'I do not want to appear stupid, but does not your lamp make it just a bit easier for your Persians to follow us?' Maximus asked.
'Oh yes, and that is just what I want.' Ballista asked a servant to tie the lantern securely to the saddle of one of the packhorses. They rode on in silence for a time, travelling no faster than an easy canter. The clouds were building up, the moon ever more obscured. Now it was pitch dark outside the pool of lantern light.
'Romulus, you know where the village of Merrha lies?'
'Yes, Dominus. Off in the hills to the north-west, not far now, four miles maybe.'
'I want you to lead the packhorse with the lantern in that direction. When you think that you have gone far enough or the Sassanids are getting too close, set the packhorse running free and ride for Arete.'
The standard-bearer smiled enigmatically. 'We will do what is ordered, and at every command we will be ready.' He spoke ruefully. He took the horse's leading rein and set off diagonally across the dark plain.
'Now we ride flat out again.'
In complete silence the small group rode hard. Off to their left, the light of Romulus's lantern bobbed across the plain towards the just distinguishable darker mass of the hills. Beaded across the wide plain were the lights of the Sassanids. Soon they altered course and surged after the lone Roman lantern. Ballista and his remaining twelve men rode north into the darkness to safety.
Not one was looking back when the line of Sassanid lights converged on the solitary lantern making vainly for the hills.
They were found by the patrol just after dawn; Turpio was working Cohors XX hard these days: the first patrols set out early, always in the dark. When Ballista and his party were found they were still a couple of miles from town, and in a bad way. Horses and men were completely exhausted. The flanks of the horses were covered in a white foam of sweat, their nostrils wide, mouths hanging open. The men were ashen-faced, almost insensible with fatigue. Apart from a servant more dead than alive who was slung over a packhorse, they were walking, stumbling along by their mounts. The Dux Ripae looked terrible, his face masked in dried blood, staggering, hanging on to the near-side pommel of his horse's saddle.
Before they reached Arete the Dux called a halt. He washed as much as he could of the blood from his face. He put on a hooded cloak borrowed from one of the troopers. He climbed back on to his horse and pulled the cloak up to hide his injuries. He rode into town with a straight back.
After the battered cavalcade had passed through the Palmyrene Gate the telones looked at the boukolos with an air of smug vindication.
'Calpurnia mutters… There is truth in poetry, boy – looks like that old centurion knew a thing or two: the ides of March did not do our barbarian Dux any good.'
'And knowing poetry didn't do your fucking centurion much good either; he still had his bollocks cut off,' replied the boukolos. 'Now this is what I call an omen: first time our commander meets the Persians they nearly kill him. Bloody bad omen that.'
From this first conversation discussions of the events at Castellum Arabum spread out across the town of Arete.
An hour or so after their return, Ballista, Maximus and Demetrius were lying in the tepidarium of the private baths attached to the palace of the DuxRipae. The doctor had come and gone. He had put a couple of stitches in a gash on Maximus's thigh and five or six in the scalp wound on the back of Ballista's head. Demetrius had come through untouched.
They were lying in silence, dog-tired, aching. Ballista's head throbbed.
'No one to blame but yourself… your own fucking fault,' Calgacus grumbled as he brought in some food and drink. Ballista noted that now the Caledonian felt firee to express his opinions before Maximus and Demetrius.
'Those notices you keep posting up in the agora: "the Dux Ripae will be virtually on his own riding down to some fly-blown piece of shite in the middle of nowhere; why not send a message to the Sassanids so they can ambush him?" Never listen… just like your bloody father.'
'You are right,' Ballista said tiredly. 'There will not be any more notices, no more advance warning of what we are going to do.'
'Surely it could just be chance, bad luck? Their patrol just happened to be there and we just happened to run into them. Surely there does not have to be a traitor?' Demetrius's tone could not be mistaken. He desperately wanted one of them to say he was right, it was unlikely to happen again.
'No, I am afraid not,' said Ballista. 'They knew we were coming. That dust cloud in the south was the main force. It was intended to take us as we camped at the disused caravanserai. We were behind schedule. We were never meant to see the ones we ran into. They were just a screen to catch any of us who managed to escape the massacre.'
'So,' said Maximus, 'you see the virtue in sloth – a good long meridiatio saved our lives.'
Four hours after the Dux Ripae rode through the Palmyrene Gate the frumentarii were in their favourite bar in the south-east of the city.
'Left him to die like a dog in the shand.' The emotion was not counterfeit; the North African was packed full of anger.
'Yes,' said the one from the Subura. He kept his voice neutral. He was sorry for the Spaniard, Sertorius as he had dubbed him, but what else could the Dux Ripae have done – stop and get the whole party killed?
'Like a dog… hope the poor bashtard was dead before they got to him.'
'Yes,' repeated the one from the Subura. The North African's Punic accent was becoming stronger, the volume louder and, although the bar was almost empty, the Roman did not want attention drawn to them.
'I will fix that bashtard barbarian… write a report that will fix him, write such a report on him, the bashtard. I just wish I could be there when the princeps peregrinorum hands the report to the emperor – see the look on Valerian's face when he hears how his barbarian boy has fucked up – the fucking bashtard.'
'Are you sure that is a good idea?'
'Godsh below it is… fix that bashtard good and proper.'
The Persian rug which curtained off the inner room was drawn back. Mamurra walked through and over to the table of the frumentarii. He leant down, bringing his great slab of a face close to them.
'My condolences on the loss of your colleague.' He spoke softly, and walked on without waiting for a reply. The two frumentarii looked at each other in some consternation. How long had the praefectus fabrum been there? What had he heard? And was there something in the way he had pronounced 'colleague' that implied more than the Spaniard being a fellow member of the staff of the Dux Ripae?
Seven days after the events at Castellum Arabum Antigonus rode in on a donkey led by a peasant. He told the telones and boukolos to fuck off, made himself known to the centurion from Legio [III in charge at the Palmyrene Gate and, within half an hour, he was in the palace. Sitting in the private apartments of the Dux Ripae, food and drink to hand, he told his story.
Yes, Antigonus had found the two troopers on point duty. The Sassanids had been questioning them, the poor bastards, as he rode past. Oddly, no one had pursued him. There was a line of Persian cavalry coming up from the south, a lot of them. Antigonus had turned his horse loose – excellent horse it was too – hidden most of his kit in a ravine and swum out to an island in the Euphrates. He told them proudly that he was a Batavian from the Rhine. The whole world knew that the Batavians were great swimmers. As everyone in the party of the Dux had taken the standard three days' rations with them, he had sat on his island for two days. He had not seen a Persian after the first day. Then he had swum ashore, picked up as much of his kit as he could carry and walked south to Castellum Arabum. It had not been pretty. Eighteen heads were mounted over the gate and on the walls. The other two dromedarii might have escaped but, more likely, they had been taken for further questioning.