The Wolves of the North

IX

‘The same killer,’ Ballista said.

None of the men contradicted him. There were eight of them in the tomb: five Romans, Castricius, Maximus, Hippothous, the centurion Hordeonius and Ballista himself, the Gothic gudja, and two Heruli, Andonnoballus and Philemuth. There had been many more, a packed crowd, gawping. Ballista curtly had told Calgacus to herd them out. Ballista knew his temper was short, and he knew why: thousands of tons of earth poised above his head, and the only ways out two long and narrow, obviously unsafe tunnels dug by robbers. He would have given a lot to be able just to leave.

The scene in the chamber did not help. It was infinitely macabre. The freshly mutilated corpse lay among the bones of ancient violence. In the torchlight, the shadows of the living shifted on the rough walls as if souls already halfway to flitting like bats in Hades. All too easy to imagine being trapped here for eternity.

‘Why stuff the body parts under his armpits?’ Maximus asked.

‘Offerings to the infernal gods,’ Hordeonius replied. ‘As we offer the heart, liver and organs of a sacrificial beast. The murderer turns his victim into a sacrifice; turns away the anger of the gods, buys their protection.’

‘Or something more practical,’ Ballista said. ‘A daemon cannot accuse you with no tongue, cannot harm you with no hands.’

‘And cannot fuck you with no cock,’ Maximus added. ‘Although that might not be too much of a problem with a eunuch.’

‘The murderer will kill more than just slaves,’ Ballista said.

‘Possibly not — the eunuch was a freedman,’ the centurion said. ‘Once a slave, always a slave. You can always tell. I remember being in the baths at Byzantium. It was in the apodyterium, I was just putting my clothes in a locker.’

Ballista let Hordeonius run on. The fumes of cannabis and alcohol were still in his head. It was easier to think without having to talk. Both bodies had been found outside the camp. The first could have been killed anywhere. It had drifted down the Tanais. The blood showed that this one had been killed in the corridor of the tomb. Mastabates was unlikely to have ventured outside the camp on his own. He had to have been lured out.

‘The man barged past me, almost knocked me over. Not a word of apology.’

Mastabates would not have left the camp with a stranger, certainly not to this ghastly place. The killer had to be travelling with them. But who?

‘So I punched him to the ground. His slave came at me, so I knocked him down too. Beat them both like dogs; used my fists, feet, a wooden clog.’

And why?

‘You see into a man’s soul when you beat him.’

Of course, the killer might be in the pay of an outsider. Not the Borani. Somehow, it was not the way of the Goths, not the northern way of doing things. It could be Safrax, the King of the Alani. Certainly, he would hold a grudge from his defeat at the Caspian Gates. But, on such grounds, it was much more likely either Saurmag or Pythonissa; a prince denied a throne, and a woman scorned. The Suanian royal family were brought up in a world where murder was common currency. They prided themselves on their ingenuity in killing: poison, steel, drowning, suffocation. And Pythonissa had cursed him with that terrible curse.

‘He was nothing but a dirty little freedman from Lycia who had made some money.’

Yet the killer’s motives might have nothing to do with the outside. Like his person, they could be contained inside this strange caravan plodding across the Steppe.

‘Even naked, as we all were, I could tell what he really was.’

Ballista thought of his own slave, Polybius. Had he run back in Panticapaeum, or had something worse happened? If the latter, the killer had been with them from the beginning.

‘It is just a eunuch,’ Andonnoballus said. ‘Easy to replace.’

‘He was a brave…’ Somehow, Ballista could not say ‘man’. ‘He did not lack courage. Last year, when our ship was being chased by pirates on the Euxine, he stepped up to fight. He did not deserve to die like this. No one does.’

‘You do not like them any more than anyone else,’ Maximus said. ‘The other year in Cilicia, when we captured the Sassanid king’s harem, you killed two of Shapur’s eunuchs out of hand, just because they were crying and it annoyed you. What was it you said? Something like, We never cared for their sort in the north.’

Ballista suppressed a flash of anger. He had been out of his mind then, maddened with grief. He had been convinced his wife and sons were dead. But he was not going to voice that excuse; did not want to be reminded of that time at all. Fuck Maximus for bringing it up.

‘Look at the eunuch’s head; the killer cleaned his blade on his hair,’ the gudja said in heavily accented Greek.

It was true. There was much blood from the wound at Mastabates’ throat and the various mutilations, but none of it seemed to account for the clotted hair. From his youth at the imperial court, half-remembered lines of poetry came into Ballista’s mind. He recited hesitantly; losing the metre, missing words altogether.

Think… is it likely the dead in the tomb will take these honours well, who mercilessly slew him… armpitted him, and for ablution wiped off the bloodstains on his head…

‘What is that?’ Maximus asked.

‘Lines from Sophocles’ Electra. Clytemnestra tried to avoid the blood guilt of killing her husband, Agamemnon, by wiping the murder weapon in his hair. On his own head be it. It was his fault for sacrificing their daughter, Iphigenia. Mastabates mentioned the lines when we were looking at the body of Castricius’s slave. Now, Mastabates is the dead one.’

Ballista paused, thinking.

No one else spoke.

‘Mastabates said he was sure there was something more about mutilation, not in tragedy but in epic.’ Ballista looked at Castricius and Hippothous.

Neither the enthusiast for epic poetry nor the self-styled man of Hellenic high culture reacted.

Suddenly, the weight of the earth above was very heavy on Ballista. He was tired, hung over, oppressed. He had to get out of this tomb. Abruptly, he turned to Hordeonius. ‘Organize the burial,’ he said.

As he neared the surface, Ballista could hear the wailing of the other eunuch, Amantius.

The tunnel was almost pitch dark. Men were screaming. The sounds of fighting were coming nearer. The flickering of distant torches gave it the look of Hell.

Mamurra was down, wounded. He was shouting something. Ballista could not hear. He felt the crushing weight of the earth above them. It was hard to breathe. He was choking. Far away behind him was the faint light of the outside world, the light of safety.

Mamurra shouted again. His hand reached out to Ballista. The Persians were getting closer. Earth drifted down on to Ballista’s head, like flour on a sacrificial animal. He felt as much as heard the thunk, thunk of axes biting into the pit props. He had to get out. He took a last look at Mamurra. His friend’s eyes were wild. Ballista turned and ran.

He stumbled out into the light…

The dream scrambled and retreated.

Ballista lay in the darkness. Poor old Mamurra. Poor square-headed old bastard. A man you could trust. A man who had trusted him.

Ballista had not been in the tunnel at Arete. But he had given the order. What in Hell else could he have done? Spare one and let the others die? He had given the order, and left his friend entombed in the dark for ever.

The Steppe was like nothing Calgacus had ever seen. It was another world. The ox-wagons had rumbled east for four days since the discovery of Mastabates’ corpse. They must have covered forty miles. But it could have been four hundred, or no distance at all. The Steppe gave no indication of having any beginning or end.

Many found it monotonous. But Calgacus was comfortable with the sameness. Although there were occasional bursts of rain — it was still May — most of the time, the sun shone. Calgacus enjoyed each day’s travel. The plain spread flat in all directions. There were spring flowers in the grasses: blue, lilac and yellow. There were milkwort and wild hemp, and tall candelabras of mullein flowers. And everywhere was grey wormwood; everywhere the bitter aroma of wormwood.

Not all was monotony. Groups of rounded barrows of the dead came and went. Then, abruptly, the convoy would come upon small watercourses. Hidden in their own declivities, the streams sparkled, refreshing the eye. Snipe flew up, and there were chub, tench and pike, even crayfish, to be caught. Mice and larger rodents dived into holes and burrows. Maximus claimed to have seen all sorts of other animals — wild asses and goats, a vixen playing with her cubs — but Calgacus’s old eyes were not sharp enough to catch them. The Hibernian was probably lying.

The days were one thing, but the nights were another. In the day, unless you rode away from the din of the caravan, you could not hear the Steppe singing. But, at night, when men and beasts slept, there was no escaping it. The wind — and there was almost always wind — sighed through the fresh spring grasses. The sibilant whistling and whispering insinuated thoughts of regret and loss, instilled a feeling of trepidation. Nightingales and the call of owls added to the melancholy. On those nights when there were no clouds, the moon was bright enough to illuminate every blade of grass. The unfathomable immensity of the sky made Calgacus uneasily aware of the fleeting insignificance of man. He thought of Rebecca and the boy Simon, of his own hopes of comfort and domesticity. If he survived this — and in the face of such alien vastness it seemed somehow implausible — he would marry her. Ballista might hanker for a return to the north, at least in half his heart, but Calgacus wanted none of it. He had been a slave there. In the south, he had freedom. He wanted nothing more than to live out his days under the hot Sicilian sun, a son of his own playing at his feet.

On the fifth morning, Calgacus rode with Ballista and Maximus away from the others.

‘So, would now be a good time for you to be telling me how you and the longheads are so well informed about each other?’ Maximus asked Ballista.

‘You might as well know,’ Ballista said. ‘Once, the Heruli lived in the north, on the island of Scadinavia, across the Suebian sea, north-east from my people. In my grandfather’s time, the Heruli killed their king, for no better reason than they did not want to be ruled by him any more.’ Ballista smiled.

‘We Germans do not exalt our rulers like the Persians or Romans, but among the Heruli their kings enjoyed practically no advantage over any other warrior; all claimed the right to sit with him, eat with him, insult him without restraint.’ Ballista smiled again.

A brace of partridge flew up, their whirring wings making the horses skitter. Ballista soothed his mount, and took up the story once more.

‘They chose a new king, Sunildus. He was more to their taste. They were numerous and warlike. They soon conquered most of the thirteen neighbouring tribes on Scadinavia. Both the powerful Gauti and the savage Scrithiphini fell under their sway. Their king tried to call a halt, but they reviled him, called him effeminate, a coward. Their natural avarice was aroused. He did not dare try to curb them. They crossed the sea. The Eutes were subjected. The Heruli moved south, raided far and wide. The terrible things they did roused the other tribes against them: the Varini, Farodini, Reudigni, Saxones, Aviones and the Angles.’

Ballista stopped. Calgacus was half listening; he knew the tale of old.

‘And?’ Maximus prompted.

‘And, my grandfather had been away when the Heruli came. They raped and killed his first wife, their two daughters. It was Starkad who formed the tribes into alliance against the Heruli, persuaded their subjects to revolt. He killed their king Sunildus with his own hands. The Heruli were driven from their lands. Sunildus’s son, Visandus, led them into exile. Many of the Eutes went with them. Now they are here.’

Maximus laughed, and turned to Calgacus. ‘Did you know this?’

‘Aye.’

‘And you both thought telling anyone might cast a further blight on the spirits of your companions?’

‘Something on those lines,’ Ballista said.

‘I can see your point,’ Maximus said. ‘Being tracked by an unknown murderer through a wilderness utterly forsaken by the gods but seemingly crowded with your enemies; that I am sure they can take in their stride. But should they discover that if, by some miracle, we are lucky enough to reach our destination alive, we will have delivered ourselves into the hands of a people who have good reason to want to see your entire family, and probably anyone connected to you, dead, now that might depress anyone a little.’

‘Like hunting bear across ice with a cracked bow and a torn hamstring,’ Calgacus said.

The other two ignored him. He wheezed his own amusement.

Then, for a while, they rode in silence.

‘Who do you think it is?’ Ballista said, breaking into their thoughts.

‘A man who does not like slaves or eunuchs,’ Maximus said. ‘It could be me.’

‘So you do not think it is the old witch?’ Ballista asked.

‘Sure, you can never tell,’ Maximus said. ‘She is a villainous-looking old bitch.’

‘Never succumb to the soft words of a witch, or her snaring embraces; every sweetness will turn sour, you will take to your bed broken with sorrow,’ Calgacus said.

‘Stop it,’ said Ballista, smiling. ‘When you get happy enough to start quoting northern aphorisms, it always depresses me.’

‘Aphor-what?’

‘Sayings.’

‘Are you sure it is not the Borani?’ Maximus asked.

‘Quite sure. They want me dead, not some slave and an imperial eunuch.’

‘Pythonissa cursed you and all you love. Now, unless your girl thinks you have taken to loving eunuchs, it is not going to be her behind it. Come to that, it is not going to be her brother Saurmag or the Alani either.’

Ballista nodded in acceptance.

‘I have been wondering if it might be the King of the Urugundi,’ Maximus said. ‘He will not be wanting to be attacked by the Heruli, and he has that old gudja on hand, and he is a nasty piece of work.’

‘If Hisarna knew we are meant to set the Heruli on him, he would not have let us cross his lands. He could have sent us back, or just had us killed.’

Again they rode in silence. Another group of barrows was looming.

‘But you might be right that it is political,’ Ballista continued after a time, as if he had not stopped speaking. ‘We are in the middle of nowhere, cut off from all news. But out there the dance of emperors and kings goes on, and for all we know we may be a small part of it. The Persians do not want the Urugundi fighting the Heruli. The easterners want them and the other Goths free to raid the imperium. As Corrector of the Orient, Odenathus of Palmyra has been taking the fight to the Persians. They would rather he was distracted chasing northerners around the southern shores of the Euxine. There again, Postumus the pretender in the west must know Gallienus is preparing to attack him. It is better for him if Gallienus has to deal with Gothic raids in the Aegean and Greece.’

‘How is killing a eunuch and a slave going to make the embassy fail?’ Maximus asked.

‘If the Heruli think there is a killer with us, they might not want us coming too close to their king,’ Ballista said. ‘It could be politics.’

Calgacus hawked and spat. ‘Was it politics drove you to kill those two eunuchs in Cilicia?’

Ballista shot him a fierce, unhappy look.

‘You were out of your mind,’ Calgacus continued. ‘Same here; no politics, no deep reason — it is the work of a madman.’

‘Who?’ Maximus raised the question.

‘Of course,’ Calgacus went on, ‘it might not be a man at all. No one has seen the killer. Maybe not a man, but a daemon.’

They rode past the first of the tombs. From its summit, an ancient stone effigy of a warrior holding a sword gazed down.