Fire in the East (49 page)

They walked outside and looked into the three large cauldrons of water along the wall which faced into the town. The waters were still.

Castricius led them to the north. Here, along the inner face of the town wall at intervals of about five paces, were three more cauldrons of water. The water rippled in the two nearest the tower; it was still in the one furthest away.

‘It is clear what they are doing,’ Castricius said. ‘If poor old Mamurra was right that they originally intended to tunnel clean under the wall to bring troops into the town, they have changed their minds. They know we are expecting that, so they have decided to undermine the south-east tower and about ten paces of the wall to its north.’

He is good, thought Ballista. He is not Mamurra - may the earth lie lightly on him - but he is good. As Ballista framed the conventional line its sheer inappositeness struck him.

‘Can we stop them?’

With no pause for thought Castricius replied, ‘No, there is no time. They can spring their mine at any moment. When the peas and the waters stop moving, that will be the time. I will send word.’

In the event, Ballista and his entourage had only just reached the Palmyrene Gate when the word caught up with them. They turned and retraced their steps.

Nothing moved on the face of the waters. The dried peas stayed in place. The Persians had stopped digging. There was nothing to do but wait. The tower and the adjacent stretch of wall had been evacuated. Two volunteers had remained on the battlements of the tower. The terms were those usual if it had been a storming party. Should they survive, they would receive a large sum of money. Should they not, their heir would receive the money. Ballista had summoned both the reserve centuries of legionaries, that of Antoninus Prior from the caravanserai and that of Antoninus Posterior from the
campus martius.
The men were marshalled in the open space behind the tower. They were armed. They also carried entrenching tools. Piles of timber and mud bricks were at hand. That was all anyone could think to do.

Turpio, now acting
praefectus fabrum
in addition to commanding Cohors XX, stood on one side of Ballista. Next to Turpio was Castricius, now deputy to the new
praefectus fabrum.
On Ballista’s other hand, as ever, were Maximus and Demetrius. The white draco hung limp behind them. They waited.

After an hour the indefatigable Calgacus appeared, followed by a train of slaves carrying water and wine. The
Dux
Ripae and his companions drank thirstily in silence. There was little to talk about. Even Maximus, out of sorts for the two days since the underground disaster, had nothing to say.

When it happened there was next to no warning. There was a loud crack. The wall near the tower shook. It seemed to ripple. Held in place by the great earth banks, unable to fall outward into the plain or inward into the town, it slid vertically about two paces into the ground. It shuddered, cracks zigzagged across its face, but it remained standing. A stunned silence. Another loud crack. The south-east tower lurched drunkenly forward. Its descent caught by the outer earth bank, it leant at an angle. It shook. Some of the makeshift parapet came away, bricks raining down. The tower remained upright.

Ballista thought that the two volunteers on the tower were screaming. But no, clinging to what was left of the battlements, they were howling, howling like wolves. The howling echoed along the whole wall as soldier after soldier joined in. Then a chant began: ‘Ball-is-ta, Ball-is-ta.’

The tall northerner laughed. Men slapped him on the back. The defences of Arete still stood.

Ballista lay in the pool of the
frigidarium.
The cool water was scented with carnations or cloves. He was alone; both Maximus and Demetrius had asked for the evening off. To anyone who knew them it was no surprise after such a day. They would look for release in their different ways. Maximus would find his with a woman; Demetrius would opt for the less physical, the rather less tangible comforts offered by a dream-diviner, an astrologer, or some such charlatan. Ballista had been happy to grant their requests. Solitude was a rare commodity for a man in his position.

Putting his thumbs in his ears and blocking his nostrils with his forefingers, he submerged himself. Motionless underwater, his eyes shut, he listened to the beating of his heart, the plink, plink of water dripping. It had been a good day. Things had worked out well at the tower and the wall. But every danger surmounted brought on fresh dangers in its train.

Ballista surfaced, shaking water out of his hair, wiping it from his eyes. It had a taste of carnations or cloves too. Idly he wondered where Calgacus had got this new, unlikely scent. He lay motionless. The ripples in the pool died down. Ballista looked at his body, the forearms burnt dark brown by the sun, the rest pale white, the two long scars on the left of his ribcage a still paler white. He flexed his left ankle, felt the bone scrape and click. He yawned a big yawn, the right-hand side of his jaw scrunching where it had been broken. He was thirty-four. Sometimes he felt much older. His body had taken a battering in the thirty-four winters he had walked the middle earth between the gods above and Hell below.

Ballista started to think of the siege. He pushed the thoughts away, keen to hang on to the momentary feeling of peace the bath had brought. He thought of his son. It was over a year - thirteen months - since he had left Isangrim in Rome. The boy had turned four in March. He would be growing fast, changing fast. Allfather, do not let him forget me. Deep Hood, Fulfiller of Desire, let me see him again. Ballista felt crushed by longing, by sadness. Unwilling to give way to tears, he plunged under again.

Standing up abruptly, the water sluiced off his heavily muscled, battered body. Stepping out of the pool, he wrung the water from his long fair hair. From nowhere Calgacus appeared and handed him a towel. The northerner began to dry himself. Somehow he had never got used to the Roman habit of having others towel you down.

‘Did you like the
perfume
?’ Calgacus asked, his intonation showing what he thought of it.

‘It’s fine.’

‘It was a present. From your mincing little
tribunus laticlavius.
Seeing how fond you and Acilius Glabrio are of each other, I tested it on one of the house slaves. He did not die, so it must be safe.’ Both men smiled. ‘And here is the robe you asked for; the finest sheer Indian cotton-you sensitive little flower,’ wheezed Calgacus.

‘Yes, I am, renowned for it.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

Although he spoke at the same volume, Calgacus as ever affected to believe that a change of tone rendered the asides he came out with when they were alone completely inaudible.

‘I have put some food and drink out on the terrace for you. It is in the shade of the portico. There is a cover over it to keep the flies off.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Will you need me again tonight?’

‘No. Go off and indulge in whatever frightful drunken lechery your vices demand.’

With no word of thanks Calgacus turned and walked away. As his domed head receded, his complaints floated behind him. ‘Lechery... vices... and when would I find the time for them, working my fingers to the bone all hours looking after you?’

Ballista pulled the soft robe around himself and walked out on to the terrace. In the gathering gloom under the portico he found the food up against the back wall. Lifting the heavy silver cover by its handle, he poured himself a drink, scooped up a handful of almonds. Having replaced the cover, he went over to his accustomed place on the wall of the terrace.

It was the best time of the day. To the west the farmland of Mesopotamia was purple-hazed as night advanced. A cool wind blew over the Euphrates. The first stars shone. Bats hunted across the face of the cliff. But none of it brought back to Ballista the fleeting peace of the bathhouse.

Things had gone well today. But that was luck. Ballista had had the earth banks built to protect the walls and towers from artillery and from rams; that they had saved the defences from undermining was luck. Yet, Ballista smiled ruefully in the dark, if others put it down to his farsightedness, that was no bad thing for morale. He had issued orders to capitalize on his luck. Throughout the night men would labour, packing the leaning tower with earth. By the morning the parapets of tower and wall should have been replaced or shored up.

The Persians had thrown all the instruments of siege warfare at the city of Arete: siege towers, the great ram - the Fame of Shapur - the siege ramp, the mine. All had failed. The defences had held. Now it was the first of October. The rains should come in mid-November. There was not enough time for the Persians to gather the materials and begin new regular siege works. But only those defenders of very little understanding could believe that the danger was passed. The King of Kings would have no intention of slinking away defeated. The frustrations, the losses, the stain on his glory - all would have increased his resolve. Shapur would have no intention of lifting the siege. If his siege engineers could not deliver the town to him, he would punish them - probably savagely - and revert to a simpler strategy. He would decree another attempt to storm the town.

Five and a half months of siege had taken their toll on the defenders. Casualties had mounted. When the Sassanids launched another assault, Ballista wondered if there would still be enough defenders to deny them. The storm would not come tomorrow; there was not enough time for Shapur and his nobles to whip their men up to fighting frenzy. It would come the day after. Ballista had one day. Tomorrow he would send more men to the desert wall. He would go among them. He would speak to them, try to encourage them. Tomorrow evening he would hold a last supper for his officers and the leading men of the town; try to put heart in them. Inauspiciously, he thought of the final dinner in Alexandria of Antony and Cleopatra. What had they called the diners? ‘Those inseparable in death’ - something like that.

Finding that he had finished his drink, Ballista wondered for a second if he could throw the heavy earthenware beaker all the way over the fish market far below and into the black waters of the Euphrates. He did nothing of the sort. Instead he walked back to the portico. It was very dark behind the columns. He only found the food because he already knew where it was.

There was a noise of something scraping on brickwork. He froze. The noise came again, from the south of the terrace. Ballista crouched down low. From over the south wall a shape appeared. Compared with the darkness under the portico where Ballista waited, it was reasonably light out on the terrace. Ballista could make out the black-clad figure that dropped down over the southern wall, the wall that led into the town. More sounds of scraping on brickwork and two more black-clad figures joined the first. There was a quiet rasping as the three drew their weapons. Starlight glittered on the short swords.

Ballista reached for his own sword. It was not on his hip.
You fool, you stupid fucking fool.
He had left it in the bathhouse. So this was how it was going to end: betrayed by his own stupidity. He had let down his guard and he was going to be punished.
You stupid
fucking fool.
Even that poor bastard Mamurra warned you of this.

The three black-clad assassins moved slowly forward. Ballista pulled the robe up half over his head to cover his face, his long fair hair. If by some miracle he survived, he must thank Calgacus for finding a robe of the finest Indian cotton in the black that his
dominus
customarily wore. The dark figures advanced down the terrace. Moving ever so gently, the fingers of Ballista’s left hand found the big silver food cover. He gripped the handle. His right hand found the heavy earthenware beaker from which he had been drinking. As weapons they were not much but they were better than nothing. He stilled his breathing and waited.

A fox barked away across the river. The three assassins stopped. They were a few paces short of Ballista. One of them waved, gesturing the one nearest Ballista to go under the portico. The northerner raised himself up ready to spring.

The door to the terrace opened. A rectangle of yellow light shone across to the wall, plunging everything outside it into a deeper darkness. The assassins stopped.

‘Kyrios? Kyrios,
are you out here?’ the voice of Demetrius called. After a moment, when there was no answer, the young Greek could be heard going back into the palace. His shadow disappeared from the rectangle of light.

One of the assassins spoke softly in Aramaic. All three crept silently towards the open door. The one just inside the portico, his night vision spoilt by looking into the light, passed no more than four paces from Ballista. At the edge of the patch of yellow they stopped, drawing close together. Again one whispered in Aramaic, so low that Ballista probably would not have made out the words even had he spoken the language.

The first assassin slipped through the door.

Safe, thought Ballista. Let them come inside, run across the terrace, over the north wall, drop down into the alley, a few paces to the two guards on the north door, collect them, run to the main courtyard, collect the five
equites singulares
from the guardroom, pick up a sword, and then back through the main door into the living quarters. Take one of the bastards alive, and then we can find out who sent them.

The second assassin slipped through the door.

But - Demetrius. The Greek boy would be killed, maybe Calgacus too.

Ballista moved. As the third assassin stepped through the door, Ballista came up behind him. The northerner smashed the heavy beaker into the back of the man’s head. There was a sickening thud, the sound of breaking crockery. With a gasp of pain the man turned. Ballista ground the broken crockery into his face, twisting the edges into his flesh. The man fell back, his face a bloody ruin.