Harry Sidebottom - Iron and Rust

‘I had hoped-’ Gordian stopped himself, wished he had not spoken. He did not want to lower the spirits of the others. There was no point in unsettling himself. Disquiet was to be avoided, no matter the external circumstances. Unhappiness, even misery, was nothing but the product of ignorance or faulty judgement. Knowledge and correct thinking would dispel any suffering. But, somehow, the thing was too obvious. He had hoped; they had all hoped — expected, even — that Arrian would be here before them.

Three men, leading spare mounts, cover much more ground than the fastest of cavalry columns. The Mirror Fort was much nearer than Hadrumetum. The speculatores were famous rough riders. Something must have happened to Arrian: an accident, an encounter with the nomads. All ways of dying are hateful to us poormortals.

Gordian took charge of himself. He would send another rider to bring the scouts. At least the nomads had neither left a rearguard at this oasis nor already returned. Gordian felt better, thinking and acting correctly. A philosophical education paid dividends. Mental disturbance was to be avoided like the plague.

‘We could impress the able-bodied inhabitants, arm them somehow.’ In the face of the silence of the others, Valerian stopped.

Sabinianus answered, in tones of mock-sympathy. ‘My poor, dear innocent friend, these people will not fight for us. They do not want us here. If we had not arrived, on the way back the raiders would have passed them by; just a bit more raping, perhaps a final bit of torture to try to prise out the hiding place of some probably imaginary treasure. But there would have been no killing, no wholesale destruction. Valerian, my dear, you are far too trusting. One day it will be the death of you.’

The citadel was built around a courtyard, with thirty stables opening off it. The other lean-to sheds were empty. Another forty horses were stalled in them. The remaining mounts were tethered in the open. It was not ideal, but most were in the shade. As the riders rubbed them down, Gordian was given a formal, if guarded speech of welcome in heavily accented Latin by the headman.

‘Riders!’

The shout stopped everything.

‘Coming down from the north!’ The man in the lookout tower was leaning far out, pointing, as if those below might have forgotten the track of the sun.

‘Riders, lots of them.’

‘Fuck.’ Sabinianus was eating some dates. His servant was grooming his horse. ‘Just when I was thinking of a nap.’

Holding his scabbard well away from his legs, Gordian took the stairs two at a time. No sooner had they arrived, and this had to happen. Exhausted men and horses. No Arrian or scouts. Probably untrustworthy inhabitants … The great Epicurus himself might have had trouble keeping his equanimity through all this shit.

At the top, Gordian doubled up, blowing hard. Too much soft living, rich food and drink, too many nights with Parthenope and Chione, never enough sleep.

A pillar of dust: tall, straight, definitely made by cavalry. There were a lot of them, coming this way, travelling fast. Under two miles away.

Gordian looked around. Mud-brick battlements, five paces square, above the top fronds. Excellent vision in all directions. Odd he had not noticed the tower when looking in at the oasis. Valerian was next to him. Gordian drew a deep breath. ‘Send a rider … No, go yourself. Get to the Mirror Fort. Bring the scouts.’

Valerian saluted. ‘We will do what is ordered-’

‘Too late,’ Mauricius interupted. ‘They have passed the turning. He would have to go south, through the desert, around the western salt flats. He would need a camel. It would take days.’

‘How many?’

‘Hard to say, but everything here will be long finished before he gets to the Mirror Fort.’ Mauricius shrugged. ‘I will send a couple of my men. Maybe-’

‘I would not bother.’ Sabinianus was shading his eyes with his hat. His bald forehead shone with sweat. He started laughing.

Gordian wondered about the effects of the ride, the desert.

‘Time for a nap, after all.’ Sabinianus said. ‘Unless I am much mistaken, here comes Arrian, and my little white-bottomed friend has brought the famous tough Frontier Wolves.’

Gordian held his war council in the room at the foot of the tower. It was the largest in the citadel. It had a high ceiling and, with the shutters closed and boys wielding fans, it was cool. There were six of them: Gordian himself, Valerian, the reunited Sabinianus and Arrian, Mauricius, and another local, Aemilius Severinus, the commander of the speculatores . They drank fermented palm wine and ate pistachios. From outside came the smell of chicken on a grill. Perhaps, Gordian thought, the nomads had not been entirely wrong: peasants always have something hidden.

‘Yes,’ Arrian said, ‘I could have got here quicker. But the scouts were dispersed all along the wall. Aemilius Severinus here agreed that it would be best to gather as many as possible. There are four hundred camped in the oasis.’

‘No one is criticizing you,’ Gordian said.

Sabinianus snorted.

‘No one apart from your twin, the other of the Cercopes.’ Gordian smiled.

‘The day I give a fuck about his views, I will-’

‘Sell your arse at the crossroads,’ Sabinianus said.

‘Possibly, although I was thinking of something else.’

‘If we could postpone the discussion of your descent into male prostitution,’ Gordian said, ‘it might be useful if you gave us some estimate of how many bloodthirsty savages were chasing you, and how soon they might be here.’

Arrian scratched his short, stubbly beard. He pulled the end of his upturned nose.

‘Hercules’ hairy black arse; it is as if he is auditioning to be in a comedy without a mask. What would a physiognomist read in his soul?’

Gordian gestured amiably for Sabinianus to be quiet. ‘If it helps him think.’

Arrian looked up, hands and face still. ‘I saw about two thousand, all mounted. But there was a lot of dust to the north of them. Although the majority of that would have been raised by baggage animals and captives.’

‘How long?’

Arrian spread his hands in a sign of hopelessness. ‘At first, the two thousand chased us hard. They gave up when they realized they would not catch us.’

‘Where was that?’

Arrian gestured to Aemilius Severinus.

‘Ten miles south of Thiges, fifteen north of here.’ The officer answered immediately and with confidence. Although most appointments were decided by patronage, probably the commander of the Frontier Wolves would not last long without certain qualities.

‘The afternoon wears on; most likely we can expect them at some point tomorrow.’

No one contradicted Gordian’s estimate.

‘How shall we greet them?’

Silence, until Gordian carried on. ‘I was thinking of a barrier — palm trunks, thorn bushes, whatever — across the neck of land.’

‘But it is near two miles across, and we are too few, with too little time,’ Sabinianus said.

‘A mounted charge, in a wedge,’ Valerian said. ‘No irregular troops will stand up to it, let alone a horde of nomads from the desert.’

‘True,’ Aemilius Severinus said. ‘But they would not need to. With their numbers, they would give way, flow all around us. Quite likely we could charge clean through them. But what good would it do? We would be charging at nothing, and all the time their arrows and javelins would be whittling down our numbers. Getting back might prove difficult, and if we ended up out there surrounded, on spent horses-’

‘What do these nomads value above everything?’ Gordian went straight on to answer his own rhetorical question. ‘They would do anything rather than leave behind the plunder they have amassed.’