The Amber Road

I

The Town of Olbia to the North of the Black Sea

Some damaged walls and any number of ruins. Ballista’s first impression of Olbia was not favourable. The pilot who had come aboard at the Castle of Alector as they left the Euxine had negotiated the long, marshy confluence of the Borysthenes and Hypanis, skilfully avoiding both the shallows and the many rafts of logs being poled downstream, and then taken them up by the far channel of the latter river. Now he was threading their way across through the numerous islets and mudflats. There were duck and geese on the water. Its margins were teeming with waders. Progress was slow, and the passengers on the trireme had plenty of time to view the remote outpost of Hellenism and empire.

‘Another shitehole,’ said Maximus.

‘Yes,’ Ballista agreed with his bodyguard.

A citadel on a cliff dominated the south of the town. The narrow pediment of a temple and a jumble of other roofs jutted above its curtain wall and rectangular towers. At the northern foot of its slope, quays, slipways and sheds huddled against more walls. Several fishing boats and some local river boats were pulled up out of the water. Near the indigenous craft four small trading vessels from the south and one small warship were moored. Behind the docks the incline was steep. It was terraced, close packed with houses, tiled roofs overlapping, seemingly built on top of each other. A line of mean one-storey dwellings backed on to another low wall, which snaked up towards the gate of the acropolis and marked off the inhabited quarter. Beyond it, away to the north, was desolation. Smoke hung over parts of it. Isolated towers, once part of a much greater defensive circuit, showed here and there through the haze, and a couple of huge conical barrows for the dead had been erected in what once must have been the heart of a thriving Greek polis.

Ballista had no more wish to be here than in any of the places he had been since the dreadful events of the previous autumn. It had been months of unhappiness and frustration. From the even more far-flung polis of Tanais they had crossed Lake Maeotis to the faded splendour and vicious political infighting of Panticapaeum, capital of the Roman client kingdom of the Bosporus. From there, just before the close of the sailing season, they had taken ship across the Euxine to Byzantium. At the Hellespont an imperial official had waited, the bearer of new, most unwanted orders. The pleasures of Byzantium — the famed seafood and wine, the games and chariot racing, the public displays of wisdom by philosophers and sophists — had meant nothing as they were constrained to winter there. Now they were heading north again, misery unabated, vengeance unfulfilled.

As the warship edged in to Olbia, a lifetime of training took over and moved Ballista’s thoughts from his troubles. A closer study of the acropolis revealed vegetation growing in fissures in both curtain wall and towers. In places some of the dressed stones had fallen, tumbled down the gradient and been replaced with makeshift rubble. Despite this the cliff made the river side of the citadel almost impregnable, if defended with any application. There was nowhere to site artillery against it, no way to bring up rams let alone siege towers, no chance at all of undermining. A storm with ladders would bring incalculable casualties, almost certainly fail. The only access there would be surprise or treachery.

‘Clear fore and aft,’ the trierarch called. ‘Bring her about. Ropes for mooring.’

The long galley slowly swung around. Her triple banks of oars took the way off her, and then gently backed her up against a ramshackle jetty. Deck crew jumped ashore and secured the vessel. Others ran out the boarding ladder from one side of her stern ornament.

Toga-clad and purposeful, Aulus Voconius Zeno, sometime a Studiis to the emperor Gallienus himself, before that governor of Cilicia, processed down the ramp, his usual display of dignitas only slightly marred by a less than dignified stumble as his feet stepped on the unmoving ground.

With even more self-regard, and far more exotic in a floor-length, gold-fringed red cloak over snow-white tunic, the portly eunuch secretary Amantius went next. He, too, was unsteady as his silk slippers trod the dock.

Ballista followed with Castricius, who would be his deputy when he assumed command of Zeno’s escort. The rest of the party, Maximus and Tarchon, the two fighting men from Ballista’s familia, and the five slaves, trooped down in the rear.

Zeno looked up and down the quayside. He was as clearly unimpressed by what he saw as might be expected in a man who had once advised the emperor on things of culture, and much else more political.

‘We must make our arrival known to the authorities,’ he announced.

‘You do that,’ said Ballista.

Zeno bridled. ‘Gallienus Augustus has despatched us on an official mission.’

‘Tell the local magistrates about the amber,’ said Ballista.

Zeno glowered. As the real mission could not be mentioned, he was unsure what to reply.

‘Take Amantius with you,’ Ballista continued. ‘The slaves can unload our baggage, look after it until we have been assigned lodgings. The rest of us are going for a drink.’

‘Our escort, the crew of that warship from Moesia …’

‘Will find us.’ Ballista spoke over him. ‘Now, I need a drink.’

‘Where?’

Outside a shed, unimpressive even on that waterfront, two elderly men sat drinking. ‘Over there.’

Zeno and the eunuch swept off, waving away a customs official who tried to speak to them. The telones next approached the men with Ballista.

‘Fuck off,’ said Maximus.

The telones regarded Maximus and the other three armed men, and withdrew.

The inside of the bar was bigger than the exterior suggested, although possibly even less appealing. A rough wooden counter ran down the left-hand side. Storage jars sat in holes cut into its surface. Amphorae were stacked behind, and there was an oven next to a closed door at the far end. The only light was from the front door, but nothing looked very clean. Ballista had no intention of eating here.

‘A pitcher of wine, please, one quarter water,’ he said.

‘The best you have,’ added Castricius.

As they took places at benches around a plank table, the only other customers, six men and two whores sitting together, hard-eyed them. Maximus and Tarchon stared back. Ballista and Castricius pretended not to notice.

‘The best,’ said the barman. ‘A local speciality.’

He poured it and they drank. It was not too bad, although it tasted oddly of elderberry. They drank some more.

‘Another,’ said Maximus.

As the barman returned, Ballista checked over the other table. The men wore military-style belts with daggers. They were evidently drunk. It was mid-afternoon. He motioned Maximus to look less challenging. There had been several unpleasant incidents in Byzantium over the winter. Not surprising, given the amount everyone in the familia had been drinking and what had happened before out on the steppes.

From where he sat Ballista could see a section of the dockside through the open door. An old fisherman was sitting cross-legged in the spring sunshine, mending his nets.

Outwardly at ease, Ballista listened carefully to everything in the bar. The knife men had turned to a loud, drunken conversation among themselves: women, money, drink — the usual subjects. They laughed, moronic in their cups. The whores simpered. The violence had retreated from the room. For now, at least.

Outside, the fisherman was using pot shards as weights. He must have bored a hole in some, as he was stringing them on to the net. Others, he was tying. Perhaps he had scratched a groove in those, so the sharp edges would not cut the cords. An amphora was easy to break, but when broken its fragments were nearly indestructible. Almost a paradox, Ballista thought. A philosopher could make something of that.

Ballista drank more. He felt the wine buzz in his head. The false wellbeing and confidence of alcohol were creeping over him. The melancholy would come later.

Castricius was talking. The short, pointy-faced Roman officer was teasing the other two members of the familia. ‘You pretty barbarian boys had better watch out. Men from Miletus founded Olbia. Brought the love of boys with them. The locals here are addicted to it, like sparrows in their lechery. Their lust will be inflamed at the sight of you two — a pretty Hibernian and a tender little Suanian.’ Maximus and Tarchon gazed back at him with no expression. Each of their lined, battered faces showed its owner’s forty-odd years. The Hibernian Maximus was missing the end of his nose.

‘I was in Miletus once,’ Maximus said flatly. ‘Another shitehole.’

There was no obvious catalyst to violence here — unless the knife men were locals who might take offence at being dubbed pederasts. The drink in him, Ballista did not care if they did. He would back himself and his three companions against the six opposite.

A smallish sailing boat had tied up to the wharves. Stevedores were bringing off its cargo. Bales of hides were being piled next to boxes of wax, which suggested the coarse grey amphorae contained honey. Guessing the produce of the neighbouring land could not keep Ballista’s mind from why he was here. He was going home. Twenty-six winters since he had been taken as a hostage into the Roman imperium. Well over half his time on Middle Earth, and finally he was going back to the lands of his people, to the Angles of the Suebian Sea in the far north. Twenty-six winters waiting to go home. And now he did not want it.

Ballista drank more. No, he did want it. Part of him did. He wanted to see his father, his mother. Of course, Eadwulf, the half-brother he had been closest to, would not be there. But — he smiled — he would see Kadlin, the first girl he had loved. And he could drink again, as he had in his youth, with her brother, Heoroweard.

But the north was not where he should be going now. Calgacus his companion and friend was dead — murdered last autumn on the Steppe — and his killer escaped. In Tanais, Panticapaeum and Byzantium, Ballista had asked everywhere for news. No one knew anything of a Greek called Hippothous. That was what Ballista should be doing — scouring the imperium for the Greek bastard. They had taken Hippothous into the familia, and he had killed Calgacus. He had killed many others, but it was Calgacus who counted.

Ballista took a long pull from his cup. The flavour of elderberry was getting cloying. Most things did, if you drank enough on an empty stomach. If not hunting Hippothous, he should be at home in Sicily, at home with his wife and sons, keeping them safe. Certainly things had not been right between him and Julia for a long time — he was unsure why, it might be his fault. But with his boys it was different. Two winters since he had seen them. Isangrim would be twelve now, his birthday the kalends of this month. Dernhelm turned five last November. The younger would have changed more, maybe out of all recognition.

Poor old Calgacus had loved them. The Caledonian had been a miserable, ugly old bastard. But he had always been there, since Ballista himself was a child. Calgacus had travelled into the imperium with him, served on every distant frontier. Maximus was a good friend. They had been together years. They were close. Castricius less so — he was strange. But, on and off, the little Roman had been with him for years, too. Tarchon the Suanian was loyal, even if often incomprehensible. But none of them was Calgacus. The one man Ballista had talked to in the worst of times, in the most uncertain and unguarded moments.

Ballista knew he was already drunk, his thoughts sliding around, maudlin, full of self-pity. Perhaps he should eat. He concentrated, trying to focus on the dock outside.

A big trading vessel up from the south had now been pulled in to the side. Dozens of amphorae were being lugged ashore, men everywhere. Incongruous in scarlet cloak and silk slippers, Amantius was weaving his way through the bustle, half imperious, half diffident.

The eunuch walked into the bar. Instantly the knife men fell silent, their eyes on the outlandish newcomer.

‘Ho, precious,’ one called out in rough Greek, ‘we have whores already.’

They laughed. One made the sign to avert evil. Everyone knew eunuchs were like monkeys or cripples, things of ill omen.

Amantius stopped, irresolute.

‘Fuck off, we do not want your kind in here.’ One of the toughs got up from their table.

‘Apologize.’ Ballista found himself on his feet, face close to the standing knife man.

‘And who the fuck are you?’ It takes most men a few moments to work themselves up to violence, at times an unfortunate weakness.

‘Apologize to the eunuch.’

‘You can fuck — ’

Ballista smashed his cup hard into the man’s face. His head snapped around, blood spraying as the shattered earthenware lacerated his skin. He crumpled to the floor, hands to his face.

From the right a whore swung a heavy wine jug at Ballista. He swayed back. When it had passed, he punched her in the face. The bones in her nose broke under his fist. She went down.

‘Blade!’ Maximus yelled.

Ballista dropped, turned, tugged his dagger free. As he did so pain lanced through his left arm. He rammed the tip of his weapon up where his assailant’s stomach should be. Nothing. The man had checked his momentum, stepped away, dropped into a fighting crouch. Ballista did the same, no room for sword-work. Blood ran down his arm. A bad cut high up. There was a sickness deep in his guts. Noise battered his senses. Watch the blade. Watch the blade.

The man’s dagger weaved like a sightless steel predator scenting warm blood. Ballista felt a wave of nausea rise. Ignoring the pain, he gripped his sword scabbard in his left hand, held it clear of his legs. The man shifted his blade to his left hand, made a pass. Ballista stepped clear, jabbed. The man evaded, passed his weapon back into his right. He had done this before. Watch the blade.

At the edge of his vision, Ballista saw the man on the floor move. He took a step towards him. The one on his feet blocked him. Ballista sidestepped away. The din buffeted back from the walls, Ballista and his opponent a pocket of silence in the chaos.

The injured man was trying to haul himself up. Ballista had to act. He tossed his dagger in the air, caught its blade on the first rotation, spun it at the standing knife man’s face. Surprised, his opponent jerked sideways, off balance, his guard disturbed. Ballista drew his sword, flicked it straight out, lunged. Two quick steps. The heavy spatha battered the dagger aside. Its steel tip ripped in below the chest, two foot of steel following. The man grunted, dropped his weapon, clutched at the blade. Not looking into his face, Ballista twisted his sword, pushed him away, retrieved his spatha, turned to deal with the other on the floor. The man was scuttling off under the table.

A crash of splintering wood; light flooded in from another angle. Someone had kicked open the back door. Figures flitted out. The man from the floor last, staggering but fast.

Ballista checked the room. His three friends all on their feet, seeming unhurt. The eunuch cowering under a table. The stabbed man at his feet, gasping out his life in a spreading pool of dark blood. Another very motionless in front of Maximus. A whore unconscious on her back, her face a bloodied ruin.