Throne of the Caesars 01 - Iron and Rust (9 page)

‘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.