'Zeus, be my witness first; the highest, the best of gods! Then the Earth, the Sun, and the Furies who stalk the world below to wreak revenge on the dead who break their oaths — I swear I will carry out my task in good faith. I will travel to Macrianus and spare no effort to arrange the ransom of Valerian, emperor of Rome. I swear, in success or failure, I will return to perform proskynesis before the throne of Shapur, the Mazda-beloved King of Aryans and non-Aryans.'
Again Ballista pulled up the lamb's head, roughly this time. He dragged the ruthless blade across its soft throat. The little lamb fell at his feet, dying, gasping away its life breath.
Ballista took a silver bowl in one of his bloodied hands. 'Zeus, god of greatness, god of glory, all you immortals.' He tipped out some of the wine. 'If I break my oath, spill my brains on the ground as this wine spills, my brains and the brains of my sons too.'
Calgacus and the others rode up to the walls of Zeugma late in the morning. It had all taken far longer than they had expected.
After the landslide, the Caledonian and the three cavalrymen had climbed down from where they had levered the rocks from the cliff. Demetrius and the other Dalmatian were where they had left them holding the horses. They had all mounted and waited.
Maximus had walked his horse up to them. The Hibernian was powdered white like a man who has worked a long day on the threshing floor. A cut showed bright red in the dust on his cheek. His face was motionless, drained. He had thanked them, haltingly, in a monotone.
Calgacus had seen the like before. A man who has resigned himself to death is unexpectedly saved but, instead of revelling in the reprieve from execution, in a released-from-gaol euphoria, the man is overcome by his troubles and fears, things he thought he had left behind him. Calgacus was not unduly perturbed. He knew that Maximus's moods changed like the weather in springtime. In no time the Hibernian would be his usual self.
Almost as soon as they set off, Calgacus had noticed a track leaving their path and running off to the left between a fold in the hills. Not long after, he saw another climbing the slope to the right. As the stars had paled and the sky lightened, track after track appeared.
The sun had risen as they came down from the hills, revealing a broad plain heavily worked by man. It was dotted with barns and farms and, here and there, hamlets, and even small villages. Although some of the buildings had been burned, it had not been done recently. Most showed signs of repair. In all probability, the destruction dated back to the previous Persian invasion, the so-called 'time of troubles', seven years earlier. Stretching away on either side of the path were thick groves of trees, mainly olives and pistachios, vineyards in leaf and corn standing tall even this early in the year.
Calgacus looked over at Maximus. The Hibernian's face still wore the blank thousand-pace stare of a man back from near-death in combat. If Maximus had not realized his stand may have been unnecessary, Calgacus was not going to tell him.
The horses were done in, so Calgacus had ordered the men to dismount. Leading their tired mounts, they had trudged across the plain. The last stage seemed to take for ever. In the distance, on the other side of the Euphrates, was the rounded mound of the citadel of Zeugma. The outlines of the city were clear in the bright spring air: the red roofs of the close-packed houses climbing the slopes, the sharp line of its wall, some type of tree dotted above and, on the very summit, the great temple and the palace. Gradually, they had been able to make out the details, but for a long time it seemed to come no nearer.
Finally, they were only half a mile or so from the city walls. They had reached the outskirts of the eastern necropolis. Calgacus gave the order to remount. They trotted past many types of tomb, bearing many gloomy images in stone. Among the heavily sculpted swags of flowers framing baskets of offerings to the dead and the eagles which the pious hoped would carry their souls to a better place, there were portraits. The men depicted stood, respectable in Hellenic cloak and tunic; the women sat demurely. Children clutched their toys. The paint was flaking from quite a few. Some of the tombs had been broken open and not resealed. Their doors gaped open, the interiors loomed black in the sunshine.
None of it depressed the spirits of the riders. They were almost at safety. The walls of the town were no further away than a goatherd could throw a stick. Calgacus flexed his wounded right arm. He had taken a sword cut in the final fight before they had escaped from the valley of tears. The wound hurt like a bastard. Still, here they were: safety in their grasp and the welcome hope of a fat reward from a grateful town councillor for returning his lost son. Calgacus glanced at the boy, who was fast asleep in the saddle in front of Demetrius. The Caledonian momentarily wondered how the family reunion had gone when the mother had returned without the child. Well, that was their concern. It would be an unfeeling sort of father who did not reward, and reward to the limit of his means or even beyond, a man who brought his son back from a fate that unmans one for ever, or maybe death itself.
Get hold of a decent reward, have a bath, a long sleep, clean clothes, then off for a drink and a girl. Maximus could always be relied on to sniff out the latter two. But their old companion Castricius, centurion of Legio IIII Scythica, was stationed at Zeugma. He had the inside knowledge. On the march out, he had taken them to a couple of places. The upmarket one on the Apamea side of the river had been horribly expensive. The other, the bar near the military base, had been fine.
Calgacus thought of Castricius in quite a fond way. The centurion had a thin little face, all lines and points, like that of a mythical creature dreamed up to entertain children with its mischievous tricks. But before he had joined the legions Castricius had been condemned to the mines — surely there was a law that stopped ex-slaves enlisting in the legions? — and he had survived. And not only that, he had lived through the fall of Arete. It would be a bad error to mistake Castricius for something harmless that entertained children.
'Virtus.' The challenge rang out from the walls. The gates were shut.
Calgacus moved his mount forward. He called up that they did not know the day's password — they were come straight from the field army north of Edessa.
'Identify yourselves,' shouted the guard.
'Marcus Clodius Calgacus.'
'Marcus Clodius Maximus.'
'Marcus Clodius Demetrius.'
Calgacus identified the boy — Antiochus, son of Barlaha, member of the Boule of Zeugma — and the four Dalmatian troopers gave their names, rank and unit.
'Wait there,' came the response.
As he waited, Calgacus thought of Marcus Clodius Ballista. When the Angle had given them their freedom, he had also, in legal terms, given them Roman citizenship. They, as custom prescribed, had taken both his praenomen and nomen as their own. For the rest of their lives, two-thirds of their names would bind the four men together.
Calgacus climbed down from the saddle. He pulled Pale Horse's ears, scratched its nose. Ballista loved the animal and, in an awful moment of clarity, Calgacus felt how much he loved Ballista. The Caledonian had been little more than a child himself when he had been taken as a slave north of the wall. A quick succession of owners — thank the gods his looks had forestalled any of them taking too close an interest in him — and he had found himself in Germania, in the hall of Isangrim, warleader of the Angles. Ballista had been just four when Isangrim had instructed Calgacus to serve as his son's manservant. Ballista had been a rather shy, sensitive child. Calgacus had watched Ballista as a youth trying to be brave on the training ground, in the hunting field and, eventually at the age of fifteen, in the battle line. Calgacus had been there on the dreadful day when the Roman centurion had ridden up and announced that the emperor Maximinus Thrax had demanded one of Isangrim's sons as a hostage. Of course there had been no question that Ballista's elder brother could go.
Calgacus had watched Ballista face down his misery. He had ridden at Ballista's side into the alien world of the Romans. On any reckoning, Ballista had done well in the service of the imperium. Yet Calgacus had always felt sorry for the young Angle, as surely torn from his people as the Caledonian himself. Whatever was thrown at him, Ballista tried to be brave. And now he was a captive of the Sassanids.
Calgacus buried his face in Pale Horse's flank. If all the miseries of the world had been set before him, it would not have touched him. He was already too full. Soundlessly, he mouthed some prayers to the half-forgotten gods of his childhood, to the gods he had never really believed in.
'Let them in.' The voice of the centurion broke into Calgacus's unhappiness. He straightened up.
The gates swung back. They led their horses in. Moorish auxiliaries, weapons drawn, swarthy faces
