As for Odenathus, he not only knew what he was about, nature was aiding him too. The moon, like some radical democrat in old Athens, wanted everything out in the open and treated all the same. It was bright as day but without the colours. The world was snow-blue or black. Anything that did not stay in the shadows was visible for miles.
As if the gods wanted to reiterate the point, a fox came out from behind one of the furthermost tombs. Ballista watched it cross the road. Its high ears and low body were strangely one-dimensional; its shadow had an unreal depth. But tricks of the moonlight aside, it was easy to see.
A single fox at a couple of hundred yards – what price five hundred men at twice the distance? This was hopeless. If pressed home, suicidal.
Ballista walked back to the postern and kicked it to signal that the operation should get under way.
The Palmyra Gate had not been oiled. The shriek of its hinges rushed away across the plain. Not all the torches had been extinguished. The Praetorians were orange-tinged silhouettes as they emerged. The gate shrieked shut behind them. The soldiers jingled and thumped into their new formation.
As if Odenathus did not know we were coming anyway, Ballista thought. Calgacus at his side, he took his place with Jucundus at the head of the column. Ballista ordered the standard bearer Gratius to signal the advance. Best get it over.
In the forsaken, luminous light, their shadows went on far ahead. The shadows ran on as if the men's souls had already left and were flitting away, searching for some fissure to slide down to Hades.
Ballista could hear nothing over the heavy tramp of boots and the higher notes of harness and weapons, like ten thousand bone dice clinking together. He could see no movement from the nearer picket fires. Even if not forewarned, the Palmyrenes must have heard or seen them coming. He knew they were walking into an ambush.
They were clear of the last of the necropolis. The land opened up all around, flat and deadly. Two hundred yards to go. No movement by the fires. Come on, come on. Get on with it. One hundred and fifty. They were within bowshot. In the darkness beyond the fires, the Palmyrene archers would be notching arrows, waiting for them to walk into a good, effective range – the range where the tip of an arrow can punch through the best steel armour and into the delicate flesh it covers.
Twang-slide-thump. From the wall behind them, loud in the night, the sound of an artillery piece. The lanterns were still shuttered in Calgacus's hands. Twang-slide-thump: the sound of another. Now there could be no question of surprise.
'Halt!' Even as Ballista's voice faded, a trumpet called from beyond the fires. Seconds later, no one in the column could help but duck as they heard the whoosh of arrows.
There was only one scream. The first flight had almost all fallen short.
'About turn. Quick march.' The Praetorians jostled to obey.
Again the horrible sound of unseen arrows. Again just a solitary yell of pain. The second volley had also been misjudged.
Ballista looked over his shoulder. He saw his own shadow, elongated into the distance. It was the moonlight. In the uncanny light, distances were hard to judge.
A terrible, huge, tearing sound. Screams behind them. Castricius had decided the time had come for his artillery to use missiles. All along the wall, from tower to tower, echoed the sounds of torsion artillery. They were shooting virtually blind into the night; aiming roughly at the picket fires. Yet it should be enough to deter any close pursuit.
'Run!' Ballista shouted.
The gate banged shut behind them. The orange torchlight could not have been more welcoming. They had not returned unscathed. The ever-efficient Jucundus reckoned ten men missing. It could have all been so very much worse.
The palace of Emesa, like that of Minos, was a maze. Of course, the Emesene priest-kings had had over three centuries to add architectural complexity. There had been a Sampsigeramus waiting all those years earlier when Pompey the Great had first led Roman arms into Syria.
Even if they had just been given instructions, it would be doubtful if Ballista, Castricius and Jucundus would have found their way to this secluded courtyard on their own. The morning after the failed raid, this had not been put to the test. Summoned in haste, they had arrived at the main gate and had been taken in charge by no less than sixteen of the Emesene royal guard. As Jucundus had muttered, the odds were worse than five to one.
Since the time of the first emperor, the Praetorians had been among the few who were allowed to be armed in the imperial presence. The more recent post of Prefect of Cavalry was one of the others. None of this held any longer at the court of Quietus. The Emesene guards had brusquely disarmed and thoroughly searched Ballista and the other two. Their weapons and armour were piled negligently against the wall. The easterners, uncaring of their wounded foreign dignitas, had hustled them like condemned prisoners through the myriad corridors of the palace.
Like the palace of Minos, at the heart of the maze was something unpleasant. Quietus at first completely ignored the new arrivals. The emperor was dressed in eastern fashion: long, flowing robes, a jewelled dagger in his sash. Arm in arm with Sampsigeramus, he wandered here and there across the courtyard. Quietus inspected things, issued commands and reproofs, even the occasional word of encouragement.
The open space was a hive of activity. At one end, slaves were laying out a huge array of precious things: paintings, sculptures, dinner services in gold, silver and electrum, intricate carpets and curtains, silken garments. Quietus studied them closely, head on one side, rearranging his hair with one finger. Sometimes he ordered an item removed and another brought out in its place. Opposite all this, other slaves were building an elaborate pyre, surely too close to the wall; with the amount of scented oils being poured, it would burn with an all-consuming ferocity.
Ballista had seen nothing like it before, but it was all oddly familiar.
There was an awning strung over the whole courtyard. It was torn near the centre and let in a column of clean light. The slaves walked tentatively around it, as if it were solid. The emperor and his friend avoided it as if it could hurt.
Despite the shade, it was hot. Soon Quietus and his delicate eastern priest-king needed a rest. At a word, work was suspended. A couch was brought out and they reclined between the mountain of luxuries and the half-built pyre. They sipped drinks chilled with the snow of Mount Libanus.
Ballista stood rigid. Castricius and Jucundus did the same. They were unarmed, ringed by guards, prey to justified fears. Quietus's words at their last meeting ran round and round in Ballista's thoughts: by dawn, the Lion of the Sun would be dead, or others would suffer. The northerner pictured the senator Astyrius in the gloom of the temple; his headless trunk in the pooling blood. Rather that happen to himself, here and now in this sweltering courtyard, than any harm come to his boys. Let this be over. It was the waiting that always threatened to unman you. Calm, calm. In a way, what was life but one long wait for the final, horrible thing?
At long last, Quietus waved a long-sleeved arm to summon them over. They got up from proskynesis. The sand of the yard had been watered to keep the dust down. It fell in crumbling lumps from the front of their tunics.
Quietus gestured, palm limply up, at a painting. Ballista recognized it as the one from the consilium in the palace at Antioch: The Wedding of Alexander by Aetion.
'What do you think it means?' Quietus asked.
The three officers may have had views, but they kept quiet.
'My dear Sampsigeramus thinks it shows how love and sex can make even the most warlike men, such as the great conqueror, forget the battlefield and soften their bellicose natures.'
Quietus gently ran his hand through Sampsigeramus's hair. 'My dear boy is too trusting. Look what those cupids are doing. Some of them distract Alexander by pulling the clothes off Roxanne. The others drag away his weapons out of reach. All the while, two men stand behind him, another peers around the door. Treachery – it is nothing but an allegory of treachery.'