The Caspian Gates

XXVIII



By nightfall, the four riders came to the confluence of the Aragos and another river flowing from the north. Here, Pythonissa said they should leave the valley and strike due east into hills covered in stands of trees. They did not go far before camping. Again, they made no fire but, away from the valleys, in the immensity of the wilderness, their pursuers were unlikely to discover them.

They rode on the next day across gentle slopes of birch, ash and hazel. In the glades were lupins and hollyhocks. The big rainclouds had gone and the day was warmer, alternating between short showers and soft sunshine. They made camp early, mid-afternoon, by a stream fringed with raspberry bushes. Pythonissa showed them how the locals caught trout by digging under the stones to uncover creatures muck like small black scorpions, fitting them to hooks. They bathed in an upland pool. First Ballista and Maximus, then, as they built a fire, Pythonissa and her eunuch.

‘You know,’ said Maximus, ‘some eunuchs can get it up. It all depends on what age they were castrated and how.’

‘You know,’ said Ballista, ‘I could not give a f*ck.’

They cooked the trout, ate them with toasted flat bread.

When they had finished, Pythonissa came to Ballista, led him away, back to the pool. They had sex almost fully clothed, without talking. There was a chill to the evening. Afterwards, they lay together.

‘Tell me about your brothers,’ Ballista said.

‘Saurmag and Azo …’

‘No, the two who were killed.’

She was silent.

‘What happened to them?’ he prompted.

‘In Suania, the more sons a warrior has, the more he is thought a man. Often, if a girl is born, they put a pinch of hot ash in the baby’s mouth.’

Ballista considered this. ‘In the story, Medea was not treated well by her father, but no one thinks she was right to dismember her brother.’

‘So you think I am a new Medea.’ She smiled. ‘After you killed my husband, I was returned like an unwanted purchase to my father’s court. My father wanted to marry me off to the king of the lice-eaters. Saurmag promised me more. If he took the throne, he would find me a better match. He talked much of the king of the Bosphorus.’

‘So you helped him kill your brothers.’

Pythonissa did not reply.

‘Why did you turn against him?’

‘Like all men, Saurmag is only interested in f*cking women or using them in other ways. He realized he could only rid himself of our father and Azo if he had help from outside Suania. He decided to summon the barbarian Alani. As an inducement, I was to be given to the Alani chief. I would have shared a tent with the nomad as his fourth wife.’

‘And you discovered this when hunting north of the mountains.’

‘No, I went there to make certain my suspicions were right.’

‘And on your return, you came to my bed.’

She smiled. ‘Do you regret it?’

‘And now you think I can rid you and Suania of Saurmag and the Alani, making your brother Azo grateful to you.’

‘As you say.’ She turned to look at him with her blue-grey eyes. ‘If you think I am a new Medea, remember what she did when Jason deserted her.’

The next day, they picked up the headwaters of the Alazonios river and followed them down out of the high country. They emerged on to a broad, grassy plain dotted with isolated Albanian farmsteads. It was the threshing season. Small boys stopped their work and regarded them from out of clouds of chaff. The river meandered beneath bald hills to the right. The greener foothills of the Caucasus were some miles away to the left. They rode by the trees that bordered the Alazonios. At night, they went down to the banks and camped. And Ballista worried about Calgacus and young Wulfstan and the others.

After four days by their side, the Alazonios turned south through the hills. Down there, the river was the border between Albania and Iberia. Wanting to keep well clear of Hamazasp, they kept on to the south-east, tracking a tributary upstream. For another three days they crossed more high country, fording fast streams where the waters surged dangerously around the animals’ bellies. The evening before the nones of August they reached an Albanian settlement called Chabala.

The headman of Chabala was welcoming. He told them what they wanted to know. Cosis, king of Albania, was on the Caspian coast, south of the big peninsula, in the territory of the Cadusii. His uncle, Zober the high-priest, was with him. They had gone to confer with Prince Narseh, the son of Shapur. Yes, Narseh had his troops with him – many myriads – for there were still those unpunished among the Cadusii. Yes, the headman thought the Roman Castricius was with Cosis.

They rested for a day in the headman’s house. When they left, he gave them gifts and food, provided two warriors who would act as guides. A day in the saddle brought them down to an immense lowland plain. It was hot down there. Yet not so hot they would put off their armour.

They rode hard for three days, but the news of their coming preceded them. No fewer than one hundred mounted Albanian warriors were waiting for them. They were large, handsome men, dressed much like Persians or Armenians. They were armed to the teeth: bows, javelins, swords, many daggers; wearing breastplates and curious helmets made from the skins of wild animals. The leader at least spoke Greek. He welcomed the kyria Pythonissa with all politeness – his basileus Cosis greatly looked forward to entertaining her. With Ballista he was more reserved – it was his duty to take him with all speed to Narseh, the glorious son of the house of Sasan. On the type of welcome Ballista might receive he would not be drawn.

To reach the sea, they crossed the strangest landscape Ballista had ever seen. The path ran through nothing but miles of crazed, cracked mud. In places it pushed up to resemble small hillocks or large anthills. From these eminences, hot, liquid mud flowed; darker than its solidified antecedents. There was no animal or plant life. The smell was repulsive, like naphtha. It was like riding back into primordial chaos, back before Prometheus had moulded man from the foul stuff around them.

Finally, there were clumps of coarse grass, patches of sand. The mud gave way to the shore. The sea breeze blew away most of the stench. And there on the silted coastline was the camp. The horselines stretched into the distance. To Ballista’s experienced eye, there were some ten thousand horsemen and a horde of others – infantry and camp followers, Persians and Albanians all indiscriminate.

The camp was dominated by two pavilions, both purple, one larger than the other. The men were led in front of them, told to dismount. Pythonissa and her eunuch were ushered straight inside the smaller of the tents. Ballista and Maximus were told to wait. The Albanian guards were replaced by Persians. Beyond the camp, the line of the sea was decorated with men impaled on poles. It could have been the wind coming off the sea, but one or two of them seemed still to be moving.

‘Did you know, the Caspian is a lake?’ Maximus asked.

‘No, it is not.’

‘Sure it is – sweet water and snakes. I know about snakes.’

‘Did you know that among the many poisonous snakes in Albania there is one whose bite causes men to die laughing?’

‘F*ck off.’

‘And another with venom that brings you to death weeping and mourning for your ancestors.’

‘What if you did not know who your father was?’

‘You would probably cry about that.’ Ballista inclined his head. ‘We are drawing a crowd.’

‘Well, you cannot blame them, it is not every day Nasu the daemon of death comes calling cap in hand.’ Maximus looked somewhere else. ‘Do you think we will be joining the boys on the shore?’

‘No, I would not have come if I thought that.’

‘You do not sound so sure now.’

‘No, I am not so sure now.’

A Sassanid noble walked out of the pavilion. He was tall, broad-shouldered with slim hips. The silk surcoat over his steel was heavily embroidered, predominantly light blue. His beard was dyed bright red, and his eyes were lined with kohl. Some years before, Ballista would have laughed. That was before he had seen such men fight.

The Persian greeted them suavely in Greek. He asked them to accompany him into the presence of Prince Narseh. Ballista knew that such civility was only to be expected in a man of such rank from the Orient. It signified nothing about their fate.

They passed through the outer chamber of the marquee, where petitioners waited in silence. They were not told to remove their weapons – that might be a good sign.

The inner sanctum was a slightly smaller version of that of the King of Kings Shapur himself: purple and gold opulence in everything. Ballista pushed away the memories. He had to keep his concentration. Everything might depend on it.

The son of Shapur sat on a throne at the far end. Ballista and Maximus advanced – not too close – and made full proskynesis. Face down on a Persian rug, Ballista accepted that this was not the time for an assertion of either Roman dignitas or Germanic freedom. Having blown the ritual kiss, they got to their knees, then their feet.

Prince Narseh was a good-looking young man, with an aquiline nose above a curly blue-black beard. He wore a tiara and an enormous pearl hanging from each ear. He was flanked on his right by officers, on his left by mobads. Ballista did not recognize any of them. A Zoroastrian fire altar burnt in front of the priests. Soldiers in armour lined the walls.

‘I know you well, Dernhelm son of Isangrim.’ Narseh spoke excellent old-fashioned Attic Greek. ‘The barbarian from the frozen north where lies the mouth of hell. Marcus Clodius Ballista, the man who would have been king of the Romans – if only for five days, in just one town in Syria.’

The courtiers laughed.

‘The man who tried to kill my father at Arete, who raped the favourite concubine of the King of Kings at Soli. The oath-breaker who reneged on what he promised at Edessa.’

No one in the pavilion was laughing now.

‘The unrighteous one who defiled the purity of fire with the corpses of the slain at Circesium, the sacrilegious one who extinguished the fire altar in the tent of Shapur. The servant of Ahriman who has the temerity to style himself Nasu the daemon of death. And he brings with him his heartless killer, the ex-gladiator Maximus.’

It was very still in the pavilion. The sacred fire crackled.

‘Mazda is the supreme requiter – none of the wicked is so high or low as to escape him either by force or by stealth. We of the house of the Mazda-loving king Sasan follow the customs laid down by our ancestors. The torture of the boats is an ancient Persian punishment. The malefactor is laid on his back in a boat. Another boat, carefully adjusted, is nailed over the first. Only the criminal’s head, hands and feet protrude. He is given good food to eat, milk and honey to drink. If he refuses, his eyes are pricked until he takes it. The sweet drink is tipped over his face. He is left, facing the sun. A swarm of flies descends to cover his face. Inside the boat, sooner or later, he does what must needs be done when men eat and drink. In time, worms and maggots seethe up from the corruption and rottenness of his excrement. Slowly they devour his body, eat their way into his vitals. It is not a quick death. Men have lived as long as seventeen days in the torture of the boats.’

Ballista held himself on such a tight rein he could not speak. Even his thoughts were stifled. He had been a fool to come here. Now he would be killed, and he had brought Maximus to this horrible death.

‘The Greeks and Romans traduce us when they talk of Persian cruelty.’ Narseh continued in the same flat tone of voice. ‘With us, even a slave has his services weighed against the number and gravity of his crimes before he is sentenced. It is true that you, Ballista, were gracious when mischance and the evil of the tent-dwelling Arabs brought one of the mobads into your house as a slave. Again, no one can deny that in Cilicia at the place of blood you saved the life of my brother Valash, the joy of our father Shapur.’

The faint flicker of hope in Ballista was stamped out by the next words of Narseh.

‘There are many crimes born in the darkness in the hearts of men. Mazda inspired our ancestors to create as many fitting punishments. Bring in the crosses.’

Six men in the soiled costume of labourers dragged in two crosses. They rolled back the carpets, set the crosses upright. In the previously quiet space the noise was fearsome as they hammered the wicked-looking things into the sandy soil.

The workmen left. They were replaced by four executioners; two held knotted whips, and two long swords.

This was all happening too fast. Ballista knew he had to do something. ‘Prince Narseh, son of …’

‘Silence,’ Narseh ordered. ‘Your words will change nothing. Strip them.’

It was no sooner said than done. Strong arms seized Ballista and Maximus. They were disarmed. Their hats, cloaks and armour were pulled off. They were left standing in their travel-stained tunics.

‘Five hundred lashes. Cut off their ears and then their heads. Carry out the punishment.’

Allfather, Ballista began to pray. He doubted they would survive the scourging to feel the severing of their ears. Allfather …

The executioners draped the cloaks of Ballista and Maximus over the crosses, tied them in place, fixed their native hats firmly on top. The ones with the whips steadied themselves, and then swung. With the utmost seriousness they went about their work. After a few strokes, the knots in the whips had torn great rents in the cloaks.

The condemned men began to laugh. A court official told them it was customary for men in their position to beg for mercy. Sheepishly, they both bleated, ‘Mercy,’ once or twice, quietly.

The men with the whips were running with sweat, panting hard, by the time they had finished. It had taken a long time. They had not stinted themselves. The cloaks were in shreds. The two with the swords approached the crosses. With a deftness approaching artistry, they sliced the lappets from the native caps – first one ear, then the other. A flourish of the blades, and the headgear was cut in two.

‘Humanity and piety are the kindly sisters of the virtues,’ Narseh said. ‘Valash and I have always been close. I could not stand my brother’s anger if I had killed his saviour. Besides, I believe we have much to discuss.’