The Curse of Babylon (53 page)

The legal niceties went over his head. Or perhaps they didn’t matter. ‘Samo told me too I’m now your son,’ he said. ‘But my father was put to death when we got taken in the western mountains.’

How to answer that one? Every time you want something fast, you can trust lawyers to take a complex law – rendered more complex by some ‘clarifying’ decree that Heraclius
might
or might
not
have published – and make a total balls-up of it. The other manumissions could go through the normal process. Even after backdating the special cases to the day of my Regency, though, I’d been assured adoption was the only way of cutting through the complexities. An hour after registration, you can be sure, the lawyers had dropped in again, carrying enough papyrus rolls to fill a latrine trench, and begged my pardon for getting it wrong. By then, the number of my sons had expanded irrevocably from two to five – none of them mine other than in the sense prescribed by law.

Thoughts of children actually sired by me brought on another stab of the ache deep within that dwarfed the pain of riding. I closed my eyes and focused on that until it went away. Nothing good came of dwelling on things beyond my knowledge and control. I’d made my plans and I’d carry them through grimly, not flinching though I went to my death. I smiled at the back of Rado’s neck. ‘It’s a formality required by Greek tribal custom,’ I explained. ‘It makes our own relationship somewhat irregular. But you’d soon have been fully grown in any event.’

I was saved the trouble of further explanation by a rattling of hooves on loose stones. Without any other warning, my other new ‘sons’ emerged from what I’d taken for a sheer drop. From the pleased looks they flashed us, they’d been competing again at who could ride fastest without any noise. It was easy to guess that Slavs could move about this sort of terrain like a cat over roof tiles. That’s why I’d brought Rado. If I weren’t so aware of my own failings, I’d have been pleased to be shown again that Lombards were the same.

Jealous, I kicked out at the dead goat Eboric threw at my feet. ‘Where did you get that?’ I asked sharply in Latin.

‘It fell off a rock and died, Master,’ he said with a winning smile. His brother was already dismounted and going at it with a knife. I dropped the pretence of envy posing as anger. Eboric was getting prettier by the day. His brother wasn’t less than easy on the eye. Besides, it would be nice to have something for dinner that didn’t give the four of us a bellyache.

I told myself not to feel – or, failing that, not to show – any pain, and got unsteadily to my feet. I walked over to my horse and took out the big map I’d brought from Constantinople. Rado brushed some dust from a flattish rock and waited for me to unfold the linen sheet. ‘If you’re right,’ I said in Slavic, ‘we must be here.’ I jabbed my finger at one of the stylised blobs that signified a mountain. ‘The village from where the boys stole the goat is probably this one.’ I pointed again. There was no certainty in either claim. The map had been another rush job – superimposing my own drafting office coordinates on a military map was bound to multiply any initial errors. Rado stared intently at what I was sure meant very little to him. He made a casual remark in Latin and looked quickly round to make sure the boys were watching his show of equality with the Great Lord Alaric. Purely for my own benefit, I traced a depressingly long route from where we might have been to another blob. ‘The Larydia Pass will be over here,’ I continued. ‘All this being so, the question is whether we’ve outrun them.’

‘I think we have, Master,’ Rado said, still in Latin. ‘You tell me the Persian’s legs are too short for him to ride a horse properly. If the Lord Prefect is with them, he can’t ride at all. That means they would have to come down the secondary road.’ He looked at me for support and ran his finger along a blue line. Either he was learning to understand the map or he’d got lucky. I nodded. ‘From the distance you told me the road covers, we must be three days ahead of them – perhaps more.’ I nodded again. The agreed plan was to intercept Shahin and his people as they moved through the narrow pass that Rado believed was the only one they would dare attempt. It joined at what the map said was a suspiciously exact right angle with a much wider pass that would, with a few detours, bring a small escort of honour directly from the zone of Persian occupation. They’d be worn out from their own dash southward. They’d be in no kind of formation. Carrying Timothy, and travelling over broken and nearly impassable ground, would soak up much of the effort that, on the road, would go into providing an armed escort. They’d be more focused on their triumphant meeting with the Great King’s representatives. The four of us stood no chance against an armed band hurrying along a level road but the night smash and grab I had in mind was just conceivable in the pass. Or so it had seemed in Constantinople.

Eboric came and stood on the other side of the stone. He looked in awe at the broad linen square. ‘The streams show the valleys are descending the further inland we go,’ he said shyly. He ignored Rado’s look of outrage. ‘We’ve surely outrun them. But they might not be so far behind us.’

I folded the map away. Rado could give the boy the kicking he’d earned while I was pretending to sleep. For the moment, I’d learned everything I wanted. I looked once more at the surrounding desolation. The mountain peaks were capped white with unthawed snow, their lower reaches green with scrubby trees. The valleys were hidden in mist or lost in the impenetrable shadows of late afternoon. Twelve days of fast and nearly continuous movement lay between us and the sea. Except the map told me otherwise, the mountain chain might stretch another hundred or even a thousand days to the south. I felt a returning attack of the horrors. Had Antonia refused to cooperate? Had she tried to escape? Had Shahin been his usual lying bastard self, and tossed her body overboard the moment his ship was safely out in the straits? Would I be left with nothing, when I finally caught up with him, but the cold satisfaction of tying his severed head to the mane of my horse?

I looked at Eboric’s brother. He was fast with his knife. ‘It won’t be dark for a while,’ I said in Latin, so everyone could understand. ‘I think we should hold off from dinner till we’ve found somewhere to rest for the night.’

Rado got in first with his reply. ‘But, My Lord, we can’t get to the next safe hilltop till long after dark. It’s best to camp here. If we start before dawn, we can be within a day of the Larydia Pass by late afternoon.’

The two boys nodded in unison. I looked south-east at what seemed to be one mountain among many. Between us and that lay a jumble of other high and low places, some glittering bright in the late sun, others in total darkness. I could have told myself I was mad to trust three barbarians who’d never been here in their lives. Instead, I remembered something Priscus had once said about how every military art rested on the ability to look once at any terrain and see it as a series of points in three dimensions. ‘Either you’ve got that, dear boy, or you haven’t,’ he’d said dismissively. ‘You just go back to finding the money to pay for the fighting – and making sure that what we’re fighting for is actually worth defending.’

I gave in. ‘Then we’ll keep the fire out of sight,’ I said. Three heads nodded politely. I sat down. ‘I’ll take the long midnight watch.’

Chapter 53

I dreamed that I was in a room filled with dazzling light. Except the light came from no particular direction, it was like the time when I was lost in the Egyptian desert. All about me, lines of poetry had been turned to balls of coloured light and revolved slowly in paths determined by their patterns of long and short syllables. It was very beautiful to watch and reminded me of something in my early childhood.

At home and in bed, the dream could have gone on all night and given me something to think about in spare moments during the day. Here, it never effaced the fact that I was lying, cold and stiff, on top of a hill so windswept that the few bushes able to take root spread out over the ground, never more than six inches tall. Without needing to open my eyes and look at the moon, I could feel it would soon be my turn to get up and take my turn with the watch. For the moment, I lay still. The wind was up again. Its gentle and continuous moaning was something I now only noticed at times like this. I’d soon learned to accept it as a welcome blotting out of the distant and far more sinister howling of the wolves. In the summer months, I knew, there was safer prey for them than armed men huddled about a fire. Try believing that, however, when you’ve childhood experience of the creatures, and when you’re one of the huddled men. They were up and about, I could be sure. If I listened hard enough, I’d hear them. The wind was up, but not yet enough.

I began to drift back towards the room filled with light. The dream hadn’t entirely faded, but coloured balls that had been resolving themselves, one after the other, into lines of text glowed brighter and brighter again. Then it was all gone and I was awake. ‘If you won’t let me come too,’ Eboric whispered in his sulky tone, ‘I’ll wake him up and tell him.’

I think Rado poked him hard in the chest. He let out an obscenity in his own language I hadn’t yet heard. ‘And if it’s nothing?’ he asked, returning to Latin. ‘If it’s nothing, you’ll get him up for no reason? Stay here and look after things. If he does wake, tell him I’ll be back in time for my watch.’

I threw the blanket aside and sat up into a blast of chilly air. ‘What have you heard?’ I asked.

Rado wiped an angry snarl from his face and got up. ‘I don’t know, My Lord,’ he said evasively. ‘It may be something I’ve felt more than heard. It may be a trick of the wind.’ He stepped towards me and reached down for my blanket.

‘He said he heard horses, Master,’ Eboric said quickly. He twisted sideways to avoid being kicked into the embers of the fire. ‘I’m sure I heard a harness jingle.’

Shahin, running far ahead of any conjectured time, and far from his only sensible route? Not likely. A local traveller about his business? I looked at Eboric’s childish pout. I looked at the dark shadow that was Rado’s face. ‘Where did you hear them?’ I asked. I walked with Rado to the ravine edge and followed his pointed finger down to the left. The moon was heading towards its midnight zenith. If with deceptive clarity, I could see for miles in every direction. Looking down, I stared into total darkness. I put aside the mournful sound of the wind. The wolves had run out of anything more to say to each other, or were out of hearing. I held my breath and listened hard.

It was only the briefest snatch but you don’t mistake armed men on horseback. I turned and looked into the unearthly glow on Rado’s now tense and excited face. ‘Can you tell how far away?’ I asked.

He went to the edge and leaned over. ‘Not far below us,’ he said after a long pause. ‘There’s three of them and I think they’ve come out with padded harness.’

Eboric and his brother were already at work on their bootlaces. I raised a hand for attention. ‘The pair of you stay here,’ I said, quiet yet firm. I waited for their looks of disappointment to fade to sullenness ‘You need to keep an eye on the horses,’ I explained. ‘Be prepared to get them ready for an immediate retreat.’

Rado looked for the right words. Not finding them in Latin, he went into Slavic. ‘You should stay here, Master,’ he said. ‘I might be faster on my own.’

I frowned. ‘Whatever’s down there,’ I said, ‘I need to see for myself.’

After so long of having to treat me like a mounted invalid, Rado could be forgiven for believing I’d been denatured by seven years of prosperity in the Empire. On two legs, I could be still as much the predatory barbarian as he was. To be sure, we had no hills in England like these. But there were animals to be hunted, and travelling strangers to be robbed; and I had grown up surrounded by mile-wide expanses of shingle. It was hard to say which of us was more silent and more unseen, as we hurried down the steep incline. We reached its bottom about a mile from where we’d left the boys in charge of the horses. Dark caps pulled on tight to cover our hair, we crouched together behind a large boulder and waited.

We heard the muffled jingle of harness long before the three riders came in sight. They moved slowly, picking their way over the loose stones. From the first, I thought the horses were bigger than anything normally seen in the mountains. One look at how the moonlight glittered on their helmets and the hairs stood up on the back of my neck.

‘Persian regular army,’ I breathed into Rado’s ear. He stiffened beside me, the same thought probably going through his mind. I watched them come closer. There could be no doubt what they were. I could see their helmets and the fish-scale armour under their cloaks. I could see the outline of their leggings and boots. Still moving slowly, now and again letting the horses cool their hooves in the little stream, it was an officer in front and two men behind.

‘Night foragers?’ Rado whispered uncertainly.

‘I don’t see what else they could be,’ I said. ‘Though, if it’s at least a two-day ride to the Larydia Pass, and still more to the big pass, what are they doing
here
?’ I thought of my map. That might easily be wrong. But Rado and the boys knew where they were. The details might be less sharp in their minds than they claimed in front of me but that couldn’t put us two days south-west of where they said we were.