What I’d do if I ever got out alive! Looked at realistically, it was all up for me. I’d gambled and I’d lost. The question was should I make a deliberately futile gesture and get my throat cut? It would be an easier way out than Chosroes was doubtless considering. Or should I try insisting that the boys were strangers and that the plot was wholly mine and Theodore’s? I didn’t think he’d believe that — two Western barbarians whose working language was Latin: I might as well have claimed black was white. But it seemed wrong of me to take the easy way out and leave two boys who’d risked everything for my sake to carry the main punishment.
Rado was beating out a more complex rhythm and the dance was reaching its climax. Chosroes already had both hands inside his robe, and was fondling himself. He didn’t risk penetrative sex nowadays, I knew — not since one of his wives had tried to do for him with a toxic pessary. But he might contain himself till he’d walked round and round Eboric, poking and fondling as the mood took him.
Slowly, now darting forward, now back, not seeming to notice who I was, Eboric came closer. I could feel a slight tremor in the sword still held against my throat and could hear a change in the guard’s breathing. The boy raised his arms and lowered them, and the iron bracelets he had on each arm moved up and down the gold of his skin. He stretched out his arms in a gesture of endlessly wanton enticement.
Chosroes waved his own sword at me. ‘Go and stand against that wall, Alaric,’ he said evenly. ‘Stretch out your arms as if you were already on a cross. Try not to move.’ To the guard: ‘Go and dance with the boy,’ he said. ‘Keep hold of the sword. Disembowel the boy if Alaric moves so much as an inch.’ He looked at me and twisted his face into a snarling and triumphant smile. ‘Your plot is discovered, Alaric,’ he cried. ‘Whatever you and these boys had planned won’t happen now. When this dance is over, you’re going down that ladder bound hand and foot. We’ll see how much of your democratic manner is left this time tomorrow!’ He lay back against a mound of cushions and pulled at his clothes until his scab-covered belly and crotch were exposed. He clenched both fists and arched his back. He looked again at me and let out a high giggle. ‘You just stand there, Alaric, and watch me bring myself off without hands. I may see how well you can do it tomorrow — without hands!’ He pointed at the guard. ‘Dance with the boy, I command!’ he giggled.
Drawn sword in hand, the guard lurched forward at Eboric and was left clutching at air. He spun round and tried again. Once more, Eboric shifted position almost without seeming to move. On his third attempt, the guard laid hold of the boy’s left shoulder. He pulled him forward into a rough embrace. The drumbeat was rising to its fluttering climax. Chosroes steadied his voice. ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ he said. ‘When I sit up, ‘I want you to bring the boy forward and cut his throat. I want his blood splashing over me when I go off. Do you understand?’
Grunting over his throbbing stiffy, the power-crazed bastard had overreached himself. I could see this with the chilly calm that sometimes comes with despair. It was as if I’d stepped from the jostling crowds and the heat of the Triumphal Way into the entrance hall of my own palace. I knew what had to be done and I was free to act. Eboric was effectively dead. I was twelve feet away from Chosroes. I could break his neck before the guard could try to stop me, and before he could squirm to safety. So what if Chosroes ran me through first? I was only choosing a quick death over a slow one. More to the point, unless he got something vital, I’d have enough strength left in me to see to him. Eboric would be dead whatever happened. Rado would have the chance to make a run for it, or die fighting. What I’d had in mind earlier involved my own escape. Well, that was now out of the question. But I could still do the rest of the world a favour.
The guard held Eboric tighter and moved him slowly towards Chosroes, whose eyes flickered between me and the approaching treat. It was a matter of choosing the right moment. I needed to go for Chosroes when his normal reflexes were at their slowest. Carefully, I tensed every muscle. I watched for him to open his mouth to let out a groan of ecstasy.
Because I was too busy watching Chosroes, I missed the absolute precision of what Eboric did next. I saw from just inside my field of vision how he twisted round to face the guard and how he kissed him on the lips. I saw how he raised both arms aloft and flicked both iron bracelets to his wrists. I saw only in part how he smashed both bracelets at once against the guard’s temples. I did clearly see the creature go down like something stunned in a pagan sacrifice. Still more clearly, I saw Eboric take up the dead man’s sword and make a dash at Chosroes.
‘No!’ I shouted. I threw myself forward, grabbing the boy just in time. Even so, his oddly powerful momentum nearly carried the pair of us into the killing zone. I rolled on top of him and pulled him on top of me. We ended with the sword pressed between us. In all this, I’d barely heard the click of machinery as Chosroes tipped the hidden lever and then the deafening crash of his safety cage.
Every tyrant needs one, you see — and Chosroes had everything a tyrant needed. I’d never seen it in action in Ctesiphon. No one I’d spoken to ever mentioned it. Perhaps no one had seen it work and been left alive to warn of its existence. But I’d sat night after night with him, working out the function of the red square drawn on the floor and of the irregular contours in the coffered ceiling above where the Great King always sat when strangers were present, or those some turn of his frenzied imagination had given him cause to suspect of treason. I’ve said this room was a scaled-down copy of its counterpart back home. It was unthinkable its designers had left off the dual layer cage of bronze bars, eight foot by eight, that would in emergencies seal off the Great King from so much as a lucky bowshot. I’d now seen it do its work. Spikes on its underside had nailed it immovably to the floor. One of the projecting steel blades was barely an inch from my nose. Even after the reverberant crash was over, the whole of the raised palace continued pitching and swaying from the transfer of weight.
I let Eboric finish his orgasm dance. Then I lifted him, sobbing and twitching, out of harm’s way. I sat up and took the sword. There was no one left to kill for the moment. But the guards down in the pass would need to be drunk not to have noticed the fall of the safety cage.
‘You’ve failed again, Alaric!’ came the snarling cry from behind the tight bronze strands of the cage. ‘You’ll never touch me now.’ There was a double lamp hanging from the ceiling behind the cage. By the light of this, I could see the bowed shape of Chosroes shuffling about.
I looked at Urvaksha. He hadn’t been so lucky as his master. One of the fins had sliced him in half from right shoulder to left hip. The palace had settled into a slight tilt and I watched his dark blood run towards the far end of the room, where Theodore had gone still and quiet.
I turned away. ‘Get dressed!’ I ordered the boys. ‘There’s no time to lose.’ I think a couple of the support poles now gave way together. It was like standing in the belly of a ship that’s just hit something. I staggered to keep my balance. That isn’t easily done when standing upright in relation to everything round you means you’re off vertical by about twenty degrees. I gave up brandishing the sword and put it to use as a walking stick.
Rado brought forward one of the elaborate silk jackets in which they must have got past the guards. A dreamy smile on his face, Eboric stared at it. I kicked him in the chest. ‘Come on,’ I hissed. ‘He’ll get away and they’ll burn us alive in this thing.’