Before the company could drink, Iarhai turned and glared at the young Roman. The synodiarch's battered face was twisted with barely suppressed anger. A muscle twitched in the broken right cheekbone.
'No! No one shall drink to that in my house.' Iarhai looked at Ballista. 'Yes, I helped end the Sassanid occupation of this city.' His lip curled in disgust. 'You are probably still too young to understand,' he said to the northerner, 'that one probably never will understand' – he jerked his head at Acilius Glabrio and paused. His eyes were on Ballista but he had withdrawn into himself. 'Many of the Persian garrison had their family with them. Yes, I waded ankle-deep through blood – the blood of women, children, babes in arms. Our brave fellow citizens rose up and massacred them, raped, tortured, then killed them – all of them. They boasted they were "cleansing" the city of the "reptiles".'
Iarhai's gaze came back into focus. He looked at Bathshiba then at Ballista. 'All my life I have killed. It is what a synodiarch does. You protect the caravans. You talk to the nomads, the tent-dwellers. You lie, cheat, bribe, compromise. And when they all fail, you kill.
'I have dreams. Bad dreams.' A facial muscle twitched. 'Such dreams I would not wish even on Anamu and Ogelos… Do you believe in an afterlife, a punishment in an afterlife?' Again his gaze became unfocussed. 'Sometimes I dream that I have died. I stand in the grove of black poplars by the ocean stream. I pay the ferryman. I cross the hateful river. Rhadamanthys judges me. I have to take the road to the punishment fields of Tartarus. And they are waiting for me, the "kindly ones", the demons of retribution and, behind them, the others: all those I have killed, their wounds still fresh. There is no need to hurry. We have eternity.' Iarhai sighed a great sigh then smiled a self-deprecating smile. 'But perhaps I have no monopoly on inner daemons…'
The patrician drawl of Acilius Glabrio broke the silence. 'Discussing the immortality of the soul. This is a true symposium, a veritable Socratic dialogue. Not that I ever suspected for a moment that after-dinner conversation in this esteemed house would resemble that at the dinner of Trimalchio in Petronius's Satyricon.' Everything about his manner suggested that was just what he thought. 'You know, all those dreadful jumped-up, ill-educated freedmen talking nonsense about werewolves and the like.'
Ballista swung round heavily. His face was flushed, his eyes unnaturally bright. 'My father's name is Isangrim. It means "Grey-Mask". When Woden calls, Isangrim lays down his spear, offers the Allfather his sword. He dances and howls before the shield wall. He wears the wolfskin coat.'
There was a stunned silence. Demetrius could hear the oil hissing in one of the lamps.
'Gods below, are you saying that your father is a werewolf?' Acilius Glabrio exclaimed.
Before the northerner could answer, Bathshiba began to recite in Greek: Hungry as wolves that rend and bolt raw flesh, Hearts filled with battle-frenzy that never dies – Off on the cliffs, ripping apart some big-antlered stag They gorge on the kill till their jaws drip red with blood
… But the fury, never shaken, Builds inside their chests.
No one in the imperium couldfail to recognize the poetry ofHomer.
Bathshiba smiled. 'You see, the father of the Dux Ripae could not be in better company when he prepares to fight like a wolf. He is in the company of Achilleus and his Myrmidons.'
She glanced at her father. He took the hint and gently indicated that it was time for his guests to depart.
The rains confounded local knowledge. The first rains of the winter always lasted three days; everyone said so. This year, the rains lasted five. By mid-morning on the sixth day the blustery north-east wind had blown away the big black clouds. The washed-out blue sky brought the inhabitants of Arete into the muddy streets and quite a large number found their way to the palace gates. They all arrived claiming it was vital that they saw the Dux. They brought reports, complaints, requests for justice or help. A section of the cliff in the northern ravine at the far end from the postern gate had tumbled down. A row of three houses near the agora had collapsed. Two men who had been foolish enough to try to row across to Mesopotamia were lost, presumed drowned. A soldier of Cohors XX had been accused of raping his landlord's daughter. A woman had given birth to a monkey.
Ballista dealt with the flood of petitioners, at least to the extent of ordering the arrest of the soldier and, sending a messenger ahead, at midday he set out to meet Acilius Glabrio at the north-west tower, by the Temple of Bel, to begin a tour of inspection of both the artillery and the walls of Arete. He was accompanied by Mamurra, Demetrius, Maximus, the standard-bearer Romulus, the senior haruspex, two scribes, two messengers and two local architects. Five troopers of the equites singulares had been sent on horseback to clear the area outside the walls.
Ballista was not looking forward to this meeting. If only he had kept quiet at Iarhai's dinner party. What had made him admit that his father, Isangrim, was a warrior dedicated to Woden, a warrior who at times felt the battle madness of wolves? Of course, he had been drunk. Possibly he had been affected by the confession of Iarhai. Certainly he had been angered by the supercilious attitude of Acilius Glabrio. But these were excuses.
It could have been worse. It was not a secret like the visits of the ghost of Maximinus Thrax. If he blurted that out, people would either think that he should be shunned because he was haunted by a powerful daemon or that he was completely insane. Further admitting to emperor-killing, even if the emperor you killed had been universally hated, was frowned on by reigning emperors. It might test the tolerance of even so mild and well disposed a pair of rulers as Valerian and Gallienus.
Ballista climbed the stairs and walked out on to the fighting platform at the top of the tower.
'Dux Ripae.' There was a barely suppressed smirk on Acilius Glabrio's face, but Ballista's attention was on something else. There, in the middle of the windswept platform, its covers off, stood a huge artillery piece, a ballista. It was a lifelong fascination with such weapons that had won the northerner his name.
Ballista knew that Arete possessed thirty-five pieces of artillery. One was stationed on top of each of her twenty-seven towers. The Palmyrene Gate and the Porta Aquaria each boasted four; two on the roof and two shooting through portholes on the first floor. Twenty-five of the weapons shot a two and a half foot bolt. These were anti-personnel weapons. Ten shot stones. These were primarily intended to destroy enemy siege engines but could also be used to kill men. All were crewed by legionaries of Legio IIII.
The northerner had chosen to begin his tour here because this tower housed one of the biggest ballistae. A rectangular frame of iron-reinforced hardwood some ten feet wide held near each end a torsion spring of twisted sinew, each as high as a very tall man. Inserted into these springs were the bow arms. The stock, some twenty feet long, projected back from the frame. A slider dovetailed on to it at the rear of which were catches which caught the bowstring. Two powerful winches pulled back the slider and bowstring, forcing back the bow arms. The missile was placed in the slider. A ratchet held the slider in place, and a universal joint allowed it to traverse easily from side to side, and up and down. The soldier took aim, and a trigger unleashed the awesome torsion power of the springs.
Ballista happily let his eyes run over the dark polished wood, the dull gleam of the metal. All ballistae worked on the same principles but this was a particularly fine example. A beautiful and deadly piece of engineering, this enormous weapon hurled a carefully rounded stone ball weighing no less than twenty pounds. Arete had three other such massive engines; two on the roof of the Palmyrene Gate and one on the fourth tower north of there. Arete's six other stone-throwers threw six-pound missiles. All except one covered the western wall, the wall which faced the plain – for it was across the plain that any enemy siege engines must approach.