white background, flew over the head of the column. The green signum was halfway down, where the eighty mercenaries ended and the sixty men of Cohors XX began. larhai had sent ten of his men ahead as an advance guard, while another ten had been despatched as flanking guards.
'Tell me about the weather at Arete,' said Ballista.
'Oh, it is delightful. In the spring there are gentle breezes and every little depression in the desert is filled with flowers. One of your western generals said the climate was healthy – apart from dysentery, malaria, typhoid, cholera and plague,' answered larhai.
The girl, Bathshiba, smiled. 'My father is teasing you, Dominus. He knows that you want to know about the campaigning season.' Her eyes were jet-black, confident and mischievous.
'And my daughter forgets her place. Since her mother died I have let her run wild. She has forgotten how to weave, and now rides like an Amazon.'
Ballista saw that she was not only dressed but also armed like her father's men.
'You want to know when the Persians will come.' It was a statement. Ballista was still looking at her when larhai again began to speak.
'The rains come in mid-November. We may be lucky and reach Arete before they fall. They turn the desert into a sea of mud. A small force like ours can get through, if with difficulty. But it would be much more difficult to move a large army. If that army was encamped before a town, it would be impossible to get supplies through to it.'
'For how long will Arete be safe?' Ballista saw little point in denying what they clearly already knew.
'The rains tend to stop in January. If it rains again in February it means a good growing season.' Iarhai turned in his saddle. 'The Sassanids will come in April, when there is grass for their horses and no rain to ruin their bowstrings.'
Then we must survive until November, thought Ballista.
It was the improbability of Palmyra's location that first struck Mamurra. It was a completely unlikely place to find a city. It was as if someone had decided to build a city in the lagoons and marshes of the Seven Seas at the head of the Adriatic.
It had taken six days to get there from Emesa, monotonous days of tough travel. There was a Roman road, and it was in good repair, but the journey had been hard. Two days climbing up to the watershed of the nameless range of mountains, four days coming down. In the first five days they had passed through one hamlet and one small oasis. Otherwise there had been nothing, an endless jumble of dun-coloured rock echoingback the noise of their passage. Now, suddenly, on the afternoon of the sixth day, Palmyra appeared before them.
They were in the Valley of the Tombs. Horses, camels and men were dwarfed by the tall, rectangular tombs which lined the steep sides of the valley. Mamurra found it unsettling. Every town had a necropolis outside it but not of towering, fortress-like tombs like these.
As Praefectus Fabrum, he was kept busy sorting out the baggage train, trying to stop it becoming entangled with the seemingly endless traffic heading to town. Most of the traffic was local, from the villages to the north- west, donkeys and camels carrying goatskins of olive oil, animal fat and pine cones. Here and there were traders from further west bringing Italian wool, bronze statues and salt fish. It was some time before he had been free to look at Palmyra.
To the north-east were at least two miles of buildings, row after row of ordered columns. Gardens stretched a similar distance to the far corner of the walls to the south-east. The city was huge, and it was evidently wealthy.
Its walls were mud-brick, low and only about six foot wide. There were no projecting towers. The gates were just that – simple wooden gates. On the heights to the west the walls did not form a continuous barrier. Rather, there were isolated stretches of wall intended to reinforce natural barriers. A wadi ran through the town, and the gardens pointed to a water source within the walls, but the aqueduct that ran from the necropolis would be easy enough to cut. Slowly, and with care, Mamurra came to the conclusion that the defences of the city were not good. He had once been a speculator, an army scout, and every abandoned identity left its mark. Mamurra was proud of this insight; the more so as he could not voice it.
There was a great hubbub at the gate but eventually they moved inside. The men and animals were allocated their quarters and Mamurra went to find Ballista. The Dux was standing waiting with Maximus and Demetrius.
'His name is Odenaethus,' the Greek boy was reminding Ballista. 'In Greek or Latin, he is known as the King of Palmyra. In their native dialect of Aramaic, he is the Lord of Tadmor. He speaks perfect Greek. It is thought that he put at least thirty thousand horsemen in the field against the Persians three years ago in the time of troubles.'
Iarhai, together with that wanton-looking daughter of his, approached on horseback. Mamurra and the rest mounted. Ballista requested larhai to guide them to the palace of Odenaethus, and they set off, progressing slowly through the busy colonnaded streets lined with shops. They were a riot of colour. The smell was overpowering but not at all unpleasant, exotic spices mixed with the more familiar odours of horse and humanity. They negotiated a fine square, passed an agora and a theatre, and arrived at the palace, to be ushered in with courtly grace by a waiting chamberlain.
Apart from stepping forward when presented and then stepping back again, Mamurra had no part to play in the reception of the new Dux Ripae by Odenaethus, King of Palmyra, so he was able to focus on the people playing their parts. Odenaethus made a brief formal speech of welcome: great distances had been unable to diminish Ballista's martial reputation… all confidence for the future now he was here, etc, etc. Ballista's reply, after an equally fatuous beginning, ended with a polite but unambiguous request for troops. Odenaethus then dwelt at length on the unsettled nature of the east since the Persian invasion – brigands everywhere, the Arabs, tent- dwellers stirring up to a fury of avarice; he was devastated, but all his men were employed holding, and only just holding, the peace in the desert.
It was hard to number the things that Mamurra disliked about Odenaethus, the Lord of Tadmor, and his court. You could start with the king's carefully curled and perfumed hair and beard. Then there was the delicate way he held his wine cup with just thumb and two fingers, the embroidered stripes and swags of his clothes, the soft, plump cushions he sat on, again thick with patterns, reeking of perfume. And, if anything, his court was even worse. The chief minister, Verodes, and the two generals were outfitted as copies of their lord, and the latter had virtually identical ridiculous barbarian names, Zabda and Zabbai. There was a simpering little son who looked like he should be selling his arse on a street corner and, to add insult to injury, both sitting there as bold as could be, were not only a eunuch (probably some sort of secretary if he was not part of the entertainment) but a woman (a sly-looking bitch called Zenobia – Odenaethus's new wife).
'It must be because it is in the middle of nowhere,' Mamurra quietly said to Ballista. The reception was over. They were outside again waiting for their horses.
'What must?'
'This, place.' Mamurra waved his hand around. 'Palmyra is as rich as Croesus. Has fuck all in the way of defences, and is held by a bunch of effeminates with fewer balls than their eunuchs or women. Its safety must lie in it being in the middle of nowhere. If you ask me, it is a good thing they are too scared to give us any troops.'
Ballista paused before speaking. 'I think that is exactly the conclusion I would have come to if I had not spent so long talking to Iarhai. Now I am not so sure.'
Mamurra did not reply.
Ballista smiled. 'Cohors XX was originally raised here, and still draws most of its recruits from here. They seem tough enough. Then again, there are larhai's mercenaries. Some are recruited from among the tent- dwellers, the nomads of the desert, but the majority come from here or Arete. Both towns have a tradition of mercenary service – for the Romans and for others.'
The horses were led up. As they mounted, Ballista continued, 'You and I expect warriors to look like warriors, a grizzled Roman or a hairy northern barbarian. Maybe in this case appearances are deceptive. Maybe not all easterners are cowards.'
'I am sure that is the way it is.' Mamurra was not sure. But he would not dismiss the idea out of hand. As was his measured way, he would mull it over.
In truth, Ballista's thoughts had been ranging wide when Mamurra's words had pulled him back. Ranging in many, many directions but always circling back to the refusal of the king of Palmyra, and before him the refusal of
