The Wolves of the North

XI

Ballista was riding with Calgacus and Maximus, as he had been for several days. Always travelling, never arriving; the Steppe stretched on without limit. Time stagnated. It took an effort to remember it was only eleven days since the discovery of Mastabates’ body, only fourteen since they set out on to the alien world of the Steppe.

As they trudged into the east, kurgans would appear in the distance. Slowly, the barrows got closer, were passed, and left behind. Watercourses were stumbled upon, each one somehow a surprise. The ox-wagons were braked down hard into the streams, hauled up the other side. Occasionally there would be a glimpse of white up ahead in the distance, a fixed point in the shimmering sea of green. Not until they were on top of it could the travellers tell if it was a boulder or a blanched skull. A lot of cattle and other creatures had died out here.

Ballista watched a lapwing swooping and diving around the head of the column, screaming outrage and distress at the threat to its unseen nest.

‘At least we have not seen hide nor hair of the Alani since the river,’ Maximus said.

‘That means shite,’ responded Calgacus. ‘The dust, the campfires; making only ten miles a day — we could not be easier to follow. There could be any number of the bastards out there tracking us.’

‘Child’s play,’ Ballista agreed. His mood was as glum as any. ‘The main body could hang back miles away. Have a couple of scouts watch our dust cloud from over the horizon; nothing to stop them riding in to have a closer look in the dark.’

‘Not at all,’ Maximus said. ‘A couple of horsemen on their own would not last a night out there alone — the daemons would get them.’

Both Ballista and Calgacus gave him a dubious look.

‘The plains are crawling with daemons and other foul, unnatural creatures. Ochus the Herul told me so.’

‘And you believed him,’ Ballista said.

‘And why not? Your long-headed fellow was born out here. He should know.’

Calgacus made an unpleasant grating, coughing sound — what passed for laughter.

‘Go on, laugh, you old fucker,’ Maximus said. ‘See if you are still laughing when one of them is pulling your guts out, drinking your blood.’

‘Like a retarded fucking child,’ Calgacus muttered.

‘Ochus said that your Gothic witches, like that old bitch with the gudja, go out and copulate with them, breed more of the things. At Ragnarok, a whole horde of them — daemons, half-daemons, all sorts — will come out of the Steppe, kill everything in their path.’

‘I think they might be one of the lesser things to worry about at the end of days,’ Ballista said. ‘Especially once the stars have fallen, the sun has been devoured, and the dead risen — there will be a lot on our minds.’

‘Say what you like, you would not catch me out there at night on my own.’ Maximus was reluctant to give up the otherworldly threat of the Steppe. Something about the strangeness of the landscape encouraged credulity.

‘Fine bodyguard you are,’ Calgacus said.

Maximus rounded on him. ‘You miserable old bastard, only the other day you said the killings might be the work of a daemon.’

‘Aye,’ Calgacus agreed, ‘but I was thinking of a real one, not a silly story. You know as well as me, ever since Ballista here killed Maximinus Thrax, he has been haunted by his daemon. When the other mutineers cut off his head, denied him burial, they condemned the dead emperor to walk. It might have been half a lifetime ago, but Maximinus has eternity.’

Ballista considered this. He had told very few people of the terrifying nocturnal apparitions: Calgacus and Maximus, his wife, Julia, his one-time secretary young Demetrius, and a friend, Turpio. The last was dead.

‘I do not think so,’ Ballista said. ‘It has been months since Maximinus troubled me. When he appears, the daemon offers no violence — just the threat he will see me again in Aquileia. We could hardly be further from northern Italy.’

‘It might be the two of you have forgotten, but we have been cursed by a priestess of Hecate,’ Maximus said. ‘Pythonissa summoned the dark bitch goddess and all her creatures up from the underworld against us.’

‘And you are frightened she might set an empusa on us; one of those nasty shape-shifters that frighten small children. I remember Demetrius mistook a man for one once in Mesopotamia — terrified the little Greek, it did.’ Calgacus’s amusement turned into a coughing fit.

‘Actually, I was thinking more of the Kindly Ones. Dog-headed, snakes for hair, coal-black bodies and bloodshot eyes; you do not want to meet them. Any fool knows the eumenides are relentless.’

Ballista noticed even Calgacus surreptitiously put his thumb between his first two fingers to avert evil. Live long enough in the Roman empire, and it seemed even a Caledonian became a little bit Hellenized.

‘Someone else has been in my thoughts,’ Ballista said. ‘Well… in my dreams really — old Mamurra.’

‘It was not your fault,’ Maximus said, quick as a flash.

‘Aye, you had to do it,’ Calgacus agreed.

They were both far too quick to exonerate. The three rode in slightly awkward silence. Some clouds were coming down from the north. An inevitable vulture was riding the wind very high above the caravan. Below it, a couple of rooks circled. The Steppe ahead was somewhat less flat, beginning to roll just a little.

‘Do you think he could have survived?’ Ballista asked.

‘No,’ Calgacus said. ‘If the collapse of the tunnel did not kill him, the Persians would have finished him off.’

‘No chance at all. For all we know, he was dead before the tunnel came down.’

‘If he had got out, he would blame me,’ Ballista said.

‘There is absolutely no fucking possibility he survived,’ Maximus said. ‘A man could not be more dead.’

‘No one down there would have given him an obol for the ferryman,’ Ballista said.

‘In that case, as I think your Greeks and Romans have it, he would just spend forever waiting by the banks of the river Styx.’ Maximus was waving his hands around to emphasize his point. ‘So he would not be roaming around these empty grasslands chopping up people he had never met.’

‘Shite, you two are as bad as each other,’ Calgacus grunted. ‘Retarded fucking children both of you, imagining things to scare yourselves. It is just where we are. This gods-forsaken shitehole of endless grass is unlike anything we have known, and it is preying on our minds.’

‘Well,’ Maximus said, ‘that and the two dead, horribly mutilated corpses.’

‘I still think it could be three or four,’ Ballista said.

‘Someone is coming,’ Calgacus said.

A Herul was cantering out from the line of the wagons. It was Andonnoballus. He looked very serious.

‘Dernhelm, son of Isangrim, I have a favour to ask.’ The Herul put the palm of his right hand to his forehead. ‘It is on behalf of my brother Philemuth.’

Ballista woke to the thunk, thunk of axes chopping wood. The Heruli and their slaves were using the oxen to drag the timber up from the banks of the small river. The Sarmatian drivers had been deputed to help. The beasts lowed as the whips lashed across their backs.

The pyre was going up fast. Already the framework was assembled, and both the platform and ramp put in place. Now the trimmed branches were being added, doused in oil and other flammables.

Ballista watched and thought of old age and debility, and death.

… Today and tomorrow

You will be in your prime; but soon you will die,

In battle or in bed; either fire or water,

The fearsome elements, will embrace you,

Or you will succumb to the sword’s flashing edge,

Or the arrow’s flight, or terrible old age;

Then your eyes, once bright, will be clouded over;

All too soon, O warrior, death will destroy you.

If the norns had spun him that long a life, what would his clouded eyes regard in old age? He thought fondly of the villa in Tauromenium. He saw himself sitting on a bench in the garden down by the gate, a fruit tree shading him from the Sicilian sun. Isangrim and Dernhelm were with him, full grown, tall and clean-limbed. Their golden hair shone in the shadows. The Bay of Naxos spread out below them. Perhaps their sons played at their feet.

No sooner was the idyll in his mind than it was replaced by another image. He saw himself seated on the great throne in his father’s high hall. The smoke from the fire drifted among the eaves. His warriors feasted and drank on the benches; their arms glittered with the rings he had given them. A bard sang of his grandfather Starkad, of all the war leaders of the Angles back to the Grey-eyed Allfather, Woden himself.

Yet it was hard to see his sons in the north they had never known. Impossible to imagine Julia, the daughter of a long line of Roman senators, being content as the wife of a northern chieftain. And, of course, he had older half-brothers. Morcar would die rather than see Ballista in their father’s place. If Ballista had not been taken as a hostage into the empire, they would have fought.

Ballista’s thoughts shied away to generalities of old age. The ancient Spartans had given the condition high accord. They had been guided in everything by the Gerousia, a council of ex-magistrates serving for life. The life of their polis had been dictated by a small group of elderly men, a strange, decrepit gerontocracy. The Romans also seemed to hold old age in high esteem. Many of them chose to have their portrait busts looking lined and wizened, showing them grown aged in hard service to the Res Publica. Some were given a senility in marble that they lacked in reality. But not all Romans wanted to appear old, and Sparta was not what it once had been. Perhaps neither the Greeks nor the Romans had ever lived up to their ideals of respecting old age. If they had, what need would there have been for countless philosophers to advocate the virtues of such veneration?

The pyre was almost finished. The Heruli were setting out rich brocades and cushions on the platform, carrying up food and drink, and weapons. Their slaves and the Sarmatians were busy spreading kindling. It would not be long now.

Among Ballista’s own people, advanced age got a man a voice in the assembly. Yet only if his younger deeds were remembered as worthy. Powerful kinsmen aided the esteem given to the elderly, but mainly if their kin were young warriors. Things were worse with other peoples. Apparently, among the Alani, those men who did not die in battle but reached old age were confined to the wagons. There they lived the lives of women or children; the objects of bitter reproaches, despised as degenerate and cowardly.

Ballista, however, had never encountered anything quite as terrible as the practice of the Heruli. Certainly, the gymnosophists of India did much the same. Calanus had mounted the pyre in Babylon under the eyes of Alexander. Zarmarus had done the same in Athens, watched by the emperor Augustus. But the Indian philosophers had acted as their own wisdom and conscience dictated. Their euthanasia had been voluntary, not enforced by social expectation. And no one had been assigned the awful task of assisting them.

It was time. Philemuth was brought out of his tent.

Ballista wondered if he would rather have remained inside, even if it meant being reviled.

Philemuth walked unsteadily to the foot of the ramp. Two other Heruli helped him up it.

Andonnoballus came over to Ballista. The northerner felt sick.

‘You know what to do,’ Andonnoballus said.

Ballista knew. It had been explained to him. It could not be done by a kinsman or a slave, and all the Heruli present were Rosomoni or servile. Andonnoballus had said it was an honour to be asked. When they reached his camp, Naulobates would think well of him for doing it. Ballista knew he had no real choice.

When the other Heruli had descended, Ballista walked to the ramp and climbed to the top of the pyre. He had killed many men, but none like this.

Philemuth lay, slightly propped up on the expensive cushions. His hands rested on the hilt of his sword on his chest. His whip and gorytus were close by him. His shield and other arms, jugs of drink and bowls of food were placed around. The Herul’s face was waxen, his eyes fixed on the sky.

Down below, the Heruli began to clash their swords on their shields. An insistent chant rose up. There was a smell of fresh-lit torches.

Philemuth said something.

Ballista could not hear. He leant down.

‘It takes courage,’ Philemuth said.

Ballista was unsure to which of them he referred.

Philemuth spoke again. ‘I will not trouble you — now or later. Tell Ochus and Pharas I will see them soon.’

Ballista nodded.

‘Make it quick and clean.’

Ballista drew the dagger from his hip. Do not think, just act. The often repeated mantra ran through his thoughts. He had killed many, far too many, men. One more made little difference. Do not think, just act.

Ballista knelt by Philemuth’s head. He passed his palm over the Herul’s head, hoping he would close his eyes. As gently as he could, he lifted Philemuth’s beard and chin. Do not think, just act.

Ballista cut the old man’s throat.

Philemuth’s hands grabbed for the blade. His body jerked up. The blood pumped, thick and very red.

After a time, Philemuth stopped moving. The flow of blood slowed. It seeped from the dark wound, down the tattooed neck and on to the sodden brocade.

Ballista disengaged the hands from his own. He stood up.

When he reached the bottom of the ramp, Ballista walked over to his familia. Calgacus put an arm around his shoulder.

Still chanting, the Rosomoni approached the pyre, torches in hand.

Despite his care, Ballista noticed there was blood on his clothes. The dagger was still in his hand.

The pyre was burning strongly. Great clouds of grey smoke from the green wood billowed high into the sky, visible for miles across the open Steppe.

The eunuch Amantius sat back and pulled his robe free where it was caught tight across the protuberance of his stomach. He shifted his soft haunches, and reread what he had written. It started conventionally and calmly enough.

Publius Egnatius Amantius to Lucius Calpurnius Piso Censorinus, Praetorian Prefect, Vir Ementissimus.

If you are well, Dominus, I can ask the gods for no more.

After three days in the third camp on the river Tanais the ox-wagons promised by Hisarna arrived.

Amantius scanned the bulk of the letter. It contained a brief description of the caravan provided by the Goths, and a lengthier discussion of early impressions of the Heruli, the latter far from good. With something of a flourish, it conveyed the more surprising information of the murderous family history between Ballista and the Heruli. As he neared the end, Amantius began to read more closely.

So while the Heruli have so far shown no overt hostility, two extremely disturbing developments must be brought to your attention. First, the collapse of disciplina which I mentioned in my first report has gone much further. Many members of the embassy pass much of their time in drunkenness caused by consuming vast quantities of the fermented mare’s milk of the nomads and in inebriation brought on by adopting the barbarians’ habit of inhaling cannabis. I regret to inform you the lead in this is taken by none other than the Legatus extra ordinem Scythica himself. With every day Marcus Clodius Ballista appears to be sloughing off his acquired layers of Romanitas and reverting to his barbaric nature. Early today he went so far as to kill a man in some ghastly nomad ritual of enforced euthanasia. The maiestas of Rome could be brought no lower.

Of the second development I am almost too frightened to write. While we were still in camp on the Tanais, twelve days before the kalends of June, the body of a slave owned by Gaius Aurelius Castricius, deputy to the Legatus, was found in the river. It had been horribly mutilated. Just six days later, the morning after we encountered the Heruli, my colleague Publius Egnatius Mastabates — my only amicus in this cavalcade of savagery — was discovered in an ancient barbarian tomb. He too had been cruelly killed and his body desecrated. One of the barbarians laughed and said it was just a eunuch, easy to replace. Some bloodthirsty killer or daemon preys on this caravan and, as the victims are but slaves and eunuchs, no one cares. May the gods hold their hands over me.

In camp on the Steppe, by my reckoning seven days before the ides of June but, on the Steppe, even time becomes uncertain.