The Wolves of the North

XXX

There was no fanfare when Ballista finally led the mission out of the camp of the Heruli. Naulobates had ridden south with the majority of the nomad warriors three days after the feast. The First-Brother intended to join with Hisarna and his Urugundi and, although it would be late in the season, together they would take the war to Safrax in the Croucasis.

Now, two days after the departure of the horde, the few remaining men and the women and children were packing up the great summer camp ready for the annual trek back down to the winter grazing on the banks of the Tanais. Ballista had received word that he and his men were free to begin their long journey back to Lake Maeotis and then on to the imperium.

He pulled his horse out of the line, and shaded his eyes as he looked back into the rising sun. The column was in order so far. There were seventeen riders, including himself. Maximus, Calgacus and Tarchon rode point at the front with the guide provided by the Heruli. They were followed by the surviving members of the staff: Biomasos the interpreter, the scribe and the messenger, and Amantius the eunuch. It was odd seeing the latter in his red cloak and white tunic; odd that he was alive, when so many obviously tougher men had died.

The pack animals came next. There were twenty of them. The Heruli had been generous. One thing they did not lack was ponies. Roped into two strings, they were led by the two remaining slaves. Who owned these slaves was a moot point, given both Mastabates and Hordeonius the centurion were dead.

Castricius and one auxiliary cavalryman were on flank to the north, Hippothous and the other trooper to the south. The two freedmen brought up the rear. These ex-military slaves had the worst of it. Anyone riding drag got to eat the dust raised by the rest.

Their course lay west of south-west across the sea of grass. They would come to the higher reaches of the Tanais on the second day. There was a crossing place. Then they would take a direct line to the town of Tanais. Rudolphus, the guide, said it would be twelve days’ easy ride. Ballista saw no reason not to trust the Herul. Behind the swirling tattoos, Rudolphus had an open face. He had lost three of the fingers on his sword-hand, which accounted for why he was with them.

That first day, they rode under a burnished sky, empty except for the occasional vulture or rook. They plodded along the open land, the sweat running down them. Rudolphus had said they did not need to wear their armour. They were unlikely to run into any serious trouble. Given the heat, they were all glad of that.

In the afternoon, they saw great pulsating clouds of dirty yellow dust off to the north and rolling down towards them. One of the outlying Heruli herds, Rudolphus said. An hour or so later, from a slight rise they saw the ochre plain up there dotted with the tiny black shapes of cattle, hundreds of them. Like the main body of the nomads, these were making their way south. It would be a long journey. Rudolphus told them the herds — sheep, goats or cattle — if grazing as they went, usually travelled at no more than five miles a day.

They came to the Tanais, before noon on the second day. The land here folded up a little more. They saw the trees fringing the river, and smelt the water before it came in view. The river was wide, but mainly shallow. Rudolphus led them straight into the water. They waded their horses out to a narrow island with a line of trees, then across to another. They had to swim the animals the last part. Ballista kept an eye on Tarchon. The Suanian would never make a natural horseman. It was quite a stretch, but the current was slow, and nothing bad happened. In retrospect, the crossing seemed easier than scrambling up a gulley in the higher western bank.

They saw to the horses, lit a fire, dried out themselves and the baggage, and ate lunch. Afterwards, while most rested in the shade of some willows, Maximus inhaled some hemp with Rudolphus. The Hibernian had grown to love that stuff.

Hot and dirty, and not in the mood for narcotics or company, Ballista walked back down the gulley to the Tanais to bathe. Down by the water were the remains of a tiny settlement. The jambs and lintel of the doors of the two huts still stood. Their four-square solidity was strange against the rest. The walls were sagging or gone, and above the roofs were partial skeletons of joists and beams. The wattle of the stock pen wall had fallen and unwoven. Its warped sticks were strewn across the dust, while the sets of twin posts that had once held it upright stuck up at crazed angles, white like bleached bones.

Ballista walked through it, held by the common human fascination for desuetude. How did this happen? Where did everyone go? Any portable possessions had long ago been robbed out. The dust sifted grey and fine on his boots. There was no sign of burning, but somehow he had no doubt violence had been involved in its abandonment. There were fish in the river, wildfowl would flight here, the soil was fertile. He had a vision of two hardworking families, models of rustic virtue. Maybe one had a daughter to betroth to the son of the other. They would sacrifice a specially fattened calf for their bucolic nuptials. And then the riders had come. They had steel in their hands, and quite likely they had red tattoos.

The country beyond the river, while still flat, was not featureless. It was patterned with dry watercourses. The sides of these dropped down suddenly, as if they had been cut by the spade of a giant. Greyish shrubs grew in them, back flush to the level of the surrounding grass. They curved like dark tattoos across the face of the Steppe.

That night, Ballista lay watching sheet lightning on the northern horizon. Rain would come soon, Rudolphus had said.

The third day, the Steppe reverted to type, a flat run of brown-black grass as far ahead as could be seen. The north wind had brought down the clouds. Black and without a break, they slid south low overhead. As the travellers rode south-west, it was as if they were trapped between two solid planes, like the hemp between Maximus’s blades.

By noon, it was dark enough to be evening. The thunder welled up in the clouds. The sheet lightning accentuated the gloom with its sporadic flashes of pure white. In one of these Ballista saw three men on ponies riding parallel to them in the south. A quarter of a mile away, half a mile? It was impossible to judge.

‘There are many broken, tribeless men on the Steppe,’ Rudolphus said. ‘More now, after Naulobates’ victory; many Alani, riders from the Sirachoi, Aorsoi, their subject tribes.’ The guide shrugged. ‘Heruli too. Fear made some of the brothers slip away from the fighting. They were fools. It is better to stand up to the arrow-storm and the steel for an hour or two, better to take the wound’ — he held up his right hand, with the truncated digits — ‘better even to die, than live as an outcast. It is a hard life; bad for the soul. Those men have seen our horses and pack-ponies and the baggage. They may try to steal them. But, unless there are many of them, they will not try and fight us for them.’

They made camp early, under a loud, angry sky. Ballista decided they would set pickets. To keep them sharp, prevent any falling into a routine, they would be chosen by lot each evening. After dinner, Ballista and Maximus took the first watch. They sat, cloaks pulled around them, at either end of the horse lines, to the west of the camp.

Ballista could sense the rain in the storm. Nine more days to Tanais, some of them would be wet. A day or two in the town hiring a boat, another day or two crossing Lake Maeotis. Would there be an imperial official with new orders waiting for them in the Kingdom of Bosporus? If so, they might have to winter in Panticapaeum again. If not, they should be able to get passage across the Euxine to Byzantium before the weather closed the shipping lanes. If no mandata awaited them there either, he was minded to journey on by land. The weather would be bad, but he still had diplomata to use the cursus publicus. They could use the imperial posting service up through the Danubian provinces, across the Alps — if the snow had not closed the passes — and report to Gallienus at Mediolanum, assuming the emperor was there with the field army.

He was not unduly worried how Gallienus would receive them. True, he had ransomed no Roman prisoners, and had failed to turn the Heruli against the Urugundi and the other Goths. Yet there was war on the Steppes. Having fought in the Caucasus, he did not think Naulobates and Hisarna were likely to attain a quick victory over the Alani. The remote passes and upland pastures were studded with forts and made ideal terrain for ambush. That was three tribes too occupied to raid the imperium. And half the gold with which he had been entrusted was returning.

The thunder and lightning were spooking the horses.

Time was passing since Ballista had been forced briefly to assume the purple. Gallienus had not had him condemned in the immediate aftermath. There was no reason to think the emperor would do so now. Unless…

Lightning illuminated the whole Steppe with a fleeting brilliance that had no perspective, and was gone in a moment. The blackness after was impenetrable.

Unless there had been an outbreak of usurpations, and the consilium thought a purge was necessary to reassert the authority of the central government. Ballista had been away from the imperial council for a long time. He had never fully understood its inner machinations. Undoubtedly, he had enemies there. Yet he also had friends. The last he had heard, Aurelian and Tacitus still stood high in the favour of Gallienus.

Lightning tore across the sky.

Ballista wondered how Rutilus had got on in his embassy to the other Gothic tribes, the Borani and the Grethungi. Being yoked with the old consular Felix would have been no joy.

Halfway along the line, a horse reared against its tether. Ballista got to his feet, stretching the knots out of his muscles. A figure was at the horse’s head.

‘Maximus?’

A gust of wind snatched the word away.

Ballista walked down the line of white-eyed horses.

There were two men by the plunging horse.

‘Maximus!’ Ballista threw off his cloak, drew his sword. ‘Horse thieves!’

Ballista ran at them. One figure swung up on to the animal, the other holding its head.

‘Maximus!’

The second man jumped up behind the first. The horse bolted.

Something warned Ballista. He turned, weapon ready. A blade sliced towards his head. He parried, and riposted. But the man had leapt aside, and was running off into the darkness.

‘Maximus!’

A dark shape in front. ‘Is that you?’

‘Of course it is fucking me.’

Other men were running up from the campfire.

‘They just got the one.’

The next night, the storm returned, but still the rain did not fall. About midnight, someone shook Calgacus awake.

‘Enough, enough, you ham-fisted fucker.’

Tarchon stopped shaking him. ‘Your turn with the pederast.’

Calgacus clambered to his feet. His shoulder hurt. It seized up when he slept. He yawned, coughed, hawked, spat and farted; all as loudly as possible, inspired by a half-realized resentment at others sleeping when he was awake. The noises were lost in the clamour of the storm.

Hippothous was waiting by the fire with one of the soldiers. Sparks whirled away to die in the darkness.

The change of pickets was shite. Calgacus would tell Ballista in the morning. If both men on watch came in to rouse their replacements, it would not take the most intelligent horse thief in the world to work out when to strike. Although if any of the fuckers were out on a night like this, good luck to them.

The horses were tethered in two lines running north-south out to the west of the camp. Between the lightning flashes, it was so dark they were barely visible from where the men slept around the fire. Hippothous disappeared off to the northern picket.

Calgacus walked through the lines to the southern post. The horses shifted and whickered at him as he passed. He liked the sweet smell of them. He muttered soothing things. A Herul pony tried to nip him.

Out beyond the shelter of the animals, the wind buffeted him. There was no cover, so he sat with his back to it. He pulled his cloak around him. Since they had been there, he had never liked the night on the Steppe.

Up above, the storm roared. There were no stars. All the constellations, the Pleiades, the Eyes of Thiazi — whatever different men called them — were gone. The moon had vanished as surely as if Hati the wolf had devoured him.

It was Ragnarok weather. At the end of days, Fenrir the wolf will break his bonds, Jormungand the serpent rear up from the sea, the dead rise from Hel, and Naglfar — the ship made from dead men’s nails — bring doom to gods and men.

Calgacus wondered if he believed it, any of it. They were the first stories of the gods he could remember. The Angles had seemed to believe. But it had been made very clear he was not an Angle. He was a nithing, a Caledonian slave.

He had grown up an outsider in Germania. All these years with Ballista, he had remained an outsider among the Greeks and Romans. When the traditional gods were always beings other people worshipped, it made his own belief in any of them improbable. Those religions he had encountered which offered a new identity — Manichaeism, Christianity — struck him as the self-evident results of human ingenuity.

Something warned Calgacus. He shifted, and peered out from under his hood. Hippothous was ghosting down the horse lines. He had a sword in his hand.

No daemon then; all the time, just a man’s murderous insanity.

Calgacus did not move. Under his cloak, he eased his sword in its scabbard. He watched out of the corner of his eye; waiting, waiting. As Hippothous closed, Calgacus rose, turned, drew his weapon and thrust in one fluid motion.

Caught by surprise, the Greek sidestepped. Too slow. The edge of Calgacus’s blade scraped down his ribcage.

Hippothous stepped back. He seemed not to feel the pain. In the lightning, his eyes were mad.

Calgacus roared as he cut at Hippothous’s head. Sparks as Hippothous blocked the blow, countered, and was blocked in turn.

They circled. Intense concentration made it hard for Calgacus to shout. Hippothous led on one foot then shifted his weight to the other and launched a flurry of blows.

The heavy impacts jarred up into Calgacus’s shoulder. The steel rang against the thunder. The horses were calling, fighting against their tethers. That would bring the others. Just stay alive.

Something turned under Calgacus’s boot. He staggered. Hippothous struck. Calgacus brought his sword across. Not quick enough. The breath grunted out of him, as the steel punched up into his stomach.

As the blade was pulled out, Calgacus doubled up. He used his sword to push himself near upright, drew the long dagger from his right hip, got it out in front. The blood was running hot down his groin on to his thighs.

Hippothous stepped in, chopping down at his head. Calgacus met it with the dagger. The force almost drove him to his knees. Movement, shouting off towards the fire. Just stay alive.

Like an animal seeking the warmth of his blood, the steel cut at him again. He blocked — slower, the pain hindering his movements.

The horses were rearing as men ran through the lines.

Hippothous looked over his shoulder, then turned and ran into the darkness.

Calgacus felt his knees give. He was face down, the grass coarse under his cheek. The blood was hot on his hands pressed to the wound.

How long would it take the fuckers to get here? From a great distance, he heard yelling, above the howl of the wind.

With surprise, he realized he was not thinking of Ballista, and not of Rebecca and Simon. He heard the crash of waves on rocks, caught the scent of a peat fire, glimpsed a woman’s half-remembered face.