Читать книгу Iron and Rust - Harry Sidebottom - Страница 17

A hard ride, and time was against them. Two days after they left the coast of the Middle Sea at Taparura, the country changed. The olive trees pulled back and thinned out. Between their shade the earth was bare and yellowed. The four-square towered villas gave way to isolated mud-brick huts, the comfortable abodes of the elite replaced by the hovels of their more distant dependants. Ahead, south-west over the plain, a line of tan hills showed.

Gordian did not push his men or their mounts too hard, but neither did he spare them. They were in the saddle well before dawn. All morning they rode at a mile-eating canter. A rest in the shade for the heat of the day, then they rode on through the late afternoon and into the darkness. They went in a pall of their own making, the horses’ hooves kicking up a fine yellow dust. It got into their eyes, ears, noses; gritted in their teeth. Gordian knew it was worst for those at the rear. At every halt, he reordered the small column. He thought of Alexander in the Gedrosian desert. The army had been short of water. A soldier stumbled across a tiny puddle. He filled a helmet with the muddy water and brought it to his King. Alexander had thanked him and poured the water into the sand. A noble gesture. Gordian would have done the same. But Alexander had not ridden in the rear. A general had to lead. Each time they mounted up, Gordian took his place at the front, flanked by his father’s legates Valerian and Sabinianus, and the local landowner Mauricius.

On the fourth day, they reached the hills. Close up, the rocks were not tan but pink. At the foot of the slopes was a small stone tower. Following the unmade road west, up into the high country, they passed three more watchtowers. Gordian said the same to the half-dozen or so garrison of each. Should the enemy return this way, make sure you send word to me at Ad Palmam; after that, exercise your initiative. They were reliable men, legionaries on detachment from the 3rd Augustan based at Lambaesis in the neighbouring province of Numidia. There was no discussion of what forms the initiative of those left behind might take after one or two had ridden off to raise the alarm, taking the only horses or mules with them.

Guided by Mauricius, they turned and took a track that snaked over the crests to the south. Near the top of the pass, Gordian left two men at a place with a good view back over the way they had come.

Having descended, they turned right and rode due west. After a day, another pass came down from the hills. Gordian sent four men up it: two to form a picket on the heights, and two to convey the usual instructions to the watchtowers on the other side and to scout beyond.

Six days’ riding since Taparura, four before that. Both men and horses were very worn. Nine horses had gone lame already before the hills. They had been left behind. Their riders had been mounted on baggage horses. The loads had been redistributed. Five men had fallen back out of sight. These stragglers had never caught up. Perhaps they had deserted. It would have been understandable, under the circumstances. Now the going was worse. A horse foundered. It was killed without ceremony. Its rider took the last baggage animal. The burden of the latter was tossed aside and abandoned.

Not far now, Mauricius assured them. Soon – today; tomorrow morning at the latest – we will reach the oasis of Ad Palmam. All will be good there.

They pressed on, the dust working its way into them as if every particle were animate with malice.

The landscape was like nothing Gordian had seen. The cliffs to the right were steep and jumbled, their stratifications tipped and fanned. In the main they were bare slopes. Some of the heights were ringed with darker, vertical rocks like cyclopean crenellations. A harsh place, but not that out of the ordinary. There were pockets of green in the dips and hollows. Now and then a flash of white or black movement betrayed the presence of a flock of goats.

To the left, there was no remission to the harshness. A great flatness stretched as far as the eye could see. Its surface was banded like agate; brown, tan and white. There were pools of standing water and dusky lines coiled between them. There was no telling if they were tracks, animal or human, or now dry channels carved by last winter’s rain. In the high sun mirages shifted; water, trees, buildings. Once, Gordian thought he saw a boat. Nothing else moved in all that vastness. Nothing real.

This was the Lake of Triton, the dreadful, great salt lake. Once it had been a real lake, if not an inlet of the sea. The Argo had sailed its waters. But even then it had been an evil place. Two of the Argonauts had been killed here; Mopsus by a snake, and Canthus by a local herdsman. For the rest to escape had needed an appearance by Triton himself.

Mauricius had told Gordian the local legends. At night men saw torches moving far out in the desert. They heard the music of pipes and cymbals. Some said they had seen the satyrs and nymphs gambolling. There were stories of buried treasure: a huge tripod from Delphi, solid gold. Those who searched never found it, and many never came back. Once, a caravan of a thousand animals had ventured off one of the two safe paths. Nothing was seen of them again. There had been no epiphany for them.

Looking hard, Gordian saw there were patches where the crust was broken, and a dark sludge exposed.

‘Ad Palmam.’

There – two or three miles ahead – was a line of green, utterly incongruous in the waste.

They rode on without speaking, every man trying to hide his trepidation.

Two hundred yards short, Gordian called a halt. Time was against them, but he did not know by how much.

Gordian dismounted, to ease his horse. Most of the others did the same. They watched the oasis. Nothing much moved. A couple of chickens scratched in the shade of some outlying trees. Once, further in, a flight of doves clattered into the air.

‘Well, we can not stay here for ever,’ the legate Sabinianus said. ‘I had better go and take a look.’

Gordian felt a rush of affection at the calm courage of the man.

‘Of course,’ Sabinianus continued, ‘if Arrian were here, I would recommend you send him. He is far more expendable, and I would sacrifice him happily to ensure my safety.’

Men smiled. Sabinianus and Arrian were the closest of friends, always laughing at each other, and at everything else.

‘Actually,’ Sabinianus said, ‘I would sacrifice anyone at all. I want you all to remember that.’

Gordian gave Sabinianus a leg up into the saddle. He wanted to say something, but the words would not come. The wry look on Sabinianus’ face, the turned-down mouth, was more pronounced than usual. With his knees, the legate moved his horse into a walk down to the settlement.

It had all happened with a dislocating suddenness. Just fourteen days before, all had been normal. As far as Gordian and his father, the Proconsul, had known, the province had slumbered under the North African sun in a state of profound peace. They had passed February in Thysdrus for the olive season; a round of local festivals and outdoor meals in the shade of the evening. As ever, the presence of the Proconsul had drawn intellectuals from all over the province, and abroad. There had been literary recitals and plays. The old man had formed a strong fondness for the town. He had bought two estates nearby, and had commissioned a new amphitheatre at vast, possibly ruinous personal expense. Gordian Senior had lingered there until the nones of March, when he had felt compelled to give orders to begin to prepare the journey north to the town of Hadrumetum, where he had to fulfil his duty as a judge on his assize circuit. There was much to organize in the entourage of a Proconsul. The representative of the majesty of Rome could not arrive like a beggar. When, finally, they took to the road, the gubernatorial carriage and its cavalcade went by easy stages. Gordian’s father was a septuagenarian; things should not be rushed. Ten miles a day was enough. Hadrumetum was in sight, but still some miles distant, on the ides, when the messenger drove his sweat-lathered horse up to them. The beast stood, head down, trembling, as he told them the bad news. Gordian found it difficult to accept. His mind kept shifting to the horse; the way it was standing, it might be permanently broken down.

The nomads had come up out of the desert to the west of the Lake of Triton. There had been no warning. They had rampaged through the oases – Castellum Neptitana, Thusuros, Ad Palmam, Thiges; each was left a scene of desolation. Not yet sated, the barbarians were riding north. Soon they would reach Capsa. Their numbers were immense; like nothing seen before. Their leader was Nuffuzi, a chief of the Cinithii. His prestige was such that warriors from other tribes of the Gaetuli had joined him, some from as far south as Phazania.

Gordian’s father might be nearing his eightieth year, but he had a long career behind him. He had governed many provinces, armed and unarmed. He had not survived, and usually prospered, by giving way to panic. ‘If you left the barbarians on the road to Capsa, and we are outside Hadrumetum, we have time to finish our journey, go to the baths, and then take counsel over dinner.’

The defence of Africa Proconsularis was overseen by Capelianus, the governor of Numidia, the province adjacent to the west. Between Gordian Senior and Capelianus there was a personal disagreement of very long standing. It was a delicate subject, best not mentioned in front of either man. The governing elite of the empire had long memories for any slight, let alone anything worse. Duty, or at least fear of imperial displeasure, would make Capelianus act eventually, but habitual animosity would not encourage the governor to rush to the aid of his neighbour.

The governor of Africa had few troops at his disposal. There was an Urban Cohort in Carthage and two auxiliary cohorts in the west, one at Utica and the other at Ammaedara. They were there to prevent riots in the towns, and the latter to suppress banditry in the countryside. Strung out along the borders to the south-west was a cohort of legionaries from 3rd Augustan and an irregular unit of mounted scouts, and to the east three cohorts of auxiliaries in Tripolitana. Although within the province of Africa, all the troops along the borders were notionally under the command of the governor of Numidia. For his father’s security, and greater dignity, Gordian had sought volunteers throughout the province from the regular units and from the various small groups of soldiers on detached duties. With these, and some veterans who found life outside the army less than they had expected, he had raised a mounted bodyguard one-hundred-strong for the Proconsul. This unit of Equites Singulares Consularis had been the sole military force with them in Hadrumetum.

The plan which the younger Gordian advanced over dinner was bold and did not meet with universal approval. Menophilus, the Quaestor in the province, and Mauricius, the local landowner, saw its merits. One of the Proconsul’s legates, Valerian, had been talked around, but the other two, the inseparable Arrian and Sabinianus, remained deeply sceptical. ‘Putting your hand in a rat’s nest,’ said Arrian. ‘You are not Alexander, and I am not Parmenion,’ said Sabinianus. You should abandon this desire for military glory. It does not fit the type of philosophical life you profess. You should take the sort of cautious advice the Macedonian King rejected from the old general.

Nevertheless, Gordian had persevered.

The nomads had come to pillage, not to conquer. It was too late to head them off – the worst damage was done – so they should be caught as they returned. Whether they took Capsa or not, it was unlikely they would venture deeper into Roman territory. They would know troops from Numidia would be mobilized to chase them. Almost certainly, the raiders would seek to leave the province by the same route they had entered. Ad Palmam was the key. At that oasis the land narrowed between the Lake of Triton and the smaller salt lake to the west. One of the two safe paths through the great waste ran off south-east from there. It intersected the other somewhere out in the wilderness. A force at Ad Palmam dominated both escape routes.

Gordian, guided by Mauricius and accompanied by Sabinianus and Valerian, would lead eighty men of the mounted bodyguard as a flying column. They would go via Thysdrus and Taparura. When they reached the hills, Mauricius could take them south by unfrequented ways to avoid running into the nomads.

Arrian was by far the best horseman among them. He would ride ahead, take spare horses on a lead rein. At the high country he would bear west for Thiges. He could take a couple of troopers with him, but, if he came across the nomads, he would have to rely on his mount and his skill.

‘I might try praying as well,’ Arrian had said, ‘although I know some think it useless.’

After Arrian reached the frontier wall, it was not far to the Mirror Fort. At their headquarters, he would take command of the five hundred scouts and then force march them back to join Gordian and the others at Ad Palmam.

Meanwhile, Menophilus would have ridden west from Hadrumetum, through the Sufes Pass, and collected 15th Cohort Emesenorum from Ammaedara. He would bring them down from the north through Capsa.

The raiders would be burdened with their plunder. They were barbarians, and had no discipline. They would straggle all over the country. Their retreat would be slow. Gordian and Arrian, if they acted with alacrity, could be waiting at the oasis long before the nomads appeared. Between them, the Romans would dispose some six hundred cavalry. More than enough to delay the enemy until Menophilus appeared with five hundred infantry in their rear – like a hammer on to an anvil.

‘You are proposing to surround a much greater number with about a thousand men,’ Sabinianus had said.

Gordian had agreed. ‘But we are not trying to massacre or capture them all. Merely retake their loot, kill some of them and teach the rest a lesson. Make them think twice before crossing the border again. Show weakness, and they will be back before the end of the year. There will be more of them. Garamantes, Nasamones, Baquates … tribesmen from far away will flock to the banners of this Nuffuzi. You all know the nature of barbarians: success breeds arrogance.’

No one at the dinner had an answer to that, not even Arrian or Sabinianus. He was self-evidently right: that was how barbarians were. Gordian Senior was predisposed to be won over. He had no desire to be rescued by Capelianus. The thing had been clinched by Mauricius. Could he join the expedition? The local magnate had twenty-five mounted, armed retainers with him. He was sure other nearby estate owners would contribute more. If there had been time, he himself could have produced perhaps nearly a hundred from his own lands.

The Proconsul had approved the plan. He told his son to take all the equites. The younger Gordian would not hear of it; nor would the others. Together they urged the governor to have a ship prepared in the harbour to take him and his household to safety, if things should go very badly wrong and the nomads threatened Hadrumetum. Gordian Senior had replied that he had never run from his enemies, and he was too old to start now.

Menophilus and Arrian had ridden their separate ways the next morning. Three days had passed getting ready the men, weapons, supplies, and animals of the flying column. When finally Gordian led them out, he was at the head of eighty troopers and a similar number of armed locals. He had waved to his father, blown kisses to Parthenope and Chione, his two mistresses, and wondered if he was doing the right thing.

When they had ridden through Thysdrus, they had got the news that Capsa had fallen. The barbarians appeared to be taking their time over their looting. The estimates of their numbers remained unreliable, hopefully vastly inflated. They had received no further word on the journey.

Gordian shaded his eyes, and watched. Another flock of doves got up as Sabinianus disappeared into the oasis. Perhaps his friend was right – perhaps he was doing this for the wrong motives. Still, it was all too late to worry now.

The doves circled and swooped back into the treetops. The chickens had vanished. It was quiet – dreadfully quiet – and very still. Now and then Gordian thought he half saw movement deep in the shade. If something happened to Sabinianus … Odysseus must have felt this apprehension when he sent Eurylochus to scout the smoke drifting up over the Aeaean island. Eurylochus had returned from the halls of Circe. It would be all right. We won’t go down to the House of Death, not yet, not until our day arrives. But Eurylochus had not come back from Sicily. All ways of dying are hateful to us poor mortals. If he had sent Sabinianus to his death … Gordian pushed the verses from his mind. No point in entertaining such thoughts; not until necessary.

‘There!’

Sabinianus had emerged from the tree line. He was still mounted. His horse was ringed by children. He beckoned.

‘Mount up.’

It was dark under the high fronds. Sabinianus led them through the oasis towards the settlement. There were conduits everywhere. Of all sizes, they crossed and recrossed each other, elaborately regulated by dams and aqueducts of palm-stems. Where the sun penetrated, the water was jade; elsewhere, a cool brown. The hooves of their mounts rattled over narrow wooden bridges. Sheltered by the date palms, there were fig trees and a profusion of shorter fruit trees: lemon, pomegranate, plum and peach. Below, almost every inch was set out in gardens for grain or vegetables. With the arrival of the other riders, the children had withdrawn to a distance. Gordian caught glimpses of them, and of adults through the trunks of the trees.

‘They have had a bad time,’ Sabinianus said. ‘I talked to the headman. Only a few killed, but the nomads seized everything portable – all the food stocks, everything of value. The women and girls were much raped; many of the boys too. The nomads took some with them. The headman seemed most concerned about the animals.’

‘The animals?’ Valerian sounded appalled.

‘No,’ Sabinianus said. ‘Not that. The nomads took all the animals, and, while they were doing it, trampled some of the irrigation.’

Pale mud-brick walls showed through the foliage ahead. Gordian signalled the column to wait while he rode around the settlement with his officers. It was laid out in an oval. There was no defensive wall as such. But the houses abutted each other, their windowless rear walls forming a continuous circuit, only occasionally pierced by a narrow, easy-to-block passage. Flat roofs with low parapets could form a fighting platform. A watchtower and some higher walls at the south end must be what passed for a citadel. The whole was not big – maybe seven, eight hundred inhabitants, certainly not more than a thousand; difficult to tell when the houses were packed that close. Gordian might be able defend the place when Arrian arrived with the speculatores, but the perimeter was much too long to be held by the fewer than one hundred and sixty men with him now. If only Arrian had got here first with the Frontier Wolves.

‘I had hoped—’ Gordian stopped himself, wished he had not spoken. He did not want to lower the spirits of the others. There was no point in unsettling himself. Disquiet was to be avoided, no matter the external circumstances. Unhappiness, even misery, was nothing but the product of ignorance or faulty judgement. Knowledge and correct thinking would dispel any suffering. But, somehow, the thing was too obvious. He had hoped; they had all hoped – expected, even – that Arrian would be here before them.

Three men, leading spare mounts, cover much more ground than the fastest of cavalry columns. The Mirror Fort was much nearer than Hadrumetum. The speculatores were famous rough riders. Something must have happened to Arrian: an accident, an encounter with the nomads. All ways of dying are hateful to us poor mortals.

Gordian took charge of himself. He would send another rider to bring the scouts. At least the nomads had neither left a rearguard at this oasis nor already returned. Gordian felt better, thinking and acting correctly. A philosophical education paid dividends. Mental disturbance was to be avoided like the plague.

‘We could impress the able-bodied inhabitants, arm them somehow.’ In the face of the silence of the others, Valerian stopped.

Sabinianus answered, in tones of mock-sympathy. ‘My poor, dear innocent friend, these people will not fight for us. They do not want us here. If we had not arrived, on the way back the raiders would have passed them by; just a bit more raping, perhaps a final bit of torture to try to prise out the hiding place of some probably imaginary treasure. But there would have been no killing, no wholesale destruction. Valerian, my dear, you are far too trusting. One day it will be the death of you.’

The citadel was built around a courtyard, with thirty stables opening off it. The other lean-to sheds were empty. Another forty horses were stalled in them. The remaining mounts were tethered in the open. It was not ideal, but most were in the shade. As the riders rubbed them down, Gordian was given a formal, if guarded speech of welcome in heavily accented Latin by the headman.

‘Riders!’

The shout stopped everything.

‘Coming down from the north!’ The man in the lookout tower was leaning far out, pointing, as if those below might have forgotten the track of the sun.

‘Riders, lots of them.’

‘Fuck.’ Sabinianus was eating some dates. His servant was grooming his horse. ‘Just when I was thinking of a nap.’

Holding his scabbard well away from his legs, Gordian took the stairs two at a time. No sooner had they arrived, and this had to happen. Exhausted men and horses. No Arrian or scouts. Probably untrustworthy inhabitants … The great Epicurus himself might have had trouble keeping his equanimity through all this shit.

At the top, Gordian doubled up, blowing hard. Too much soft living, rich food and drink, too many nights with Parthenope and Chione, never enough sleep.

A pillar of dust: tall, straight, definitely made by cavalry. There were a lot of them, coming this way, travelling fast. Under two miles away.

Gordian looked around. Mud-brick battlements, five paces square, above the top fronds. Excellent vision in all directions. Odd he had not noticed the tower when looking in at the oasis. Valerian was next to him. Gordian drew a deep breath. ‘Send a rider … No, go yourself. Get to the Mirror Fort. Bring the scouts.’

Valerian saluted. ‘We will do what is ordered—’

‘Too late,’ Mauricius interupted. ‘They have passed the turning. He would have to go south, through the desert, around the western salt flats. He would need a camel. It would take days.’

‘How many?’

‘Hard to say, but everything here will be long finished before he gets to the Mirror Fort.’ Mauricius shrugged. ‘I will send a couple of my men. Maybe—’

‘I would not bother.’ Sabinianus was shading his eyes with his hat. His bald forehead shone with sweat. He started laughing.

Gordian wondered about the effects of the ride, the desert.

‘Time for a nap, after all.’ Sabinianus said. ‘Unless I am much mistaken, here comes Arrian, and my little white-bottomed friend has brought the famous tough Frontier Wolves.’

Gordian held his war council in the room at the foot of the tower. It was the largest in the citadel. It had a high ceiling and, with the shutters closed and boys wielding fans, it was cool. There were six of them: Gordian himself, Valerian, the reunited Sabinianus and Arrian, Mauricius, and another local, Aemilius Severinus, the commander of the speculatores. They drank fermented palm wine and ate pistachios. From outside came the smell of chicken on a grill. Perhaps, Gordian thought, the nomads had not been entirely wrong: peasants always have something hidden.

‘Yes,’ Arrian said, ‘I could have got here quicker. But the scouts were dispersed all along the wall. Aemilius Severinus here agreed that it would be best to gather as many as possible. There are four hundred camped in the oasis.’

‘No one is criticizing you,’ Gordian said.

Sabinianus snorted.

‘No one apart from your twin, the other of the Cercopes.’ Gordian smiled.

‘The day I give a fuck about his views, I will—’

‘Sell your arse at the crossroads,’ Sabinianus said.

‘Possibly, although I was thinking of something else.’

‘If we could postpone the discussion of your descent into male prostitution,’ Gordian said, ‘it might be useful if you gave us some estimate of how many bloodthirsty savages were chasing you, and how soon they might be here.’

Arrian scratched his short, stubbly beard. He pulled the end of his upturned nose.

‘Hercules’ hairy black arse; it is as if he is auditioning to be in a comedy without a mask. What would a physiognomist read in his soul?’

Gordian gestured amiably for Sabinianus to be quiet. ‘If it helps him think.’

Arrian looked up, hands and face still. ‘I saw about two thousand, all mounted. But there was a lot of dust to the north of them. Although the majority of that would have been raised by baggage animals and captives.’

‘How long?’

Arrian spread his hands in a sign of hopelessness. ‘At first, the two thousand chased us hard. They gave up when they realized they would not catch us.’

‘Where was that?’

Arrian gestured to Aemilius Severinus.

‘Ten miles south of Thiges, fifteen north of here.’ The officer answered immediately and with confidence. Although most appointments were decided by patronage, probably the commander of the Frontier Wolves would not last long without certain qualities.

‘The afternoon wears on; most likely we can expect them at some point tomorrow.’

No one contradicted Gordian’s estimate.

‘How shall we greet them?’

Silence, until Gordian carried on. ‘I was thinking of a barrier – palm trunks, thorn bushes, whatever – across the neck of land.’

‘But it is near two miles across, and we are too few, with too little time,’ Sabinianus said.

‘A mounted charge, in a wedge,’ Valerian said. ‘No irregular troops will stand up to it, let alone a horde of nomads from the desert.’

‘True,’ Aemilius Severinus said. ‘But they would not need to. With their numbers, they would give way, flow all around us. Quite likely we could charge clean through them. But what good would it do? We would be charging at nothing, and all the time their arrows and javelins would be whittling down our numbers. Getting back might prove difficult, and if we ended up out there surrounded, on spent horses—’

‘What do these nomads value above everything?’ Gordian went straight on to answer his own rhetorical question. ‘They would do anything rather than leave behind the plunder they have amassed.’

‘They do claim to have a sense of honour.’ Aemilius Severinus spoke somewhat hesitantly. ‘Of course, they seldom live up to it. Things are not the same among them as with us.’

‘They are barbarians.’ Gordian waved aside the concept. ‘They saw several hundred speculatores riding here—’

‘And,’ Sabinianus cut in, ‘the gap between the salt lakes is narrow, and they will realize that it will be difficult to drive their stolen beasts and prisoners away under our noses.’

‘Exactly.’ Gordian grinned, feeling like one of those street magicians who haunt the agora when they produce something from up their sleeves. ‘Either they have to defend the herds, and we have something to charge, or they must come and root us out of the oasis. Either way, we get to fight hand-to-hand. And that is our strength, and their weakness.’

A breeze got up in the night, some time before dawn. It hissed and rattled through the palm fronds. Gordian leant on the parapet of the watchtower, waiting. He had been unable to sleep. There was little to see as yet. The shifting canopy of foliage just below him was black. It hid the settlement. Beyond the oasis, the desert was flat, laid out in tones of blue and grey. There was no moon. The thousands of stars were as distant and uncaring as gods.

The previous evening, not long after the war council ended, the first of the enemy had arrived. The speculatores that Aemilianus Severinus had put on picket had been driven back into the village. In the night, off to the north, the campfires of the nomads had parodied the stars. At last, the fires had burnt out, leaving just the real firmament and the blackness.

All ways of dying are hateful to us poor mortals. No, Gordian thought. There was nothing to fear, he told himself. If, in the end, everything returns to rest and sleep, why worry? Death is nothing to us. When we exist, death does not, and when death is, we are not. Anyway, it would not come to that, not today. Menophilus would be here in the morning; and with him would be the five hundred men of the 15th Cohort Emesenorum. There was nothing to worry about.

Even thinking of Menophilus somewhat calmed Gordian. As Quaestor, Menophilus had been appointed by the Senate, unlike the legates, who were family friends chosen personally by the governor. Gordian had not known Menophilus before they came to Africa, but had warmed to him. On first meeting, Menophilus had seemed reserved, even gloomy. The Italian was young – still only in his twenties. He had sad eyes and wore an ornament in the form of a skeleton on his belt. He talked readily of the transience of life and was known to collect memento mori. And, to cap it all, he was a Stoic. Yet he little inclined towards the boorish asceticism many of that school so often paraded. No sooner had the governor’s entourage established itself in Carthage than Menophilus had begun an affair with the wife of a member of the city council. Her name was Lycaenion; she was dark, full-bodied, very beddable, Gordian thought. Menophilus liked to drink as well. While these traits showed an agreeable capacity for pleasure, it was the calm competence of the Quaestor on which Gordian was relying now. Menophilus would be here. There was nothing to worry about.

Swiftly, but by imperceptible stages, the sky lightened, turning a delicate lilac. Behind a haze, the white disc of the sun topped the horizon. For a moment, the Lake of Triton once again filled with water. Waves rolled across its dark surface. You could almost hear them. And then the sun rose higher and the illusion was dispelled. And again there was nothing but salt and mud and desolation.

Gordian looked off to the north. The leading edge of the barbarian encampment was about a mile distant. Dust and smoke were already shifting up from it. In the low, raking light of dawn, everything was blurred and indistinct.

If Gordian could make out little of the enemy, he could see even less of his own forces. There were four men – one for each cardinal point – with him on the watchtower, and below there were the sentinels on the walls of the citadel and the horse handlers in the courtyard. All the rest, and the whole of the settlement, were hidden by the thick, interlaced fronds of thousands upon thousands of palms. Gordian knew the men were in position. In the dead of night, when sleep had refused him, he had walked the lines. He was convinced that he had made the best dispositions he could, but he was far from content.

The narrow ends of the oval of the oasis were north and south. The tree line was about two thirds of a mile long and at its widest just under half a mile across. There were no defences – no ditch, wall or rampart – around this perimeter, and, anyway, Gordian simply did not have enough men to defend such a length. The village was set in the southern end of the cultivated land. As every inch of irrigated soil was used, the crops, shrubs and trees grew right up to the walls of the houses. There was no killing zone. Attackers could remain in cover until almost the moment they tried to scale the walls or storm the openings.

It was not a strong position, but Gordian had done what he could to remedy its deficiencies. Traps – sharpened wooden stakes concealed in shallow pits; the ones the soldiers called ‘lilies’ – had been dug in the more obvious trails through the gardens. Half the speculatores, a full two hundred men under a young centurion of local birth called Faraxen, were lurking among the undergrowth. In small groups they were to harass the nomads, falling back before them into the village.

The remainder of the scouts, under their commander Aemilius Severinus, waited in the settlement. All the entrances were blocked, except the two by which Faraxen’s men would retreat. Moveable barricades had been prepared to put across the latter. Gordian would have liked to make the place a more difficult proposition, but it had been impossible. There had been no time to cut back a space in front of the defences. There was no blacksmith, and no metal, to make caltrops to scatter where their sharp spikes would pierce the soles of the enemies’ feet. Normally, he would have ordered the collection of firewood and metal cauldrons in which to heat oil or sand. He had not done so, because the roofs of the mud-brick houses whose rear walls formed the defences did not look capable of withstanding the heat of a fire. Most were held up by palm trunks, and not a few were thatched.

If, as was likely, the nomads broke into the village, all the speculatores were to retreat into the citadel by its main gate. The labyrinthine alleys, and the nomads’ inextinguishable desire to pillage, should somewhat slow down their pursuit. Gordian did not allow himself to think what would happen to the inhabitants cowering in their homes.

The citadel was situated at the extreme southern tip of Ad Palmam. Mud brick, like every other construction, at least its walls were a bit higher and appeared a little more solid. Except on the north, it was ringed by only a shallow belt of trees. Two of its gates opened out west and south on to the plain; the third, the biggest one, north into the village. The seventy-seven remaining Africans raised by Mauricius and the other estate owners were distributed along the parapets. Mauricius was to act as second in command to Valerian. The equites of the Proconsular guard also were stationed in the citadel. Thirty-seven of them were on the walls to stiffen the resolve of the irregulars. The other forty were down in the yard with their horses, acting as a reserve. Arrian and Sabinianus were reunited as their leaders. The former in charge of those on the parapets, the latter the reserve.

Looking down, in the gathering light Gordian saw the two legates inspecting the close-packed lines of horses tethered in the courtyard. Every mount was saddled and bridled. All was ready in case the entire force had to try to cut its way out. Gordian had no intention that this should be remembered as the site of a desperate and ultimately doomed last stand.

Arrian and Sabinianus were checking the girth of each animal, and peering into the mouth to check the bit. Yet somehow they still managed to convey an air of patrician disinterest, even indolence. They never appeared to take anything seriously, and the appellation as the mythical Cercopes suited them. The originals had been brothers from Ephesus. They had roamed the world practising deceptions, until captured by Hercules. The hero had tied them up and slung them upside down from a pole over his shoulder. The skin of the Nemean lion did not cover Hercules’ arse, which was blackened by the sun. Luckily for the Cercopes, when they told Hercules why they were laughing, he saw the humour.

‘Riders coming!’

Maybe a dozen men on horses and camels had left the nomad camp. They were dark shapes under a dark flag. Now and then light saddlecloths, tunics or head coverings caught the early-morning sun. They rode at a canter, twisting between isolated clumps of vegetation and thorn bushes. A semi-opaque smear of dust marked their route.

They skirted the western edge of the oasis and reined in some hundred paces from the thin belt of trees which fronted the west gate of the citadel. There they sat, under their gloomy banner.

‘They are carrying a palm branch.’ Sabinianus had appeared at the top of the watchtower. ‘If they were civilized, you would assume they wanted a truce to talk.’

‘We had better make that assumption anyway,’ Gordian said.

‘Perhaps we should send Arrian, in case we are mistaken.’ Sabinianus shuddered. ‘The village headman told me the unspeakable things they do to their captives.’

‘No, you can come with me,’ Gordian said.

‘Is it too late to renounce your friendship?’ Sabinianus’ tone was one of polite enquiry.

Gordian grinned. ‘We will take twenty of the equites with us; to calm your girlish apprehensions. While we are gone, Arrian can take command.’

‘How reassuring.’ Sabinianus turned and started to climb down the ladder. ‘At least I have a good horse.’

The nomads neither came to meet them nor moved in any way when the party trotted out from the oasis.

As they got close, Gordian’s mount put back its ears and began to baulk. Behind him, one or two were sidestepping. Camels, he thought: their smell upsets horses. He had forgotten. It was in many histories. He drove his horse forward on a tight rein. You would have thought a horse from Africa would be used to the malodorous brutes. Perhaps some camels smelt worse than others.

Gordian pulled up a couple of lengths away. His horse stamped and shifted in agitation. He calmed it, while taking in the barbarian deputation. They all wore tunics and sheepskin cloaks, carried three or four light javelins, a small shield and a knife each. Several had swords on their hips, all of Roman manufacture. Some had a scarf wrapped around their heads, veiling everything except their eyes. Most were bare-headed, with thick, braided ropes of dirty hair. One or two of the latter had shaved parts of their skulls to create strange, intricate patterns.

The camels were very tall beside the horses. They regarded him with disdain, jaws slack, slobber hanging down. They did smell. No wonder his horse did not want to be near them.

Nuffuzi sat on a chestnut horse, just off centre of the group. Gordian could tell him not by his costume but by the way the heads of his followers turned inward towards their leader.

The chief was dark, his face thin, with high cheekbones. His greying hair was in elaborate braids, bright with beads, and he wore a small beard only on his chin. The rider next to him was a younger version of Nuffuzi.

No one seemed inclined to speak.

Gods below, Gordian thought, perhaps none of them even speaks Latin. There was no likelihood of them knowing Greek. Unless he took control, this could soon turn into a debacle.

‘You are Nuffuzi of the Cinithii?’

Inexplicably, the nomads hissed and glowered annoyance at Gordian’s question. Nuffuzi himself remained calm. The chief spoke in the Latin of the camps. ‘Where have you come from?’

Unable to see its relevance, Gordian ignored the question. ‘Without provocation you have raided into the imperium. You have pillaged from many innocent people.’

‘Where are you going?’

Again, to Gordian, it seemed a non-sequitur. ‘I cannot let you pass.’

Nuffuzi nodded, as if weighing these words. ‘You do not know how things are here. There was no innocence. Every summer when my people come north they are abused and cheated, their goods are stolen, their animals taken, their women and boys raped. This—’ he jabbed a finger towards the camp ‘—is not plunder, it is retribution.’

‘You know I cannot let you pass.’

‘I know this.’ Nuffuzi smiled like a sage close to enlightenment. ‘I wanted to see who I was fighting, before the killing and the evil began.’

With a gesture almost of benediction, the desert war-leader turned and rode away.

There was all the time in the world to study the nomad encampment. It was big, sprawling and betrayed no discernible order. From a distance, all seemed intermixed: men and animals, warriors and captives. Different-coloured flags fluttered over it at what appeared random intervals. Certainly, the nomads were in no hurry to attack. A good breakfast, Sabinianus suggested, perhaps a last rape or two. You know how none of them can resist a good-looking camel.

Gordian stood down his own men in sections to take their breakfast. He tried to eat himself – some flat bread and cheese, a few olives and dates. It did not go down well. When men visited the barracks to watch the gladiators eating the night before they fought, most would bet on those who ate with a good appetite. They often lost. Gordian would be fine when the fighting started. He would be hungry afterwards. Now, he found it hard to eat. It signified nothing, nothing at all. He drank a little well-watered wine. He wanted his head clear.

The encampment began to stir. The flags moved, first this way then that. Dark shapes eddied at their bases. High yelps and cries drifted across the plain. The music of strange instruments.

‘We have some time; they need to work themselves up,’ Gordian said to no one in particular. He was surprised to find he was chewing a piece of bread.

Warriors were streaming out from among the tents. The riders at the front could be distinguished as individuals, but those behind were a dark mass. Low down, light flickered between the legs of their animals as they raced across the parched earth.

‘Here they come.’

They came like a herd of beasts migrating. Thick white dust obscured all but the forerunners. Some horses were bolting. Their riders could be seen hauling on the reins. Their mounts ran on, heads held sideways. Some ran across the line, baulking others. Those on camels bobbed, seemingly precarious above the mass.

The nomads lapped all around the oasis. With no regular standards or set formations, numbers were hard to judge. They were not close-packed, and they were kicking up great clouds of dust. Such things could deceive. That and the terrible noise. There were fewer of them than an untutored eye might judge. Three thousand at most, perhaps considerably fewer. It could be there were no more than the two thousand that had chased Aemilius Severinus the previous day. Odds of about four to one against the Romans.

In which case – Gordian looked at the camp – how many were still guarding the captives? Among the tents and shelters, the beasts of burden and squatting, dejected humanity, it was impossible to tell. Gordian looked north, beyond the camp. Still nothing: no tell-tale smudge of dust in the sky.

From the watchtower Gordian had a view as good as watching the games from the imperial box in the amphitheatre. Nearby, around the southern end of the oasis, the barbarians had halted just out of effective bowshot. They remained mounted, brandishing their weapons, and chanting a strange, ululating song. Now they were stationary, it was easier to assess numbers. There were no more than five hundred of them, spread in a wide semicircle but clustering thickest under a big black banner. Most likely, Nuffuzi was there. They were there to block any attempt at escape.

Further north, the nomads rode right up to the line of trees. Those on horseback leapt out of the saddle. The process was more laborious for the camel-mounted. First, the beasts were forced down on their front knees, then – the rider rocking violently – on their rear ones as well. Finally dismounted, the warriors could follow the example of the horsemen and toss their reins to their less courageous companions who had remained mounted.

A camel rider was plucked backwards by an unseen arrow. Faraxen’s speculatores were about their business. The nomads surged out of sight under the palms.

Gordian peered closely through the rising murk. Those still in the saddle were cantering away; each with two, at most three animals on a lead rein. He made rapid calculations. Say two thousand five hundred of the enemy, five hundred of them so far were unengaged here in the south. That left two thousand in the north. But, of those, one in three were holding animals. There could be only about one thousand five hundred rushing into the attack. Odds of three to one; the bare minimum needed to assault a defended position. And the nomads were unarmoured. All the defenders, even the retainers of the landowners, had some form of body armour, hardened leather or padded linen, if not mail. Before he let his hopes rise, Gordian reminded himself that Ad Palmam was not in truth a properly fortified village. Without Menophilus, the odds were still heavy that this could only end one way.

The noise of the unseen battle issued up. Gordian stared, as if an exercise of will would penetrate the blanket of fronds. Frightened birds clattered away, out over the salt flats: doves, the blue flash of a kingfisher. The din was getting closer. The most dedicated follower of Epicureanism would struggle to remain free from mental disturbance. Very few Epicureans were military men. The enforced inactivity of command would try anyone’s philosophical principals.

Looking down, Gordian saw a sudden surge of people pouring through the open gate into the courtyard of the citadel. They were a mix of civilians and speculatores. The nomads must be inside the settlement already. So many were fleeing, they were pushing and fighting in the confined space. Figures were falling. A child went down. As its mother went to scoop it up, she was trampled. Soon the mob would block the entrance. The enemy would enter on their heels, cut their way through them.

‘Legate!’ Gordian bellowed for Arrian. ‘Get up here and assume command!’

Gordian quickly took stock. Out on the plain the big war standard of Nuffuzi had not moved. Some of the warriors were caracoling their horses, racing along the line, but the majority sat motionless. A fair few had dismounted and were squatting, talking and drinking. If Gordian charged at the head of his father’s guard, quite probably they could punch through the nomads and ride to safety. He suppressed the ignoble thought.

‘Sabinianus, with me!’

Before going to the ladder, Gordian look a last look to the north. The pall raised by thousands of hooves had screened the camp of the raiders almost completely. Beyond it, nothing at all could be seen.

Down in the yard was chaos. The horses were stamping and squealing, rearing against their tethers. Wild-eyed, they lashed out at each other. The forty troopers were struggling to control them. Gordian shouted for them to leave the horses and form on him.

In a compact wedge Gordian and his men forced their way into the press in the gateway. With fists, boots and the flats of their swords, they cleared a passage. Men swore at them. Women screamed and small children howled. Once, Gordian nearly went down when his boot turned on a body.

Outside, in the main avenue of the settlement, they scrummed together into a rough wall of shields about a dozen wide and three or four deep. Panicked inhabitants swirled around them like a river in spate around a boulder. In twos and threes, speculatores emerged from under the palms screening the innumerable side-alleys. Aemilius Severinus was leading one group.

‘They outflanked us. They were here before, and know this maze better than us. They were all around us, too many of them …’ The report trailed off. Aemilius stood, panting; shamefaced. There was a gash on his forearm, blood on his face.

Gordian gripped his shoulder. ‘Not your fault. Get your survivors together inside. When the enemy gets here, close the gate. Never mind about the civilians. Never mind if we are still outside.’

Aemilius Severinus nodded. ‘We will do what is ordered, and at every command we will be ready.’

Gordian waited in the front rank, shoulder to shoulder with his men. The civilians stumbled and jostled past, wailing like mourners. Behind, the horses trumpeted and screamed. Agonized yells and alien shouts echoed out from the alleyways in front. There was something unnerving in waiting silent and motionless at the centre of so much noise and movement. Here in the shade of the palms which lined the street it was cooler. The light was green, subaqueous.

Death is nothing to us. Gordian repeated it to himself. Death is nothing to us.

The press of refugees bumped and bored past. The guards waited. The din seemed to recede, as if it came from a great distance.

If at last all returns to rest and sleep …

A nomad ran out from a lane. The locals shrank away. He skidded to a halt, dumbstruck by the presence of the soldiers. Someone shot him. The arrow spun him around and dropped him in the dirt. The men around Gordian laughed.

‘And things were going so well for him,’ Sabinianus said.

From somewhere out of sight came a high call and response, the rhythmic stamping of feet, the beat of weapons on shields. The villagers hurled themselves past, sandals slapping on the compacted dirt. The street in front of Gordian emptied. He glanced back. A seething mass of bodies was stuck fast in the gateway. All sense gone, they clawed and struggled.

‘Steady!’ Sabinianus shouted.

A roar, and the barbarians came around the corner. A volley of arrows hissed over Gordian’s head. The foremost warriors twisted and fell. Those following leapt over them. More arrows, like spattering rain. Not enough to stop the charge. The nomads’ right arms went back, snapped forward. The air was full of barbed javelins. Gordian jerked his shield up. A jarring impact ran up his left arm. A splinter of wood narrowly missed his eye. The head of the javelin had penetrated the shield. He dropped the useless thing, got his sword up.

Braids flying, a nomad was on him, jabbing wicked steel down at his face. Gordian crouched, stepped forward. The javelin went over his left shoulder. He drove the tip of his blade into the guts. For a moment, they were together, face to face, in the hideous intimacy of an embrace. The stench of urine and blood. The breath of the warrior feral and hot on his face.

Gordian stepped back, pushing the dying man away. Another took his place, swinging a sword. Gordian blocked; once, twice, three times. The ringing of steel was loud in his ears. He gave ground. The soldiers around him likewise. Men were falling on both sides, but numbers were telling. Emboldened by his opponent’s passivity, the nomad lifted his arms high to deliver a mighty overhead chop. Gordian waited until the weapon was at its apex and neatly drove three inches of steel into his throat.

Again the line retreated and contracted. In the momentary respite, Gordian tried to take stock. Only three soldiers to his right now, Sabinianus and no more to his left. Nomads working around both flanks. The rear ranks of the guardsmen had turned to make a circle. The gateway was still full of massed humanity.

Like an ebbing tide, the enemy receded. Arrows from the wall plucked at their cloaks, thumped into their shields. One or two crumpled, hands clutching at the shafts. Before hope could rise, they charged again. The young chieftain at their head angled straight for Gordian. A flurry of blows, and Gordian’s back collided with that of the soldier behind. Hampered in his movements, he emptied his mind of everything except his opponent’s steel. Long training and the memory in his muscles guided him.

The briefest of pauses, and Gordian recognized him. With a curious precision and delicacy of footwork, Nuffuzi’s son feinted and lunged. Gordian took the strike high up near the pommel. This youth could fight. The sound of shouting from behind. No time for that. Gordian parried and riposted.

Sweat stinging in his eyes. Pain in his chest. Gordian was tiring, his movements slowing, growing clumsy. He had to finish this soon. He forced his feet to move, thrust to the face, and pulled back to buy himself some time. The shouting was louder. Some of the nomads were looking up over the knot of soldiers, others glancing over their shoulders. Nuffuzi’s son struck again. Gordian’s slight distraction almost killed him. A late, desperate block forced the blade down. It sliced open his left thigh. He staggered, fighting for balance. The youth readied the killing blow. Gordian brought his sword into a shaky guard. On either side the nomads were stepping back. Nuffuzi’s son shouted, glared at his warriors. Gordian stepped off his right foot, on to his left – a sickening surge of pain – and brought the edge of his blade down into his opponent’s right wrist. The youth screamed and dropped his sword. Before he could double up, Gordian got the point of his weapon up under his chin.