'Anyway,' Antigonus continued, 'I found a peasant who, out of the kindness of his heart, offered to let me have his donkey and bring me home to Arete.' In response to a sharp look from Ballista he hurried on. 'No, no, he is fine. In fact, he is waiting in the first courtyard for the huge reward I said the Dux Ripae would pay him.' Ballista nodded to Demetrius, who nodded back to say he would deal with it.
'There is more. On my way back I came across Romulus, or what was left of him. Nasty – he had been mutilated, hopefully after he was dead.'
The ever-changing stories spread out far beyond the city of Arete. Ten days after the reality had played out in darkness and fear by the Euphrates, a messenger prostrated himself in the magnificent throne room in the Persian capital of Cetisiphon and told a version of the story to Shapur, the Sassanid King of Kings. Twenty-six days after that, a messenger prostrated himself in the palace high on the Palatine Hill and told the first of several versions of the story that Valerian Imperator of the Romans would hear. Another three days elapsed before a messenger tracked down Gallienus, Valerian's son and fellow Augustus, by the cold banks of the Danube. By then, many more things had happened at the city of Arete and, for most there, the events at Castellum Arabum were a fading memory.
From the walls of Arete, for a long time the only sign of the approach of the Sassanid horde was the thick black cloud looming up from the south. On the morning of the fourteenth of April, the day after the ides of the month – always an unlucky day – Ballista, accompanied by his senior officers, staff and familia, took his stand on the battlements above the Palmyrene Gate. There was the cloud downriver, coming up from the realms of Shapur. Dark and thick, it was still some way off, at least as far as the disused caravanserai, if not as far as Castellum Arabum. No one needed to ask what caused it. It was impossible to escape the thought of the tens of thousands of marching men, horses and other, terrifying beasts kicking up the dust, of the smoke writhing up oily from the innumerable fires consuming everything in the path of the horde from the east.
At twilight a line of campfires could be seen burning no more than a couple of miles from the city. The Sassanid scouts were settling in for the night. Later, in the depth of the night, more fires flickered into life, stretching round in an arc along the hills to the west. After midnight a terrible orange glow lit the sky to the north-west as the Persian outriders reached the villages. By cock crow smudges of fire and smoke had appeared on the other side of the river to the east. Everyone within the walls of the town of Arete knew they were surrounded, cut off by land from help or flight. And yet, so far, they had not seen a single one of the warriors of Shapur.
At dawn the Dux Ripae and his men were still at their post. Most had left to try and rest for an hour or two but, to Ballista, sleep seemed impossible on a night so obviously momentous. Wrapped in a sheepskin, he leant against one of the two pieces of artillery on the roof of the gatehouse, a huge twenty-pounder ballista. His eyes ached with fatigue as he peered out on to the western plain. He thought he saw movement but, unsure his tired eyes weren't playing tricks on him in the grey light, he waited until one of the others shouted and pointed. There they were. About where the necropolis used to end, dark shapes were moving fast through the early morning mist. The small amorphous groups of mounted scouts, dividing, reuniting, crossing each other's tracks, reminded Ballista of animals running before a forest fire, until the inappositeness of the image struck him. These animals were not fleeing anything, they were hunting, hunting for a means to attack the northerner himself and all those it was his duty to protect. They were wolves looking for a way into the sheepfold.
The sun was well clear of the horizon and it was towards the end of the third hour of daylight when the vanguard of the Sassanid army finally came into view. Ballista could make out two long dark columns which seemed, like enormous snakes, to crawl towards him infinitesimally slowly across the face of the land. Above each hung a dense isolated cloud of dust. The base of a third cloud had not yet come into sight. The northerner could make out that the nearer column was composed of cavalry, the further of infantry. He thought back to his training in fieldcraft: this meant that the columns must be within about 1,300 paces. But, as he could not yet make out any individuals, they must still be more than 1,000 paces away. If he had not known of their advance toward him, the rays of sunlight flashing perpendicular off spear points and burnished armour would have told him.
Time passed slowly as the columns continued to crawl towards the city. When they were about 700 paces away (the distance at which a man's head can be made out as a round ball) they began to incline away to the north. Ballista moved to the parapet and called Bagoas to his side. By the time the columns reached the beginning of the wasteland where the furthest tower tombs had once stood, they were moving parallel to the western wall. The third column was now revealed as the baggage and siege train. The nearest column, the cavalry, was close enough for Ballista to be able to see the lighter-coloured spots of the men's faces, their costumes and weapons, the bright trappings of their mounts, the banners above their heads: about 500 paces away, just out of artillery range.
Speaking in Greek, Ballista asked Bagoas if he could identify the units of the Sassanid horde and their leaders.
'Excellent, how very cultured our siege will be. We can begin with our very own View from the Wall.' Although Acilius Glabrio had interrupted in Latin, he used the Greek word teichoskopia' for the View from the Wall. To any educated person in the imperium, the word instantly summoned up the famous scene in the Hiad of Homer where Helen looked down from the walls of Troy and identified each of the bronze-armoured Achaeans come to tear her from her lover Paris and take her home to her rightful husband, the broad-shouldered Menelaus. 'And who better than this delightful Persian boy to play the Queen of Sparta?' Acilius Glabrio smiled at Ballista. 'I do hope our Helen does not feel the need to criticize the manliness of her Paris.'
Bagoas's grasp of Latin might still be rudimentary, and Ballista had no idea if the boy knew anything of the Iliad, but it was obvious that he realized he was being mocked, that his masculinity was being questioned. The boy's eyes were furious. Before he could do anything, Mamurra spoke to Acilius Glabrio.
'That is enough, Tribune. This is not a time for dissension. We all know what happened to Troy. May the gods grant that these words of ill omen fall only on the man who utters them.'
The young nobleman spun around looking dangerous. He brought his well-groomed face inches from that of the praefectus fabrum. Then he mastered himself. Clearly it was beneath one of the Acilii Glabriones to bandy words with sordid plebeians like Mamurra. 'The men of my family have always had broad shoulders.' With patrician disdain, he brushed an imaginary piece of dirt from his immaculate sleeve.
Ballista pointed to the enemy and indicated to Bagoas to start talking.
'First ride some of the non-Aryan people subject to my lord Shapur. See the fur cloaks and long hanging sleeves of the Georgians, then the half-naked Arabs, the turbaned Indians and the wild nomadic Sakas. From all the corners of the world, when the King of Kings calls, they obey.' The boy shone with pride. 'And there… there are the noble Aryan warriors, the warriors of Mazda, the armoured knights, the clibanarii.'
All the men on the gate tower fell silent as they regarded the serried ranks of the Sassanid heavy cavalry, the elite of Shapur's army. Five deep, the column seemed to stretch for miles across the plain. As far as could be seen were armoured men on armoured horses. Some looked like living statues, horse and man clad in iron scales, iron masks covering any humanity. The mounts of others were armoured in red leather or green-blue horn. Many wore gaudy surcoats and caparisoned their horses similarly – green, yellow, scarlet and blue. Often man and beast wore abstract heraldic symbols – crescents, circles and bars – which proclaimed their clan. Above their heads their banners writhed and snapped – wolves, serpents, fierce beasts or abstract designs invoking Mazda.