Triumph in Dust

by Ian Ross

  Sighing with disdain, he dropped back onto the couch. Better to let people judge him by his actions, rather than trying to fight rumours. Wearily he picked up the wax tablet and stylus from the side table. He had been trying to compose a rough draft of a letter to Marcellina, telling her what had happened since his arrival. But writing had never come easily to him, and the scrawl of unconvincing platitudes scratched onto the wax just sounded clumsy when he read them back to himself. Communication had never been one of his strong points. With a grunt of irritation he reversed the bronze stylus and rubbed out the words with the flat end, then dropped the tablet back on the table. Sleep, he thought, he needed to sleep. And tomorrow…

  A tapping at the inner door broke into his thoughts. Castus stood up. A muffled voice from the hall outside.

  ‘Come in!’ he called.

  The door opened and two soldiers entered the chamber. ‘Dominus!’ said the first, saluting. ‘A message from the Praetorian Prefect – he wishes to speak to you.’

  ‘At this hour?’ Castus muttered, baffled. Did Ablabius want to discuss something that had happened during the banquet earlier? Clearing his throat to hide a yawn, Castus picked up his cloak from the couch and stepped towards the far corner of the room to fetch his sword and belts.

  The lamp flame twisted, a moth-shadow passing against the light. For a heartbeat he felt the warning breath up the nape of his neck, the sudden intimation of impending danger. Then he turned and looked back at the archway that led onto the portico. A third man stood in the opening, wearing a hooded cape and carrying a drawn sword.

  Castus froze; ice poured through his veins. Three against one, and he was unarmed. The lamp glow lit the face of the man in the archway: his expression was blank, but in his eyes was a killing determination. Castus saw him glance quickly at his two accomplices by the inner door; one of them stepped to the side, blocking Castus’s path to his sword. Then the man in the portico arch lifted his blade with both hands and charged.

  Shock and dread pinned Castus for a heartbeat. Then his fatigue was gone and the power of instinct alone flowed through him. Bunching his cloak around his left forearm, he snatched up the bronze stylus and launched himself towards his attacker; as the man stabbed with the sword Castus blocked the blade with the bunched cloak, shoving it away from him as the steel sliced into the wadded wool and gashed his arm. Then he slammed his other hand up under the man’s jaw, driving the pointed bronze spike of the stylus through the soft flesh at the top of his throat.

  Hot blood streamed down his arm and spattered over his chest as the man reeled against him. Castus stepped back, thrusting the attacker’s body aside as he turned and sending him sprawling across the mosaic floor. The man’s feet kicked as he died, blood spurting, the stylus still jutting obscenely from his neck.

  Pain from his gashed arm, but he fought it down. The other two men were closing in around him, swords drawn, but moving far more cautiously now. Fools, Castus thought, they should have used knives in this confined space. He felt a sudden flare of hope.

  The man on the floor still clasped his sword in a death grip; if Castus stooped to grab it, one of the other men would strike. The two who confronted him now were nervous; he could see that. They had expected this to be easy. But their nerves could make them reckless. He watched their eyes and their open mouths, the blades in their hands.

  ‘New to this?’ he growled. ‘I’ve been killing men since before you were born.’

  The man on his right drew a quick breath between his teeth and edged forward, raising his sword. Castus took two steps back until he felt the edge of the table against his hip. He reached behind him, seized the bronze lamp from the tabletop and then flung it across the room at the swordsman. The man cried out, flailing his arm as hot oil sprayed and the lamp snuffed out. Darkness engulfed them all, the after-image of the arcing flames flashing against Castus’s vision.

  But he knew this chamber far better than his attackers. He stepped quickly to his left, reaching out until he felt the wall. Stretching his hand down, he found the curved edge of the low side table with his fingertips, grasped one of the legs and whirled it up before him. The other swordsman was already advancing, unsure in the darkness, slashing his blade through the air. Castus paused for two heartbeats, then swung the table at him. The blade hacked into the wood and stuck fast; Castus dragged it aside, then smashed his fist into the man’s face.

  Three steps to the left, into the pitch darkness near the door, and Castus reached down and found the hilt of his own scabbarded sword. He pulled it upwards, shaking the scabbard free, then levelled the blade and struck. A heavy jolt up his arm as the steel bit, and the second man went down.

  The third attacker was somewhere in the middle of the room. Standing quite still, Castus could make out his shadowy form against the moonlight through the portico archway; he could hear the man’s rapid breathing as he turned in gathering panic. From somewhere outside the room came the sound of shouts and hobnailed boots crashing up stairs.

  ‘Surrender,’ Castus said quietly.

  The man let out a gasping cry, spinning on his heel. Then he raised his blade and lunged at the darkness. Castus stepped aside quickly, then punched the pommel of his sword into the man’s forehead. The attacker dropped sprawling on the tiles.

  Light flared from the portico arch, and Castus blinked and shielded his eyes, squinting as he made out the two sentries from the courtyard below, brandishing a flaming torch. A moment later, the inner door burst open. Sabinus rushed into the room, armed but still dressed in his sleeping tunic; Diogenes and more soldiers were at his back. There was a body just outside the threshold too: the sentry that had been guarding the door, his throat slashed open.

  Castus stood in the sudden illumination. Blood freckled the walls and covered the floor, and the whole room stank of it. Already he could feel his legs beginning to tremble, the sickening cramps of delayed shock twisting in his gut. He thought he would pass out, or vomit. But he forced himself to stand straight, still gripping the bloodied sword.

  ‘You took your time,’ he said to the two soldiers in the portico archway. They were stunned, staring at the bodies on the floor, the smeared and spattered blood. With dulled disappointment Castus noticed that the third attacker, the one he had struck, had managed to drive his own sword up below his ribs. He was dying slowly, a pool of gore spreading from his twitching body. No surprise, Castus thought: the man would have known that he faced long and brutal torture and execution if he were taken alive.

  ‘Brother,’ Diogenes managed to say, with an appalled gulp. ‘You haven’t lost your talent for slaughter, I see.’

  Castus grinned fiercely, then raised his hand and let the sword drop to the floor.

  For the first time in months, he felt truly alive.

  VI

  ‘I’d always assumed,’ Diogenes said as he rode, ‘that Syria would be sunny and warm. At least I’d hoped it might be, once we got out of Antioch…’

  Winter had passed in blizzard cold and whipping sleet, ice-edged winds howling from Mount Silpius, and then a drenching rain that brought floods down the stream beds and clogged the streets of Antioch with mud. It still felt like winter now, as Castus and his small retinue rode eastwards across the Syrian plain. A cold stinging drizzle was turning the road to a glistening mire that muddied the horses to knee and hock.

  ‘Wait a few weeks and it’ll be sunny enough,’ said Egnatius, the tribune commanding the mounted escort. ‘Pretty soon you’ll be grumbling about the heat, I’d put money on it!’

  Flavius Egnatius had a quick grin and the build of a natural cavalryman. He was leading forty-eight troopers of the Equites Armigeri; together with the members of Castus’s military staff, his officers and the slaves, the column made up nearly eighty men, with twice that many horses and baggage animals. An impressive array, although the very minimum possible; Castus had brought no wheeled transport, nothing that would slow him down on the muddy roads or in the desert’s dust. He
would move fast, only announcing his arrival at the last moment in the cities and fortresses along the route. At least, that was the plan.

  They had left Antioch at the end of February, just after the official celebrations of the emperor’s birthday. Finally, Castus thought, he had escaped the constricting grip of the imperial court, all the grinding administration and management, the queues of petitioners and the relentless military training, that had worn at his nerves since he first arrived in the east. Now, after five long months, he was free, with an open road ahead of him. But as he turned in the saddle and glanced back, he saw only a line of identical-looking riders in drenched brown capes and hoods, the heavy-laden camels bringing up the rear looking particularly woeful under the persistent rain.

  At least some of his party were still in good spirits, several days out from Antioch. The numerarius Metrophanes, a plump round-faced Athenian, was even singing as he rode. He had a good voice too. Castus had not forgotten that Metrophanes had been spreading rumours about him, back when he first arrived at Antioch. Probably, he thought, many others had done the same.

  He was more concerned about the Primicerius Officiorum, the head of his military staff. Claudius Sollemnis was a thickset Gaul with a suspicious frown. Capable enough, but Castus sensed that the man disapproved of him. Five months of working together had done nothing to change that, but Sollemnis gave no real cause for complaint either. And Castus had enemies enough already without seeking for more.

  Unsurprisingly, the three men who had attacked him the previous autumn had never been identified. Castus was sure they were soldiers from the garrison, paid to murder him, but nobody was willing to claim any association with the dead. The prefect’s investigators had identified a cabal among the officers Castus had demoted or threatened with discharge; conveniently, all the suspects had killed themselves before they could be questioned. But the real culprit, Castus knew, could well be higher up the chain of command. The thought that the men could have been acting on the orders of the Caesar himself, or his closest advisors, had added an even greater sense of oppression to the preceding months: Castus had gone everywhere armed, and accompanied only by men he believed he could trust. Whoever was behind the attack could well strike again, but next time they would be far cleverer about it.

  At least the news of the attempted murder had caused enough sensation in Antioch to drown out the other rumours about him. The story that the Magister Equitum had fought off a band of attackers in his own chambers had gained him a certain grim celebrity in the city. The rumours had grown more elaborate over the following months, and Castus heard them repeated back to him: there had been five assailants, or eight, all of them heavily armed. He had killed them all using only a stylus, or beaten them to death with his fists… At least, Castus thought, people respected him now. Feared him a little too, perhaps. He was no longer the old man.

  The column was passing through an area of low rolling hills, with orchards of bare trees stretching away on either side of the road. A monotonous country under the low grey sky, and the scattered villages, all similarly muddy and uninviting, did little to improve the view. As he rode, Castus thought back to the last letter he had received from Marcellina.

  We will leave for the east around the kalends of March, and should be in Antioch by the middle of May. Three months, he thought, before he would see her again. In his own letters he had not mentioned the attempt on his life; he would wait until he could tell her in person about that. Do not worry about us – we will journey by easy stages. But be careful yourself – I pray for your safekeeping, husband. Your road will be far harder than ours.

  True enough, he thought.

  The highway he was following now stretched across Syria, through Hierapolis to the Euphrates, then on across Osrhoene and the wide plains of Mesopotamia, all the way to the city of Nisibis and the distant Tigris. The vastness of the lands he had to cover was daunting: as he reached the crest of a low hill Castus could see the countryside rolling away southwards to the horizon. Beyond that horizon was the open desert, vaster still. And somewhere out there was the Persian frontier, and the battleground of the war to come.

  Once, generations past, the Roman domain had ended at the banks of the Euphrates. But successive emperors had pushed their borders eastwards, beating back the Persians and claiming a great swathe of territory all the way to the Tigris. Now this territory formed a massive northern salient, centred on Nisibis and extending beyond the Tigris into the foothills of the mountains. If the Persians wanted to invade, that would be way they would come. Their armies would cross the river and sweep across the Mesopotamian plain, crushing the cities and fortresses in their path, all the way to Syria. They had done just that, back in the distant days of the emperor Valerian, and sacked Antioch too.

  But Constantine’s planned invasion would take a different route, striking south-east from Syria down the Euphrates, directly into the heartland of the Persian realm. Castus had studied the route itineraries and the illustrated plans, the troop rosters for all the field armies and frontier units. He knew the emperor wanted him to draw as much strength as possible from the Mesopotamian garrisons to build up the expeditionary force on the Euphrates. But he could not afford to weaken them too much. Those garrisons were the only guard against the possibility of a Persian flanking attack from that direction.

  With a twitch of irritation, he shrugged the thoughts from his mind. He had several days of travel ahead of him before he reached even the Euphrates. The rain was easing off, but his hands still felt numbed as he gripped the reins, and his horse’s heavy gait on the muddy road was beginning to wear at his thigh muscles.

  ‘We’ll rest at the next milestone,’ he called to Egnatius, who signalled back to the troops that followed him. They rode a little way further until they saw the whitewashed stone at the verge, then walked their horses off the road beneath a stand of dripping plane trees.

  There was one extra rider who had accompanied the column since Antioch, and Castus was glad of his presence. He had first met the exiled Persian prince Hormisdas twelve years before, on the eve of the battle of Chrysopolis. Hormisdas had been a guarded and overly polite young man in his teens then, only recently escaped from captivity to seek sanctuary in the empire. Now he was aged about thirty, round-faced and stout, dressed in Roman military style but still with his Persian moustache and elegantly curled hair. He could almost have looked foppish, but Castus had seen the man on the practice field, and knew he was an expert horseman and a fierce fighter. Of all the men that Castus had met in the palace at Antioch, Hormisdas was the only one he truly liked or trusted; he knew a great deal about Persia too, and the Sassanian king’s army, and Castus was glad of the opportunity to learn more about his opponents.

  Most of the time, however, it had been Diogenes quizzing the prince.

  ‘But is it true,’ the secretary was asking as they dismounted under the trees, ‘that in the Zoroastrian beliefs of your people evil was created by the anti-god, who somehow… generated it from himself?’

  ‘Buggered himself, you mean!’ Egnatius called. ‘That’s what they believe, isn’t it, prince? Your devil buggered himself, got pregnant and gave birth to evil!’ A few of his troopers joined in the laughter.

  Hormisdas was smiling too, with a refined sort of condescension. ‘It must sound an outlandish concept to your Roman ears,’ he said. ‘But truly this is what our priestly mobeds tell us. Ahriman, Father of Lies, must certainly have created evil from somewhere, no? For how else can the evil we see in the world exist?’

  ‘Many great philosophers have grappled with that same problem,’ Diogenes mused, ‘although seldom have their ideas been so, ah, colourful…’

  ‘And your people wash their faces in sheep’s piss!’ Egnatius said, grinning as he rubbed down his horse. ‘Isn’t that right? Every morning and every night they do it!’

  Hormisdas spread his palms, still smiling. ‘Again I cannot deny it,’ he said. ‘And yet, you know, fresh urine is an ex
cellent purifying agent. It may seem disgusting to you cultured Romans, but I assure you that many of your own practices would seem quite vile to the devout Mazda-worshipping sons of Iran-Shahr!’

  ‘And how do they seem to you?’ Castus asked. Odd, he thought, that he had never once doubted this Persian’s loyalty to Rome.

  ‘I have been a guest in your emperor’s domain for many years,’ Hormisdas said, assuming a grave expression. ‘I respect Rome, and I respect your customs. If, with the help of the gods – and of your emperor too, of course – I regain my rightful place on the throne of Iran-Shahr I will be a different man. I will purify myself and worship the holy flame five times a day as the mobeds direct. But you have a very good saying, I think – to every country its own custom. And when you are in Rome…’

  ‘Act like a Roman!’ Egnatius declared, and tossed his wineskin to Hormisdas.

  *

  They remained three days at the town of Beroea, and by the time the column moved onwards the weather had cleared. Black clouds still barred the sky to the north, but the landscape around them was different now. The road crossed areas of scanty cultivation, then passed through wide tracts of arid stony wasteland. Across the plain rose strange rocky mounds that might once have been settlements. The desert felt much closer here, Castus thought as he rode; he could feel that great emptiness, like a pressure in the air.

  Just after midday the column passed another group of riders coming in the opposite direction, mounted on camels and small ponies. The riders drew off the road to let the Romans pass: when Castus glanced at them he saw that the men were wrapped in coarse blankets pulled up over their heads as hoods. Beneath the hoods their faces were thin and dark, their eyes fearless.