Richard Blake - The Curse of Babylon

‘Let me take first look,’ I said. Except that no one watching us could have been in any mood to be amused, what happened next had its funny side. Replacing my helmet with a grey cap, I pressed myself against a wall of smooth rock and slithered a few feet to the right. I was met, as I pushed my head out, by a blast of sound that had Rado and me straight into each other’s arms. It was the eunuch choir, you see. I’d been looking round the corner of the rock wall so briefly, and then been so shocked, that I’d taken in nothing that made sense. It was only as the eunuchs got into their stride, and were joined by an army of trumpeters and cymbal players, that I was able to put things together.

A quarter of a mile away, the eunuchs were spread out, several deep, in a semicircle that brushed both sides of the pass. Behind them were the musicians. Behind them, glittering in the first reflected rays of the sun, were the spear points of the Royal Guard. The semicircle was broken in the middle. Here, somewhat recessed, were the gorgeous robes of the main court functionaries. Right in the middle, Chosroes was looking out from his public security cage. Of soldered iron plates on three sides, this was protected in front by a double bronze grille of the sort I’ve already described. A hundred yards closer to us, Shahin had everything set out on a low table and was waving his arms about in the manner prescribed for court presentations.

Now joined from far back by all the military bands, the noise swelled in both volume and cacophony. I put my head round for another look. Yes — what mattered was that the Royal Guard was blocked both front and back. I pulled back and let Rado see for himself. He looked round at me, relief plainly on his face. We both looked up at the sky. It would soon be time. Rado took a few steps back along the pass and raised his arms. Two hundred and fifty men climbed on to their horses. The priests began their last round with their icons. Far behind, ready to bolt if need be — that much I’d got Eboric to promise — Antonia was presently out of sight.

We both looked again at the presentation ceremony. Shahin had placed a white cloth over the box and Chosroes had opened a small flap in his grille. The eunuchs were simmering down — though they’d once caused part of a ceiling to collapse in Ctesiphon when the Great King broke with precedent and stepped right out of his security cage. At last there was a moment of silence. Then seven trumpeters came forward and blew seven fanfares that were loud even at this distance. A dozen eunuchs stepped forward from the choir and drew breath.

‘What, O slave,’ they screeched in unison, ‘hast thou brought unto His Majesty, the Lord of All Creation, from the City of the Greeks? Let it be displayed for the whole universe to behold.’

Shahin went into another waving of arms.

He stopped.

High up, and from half a mile back along the big pass, two steerhorns blared out. Their sound cut through the rising warble of the eunuchs. It was followed by a long roar of hate and then by a muffled clash of arms. After that, it all seemed to go quiet. Arms frozen in mid-contortion, Shahin stood still. One of the court officials stepped out of line and looked uselessly round. I looked at Rado. He looked at me. I smiled nervously.

Suddenly, Priscus was shown right in his metaphor of the pricked caterpillar. It really seemed as if the whole army had reared up and turned back on itself. With a rising babble of shouts, the Royal Guard and the soldiers behind them were spilling forward to shove the eunuchs aside and make their way to where the terrified screaming was concentrated. The front of the crowd was both thinning out and moving forward. Chosroes was lost to sight. I could hear, and almost see, the wave of panic spreading out from where our hot and very sharp needle had been thrust into the beast’s side.

Rado lifted his right arm. Behind us, another steerhorn sounded. It was time for our archers to let fly their opening volleys. Panic turned to chaos, and almost every Persian had his back to us.

We got on to our horses. Rado beckoned everyone forward. ‘Remember,’ he said calmly — ‘no prisoners; no looting; pull back when you hear the trumpet blast.’ We arranged ourselves into a column, fifteen wide by sixteen deep. Rado and I were at the front, our standard bearer just behind us. We moved forward at a slow trot. We rounded the corner and looked fully on the spreading chaos before us. I heard the flutter of our unfurled standard. One of the priests had suggested we should fix an icon recovered from a smashed church to a spear. I’d overruled him, insisting instead on the formal chi-rho of the military — the first two letters of Christ’s name superimposed on each other. It was a crude thing of charcoal on an altar cloth we’d rescued, but it gave us the proper military look. Everyone gave a loud cheer. I held tighter on to my reins. No one in the main crowd seemed to have noticed we were coming straight at them but Shahin was looking round at us. His mouth fell open, he clutched at the box. Simon clutched at him. I saw Timothy scuttle towards the cover of an old rock fall. ‘God with Us!’ Rado cried. With a great answering roar of ‘God with Us! God with Us!’ we drew our swords and went into a gallop.

Everyone did now see us. The front of the crowd dissolved into a terrified blur. I distinctly heard Shahin’s wail of terror as he took to his heels. He stumbled forward, still holding his box aloft. We skirted the table. We ignored Shahin’s unarmed and useless flunkies. The last sight I had of him, he was vanishing into a crowd of court officials. The box was empty.

Just yards before smashing into the crowd, Rado shouted the final command. When he’d got us practising the move on foot the previous afternoon, even he was dubious of its success. Now, on horseback, we might have been professional cavalry. Like a hunter’s net, unfolding as it’s thrown, a column sixteen deep became a row five deep. At the very last moment, it became two separate rows. We struck in a loose line that filled half the big pass. No longer scared — no longer thinking very much — I knocked the unarmed eunuchs out of my way and struck at the first Royal Guard in reach. With a recoil that moved me on my saddle, I got him above the collar bone. He went down, screaming and spurting blood. Shouting in a mixture of English and Greek, I moved to the next, and then to the next. For a moment, I was aware of Rado beside me. His face shone with the sort of exaltation you see when a relic is held up in church. On my left, I had a brief sight of our standard bearer. With his free arm, he was slashing all about him. Then, someone in leather armour thrust a spear at me. It caught on one of the rings in my chainmail and nearly pulled me down. But I managed to stay on my horse. I took hold of the spear in my left hand, ramming the pommel of my sword into its bearer’s face.

I’d been worrying about how my horse would take the noise and movement of a battle. After a few signs of alarm, it soon appeared to be enjoying things more than I was. We darted here. We darted there. For the first time since I’d climbed on its back, the creature was doing as I asked.

When you’re writing the history of a war, battles are easy to describe. The hardest part of describing them to my mind — at least, it is in Latin — is keeping to the right sequence of tenses in the exaggerated oratio obliqua . You start with a silly speech, such as no winning general ever gave, and proceed through accounts of attacks and counter-attacks in which the individuals present might as well be counters on a gaming board. It may be, as I keep pointing out, that I have no feel for military things. But my general recollection of this battle — as of every other in which I’ve had to take part — is the moving from one brutal kill to another. Once or twice, there was the inevitable dawning fear that a tickling in my side was first warning that I’d been done for, or, when splashed in the face with someone else’s blood, that I was blinded. But this was less a battle than a slaughter. If we’d gone at them in the rain, they’d have put up more of a fight. When we’d struck, everyone armed had been drawn up on parade and was squeezed on every side by the unarmed. What little fighting order had remained was then erased by the continuing deathly hail from our archers. After the first wild slashing and stabbing, my own problem was finding anyone remotely worth killing. I think most of those I killed would have had trouble hurting a mouse.