tugged at Ballista’s clothes, pushed him on the bed, mounted him. Leaning forward, her breasts just above his face, she rode him, all the time saying the things that excite men.
Ballista woke in the middle of the night, sometime around the sixth hour of darkness. There was an odd smell, oily with a note of burnt almonds. Without moving, he opened his eyes. Pythonissa was not beside him. He sensed a presence in the far corner. Silently, he raised his head.
A single lamp was burning. Pythonissa was naked. She held his drawn sword. She was rubbing a liquid from a phial into the steel. Ballista watched her for a time. ‘What is that? Poison?’
‘No.’
‘Is it poison?’
‘No, it gives strength. It is what Medea gave Jason.’
Ballista grunted his disbelief.
‘You still wear the ice-white gem I gave you. Have your nights been disturbed?’
‘Coincidence.’
She laughed, walked towards him. ‘The unguent works on flesh too.’
‘You should have been a hetaira.’
‘You are not the first man to call me a whore.’
In the morning there was a thick mist. It haloed the many torches in the village square. Prince Narseh approached one of the huge panniers by the Mouth of the Impious. He drew an arrow from the gorytus on his hip. He dropped it in. One by one, the nobles and officers did the same. The clibanarii and light horsemen would throw in their arrows with less ceremony. Ballista knew from Herodotus that, long ago, the Persians had marked out an area of ground, marched in their men in their thousands. After the battle, they had repeated the procedure. From the empty space, they had estimated casualties. The new Sassanid system gave far greater accuracy. At the end of the day, every man took back an arrow. Those shafts remaining in the panniers indicated the number fallen.
An Iberian nobleman approached Narseh and performed lesser proskynesis; understandable, given the mud. ‘I bring bad news, Prince. The noble king Hamazasp sends his apologies. He has been struck down by illness. He is unable to ride with you to battle and share your glory. My name is Ztathius, son of Gobazes, I have been given the honour of leading the warriors of Iberia. Hamazasp will keep back only a hundred of his men as guards.’
The words of Ztathius were received in silence. Young Gondofarr looked openly sceptical. Tir-mihr scowled behind his beard. But there was little that could be done. ‘So be it,’ said Narseh at last. ‘Mazda watches you, and your king.’
With Pythonissa and the other Romans, Ballista climbed to the top of the tower where the council of war had been held. It must have been dawn, for there was light behind the mist. But the vapour was still thick, limiting vision to no further than a boy could throw a stick.
A trumpet sounded, muffled in the fog. A detachment of Sassanid horse bowmen trotted out below the tower. They disappeared north into the gloom, fanning out to screen the deployment of the main force. A drum began to beat. Below the tower, Narseh led out the clibanarii. At a stately pace, they manoeuvred into line. The Iberian heavy horse followed, taking their station to the left, then the armoured Albanians moved out to hold the right. The three thousand cavalry, eight deep, filled the valley like a phalanx of iron statues. Where they stood in the streams of the Alontas, the water swirled around the hocks of the horses.
At a trumpet call, the screen of bowmen trotted back through the narrow gaps between the divisions. The rest of the light horse rode out of Dikaiosyne to join them. Until the army moved forward, there was not room for all the four thousand unarmoured to take their places. Many were left still jostling in the lanes of the village.
The fog was thinning. Ballista could see a hundred yards or more. Below the great lilac standard of Narseh, he could make out the mobad Manzik. The priest was on foot, praying, arms raised. A white ram was being led up. With no warning, arrows arced out of the vapour. Most fell short. Some clattered off the armour of the clibanarii. A few landed near the sacrifice. The mobad took no notice. He pulled up the ram’s head, slit its throat. The beast collapsed. The priest again raised his arms and invoked his god. The arrows were falling thicker. Nomad horns howled in the mist. Manzik prostrated himself before Narseh, unhurriedly got up and, as if strolling in a peaceful garden, made his way through the ranks back to the village.
A Sassanid war drum thundered. The clibanarii drew their composite bows. A flight of three thousand arrows shot blind into the gloom. Like rain blown in from the sea, a dark squall of shafts came back. Here and there among the clibanarii a horse plunged as an arrow tip found its way through mail, plate and hardened leather. The Persian light horse joined the exchange, aiming a high trajectory over the heads of the armoured men. The arrow storm intensified. Above the thrum of numberless arrows came the screams of men and horses. Men were dying in the Persian ranks. Out of sight, men would be falling among the Alani. There was something uncanny about this fight with an unseen enemy.
‘This cannot last,’ Rutilus said. ‘Their quivers will soon be empty.’
‘It is impossible to tell, but the Persians should be getting the better of it,’ Castricius said. ‘Their armour will be heavier than the nomads. The Alani will have to do something.’
As if in response to their words, the incoming arrows slackened. Dark shapes emerged at the front of the wall of fog. A frenzy of horns, drums and yells sounded from the enemy.
‘Here they come,’ Maximus said.
Three closepacked wedges of horsemen burst from the curtain of moisture. Strange standards flew above: animal skulls, pelts, horse tails, the outstretched wings of birds of prey. Tatters of mist swirled about them.
The standard of Narseh inclined forward, trumpets blared, the war drums beat faster. The mighty Nisean chargers stepped out. Like a great wave building, ponderous but terrible, the Persian force surged towards the foe.
The nomads covered the ground fast. The Sassanids were still at a slow walk when the forces collided. The noise of the clash rolled back down the valley to the Romans watching on the roof. The Alani were outnumbered, but momentum drove the tips of their wedges into the Persian formation. The hideous cacophony of combat stunned the senses.
The lilac standard of Narseh dipped – seemed like to fall – then straightened. The fighting was fiercest around the Sassanid prince. The Alani advance here slowed as Persian numbers told. The other two wedges were already stationary. A great roar went up. Narseh and his retainers had stifled the central thrust of the nomads.
Across the valley, the combatants were pressed close. Often with no room to wield spears or swords, men wrestled on horseback. Clawing with their fingers at each other’s throats, gouging their eyes, seeking to fling them down among the stamping hooves.
‘More like an infantry battle,’ Castricius said.
‘Unless they cut Narseh down, the nomads will lose,’ Rutilus said.
The nomads fought with ferocity, but it could not last. The collapse started at the rear, among those still uncommitted. In ones and twos, then in small clumps, finally in whole groups, nomads pulled their horses’ heads around and bolted back up the valley into the obscurity of the fog.
Peroz! Peroz! Screaming victory, the Sassanids and their allies – heavy cavalry and light horse – poured after them.
As if swept by the hand of a deity, the battlefield was empty. There was the inevitable detritus of war – broken and discarded weapons, dead and injured men and beasts, unscrupulous and avaricious men from the victors, men of no honour, already dismounted and scavenging the field – but the combatants were gone.
The watchers on the tower were silent. There seemed nothing to say. The fog had receded further. It still hung on the hilltops, made a ceiling to the valley. Yet now Ballista could see almost a mile or so up the valley. It was not far enough to see the rout. Everything was eerily quiet. They could hear the river. It ran on as before. From there, or somewhere, came the sound of frogs: brekeke-kex.
The first vultures were dropping down on to the stricken field. Some Suani were slinking out from Dikaiosyne to join those robbing the dead and sending the wounded to join them, so they could take what they had also. Persians were said to carry all their wealth on them. Their allies the Suani would go to them first.
‘Is it all over?’ Pythonissa asked.
‘Yes,’ said Castricius. ‘It is hard to believe thousands of men are being slaughtered just up there.’
A movement caught Ballista’s eye.
‘Fuck,’ Maximus said.
Half a mile away, in the gully to the right, where a tributary came down to the Alontas, the trees and bushes
