The Wolves of the North

XXVIII

Calgacus was unsurprised when Naulobates’ prediction came true. It had been two days since Aruth and his blood-brothers had been hoisted into the trees, where, their cages turning gently in the wind, they remained defiantly alive. The previous evening the scouts had reported that the Alani would reach the camp this morning. It was quite possible a daemon had told Naulobates. He had the look of one haunted by unworldly things. It was a look Calgacus had seen over the years in Ballista.

The torches were beginning to pale as Calgacus walked through the camp with Tarchon. The Heruli horde had ridden out long before dawn, and it was strangely quiet except for the lowing of oxen. Perhaps the beasts could sense the unease in the humans. Things would be decided one way or the other today.

Calgacus had got Tarchon to carry most of the food and drink for breakfast. The Caledonian’s right arm and shoulder were still strapped, and both his years and his war gear were heavy on him. It was a long walk. Rather than continue the futile retreat north, Naulobates had ordered the encampment put on a war footing. The hundreds of wagons had been set out in a great circle on the southern bank of the stream. They had been chained or lashed together, and any gaps barricaded. The thousands of draught oxen had been corralled in the middle. The non-combatants had gone. They had driven before them the horses, camels, sheep and goats to join the other herds in more distant grazing. The women and children were scattered in the vastness of the Steppe. Of course, should the battle be lost, it would only postpone their rape and enslavement, or rape and death, by a day or two.

It could be, Calgacus thought, that he was to witness the death of a people; an earthly prelude to Ragnarok, when the sun would be devoured, and the end would come for men and gods. But what could you expect when you travelled to the ends of Middle Earth with a man under a curse? Kill all those he loves. Let him wander the face of the earth, among strange peoples, always in exile, homeless and hated.

Since Naulobates had led out the fighting men, there were only a thousand or so souls to defend the two-mile perimeter of the camp. About two thirds were the wounded, the rest boys of thirteen or fourteen, fifteen at most. And, to the surprise of everyone, in the assembly last night Naulobates had ordained they were to be commanded by Ballista.

Many of the tribesmen had seemed deeply shocked. They had complained vociferously. He was not a Herul, not one of the brotherhood. He was the grandson of Starkad, the bloody-handed killer who had strangled their king, Naulobates’ own great-grandfather. Strangled him, but not before — gods below! — he had hacked off Sunildus’s penis and shoved it down his throat.

Calgacus had not known about the mutilation. He wondered if Ballista had known. He wondered if it was true. Folk memories were fallible. They changed to suit new circumstances, new needs. How could the Heruli have found out? Starkad had left no one alive on that desolate shore. And then it had occurred to Calgacus that he only believed that no one had survived the massacre because the Angles telling the story had said so.

Naulobates had dismissed the objections. It was universally acknowledged that no people were more skilled at defending a fortified position than the Romans. Had Ballista not been — for a day or two — emperor of the Romans? As for brotherhood, Ballista was brother by the cup and the sword with Andonnoballus. And as for the past, Starkad and Sunildus were a long time ago. It happened far away in a different country. As a sop to outraged tradition, he named an injured Herul called Alaric as the second officer of the camp.

Ballista had divided his command: the injured standing guard, spread thinly among the carts; the young inside the ring seeing to the oxen. He kept the Roman contingent with him. After walking the positions most of the night, he had taken his own station on a wagon in the southern arc of the laager. The one he had chosen was tall, and constructed entirely of wood. Come daylight, its roof should command a fine view.

Calgacus and Tarchon reached the wagon in the slate-grey light of the false dawn. There was a ladder. Calgacus climbed it, slow and stiff in his movements. At the top, he saw the dark shapes of five seated men. Muffled in their cloaks, they had the air of hooded crows.

Muttering, Calgacus put down the few containers he had carried. ‘It is no trouble at all. You fuckers just sit there. Let an old man do all the fucking work. Do not let it play on your conscience.’

Tarchon lugged up the rest of the things they had brought.

‘I thought you would never be back, not with all those baggage animals to bother,’ Ballista said.

Maximus got up and helped Tarchon pass around what had been brought.

Calgacus sat down where the Hibernian had been, next to Ballista. On his other side were Castricius and Hippothous. The second-in-command, Alaric, was beyond Ballista. When they had finished serving, Maximus and Tarchon hunkered down next to the Herul.

They all ate warm millet porridge and cold boiled mutton, drank fermented mare’s milk, and waited for the day.

‘I hope you do not mind me asking,’ Maximus said to Alaric. ‘Why have you not got a pointed head?’

‘I am not one of the Rosomoni,’ he replied.

‘Some of your tattoos — and very fetching they are indeed — are not red. I am thinking you were not born one of the Heruli.’

‘No.’

‘So what race were you?’

‘Taifali.’

‘No offence, but are they the ones that bugger the small boys?’

Alaric grunted.

‘Is that why you left?’

‘No, I killed a man.’

‘So what? Everyone has killed someone. Your men Hippothous and Castricius over there, they have probably killed dozens.’

‘The man I killed was my father.’ Alaric paused. ‘And both my brothers.’

The statement put a stop to conversation for a time.

It was quiet. The wind dropped and was backing towards the south. Yet it was still there, blowing across the measureless nomad sea, almost below the level of hearing, insidiously scratching and sighing through the dry grass.

Irrepressible, Maximus returned to questioning Alaric. This time his tone was less teasing, the subject perhaps less delicate. Were the Heruli not a fine tribe in which to be a man! How many women had Alaric enjoyed? Maximus had never known a better place for the women. Alaric was more forthcoming, and soon Tarchon joined in. By the tenor of their conversation, it seemed to Calgacus there could hardly be a girl beyond puberty one or more of them had not covered. Liars, all three of them, like most men.

Ballista leant close to Calgacus, put an arm around his shoulder, spoke softly into his ear. ‘I am sorry I have brought you all into this.’

‘You were ordered here. It was our duty to accompany you.’

‘I should have found us a way out before now.’

Calgacus gave a wheeze of laughter. ‘Oh, we are deep in the shite, and believe me, I have been looking for a way out, but I have not seen one.’

Ballista squeezed Calgacus’s shoulder, then stood, stretching until you could hear his joints crack. The big man sat down again to wait.

Maximus, Tarchon and Alaric moved on to discussing hunting dogs and horses. Say what you like about the Alani — and there was much to be said against them — they bred fine hounds. Maximus thought he would try to take a couple back with him. Hippothous and Castricius remained silent, wrapped in whatever clandestine and sanguinary thoughts motivated men like them.

The sun came up, a burnished plate of electrum on the horizon. The sky above the camp was empty, shining and translucent. But the wind had set in the south, and down there a storm was gathering, big black clouds trailing tentacles of night.

In the slanting clarity of the light, even Calgacus’s old eyes could make out the whole battlefield. It was demarked in the north by the camp and the stream. Three miles to the south, he could just discern the dark line of trees bordering a parallel stream. It would all be played out in this wedge of Steppe. It struck him as a small, nondescript place to host any such momentous event.

The horde of the Heruli was easy to see. It was assembled just fifty yards away. Despite all the herdsmen of the outlying flocks having been summoned, the losses from the first battle meant there were no more than fifteen thousand warriors. Unsurprisingly, no further reinforcements had arrived from the subject and allied tribes. The host was arrayed in three equal contingents, each ten deep and five hundred broad. On the left were the Agathyrsi and Nervii led by Artemidorus. The centre was held by Naulobates with the Rosomoni. Pharas on the right commanded what was left of the Eutes combined with the remaining Heruli.

The ponies were in ordered ranks. Through the gaps between the units, Calgacus could see the leaders and their aides walking about, their mounts held by handlers. The majority of the warriors were out of sight, sitting on the ground by the heads of their ponies. Above, banners cracked in the freshening air. Below, innumerable horse tails swished. The latter seemed always to be on the verge of forming some pattern, one that remained tantalizingly beyond comprehension.

Calgacus wondered how hard the Agathyrsi and Nervii would fight. They were not bound to the Heruli by bonds lasting generations like the Eutes. Calculations of flight, or accommodation with the Alani, if not outright desertion, had to have entered the thoughts of their leaders. Defeat bred desertion.

And the ambush of the hunt still nagged him. Someone had to have told the Alani where the Herul battue would end that day, and that someone had to have been a Herul. Naulobates was a reformer; in his own eyes, a visionary imbued with the divine. Not all men welcome either reforms or epiphanies.

The thoughts of betrayal pressed on, almost of their own accord. All that remained of the embassy that had left the port of Tanais was gathered around the wagon on which he sat. Somewhere near — no further than he could toss a bean — was the man who had mutilated the eunuch, the cruel bastard who had murdered young Wulfstan. Unless, of course, it had been the gudja, who was riding with Naulobates, or the soldier killed in the last battle. Or unless the killer had not been a man at all, but a daemon.

Calgacus was glad he was in full armour and that the big Sarmatian warhorses were hitched near the foot of the ladder.

The sun tracked up into the sky, and they waited. It got hotter, much hotter. So much for those Greek writers poor old Mastabates and the others had quoted who said it was always cold up here, and summer lasted but a few days. Calgacus had never liked the nights on the Steppe. The uncanny scale of it always made you feel insignificant, somehow pointless. But on the journey up in the spring he had enjoyed the days. He had taken pleasure in the bright colours of the flowers, in their varied scents. Now there was nothing but friable earth showing through scorched grass, and depressing clumps of brown knotgrass and grey wormwood. The only smell was dust and the bitter tang of the wormwood.

Calgacus again longed to be back in Sicily, back with Rebecca and Simon. The image of him with them in Tauromenium — under a warm Mediterranean sun, all happy — struck him with the intensity of a dream. Its very vividness made him weary.

A gust of wind advanced on them across the Steppe. It raised dust devils. Tall and swirling, they bore down with mindless ferocity, trailing great lateral branches before being torn apart. Behind them, the storm was building; malignant black thunderheads, pierced by points of flickering flame.

‘The scouts are coming in,’ Maximus said.

It took Calgacus some time to locate them. Four black dots, well spaced but converging towards the centre of the Heruli line, where the big banner with the wolves and the arrow flew. There was no point in asking the news they brought to Naulobates.

The others on the wagon stiffened then stood up to get a better view. Calgacus took his time.

Down below, the Heruli stirred. Heads popped up in the serried ranks of the horde as men got to their feet. The leaders swung up into the saddle. Messengers galloped here and there with last-moment instructions or words of encouragement.

The first Alani outriders were moving fast, raising occasional, random puffs of white dust which drifted in their wake before dispersing. At the sight of them, Calgacus felt the familiar tension in his chest.

The outriders reined in about half a mile away, strung out across the field in an extended screen of individuals. From away by the far stream, a broad, dark column of riders appeared. Just behind the skirmish line, the main body divided, fanning out at speed left and right.

Calgacus admired the neatness of the manoeuvre. Where before there had been empty Steppe, a solid battle line was formed. The dust raised coalesced into a shifting, opaque mist. Through it, the colours of individual ponies could be seen, but the riders were a vague blur. Standards floated in the murk, apparently unattached to the men below.

The Alani occupied the same frontage as the Heruli, but even Calgacus could see their formation was deeper. Even more than before, the Heruli were outnumbered.

The south wind was bringing the storm up behind the Alani. The hulk of purple-black clouds was lit from within by vivid stabs of phosphorescence. The first clearly enunciated clap of thunder reached the Heruli.

‘It is very bad,’ Alaric said.

‘It is nothing. Another of those storms of thunder and lightning, but no rain,’ Ballista said. ‘Andonnoballus told me you get them all the time out here in high summer.’

‘A dark cloud over your enemy, a clear sky over yourself — on the Steppe there can be no more forbidding portent.’ Alaric looked downcast.

‘Hercules’ hairy arse,’ Calgacus muttered, ‘this is getting worse by the fucking moment.’

Ballista studied the enemy. The Alani were chanting, brandishing their weapons. The movements and sounds were curiously disjointed. Ballista was searching for the banner with Prometheus on the mountain. He found it in the centre of the enemy line, near that of Safrax.

High, indistinct shouts came across the plain, then the low rumble of hooves and the clatter of equipment. Saurmag’s banner and several others were moving behind the Alani ranks. Through the fresh waves of dust, Ballista could see that the enemy were extending their left flank.

Nearer at hand, Naulobates yelled orders. The rear five ranks of the Rosomoni in the central contingent wheeled their ponies and cantered off to the right to form up as a new unit and prevent the horde being outflanked. The elongated, red head of Andonnoballus could be seen getting them into order.

With his narcotic-fuelled dreams of the spirit world, Naulobates might well be considered insane, but he could still manage a battle. He had done the right thing. It left the ranks of the centre and new right wing dangerously thin, but the countermove had prevented the Heruli being overlapped.

Like a festival or a dance, a battle has its own rhythms. A hush spread across the almost motionless field, as if all those thousands of men stood in awe of the deeds they were about to commit. The thunder boomed above them, an unseen blacksmith working at some celestial forge.

The keening note of a trumpet was joined by the whooping of the Alani. The enemy surged forward, and the lines of the Heruli went to meet them.

Watching a battle in which he had no part had an air of unreality for Ballista. He watched the gusts of arrows fall, the ponies racing and turning, the men tumbling beneath the hooves. The choking dust slid across everything. The confused roar of it all was loud in his ears. Yet it had a theatrical quality. It touched him no more than the imperial spectacles in the Colosseum. Men died there; men were dying here. It was almost nothing to him.

A battle confuses perceptions of time. Ballista thought he had been watching the deadly show for hours. Yet when the day darkened as the first storm clouds reached out to smother the sun, he saw it was still early morning. The unseasonable gloom invested the battle with a sombre gravity. The air hissed as the lightning speared overhead, illuminating the black thunderheads from within. The earth shook from the battle. The end would be like this, when the wolf Fenrir killed the Allfather, and the nine worlds would burn, and the gods die.

Ballista wanted it to be over. If, outnumbered though they were, the Heruli won, he would drink and feast with them. If, as must be more probable, they were worn down by exhaustion and the day was lost, he would gather his familia. They would mount the remaining big Sarmatian chargers and small Heruli ponies and try to cut their way out of the chaos.

‘Fuck,’ Maximus said.

Ballista looked where the Hibernian pointed to the west. A pillar of dust, at its base; when the lightning flashed, the glint of metal. A large number of mounted men were riding along the line of the northernmost stream. Still a way off, but travelling fast. They were heading for the camp or the rear of the Heruli line. Naulobates’ overstretched warriors had no reserve to check them.

‘No chance they are Urugundi?’ Castricius said.

‘No chance at all,’ returned Ballista.

‘The daemons of death are afraid of me.’ Castricius had a far-away look.

‘The portent could not have been worse,’ Alaric said. ‘Now, we must look to defend the camp.’

‘It would be no use,’ Ballista said.

Alaric continued to talk.

Ballista did not listen. He was looking all around, thinking. It was difficult to take everything in: the approaching cavalry, the confusion of the battle line, the camp, with the boys looking after the restless mass of cattle, and the pitiful number of wounded guards in the wagons. The noise of the oxen reminded him of something that had happened when the Alani had attacked the embassy on the way out. A stratagem he had read was in the back of his mind.

‘The boys with the oxen are herdsmen?’ Ballista asked.

‘Yes,’ Alaric said.

‘They could drive that herd?’

‘Of course.’ Alaric looked exasperated. ‘The camp?’

‘How many of the injured can still sit a horse?’

‘Twenty, maybe thirty. Why?’

‘Here is what we will do. Alaric, get the boys and all the men that can ride mounted. Have the others cut free four wagons, drag them out of the laager to make an opening. All of us here, get on horseback.’

Everyone was staring at him.

‘I think it was Hannibal, maybe in Polybius. When the Alani outflanking riders get near, we are going to stampede all those oxen into them.’

‘The First-Brother was right about you,’ Alaric said. ‘Loki himself could teach nothing to you. You are Starkad’s grandson in your cunning.’

‘What if it does not work?’ Hippothous asked.

‘Then we fall back on my other deep plan,’ Ballista said.

‘Which is?’

‘Which is every man runs as if all the daemons of the underworld were snapping at his heels.’

Mounted, armoured, flanked by his two closest friends, Ballista felt the usual apprehension. Maximus never seemed to feel it, but Ballista always did. No matter how many battles he survived, he always feared he would die, or, somehow even more oppressive, would let down those around him, would disgrace himself. He pulled the dagger on his right hip out an inch or two, snapped it back, went into the vaguely soothing pre-battle ritual of his own devising.

Behind him, the seething mass of oxen bellowed. The herders kept them back from the opening with difficulty. The crack and sting of the long, knotted hide whips added to the frenzy of the animals.

Ballista had led out eleven Roman riders. The eunuch Amantius, the scribe and the messenger, and the two slaves had been left in the laager as being of no use. With twenty wounded Heruli warriors and a hundred herdboys, those Romans considered martial enough were drawn up in a mounted line masking where the wagons had been hauled clear.

The oncoming Alani had seen them and deployed into a deep line, at least five hundred wide. They were bearing down, whooping. As Ballista had hoped, the nomads had proved unable to resist the obvious chance to get among the booty of the camp.

The Alani were closing fast, the bouncing, short-legged run of their ponies eating up the distance. Five hundred paces; four hundred. It had to be judged right. Three hundred. The Alani rode with their bows or weapons held out wide to the right, not to catch the sides of their mounts. Two hundred paces. They were committed. It had to be now.

Ballista made the signal with his bow — the arrow with the bright fletchings shot almost vertical into the dark sky.

Neat as could be, the screen of horsemen parted, making two lanes. There was a terrible sound, like stones being ground by a river in spate. Bucking, kicking, snorting in fury, the first of the near-maddened bullocks thundered past. In moments, there was a solid flood of oxen.

The Alani sawed on their reins, pulled their ponies back on to their haunches as they tried to stop, to get out of the way. Their numbers, the depth of their formation, were against them. Ponies barrelled into each other. Riders fought to stay in the saddle.

The onrush caught the Alani. The solid weight of the close-packed bullocks crashed into and through them. Men and ponies went down beneath the thousands of pounding hooves. Ballista watched with horrified revulsion the body of one of the Alani bouncing off the ground as it was stamped again and again, and was reduced to a broken bundle of blood-stained, fouled rags, the shattered white of a bone protruding obscenely.

It was accomplished almost before Ballista could comprehend the totality. The outflanking column of Alani no longer existed. The Steppe where it had galloped so proudly was dotted with knots of fleeing horsemen and a widening spread of escaping oxen.

The majority of the Alani were running south past the western edge of the battle line.

‘With me! With me!’ Ballista pushed the big Sarmatian into an in-hand gallop after them.

Already, individuals at the rear left of the Alani main fighting line were turning and slipping away. The sight of their fellow tribesmen routing past them had undermined their resolve, filling their minds with shapeless but awful visions of catastrophe.

A tight group of riders was battering its way across the path of the fleeing Alani. Their arms waved, their mouths were open, shouting unheard reproaches. A banner with a picture of a giant chained to a mountain flew above them.

Caught up in the insanity of the violence, Ballista laughed. Saurmag thought to halt the flight of the outflanking column. The Suanian had no hope of success. Instead, the gods were delivering him to Ballista.

‘With me! With me!’ Ballista angled through the dust and chaos towards the banner. Memories of a tiny underground cell, himself crouched naked, jagged rock cutting his flesh, overwhelmed him. The man who had had him flung into that place was a few paces away. Revenge was here for the taking.

Saurmag saw him coming. The Suanian pulled up, drew a blade. He was yelling at his men. Would he run? Would he fight? His indecision was evident.

Two riders, braver than their master, pushed past Saurmag.

Maximus reached them first. He went for the one on the right. Calgacus crashed his mount into the other. Ballista urged his mount between the duels. Saurmag was just ahead.

Another Alan surged into Ballista’s path. The nomad cut at his head. Ballista ducked under the swish of the blow. He thrust back, missed. He tried to keep moving, but the Alan was persistent. Ballista blocked another blow. Saurmag was pulling the head of his horse around. The little bastard was going to run.

A jarring impact — a searing pain in his right arm. Ballista had paid the penalty for his distraction. He could feel the blood running hot down his arm. The Alan cut at his head. As he took it on his own blade, Ballista felt the broken rings of mail cutting into his bicep.

Hampered by the wound, Ballista could only defend. His arm was stiffening, weakening. Watch the blade, watch the blade. He had to put Saurmag out of his mind, summon all his will to survive.

The Alan was pressing his advantage, his steel a living thing seeking Ballista’s life. There was nothing in the world except the flickering shine of steel. Watch the blade.

Another flash of light, from an unexpected quarter. The Alan rocked in the saddle. Maximus struck again, and the Alan — his head a thing of horror — toppled from the saddle.

The sound of the outside world rushed back, an almost physical blow in its confused immensity.

The Alani were fleeing; not just this wing, the whole horde. When panic grips an army, it is over in moments, completely irreversible.

Tarchon was in front of Ballista, grinning like a madman, like a devotee of some ecstatic cult. He was jabbering in his native tongue. He had a bloody sword in one hand, something heavy in the other. He held it out to Ballista like a proud child.

‘See, I bring you Saurmag.’