Fire in the East (9 page)

Everything was ready. It was the fifth hour of the day, just under an hour from noon. Although it was late October, it was hot. Ballista had chosen late morning for the practice fight with various things in mind. It allowed him to show politeness to the acting trierarch by asking his permission to practise on the deck of his warship. The delay let the crew eat breakfast and carry out any essential tasks. Above all, it gave a chance for expectation to grow, maybe even for some bets to be placed.

Ballista laced up his helmet and looked around. All the marines, deckhands and Ballista’s own staff, as well as those rowers who could get permission, sat lining the rails of the ship. The audience would be well-informed. Only the marines were trained swordsmen but all aboard were military personnel. Where there were soldiers there were gladiators, and where there were gladiators there were people who thought they knew about sword fighting. Ballista stepped forward into the cleared area. The light seemed much brighter here, the space around him wider, and the deck, which until now had seemed to tilt or move hardly at all, heeled and shifted alarmingly. The sun beat down, and he squinted as he looked around at the circle of expectant faces. A low murmur ran through the crowd.

Ballista carried out his usual ritual, gripping the dagger, the scabbard of his sword and the healing stone tied to it in turn. He wondered why he was fighting. Was it a calculated attempt to impress his men? Or a way of washing away the memory of the man, dead for nearly twenty years, who had visited him last night?

Maximus now stepped into the makeshift enclosure. The Hibernian was wearing the same kit as Ballista - helmet, mail shirt, shield - but the two were carrying different swords. Maximus favoured the gladius, the short, primarily thrusting sword, which had long fallen out of favour with the legions but was still used by many a type of gladiator, including the
murmillo.
Ballista used the longer
spatha,
known more as a cutting weapon.

After a few fancy passes with his
gladius
- inside and outside rounds, figures of eight around his head and so on - Maximus went into the low crouch typical of a shorter man armed with a thrusting sword. Ballista found that he was twirling his
spatha
in his hand. He hastily slipped on the leather wrist loop. He got into his ready stance: upright, feet apart, weight evenly distributed, side on, shield held well away from his body, eyes looking over his left shoulder, sword raised behind his right.

Maximus came on at a run. Knowing the Hibernian’s impetuosity, Ballista half expected it. Their shields collided. Letting himself be pushed backwards, Ballista stepped away to the right with his rear foot and brought his leading left foot back behind his right, turning his body through 180 degrees. His opponent’s own momentum drew him in - a perfectly executed Thessalian feint. As Maximus slid past, Ballista brought his sword over, palm down and taking most of the force out of the blow, stabbed the Hibernian’s shoulder. He was rewarded with a loud chink as the point of the
spatha
struck mail shirt. Less agreeably, a moment later he felt and heard the impact of Maximus’s
gladius
in his back.

The two men circled and began to spar with more circumspection. Maximus, busily darting, feinting, keeping his feet moving, was doing most of the attacking.

The only other person who knew about the big man was Julia. She had been raised an Epicurean and dismissed dreams and apparitions as tricks of the mind. They came when you were tired, when you were under physical and mental stress. Ballista had not felt good since the encounter with the Borani. The words of their chief had, to some extent, struck home. Half a lifetime in the
imperium Romanum
had changed Ballista, had led him to do things he would rather not have done - and first among them was the killing of the big man. Maybe Julia was right: it was not a daemon, it was just guilt. But still ...

Ballista jerked his head back out of the way as Maximus’s
gladius
went past, far too close for comfort. Bugger, he thought. Concentrate, you fool. Watch the blade. Watch the blade. He fought best when he relied on a mixture of training, practice and instinct, letting the memory in the muscles deal with things as they happened. But his mind needed to be focussed two or three blows ahead in the fight - not on a killing seventeen years earlier.

Ballista moved to take the initiative. He shifted his weight on to his left foot and stepped forward with his right to make a cut to the head. Then, as Maximus brought his shield up to parry, Ballista altered the angle of his blow to aim at the leg. Maximus’s reactions were quick. The shield came down just in time.

Maximus punched his shield towards Ballista’s face. Giving ground, Ballista dropped to his right knee and swung the
spatha
in at ankle height below his opponent’s shield. Again Maximus’s reactions got him out of trouble.

Ballista aimed another cut at the side of the head. This time Maximus came forward, stepping inside the blow, and brought his gladius down in a chopping motion towards Ballista’s forearm. The Angle was not quite quick enough dropping his arm. Maximus had turned the sword, but the blow from the flat of the blade hurt.

Ballista could feel his anger rising. His arm was smarting. He was buggered if he was going to be beaten in front of his own staff, bested by this cocky Hibernian bastard. His fear from the previous night mixed with the pain in his arm to form a hot jet of rage. He could feel himself losing self-control. He launched into a series of savage cuts, at Maximus’s head, legs - any body part he thought he might hit. Again and again his blade nearly got through but Maximus either blocked the blow or twisted away. Finally, the opening was there. Ballista launched a vicious backhand cut at Maximus’s head. The Hibernian’s face was completely open. Ballista’s
spatha
could not miss. The rowing master’s pipes, shrill over the noise of laboured breathing and heavy footfalls, cut into Ballista’s consciousness. At the last second he pulled the blow.

‘Harbour. Seleuceia in Pieria. Off the starboard bow,’ came the bow officer’s call.

Ballista and Maximus stepped apart and put their swords down. Ballista physically jumped when the men cheered. It took him a moment to realize that they were cheering not the appearance of the
Concordia’s
final destination but his and Maximus’s sword work. He raised a hand in acknowledgement and walked over to his bodyguard.

‘Thank you.’

‘Sure, it was a pleasure trying to stay alive,’ replied Maximus. ‘You would have slaughtered a horde of worse-trained men.’

‘And in my anger I left myself open again and again to a killing blow from a good swordsman if he wanted me dead. Thank you.’

‘Oh, I knew you were not really trying to kill me. I would cost a lot to replace.’

‘That was my main thought.’

It had been a bad mistake remaining in armour. As each member of his staff appeared on deck in clean clothes, looking scrubbed and cool, Ballista inwardly cursed himself for a fool for not thinking to ask the acting
trierarch
how long it would be before the
Concordia
docked at Seleuceia. He called for some watered wine. Tired and hot from his swordplay, he was sweating profusely under the Syrian sun.

Now, there was this added delay. A big fat-bellied merchantman had made a complete mess of wearing round in the fresh westerly breeze. Somehow she had fallen foul of an imperial warship. Their bowsprits thoroughly entangled, they blocked the mouth of the canal which led to the main harbour.

Standing on the prow, Ballista checked the position of the
Con
cordia:
To the south off the starboard beam rose the green hump of Mount Cassios. To the south-east off the starboard quarter lay the flat, lush-looking plain of the Orontes river. Directly ahead was Seleuceia, in the foothills of Mount Pieria, which rose in a long reach to port before falling away in a series of switchbacks.

The warship, a little Liburnian galley, freed herself from the roundship, spun round and, with an interesting variety of obscene gestures from the deck, skimmed off north-west towards the Bay of Issos. Possibly chastened, the merchantman plied its sweeps to push its way into the wind until it had enough sea room to make its intended course up or down coast.

Seleuceia, the main port of Syria, had two harbours. One was a wretched thing. Little more than a semicircle open to the prevailing winds, it was widely considered unsafe, fit only for the local long-shore fishermen. The other was an altogether grander affair, a huge manmade polygonal basin protected from the westerly winds by a long dog-legged canal.

Ballista was mindful of his imperial
mandata
to look to the safety of Seleuceia, if still unsure how he would carry this out when several hundred miles away in Arete. He studied the approaches to the city. As the canal was only wide enough for two warships abreast, it would be quite easy to rig up a chain or a boom to close it. There was no sign of any such thing.

The harbour was little more encouraging. It was large, and there were several merchant vessels moored, yet the whole had an air of neglect. A jetty had collapsed, and there was a large amount of floating rubbish. Of more concern to Ballista, there were only three warships in the water. The rams of another six pointed out of their ship sheds. This was the home port of the Syrian fleet, and there were just nine warships. Looking at the state of the ship sheds, Ballista doubted that any of the galleys within would be ready for action.

The
Concordia,
ignoring an impudent boy in a skiff who nearly disappeared under her ram, cut a tight circle through the harbour, came to a halt and neatly backed water to the main military dock. From the top of one of the boarding ladders, Ballista could see a well-turned-out welcoming party: sixty soldiers and a couple of officers with a standard-bearer in front. Certainly they had had plenty of time to prepare, both in the long term, as the
Concordia
was several days overdue, and in the short, as she negotiated the canal.

‘The officer ordered to meet you is Gaius Scribonius Mucianus. He is the tribune commanding the auxiliary
cohors.’
Demetrius whispered the reminder in Ballista’s ear. Some large Roman households would keep a special slave for such moments but in Ballista’s small
familia
his secretary had to double as his
a memoria.

The new
DuxRipae
began to disembark. He was very aware of all the eyes on him - those of his own staff, the crew of the
trireme
and the ranks of the auxiliary soldiers. It is strangely hard to walk normally when you are conscious of being watched. As Ballista stepped off the ladder, he stumbled. The dock seemed to shift under his boot, then rush up at him. On his knees, he had to think quickly. This was embarrassing. Worse, some could take it as a bad omen. Of course it was just his land legs deserting him after three days at sea, it happened all the time. It had happened to Alexander, to Julius Caesar. They had turned it to their advantage with a few clever words. As he climbed to his feet, trying to dust down his knees in an unconcerned way, he wished he could remember what they had said.

‘I have hit Asia hard.’ He spread his arms wide. With a grin he turned to the
trireme.

The crew and his staff laughed. He turned to the auxiliaries. A laugh began to spread through the ranks. It was checked by a harsh look from the officer.

‘Marcus Clodius Ballista,
Vir
Egregius, Knight of Rome,
Dux Ripae,
Commander of the Riverbanks.’

It seemed unnaturally quiet after the boom of the herald’s voice. Possibly there was a moment’s hesitation before the officer of the auxiliaries stepped forward.

‘Titus Flavius Turpio,
Pilus
Prior, First Centurion, of Cohors XX Palmyrenorum Milliaria Equitata. We will do what is ordered, and at every command we will be ready.’ The man snapped a smart salute.

The silence stretched out. Ballista’s hot face turned pale as his anger mounted.

‘Where is your commanding officer? Why has the tribune of the
cohors
not come as he was ordered?’ In his fury the tribune’s name had slipped Ballista’s mind.

‘I do not know,
Dominus.’
The centurion looked unhappy - but shifty too.

Ballista knew this for a terrible start to his mission in Asia. To hell with the stumble, it was this snub that made it so. This bastard tribune had disobeyed a specific order. Why this deliberate and very public rudeness? Was it because Ballista was only an equestrian, not a senator? Was it - much more likely - his barbarian origins? Flagrant disobedience like this could only undermine the authority of the new Dux among the troops. But Ballista knew that the more he made of it the worse it would become. He forced himself to speak in a civil tone to the centurion.

‘Let us inspect your men.’

‘May I present the
decurion,
commander, of this
turma,
cavalry unit, of the
cohors?’
The centurion gestured to a younger man, who stepped forward.