did not intend to trust his life to the Hibernian's talking. When the patrol was about fifteen paces away, Ballista stepped to the front and called, 'Halt there. Identify yourselves.'
The Sassanids stopped. The four on the wings had arrows notched, their bows half bent. There looked to be about ten in the main body.
'Vardan, son of Nashbad, leading a patrol of the warriors of the Suren.' The voice was one used to authority. 'And who are you? You have a strange accent.' I
'Titus Petronius Arbiter and Tiberius Claudius Nero.' At the sound of the Roman names the starlight glittered on the swords which the Sassanids drew, from the flanks bows creaked as they were pulled to maximum draw. 'Mariades, the rightful Emperor of the Romans is our master. Shapur the King of Kings himself decreed that his servant Mariades send men to reconnoitre by stealth the postern gate of the town of the unrighteous.'
There was silence for a while. Ballista could feel his heart beating, his palms sweating. At length Vardan replied. 'And how do I know that you are not deserters from the Great Emperor Mariades?' There was a wealth of scorn in 'Great Emperor'. 'Roman scum running to its own kind?'
'If we were fools enough to desert into a doomed town we would deserve to die.'
'There are many fools in the world, and many of them are Romans. Maybe I should take you back to camp to see if your story is true?'
'Do that and I will come and watch you impaled tomorrow morning. I doubt that the Mazda-worshipping Shapur, King of Aryans and Non-Aryans, will take kindly to his orders being countermanded by an officer of the Suren.'
Vardan walked forward. His men were clearly taken by surprise. They started walking hurriedly after their commander. Vardan held his long sword at Ballista's throat. The others closed round. The commander put his sword aside and peered closely into Ballista's face. The northerner returned his gaze.
'Uncover the lantern. I want to see the face of this one.' A Persian behind Vardan began to move.
'No. Do not do that.' Ballista put all his experience of command into his voice. 'The great King's mission will fail if you show a light. The Romans up on the wall could not fail to see it. Shapur will not get the information, and we will meet our deaths at the foot of that wall.'
There was an awful moment of indecision before Vardan told the lantern-bearer to remain as he was.
Vardan brought his face so close that Ballista could smell his breath; a waft of some exotic spices. 'Even in the dark with your face blackened like a runaway slave I can still see you well enough to recognize you again.' Vardan nodded to himself. Ballista did not move. 'If this is a trick, if you are in the town when it falls, I will seek you out and there will be a reckoning. It will be I that watches you writhe on the stake.'
'Mazda willing that will not happen.' Ballista took a step backwards, keeping his hands well away from his sides. 'The night is advanced. If we are to return by dawn we must be going.'
Ballista looked over at Maximus, jerked his head towards the wall and walked to the edge of the circle of Sassanid warriors. The two blocking his way did not move. He turned back to Vardan. 'If we do not return tell our master Mariades that we did our duty. Remember our names: Petronius and Nero.'
Vardan did not reply. But at his sign the two men blocking Ballista's way moved aside. Ballista set off.
It is very difficult to walk normally when you think that someone is watching you and even more difficult when you think that someone might try to kill you. Ballista forced down an urge to break into a run. Maximus, Allfather bless him, had fallen in directly behind his dominus. The Hibernian would take the first arrow. Yet Ballista's back still felt terribly exposed.
Fifty paces was about the real limit of accurate bowshot, less in a dim light. How far had they walked? Ballista started to count his steps, stumbled slightly and went back to concentrating on walking as normally as possible. The walk seemed to last for ever. The muscles in his thighs felt twitchy.
In the end, the wall of the ravine came as almost a surprise. Both men turned, crouching, making themselves the smallest target possible. Ballista realized that he was panting. His tunic was soaked in sweat.
'For fuck's sake, Petronius and Nero?' Maximus whispered.
'It's your fault. If you ever read anything apart from the Satyricon some other names might have appeared in my mind. Anyway, let's get the fuck out of here. We are not home yet. The reptiles might change their minds and be after us.'
Demetrius was standing just outside the postern gate. He was surprised to find himself there. Admittedly Cocceius the decurion and two of his troopers were there as well. But even so Demetrius was surprised by his own bravery. Part of his mind kept telling him that he could hear and see just as well, maybe better, up on the tower. He pushed such thoughts away. There was a strange exhilaration in being outside the walls after so many months.
Demetrius stood with the three soldiers, listening and watching. The dark was alive with small sounds; the scurrying of nocturnal animals, the sudden rush of wings of a night bird. The gentle wind had moved round to the south. Fragments of sound, voices, laughter, the cough of a horse, drifted across from the Persian pickets on the far side of the ravine. Once, a jackal barked and others joined in. The chink of pickaxes came and went. But there was nothing that betrayed the progress of Ballista and Maximus.
The young Greek's thoughts drifted far away to the dark plain before the walls of Troy, to the Trojan Dolon slinging his bow across his shoulders, pulling the pelt of a grey wolf around him and stealing forth to spy out the Greek camp. Things had not gone well for Dolon. Out there across the dark plain he had been hunted down like a hare by cunning Odysseus and Diomedes of the great war cry. In tears, begging for his life, Dolon had revealed how the Trojan pickets lay. It had done him no good. With a slash of his sword Diomedes had cut through the tendons of his neck. His head dropped in the dust, and his corpse was stripped of his back-strung bow and the grey wolf-pelt.
Demetrius fervently prayed that Ballista and Maximus did not share the fate of Dolon. If the young Greek had had the poetry of Homer to hand he would have tried to see how things would fall out. It was a well-known method of divination to pick a line of the Iliad at random and see what light the divine Homer shed on the future.
The thoughts of Demetrius were dragged back to the present by the sounds of a Sassanid patrol making its way along the ravine up from the river. He heard the challenge 'Peroz-Shapur' and the response, 'Mazda', then a low exchange in Persian. Demetrius found himself, like the others, on the lip of the ravine, leaning forward, straining to catch the words. It was pointless. He did not know a word of Persian.
Demetrius physically jumped as a flood of light came from the postern gate. He spun round. In silhouette in front of the gate stood Acilius Glabrio. The torchlight caught the nobleman's gilded cuirass. It was moulded to resemble the muscles of an athlete or hero. Acilius Glabrio was bareheaded. The curls of his elaborate coiffure shone. His face was in shadow.
'What in the name of the gods below is happening here?' The patrician tones sounded angry. 'Decurion, why is this gate open?'
'Orders, Dominus. Orders of the Dux.'
'Nonsense, his orders were that this gate remain shut at all times.'
'No, Dominus. He told me to keep the gate open until dawn.' The junior officer was cowed by the seemingly barely controlled anger of his superior.
'And why would he do that? To make it easy for the Persians to get in?'
'No… no, Dominus. He and his bodyguard are out there.'
'Are you mad? Or have you been drinking on duty? If you have I will have you executed with old-fashioned severity. You know what that entails.'
Demetrius did not know what that entailed, but presumably Cocceius did. The decurion started to shake slightly. Demetrius wondered if Acilius Glabrio's anger was real.
'Even our beloved Dux is not such a barbarian that he would desert his post to run around outside the walls in the middle of the night.'
Acilius Glabrio half turned. He pointed to the gate. 'You have moments to get inside and return to your post before I have this gate shut.'
Arguing with senior officers did not come easily to Cocceius. 'Dominus, the Dux is still out there. If you close the gate he will be trapped.'
'One more word from you and it is mutiny. Inside now.'
