It seemed like half the night, though it probably wasn’t that long, before I heard them walking back together. They shared a quiet joke in Slavic outside the tent, before the flap was opened wide and Priscus poked his head in. ‘Come out, Alaric,’ he said in Greek. ‘It’s time we had an honest word in private.’
Chapter 68
The moon was out once more from behind the clouds and its dim light shone over the quiet stillness of the plain where we’d set our camp. Priscus led me up a small hill and sat down on the grass. I sat beside him and refused the pill he offered — for what was to come in just a few hours, I needed my natural wits about me. Together, we looked for a while at the distant glow of the fires in the pass.
‘Rado’s plan is sound,’ he said abruptly. ‘That’s not to say it will work. But what he’s cobbled together to meet your strategic requirements is the best one for the circumstances. I suggested one change in a matter of detail — an important detail, I’ll grant — but you’ve no need to outrage the boy by asking me to take charge. Believe me that he’s the best man to do the job you’ve set him.’
I said nothing. My earlier panic was over and I now felt ashamed. I patted the short grass, and thought of the hills in Kent. There was nothing for me to say. Priscus had brought me here for him to do the talking. It was for me to listen.
‘Do you recall how, when I was banged up in that monastery, I wondered if I hadn’t been reserved for some final achievement?’
I nodded. ‘Something that would get you a better place in the histories than you were likely to get,’ I said.
He sniffed. ‘On second thoughts, I think the histories can look after themselves. But I did spend a lot of time in the attic you gave me, thinking about one last thing I could do with myself. The trick with the silver cup seemed exactly the thing. I heard about it on one of my night wanderings. That was a while after I’d discovered that Shahin was sniffing about with Eunapius and Nicetas. I approached the old loons who had it and told them I had a commission from Heraclius himself. I got the box made, covered it with lies and got word to Shahin about its wondrous qualities. After that, it was largely a matter of letting events unfold without further intervention. I stole the cup and dumped it with you when something you don’t need to know about went wrong. It was somewhat ungrateful of me. But, so long as you keep telling yourself that the end justifies the means, you can’t deny that everything went absolutely swimmingly. By the time he took sail with the thing, Shahin had no reason to believe other than that we were desperate to keep it out of Persian hands. I could hug myself, thinking that I’d saved the Home Provinces and sent the Persian elephant charging at Egypt instead.
‘Then it all began to unravel. I should have expected you’d work out part of the truth about the box. I was hoping Eunapius didn’t know quite as much as he did. When you left earlier than I expected, I had to come after you and stop you from interfering with Shahin.
‘But you got here faster than I ever expected. By the time I’d realised that, of course, the box and its contents had been made largely irrelevant by some turn of the Royal Mind in Ctesiphon. So I decided to take out Chosroes. But he was too well guarded, even for me. I suffered the humiliation of learning from useless bloody Theodore that you’d nearly got there instead — and that you would have got there but for his own insane jealousy for the girl, or the boy, or whatever he had fixed in his diseased mind.’
Priscus stopped. ‘Something I can’t work out is why you let me think you hadn’t got the real secret of the box. Did you want me to come after you?’
I smiled. ‘Would you have let me come out here if you’d known the truth?’ I asked. ‘Even without the invasion, there was a chance I’d fall into Persian hands. Could you risk that I’d talk under torture? You let me go because, if I were taken, you thought I’d only reinforce belief in the magic cup and its true message of our strength in the Home Provinces. In the end, I suppose you followed me anyway, to see what would happen.’
‘Would you believe I followed you in case you needed to be saved?’ he asked. ‘You and somebody else?’ That thought hadn’t crossed my mind. I fell silent again.
‘I can’t recall how many times in the past I used the phrase “We stand or fall together”,’ he continued. ‘Too often, you took it as ironic. Perhaps it often was. I mostly uttered the phrase before or after trying to stitch you up. The Empire needs a genius to defend it and a genius to make it worth defending. It doesn’t matter who’s the Emperor, so long as those two are agreed on what needs to be done. You are the reformer — sound money, low taxes, honest government, quiet toleration of religious and other differences. I can’t be the defender. But I do ask you to look after young Rado. When he first tried to make me get up in the morning and wash, I saw he had unusual qualities. He’s shown these pretty well in the past few days. If he survives this battle, take him back to Constantinople. Get him into the Military Academy. Make Heraclius promote him as illegally as he promoted you. Give him five or six years of carving up the Lombards. Then turn him loose again on the Persians. He’ll astonish the world.’
I pursed my lips. ‘That depends on my standing with Heraclius,’ I said.
Priscus sniffed again. ‘There’s no doubt of that, dear boy. Before I left, he’d renamed a square after you and announced your marriage to his niece. He’s extended your land law to every province not under occupation and declared non-compliance punishable as high treason. He’s even sent an army to your assistance, such as that may be. It might be here within another ten days. Win tomorrow and you’ll go home as quite the golden boy.’
‘And what of you, Priscus?’ I asked.
He stood up and looked harder at the continuing glow from the bonfires. ‘Oh, I’ll get my final achievement,’ he said. ‘General Rado’s idea was to concentrate most of his forces on the frontal assault. He did put some aside for a preliminary sideways attack — to cause panic and pull defenders away from the site of the main attack.’ He laughed. ‘Imagine digging a hot needle into a caterpillar’s side. It rears up and twists about. The problem with Rado’s original plan was that his needle wasn’t hot enough. He’s now agreed to group all the survivors of some Persian atrocity under my command. I’ll be leading them down into the pass. We’ll make it look as if we’re going for the True Cross. That should put Chosroes in a sweat.’
‘And how will you get men on horseback down the slopes?’ I asked.
He sniffed louder still. ‘Who mentioned horses, my dearest? We’re going down on foot.’
There was an obvious answer. I still asked the question. ‘How will you get out again?’
‘Dearest Alaric,’ he laughed, ‘you’ll just have to make a success of the frontal assault.’
I got up and stood beside Priscus. Together, we watched the glow from the pass. Every so often, there was a snatch of voices lifted in rapturous song and of wind instruments.
‘Do you remember how we first met?’ he asked.
‘It’s not something I’m likely to forget,’ I answered. ‘It was my second day in Constantinople. I was enjoying myself in a restaurant with Martin, when you walked in with half a dozen of your Black Officers. You clubbed someone to pulp while arresting him and finished him off in private when you discovered you’d got the wrong man. You arrested the pair of us and took us off to be tortured to death. It was a stroke of luck I’m still here.’
‘Oh, Alaric,’ he said, ‘I’ve always wished we could have got off to a better start. But who was it said “When error is irreparable, repentance is useless”?’
‘Thucydides,’ I said automatically.
‘Oh, such scholarship!’ he mocked. ‘And such a contrast to the battle speech you’ve taught to young Rado.’ He let his voice fall back. ‘Still, must be getting along. You won’t believe the work Rado and I have on our plates before dawn.’ He put his hand out. ‘Will you wish good luck to an old comrade?’