A jabber of Persian voices. The bobbing light of torches trailing after the eunuch.
It was cold in the water. Valens felt Sasan shivering. He put his arms around the boy.
The torches swarmed up onto the islet and disappeared under the trees.
Valens helped Sasan back up onto the track.
‘The levee is clear.’ Narses had returned. ‘The old eunuch did well. But we must hurry.’
*
When they crossed the deserted levee, Valens thought about turning the Persian horses free, stampeding them. But that would make a noise. There would be other Sassanids nearby in the watchtowers, and it would give them proof that the Romans had slipped past. If the hunters took Barbad alive, Valens doubted the eunuch would tell them anything.
Narses navigated them to a spit of firm ground running into the fens from the north-east. They took it at a walk. When they reached the plain, they moved to a trot, then a gentle canter.
Sunrise found them still in the saddle. Its low, slanting light threw their shadows far out across the plain. Everyone was relieved that the Walls of Alexander were out of sight over the horizon.
The Steppe here rolled like a sea in a gentle swell. It was cut by little watercourses running off to the west. By the third hour of daylight the horses were stumbling with weariness, and roped in sweat. They stopped and watered them at a stream. Although no one had slept in the night, Valens set a watch, and Decimus chivvied those not on that duty to see to the horses.
Despite the cold, men and animals were glad to get into the rivulet and have its bracing water wash away the foul and clinging black mud of the swamp. The men put on clean tunics from their saddlebags, and rubbed the horses dry. They were down to the last of their rations – some hard tack and a morsel of bacon – and there was no food for their mounts. But the autumn rains had revived the grass, and they hobbled the horses and let them graze. Supplies should not be a problem. The Steppe was nothing but thousands of miles of grass, and the men could live off what they caught hunting.
Young Prince Sasan did not want to eat. He was desolate at the loss of the old eunuch. Clemens sat close to him, and tried to offer consolation in Greek. There was a tenderness about his actions. The severe, time-worn face – so very like a sculpture of a senator from the stern time of the ancient republic – bent over that of the boy, showing the concern of a father.
All Clemens’s efforts were in vain. The boy continued to sob.
Narses, resplendent in a tunic embroidered with the heraldry of the Suren clan, went over. He pulled the child to his feet. Gripping Sasan’s shoulders, Narses spoke to him sharply in Persian. The boy wiped the tears from his eyes with his knuckles, took several deep and shuddering breaths, and stopped crying. Narses passed him a biscuit, and he ate.
‘What did you say?’ Valens asked.
‘I reminded him that he was a Persian: born to ride, shoot and abhor the Lie. I told him that Barbad had died for him, and that of the ten of us who had come to rescue him, three had already given their lives. He owed the dead the dignity of silent grief.’
Before they slept, they resaddled their horses.
The boy moved off to relieve himself. Clemens went to follow. Narses said Persian decorum demanded privacy. Someone should keep an eye on the child, Clemens said. Narses assured him that Sasan would do nothing foolish. Anyway, Aulus was on watch, and out on the Steppe the old hunter could see anything coming twelve miles off.
*
Valens was woken by someone shaking him. He had not been asleep long, and it was hard to drag himself awake, to force his tired eyes to focus.
It was Aulus. Fatigue had further sunken his cheeks. The skin under his eyes was veined and purple, like bruises.
‘They are coming,’ Aulus said.
‘Who?’ Valens was still stupid with sleep.
‘The Kindly Ones. Who the fuck do you think?’ Aulus said. ‘Sassanid horsemen, three columns of them spread out across the Steppe.’
‘How far?’ Valens ached all over from sleeping in his mail.
‘A couple of miles. The rain laid the dust. I caught a flash of sunlight on steel. When I knew the first column was there, I could find the others. There may be more further east. They are dragging the Steppe for us.’
‘Wake the others. We will move out straight away.’
Valens went over to Decimus. The horse master was already awake. ‘We will fit a blanket and girths on the two spare horses. If a mount goes lame, there will be no time to change saddles.’
As he tacked up the horse, Valens looked at the sun. It was directly overhead. Noon, the horses had had three hours rest. It was not enough. Six hours until darkness. That was too long. Despair seized his mind and limbs. All this way to end in failure on this featureless, empty plain. Severus, Quintus and Zabda had died for nothing. Unless some god intervened, the rest would soon be joining them. But if at last it all ends in sleep and quiet, why worry?
‘We are ready.’
Narses’s words jolted him back to his surroundings.
‘Is the boy enough of a horseman for this?’
‘He is a Persian.’
‘Mount up.’
As they came up out of the watercourse, they were seen. The Sassanids were much closer, little over a mile. They had been going at a trot. Now, spying their quarry, a trumpet brayed from the nearest column and they went straight up to a gallop. Other trumpets took up the call. The notes were repeated across the face of the Steppe.
The fugitives rode hard, in a clump, in no human order, but like a herd of wild horses.
The Steppe stretched away. It was flatter to the north, utterly without features. There was no cover, just isolated scrubs of wormwood. Nowhere at all to hide. Along the horizon was a series of low, round oddly regular hillocks. They would never reach them.
Their mounts were worn out with hard travel and little rest. Those of the Sassanids must be fresh. Within half an hour the hunters had closed the gap to less than half a mile. They were gaining hand over fist.
Valens could feel the energy dying out of his mount. It was running with its head held to one side, the rhythm of its legs faltering. He bent low over its neck, driving it forward with hands and heels.
There was a shout, then an awful crash from the rear. Valens looked back over his shoulder. Aulus’s horse had fallen. The Gaul had jumped clear. He was down in the dirt. The horse was struggling to rise. One of its front legs was broken.
Decimus, with the spares, was near the front. He did not slacken stride, did not appear to have noticed. Every moment was taking them all further away from Aulus.
High and exultant cries came from the Sassanids just a couple of hundred paces behind.
Valens yanked on his reins, sat back in his seat. He would not leave Aulus alone to die.
The first arrow whistled past to embed itself in the turf.
Suddenly Valens’s mount leapt forward again. The unexpectedness rammed him backwards. Were it not for the rear horns of the saddle, he would have disappeared over the horse’s tail.
‘There is nothing you can do.’ Iudex brought the flat of his sword across the rump of Valen’s mount again. The beast set off, ignoring its rider.
Valens regained his balance, again reined in, and looked back.
Aulus was on his feet, sword drawn.
The Sassanids were almost upon him.
Iudex grabbed Valens’s bridle. ‘Leave him.’
The enemy horsemen were lapping around the solitary man.
‘We will share his fate soon enough.’ Iudex kicked his own horse forward, dragging Valens’s along.
Torn with indecision, Valens let himself be led away.
‘Aulus will buy us a few moments,’ Iudex bellowed. ‘Now ride!’
*
Doing as he was bidden, Valens gazed over his shoulder. Aulus was like a beast at bay. The Gaul turned this way and that. He made little rushes. The horsemen surrounding him wheeled out of range of his blade. The Sassa
nids did not close with Aulus. Instead they shot him down from a safe distance. The first shaft to hit took him in the back of his thigh. Aulus staggered. The next struck his right arm. He shifted his sword to his left. The third and fourth thumped between his shoulder blades.
Valens looked away, over his horse’s head.
Those strange round hills were not that far away now. But they were bare, and offered nothing except a last stand.
The Sassanids were so close Valens could hear the jingle of their armour and weapons, hear them call encouragement to each other.
Brightly feathered arrows were falling thicker.
It is hard to aim a bow from a galloping horse, but it was only a matter of time until the first Roman rider or horse was brought down. Valens was tensed for the searing pain as an arrowhead punched into his back. A tiny part of him willed it to happen, to bring this torment to an end.
And then it was over. No more sounds of pursuit. No arrows falling.
Valens looked back. The Sassanids had reined to a ragged halt. As he watched, they wheeled their horses and rode away to the south.
Valens looked ahead. There, in front of the mounds, was a line of the strangest horsemen he had ever seen.
CHAPTER 33
The Steppe
NO ONE WAS PREPARED TO meet the Heruli.
The rumour was that they were not as other men. Rumour did not know the half of it.
Valens sat on his horse, open mouthed, oblivious to everything except the men in front of him.
The Heruli were dressed much as you would expect of nomads. They wore thick fur coats. The furs were luxurious – sable and marten and ermine – and their ornaments were gold. They rode small Steppe ponies. Each had a richly embroidered gorytus, a combined bow case and quiver, and had a long straight sword on their hip. Most carried a small round shield. From the tack of their ponies fluttered what looked suspiciously like human scalps.
That was where normality ended.
The faces of almost all the riders were covered in intricate tattoos. The hair and beards of many were dyed a bright red. But it was the heads of the red-haired warriors that were truly shocking. Their skulls were long – perhaps half as long again as that of a man – and they were pointed, like that of some predatory animal, or creature from a nightmare.
A tall rider nudged his pony forward.
‘Zirin,’ he said, and placed his right palm flat to his forehead.
Not knowing what the word meant, Valens saluted.
The rider smiled. Without the tattoos and the red dye and the deformed skull, he would have been handsome.
‘I am Andonnoballus, son of Naulobates who rules all the grasslands from the Sea of Azov to the Volga. My father would have come to meet you himself, but he is . . . away.’
Andonnoballus spoke Greek with a slight accent.
‘Health and great joy,’ Valens replied in the same language. ‘My name is Marcus Aelius Valens.’
‘We were warned to expect an officer called Severus,’ Andonnoballus said.
‘He is dead.’
‘My condolences.’ Three more nomads came forward. ‘These are my brothers – Aruth, Uligagus and Artemidorus.’
They looked nothing like either Andonnoballus or each other. Aruth was short and stocky, Uligagus a great bear of a man. The last indicated – the one with the Greek name – had tattoos, but his hair was not dyed red, nor was his skull misshapen.
Seeing the surprise on Valens’s face, Andonoballus laughed. ‘All Heruli warriors are brothers. You people from the Middle Sea find it shocking that we hold our wives in common. Among us maternity is a matter of fact, paternity merely opinion.’
‘Then how can Naulobates know that you are his son?’ As soon as the words left his mouth, Valens regretted asking what might be an awkward question.
The young warrior was unconcerned. ‘The custom with our wives is not ancestral. My father introduced it some years ago.’
Valens was relieved that his ill-considered words had caused no offence. The safety of the expedition now rested entirely in the hands of these strange tribesmen.
‘The gods told my father that the Heruli should adopt the practice from the Agathyrsi, one of our subject tribes. If the woman is willing, any one of us may lie with the wife of another. It is much better than the system of Plato. In the Republic the family was to be abolished. How cruel was the Athenian? What is more natural than the family?’
Valens was speechless. Andonnoballus’s conversation was even more unlikely than his cranial deformation.
Without leave, Artemidorus interrupted the son of his king. ‘That is enough, Andonnoballus. Our guests are tired. Philosophy and discussion of our customs can wait.’
Artemidorus spoke in the pure Attic dialect of Plato or Demosthenes. Its use was now confined to the elite in Greek cities.
‘Do not be surprised at my accent.’ The swirling patterns of ink on Artemidorus’s face came alive when he smiled. ‘I was a member of the Boule in the city of Trapezus on the Black Sea. When the Heruli sacked the polis seven years ago, I was enslaved. Among the Heruli, courage in battle wins freedom and good advice brings high rank. Look at me now.’
Apart from being blue, not red, the designs on Artemidorus’s bow case were not dissimilar to those on his face. The realisation dawned on Valens that the gorytus was not embroidered, but covered in human skin.
‘My brother is right,’ Andonnoballus said. ‘Come, our camp is just beyond the burial mounds. Let us make you welcome. Tomorrow we will ride to my father. He is very keen to entertain Prince Sasan.’
*
The main encampment of Naulobates was a day’s ride to the north. It was pitched under tall trees on the far bank of a steep-sided river that cut across the Steppe. The tents were set in the shelter of the wood. There were many of them, but their number was dwarfed by the thousands of ponies grazing across the Steppe.
Andonnoballus had told Valens that this was a hunting expedition. Naulobates had not wished to arouse suspicion among the Persians at his long journey to their frontier, at the very south-east of his domains. When the King of the Heruli went hunting, it was not a matter of a few friends and dogs. Naulobates was accompanied by ten thousand warriors, and each of them had brought at least five remounts.
As they approached, Valens spotted a lookout stationed high in a tree. It seemed an unnecessary precaution, given that Andonnoballus had left half his troop – no fewer than a thousand riders – strung out across the Steppe south of the burial mounds. Nothing could leave the Walls of Alexander without the Heruli being informed. All the tribes between the Caspian and the Aral Sea were subject to Naulobates. Perhaps their allegiance was uncertain.
There were only a few places where a rider could descend with safety into the bed of the river. Andonnoballus led them down a sandy, well-trodden draw, and called in his native tongue to the man perched among the topmost branches. The warrior replied in a sorrowful tone. Andonnoballus and the other Heruli laughed with little sympathy.
‘He will stay there until dawn tomorrow,’ Artemidorus explained to Valens.
‘Why not relieve the sentry more often?’
This provoked a gale of merriment among the tribesmen.
‘He is not a sentry.’ Artemidorus could hardly talk for laughing. ‘It is a punishment. He must cling there from one dawn until the next.’
‘What was his crime?’
‘Before we left our winter grazing, he attacked Uligagus.’
‘Nothing wrong done by me.’ The Greek of the big shaggy Uligagus was not as good as the others. ‘Hung gorytus outside tent. Enjoying his wife. All quite proper. Come in and attacks me, unproven.’
‘Unprovoked,’ Artemidorus corrected.
‘Yes, that. Gave him good beating.’
‘My father showed clemency,’ Andonnoballus said. ‘In the past, Naulobates has had men torn apart for such a thing.’
‘Torn apart?’
‘Two saplings are bent down.
One of the criminal’s legs is tied to each. Then you let them go.’
‘There can be no jealousy or mistrust among the brothers,’ Artemidorus added.
‘What if he falls from the tree?’ Valens asked.
‘It is a long way down.’
They were shown to their quarters. Three tents at the north-western edge of the camp away from the river had been assigned to them. One was for Valens, the second for the other officer, Decimus, the final tent for the four soldiers. The shelters were made of felt stretched over a round wooden frame. There was a hearth in the centre, and a hole at the top. If the smoke got too much, drawstrings could raise the sides. Although their design was unusual to the Romans, the tents were clean and well appointed. The mission stacked their saddles and tack, as well as what little baggage remained to them, against the walls opposite the entrances.
‘When will your father receive us?’
‘That is for him to decide. When he returns.’
‘From where?’
‘That is for him to explain, if he wishes. Until Naulobates formally accepts you into our camp, you will stay around your tents. Your horses will be turned out with the herds. Food and drink will be sent, slave girls too. Do not pollute the running water of the river. That is a great crime with us. Use the pots provided. Slaves will empty them. The boy Sasan will come with me.’
‘No,’ Valens said. Without their mounts they were at the mercy of the tribesmen. If they no longer had the boy, the Heruli might have no further need of them.
‘My father instructed me to show Prince Sasan the hospitality due to a member of Shapur’s dynasty.’
‘We have taken an oath to defend him. He must stay with us. He can take my tent, and I will share with Decimus.’
Narses and Clemens moved to stand on either side of the boy.
The other Heruli looked to Andonnoballus.
It was the child that dispelled the tension. ‘Thank your father for his kindness. These men have suffered much for me. It is right that I do not leave them.’
Andonnoballus put his palm to his forehead. ‘My father wishes nothing but your safety and happiness. Sacred oaths are not to be broken.’
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