Waving for the others to follow, Ballista pointed Pale Horse up the ravine away from the river. At the head of the line he kept them to a steady canter.
They had not gone far when they heard the shouts. Far up above them to the left, torches flared. A trumpet shrilled. Mounted Sassanid warriors were moving along the ledge, following in their tracks. Ballista felt absurdly depressed. Somehow he had hoped to be able to sneak away unnoticed like thieves in the night. Allfather, he prayed, Deep Hood, High One, Fulfiller of Desire, let their horses refuse the dreadful drop, let the courage of their riders fail them. He had little hope that the prayer would be answered. He moved to hoping that their own horses had so dislodged the surface of the ramp that it would give way and betray the Persians to share the bloody fate of Felix.
As the sounds of the pursuing enemy swelled, Ballista mastered the urge to kick his mount into a gallop. He could feel the thoughts of all those behind him willing him to increase the pace. He ignored them. It would not do. He remembered the rough going from his chase of the onager. He forced himself to keep Pale Horse at a steady canter, letting the gelding pick his own way.
Soon the bend of the ravine hid them from their pursuers. The heat of the previous day still hung heavy in the depths. Ballista rode through clouds of gnats. They got in his eyes and mouth.
Ballista approached the fork in the ravine. Before steering Pale Horse into the narrow turning to the right-hand passage, he looked behind. Bathshiba and Calgacus were close. He could not see Maximus. He had not heard a horse fall. There had been no commotion. He was surprised but not unduly worried. He cantered on. The path was beginning to rise more sharply.
Maximus had enjoyed the descent of the ramp. He prided himself on having known from the start what Ballista intended. As soon as they had seen the landslip on the day they killed the lion, Maximus had known that one day they would try to ride down it. Admittedly, he had not thought it would be in the dead of night fleeing the sack of the town. But that just added spice to the adventure.
When he heard the sounds of pursuit Maximus twisted in his saddle and looked back down the column. Everything seemed fine. But he noticed Bagoas pull his horse to the side and let others begin to pass him. Maximus did the same. Gradually he dropped back down the column. By the time they entered the right-hand fork of the ravine, there were just three riders behind Maximus. When the passage opened up again, he pulled his horse against the rock wall and waved the guardsman Titus and Turpio past.
Maximus sat still. There was no sign of the Persian boy. Maximus wheeled his horse and, drawing his sword, set off back the way that he had come. So that is your game, you treacherous little bastard. Sit at the fork and direct them after us. Well, you will be in Hades before that happens, you little fucker. He kicked on, stones rattling out from under the hooves of his horse.
Sure enough, there at the fork Bagoas sat motionless on his horse. Maximus pushed his mount faster. The Persian boy saw Maximus coming, saw the blade in his hand. He threw up his hands, palms forward.
'No, please no. Please do not kill me.'
Without a word Maximus came on.
'No, please, you do not understand. I am not going to betray you. I am trying to save you. I will point them down the wrong turning.'
Maximus reined in savagely, his horse almost back on its hocks. He reached across and grabbed the boy's long hair. He half pulled him out of the saddle. The Hibernian's sword flashed and found the boy's throat. The tip of the blade just broke the skin. A trickle of blood, very black in the moonlight, ran down the gleaming steel.
'And why should I believe you?' Bagoas looked into Maximus's pale-blue, terribly blank eyes. He could not speak. The noise of the pursuit echoed up the ravine. With the sounds bouncing off the rock walls, it was impossible to tell how far away the pursuers were. 'Come on, we haven't got all night.'
Bagoas swallowed hard. 'Ballista and you are not the only men who have honour. You saved my life when the legionaries attacked me. Now I will repay that debt.'
For a long, long time neither spoke. The sword remained at Bagoas's throat. The staring blue eyes gave nothing away. The sounds of the pursuit were getting louder.
The sword was gone. Maximus was carefully wiping it on a rag at his belt. He sheathed it. He smiled. 'Until the next time, boy.' Maximus spun his horse round and kicked on back the way that he had come, up the right-hand branch of the ravine after the others.
High on the hills, Ballista sat on Pale Horse and looked down at the burning city. The south wind was picking up. It pulled long streamers of fire into the night sky. Now and then dense clouds of sparks like an erupting volcano rose up as a building collapsed. The dying city was at least a mile and a half away. No sounds reached Ballista. He was glad of that.
All our efforts and it has come to this, he thought. Is it my fault? Did I concentrate so much on the Sassanid siege works that I did not pay enough attention to the possibility of treachery? If I had thought properly about the Christians, would clues have been there; would I have seen them?
Another large building fell and a whirl of sparks rose up. The undersides of the racing clouds were tinged pink. An ugly, unwanted thought rose like a big pike with a mouth full of sharp teeth to the surface of Ballista's mind: this was meant to happen. This is why I was sent, not Bonitus or Celsus. This is why I was given no additional troops. This is why the kings of Emesa and Palmyra felt able to refuse my requests for troops. There never was any hope of relief. The emperors already knew that the two field armies would be needed elsewhere this campaigning season; that one would go to the Danube with Gallienus to face the Carpi, and one with Valerian to deal with the Goths in Asia Minor. Arete was always expected to fall. The town, its garrison, its commander were expendable. We were to be sacrificed to buy time.
Ballista found that he was laughing. In a sense he had succeeded. The city had fallen, but he had bought the Roman imperium some time. At the cost of so much suffering, of so many lives, so many thousands of lives, he had bought the Roman imperium some time. The emperors should welcome him like a returning hero. Of course, that would not happen. They had wanted a dead hero, not a living witness to their heartless betrayal of the city of Arete. They had wanted their expendable barbarian Dux Ripae dead sword in hand in the smoke-blackened ruins of the town, not staggering back into the imperial court reeking of failure and treachery. Ballista would be an embarrassment. He would be blamed, made the scapegoat, his reputation left in tatters.
One day, he vowed, this imperium will regret all the things it has done.
The city was still burning. Ballista had seen all he wanted to see.
Turning in the saddle, Ballista looked back down the line. All those he cared about were there: Calgacus, Maximus, Demetrius. And there was Bathshiba. Other thoughts came into his mind – the hooded figure of the big man, Mamurra entombed in the dark beneath the walls. He pushed them away. He looked back beyond the column. There was no sign of any pursuit. He gave the signal to move on.
At the rear of the line the last remaining frumentarius looked at the burning city of Arete. He wondered what report he would write to the emperors about all this. He took a last look at the fire in the east and kicked his horse to follow the others. He sneezed. And he wondered how this new journey would end. Appendix Historical Afterword Fire in the East is a novel, but I have taken care over the historical background. The following notes aim both to show where history has been 'played with' to fit the fiction and to provide further reading for those who would like to try to create their own interpretation of the reality.