M. Scott: The Eagle of the Twelfth

A quick glance rightward revealed that Cadus was in the process of doing the same. I joined him; it was easier to breathe if I did not have to appear to be kissing the floor, andthere was some relief in being able to see the king, if not yet to look on his face.

Vologases was seated on a thick oak chair, padded with hides and velvet. He leaned both elbows on the arms, and the weight of his head on his steepled fingers, and he was staring at Pantera as if his eyes might bore holes in his skull, and thereby bring him to do his bidding.

Pantera had fixed his eyes on the king’s feet. It seemed a prudent move. ‘Majesty,’ he said, after a pause. ‘I am a trader. I have sold all I brought. With great regret, I must therefore leave your company to purchase more.’

‘And you will return when? Ever?’

Another stretch of silence. Another moment to wonder that Pantera knelt before a man who was more powerful than Caesar, and appeared to be refusing him what he wanted.

‘We would give you more than you can ever buy, did you choose to remain with us,’ said Vologases, at length.

‘Your majesty is gracious.’

‘You accept?’

‘You know I cannot.’

‘ Why? ’ Vologases’ hand slammed on the arm of the chair. The entire room shook. Two guards stepped forward and then nervously back again. I dug my fingernails into my palms and kept my gaze hard on his magnificent seal-fur boots and let that vast voice boom over me. ‘Because you work for Rome? Your heart is given to the thin-skinned, mewling children who rule there? Truly?’

‘My heart is not given, lord, but I have given my oath and must keep it. What man would trust another who broke his oath to his liege-lord? My lord is too wise for that. I will take the bay mare and sell her and return to my lord his gold and it may be that in time I will be released from the burden of my oath and may return joyful to my lord’s side. Nothing is impossible.’

Sweat soaked the armpits of my lamb’s wool tunic as I watched Vologases compress his lips and close his eyes and saw him frame an order — and then reconsider it.

When he opened his eyes to look at us again, the yearning in them was less.

He said, ‘She was your gift, was she not? You gave her to… him whose name is no longer spoken.’

‘I did, lord. As I told you last autumn, it was necessary to come close to that one in order to stand any chance of success in our endeavour.’

Our endeavour? He had planned it for six months? I bit the inside of my cheek to keep my face still.

A tension changed in the air. I lifted my eyes and found that the King of Kings was staring at Pantera and Pantera was staring openly back. Which surely was not permitted.

‘You asked of me a boon, when you brought your proposal,’ Vologases said, and there was a new softness, almost an intimacy, to his voice. ‘I agreed to it. Has anything changed?’

‘Not that I am aware of, gracious lord. I asked that you not attack Rome unless she bring her legions east of the Euphrates. That remains my request.’

‘Then I will keep to it. I, too, am a man who knows the value of his oath.’

Rising, Vologases grasped Pantera by the shoulders and raised him ungently to his feet. They were of a height, but where Pantera was slim as whipcord the king was a bear with bull’s shoulders, a man born to wield an axe in war. His fists held Pantera upright. I could not tell if the Leopard’s feet were touching the ground.

‘Tell your Corbulo to keep his troops on his side of the river and I will keep Parthia’s heavy cavalry and horse-archers on mine. In this way might our empires be neighbours in peace.’

The king’s hands snapped open. Pantera rocked down on to his feet, and, with a tumbler’s elasticity, converted whatmight have been a stumble into a bow. ‘His majesty is wise as the eagle, fierce as the bear in protection of his people. I will convey to General Corbulo your message. If it is in my power, I will bind him to keep his side of the bargain.’

‘It won’t be in your power,’ Vologases said sourly. ‘Like all his kind, he is ruled by greed. And now he is ruled also by a mewling boy-child in Rome, who sings for the entertainment of others. There will be war. But not this year and perhaps not next. Leave now; we tire of your company. Take the bay mare and do with her what you will. We wish no recompense for such a gift.’

‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘Vologases is as much an enemy to Rome as his son was. His brother is on the throne of Armenia and General Corbulo is about to start a war against him.’

We were no longer in the foul Hyrcanian inn; we were, in fact, no longer in Hyrcania, but in a tavern that spanned three storeys, a day’s ride into Armenia, which nation, as I had had just pointed out, was currently ruled by Tiridates, brother to Vologases, whose men were assiduous in their care of us, as ordered by the letters of safe passage provided by the King of Kings.

These letters had provided not only our safety but also our luxury as we travelled; this inn was not the first to offer us its best rooms, but it was the first in which armed men had not shared those rooms with us, in order to ‘ensure our safety at all times’. They had backed off now, just as had the snow that had harried us all the way to the border.

If the King of Kings could control the weather, he had done so well, for it had followed us faithfully until we had departed Hyrcania and begun to travel through Media Atropatene and Adiabene. Then the snow had dropped back and the sun hadfound its heart and spring had come, bringing snowmelt, and mud, so that there were times when we would have preferred the ice and snow. Armenia, such as we had seen of it so far, was little different.

I sat on the end of the bed tugging off my sodden riding boots and let fly the questions that had been held inside since we had taken our leave. ‘What on earth were we doing back there besides trying to get ourselves killed?’

‘Demalion, we’re alive.’ Pantera’s voice was unusually clipped, as if his patience had finally run to an end. ‘If we were trying to get ourselves killed, we three would have managed it, I think. Two officers of the Fifth and a spy trained by Seneca could manage that much at least.’

He was sitting by the open window of our room, facing west, to the old sun. As ever, he kept his back to a wall and his face to the door and the Scythian bow with the raven arrows at his side; he had never yet let it go, except when required to by the King of Kings.

He was resting now, turned away from us with his chin on his fist and his elbow on the edge of the window, and so did not see the mix of confusion and resentment on my face. Still, he must have sensed it. ‘Cadus, tell him,’ he said tersely.

Cadus was sitting on the bed nearest the door, teasing a stone from the sole of his riding boot with his belt knife.

I turned on him. ‘Well? Plainly you know everything I don’t.’

Cadus tossed his knife loosely on to the pillow. Seeing him smile was like watching stone crack after frost; like having a friend return who had been lost. I don’t think he’d smiled once all the time we were in Hyrcania. Smiling now, he said, ‘Vologases is only an enemy of Rome if we make him into one.’

‘But he put his brother on the throne of Armenia in direct defiance of Rome! What’s that if not an act of war?’

‘It’s expediency. Armenia is a part of the Parthian empire and Vologases has the right to choose its king. If he fails, he will not be King of Kings for long — he has enemies inside his empire as much as he does without. General Corbulo thinks that Vologases can be persuaded to deal with Nero; he will be allowed to keep his brother on the throne, but only if Tiridates comes to Rome himself and asks for it nicely. That way, Nero can hold a Triumph, claim a great victory and not have to spend any more money in the east, at a time when the western borders are a sponge soaking up gold in the defence of Britain. Quite why anyone would wish to pour money into a swamp surrounded by sea, full of women who fight like harpies, is beyond me, but that’s why we’re here, you and me and Pantera: it’s all about saving money.’