Richard Blake - The Curse of Babylon

I folded the map away. Rado could give the boy the kicking he’d earned while I was pretending to sleep. For the moment, I’d learned everything I wanted. I looked once more at the surrounding desolation. The mountain peaks were capped white with unthawed snow, their lower reaches green with scrubby trees. The valleys were hidden in mist or lost in the impenetrable shadows of late afternoon. Twelve days of fast and nearly continuous movement lay between us and the sea. Except the map told me otherwise, the mountain chain might stretch another hundred or even a thousand days to the south. I felt a returning attack of the horrors. Had Antonia refused to cooperate? Had she tried to escape? Had Shahin been his usual lying bastard self, and tossed her body overboard the moment his ship was safely out in the straits? Would I be left with nothing, when I finally caught up with him, but the cold satisfaction of tying his severed head to the mane of my horse?

I looked at Eboric’s brother. He was fast with his knife. ‘It won’t be dark for a while,’ I said in Latin, so everyone could understand. ‘I think we should hold off from dinner till we’ve found somewhere to rest for the night.’

Rado got in first with his reply. ‘But, My Lord, we can’t get to the next safe hilltop till long after dark. It’s best to camp here. If we start before dawn, we can be within a day of the Larydia Pass by late afternoon.’

The two boys nodded in unison. I looked south-east at what seemed to be one mountain among many. Between us and that lay a jumble of other high and low places, some glittering bright in the late sun, others in total darkness. I could have told myself I was mad to trust three barbarians who’d never been here in their lives. Instead, I remembered something Priscus had once said about how every military art rested on the ability to look once at any terrain and see it as a series of points in three dimensions. ‘Either you’ve got that, dear boy, or you haven’t,’ he’d said dismissively. ‘You just go back to finding the money to pay for the fighting — and making sure that what we’re fighting for is actually worth defending.’

I gave in. ‘Then we’ll keep the fire out of sight,’ I said. Three heads nodded politely. I sat down. ‘I’ll take the long midnight watch.’

I dreamed that I was in a room filled with dazzling light. Except the light came from no particular direction, it was like the time when I was lost in the Egyptian desert. All about me, lines of poetry had been turned to balls of coloured light and revolved slowly in paths determined by their patterns of long and short syllables. It was very beautiful to watch and reminded me of something in my early childhood.

At home and in bed, the dream could have gone on all night and given me something to think about in spare moments during the day. Here, it never effaced the fact that I was lying, cold and stiff, on top of a hill so windswept that the few bushes able to take root spread out over the ground, never more than six inches tall. Without needing to open my eyes and look at the moon, I could feel it would soon be my turn to get up and take my turn with the watch. For the moment, I lay still. The wind was up again. Its gentle and continuous moaning was something I now only noticed at times like this. I’d soon learned to accept it as a welcome blotting out of the distant and far more sinister howling of the wolves. In the summer months, I knew, there was safer prey for them than armed men huddled about a fire. Try believing that, however, when you’ve childhood experience of the creatures, and when you’re one of the huddled men. They were up and about, I could be sure. If I listened hard enough, I’d hear them. The wind was up, but not yet enough.

I began to drift back towards the room filled with light. The dream hadn’t entirely faded, but coloured balls that had been resolving themselves, one after the other, into lines of text glowed brighter and brighter again. Then it was all gone and I was awake. ‘If you won’t let me come too,’ Eboric whispered in his sulky tone, ‘I’ll wake him up and tell him.’

I think Rado poked him hard in the chest. He let out an obscenity in his own language I hadn’t yet heard. ‘And if it’s nothing?’ he asked, returning to Latin. ‘If it’s nothing, you’ll get him up for no reason? Stay here and look after things. If he does wake, tell him I’ll be back in time for my watch.’

I threw the blanket aside and sat up into a blast of chilly air. ‘What have you heard?’ I asked.

Rado wiped an angry snarl from his face and got up. ‘I don’t know, My Lord,’ he said evasively. ‘It may be something I’ve felt more than heard. It may be a trick of the wind.’ He stepped towards me and reached down for my blanket.

‘He said he heard horses, Master,’ Eboric said quickly. He twisted sideways to avoid being kicked into the embers of the fire. ‘I’m sure I heard a harness jingle.’

Shahin, running far ahead of any conjectured time, and far from his only sensible route? Not likely. A local traveller about his business? I looked at Eboric’s childish pout. I looked at the dark shadow that was Rado’s face. ‘Where did you hear them?’ I asked. I walked with Rado to the ravine edge and followed his pointed finger down to the left. The moon was heading towards its midnight zenith. If with deceptive clarity, I could see for miles in every direction. Looking down, I stared into total darkness. I put aside the mournful sound of the wind. The wolves had run out of anything more to say to each other, or were out of hearing. I held my breath and listened hard.

It was only the briefest snatch but you don’t mistake armed men on horseback. I turned and looked into the unearthly glow on Rado’s now tense and excited face. ‘Can you tell how far away?’ I asked.

He went to the edge and leaned over. ‘Not far below us,’ he said after a long pause. ‘There’s three of them and I think they’ve come out with padded harness.’

Eboric and his brother were already at work on their bootlaces. I raised a hand for attention. ‘The pair of you stay here,’ I said, quiet yet firm. I waited for their looks of disappointment to fade to sullenness ‘You need to keep an eye on the horses,’ I explained. ‘Be prepared to get them ready for an immediate retreat.’

Rado looked for the right words. Not finding them in Latin, he went into Slavic. ‘You should stay here, Master,’ he said. ‘I might be faster on my own.’

I frowned. ‘Whatever’s down there,’ I said, ‘I need to see for myself.’

After so long of having to treat me like a mounted invalid, Rado could be forgiven for believing I’d been denatured by seven years of prosperity in the Empire. On two legs, I could be still as much the predatory barbarian as he was. To be sure, we had no hills in England like these. But there were animals to be hunted, and travelling strangers to be robbed; and I had grown up surrounded by mile-wide expanses of shingle. It was hard to say which of us was more silent and more unseen, as we hurried down the steep incline. We reached its bottom about a mile from where we’d left the boys in charge of the horses. Dark caps pulled on tight to cover our hair, we crouched together behind a large boulder and waited.

We heard the muffled jingle of harness long before the three riders came in sight. They moved slowly, picking their way over the loose stones. From the first, I thought the horses were bigger than anything normally seen in the mountains. One look at how the moonlight glittered on their helmets and the hairs stood up on the back of my neck.

‘Persian regular army,’ I breathed into Rado’s ear. He stiffened beside me, the same thought probably going through his mind. I watched them come closer. There could be no doubt what they were. I could see their helmets and the fish-scale armour under their cloaks. I could see the outline of their leggings and boots. Still moving slowly, now and again letting the horses cool their hooves in the little stream, it was an officer in front and two men behind.