Harry Sidebottom - Warrior of Rome - Part Two - King of Kings

Dr Harry Sidebottom teaches classical history at the University of Oxford, where he is a Fellow of St Benets 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 topfive 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

Sidebottoms prose blazes with searing scholarship
THETIMES

A well-constructed, well-paced and gripping account
TIMESLITERARYSUPPLEMENT

Harry Sidebottoms epic tale starts with a chilling assassination and goes on, and up, from there
P ROFESSOR MARY BEARD , C HAIR OF C LASSICS , U NIVERSITY OF C AMBRIDGE

A gripping yarn interwoven with superb knowledge of the ancient world
P ROFESSOR B RYAN W ARD -P ERKINS , F ELLOW IN H ISTORY , U NIVERSITY OF O XFORD

Sidebottom captures perfectly the corruption, betrayals, and enmities of the Roman Empire
P ROFESSOR D AVID K ONSTAN , P ROFESSOR OF C LASSICS , B ROWN U NIVERSITY

Sidebottom has the touch of an exceptionally gifted storyteller
T IM S EVERIN , A UTHOR OF T HE V IKING T RILOGY

The best sort of red-blooded historical fiction
A NDREW T AYLOR , A UTHOR OF THEAMERICANBOY

At last a piece of historical fiction for grown-ups
R OBERT L OW , A UTHOR OF T HE O ATHSWORN N OVELS

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

MICHAEL JOSEPH
an imprint of
PENGUIN BOOKS

MICHAEL JOSEPH

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First published 2009

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

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. 112115. tr. R. Fagles)

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.