Harry Sidebottom - King of Kings

As the bloodied knifeman ran past, Julia tripped him. It was the lightest of taps, but it destroyed the man's balance. Toppling forward, arms flailing, he ran a few more steps, then crashed on his face. The knife skittered out of his grasp as he slid on the hard, marble walkway. In an instant Ballista released the man he was holding, who crumpled, hands clutching his bruised throat. Ballista swivelled rapidly and threw himself on the man on the floor. His weight came down through his knees into the small of the man's back. The breath wheezed out of him as if he were a broken wind instrument.

On his hands and knees Ballista scrabbled after the knife. Its worn leather hilt was warm in his hand. He got to his feet. The tripped man tried to rise. Ballista stamped his left heel down on an outstretched hand. Putting all his weight on his left leg, he swivelled again. There was a terrible scream over the sound of splintering bones.

The half-choked man was up again. Stepping carefully over the prone attacker, now curled into a foetal position and whimpering quietly, Ballista moved forward. He swung the knife from side to side. The other man's eyes were as if mesmerized by the blade. He edged backwards past Julia and Isangrim.

As the knifeman reached the foot of the steps down which Ballista and his family had come, a rioter clambered over the low dividing wall into the elite enclosure. Another two, then another three followed. In some inexplicable dynamic of the mob, a horde of men poured over the wall. The man with the knife was gone, swept away up the stand by its momentum.

Ballista threw away the knife to scoop up his son. One arm clasping Isangrim secure to his chest, he took Julia in his other hand and ran to the head of the exit. There were the stairs, lit here and there by lamps in niches. In strange contrast to the crowded chaos of the seating enclosure, they were completely empty. The way to the safety of the corridor at the bottom was clear. Holding Isangrim gently, the boy's blond curls against his shoulder, Ballista began to descend as fast as he could without risking a fall.

They had gone some way when a change in the light warned him that something was wrong. He looked up. There, at the head of the stairs, blocking much of the daylight, he saw a man — or the hooded silhouette of a man. A weapon shone in his right hand. This was not a mundane knife to peel apples, this was a man-killing blade, an old-fashioned legionary short sword, a gladius.

Ballista handed his son back to his wife.

'Go.'

'I cannot.'

'The boy…' Ballista gestured. 'Go now.'

Julia turned to leave.

Very deliberately, in a fighting crouch, on the balls of his feet, the man began to descend the stairs. Cursing himself for a fool for throwing away the knife, Ballista again rearranged the toga over his arm. He began to retreat down the stairs slowly, one careful step at a time.

It was very quiet in the stairway. Ballista could hear Julia's retreating steps, heavy with the weight of their son, the son he would not see again. The man was closing the distance quickly, taking two steps to every one backward of Ballista. The reckoning would be soon.

Ballista could hear the oil fizzing in the lamps. Typical, he thought. In my barbarian northlands, the lights would be solid torches, useful weapons for burning a hall or ramming into a man's face, and here civilization has given me delicate little pottery lamps. Still, the hot oil might have a use if he could surprise the man with it. He stopped by one of the niches where a lamp burned.

The man was getting very close now. Ballista caught the glitter of his eyes under his hood. Ballista watched the blade of the gladius. The man moved like a fighter. There was a scar on the hand that gripped the blade. Julia's footsteps were growing fainter. The hissing of the lamp seemed unnaturally loud. Ballista could hear his own breathing, harsh, laboured.

The man was just three or four steps away. Watch the blade, watch the blade.

Another sound broke into Ballista's concentration. The sound of running feet. Boots pounding up the stairs behind him. Watch the blade. Ballista could not turn. His assailant flicked a glance over Ballista's shoulder. The northerner saw recognition on the nondescript face under the hood. Without hesitation, the man turned and ran. In seconds he had reached the top of the stairs and, sheathing his sword, was gone.

Moments later, Maximus reached Ballista.

'Are you all right?'

'Never better. Like a slave at Saturnalia.'

'Sure, but you are a cruel man to be reminding me of my servile status.' Maximus grinned. 'Julia and the boy are safe enough for the moment with Calgacus down below. Want me to go up and look for him?'

'No, he will be long gone, and it's dangerous up there. I do not want you getting hurt by any rough men. Let's all get out of here.'

Maximus turned to go. Ballista paused.

'What is it?'

'Probably nothing,' said Ballista. 'It is just that the others wanted to rob and rape, and that one… I think that he was only interested in killing me.'

Solid-looking shafts of light came through the windows of the great apse and shone on to the floor of the audience chamber. Ballista stared at them, his face carefully composed into a look of thoughtful attention. The glass of the windows gave the light a strange, underwater look. Thousands of motes of dust and the odd oily flick of incense smoke moved in it. Ballista thought about the paradox of Heraclitus: no man can step into the same river twice. The imperial council was ever changing, always the same. For some time, the praetorian prefect Successianus had been telling the members of the consilium a story they all knew, except for the ending.

The outrages of three days earlier had been confined to the island in the Orontes. As soon as the disgraceful scenes in the hippodrome had begun, troops had sealed off the five bridges that led to the city and the one that led to the suburbs. In fact, the unrest had been contained in only a small part of the island — as ever, the imperial palace had been well garrisoned, and a sweep by Batavian auxiliaries supported by Dalmatian cavalry had dispersed any looters, at the cost of only one burnt bath house and four burnt dwellings. In the hippodrome itself, the praetorians had promptly escorted the emperor and imperial party to safety. After his sacred majesty had left, there were scenes of the most appalling depravity — four equestrians had been killed, several beaten and robbed, and six women of the equestrian order raped. Much worse than all this, wooden pictures of the imperial family had been stoned, the mob jeering when they splintered, and a bronze statue of the ever-victorious imperator Valerian had been toppled from its pedestal, beaten with shoes, broken apart, before street children had dragged the pieces through the dirt. Although the people of Antioch had always been notorious for their unruliness and lack of respect for their betters, it was clear that the outbreak was the work of a handful of brigands — foreigners, for the most part. Selected squads of soldiers had been sent in to arrest the ringleaders. The unpleasantness had lasted just a few hours, having ended soon after dark. It was estimated that some two to three hundred rioters had been killed. All the surviving ringleaders were in custody — forty-five men, seven women and four children. They awaited the emperor's infallible justice.

Words are slippery things, thought Ballista, and these were weasel words. No one who had been there and had a less than blinkered view could believe that the riot had been instigated and carried on by only a few foreign brigands. How, in that seething mass of humanity, had the troops identified these supposed ringleaders? Above all, how in the name of the Allfather, could children have been involved its organization? These were the weasel words that one heard in the consilium. Free speech, freedom itself, the much-vaunted libertas of the Romans, the eleutheria of Greek philosophy — how could they exist when one man was all powerful? How could they exist when one man was, depending on your viewpoint, either the vice-regent of the gods on earth or a living, walking god himself?