It was night when the transport reached Dubris, and the ship wallowed into port with the guidance of a lighthouse on the promontory above. When it had docked it had to be unloaded, a task that promised to take some time. Natalis stopped to wish me good health before going off to his house to rest, and I asked him to send Eukairios back to collect his things.
“You’re not afraid he’d run off?” Natalis asked, as Eukairios himself had done.
“He says it would be against his religion to do so,” I answered. “I am content to let him go.”
“Very well, very well. I’ll take him with me tonight, shall I, and send him off first thing tomorrow morning?”
“Thank you, my lord.” A wagon we were pulling out of the hold lurched, and one wheel slipped off the gangway. Its owners crowded round, trying to push it one way; Natalis’ sailors tried to drag it another; behind it, the tired horses waiting to get out began to whinny and kick. “Good health!” I called, leaving Natalis and hurrying to take charge.
“Good health!” the procurator called after me, and, as an afterthought, “You know your people are all camped at the parade ground?”
“Eukairios read me that letter,” I said, shooing my men away from the stuck wagon. “We can find it.”
The parade ground was not hard to find, but it was after midnight by the time we reached it. The wagons of the men who’d crossed before us were already in their concentric circles, but the fires were banked down and everyone was asleep. It was beginning to rain, a fine drizzle that made the ground soft. We were too tired to prepare a meal, and simply moved our own wagons into the outermost circle, saw to the horses, and went to bed.
I was tired, but I lay awake for a little while, listening to the rain splashing in the felt of the awning, and the sound of the horses tethered outside. I remembered lying listening to the rain with my Tirgatao, warm in her arms, holding her and not needing to say anything. The grief was like a black chasm, more unfathomable than the sea; I could no more understand or limit it than I could the deep waters. What would she have said if I’d suggested keeping a Roman slave in our wagon?
I got up, went out of the wagon and checked my horses unnecessarily, then went back in and slept like the dead.
I woke next morning late, muzzy-headed and stiff-legged, to find Arshak and Gatalas waiting outside ready to raise another mutiny. It was still raining.
“They won’t give us our weapons!” Arshak declared angrily as soon as I stumbled out of my wagon. “They swore we would have them in Britain, but now they say we must ride to a place called Eburacum. They don’t mean to return them to us at all!”
“Let me eat first,” I said.
Leimanos, the captain of my bodyguard, at once brought me a chunk of bread, then, with a grin and a flourish, presented me with a cup of milk. The milk was the result of letter-writing in Bononia: we hadn’t had any on the journey, and I’d tried to arrange for the loan of some cows during the few days we were in Dubris. But I doubted that the neighboring countryside had spared us more than a few beasts, and most of the men must have had to make do with the sour beer we’d been given on the journey. I guessed that when Leimanos had set this cup aside for me, the others had squabbled over the rest. Another thing to sort out. I sat down on the step of my wagon and began eating.
“Did you know?” asked Gatalas, angrily.
“Of course I didn’t,” I replied sharply. “I’ll join you in protesting-after I’ve eaten.”
“Protesting?” Arshak snapped. “What’s the point of ‘protesting’? We must do something to show them that they cannot tell us lies and escape. Gatalas and I have decided that we will not leave this city without our weapons. When you’ve finished eating, you can go and tell them that.”
“ I can go and tell them?” I snapped back, beginning to lose my temper. “Why only me? If you and Gatalas decided it, you and Gatalas can tell them so.”
There was an abrupt silence. I looked from one to another of my fellow commanders. Why only me? Because I was the Romanized one and compromised already. If I went alone, they could keep their own hands clean of ignoble bargaining, take the advantage, and leave the shame to me. “You perhaps think that my nature is better suited to dealing with Romans than yours?” I asked quietly. I half wanted to fight one of them just to prove myself a Sarmatian.
Arshak and Gatalas looked uncomfortable. “You’ve been able to deal with them successfully so far,” Arshak said.
“I am still a prince of the Iazyges,” I told him. “No less than you, Gatalas, or you, Arshak, for all your royal blood.”
“I don’t deny it,” said Arshak, embarrassed now. “But you went to Britain before the rest of us, and you met this legate, Priscus, and you were managing well with the procurator in Bononia. I thought, since you knew the men…”
“Haven’t you met this legate yourself now?”
“Briefly,” Gatalas answered for him. “We both met him briefly when we arrived.”
That “briefly” was probably to the good. I hadn’t told anyone what the Romans had planned to do with us, either what I’d overheard in Bononia or what I’d argued against in Dubris. It would have fed suspicions and inflamed resentment, and it was just as well there’d been no chance for the others to learn what I had. But I was not in the mood to be pleased about it. “Then why couldn’t you go to him yourselves and tell him what you’d decided?” I demanded bitterly. “Why sit about like a couple of eagles with ruffled feathers, too grand to complain, waiting for me? And then, the moment I arrive, sending me to deal with them as though I were your message boy!”
“I am sorry, Ariantes,” Arshak said-rare words for any Sarmatian prince to use, and rarer still in his mouth. “We were mistaken, Gatalas and I. We will all go and see this legate together.”
At this I was ashamed of myself. The bread choked me, and I tossed it aside. “My brothers,” I said, speaking now with the urgency of what I felt, “don’t you and the Romans conspire to make a Roman of me. I have tried to deal with them on their own terms, it’s true, but it’s only because they won’t listen to me otherwise, and we must make our voice heard. But you know what they say: di vide et impera. ” (And I said the words in the language to which they belonged.) “I know perfectly well that they think I’m the man they can use, the reasonable one, and they’ll make a tool of me if they can. Don’t help them by pushing all the reasoning, and all the bargaining, onto me.”
Arshak stepped over to me and offered me his hand. “We will stand by you,” he promised solemnly. Gatalas nodded and followed him.
I stood and took both hands in my own. The fear that had twisted in the back of my mind was out in the open now, and it was an immense relief to throw it off, and stand joined with my brother princes. “Thank you,” I told them. “We’ll all go and see the legate, then. But, Arshak, I think you should change your coat first.”
He frowned. He took great pride in his coat, and was wearing it that day tossed loose over his shoulders and pinned. The scalps had been stitched on in a kind of pattern, with the lighter-colored ones making a stripe down the back and each arm, and the body in shades of black: the red wool of the coat’s fabric showed only at the cuffs. (I’d watched him carefully working out where he’d put Facilis’ scalp, if the gods were kind, and which others he’d move to make space for it.)
“We want to ask the legate to give us our weapons back,” I said, when he was silent. “It’s not a good move to start by reminding him how many Romans we’ve killed with them.”
Arshak sighed. “Very well! I’ll wear the other one. But I’d thought we would demand our weapons back, not ask for them.”
I hesitated. “Do you want my advice?”
“You know more about the legate than we do.”
“Then we should ask first, and ask softly, before we demand. My impression of the legate is that he’s a proud man and a hard one, and doesn’t like to be corrected: if we demand, he may say no, simply to prove to us that he won’t be dictated to. Then if we refused to leave the city weaponless, even if he had to back down now, for lack of troops to put down a mutiny, he’d punish us later. He doesn’t like or trust us, and he’s accepted Facilis into his legion to advise him about us.”