LITMIR.BIZ

      Africa Proconsularis The Oasis of Ad Palmam, Four Days before the Kalends of April, AD235

      A hard ride, and time was against them. Two days after they left the coast of the Middle Sea at Taparura, the country changed. The olive trees pulled back and thinned out. Between their shade the earth was bare and yellowed. The four-square towered villas gave way to isolated mud-brick huts, the comfortable abodes of the elite replaced by the hovels of their more distant dependants. Ahead, south-west over the plain, a line of tan hills showed.

      Gordian did not push his men or their mounts too hard, but neither did he spare them. They were in the saddle well before dawn. All morning they rode at a mile-eating canter. A rest in the shade for the heat of the day, then they rode on through the late afternoon and into the darkness. They went in a pall of their own making, the horses’ hooves kicking up a fine yellow dust. It got into their eyes, ears, noses; gritted in their teeth. Gordian knew it was worst for those at the rear. At every halt, he reordered the small column. He thought of Alexander in the Gedrosian desert. The army had been short of water. A soldier stumbled across a tiny puddle. He filled a helmet with the muddy water and brought it to his King. Alexander had thanked him and poured the water into the sand. A noble gesture. Gordian would have done the same. But Alexander had not ridden in the rear. A general had to lead. Each time they mounted up, Gordian took his place at the front, flanked by his father’s legates Valerian and Sabinianus, and the local landowner Mauricius.

      On the fourth day, they reached the hills. Close up, the rocks were not tan but pink. At the foot of the slopes was a small stone tower. Following the unmade road west, up into the high country, they passed three more watchtowers. Gordian said the same to the half-dozen or so garrison of each. Should the enemy return this way, make sure you send word to me at Ad Palmam; after that, exercise your initiative. They were reliable men, legionaries on detachment from the 3rd Augustan based at Lambaesis in the neighbouring province of Numidia. There was no discussion of what forms the initiative of those left behind might take after one or two had ridden off to raise the alarm, taking the only horses or mules with them.

      Guided by Mauricius, they turned and took a track that snaked over the crests to the south. Near the top of the pass, Gordian left two men at a place with a good view back over the way they had come.

      Having descended, they turned right and rode due west. After a day, another pass came down from the hills. Gordian sent four men up it: two to form a picket on the heights, and two to convey the usual instructions to the watchtowers on the other side and to scout beyond.

      Six days’ riding since Taparura, four before that. Both men and horses were very worn. Nine horses had gone lame already before the hills. They had been left behind. Their riders had been mounted on baggage horses. The loads had been redistributed. Five men had fallen back out of sight. These stragglers had never caught up. Perhaps they had deserted. It would have been understandable, under the circumstances. Now the going was worse. A horse foundered. It was killed without ceremony. Its rider took the last baggage animal. The burden of the latter was tossed aside and abandoned.

      Not far now, Mauricius assured them. Soon – today; tomorrow morning at the latest – we will reach the oasis of Ad Palmam. All will be good there.

      They pressed on, the dust working its way into them as if every particle were animate with malice.

      The landscape was like nothing Gordian had seen. The cliffs to the right were steep and jumbled, their stratifications tipped and fanned. In the main they were bare slopes. Some of the heights were ringed with darker, vertical rocks like cyclopean crenellations. A harsh place, but not that out of the ordinary. There were pockets of green in the dips and hollows. Now and then a flash of white or black movement betrayed the presence of a flock of goats.

      To the left, there was no remission to the harshness. A great flatness stretched as far as the eye could see. Its surface was banded like agate; brown, tan and white. There were pools of standing water and dusky lines coiled between them. There was no telling if they were tracks, animal or human, or now dry channels carved by last winter’s rain. In the high sun mirages shifted; water, trees, buildings. Once, Gordian thought he saw a boat. Nothing else moved in all that vastness. Nothing real.

      This was the Lake of Triton, the dreadful, great salt lake. Once it had been a real lake, if not an inlet of the sea. The Argo had sailed its waters. But even then it had been an evil place. Two of the Argonauts had been killed here; Mopsus by a snake, and Canthus by a local herdsman. For the rest to escape had needed an appearance by Triton himself.

      Mauricius had told Gordian the local legends. At night men saw torches moving far out in the desert. They heard the music of pipes and cymbals. Some said they had seen the satyrs and nymphs gambolling. There were stories of buried treasure: a huge tripod from Delphi, solid gold. Those who searched never found it, and many never came back. Once, a caravan of a thousand animals had ventured off one of the two safe paths. Nothing was seen of them again. There had been no epiphany for them.

      Looking hard, Gordian saw there were patches where the crust was broken, and a dark sludge exposed.

      ‘Ad Palmam.’

      There – two or three miles ahead – was a line of green, utterly incongruous in the waste.

      They rode on without speaking, every man trying to hide his trepidation.

      Two hundred yards short, Gordian called a halt. Time was against them, but he did not know by how much.

      Gordian dismounted, to ease his horse. Most of the others

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