The Amber Road

XI

The Estuary of the Hypanis and Borysthenes

On that day the expedition encountered four rafts of timber being floated down to the Euxine. None was as alarming as the first. Apart from them, they had the river much to themselves all the way to Cape Hippolaus. There were fishermen out, but at the sight of four unknown boats, they rowed into overgrown creeks and were lost to sight.

Ballista enjoyed the journey. It was good to be on the water in a small boat very like the ones of his childhood on the shores of the Suebian Sea. The weather remained set fair. A gentle southerly breeze got up and ruffled the surface. It was warm in the spring sunshine. There were no clouds. In between the islands with their reeds and trees, the low, grey line of the western shore could be seen two miles or more away. There was a pale-blue band above it, straight as if drawn with a pencil; a white-blue sky above that.

The Hypanis was rich. Resting happily in the prow, Ballista saw perch, bream and carp. There were many catfish. Once, a huge pike, solitary in its ferocity, came to investigate the boats, before flicking away to find sanctuary under a bank. He had been told there were sturgeon, but he saw none. Great gaggles of geese and ducks bobbed on the water. The shallows and mudflats were crowded with waders; high-stepping, beaks darting, tireless in their endeavours. When the boats came too close, the birds took wing, filling the air with their noise.

The eastern shore was thick with reeds. Alder and willows grew among them. There were birch, oak and poplars behind. Animals moved through the vegetation, coming down to drink; herds of deer and wild sheep, lumbering bison.

Amidst this plenty the signs of man were few. They passed only two Olbian settlements. They were sited on high bluffs. They looked down on the river from cliffs which were banded with pink and grey rock. Both villages were small, circumscribed by ravines and heavily fortified in stone. Their inhabitants could not be blamed for such prudence. But Ballista noted the area of cultivation around them was narrow. There was little terracing, no vines and few domestic animals. When the boats approached, those cattle that were grazing were driven up towards the walls.

The water level was high. The lower trees were half submerged. Bleached branches swept downstream had tangled on promontories. The winter must have been hard further north in the cold interior of the continent. Ballista remembered the winters of his youth on Hedinsey. In the bleak midwinter the snow could drift so high that only the smoke of their hearths revealed the outlying farms around his father’s hold of Hlymdale. In such a place it was easy to believe in Fimbulvetr, the winter of the world before Ragnarok, easy to believe the sun would never rise again, and that all except one man and one woman were destined to die.

They reached their destination at sunset. Cape Hippolaus thrust out into the waters as sharp and firm as the beak of a ship. It was gloomy at the landing place. A broad cloak of clouds had formed and trapped the evening redness in the west.

There was no one to greet them. They hauled the boats out of the water, took out what they needed, and set a guard. In near-darkness they climbed the broad stone steps.

At the top the gate was shut. No torches burned, but men could be sensed watching from the wall. There was the sound of metal scraping on stone. Some of the Romans shifted uneasily, their hands reaching for the reassurance of their sword hilts.

A voice challenged them in Greek: Who came in the dark to Cape Hippolaus and the Temple of Demeter?

The Olbian guide announced himself, detailed those with him and what they were about. The names of the first archon Callistratus and the strategos Montanus were well received.

Inside, torches flared, and at no long interval the gate swung open. Men in leather and horn armour emerged.

‘Health and great joy.’ The headman introduced himself and those considered of note in the village. He seemed predisposed to make much of Ballista and Castricius. News of the heroic defence of Olbia had not long reached Cape Hippolaus; it was an honour to welcome the saviours of the city. Zeno intervened. With the barest nod to civility, the imperial envoy demanded entrance. By the mandata entrusted to him by the most noble Augustus Gallienus, and in the name of Claudius Natalianus, governor of Moesia Inferior, within whose province this place lay, food and lodgings should be provided, suitable in both quantity and quality.

Ballista thought there were many things that were dislikeable about Aulus Voconius Zeno. Some, above all his cowardice, were damning. Others, such as his endless, often inapposite quotations from Homer and his pretence of contempt for all later Greek literature, let alone anything in Latin, were merely tiresome. But his sanctimonious pomposity could put all the rest in the shade. Back in Cilicia, Zeno had abandoned his province and run like a deer. But he had left Ballista a letter whose carefully crafted sentences stressed how the departed governor’s actions had been dictated by good faith, piety and devotion to duty and should be emulated by others. Years later, the phrases still rankled.

They were led through alleys so narrow they had to walk in single file. They came out into a tiny square. The torchlight revealed a small temple on one side, what probably passed for a Bouleuterion opposite, and a stone-built house on each of the others. The council chamber and one of the houses were made over to the expedition, the occupants of the latter being summarily evicted. Ballista thought there were winners and losers in politics in this remote village, just as there were in the imperial consilium.

The headman, who rejoiced in the title of Archon, invited Zeno, Ballista and Castricius to dine at his home, which turned out to be the other house facing on to the square. Provisions and firewood would be sent in to the rest. There was a well in the square.

Between the inevitable eggs and apples — respectively hard-boiled and dried this time — the meal was made around a none too large, cold leg of mutton with cold, once-dried peas. The bread was from the day before. But there were fresh, plain, grilled fish.

They drank a little well-watered wine from clay beakers and ate off a mixture of pottery. Most of the crockery was red; some pieces grey. Not all had been turned on a wheel. Ballista noticed the rings on the fingers of the locals were iron or bronze; their brooches were inlaid with beads of glass or paste. Most striking were the tallow candles — there was not a lamp anywhere.

Conversation was uncomfortable. Zeno made no attempt to speak or hide his disdain. He seemed to take the poverty of the villagers of Cape Hippolaus as a personal affront. Given the air of suspicion with which he regarded everything around him, including every morsel he ate and those who offered them to him, it was possible he thought it all subterfuge. Perhaps he thought the villagers secretly as rich as Croesus, with caches of treasure buried under the floors. Perhaps he resented them passing this poor fare off on him, certain they had hidden larders groaning with delicacies.

Ballista and Castricius put themselves out to be charming. They responded at length, although with some modesty, to the hosts’ questions about the siege. Unsurprisingly, this did nothing to improve Zeno’s mood.

The end of the dinner brought little in the way of relief. Zeno had taken the Bouleuterion for himself. The secretary Amantius was to attend him; their slaves would look after them. Zeno required no more than a bodyguard of ten of the Romans commanded by Diocles. Even with six men watching the boats, it left more than thirty crammed into the requisitioned house. When Ballista and Castricius returned, they found a small area of floor had been reserved for them to sleep. A slave had made Ballista a bed of almost clean straw.

Ballista knew he would not rest easy. He had always had a horror of confined spaces. One by one, the others started snoring. Ballista lay in the dark, tired but tense. Iron-eyed, sleep rejected his embrace. He should have checked the defences. The headman had told him a watch was always set, but he should have checked. Ballista imagined the Tervingi out there in the night; blades in their hands, revenge in their hearts, they scaled the wall, slid through the alleyways.

Most men would have been unable to leave the crowded house without a commotion. Ballista, like most sons of warriors in the north, had been brought up partly by his maternal uncle. Heoden was King of the Harii. They were night fighters. Thanks to Tacitus, their skills were known even within the imperium. Stepping quietly, feeling with the outside of each foot before putting his weight down, Ballista left. At the click of the latch, a couple of men stirred, but none woke; not even Maximus. Outside, Ballista slung his sword belt over his shoulder.

The moon was low, but the eyes of Thiazi and the other stars shed enough light. It was quiet up on the walls. Ballista saw no sentinels. There were cliffs on three sides of the village. Good walls of unmortared stone at the top. The citadel was tiny. On its landward side the wall was fronted by a deep ditch. A wooden bridge crossed over to the lower settlement. Down there the dwellings were much wider spaced, more like farms than town-houses. Another deep ditch and similar walls encircled them. Motionless, Ballista peered through the darkness at the outer wall. There was a chill to the wind. He should have brought his cloak.

A movement on the wall. Gone as soon as he saw it. Opening his eyes wide to admit all the light there was, Ballista looked a little to one side of where he had spotted the movement. His own breathing filled his ears. There it was again. Now he had it. A man walking the rampart. Without hurry, and with no attempt at concealment, the figure moved along the battlements. Ballista watched until he was certain it was a watchman. He relaxed. There should have been more than one, but it was good the guard did not carry a torch.

Ballista thought of walking the palisades at Hlymdale with his half-brothers, Froda and Eadwulf. They had been older; Froda by nine winters, already a man. He remembered the creak and jingle of Froda’s war-harness.

A noise, close at hand. Ballista turned, drew his sword. A footfall in the dark, a croaking raven, a chance encounter with your brother’s murderer — Calgacus had been fond of listing things not to be trusted. It had done the old man no good. Ballista’s blade glinted cold in the starlight.

Soundless, like some dark elf or dwarf, the short, hooded figure approached.

‘Who walks the night?’

‘A friend.’ Castricius pushed back his hood. ‘Sleep eluded me, too.’

They leant on the parapet, watching the stars slip their moorings and race to their doom.

‘How long is it since we met?’

Ballista thought. ‘Coming on ten years. We were young then.’

‘Already old in the ways of the world.’

Ballista laughed softly. ‘Maybe you more than me. Why were you in the mines?’

‘It is a long story, for another time.’

‘Ten years is a long time.’

Castricius turned his small, sharp face towards Ballista. ‘The daemon that watches me has been strong. Yours, too.’

‘My people do not have that belief. Three old women — the Norns — spin our fate.’

Castricius smiled and turned away. ‘Back in Arete there was much talk before you arrived. The men of Legio IIII Scythica said our new barbarian commander had been born in a mud hut.’

Ballista said nothing.

‘We knew you were a hostage, but we had no idea of the power your father wields in the north.’

‘Most inhabitants of the imperium know little of the world outside. All barbarians are much alike.’

‘Your family rule over many peoples. They must be fine warriors.’

‘The north breeds hard men.’ Ballista shrugged. ‘But much of the rise of the Himlings was down to love, or at least marriage.’

Castricius looked back at Ballista, waiting for more.

‘There were rival families, but we have held the island of Hedinsey time out of mind, since the first Himling, Woden’s son. My great-grandfather Hjar took a Waymunding woman for his first wife. She brought him the island of Varinsey. His second wife was from the Aviones, and he married his sister to the chief of the Chali. It brought him influence on the mainland, on the Cimbric peninsula. His son Starkad extended that. He married women from the Varini and the Reudigni, and gave his sister to the king of the Farodini.’

Ballista stopped. ‘These are just strange names, meaningless to you.’

‘We are bound for the north. I am not Zeno. My daemon will protect me, but it is good to know the sort of people I must move among,’ said Castricius.

‘My father Isangrim has had many wives; a Langobard, a Bronding, a Frisian. My mother is from the Harii. Many peoples of the islands and shores of the Suebian Sea pay him tribute.’

‘All that without fighting?’

Ballista grinned. ‘No, there was much fighting. Hjar sailed east and never returned. Starkad died in battle. But the most important fighting was not in the north. About a century ago the divine Marcus Aurelius wore the purple. In the great wars, when the Marcomanni and other tribes crossed the frontier, the emperor offered Hjar friendship. Hjar sent warriors south to fight for the Romans along the Ister. Hjar himself attacked the lands of the emperor’s enemies from the north. In return, Marcus sent Hjar money and swords. You could say the emperor created the power of the Himlings.’

‘And now one emperor wants to turn that power against another,’ countered Castricius, grimly.

‘Yes,’ said Ballista.

‘It will be good for you to see your family,’ said Castricius.

‘Some of them,’ Ballista said. ‘Some are no longer there for me to see.’