The noise was getting louder: the sound of men pounding through the snow. Ballista pushed himself away from the wall and raised his sword again. My enemy's enemy is my friend. But you can never be sure.
A flood of torchlight, and Demetrius appeared. He had one of the Superintendents of the Tribes with him. They were backed by half a dozen Club Bearers of the watch. Ballista lowered his sword and embraced Demetrius, their faces together. 'Thank you, boy. How?'
'I knew something was wrong. Cupido never volunteers for anything.' Demetrius' face was earnest. 'I disobeyed you, Kyrios. I went out and found a party of the watch, led them to the Jewish quarter.'
'You showed initiative. It is lucky one of us kept his wits about him.'
Ballista released Demetrius and went over to where Cupido lay. The ex-gladiator was not moving. Covering him with his sword, Ballista searched him for concealed weapons. 'A doctor,' Cupido moaned.
Ballista looked at the wounded arm. He was fast bleeding to death. 'Who hired you?'
'Doctor…' The stale copper-coin smell mingled with that of fresh blood.
'Who hired you?'
'A man in a bar. I do not know his name. The one wearing the old-woman mask. Scar on his hand.'
Ballista looked down at him, considering.
'I need a doctor,' Cupido whimpered again.
'Too late, brother.' Ballista lined the sword up and thrust it down into the man's throat. It was finished. The snow was turning to sleet.
VII
It was early, the second hour of an overcast, gloomy day. The black clouds piling up over Mount Silpius threatened rain. It seemed to have rained every day since the attack in the alley. From the second day of the Saturnalia, 18 December, to six days before the ides of January: twenty-four days, calculated Ballista, counting inclusively, as everyone did. Twenty-four days since the third attempt to kill him and, despite both the municipal Epimeletai ton Phylon and the imperial frumentarii scouring the city, there was no trace of the would-be assassins.
The dead assassin's mask, the beauty of its young girl's face marred by the blood soaked into the linen, had been no help. There were more than thirty theatrical mask makers in Antioch. Unsurprisingly, none admitted it was their work. And no one had come forward to claim the body.
There was little to go on. Three hired swords: two faceless men and a nondescript man with a scar on his hand – a nondescript man who in the charcoal burner's clearing had shouted, 'The young eupatrid sends you this' – in a city of more than a quarter of a million people.
The identity of the young eupatrid on the horse was still a mystery. The type of cavalry parade mask he had worn was very expensive, but they were readily available all over the imperium. It need not even have been made by a silversmith in Antioch. The horseman had spoken Latin. But his voice had been so distorted as to be unrecognizable.
One thing, however, had struck Ballista. The silver-masked horseman had called him a barbarian. That would come naturally to Acilius Glabrio, or the sons of Macrianus, yet surely it was unlikely that Videric, the son of Fritigern, King of the Borani, would call him a barbarian – unless he had become thoroughly romanized in his months as a diplomatic hostage. Or unless he had said it deliberately to throw suspicion elsewhere.
There was so little to go on; still, the northerner had hoped that something would have turned up before he had to leave.
Ballista sat on Pale Horse outside the Beroea Gate, waiting. He looked up at the nearest window in the great, square, projecting towers of the gate. The bright lamps inside made a halo of golden hair low down in the window. Higher and less distinct, slightly behind the boy, was the dark hair of his mother. Ballista had said he would leave Maximus to protect them, but Julia would not hear of it. She had pointed out that while someone had three times tried to kill Ballista, there had been no attempt on his family. She had stated firmly that the two remaining ex-gladiators would be enough protection while Ballista was away. The northerner felt some guilt at his relief that he would have the familiar presence of his Hibernian bodyguard at his side. He waved, and saw the light blur of his wife's and son's hands waving back.
Behind Ballista, his staff were getting restless. It irritated him. They irritated him. He did not want them there. It was so typically Roman – the dignitas of a man granted imperium, command, demanded that he be accompanied by a commensurate number of staff. As Dux Ripae, Ballista must have an escort of four scribes, six messengers, two heralds, and two haruspices, to read the omens. Whether he wanted them or not was a matter of no moment.
And the members of staff were more than an irritation, they presented a danger. Ballista knew that, concealed among their number, would be at least two, maybe more, frumentarii. The reports written by these members of the secret police would fly along the cursus publicus, sometimes at more than a hundred miles a day, into the hands of their commander, Censorinus, the Princeps Peregrinorum, who would pass them to his superior Successianus, the Praetorian Prefect, who in turn would hand them to the emperor himself. Every move Ballista made would be scrutinized. The only, grim, satisfaction to be drawn from the situation was the marked reluctance of the twelve new members of staff he had chosen from the officially approved lists. There were so many places to be filled because, from the last expedition, only two of the staff had come back alive.
From under the great arch of the Beroea Gate came a clatter of horses' hooves. A trumpet rang out. Gaius Acilius Glabrio, Commander of the Cavalry in the army of the Dux Ripae, led out his two units of men. As befitted a scion of one of the oldest noble houses in Rome, Acilius Glabrio and his charger, a glorious, prancing chestnut, were magnificently turned out. Even on this dull day the young patrician seemed to shine with gold, silver and precious gems. The troopers that followed him were less gorgeous, but they were well equipped. There was no complete uniformity, but they were all much alike: heavily armoured men on heavily armoured horses. Wherever one looked, there was mail, scale, hardened leather and, in each right hand, a long spear, a kontos. They made an impressive sight, silent apart from the ring of their horses' hooves and the jingle of armour, bridle and bit, red pennants nodding above the Equites Primi Catafractarii Parthi, green above the Equites Tertii Catafractarii Palmirenorum. These were elite heavy cavalry – shock troops; regular units of tough, disciplined professionals. These men knew their own worth and expected to be treated accordingly.
Rank after rank they came out of the gate. As the last rank cleared the fortifications, the ritual shout went up: 'We will do what is ordered, and at every command we will be ready.' There was a perfunctory sullenness to the cry. It could be that they had caught the distaste of their commander Acilius Glabrio for serving under a barbarian Dux, but Ballista suspected it was more to do with the reduced numbers of each unit. They had numbered four hundred each; now, they were down to three hundred. Ballista had taken a hundred men from each unit to form a new one, his guard of Equites Singulares, under the command of the Danubian Mucapor.
A fresh round of trumpet calls, and the tramp of marching feet. Lucius Domitius Aurelian, Commander of the Infantry in the army of the Dux Ripae, marched out from under the great gate. Ostentatiously, he was equipped in the worn mail and leather of his men and, like them, he was on foot. First at his back were the men of Legio III Felix. It was a splendid sounding title, but it could not hide that this was a scratch unit of only a thousand men, made up of drafts from the long-established legions III Gallica and IV Flavia Felix. Still, while the unit might be new, the men, in the main, were veterans, and a vexillatio of a thousand men from Legio IIII Scythica would join the army when it reached the Euphrates. At the heart of the force would be two thousand of the best heavy infantry in the world, the feared legionaries of Rome.