Ammaedara. He would bring them down from the north through Capsa.
The raiders would be burdened with their plunder. They were barbarians, and had no discipline. They would straggle all over the country. Their retreat would be slow. Gordian and Arrian, if they acted with alacrity, could be waiting at the oasis long before the nomads appeared. Between them, the Romans would dispose some six hundred cavalry. More than enough to delay the enemy until Menophilus appeared with five hundred infantry in their rear – like a hammer on to an anvil.
‘You are proposing to surround a much greater number with about a thousand men,’ Sabinianus had said.
Gordian had agreed. ‘But we are not trying to massacre or capture them all. Merely retake their loot, kill some of them and teach the rest a lesson. Make them think twice before crossing the border again. Show weakness, and they will be back before the end of the year. There will be more of them. Garamantes, Nasamones, Baquates … tribesmen from far away will flock to the banners of this Nuffuzi. You all know the nature of barbarians: success breeds arrogance.’
No one at the dinner had an answer to that, not even Arrian or Sabinianus. He was self-evidently right: that was how barbarians were. Gordian Senior was predisposed to be won over. He had no desire to be rescued by Capelianus. The thing had been clinched by Mauricius. Could he join the expedition? The local magnate had twenty-five mounted, armed retainers with him. He was sure other nearby estate owners would contribute more. If there had been time, he himself could have produced perhaps nearly a hundred from his own lands.
The Proconsul had approved the plan. He told his son to take all the equites. The younger Gordian would not hear of it; nor would the others. Together they urged the governor to have a ship prepared in the harbour to take him and his household to safety, if things should go very badly wrong and the nomads threatened Hadrumetum. Gordian Senior had replied that he had never run from his enemies, and he was too old to start now.
Menophilus and Arrian had ridden their separate ways the next morning. Three days had passed getting ready the men, weapons, supplies, and animals of the flying column. When finally Gordian led them out, he was at the head of eighty troopers and a similar number of armed locals. He had waved to his father, blown kisses to Parthenope and Chione, his two mistresses, and wondered if he was doing the right thing.
When they had ridden through Thysdrus, they had got the news that Capsa had fallen. The barbarians appeared to be taking their time over their looting. The estimates of their numbers remained unreliable, hopefully vastly inflated. They had received no further word on the journey.
Gordian shaded his eyes, and watched. Another flock of doves got up as Sabinianus disappeared into the oasis. Perhaps his friend was right – perhaps he was doing this for the wrong motives. Still, it was all too late to worry now.
The doves circled and swooped back into the treetops. The chickens had vanished. It was quiet – dreadfully quiet – and very still. Now and then Gordian thought he half saw movement deep in the shade. If something happened to Sabinianus … Odysseus must have felt this apprehension when he sent Eurylochus to scout the smoke drifting up over the Aeaean island. Eurylochus had returned from the halls of Circe. It would be all right. We won’t go down to the House of Death, not yet, not until our day arrives. But Eurylochus had not come back from Sicily. All ways of dying are hateful to us poor mortals. If he had sent Sabinianus to his death … Gordian pushed the verses from his mind. No point in entertaining such thoughts; not until necessary.
‘There!’
Sabinianus had emerged from the tree line. He was still mounted. His horse was ringed by children. He beckoned.
‘Mount up.’
It was dark under the high fronds. Sabinianus led them through the oasis towards the settlement. There were conduits everywhere. Of all sizes, they crossed and recrossed each other, elaborately regulated by dams and aqueducts of palm-stems. Where the sun penetrated, the water was jade; elsewhere, a cool brown. The hooves of their mounts rattled over narrow wooden bridges. Sheltered by the date palms, there were fig trees and a profusion of shorter fruit trees: lemon, pomegranate, plum and peach. Below, almost every inch was set out in gardens for grain or vegetables. With the arrival of the other riders, the children had withdrawn to a distance. Gordian caught glimpses of them, and of adults through the trunks of the trees.
‘They have had a bad time,’ Sabinianus said. ‘I talked to the headman. Only a few killed, but the nomads seized everything portable – all the food stocks, everything of value. The women and girls were much raped; many of the boys too. The nomads took some with them. The headman seemed most concerned about the animals.’
‘The animals?’ Valerian sounded appalled.
‘No,’ Sabinianus said. ‘Not that. The nomads took all the animals, and, while they were doing it, trampled some of the irrigation.’
Pale mud-brick walls showed through the foliage ahead. Gordian signalled the column to wait while he rode around the settlement with his officers. It was laid out in an oval. There was no defensive wall as such. But the houses abutted each other, their windowless rear walls forming a continuous circuit, only occasionally pierced by a narrow, easy-to-block passage. Flat roofs with low parapets could form a fighting platform. A watchtower and some higher walls at the south end must be what passed for a citadel. The whole was not big – maybe seven, eight hundred inhabitants, certainly not more than a thousand; difficult to tell when the houses were packed that close. Gordian might be able defend the place when Arrian arrived with the speculatores, but the perimeter was much too long to be held by the fewer than one hundred and sixty men with him now. If only Arrian had got here first with the Frontier Wolves.
‘I had hoped—’ Gordian stopped himself, wished he had not spoken. He did not want to lower the spirits of the others. There was no point in unsettling himself. Disquiet was to be avoided, no matter the external circumstances. Unhappiness, even misery, was nothing but the product of ignorance or faulty judgement. Knowledge and correct thinking would dispel any suffering. But, somehow, the thing was too obvious. He had hoped; they had all hoped – expected, even – that Arrian would be here before them.
Three men, leading spare mounts, cover much more ground than the fastest of cavalry columns. The Mirror Fort was much nearer than Hadrumetum. The speculatores were famous rough riders. Something must have happened to Arrian: an accident, an encounter with the nomads. All ways of dying are hateful to us poor mortals.
Gordian took charge of himself. He would send another rider to bring the scouts. At least the nomads had neither left a rearguard at this oasis nor already returned. Gordian felt better, thinking and acting correctly. A philosophical education paid dividends. Mental disturbance was to be avoided like the plague.
‘We could impress the able-bodied inhabitants, arm them somehow.’ In the face of the silence of the others, Valerian stopped.
Sabinianus answered, in tones of mock-sympathy. ‘My poor, dear innocent friend, these people will not fight for us. They do not want us here. If we had not arrived, on the way back the raiders would have passed them by; just a bit more raping, perhaps a final bit of torture to try to prise out the hiding place of some probably imaginary treasure. But there would have been no killing, no wholesale destruction. Valerian, my dear, you are far too trusting. One day it will be the death of you.’
The citadel was built around a courtyard, with thirty stables opening off it. The other lean-to sheds were empty. Another forty horses were stalled in them. The remaining mounts were tethered in the open. It was not ideal, but most were in the shade. As the riders rubbed them down, Gordian was given a formal, if guarded speech of welcome
