They moved out before sunrise. The country was flat, with nothing to obstruct visibility, but there were dry watercourses, some deep, running across their path. Each of these could offer concealment. Mindful of this, they maintained a good order of march. No more than five paces was allowed between each mule. All the horsemen kept in close attendance, except for Hairan riding ahead on point. Valens would not let them be ambushed by bandits or tent-dwellers again.
After an hour at a walk, they stopped to check their girths, smooth the saddle blankets, and adjust the loads on the mules. As they worked, the sun came up. It threw long shadows of men and beasts. The sky was a bowl of the purest blue. It was going to be a hot day.
Remounted, they increased the pace, the horses trotting, the mules going at an amble. Riding at the head of the column, Valens watched Hairan. The bright red robe that the Hatrene wore over his armour billowed in the freshening breeze. Valens noted the little swirls of dust that lifted and snaked towards them. Beyond Hairan, on the horizon, the plain lifted to a low ridge of sand-coloured hills.
They had made no great distance before they had to rein in at a steep wadi. Dismounting, they first led the horses down its crumbling bank, and up the other side, then returned for the mules. Their hooves slipping, the baggage animals jibbed and complained at this unwanted break in their routine. The men sweated and cursed and swore.
Back in the saddle, after they had resumed station, Valens took them straight back into a trot. The hills looked surprisingly near – he had not thought they had travelled so far. Yet, lacking landmarks except the Singaras away to the right, distance was hard to judge in the desert.
‘Ahead.’ Quintus pointed.
Hairan was coming back, riding fast.
Valens felt a stab of foreboding. He squinted at the incoming rider. Hairan was not holding his cloak aloft, the signal for enemy in sight. Valens scanned the landscape. It was empty, nothing living in sight, not even a bird, although the hills seemed much nearer.
Hairan disappeared as he descended into a watercourse. Waiting for him to re-emerge, Valens held up his hand to halt the column. The day had turned dull, the sky overcast and oppressive. The crest of the hills seemed to move and shift, perhaps a mirage, or some other trick of the hazy light. Quintus had dismounted to check his mount’s feet for stones. Facing the horse’s tail, the navigator lifted each of its legs in turn, holding them between his own thighs and using a knife to clean the hoof.
Hairan popped back out of the wadi and put his horse into a gallop for the final section. He was waving an arm, shouting. The sighing of the wind, and the noise of his coming, drowned the words.
Valens lifted his gaze again to search for potential threats. For a moment he could not believe what his eyes saw. He must be mistaken. The hills were moving – like a great brown tidal wave, they surged across the plain towards them.
‘Haboo!’ In his alarm, the Hatrene was shouting in his native tongue.
Iudex translated. ‘Dust storm.’
‘Turn around!’ Hairan had reverted to Latin. ‘Get back to the last wadi. We can shelter there.’
Valens circled his arm. The order was unnecessary. Already the men were yanking the heads of their mounts around. Decimus and Narses were either side of the bell-mare, turning her, the first mules plodding after. Zabda had set off for the rear with the spare horses on leading reins.
Valens could not take his eyes off the approaching storm. A dark wall of swirling cloud, it raced ever closer. Was it a mile away, two? There was no way to tell.
Hairan rode straight past.
‘We best go,’ Iudex said.
Quintus’s horse was playing up, circling as he tried to mount, hopping after it.
‘Let me help,’ Valens said.
‘I am fine. You get moving.’ Quintus’s hair was blowing in the wind, flicking across his face. ‘Stand still, you fucker!’
Iudex was cantering back towards the baggage train.
A spray of sand was hitting Valens in the face, stinging and gritting his eyes. Pebbles were skittering along the ground.
‘Get off, and help with the mules,’ Quintus shouted.
Valens turned his gelding. The mule train was stationary, in disarray. Some of the animals had stepped over the traces and become tangled. Decimus was on foot, wrestling with the twisted leather, shoving the recalcitrant beasts. Narses, still on horseback, was leaning over, gripping the bridle of the bell-mare.
Slinging a leg over the horn of his saddle, Valens dropped to the ground.
‘Have to cut them loose,’ Decimus yelled.
Holding the reins of his horse in one hand, it was near impossible to saw through the thongs.
‘Fuck!’ Decimus was swearing loudly and monotonously. ‘Fuck!’
When the animals were freed, they stood, looking anxious and uncertain.
From the east came a roaring like surf on a shore.
‘Go on, Narses,’ the horse master bellowed. ‘They will follow the bell-mare.’
The Persian needed no further urging, but jammed the heels of his boots into the ribs of his mount. Packs swaying, the mules went after the tinkling bell.
Decimus swung back into the saddle and Valens went to follow his example. He glanced up. The storm loomed over him, no longer a wall, but a high cliff – a hundred foot, or even higher. It roiled with destructive energy, thundered like an avalanche. Stones smacked into his shins. And then it hit.
Valens staggered with the force of the wind. It was as hot as a blast from a furnace. The sand was flaying his exposed skin. The world had narrowed to a few indistinct feet. Without warning, the horse reared. It wrenched the reins from Valens’s grasp. He grabbed for the trailing strap, and missed. In a moment the beast had vanished in the swirling murk. The beats of its hooves heard for a moment, then there was just the howling storm.
No one in sight. Valens was alone. He must not panic. Tugging his scarf up to his nose, hunching his back against the wind, he staggered back the way they had come.
The world was full of hurtling, stinging, biting torment. He was breathing sand. His ears rang with a sound like a malevolent giant tearing cloth. He reeled under the impact of the wind.
Disorientated, it would be so easy to become lost. Wander miles away from the others. Do not panic. The wind was from the east. The wadi ran right across to the west. Keep going, and he had to reach it. No need to panic. Just keep going.
Once he thought he heard horses running, out of sight, in the heart of the storm.
Step by step, gasping for breath, inhaling sand, he tottered on.
Another time in that hellish journey there was a sound like a scream.
Just the wind. Keep going.
Eyes bleared, he did not see the lip of the watercourse until he nearly fell into it. On his arse, he slid down the bank.
Blurred outlines of men and beasts. The quiet down here unnatural.
‘Is that you, sir?’ It was Decimus.
‘Is everyone else here?’
‘Clemens just turned up, but Iudex and Quintus are still out there.’
‘The animals?’
‘Not sure. Some are missing.’
A huge, dark shape above them. Stones rattling down.
They scuttled apart.
Iudex, leaning back in the saddle, his horse almost sitting back on its haunches, skidded to the floor of the wadi.
The great hairless cranium shone in the gloom. With the grace of an acrobat, Iudex vaulted off his mount.
‘Are you alright?’ Valens shouted. ‘Did you see the others?’
‘No, they are lost.’ Iudex smiled. ‘Unbelievers move in darkness, but the Lord guides the path of the Elect.’
CHAPTER 10
Arbayestan
THEY FOUND QUINTUS THE NEXT MORNING. The storm had blown itself out during the night. The navigator was no more than fifty paces from the wadi, half covered in sand. It gritted his wavy hair, dulled the once expressive eyes. His head was twisted at an impos
sible angle. Obviously his neck was broken.
‘Poor bastard,’ Decimus said. ‘Must have taken a fall. No sign of his horse.’
‘Well, that is an end to it,’ Aulus said.
Valens rounded on the Gaul. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You all know what I mean. Without Quintus we are lost. No choice but to go back.’
‘We obey our orders.’
‘Not what the boys think.’ Aulus looked around for support. Narses and Zabda held his eye. The others looked at the ground.
‘This is a Roman army unit, not some Greek democracy,’ Valens snapped. ‘We go where I say.’
‘Two men dead, and we are not in enemy territory yet. We must go back while we still can.’
‘No.’
‘Without Quintus we have no way of plotting our course.’ There was an ugly, stubborn and belligerent cast to Aulus’s aged and pouched face. ‘We could wander these wastes until we die of hunger and thirst, or until the tent-dwellers pick us off one by one.’
‘Nonsense.’ Valens affected a certainty that he did not feel. ‘We have supplies for several days, enough water, the Arabs are nothing to fear, and Quintus taught me to navigate by the stars. We follow the sinking of Arctophylax and Cynosura to the east. Soon we will reach the Tigris. Once we are in the realm of the King of Kings, Narses is a Persian and can guide us.’
Narses cleared his throat. ‘I once served in Hyrkania, did a tour of duty at the Castle of Silence – the Lord Mazda be praised for bringing me safe from that lonely place – but I do not know the mountains that we must cross in the province of Matiane to reach the Caspian.’
‘Then once across the Tigris, we hire a native guide.’ Valens was adamant. ‘You and Hairan speak Persian. And money is a universal language.’
Zabda spoke, although somewhat reluctantly. ‘I have the Persian tongue as well. The wealth of Palmyra depends on their trade.’
‘All mercantile endeavour is trickery and fraud,’ Iudex said. ‘If I pray, the Demiurge will set my spirit-guide on the right path.’
‘Your spirit-guide?’ Aulus spat, sacrilegiously near to the corpse. ‘A human guide might be more reliable.’
‘Enough.’ Valens drew himself up, tried to radiate authority. ‘We will search for the strayed animals, see to those we find and those that remain. Then we will return and bury Quintus. Those are your orders. Carry them out.’
Valens saw Aulus look at Iudex.
‘We will do what is ordered, and at every command we will be ready,’ Iudex said.
One by one the others repeated the words. Aulus last, and with utmost reluctance.
We will do what is ordered, and at every command we will be ready.
No one had spoken the ritual with any enthusiasm, but they began to walk back to the dry watercourse.
‘Did Quintus really teach you?’ Hairan spoke quietly to Valens.
‘It is not difficult. Anyway, ride into the rising sun, and we will reach the Tigris.’
Hairan twirled the points of his long moustache. ‘An open road, the wind in your face, a sword on your hip, a woman in your bed, a poem in your heart – adventure is in the blood of the warriors of Hatra – although there are few women in this desert. Perhaps in Persia . . . Have you ever had a Persian?’
‘No.’
‘You should, they are very lascivious. And a few nights with a houri does wonders for learning a language. Although much of what they say is not polite.’
They had not been searching long when they found Valens’s horse and one of the missing mules at no great distance. The horse was sheltering in a small depression. The mule was standing in the open, enduring with the eternal patience of its kind. But Quintus’s mount and four of the mules were gone beyond recall. As bad luck would have it, one of the lost mules had been carrying half the trade goods.
‘Some tent-dweller will find a fortune,’ Hairan said.
‘Perhaps the bones and the jewels will lie undisturbed forever,’ Valens said.
‘Or some traveller will stumble across them in centuries to come.’ Iudex narrowed his eyes, as if peering far into the future. ‘Long after Rome has fallen, they will hold those artefacts in their hands, and wonder at the pointless ingenuity of the artists who expended such time and skill in carving tiny figures in gemstones, condemn the vanity of those who desired such things.’
‘You do not believe Rome to be eternal?’ Valens asked.
‘Nothing is eternal, except Light and Darkness,’ Iudex replied.
As the merchandise was easily portable, Valens decided to redistribute the remainder in the saddle bags of the eight surviving members of the expedition. That an individual might desert crossed his mind for the first time. Once the idea was there, it seemed extraordinary that he had not thought it before. The three easterners could be most tempted. They were closest to home. Although, of course, Hairan’s city of Hatra was no longer inhabited. But all frumentarii were selected for their resourcefulness. Any of them could decide to vanish. It would not be difficult to make a new life somewhere in the vast expanses of the empire, or even beyond its frontiers. The price of the cameos would set a man up, if not for life, at least for a time. Yet Valens thought sharing out the valuables a risk worth running. If all the trade goods were lost, it would be hard to pretend to be nothing more sinister than a merchant caravan.
Several of the animals had cuts and abrasions from the storm, but from only one of the spare horses did the blood spurt bright scarlet. The incision was high on its thigh. This animal Decimus left aside. From the others the blood ran dull, red and slow. For these the horse master used some of the caravan’s precious water to bathe the wounds. Using forceps, he removed every trace of dirt and grit, then, with delicate precision, shaved the hair around the injury. When the blood barely oozed, he applied a plug of clean wool, held in place by a linen bandage.
‘The spare horse?’ Valens asked.
‘An artery is severed.’ Decimus brought his face close to that of the injured animal. He talked gently to it, stroked its nose, let it inhale his breath. Then without preamble he drove a blade deep into the horse’s neck. It tried to rear up, but he held it down by its soft and tender nostrils. When he withdrew the knife, a stream of blood thick as a man’s arm pumped forth. The horse did not fight, but stood trembling. The blood pooled in the dirt. Everyone was silent, as if attending the rites of some deep religious mystery.
When the horse collapsed, Decimus cleaned his arm and blade. Valens saw tears in the eyes of the horse master.
‘We must get on,’ Valens said.
Leaving Decimus to cut strips of meat from the dead animal’s haunches, they went to bury Quintus.
The stiffness of death had gone from the navigator. His corpse slumped, and his hands and feet dragged along the ground as they carried him down into the wadi. They enlarged an overhang in its bank, placed a coin between his teeth, and shovelled dirt and stones into the opening.
May the earth lie lightly upon him.
It was the second makeshift grave in which they had left one of their number. Valens thought water must run at some time of the year in what was now a dry watercourse. A flash flood would drag Quintus from his resting place. Still, they had done what was right. When the waters came, the shade of Quintus would have departed. The coin would have paid Charon, and the ferryman would have taken Quintus over the Styx. The soul of the navigator would have joined the countless dead thronging the dark meadows of Hades. Except, since the death of his parents, Valens no longer had any belief in such things.
*
On the third day after the storm they reached a watercourse that did not lie across their path, but ran ahead towards the east. There was a small stream in its bed, scrubby vegetation on its banks. They led the animals to the water gratefully, drank themselves, and replenished their flasks. Ordering that two men stand guard at all times, Valens gave the rest permission to strip and wash and take their ease.
Valens took the first sentry du
ty with Iudex. Below them the others splashed and laughed in the rivulet. Valens forced himself to look away from the cool tempting water, and scan the bare ochre countryside. He was tired, dirty and hot, but he must lead by example. You should never order men to do what you will not do yourself.
Surely this channel must lead down to the Tigris. Their journey across Mesopotamia was nearly at an end. But any sense of accomplishment was undermined by the thought of what was to come. No matter how dangerous the lands between the two rivers, so far they had travelled through territory at least nominally owing allegiance to the Rome. Soon they would be beyond the frontier. Once they crossed into the world of the barbarians, they would be beyond help from any Roman troops.
Perhaps we already are. The unsettling thought struck Valens. In this wilderness, who could tell exactly where was the boundary between Roman and Sassanid? The very idea of Persia frightened him.
Shapur was said to be cruel beyond measure, and certainly the King of Kings was implacably hostile to Rome. Both characteristics would be shared by his subjects. As well as the fear of pain and death, there was the fear of alienation. Not speaking Persian, Valens would be forced to rely on those that did. Narses, of course, was Persian. Coming from the caravan city of Palmyra, Zabda would have grown up hearing the language. If Iudex had not intervened, the two easterners might have murdered Valens at the start in Zeugma. Their evident continuing hostility did not encourage trust. At least there was also Hairan. But it was sobering for Valens to consider how very little he knew about the warrior from Hatra. Not even what fate had befallen his city.
The four westerners brought little comfort. Decimus the horse master and Clemens the armourer appeared dutiful enough, but Iudex was unaccountable, touched by some god, and Aulus the quartermaster more than reluctant to obey orders or continue the mission. Waiting in the hot sun, Valens turned his problems over until his thoughts became splintered, and the fragments glittered and turned and fell in no order, like a ruined mosaic.
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