King of Kings Read online

  Dr Harry Sidebottom teaches classical history at the University of Oxford, where he is a Fellow of St Benet’s Hall and a lecturer at Lincoln College. He has an international reputation as a scholar, having published widely on ancient warfare, classical art and the cultural history of the Roman Empire. Originally from Newmarket in Suffolk, he now lives with his wife and two sons in Woodstock near Oxford.

  King of Kings follows top–five bestseller Fire in the East in the epic grand narrative Warrior of Rome – a story of empire, of heroes, of treachery, of courage, and, most of all, a story of brutal, bloody warfare.

  www.harrysidebottom.co.uk

  By the same author

  WARRIOR OF ROME: I

  Fire in the East

  PRAISE FOR THE BESTSELLING

  WARRIOR OF ROME SERIES

  ‘Sidebottom’s prose blazes with searing scholarship’

  THE TIMES

  ‘A well-constructed, well-paced and gripping account’

  TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

  ‘Harry Sidebottom’s epic tale starts with a chilling assassination and goes on, and up, from there’

  PROFESSOR MARY BEARD, CHAIR OF CLASSICS, UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

  ‘A gripping yarn interwoven with superb knowledge of the ancient world’

  PROFESSOR BRYAN WARD-PERKINS, FELLOW IN HISTORY, UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

  ‘Sidebottom captures perfectly the corruption, betrayals, and enmities of the Roman Empire’

  PROFESSOR DAVID KONSTAN, PROFESSOR OF CLASSICS, BROWN UNIVERSITY

  ‘Sidebottom has the touch of an exceptionally gifted storyteller’

  TIM SEVERIN, AUTHOR OF THE VIKING TRILOGY

  ‘The best sort of red-blooded historical fiction’

  ANDREW TAYLOR, AUTHOR OF THE AMERICAN BOY

  ‘At last a piece of historical fiction for grown-ups’

  ROBERT LOW, AUTHOR OF THE OATHSWORN NOVELS

  AD256 –

  The spectre of treachery hangs ominously over the Roman world. The sparks of Christian fervour have spread through the empire like wildfire, and the imperium is alive with the machinations of dangerous and powerful men.

  All the while, Sassanid forces press forward relentlessly along the eastern frontier, and the battle-bloodied general Ballista returns to the imperial court from the fallen city of Arete – only to find that there are those who would rather see him dead than alive.

  Ballista is soon caught in a sinister web of intrigue and religious fanaticism… his courage and loyalty will be put to the ultimate test in the service of Rome and the emperor.

  The warrior of Rome is back…

  Warrior of Rome

  PART II

  King of Kings

  DR HARRY SIDEBOTTOM

  MICHAEL JOSEPH

  an imprint of

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  MICHAEL JOSEPH

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  www.penguin.com

  First published 2009

  1

  Copyright © Dr Harry Sidebottom, 2009

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  All rights reserved

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978-0-14-194325-1

  With love to my mother, Frances,

  and memory of my father, Hugh Sidebottom

  Contents

  Maps

  The Outward Itineraries of Ballista

  The City of Ephesus

  The City of Antioch

  Prologue (Autumn AD256)

  Part I: Dux Ripae (Autumn AD256–Spring AD257)

  Part II: Vicarius Proconsularis (Summer AD258–Spring AD259)

  Part III: Comes Augusti (Spring AD260)

  Epilogue (Spring AD260)

  Appendix

  Historical Afterword

  Glossary

  List of Emperors in the First Half of the Third Century AD

  List of Characters

  ‘The other crag is lower – you will see Odysseus –

  though both lie side-by-side, an arrow-shot apart,

  Atop it a great fig-tree rises, shaggy with leaves,

  beneath it awsome Charybdis gulps the dark water down.’

  Homer, The Odyssey (12. 112–115. tr. R. Fagles)

  Prologue: The Syrian Desert between the Euphrates River and the city of Palmyra (Autumn AD256)

  They were riding for their lives. The first day in the desert they had pushed hard, but always within their horses’ limits. Completely alone, there had been no sign of pursuit. That evening in camp among the muted, tired conversations there had been a fragile mood of optimism. It was smashed beyond recall in the morning.

  As they crested a slight ridge Marcus Clodius Ballista, the Dux Ripae, pulled his horse to one side off the rough track and let the other thirteen riders and one pack horse pass. He looked back the way they had come. The sun was not up yet, but its beams were beginning to chase away the dark of the night. And there at the centre of the spreading semi-circle of numinous yellow light, just at the point where in a few moments the sun would break the horizon, was a column of dust.

  Ballista studied it intensely. The column was dense and isolated. It rose straight and tall, until a breeze in the upper air pulled it away to the south and dissipated it. In the flat, featureless desert it was always difficult to judge distances. Four or five miles away; too far to see what was causing it. But Ballista knew. It was a troop of men. Out here in the deep desert it had to be a troop of mounted men; on horses or camels, or both. Again, the distance was too great to make an accurate estimate of the numbers, but to kick up that amount of dust there had to be four or five times as many as rode with Ballista. That the column of dust did not incline to left or right but seemed to rise up completely straight showed that they were following. With a hollow feeling Ballista accepted it for what it was – the enemy was chasing them, a large body of Sassanid Persian cavalry was on their trail.

  Looking round, Ballista realized that those with him had stopped. Their attention was divided between him and the dust cloud. Ballista pushed them out of his thoughts. He scanned through 360 degrees. Open, slightly undulating desert. Sand with a thick scattering of small and sharp dun-coloured rocks. Enough to hide a myriad scorpions and snakes; nothing to hide a man, let alone fourteen riders and fifteen horses.

  Ballista turned and walked his mount to the two Arabs in the centre of the line.

  ‘Riding hard, how long will it take
to reach the mountains?’

  ‘Two days,’ the girl replied without hesitation. Bathshiba was the daughter of a caravan protector. She had travelled the route before with her late father. Ballista trusted her judgement, but he glanced at the other Arab.

  ‘Today and tomorrow,’ Haddudad the mercenary said.

  With a jingle of horse furniture Turpio, the sole Roman officer under Ballista surviving from the original force, reined in next to them.

  ‘Two days to the mountains?’ Ballista asked.

  Turpio shrugged eloquently. ‘The horses, the enemy and the gods willing.’

  Ballista nodded. He raised himself up using the front and rear horns of the saddle. He looked both ways along the line. He had his party’s undivided attention.

  ‘The reptiles are after us. There are a lot of them. But there is no reason to think they can catch us. They are five miles or more behind. Two days and we are safe in the mountains.’ Ballista felt as much as saw the unspoken objections of Turpio and the two Arabs. He stopped them with a cold glance. ‘Two days and we are safe,’ he repeated. He looked up and down the line. No one else said anything.

  With studied calm Ballista walked his horse slowly to the head of the line. He raised his hand and signalled them to ride on. They moved easily into a canter.

  Behind them the sun rose over the horizon. Every slight rise in the desert was gilded, every tiny depression a pool of inky black. As they rode, their shadows flickered far out in front as if in a futile attempt to outrun them.

  The small column had not gone far when a bad thing happened. There was a shout, abruptly cut off, then a terrible crash. Ballista swung round in the saddle. A trooper and his mount were down; a thrashing tangle of limbs and equipment. The man rolled to one side. The horse came to a halt. The soldier pulled himself on to his hands and knees, still holding his head. The horse tried to rise. It fell back with an almost human cry of pain. Its near foreleg was broken.

  Forcing himself not to check the dust cloud of their pursuers, Ballista rattled out some orders. He jumped down from his mount. As endurance was at issue it was vital to take the weight off his horse’s back at every opportunity. Maximus, the Hibernian slave who had been Ballista’s bodyguard for the last fifteen years, tenderly coaxed the horse to its feet. He talked to it softly in the language of his native island as he unsaddled it and led it off the path. It went with him trustingly, hopping pathetically on its three sound legs.

  Ballista turned his eyes away to where his body servant, Calgacus, was removing the load from the one packhorse. The elderly Caledonian had been enslaved by Ballista’s father. Since Ballista’s childhood in the northern forests, Calgacus had been at his side. Now, with a peevish expression on his ill-favoured face, the Caledonian redistributed as much of the provisions as he could among the riders. Muttering under his breath, he placed what could not be accommodated in a neat pile. He regarded it appraisingly for a moment then pulled up his tunic, pushed down his trousers, and urinated copiously all over the abandoned foodstuffs. ‘I hope the Sassanid fuckers enjoy it,’ he announced. Despite their extreme fatigue and fear, or maybe because of it, several men laughed.

  Maximus walked back looking clean and composed. He picked up the military saddle and slung it over the back of the packhorse, carefully tightening the girths.

  Ballista went over to the fallen trooper. He was sitting up. The slave boy Demetrius was mopping a cut on the man’s forehead. Ballista began to wonder if his young Greek secretary would have been so solicitous if the soldier had not been so good-looking, before, annoyed with himself, he closed that line of thought. Together, Ballista and Demetrius got the trooper back on his feet – Really, I am fine – then up on to the former packhorse.

  Ballista and the others remounted. This time he could not resist looking for the enemy dust. It was appreciably closer. Ballista made the signal and they moved out past where the cavalry horse lay. On top of the spreading pool of dark red arterial blood was a foam of light pink caused by the animal’s desperate attempts to breathe through a severed windpipe.

  For the most part they cantered, a fast, ground-covering canter. When the horses were blown, Ballista would call out an order and they would dismount, give their mounts a drink – not too much – and let them have a handful of food: bread soaked in watered wine. Then they would walk, leading rein in hand, until the horses had something of their wind back and the riders could climb wearily back into the saddle. With endless repetition the day wore on. They were travelling as fast as they could, pushing the horses to the edge of their stamina, at constant risk of fatigue-induced accident. Yet every time they looked, the dust of their unseen enemy was a little closer.

  During one of the spells on foot Bathshiba walked her horse up alongside Ballista. He was unsurprised when Haddudad appeared on his other side. The Arab mercenary’s face was inscrutable. Jealous bastard, thought Ballista.

  They walked in silence for a time. Ballista looked over at Bathshiba. There was dust in her long black hair, dust smudged across her high cheekbones. Out of the corner of his eye Ballista watched her moving, watched her breasts moving. They were obviously unconstrained under the man’s tunic she wore. He found himself thinking about the one time he had seen them; the rounded olive skin, the dark nipples. Allfather, I must be losing my grip, Ballista thought. We are being chased for our lives through this hellish desert and all I am thinking about are this girl’s tits. But Allfather, Fulfiller of Desire, what fine tits they were.

  ‘Sorry, what was that?’ Ballista realized she had been talking to him.

  ‘I said, “Why did you lie to your men?” ’ Bathsiba’s voice was pitched low. Above the rattle of equipment, the heavy footfalls and laboured breathing of men and horses, she could not be heard beyond the three of them. ‘You have travelled this way before. You know we will not be safe when we reach the mountains. There is only one path through the high country. We could not be easier to follow if we were unrolling a thread behind us.’

  ‘Sometimes a lie can cause the truth.’ Ballista grinned. He felt oddly light-headed. ‘Ariadne gave Theseus the ball of string to find his way out of the labyrinth when he went in to kill the minotaur. He promised he would marry her. But he abandoned her on the island of Naxos. If he had not lied Ariadne would not have married the god Dionysus, Theseus would not have had a son called Hippolytus, and Euripides could not have written the tragedy of that name.’

  Neither Bathshiba nor Haddudad spoke. They were both looking at him strangely. Ballista sighed and started to explain. ‘If I had told them the truth – that the Persians may well catch and kill us before the mountains, and that even if we get that far they will probably kill us anyway – they might have given up, and that would have been the end of things. I gave them some hope to work towards. And who knows, if we get to the mountains, we might make our own safety there.’

  Ballista looked closely at Haddudad. ‘I remember the road passes through several ravines.’ The mercenary merely nodded. ‘Are any of them suitable for an ambush?’

  Haddudad took his time replying. Ballista and Bathshiba remained silent. The Arab mercenary had served Bathshiba’s father for a long time. They knew he was a man whose judgement was sound.

  ‘The Horns of Ammon, not far into the mountains – a good killing ground.’

  Ballista signalled it was time to remount. As he hauled his tired frame into the saddle, he leant over and spoke quietly to Haddudad. ‘Tell me just before we reach the Horns of Ammon – if we get that far.’

  Night fell fast in the desert. One moment the sun was high in the sky, the next it was dipping out of sight. Suddenly Ballista’s companions became black silhouettes and the dark came crowding down. The moon had not yet risen, and, even if the horses had not been fit to drop, it was not thought safe to continue by starlight.

  Just off the track, they made camp in near-total darkness. By Ballista’s order there were only three shuttered lanterns lit. They were positioned to face west, away from
the pursuers, and when the horses were settled they were to be extinguished. Ballista rubbed down his mount, whispering quiet, meaningless endearments in the grey gelding’s ears. He had bought Pale Horse in Antioch the year before. The gelding had served him well and he was very fond of the big-hearted animal. The smell of hot horse, as good to Ballista as the scent of grass after rain, and the feel of the powerful muscles under his smooth coat soothed him.

  ‘Dominus.’ The voice of a trooper leading up his mount broke Ballista’s reverie. The soldier said nothing else. There was no need. The man’s horse was as lame as a cat. As they so often did when needed, Maximus and Calgacus appeared out of the darkness. Without words, the elderly Caledonian took over seeing to Pale Horse and the bodyguard joined Ballista in checking the other horse. They walked it round, made it trot, inspected its hooves. It was hopeless. It could go no further. With a small jerk of his chin, Ballista indicated to Maximus to lead it away.

  The trooper held himself very still, waiting. Only his eyes betrayed his fear.

  ‘We will follow the custom of the desert.’ At Ballista’s words the man exhaled deeply. ‘Tell everyone to gather round.’

  Ballista collected his helmet and a pottery wine jar and placed them on the ground next to one of the lanterns, which he opened completely. The small party formed a circle in the light, squatting in the dust. The lantern threw harsh light on to their tense faces, accentuating their features. Somewhere a desert fox barked. It was very quiet afterwards.

  Ballista picked up the wine jar, drew the stopper and drank deeply. The wine was rough in his throat. He gave it to the man next to him, who drank and passed it on. Maximus came back and hunkered down.

  ‘The girl will not be included.’ Ballista’s voice sounded loud to himself.

  ‘Why not?’

  Ballista looked at the trooper who had spoken. ‘I am in command here. I am the one with imperium.’