The Lost Ten

by Harry Sidebottom

  Nothing was more precious to the nomads than their camels. Jabbering with concern, the crowd of men facing the two Romans rushed to their aid.

  ‘Run,’ Iudex said.

  Holding his scabbard in his left hand to keep it from tangling in his legs, the hilt of his blade still grasped in his right, Valens ran. Terror gave wings to his feet. Even so, Iudex was drawing ahead.

  The respite was temporary. All too soon, Valens heard the shouts of his pursuers.

  He ran on, his breath torn, rasping from his throat, his lungs scorching.

  It was no more than two hundred paces to the depression where Narses and the others waited. It might as well have been miles. There was no sight of them, or even of Zabda and the woman. Just the blue cloak of Iudex swirling in the expanse of the night.

  The nomads were gaining. Their unearthly ululating cries echoing in the darkness.

  Valens glanced back. They were but thirty paces behind.

  The inattention was his undoing. Something caught his boot. Off balance, he ran another four or five steps before crashing to the ground.

  His hands and forearms were grazed by the stony desert, his chin gashed, the sword cracked from his grip.

  A yell of triumph, of hunters closing in on their prey.

  Frantically, Valens grabbed the hilt, and was up and running, oblivious to the pain.

  ‘Get down!’

  The fall had knocked the wind out of him. He could not draw breath. He was not going to make it. The Arabs were right behind him.

  ‘Get flat, you fool!’ The shout was in Latin.

  Valens dived to the earth.

  Something whisked above his head.

  He rolled, hilt clasped in sweating palm. The nomads were but ten paces distant.

  But they had stopped. One of them was looking at his chest. With a look of utmost surprise, he regarded the fletchings of the arrow buried in his body. The others gazed at their companion. Then, like a bad actor on the stage, he toppled.

  Three more shafts tore through the night. Two vanished into the dark. But another struck home. It took the tent-dweller in the throat. He was plucked backwards, as if yanked by a rope.

  The remainder of the nomads – a dozen or more – hunched down. A couple of the bravest, or most foolhardy, edged towards the prone figure of Valens.

  The next volley again yielded a single victim. An arrow hit a nomad in the shoulder. The blow was not fatal, but all the better for that. The injured man spun around, clutching the wound, and screamed in agony. Fear enters by the ears as much as the eyes. At the ghastly sound of his suffering – a suffering inflicted by an unseen foe – the rest lost their nerve. As if heeding a command, they turned and fled, loose cloaks flapping.

  The wounded nomad hobbled in their wake.

  No one stopped to aid him. He had made half a dozen steps before three shafts thumped into his back.

  CHAPTER 15

  Adiabene

  AT MIDDAY THERE WAS A COLUMN of dust in the distance on the northern horizon. It was tall and thin and rose straight in the air. Decimus said its shape showed it was raised by a column of mounted men moving fast, three, perhaps four miles away.

  Reunited after the raid on the nomad camp, the soldiers had ridden through the remaining hours of darkness. The cool of the night, and the wind of their motion, acted as a tonic. They were in good spirits. They had eaten and drunk in the saddle. Valens was glad to be alive. If the gods had cared, he would have thanked them.

  They had ridden on in the morning; in the greyness of predawn, through the long, canted shadows of sunrise, and into the heat of the day. By the fourth hour they came to a watering hole. The horses and mules were very tired, the men hardly less so, and they had halted.

  Although hardened by the long journey since Zeugma, Valens was stiff and sore when they dismounted. The woman had ridden pillion, clinging on behind Zabda. The Palmyrene had had to lift her off the horse and place her upon the ground. Her clothes were ruined, and she had not yet spoken a word. Zabda hovered anxiously over her, his receding forehead turned this way and that, like some moulting hen bird, as he regarded her carefully from different angles. The other soldiers had gathered around, offering spare tunics and cloaks, a drink from a flask or a bite to eat. She had sat silent and withdrawn, ignoring their ministrations. There was a simplicity to the soldiers. Usually licentious, often brutal, and capable of terrible cruelty, yet if someone – usually a child or a woman – sparked their sympathy, their solicitude was infinite. After a time Valens had ordered them to their duties; the horses and mules would not see to themselves.

  They had left the mules standing in line, the lead reins thrown on the ground. The head of the foremost mule was turned and secured to its pack to prevent it moving. The bell-mare was released from her traces, and led to water with the horses that had been ridden and the spare mounts. They were taken to the watering hole two at a time so they did not cause a commotion. After the horses had drunk, they were hobbled and unsaddled. They were given a little hay as the men brushed their backs and first checked their feet, then cleaned their eyes, nostrils and dock with a damp cloth. Finally, when they had cooled down, they were fed a mixture of oats and hay, and given a salt lick from the stores. After the horses, the mules were fed and watered. Their feet and legs and backs were examined, and their rigging adjusted, but they were not unloaded.

  Clemens’s horse had gone lame, and he joined Decimus and Valens in selecting a replacement from the remounts. That done, they had worked together to improvise a saddlecloth and tack so that the woman could ride the quietest of the remaining spare horses.

  ‘Need to keep an eye on her,’ Decimus said. ‘A lot of women commit suicide after they have been raped.’

  ‘How is she going to kill herself out here?’ Clemens asked. ‘She has not got a knife or anything.’

  ‘Drown herself.’

  ‘In that pond?’

  ‘Throw herself off the horse.’

  ‘Be lucky to die.’

  ‘Wander off into the desert.’

  ‘And risk the tent-dwellers catching her?’

  ‘How should I know?’ Decimus had sounded irritated at the intransigence of Clemens. ‘The road to freedom is always open, so the philosophers say.’

  ‘Lucretia killed herself,’ Valens said. ‘Her husband and family begged her not to, but she did.’

  Everyone knew the story. Raped by the son of the last King of Rome, her suicide had been the catalyst for the overthrow of the monarchy. Her resolution had brought freedom to Rome, and left her name as a symbol of female courage.

  ‘Like I said,’ Decimus concluded, ‘it is in their nature.’

  The other men lit a fire and prepared a meal. They used the last of the fresh meat and a portion of the onions and peas they had bought in Nineveh to make a stew. The flatbread had gone stale, so some of the men heated it on sticks in the fire.

  Valens had taken two bowls and a flask of watered wine over to where the woman sat in the shade of a palm tree. The sun was almost directly overhead.

  She looked at the food and drink and him equally without interest.

  ‘Eat,’ he said.

  Mechanically she had done as she was told. She was wearing a white tunic someone must have given her. It was unbelted. That was one road to freedom closed. No danger of her hanging or strangling herself.

  ‘You speak Greek?’

  She had nodded.

  ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Lucia, but I am also known as Al-zabba.’

  ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘Matiane.’

  ‘And what brought you here to the desert?’

  ‘Greed.’ Her reply was flat.

  ‘The dead man was your husband?’

  She had said nothing.

  ‘The other a slave?’

  ‘I knew it was too dangerous, begged him not to.’

  ‘Your husband was trading wine to the nomads?’

  ‘He said they would pay
high prices.’

  ‘They have none of their own.’

  ‘I told him they could not be trusted.’ There was an edge of desperation in her voice, an echo of that futile argument. ‘He would not believe that they would just take what they wanted.’

  An old fable came into Valens’s mind. ‘The god Hermes was driving across the world in a chariot filled with lies, villainy and fraud. To every people he distributed a little of his cargo. In the desert the chariot broke, and the Arabs stole the remainder of the contents.’

  She inclined her head sadly, as if he had done more than repeat a story his nurse had told him.

  ‘Where will you go?’

  She’d drawn a shuddering breath, mastered herself. ‘Home to Matiane. If I can get there, if the gods relent. I have family there. If no one knows what has happened, our customs ensure that I will be given another husband.’

  ‘It was not your fault.’

  ‘That makes no difference. Would you marry a woman who had been defiled by the tent-dwellers?’

  There had been nothing he could say.

  ‘Sir.’ Decimus approached. It was midday, and the pall of dust had been spotted to the north.

  They saddled up quickly with the efficiency of long practice.

  ‘How many Arabs were left in the camp?’ Decimus asked.

  Valens calculated. He and Iudex had both killed a pair, and Zabda had dealt with the sentry. The arrows of Narses had accounted for three more. ‘No more than seventeen.’

  ‘That cloud is raised by at least thirty.’

  ‘Then it might not be them.’

  ‘Or they have found some friends. These deserts are full of the bastards.’

  ‘We will turn south-east. The mountains we have to cross are in that general direction. Sooner or later we should strike the river we need to follow. At Nineveh they said it ran down from the heights.’

  There was no panic. For the first mile they went at a walk to let the animals warm up. As ever they then halted briefly to check the girths of their mounts and the rigging of the mules. After that they proceeded at a trot, the baggage animals ambling. They still made good ground, and their relatively gentle progress left less telltale dust behind them.

  After another hour, at the next halt, it was evident the other riders had turned after them. The pursuing column of dust was appreciably closer, perhaps no more than a couple of miles to the rear.

  Valens sat his horse, studying the sky, thinking.

  ‘We should get going, ride hard.’ Decimus said. ‘The mules will not be able to keep up. We must abandon them.’

  ‘Not yet,’ Valens said. ‘We have a head start. If we alter course south-west, and they turn after our tracks, then we can be certain that they are hunting us.’

  ‘But that is away from the mountains.’

  ‘If we continue south-east, we may reach the foothills before we find the river.’

  Decimus looked dubious, but did not argue.

  ‘Without the river to guide us up to the pass, we may be trapped against the mountain wall.’

  Decimus gave a curt nod, and circled his horse back to his station.

  Within half an hour they knew the worst. Again the hateful column of dust dogged them.

  Valens raised his arm to halt the small column.

  ‘Take from the baggage train whatever grain and water your horses can carry. Load some supplies onto the sound spare horses. We will leave the mules, and the lame horse.’

  ‘Why leave the mules for the camel-fuckers?’ Aulus said. ‘We might as well slaughter them.’

  ‘And the lame horse will recover,’ Clemens said. ‘I hate to think of a nomad riding him.’

  ‘No,’ Valens said firmly. ‘They may be satisfied with their booty.’

  ‘And they may not,’ Hairan said glumly.

  The provisions were speedily stowed on the horses. It would leave them short, but it was no time to worry about that.

  ‘Now we ride due south. There are only some three hours of daylight left. They will never catch us before dark.’ Valens spoke with far more certainty than he felt.

  They did not set off at a mad gallop. That risked accidents, and would soon exhaust their mounts. Instead Valens kept them to a steady canter which ate up the miles.

  For the first hour all went well. Valens reined in, and looked back. The Arabs would have been pushing their mounts for longer than the soldiers. Valens and his men were pulling away. But the column of dust was still following. The mules and what they still carried had not been enough to placate the vengeance of the tent-dwellers.

  ‘Persistent, aren’t they?’ Valens muttered to no one in particular.

  ‘The nomads live by blood feud,’ Hairan said. ‘We have killed seven of them, they are bound to kill seven of us.’

  ‘Well, as long as I am the one left alive,’ Clemens said in a rare moment of black humour.

  ‘Give the horses a drink, and then we press on,’ Valens said. ‘Not long until darkness, and we must be getting near the river.’

  The ground here was more rock than sand. The hooves rattled in the steady, almost soothing rhythm of a fast canter, the easiest gait for both horse and rider. The noise and the motion lulled Valens into something approaching a reverie. He had the odd impression that they were unmoving, that the sky wheeled overhead, and the desert raced away behind them. In this altered state, his thoughts moved unbidden to dark, unhappy things.

  Interfectus a latronibus. You saw the inscriptions all over the empire: Killed by bandits. You passed without a thought. Until the victims were those you loved. There were many bandits in Italy. The Apennines were full of them. Many were barbarians, stragglers from the Alamannic invasion five years ago. Had they tortured his father before they killed him? Had they raped his mother before they killed her too?

  Killed by bandits. He had set up the stone by the mountain road beside which the bodies had been found. They had lain there for some time. It had been impossible to judge how much they had suffered.

  A harsh shout, and a break in the rhythm of the horses, brought him back. Valens pulled on his reins.

  The woman had fallen. She was lying, groaning on the ground. Zabda and Clemens were already dismounted at her side.

  ‘I can’t go on,’ she said. ‘Don’t let them take me again. Please, put me out of my misery.’

  Zabda hushed her, and looked up at Valens. ‘She is not badly hurt. She can ride with me.’

  ‘Make sure to switch to a spare horse every half-hour,’ Valens said. ‘Otherwise the extra weight will slow you down.’

  Clemens helped Zabda hoist her up in front of the saddle.

  Valens gazed back the way they had travelled. The hard scrabble over which they had ridden raised little dust. There was no sign of pursuit. Something caught his eye. Something out of place in that elemental wasteland. He squinted in the late afternoon sun.

  ‘What fool dropped a water bottle?’ Valens rounded on his men in fury.

  None avoided his eye. One or two spread their hands in a mime of innocence.

  ‘Why leave a trail for them to follow?’

  The anger died out of him. ‘Just take more care,’ he muttered. ‘Check the horses, the saddlebags and stowage as well as the tack, before we move on.’

  There was no further indication of pursuit before the light faded. But two more horses, those of Aulus and Decimus, went lame. It was not to be wondered at; the animals had been hard used. Neither was broken down, and both could still run on a lead. It did mean there was only one spare ridable horse left, and a further redistribution of their much diminished stores. After the column pulled out, Valens hung back with Hairan, and checked that nothing had been dropped or cast aside that could mark their sojourn.

  After the sun had set, the water of the river still held a faint luminescence of the day. They had reached the Lykos, and the nomads had not caught them. The road to the pass was open before them. All they had to do was follow the river upstream. The waters would
cover their tracks. In the upper reaches they could find a local to take them over the watershed. It felt like a pivotal moment.

  ‘How do we know this is the right river?’ Aulus’s question crushed Valens’s temporary joy.

  ‘What other river can it be?’

  ‘Any number of streams must run down from the mountains to the Tigris.’

  ‘The stars indicate we are at the right latitude.’

  ‘The stars are malign,’ Iudex said.

  The woman walked up to where they stood. ‘It is the Lykos.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Aulus asked gently. Like all the men, her suffering was on his mind.

  ‘My husband and I followed it down from Matiane.’

  Inwardly Valens cursed himself for a fool. How else could the ill-fated trader have crossed the mountains to meet his fate in the desert? Because she was a woman, it had not occurred to any of them to ask her advice.

  ‘We have our guide,’ he said.

  The soldiers laughed, although Iudex put his thumb between his fingers to avert evil. In his religion women were as inherently evil as the stars.

  ‘Can we take the horses up the riverbed?’ Valens said.

  ‘I do not know. We brought the wagon down the track alongside the river,’ she said.

  ‘Well, we will soon find out.’

  The bottom of the stream was solid rock, but overlaid by a fine silt. The disturbed sediment bloomed up and streamed away from each step the horses took. It turned the waters milky white in the moonlight.

  Again Valens waited behind with Hairan. They stood on the bank watching the surface of the river. The stream was fast. Soon all evidence of the rest of the horsemen had vanished.

  They swung into their saddles, and splashed into the stream. The water was shallow, only occasionally reaching the fetlocks of the horses. Valens restrained himself from singing. There was no way the tent-dwellers could track them now.

  CHAPTER 16

  Adiabene

  TWO DAYS IN THE SADDLE SEPARATED by a sleepless night had left them bone tired. For two hours they rode up the bed of the river. Their progress was slow, and it was hard to judge how many miles they had covered. Eventually, when they had climbed onto the bank, at least a third of the night had gone.