Fire in the East (12 page)

The pretenders were all from different branches of the same family of priest-kings. You could see why the emperors had chosen to elevate this Sampsigeramus to the throne of Emesa. Surely if anyone in this extended family of turbulent priests would cause no trouble it was this ineffectual, mincing little man? But now he seemed to be acting true to his line: in these troubled times Emesa could not spare any men to defend Arete, a town far away and probably already doomed - but the brave men of Emesa would always answer Elagabalus’s call in a just cause with a hope of success. There had been vague but not very veiled implications of revolution in the god’s message to Ballista- ‘the ordered world will become disordered ... a dark-skinned reptile ... raging against the Romans ... a sideways-walking goat’ - probably treasonous, although the obscurity of the prophetic language might make that hard to prove.

The reptile was, presumably, the Persian king. Was the goat meant to be Ballista himself? They could have come up with a rather more impressive animal, say a lion or a boar. It mattered little. He would write to the emperors with his suspicions. Despite Sampsigeramus’s insinuations, Ballista doubted they would think him already implicated.

Allfather knew what sort of chaos they would find at the Palmyrene Gate. Yesterday, Ballista had agreed to a caravan owned by a merchant from Arete travelling with them. Turpio had strongly urged it. The merchant, larhai, was one of the leading men of Arete. It would be unwise to offend him. While it might avoid offence (had that bastard Turpio taken a bribe?), it would almost certainly cause confusion and delay, with camels, horses and civilians wandering all over the road.

The sky was a delicate pink. The few clouds were lit from underneath by the rising sun. Mamurra was standing in the middle of the road, waiting.

‘How is it looking,
Praefectus?
’

‘Good,
Dominus.
We are ready to march.’ Mamurra had the air of wanting to say more. Ballista waited, nothing happened.

‘What is it,
Praefectus?’

‘It is the caravan,
Dominus.’
Mamurra appeared troubled. ‘They are not merchants. They are soldiers.’

‘From what unit?’

‘They are not from a unit. They are mercenaries - part of the private army of this man larhai.’ Mamurra’s almost square face looked baffled. ‘Turpio ... he said he would explain.’

Surprisingly, Turpio looked, if anything, slightly less defensive than usual. There was even the hint of a smile. ‘It is quite legal,’ he said. ‘All the governors of Syria have allowed it. The great men of Arete owe their position to protecting caravans across the deserts. They hire mercenaries.’ It was unlikely that the man was telling a straightforward lie.

‘I have never heard of this, or anything like it,’ said Ballista.

‘It happens in Palmyra as well. It is part of what makes these two cities so different from anywhere else.’ Turpio smiled openly. ‘I am sure that larhai will explain more eloquently how it all works. He is waiting to meet you at the head of the column. I persuaded Mamurra it would be best if larhai’s men led the way; they know the desert roads.’

Turpio and Mamurra mounted and fell in on either side of Ballista. With his bodyguard and secretary just behind, he set off at a loose canter. The white
draco
whipped above their heads. Ballista was bloody furious.

As they passed, men from Cohors XX called out the sort of well-omened things that one says before setting out on a journey. Ballista was too angry to do more than force a smile and wave.

The mercenaries were silent. Out of the corner of his eye the northerner inspected them. There were a lot; all mounted, drawn up in columns of twos, probably the best part of a hundred in all. There had been no attempt by authority to impose uniformity on them. Their clothes were of different colours, the colours faded by the sun. Some had helmets, pointed eastern or Roman ones, some none. Practicality had imposed uniformity in some things. They all wore eastern costume suitable for the deep desert: low boots, loose trousers and tunics, voluminous cloaks. They all had a long sword on a baldric, and a bowcase, quiver and spear strapped to their saddle. They looked disciplined. They looked tough. ‘Marvellous, bloody marvellous, outnumbered by mercenaries we know nothing about. Bastards who are every bit as well kitted out and organized as we are,’ muttered Ballista to himself.

One man waited at the head of the column. There was nothing showy about him or his mount, but it was obvious that he was in charge.

‘You are larhai?’

‘Yes.’ He spoke quietly, in a voice that was used to being heard the length of a camel train.

‘I was told that you were a merchant.’

‘You were misinformed. I am a
synodiarch,
a protector of caravans.’ The man’s face backed up his words. It was deeply lined, the skin coarse, blasted by the sand. The right cheekbone and nose had been broken. There was a white scar on the left of the forehead.

‘Then where is the caravan that your hundred men protect?’ Ballista looked round, as much to check that none of the mercenaries was moving as for rhetorical effect.

‘This was not a journey to help the merchants. It was to fulfil a vow to the sun god.’

‘You have seen Sampsigeramus?’

‘I came to see the god.’ larhai remained expressionless. ‘Sampsigeramus is why I needed the hundred men.’

Ballista did not trust Iarhai one inch. But there was something about his manner which was appealing, and mistrusting the prancing priest-king struck Ballista as a good thing.

larhai smiled, a not altogether reassuring thing. ‘A lot of you westerners find it hard to believe that the empire allows the nobles of Arete and Palmyra to command troops. But let me prove that it is so.’

At a gesture, one of the riders moved forward, holding a leather document case. It took Ballista a moment to realize that it was a girl, a beautiful girl dressed as a man, riding astride. She had very dark eyes. Black hair escaped from under her cap. She hesitated, holding the case out.

They are not sure if a northern barbarian can read, thought Ballista. He pushed aside his irritation (Allfather knew he had practice). It could be useful if they believed he could not. ‘My secretary will tell us what they are.’

As she leant across to hand the case to Demetrius, her tunic pulled tight across her breasts. They were bigger than Julia’s. She looked more rounded in general, a touch shorter. But fit from riding.

‘They are letters thanking larhai for guarding caravans, from various governors of Syria and some from emperors - Philip, Decius, others - Iarhai is sometimes referred to as
strategos,
general.’

‘I must apologize,
Strategos.
As you say, we westerners do not expect such a thing.’ Ballista held out his right hand. Iarhai shook it.

‘Do not mention it,
Dominus.’

 

It was not just the girl that had made Ballista decide that he would ride with larhai in the lead; it was Turpio’s discomfort in his presence.

The white
draco
of Ballista and the elaborate flag of larhai, a semicircle with streamers, a red scorpion on a white background, flew over the head of the column. The green
signum
was halfway down, where the eighty mercenaries ended and the sixty men of Cohors XX began. larhai had sent ten of his men ahead as an advance guard, while another ten had been despatched as flanking guards.

‘Tell me about the weather at Arete,’ said Ballista.

‘Oh, it is delightful. In the spring there are gentle breezes and every little depression in the desert is filled with flowers. One of your western generals said the climate was healthy - apart from dysentery, malaria, typhoid, cholera and plague,’ answered larhai.

The girl, Bathshiba, smiled. ‘My father is teasing you,
Dominus.
He knows that you want to know about the campaigning season.’ Her eyes were jet-black, confident and mischievous.

‘And my daughter forgets her place. Since her mother died I have let her run wild. She has forgotten how to weave, and now rides like an Amazon.’

Ballista saw that she was not only dressed but also armed like her father’s men.

‘You want to know when the Persians will come.’ It was a statement. Ballista was still looking at her when larhai again began to speak.

‘The rains come in mid-November. We may be lucky and reach Arete before they fall. They turn the desert into a sea of mud. A small force like ours can get through, if with difficulty. But it would be much more difficult to move a large army. If that army was encamped before a town, it would be impossible to get supplies through to it.’

‘For how long will Arete be safe?’ Ballista saw little point in denying what they clearly already knew.

‘The rains tend to stop in January. If it rains again in February it means a good growing season.’ Iarhai turned in his saddle. ‘The Sassanids will come in April, when there is grass for their horses and no rain to ruin their bowstrings.’

Then we must survive until November, thought Ballista.

 

It was the improbability of Palmyra’s location that first struck Mamurra. It was a completely unlikely place to find a city. It was as if someone had decided to build a city in the lagoons and marshes of the Seven Seas at the head of the Adriatic.

It had taken six days to get there from Emesa, monotonous days of tough travel. There was a Roman road, and it was in good repair, but the journey had been hard. Two days climbing up to the watershed of the nameless range of mountains, four days coming down. In the first five days they had passed through one hamlet and one small oasis. Otherwise there had been nothing, an endless jumble of dun-coloured rock echoingback the noise of their passage. Now, suddenly, on the afternoon of the sixth day, Palmyra appeared before them.

They were in the Valley of the Tombs. Horses, camels and men were dwarfed by the tall, rectangular tombs which lined the steep sides of the valley. Mamurra found it unsettling. Every town had a necropolis outside it but not of towering, fortress-like tombs like these.

As
Praefectus Fabrum,
he was kept busy sorting out the baggage train, trying to stop it becoming entangled with the seemingly endless traffic heading to town. Most of the traffic was local, from the villages to the north-west, donkeys and camels carrying goatskins of olive oil, animal fat and pine cones. Here and there were traders from further west bringing Italian wool, bronze statues and salt fish. It was some time before he had been free to look at Palmyra.

To the north-east were at least two miles of buildings, row after row of ordered columns. Gardens stretched a similar distance to the far corner of the walls to the south-east. The city was huge, and it was evidently wealthy.

Its walls were mud-brick, low and only about six foot wide. There were no projecting towers. The gates were just that - simple wooden gates. On the heights to the west the walls did not form a continuous barrier. Rather, there were isolated stretches of wall intended to reinforce natural barriers. A wadi ran through the town, and the gardens pointed to a water source within the walls, but the aqueduct that ran from the necropolis would be easy enough to cut. Slowly, and with care, Mamurra came to the conclusion that the defences of the city were not good. He had once been a
speculator,
an army scout, and every abandoned identity left its mark. Mamurra was proud of this insight; the more so as he could not voice it.

There was a great hubbub at the gate but eventually they moved inside. The men and animals were allocated their quarters and Mamurra went to find Ballista. The
Dux
was standing waiting with Maximus and Demetrius.

‘His name is Odenaethus,’ the Greek boy was reminding Ballista. ‘In Greek or Latin, he is known as the King of Palmyra. In their native dialect of Aramaic, he is the Lord of Tadmor. He speaks perfect Greek. It is thought that he put at least thirty thousand horsemen in the field against the Persians three years ago in the time of troubles.’

Iarhai, together with that wanton-looking daughter of his, approached on horseback. Mamurra and the rest mounted. Ballista requested larhai to guide them to the palace of Odenaethus, and they set off, progressing slowly through the busy colonnaded streets lined with shops. They were a riot of colour. The smell was overpowering but not at all unpleasant, exotic spices mixed with the more familiar odours of horse and humanity. They negotiated a fine square, passed an
agora
and a theatre, and arrived at the palace, to be ushered in with courtly grace by a waiting chamberlain.

Apart from stepping forward when presented and then stepping back again, Mamurra had no part to play in the reception of the new Dux Ripae by Odenaethus, King of Palmyra, so he was able to focus on the people playing their parts. Odenaethus made a brief formal speech of welcome: great distances had been unable to diminish Ballista’s martial reputation ... all confidence for the future now he was here, etc, etc. Ballista’s reply, after an equally fatuous beginning, ended with a polite but unambiguous request for troops. Odenaethus then dwelt at length on the unsettled nature of the east since the Persian invasion - brigands everywhere, the Arabs, tent-dwellers stirring up to a fury of avarice; he was devastated, but all his men were employed holding, and only just holding, the peace in the desert.

It was hard to number the things that Mamurra disliked about Odenaethus, the Lord of Tadmor, and his court. You could start with the king’s carefully curled and perfumed hair and beard. Then there was the delicate way he held his wine cup with just thumb and two fingers, the embroidered stripes and swags of his clothes, the soft, plump cushions he sat on, again thick with patterns, reeking of perfume. And, if anything, his court was even worse. The chief minister, Verodes, and the two generals were outfitted as copies of their lord, and the latter had virtually identical ridiculous barbarian names, Zabda and Zabbai. There was a simpering little son who looked like he should be selling his arse on a street corner and, to add insult to injury, both sitting there as bold as could be, were not only a eunuch (probably some sort of secretary if he was not part of the entertainment) but a woman (a sly-looking bitch called Zenobia - Odenaethus’s new wife).