The Wolves of the North

XVII

Tarchon was riding holding on to the front horns of the saddle. He was holding on for grim death. Raised in the high mountains of the Croucasis, a Suanian warrior but not a nobleman, he made no claims to horsemanship. It was a pity the big Sarmatian horse he had got used to had been shot out from under him. The stray Alani pony he had caught was skittish and snappy.

Ballista and the other five were drawing some lengths ahead. Tarchon wanted to drive his mount on with shoulders and arms like them. Yet he knew if he let go of the saddle horns, at this pace, most likely he would take a fall.

It had been a good little fight back there. Tarchon laughed out loud. The Alani had been lining up Ballista’s back, composite bow at full draw. Tarchon had cleaved the nomad from the shoulder to the saddle. A mighty blow. The blow of a hero. Tarchon had saved Ballista’s life. He had repaid the Angle. But did it count, as no one seemed to have witnessed it? As he posed the question, Tarchon was furious with himself. What was he thinking? This was the sort of chiselling reckoning of some fat Greek merchant. This was unworthy of a Suanian warrior. Honour was not to be measured out like olive oil or salt fish.

Old Calgacus was injured in the abandoned wagon. It was Tarchon’s duty to save him, or die in the attempt. It was very simple. Tarchon let go of the horns, began shaking the reins, pumping his elbows, making strange noises intended to speed the pony. The effects were other than what he had hoped. His ungainly bouncing seemed to be upsetting the animal’s balance. It started to crab. Tarchon felt his seat shifting. Long-suffering Prometheus, he was going to fall off. He abandoned his ill-conceived urgings, and grabbed hold of the saddle again. Better he got there a little slowly than broke his neck without aiding the other man who had saved him from the Alontas river.

They were passing the seven wagons coming the other way. Ballista veered a little, so they skirted the southern line of three wagons. The oxen were bellowing their pain and fury at being harried with the whip into such unaccustomed alacrity. The wagons themselves were screaming; innumerable joints of wood under stress. Sometimes, one of the great heavy things would lurch into the air, one or more of the four wheels off the ground. It was a wonder on landing they did not break apart.

Andonnoballus the Herul was riding alongside the wagons. He called to Ballista. It was lost in the kicked-up dirt and pandemonium. Tarchon could not even tell what language it had been. Ballista shrugged and drove on.

They burst through the dust cloud as if into another world, one marked by the passing of the convoy, but not yet vitiated. The lone wagon stood in the warm sun not far off. The oxen, injured and unharmed alike, were head down and placid.

Tarchon’s heart lurched. There were nomad horsemen already around the wagon. How could they be too late? By all the gods and men, it was not possible. They would all have to die to avenge Calgacus. They and all their families. And poor young Wulfstan; they would suffer for his death.

The nomads turned and started to trot after the other wagons. As they came towards him, Tarchon saw the bright-red hair, the very long heads of the first two riders. It was Ochus and Pharas. The ex-slave Aordus was with them. Each rider had a man up behind him. There was Calgacus. And young Wulfstan. And the Sarmatian driver. Prometheus and Hecate be praised, the Heruli had ridden back and rescued them all.

Ballista slackened the speed to a walk as the two little cavalcades came together.

‘You had better not delay, if you want to save any of your possessions,’ Pharas said as they passed. ‘Be quick. We will see you at the riverbank. We will need every man.’

The Heruli and their passengers trotted on. The arm of one, Ochus, was soaked in blood.

Ballista sat looking about. The caravan was vanishing in the obscurity of its own making in one direction. The main horde of Alani were approaching from the other. Tarchon could begin to make out individual riders among the latter. It meant they could only be a thousand paces away.

‘Castricius,’ Ballista said, ‘take the three troopers, and go after the wagons. Screen their right flank, in case those other few Alani to the south try to interfere or shoot any more oxen.’

The Romans hastened away.

‘Maximus, Tarchon, come with me.’

At the wagon, Ballista handed his reins to Tarchon and told Maximus to do the same. Tarchon, uneasily sitting his pony and controlling their horses, watched them climb into the back. He was puzzled. This seemed most unlike either of the northerners. Material things never seemed to trouble them.

After a few moments, they reappeared, lugging towards the tailboard the heavy wooden box which contained half the gold for the ransoms and the diplomatic presents. Ballista broke the seals and wrenched the lid open with his dagger. Tarchon watched in something approaching dismay as the two scooped up handfuls of golden coins and, to save time bothering to open their wallets, tipped the specie into their boots. Then, at a word from Ballista, they hefted the box high, swung it, and — one, two, three — threw the whole thing over on to the ground. The wood split. Shining coins tipped out and lay glinting in the trampled grass.

‘Tarchon, are there any of your possessions you particularly want?’ Ballista called.

‘Tarchon is warrior. Possessions mean nothing to him,’ the Suanian replied stiffly.

Annoyingly, the Hibernian laughed as they ducked back under the covering.

Both re-emerged a moment or two later. Each carried his own saddlebag. Ballista had Tarchon’s as well. He threw it across. The Alani pony chose that moment to sidle and try and bite one of the horses. Tarchon nearly slipped off. Somehow he managed to hang on to the saddlebag, and let go neither the others’ reins nor his own dignity.

Ballista and Maximus swung easily into the saddle. As they secured their baggage, they looked at the approaching menace. The heads of the Alani were visible, distinct round balls. It meant they were no more than seven hundred paces distant.

Ballista looked at the gold. ‘The oldest trick in the book. It worked for me once in a riot in the Hippodrome in Antioch. You scatter rich things and hope your attackers are greedy enough to be distracted.’

They wheeled their mounts, and kicked straight on to an in-hand gallop. Getting on for half a mile start over the Alani. They should reach the watercourse just after the wagons, comfortably ahead of the nomads.

Soon they were overhauling the swaying, jouncing wagons. The handful of Alani out to the south had not attempted to intervene, and the main body, if anything, seemed to have fallen back a little.

A deafening, splintering crash, followed hard by high screaming; human as well as bestial. An enormous cloud of dust and debris mushroomed ahead. One of the wagons of the northern four had crashed. The last wagon in the line manoeuvred desperately around it, and did not stop.

From behind came the distant whooping of the Alani. Nothing could encourage them more. The gold might seem less tempting. Now they would drive their mounts all the harder.

‘Come on.’ Ballista booted his animal towards the wreck.

The north wind was blowing away the murk. A tangle of wood and felt and leather traces, of scattered possessions, of fallen oxen and twisted men was revealed. It had been the conveyance of the Roman staff: Porsenna the haruspex, the herald, the two scribes and the two messengers. One of the lead oxen appeared to have caught its leg in the hole of one of the big mouse-like things. It must have brought the rest of the team down and the wagon had ploughed into them. An upturned wheel still rotated.

‘Maximus, take the driver on your horse, unless he is badly hurt,’ Ballista said. ‘Tarchon, take any one of the staff; not an injured man though.’

Tarchon dismounted carefully. He was not going to let the pony loose and be stranded here himself. The Alani were coming. He had seen what they did to the centurion.

Several crumpled bodies were scattered in or near the wreckage.

‘Ballista, the Sarmatian is dead — broken neck,’ Maximus called.

‘Take someone else.’

A survivor tottered up to Tarchon. ‘Help, I am hurt; my leg.’ It was one of the scribes. There was a terrible gash in his right thigh.

Tarchon roughly pushed him aside. The wounded man fell. He whimpered with pain.

‘You.’ Tarchon led the pony to a man standing overwhelmed by the calamity. ‘Are you injured?’

‘No, I do not think so.’ It was Porsenna, his voice flat and dull. With difficulty, Tarchon helped the diviner up behind the saddle. The wretched pony tried to bite him. He hit it hard on the nose. It laid its ears flat back and began to circle.

‘Come on,’ Ballista called. The big northerner and Maximus were already back in the saddle, a passenger behind each.

With the encumbrance of the haruspex, and the pony turning, Tarchon could not remount.

The light-coloured dots of the faces of the Alani, the draco and some other banners snapping above their heads, the colours of their tunics, all could be seen clearly. Not more than five hundred paces at most.

Tarchon made another jump. The pony side-stepped away. He slid down its side.

The Alani were whooping. The rattle of their horses was loud.

Tarchon went to make another attempt. The pony skittered sideways.

Ballista rode up. Without ado, he grabbed the haruspex by the scruff of his tunic and hauled him off the pony. There was a yell of pained outrage as he hit the ground.

Ballista took the pony by the bridle, wedged his own horse against it so it could not sidle away. ‘Get up, quick.’

The horrible whisp-whisp-whisp of the first incoming arrows. By Prometheus, they were less than two hundred paces away.

Tarchon struggled, ungainly and urgent, into the saddle.

‘You cannot leave me.’ The hands of the haruspex clasped Ballista’s boot.

A shaft sliced through the air past Tarchon’s ear. Hurriedly, he gathered the reins.

‘I am sorry,’ Ballista said.

‘You faithless barbarian,’ Porsenna spat. He was clinging to Ballista’s leg, as if trying to unhorse him.

Ballista leant down and took him by the throat, breaking Porsenna’s grip. Ballista pushed him back, then kicked him in the face. The haruspex fell.

‘He is a fighting man, you are not,’ Ballista said. ‘I am sorry.’

‘Sacrilegious barbarian filth!’ The voice was high-pitched with pain and hatred and fear. ‘Curse you! May all the gods of the underworld…’

The venomous Latin was drowned by the sound of their horses, by the sound of the Alani.

They pushed their mounts as fast as they could. With two up on Ballista and Maximus’s mounts and Tarchon no great horseman, and with three or four hundred paces to the riverbank, things did not look good.

Unwittingly, the haruspex and the remaining staff bought them the necessary time. The Alani seemingly had not stopped for the gold and the first abandoned wagon. But the second was too tempting. It had people to be taken prisoner or killed. The pause was brief, but enough.

Tarchon held tight to the horns on the saddle. He let his pony have its head. Obeying the instinct of its kind, it raced after and alongside the other horses. As they neared the riverbank, they had to swerve aside to avoid the herd of oxen released from their traces and driven out of the forming wagon-laager. It was good thinking on someone’s part. The stampede was impressive, frightening even, out on the wide Steppe. In the confines of a small, enclosed camp, it would have been devastating.

They clattered into the semicircle, and the last two wagons were drawn together behind them.

Tarchon was grateful to slide from the back of the ill-natured, wilful pony. He stood by its head, blowing nearly as hard as the animal. He smiled happily. In Tarchon’s Suanian terms of understanding, Ballista had proved himself a Sceptre-bearer worth following. The trick with the gold had not worked, but it was cunning; worthy of the great ancestor Prometheus himself. And the northerner’s good sense when it came to warriors and those who dare not lift a weapon was exemplary. He had shown a fine lack of care for the latter. Ballista was a fine sceptouchos to follow, Tarchon thought. The pony swung its neck and sank its big, yellow teeth into his arm.

Ballista looked for Andonnoballus in the chaos of the laager. Men shouted, and horses called. A surprising number of domestic animals had escaped from the wagons and now darted about between the river and the semicircle of the laager. It was as well the oxen had been driven out.

The young Herul was in the centre of it all. Still on horseback, his long head rose above the confusion. Turning, he called out orders, encouragements and reprimands. He pointed and men ran to do his bidding.

‘Where do you want me?’ Ballista asked.

Andonnoballus saw him and smiled. It struck Ballista the Herul would have been a handsome northern warrior were it not for the deformed skull and the tattoos.

‘Down by the watercourse. Hold the bank. How many men do you have with you?’

‘Just Maximus and Tarchon.’

Andonnoballus looked at the other two.

‘They are just members of the staff,’ Ballista said. ‘No use in a fight.’

‘Take them anyway,’ Andonnoballus said. ‘I will try to send you one or two more — if we can spare them.’

Ballista summoned the others to his side. The two members of staff shuffled up. They would not hold his gaze. They were terrified; they would be no use. Maximus trotted his horse over. He was holding a chicken by its feet. He wrung its neck, and tied it to a rear horn of his saddle. Tarchon had to be called several times. The Suanian, a wistful look on his face, was standing holding his pony at arm’s length. He seemed lost in some barbaric other world. Seeing him made Ballista feel guilty about Porsenna. That he had disliked the pompous haruspex made it worse.

There were about forty paces of riverbank between the end wagons of the makeshift fortification. Half a dozen mature limes grew in quite an evenly spaced line. Ivy curled up their lower trunks. There was some thorny undergrowth between them and the lip of the watercourse.

The whooping of the Alani was growing louder.

Ballista and Maximus dismounted. They hobbled their horses, bringing the reins over the head and tying them around a foreleg. Tarchon did the same, although with some difficulty, and getting nipped in the process. They each took their bowcase from their saddle. Ballista told Maximus to take the right, Tarchon the left. He would take the centre. Use the limes as cover.

Both the staff had disappeared already. As if hiding among the baggage would do them any good if the Alani broke into the camp. Inconsequentially, Ballista realized neither of them could be frumentarii. In just this one instance, it was a pity. All frumentarii were trained soldiers before they were seconded. They could not have known it, but they had saved the wrong men. Yet Ballista doubted if the haruspex could have been a frumentarius. It was impossible to imagine he had ever been a legionary.

Pushing through the shrubs, Ballista quickly inspected the river. There was a steep drop of some ten, twelve paces down to the water. The soil of the bank looked quite loose, friable. The river was about twenty paces across. The far bank, if anything, was higher. You could get a horse up and down, but it would not be easy. All that was very good. Not all aspects were as encouraging. The water was not deep, not above knee level at any point. The bed of the river looked solid. The vegetation on the far bank matched that on the side of the camp, giving the Alani the same cover as the defenders until they attempted to cross the river. Yet, all in all, it could have been far worse.

The howls and roars of fighting came from behind Ballista. The Alani were attacking the wagons. The noises told him it was not yet hand to hand. The Alani were pressing close with a storm of arrows. Ballista went back, thorns plucking at his clothes. Overshot arrows were plunging to the ground all around. Ballista sheltered under the branches of the central lime, back against its smooth, grey trunk. He kept an eye over his shoulder on the river and what he could see of the Steppe beyond. He devoted the rest of his attention to holding his small buckler out ready to deflect any arrows that made it through the foliage.

Ballista looked up through the leaves at the sun. It was early afternoon. He was hungry. They had missed lunch. It was going to be a long day.