Richard Blake - The Curse of Babylon

Leander took his hat off so he could give a haughty toss of his head. ‘My good man,’ he said, ‘your orders come from a youthful clerk, who takes his orders from me. And I represent the Lord Nicetas. Your new orders are to stand aside and allow your betters to go about their business.’

‘Well, don’t you go messing about with that thing,’ the guard said flatly. ‘It’s done enough harm already.’ He waved at the other two guards. ‘Come on. I don’t fancy being anywhere near if those two jokers let that thing off again.’

I watched the three men shamble towards one of the more distant bonfires. For the first time in two years, I was beginning to see some merit in the New Callimachus. Kissing him was out of the question. But I’d make a point of not killing him unless I really needed to.

Leander climbed up and balanced unsteadily on the catapult’s wooden stock. He pointed at one of the bow arms. ‘It’s really just a big bow,’ he said learnedly. ‘But, when you’re shooting arrows, it’s the bow itself that gives the tension. This is much cleverer. Can you see how its arms are buried in those elaborate twistings? They look like elongated balls of wool, but are many rods of coiled bronze.’ I said nothing but moved closer to the silken cord. The guards were far off, and had their backs to us. Leander’s most likely response when I pulled my sword out would be to shit himself. I wondered again how much noise the torsion springs would make when they snapped back into place. Thanks to Leander, it probably didn’t matter.

He noticed where I was looking, and laughed. He climbed down again beside me. ‘Yes, Father, it is a gigantic bowstring. You put your stone ball in the special pouch woven into its centre. Now, you don’t pull the string back by hand. Instead, you attach it to the hook in this block of wood. This thick rope here pulls the block back. You wind the rope back by turning that big wheel thing.’ He pointed again at the torsion springs. ‘When the bowstring is wound fully back, the wooden arms come back as well, and they pull the bronze twistings back.’ He laughed. ‘You can’t imagine how powerful those twistings are. Four powerful men can’t move one of them even an inch. Winding them back needs two men with wooden levers to pull on the big wheel. When the tension is released, they spring back too fast for the eye to see.’

He paused for breath and struck another pose, this time, pushing his fingers between the strands of the nearest torsion spring. ‘I tell you, Father — and I tell you as a man filled with ancient learning, who helped interpret its instruction book into the common Greek of our own age — this is the ultimate power in the universe!? ’

‘My son,’ I said, nearly forgetting to sound foreign, ‘are you not overlooking the power of Him who stands above all earthly powers?’

I was expecting a long whine of piety and a convenient upward glance. Instead, with a sudden lapse into glumness, he sat down on the stock. ‘But is there no one to talk His Lordship into a diplomatic solution?’ he asked. ‘Has he forgotten it’s his own daughter who may be destroyed if the power of this thing is fully unleashed?’ He covered his eyes. ‘I’ve known her since she was just a little girl. Nicetas can’t be serious about giving her up to the mob.’

Eyes still covered, he fell into a fit of horrified sobbing. It was long enough for me to check what I’d briefly felt when stroking the bowstring. Yes — the silk strands were cut at least three-quarters through each side of the central pouch. This wasn’t anything you might expect from clumsy use. Someone had cut it from underneath. Gently, I pushed a fingernail into one of the notches. Perhaps three-quarters through was an understatement. I’d already seen that the torsion springs were set to maximum stretch. Pull it back as far as the first trigger mechanism and the string would certainly fail. Tensed as it presently was, it might go at any moment. I pulled my hand back from the string and stepped away from the machine. Leander was right about the torsion springs. They were enormously powerful. If the bowstring snapped, they’d send its two lengths whipping about like flexible razors. I’d heard of one battlefield accident where an operator’s head had been sliced off.

‘So the assault is to be at dawn?’ I asked.

Leander looked up and spread his hands. ‘I was hoping you would tell me that,’ he said. He covered his eyes again and uttered an almost poetic groan. ‘If we don’t get proper orders soon, even those who bother coming back will only stay for breakfast. I don’t want this thing to be used again. But what are we all to do if the revolution goes out like a lamp exhausted of its oil?’ He put his hands down. ‘Oh, Antonia,’ he sighed, ‘if only, for the first time in your life, you’d done as you were told. You’d soon have got used to Eunapius!’

I stepped further away from the catapult. In his genuine despair, Leander was rocking back and forward on it. I could almost fancy I was looking at the remaining strands as they snapped, one at a time. No point in asking who’d set things up for a catastrophic failure. I turned and stared at the looming mass of my palace. When I got back inside, I’d call him names for keeping another of its hidden doorways to himself. I’d pointedly not ask how he’d got past the guards. There could be no spoiling his present fun, however. He must be somewhere up on the roof, hugging himself and breathing self-endearments, as he beheld what an utter fool I’d been made to feel. All the way here, I’d been turning over what to say to Antonia when I got back. ‘Wake up, dearest,’ I’d been thinking to call. ‘Don’t worry about the catapult. I’ve just slipped out and disabled it.’ Nonchalance on one side, astonishment on the other — a nice long fuck to keep us happy till dawn, and then a clear view of baffled rage, or even death or dismemberment, brought on by the ever-resourceful as well as beautiful young Alaric. Oh, I’d have Priscus for this!

But it wouldn’t be a wasted journey through the night, I suddenly told myself. I looked again at Leander. ‘Two men travelling together are surely better than one at a time like this,’ I said. ‘Why not come back with me, my son? You could speak the message of peace and diplomacy directly to the Lord Nicetas. Will he not still be awake? Does he not hang on your every word?’

‘He did tell me to stay put and wait for instructions,’ came the hesitant reply. Leander looked about at what little there was to see in the gloom of the Triumphal Way. ‘And the important men about him won’t like anything that sounds like a compromise. But I can’t say I like it out here all alone. Some of these people have rough ways.’ He brightened. ‘And, if you don’t like the idea of going back alone, I suppose I could come with you as protection. A man of the church shouldn’t be expected to risk himself alone in these streets. You never know what might happen on a night like this.’

‘Indeed, my son,’ I said. Unmoving in the darkness, Rado hadn’t enough Greek to follow the discussion. I’d have to trust him to guess what I was about and play along.

I didn’t fancy stepping any closer to the catapult. Leander had stopped rocking back and forth on it, but was now kicking his heels against the stock. I stretched out my arm. ‘Come with me, my son,’ I said. ‘All that can be done in this place you have done well.’ I waited for the faint look of doubt to vanish from his face. There was a five-foot space behind the statue of Cicero. Any vagrants sleeping there could be sent packing with a few coppers.

I shuffled into a more comfortable spot on the ledge and leaned back against the chilly bronze. ‘I won’t tell you again,’ I said. ‘If you don’t keep your voice down, my friend will have no choice but to cut your throat.’