Harry Sidebottom: The Caspian Gates

Pythonissa waved the idea away angrily. ‘Gratitude does not run in my family. Take me with you.’

‘No.’ There – it was said.

‘I saved your life.’ Her blue-grey eyes looked into his. ‘I love you.’

‘There is nothing to be done.’

She stepped away – tall, straight-backed, angry. ‘They told me you were sick on the battlefield. Did you think I had poisoned you?’

‘It crossed my mind. I thought my usefulness might have ended.’

‘I wish I had.’ She turned and left the room.

Under a lowering sky, Ballista led the small column south up the pass towards Dikaiosyne. It was an oddly assorted company: six fighting men in Roman armour, three eunuchs, eight slaves and a Suanian called Tarchon who would not be left behind – eighteen horsemen with five baggage animals.

It was raining. Groups of Sassanids paused from the grisly work of sorting cadavers and watched them pass. Nothing was said.

The path ran through the village. The horses stepped carefully in the mud of the alleys. The blank, forbidding walls of the towers were black in the rain. They came out into the village square. She was there. Dressed in black, standing in the rain, hair unbound. Standing by the Mouth of the Impious.

Ballista reined in.

Pythonissa did not look at Ballista. She stretched her hands down to the earth. ‘Hecate triple-formed, who walks the night, hear my curse. Vengeful furies, punishers of sinners, black torches in your bloody hands, hear my curse.’

Now she turned her blue-grey eyes on him. ‘Kill his wife. Kill his sons. Kill all his family, all those he loves. But do not kill him. Let him live – in poverty, in impotence, loneliness and fear. Let him wander the face of the earth, through strange towns, among strange peoples, always in exile, homeless and hated.’