Richard Blake - The Curse of Babylon

For a while longer, he continued looking up into the darkness. At last, with a loud sigh, he turned and began walking slowly away to the right.

As soon as everything was silent, we got ourselves to one of the gentler slopes. ‘What was that all about?’ Rado whispered as we paused halfway up.

‘I think Antonia was right about his being touched in the head,’ I replied. ‘Other than that, Shahin was uttering a convenient lie. Since he’s unable to produce her as a trophy, he’s decided to suppress any mention of Antonia. That means he needs another reason to explain our presence. Either he admits that we did follow him out here, or he puffs up the efficiency of our intelligence services and says I’m here with an army. As for Chosroes, he’s keen to save face — even to the point of bending reality to fit his image of himself.’ I sniffed. I looked at Rado in the darkness and hoped he was aware of my smile. ‘That’s a frequent weakness of those at the top, by the way. It’s never easy to get the truth out of people who are scared of you. Add to that an unwillingness to see things as they really are, and you explain the trouble with any form of settled government but a constitutional republic.’

But this was no time for lectures. I took the reins of my horse again and waited for Rado to go ahead. There was little I could tell him about the military arts. One thing I did know, however, better than most generals I’d met. But perhaps he’d long since guessed one of the chief reasons behind my liberal scheme of household management. Between attacks of cold feet, my opinion of General Rado was rising into the sky.

Our reconnaissance along the top of the pass took us above the Persian camp. The army had moved forward a couple of miles since the dying away of the rain, but looked as chaotic as ever. It was getting late and the moon was already far up in the sky. The front part of the camp was ablaze with light. The singing eunuchs showed no evidence that they’d soon be going to bed.

As you might expect of Chosroes, the evening entertainment was mostly executions. In defiance of his people’s established worship of fire, he was roasting men alive in iron cages suspended over bonfires. Search me who the poor buggers were. Prisoners brought back from the foraging raids? The engineers who’d made such a balls-up of his night palace? Human offerings to the shade of Urvaksha? Young Babar and anyone else who’d upset him in the past few days? You decide. The cages were a fair distance away and there wasn’t much to be seen through the smoke but the occasional glimpse of a thin, capering body. The screaming was enough, though. Not even the thousand eunuchs could obliterate that. His Majesty had to be down there in one of the better viewing positions — roasting alive was one of his favourite punishments — but I couldn’t see him.

Rado was marching up and down, now peering over the edge, now stamping his feet near the edge. The path along the top was narrower than on the other side. Looking up, there was nothing to be seen in the dark. But I knew some of the high points rose a couple of hundred feet above where we were standing.

‘Here, what are you doing?’ someone called in Persian from the shadow of an overhanging rock. He stepped out, pulling his clothes down and wafting a shitty smell through the night air. He hadn’t seen Rado — he was busy in what looked like the act of embracing a boulder — and stepped closer to me. ‘State your business, stranger,’ he said in the tone of a customs officer.

‘I’m Alaric,’ I said earnestly. ‘You may know me as the barbarian spy who nearly murdered your King the other night. I’ve come back to spy on you.’

Honesty’s a fine policy, especially when it shocks a man into not going at once for his sword. I took hold of his shoulders and head butted him in the face. I lifted him into my arms as if he’d been a sleeping child and tossed him over the edge. With the general racket down in the pass, no one could have heard his scream. No one seemed to notice his impact on the now dry floor of the pass.

I stepped away from the edge. There was another burst of cheering and a long wail of despair, as I suspect a new victim was hoisted into position over one of the fires. ‘How much more to do?’ I asked, raising my voice. I suspect Rado hadn’t noticed it, but I felt moderately pleased with my latest kill. All the same, where one had been there might be others.

‘All done,’ came the reply. ‘I’ve got everything I needed.’ I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting. I only knew it was more than this. In the next few hours, we’d be making a frontal assault on this lot with a pitifully small and untrained force. And Rado was giving his preparations less time and apparent detail than I’d seen from actors testing the acoustics in a theatre they knew. I swung abruptly from worship of my military hero to the fringes of panic over the madness of what we were doing.

If Rado picked anything up from my tone, it didn’t show. ‘It’s done,’ he said. ‘We can go back and try for some sleep. I want everyone in his place an hour before the dawn.’

I scratched my head. What places was he talking about? He’d spent the remaining hours of light mumbling on and off in bad Greek over one of his pebble maps. Every so often, one of the half dozen young men listening had asked a question that bore no obvious relation to anything Rado was trying to say. Even with Antonia to interpret where his Greek failed him, the answers in turn bore no relation to the questions. And this had been before the pair of us had come out to see the topography for ourselves. Granted, those half dozen young men had gone off looking mightily pleased and had then visibly raised every spirit in the sections they were appointed to lead. Everyone had been cheered still more when Rado got us running about in groups while he shouted at us to move left and right. That was part of the reason for my depressive speech. Everyone was eager for the dawn. On the other hand, did anyone know better?

‘Is there any chance,’ I asked on our way back to the camp, ‘that you could get a couple of the bigger men to take Antonia back to where we camped last night?’

‘Not really,’ he said. ‘She’s the Emperor’s niece and everyone thinks she brings good luck.’ He sighed. ‘However, I have told Eboric to keep a close watch on her tomorrow morning. If things go wrong, he’ll get her to safety.’ He coughed, I think to cover a smile. ‘You do realise, though, that nothing will go wrong tomorrow?’

I tried for a smooth answer but gave up. Rado laughed softly. ‘You’ll be surprised,’ he said. ‘What I realise more and more is that everything in my life has been a preparation for this moment.’

Oh dear! It’s when someone comes out with this kind of lunatic remark that sensible men start looking round for an escape. But there could be no escape. I was the complete author of this madcap raid. All I’d needed to do was get the militias to guard the paths round the mountain. They could have fought defensive actions, on their own ground, against little bands not really inclined to push their luck so far from base. Instead, I’d called for another Marathon and was most likely to get another Thermopylae, though without actually buying time for a real defence. A further thought came into my head. Some of our horses were captured from the Persians. They could be expected to charge into battle. What about the others? What about mine ?

I was halfway down a spiral of misery when I heard a clomping of feet on turf somewhere on my right. Rado was already off the path and picking up speed. I drew my sword and waited. The moon was presently behind a cloud. There was nothing I could see, though what I heard suggested no serious problem. It was a faint squeal, followed by a louder cry of fear and then a savage laugh from Rado and a mouthful of obscene abuse in Slavic.