'So warriors are well thought of by Mazda?' Maximus, who had been sitting quietly with his eyes shut, giving every impression of being unconscious with his hangover, took up the questioning.
'Know that the Aryans are one body. The priests are the head, the warriors are the hands, the farmers are the belly, and the artisans the feet. When the unbelievers threaten the bahram fires, the warrior who does not do battle and who flees is margazan. He who does battle and is killed is blessed.'
'Margazan?'
'One who commits a sin for which he deserves death.'
'Blessed?'
'One who goes straight to the first of the heavens.'
It was five nights later, the very last night of the cruise, the middle of the night, maybe about the third watch. Ballista lay on his back. He did not move. His heart was beating fast, and he was sweating heavily. There again was the noise by the door. Already knowing what he would see, he forced himself to look. The small clay lamp was slowly going out, but it still shed enough light to illuminate the tiny cabin.
The man was huge, both tall and broad. He was wearing a shabby dark-red caracallus. The hood of the cloak was pulled up, and its tip touched the ceiling. He stood at the end of the bed without a word. His face was pale even in the shadow of the hood. His grey eyes shone malevolent and contemptuous.
'Speak,' commanded Ballista, although he knew what would be said.
In Latin, with an accent from the Danube, the man said, 'I will see you again at Aquileia.'
Gathering his courage, as he had many times before, Ballista said, 'I will see you then.'
The man turned and left and, after a long, long time, Ballista fell asleep.
Ballista woke to the rocking motion and the mingled smells of wood, tallow and pitch: he was safe in his small, snug cabin aboard the Concordia, about to embark on the final day of crossing the open sea to the trireme's ultimate destination, the port of Seleuceia in Pieria. Without conscious thought he knew that the wind was westerly, on the beam of the Concordia as she sailed north up coast of Syria. Surfacing a little from sleep, he wondered if Priscus was keeping the ship far enough out to sea, giving her enough leeway to clear the promontory of Mount Cassios.
Suddenly all comfort left him. The vague disquiets at the back of his mind coalesced into an awful memory. Fuck. Ithought I had seen the last of him. The sheet under him felt damp, clammy with sweat. He began to pray: 'Allfather, One-Eyed, Worker of Evil, Terrible One, Hooded One, Fulfiller of Desire, Spear-Shaker, Wanderer.' He doubted that it would do much good.
After a while he got up. Still naked, he opened the door, stepped over the sleeping Calgacus, went up on deck, and pissed over the rail. The early morning air was cool on his skin. When he returned to the cabin Calgacus was putting out his breakfast, and Maximus was eating most of it.
There was no point in asking, but he had to. 'Calgacus?' The Caledonian turned. 'Did you see or hear anything last night?' The ill-favoured old man shook his head.
'Maximus?'
The bodyguard, his mouth full of bread and cheese, also shook his head. After washing the food down with a swig of Ballista's watered wine, he said, 'You look terrible. It is not the big fellow back again, is it?'
Ballista nodded. 'Neither of you mention this to anyone. Anyone at all. The staff are jumpy enough ever since that bastard sneezed when we were setting off. Think how they would feel if they knew that their commander, their barbarian commander, came complete with his own personal evil daemon?'
The other two nodded solemnly.
'It could be that the staff are jumpy because they know where we are going,' suggested Maximus with a smile. 'You know, the very high probability that we are all going to die.'
'I am unfit,' said Ballista. 'Maximus, get our kit out. We need to practise.'
'Wooden practice swords?'
'No, naked steel.'
Everything was ready. It was the fifth hour of the day, just under an hour from noon. Although it was late October, it was hot. Ballista had chosen late morning for the practice fight with various things in mind. It allowed him to show politeness to the acting trierarch by asking his permission to practise on the deck of his warship. The delay let the crew eat breakfast and carry out any essential tasks. Above all, it gave a chance for expectation to grow, maybe even for some bets to be placed.
Ballista laced up his helmet and looked around. All the marines, deckhands and Ballista's own staff, as well as those rowers who could get permission, sat lining the rails of the ship. The audience would be well-informed. Only the marines were trained swordsmen but all aboard were military personnel. Where there were soldiers there were gladiators, and where there were gladiators there were people who thought they knew about sword fighting. Ballista stepped forward into the cleared area. The light seemed much brighter here, the space around him wider, and the deck, which until now had seemed to tilt or move hardly at all, heeled and shifted alarmingly. The sun beat down, and he squinted as he looked around at the circle of expectant faces. A low murmur ran through the crowd.
Ballista carried out his usual ritual, gripping the dagger, the scabbard of his sword and the healing stone tied to it in turn. He wondered why he was fighting. Was it a calculated attempt to impress his men? Or a way of washing away the memory of the man, dead for nearly twenty years, who had visited him last night?
Maximus now stepped into the makeshift enclosure. The Hibernian was wearing the same kit as Ballista – helmet, mail shirt, shield – but the two were carrying different swords. Maximus favoured the gladius, the short, primarily thrusting sword, which had long fallen out of favour with the legions but was still used by many a type of gladiator, including the murmillo. Ballista used the longer spatha, known more as a cutting weapon.
After a few fancy passes with his gladius – inside and outside rounds, figures of eight around his head and so on – Maximus went into the low crouch typical of a shorter man armed with a thrusting sword. Ballista found that he was twirling his spatha in his hand. He hastily slipped on the leather wrist loop. He got into his ready stance: upright, feet apart, weight evenly distributed, side on, shield held well away from his body, eyes looking over his left shoulder, sword raised behind his right.
Maximus came on at a run. Knowing the Hibernian's impetuosity, Ballista half expected it. Their shields collided. Letting himself be pushed backwards, Ballista stepped away to the right with his rear foot and brought his leading left foot back behind his right, turning his body through 180 degrees. His opponent's own momentum drew him in – a perfectly executed Thessalian feint. As Maximus slid past, Ballista brought his sword over, palm down and taking most of the force out of the blow, stabbed the Hibernian's shoulder. He was rewarded with a loud chink as the point of the spatha struck mail shirt. Less agreeably, a moment later he felt and heard the impact of Maximus's gladius in his back.
The two men circled and began to spar with more circumspection. Maximus, busily darting, feinting, keeping his feet moving, was doing most of the attacking.
The only other person who knew about the big man was Julia. She had been raised an Epicurean and dismissed dreams and apparitions as tricks of the mind. They came when you were tired, when you were under physical and mental stress. Ballista had not felt good since the encounter with the Borani. The words of their chief had, to some extent, struck home. Half a lifetime in the imperium Romanum had changed Ballista, had led him to do things he would rather not have done – and first among them was the killing of the big man. Maybe Julia was right: it was not a daemon, it was just guilt. But still…