Ballista pulled his horse to the side of the road and waved the column on, calling out to Turpio that he would catch up in a short while. The men passed at a walk. Nine days on the road had shaken the unit down to some extent. The men seemed a little bit more disciplined and quite a lot happier. Even the civilian baggage train, thirty pack horses and their drivers and the fifteen men of his staff, was no longer the atrocious sight it had been on leaving Antioch.
It had been an easy march, never more than twenty miles in a day, billets in a town or village at almost every stop, only once camping beneath the stars. An easy march, but it had done them some good.
Ballista watched the men as they passed. How strong was their commitment to Rome? The cohors was a unit of the regular Roman army, but its men had been recruited from Palmyra, at once a client kingdom and a part of the Roman province of Syria Coele. Their first language was Aramaic; for those that had a second it was Greek. Their Latin was limited to army commands and obscenities. Their helmets, armour, shields and swords were Roman army issue but their combined bowcases and quivers were of an eastern design, and highly personalized. Eastern ornaments swung and clashed on the tack of their horses and their own belts and striped and brightly coloured baggy trousers beneath the Roman armour pointed to the men's eastern origins.
How would this affect his mission in the east? He had always been told that Syrians lacked the courage for a fight, and the fall of the well-fortified cities of Seleuceia and Antioch seemed to bear this out. Yet generations of being told that they were cowards may have had an effect. Possibly the cliche shaped reality rather than reflecting it. And what about the client kings of Emesa and Palmyra? Would they feel Roman enough to give Ballista the troops he had been ordered to ask for?
The looming, uneasy task of asking for troops set Ballista's thoughts back down familiar paths. Why had he not been given Roman troops to bring to the east? Anyone could see that the two units in Arete were hopelessly inadequate for the task ahead. Why had he, who had no experience of the east, been chosen to defend these remote outposts against attack?
From human worries to supernatural was an easy step for one raised in the forests and fens of northern Germania. Why had the daemon of the big man sought him out again? Ballista had been free of him this last couple of years. No matter, he had faced the bastard down many times, once when Maximinus was alive and many times since Ballista had killed him. The omen of the ravens was different. It was much worse. No mortal could win against the Hooded One, the One-Eyed, Woden the Allfather.,
To shake such bad thoughts out of his mind, Ballista wheeled his grey gelding and set him to jump the ditch at the left-hand side of the road. The horse cleared it easily. With a rising yell not unlike his native barritus, Ballista pushed his mount into a wild gallop across the fields.
'Emesa is my kind of town,' thought Maximus. 'Get through the religion, and then it's time to plough the field.' He was not looking for any old field but a new and exotic one, with any luck, the daughter of one of the local nobles. In any event, a virgin, and a complete stranger.
It was the custom in these parts that every girl had to go up to the temple once before her marriage. There, the majority of the girls, a band of plaited string tied round their head, would sit in the sacred precinct. There, each had to wait until one of the men strolling the marked walkways threw a silver coin in her lap. Then she would go outside with him, no matter who he was, rich or poor, handsome or hideous, and let him take her virginity.
Sure, it must be tough for some of the girls (the really ill-favoured must be out there in all weathers for years) but, overall, it seemed an excellent idea to Maximus. The going outside slightly puzzled him. Surely they were already outside? Did it mean you had to hire a nearby room? Or were you talking about up against a wall in a backstreet? He had never been totally happy with that sort of thing since that unfortunate incident in Massilia.
However, that was not what had really caught his imagination. Although they could not escape the demands of their gods, the daughters of the nobility could not mix with the daughters of swineherds (actually, probably not swineherds, as these people seemed not to eat pork). They might all be forced to have sex with strangers, but certain social barriers had to be maintained. Surrounded by servants, the rich girls were driven to the temple in closed carriages. And, in those, they waited. Maximus savoured the thought.
He was even quite looking forward to the religious ceremonies. They were said to put on a good show, these Syrians – Phoenicians, Assyrians, whatever they were. If truth be told, it was rather hard to tell what the inhabitants of the city of Emesa were. Anyway, whatever they were, they were known for the elaborate ceremonies in which they worshipped their sun god, Elagabalus.
It took place just before dawn. The audience was stationed according to rank in a semicircle around an altar, each person holding a lit torch. They began to chant, and Sampsigeramus, the King of Emesa and Priest of Elagabalus, came into view. A band of flutes and pipes struck up and Sampsigeramus began to dance around the altar. He wore a floor-length tunic, trousers and slippers, all in purple and decorated with jewels, a tall tiara and a multitude of necklaces and bangles. Others joined him in the dance, twisting and turning, crouching and leaping. The music reached a crescendo and they stopped, each striking an attitude. The audience applauded, Ballista's entourage politely, the majority rather more enthusiastically.
The lowing of cattle indicated the next stage. A large number of bullocks and sheep were driven into the semicircle. The delicate-looking priest-king delegated the killing of the first two animals but inspected the entrails himself, lifting the steaming coils in his hands. They were auspicious; Elagabalus was happy.
The ceremony ended as the first rays of sun appeared over the temple. Splendid, a bit lacking in monkeys, snakes, and severed genitals, but splendid, and now that it's over… Maximus's thoughts were interrupted when Ballista motioned for his entourage to follow him into the temple. Inside, there was a large golden eagle, a snake writhing in its beak. But what dominated the scene was the dark, massive bulk of the conical stone that was Elagabalus. In the candlelight, the enigmatic markings on its smooth black surface seemed to move.
The diminutive priest-king Sampsigeramus spoke to Ballista, and the northerner turned to his men.
'The god wishes to favour me with a private audience.' His voice was neutral. 'Demetrius and Calgacus, you had better wait. Mamurra, Turpio, Maximus, you are free to do what you want.' The doors of the temple shut behind him.
Maximus wondered where to start. Presumably, the whole temple complex counted as a sacred precinct. Where were the girls?
With Mamurra following, he started by looking in the street outside the main gate. There were a few carriages, but people of both sexes were getting into them and driving off. Obviously they did not contain waiting virgins. He extended his search to the streets bordering the sacred precinct. Still no luck. Then, Mamurra still in tow, he cross-quartered the grove of conifers. Finally he searched in the courtyard behind the temple.