The Wolves of the North

III

There was nothing to do but wait. Ballista did not much mind. It was an experience he knew well. Over the years, he had become used to its ways. Usually, he had been waiting for bad things to happen: for the centurion to take him as a hostage into the imperium, to be admitted into the pavilion of the emperor Maximinus Thrax, to be hauled before a murderous Hibernian chief with designs on the throne of the high kings of that island.

When he was young, he had not been good at waiting. Often, he had prayed to the gods to make it end, or, conversely, to postpone the approaching event indefinitely. In those days, he had had a child’s or young man’s belief that his life had a purpose and a goal; that its course could be determined by his will. He had seen it like the trajectory of an arrow. If he were not the bowman or the arrow itself, he was at least the breeze that could affect the arc and influence where the shaft fell. Forty-one winters on Middle Earth had disabused him of such juvenile fallacies. His life meandered. He went where he was sent. In Greek tragedy, the characters were playthings of the gods. He was at the whim of the yet more immanent gods who sat on the thrones of the Caesars. There was no point fighting. It was best to accept it, and wait.

There were worse places to wait. The hall was new-built, still clean, roomy enough for thirty-three men and two eunuchs. It reminded him of his father’s hall in Germania. There was little privacy, but Ballista knew his desire for it was unusual. The hall overlooked the harbour: both the trireme and the Gothic longships were gone. He watched the shallow draught merchant vessels come and go, listened to the scream of the gulls. Early the first morning, he sat looking at the mist coiling up from the broad, silty river. The trees on the far side grew straight out of the water. There were ducks and moorhens over there.

Later that first day, a Gothic priest came. The gudja was festooned with bracelets, his long hair braided with amulets and bones and other, unidentifiable things. He was followed by a quite exceptionally hideous old woman, hunched and filthy beyond description. The priest said his name was Vultuulf; much beyond that, he was not inclined to talk. He brought livestock for them — some chickens, two pigs and four sheep — and grain: wheat and rye.

By the second day, they had settled into routines to which their interests led them. The official staff, the herald and his like, kept to themselves; the interpreter apart even from them. The centurion drilled his men, stamping bad-temperedly along the quay. Maximus and Castricius each disappeared separately into the inhabited parts of the town, presumably searching for drink and women. Hippothous likewise, although Ballista assumed the human objects of his desire were different. The two eunuchs remained in the recesses of the hall, cloistered close together. Calgacus sat staring out at the river; Tarchon with him in companionable silence. The Suanian did not care to be far from one or other of Calgacus or Ballista since they had saved him from drowning in the Alontas river the year before. When drinking — for him a not uncommon activity — he was given to swearing blood-chilling oaths in very bad Greek concerning his readiness, eagerness even, to repay the debt by dying for them. All reckoned, Ballista thought he had a reasonable chance of it happening, probably quite soon, somewhere out on the Steppe.

Ballista ate, slept and read. There had been few books for sale in Panticapaeum — little enough of any luxury goods, although the eunuch Amantius had spent some of his almost certainly corruptly acquired money on a gilded brooch studded with sapphires and garnets. Of what books there had been, Castricius had bought all the epic poetry. Ballista did not mind. The northerner liked Homer and, last year, sailing the Kindly Sea, he had quite enjoyed listening to Apollonius of Rhodes being read to the elderly senator Felix, but, in general, more recent epic was not his choice. Ballista had purchased cheaply all of Sallust’s Histories and the Annals of Tacitus. He had finished the many rolls of the former during the winter. Now he was reading Tacitus’s account of the reign of Caligula. The hard-edged, practical pessimism of both authors appealed to him. Most human nature is weak, politics corrupt, freedom unattainable, libertas in fact no more than a word.

By the fifth morning, Ballista had had enough of waiting. He called Calgacus and Tarchon to him, and set out to see Hisarna. It had rained in the night. Little rivulets of milky water ran off the hill of ash before the town walls. It steamed slightly in the sun. The Urugundi guards at the gates seemed neither surprised nor interested to see them. At their appearance, however, one of them strolled off ahead of them into the town.

The agora was quieter than the first time. The slaves were still working on the gymnasium, but their efforts seemed desultory, unmotivated. There was no one outside the council house. The door was shut.

Ballista pushed it open, walked in. The big room was empty, the untenanted benches stretching up to the gloomy rafters. The throne of the Iron One was gone. Motes of dust turned slowly in the light from the door.

Ballista sat down, thinking. Calgacus sat next to him. Apparently unnerved by the emptiness, Tarchon prowled about, glaring into the shadows, as if expecting the apparition of a threat.

‘The Borani were here; now they and the Urugundi are gone,’ Ballista said.

‘Aye, it could signify something or nothing,’ Calgacus responded.

‘Bad feeling, Kyrios,’ Tarchon gravely announced. ‘Much malignity.’

With theatrical abruptness, a long shadow was thrown into the Bouleuterion. The gudja stood haloed in the doorway. The sunshine glinted in the things in his hair. The old woman was behind him.

‘Hisarna, son of Aoric, has gone,’ the priest said.

‘Where?’ Ballista asked.

‘To another place. The boats will come for you soon.’

‘When?’

‘Soon. You should go back to the hall.’

‘Why?’

‘It is safer. Many men hate you. Some of the gods hate you. Dernhelm or Ballista, many would rejoice to see you dead.’

There was no point in denying it, no point in arguing.

He was in a hot eastern city. There was dust everywhere. People were running, shouting. Maximus was with him in the street, looking absurdly young.

The men were running out of the hideous dark mouth of a tunnel. They were Roman soldiers. They were running away. Where was Calgacus? The old bastard was over there — thank the gods for that. Soldiers were rushing past, jostling, panic stricken. If Ballista did not give the order, the Persians would take the town. But Mamurra was still down there.

Maximus was shouting something. A soldier knocked into Ballista. There was no choice. Ballista gave the order. Maximus was yelling — no, no, you cannot leave him in there. The men with axes moved forward — the thunk, thunk as they got to work. Calgacus was saying it had to be done — they would kill everyone.

Soil was sifting down from the roof of the tunnel. A sharp series of cracks. The pit props gave. The tunnel caved in. A cloud of dust rolled out.

Mamurra was still in there.

Ballista jerked awake. The dream slipped away like smoke, leaving a feeling of utter dread.

Heart racing, he tried to force his eyes open, fearing what he would see. He looked towards the opening in the hangings, his eyes wide now. Nothing. No tall, hooded figure. No grey eyes filled with hatred. He looked all around the small, curtained-off area. There was no lamp, but enough light from the main body of the hall to see it was empty. Maximinus Thrax was not there.

Ballista had had just sixteen winters when he had killed the emperor at the siege of Aquileia. Maximinus Thrax had been a tyrant, a savage tyrant. But Ballista had sworn the military oath to him. He had broken his sacramentum. The other mutineers had decapitated the emperor’s corpse. Since then the daemon of that terrible man had pursued Ballista. The appearances were infrequent, but utterly petrifying. Ballista’s wife said it was nothing but bad dreams brought on by exhaustion or stress. It was easy for Julia. She was an Epicurean. Ballista was not. But he wished she was right.

Suddenly, like a dam giving way, the dream came back to him, bizarre in its clarity. Poor, poor Mamurra. Ballista had left his friend to die alone in the dark.

The boats did not come the next morning. The familia and the rest ate lunch together in the hall.

‘Why did Hisarna call the Heruli long-headed?’ Ballista asked.

‘Skull-binding,’ said Hippothous. ‘They are the Macrophali of whom Hippocrates wrote. They tie tight bandages around the soft skulls of infants, before they are properly formed. Their heads grow long, pointed, hugely deformed. After a generation or two, nature begins to collaborate with custom. If bald parents often have bald children, grey-eyed parents grey-eyed children, if squinting parents have squinting children, why should long-headed parents not have long-headed children?’

‘That is a grand idea,’ Maximus said. ‘If your nomads turn their enemies’ skulls into drinking cups, the bigger the skull the more drink in your cup.’

‘You should not joke,’ the eunuch Mastabates said, speaking in public for the first time since they had arrived in the town of Tanais. ‘They are like no other people. They sacrifice prisoners to their god of war. The first captive in a hundred, they pour wine over his head, cut his throat, catch the blood in a jar, tip some over their swords, and drink the rest. They cut off the right arms of the others and behead them. They skin the arms and use the skins as covers for their quivers. With the heads they make a circular cut at the level of the ears, shake the scalp away, scrape it clean with a cow’s rib, sew them together to make patchwork coats. The skull is lined with gold inside and leather outside. When they have important visitors to impress, they bring out these grisly cups and tell their story. They call this courage. The grasslands are a terrible place, inhabited by terrible people.’

Hippothous laughed. ‘It should suit you well, eunuch. Hippocrates wrote that because of their moist, womanish constitution, and the softness and coldness of their bellies, nomad men lack sexual desire. They are worn out by riding all the time, so are weak in the act of sex. Rich nomads are the worst. The first time or two they go to their women and it does not work, they do not despair. But when it never works, they renounce manhood, take up the tasks of women, begin to talk like them. They have a special name for them, the anarieis. You will fit in well with them.’

Ballista looked up, chewing on a mutton bone. ‘They only kill one in a hundred? In the north, when the Angles and Saxons go sea raiding, we sacrifice to the sea one in ten of the captured.’

‘No, Kyrios,’ Mastabates said. ‘They drink the blood of one in a hundred, but they kill and decapitate them all.’

‘Takes away the point in raiding.’ Castricius grinned wolfishly.

‘That strange-looking gudja is here again,’ Calgacus said.

Charms and bones clinking, the tall priest entered; as ever, the old hag scuttled behind him. ‘The boats will be here tomorrow. It is the will of my King Hisarna that I accompany you upriver.’

Everyone knew that if an unjustified, unpurified murderer set foot in a sacred place, madness or disease would descend on them. The gods could not be deceived. Nevertheless, the figure standing in the temple of Hecate thought it should be safe.

The small temple was in the north of Tanais. The harbour, the road up from it, the agora and the handful of streets leading to the few areas of reoccupied housing might have been cleared, but the majority of the town, including the northern quarter, remained deserted. The sack ten years before by the combined warriors of the Urugundi and the Heruli had been savage and thorough. The homes of mortals had been ransacked and burnt; their occupants enslaved. The homes of the gods had been partially spared. While their contents — statues and offerings, both precious and otherwise — had been looted or smashed, the structures had not been fired.

The figure looked around the dusty bareness of the temple. It was dark, suitably Stygian. The only light was from a small, unshuttered window high at the rear and what leaked around the slightly ajar door. Two columns stood two thirds of the way down the space. Beyond them there was nothing to see except the pitiful remains of some broken terracotta figures. These had been of no value to anyone except the devotees whose piety and trust had been so cruelly disabused.

A squeal of rusted hinges, and another figure slipped through the door. He had come.

‘Did you get it?’

The newcomer jumped at the question, his eyes flicking this way and that as he tried to locate the speaker in the gloom.

‘Back here.’

Locating the voice, the new arrival stepped forward. In those moments his face was bland and trusting, unburdened by anything except a childish avarice. He smiled placatingly, and hurried to unwrap the parcel in his hands. What else could you expect from a true slave? By nature untrustworthy, they were utter rubbish by definition.

Blue and dark-red stones caught, refracted and seemed to amplify the dim light. The slave handed across the small, heavy object. The other took it, pretended to examine it.

‘You said…’ The slave’s voice trailed off.

‘Yes, I did.’ Tucking the jewelled thing into a belt, the speaker passed over a purse, heavy and loud with the desired chink. The slave loosed the drawstring, tipped the contents in his palm. In the untrusting, unseemly way of his kind, he began counting the coins openly, his mouth moving.

The killer turned away, and drew a sword. The blade came free with a whisper. Lost in who could know what sordid material ambitions, the slave noticed nothing.

In one fluid motion, the killer spun around and swung. As the steel hummed through the still air, startled, the slave looked up. He had time to open his mouth to scream. The blade cut heavy and deep into his left thigh. He screamed now, and fell away like some toppled statuette. He rebounded from one of the columns. The wounded leg dragging, he began to flounder towards the door; blood sluicing out on to the dusty floor.

Two quick steps and the killer slashed the sword into the slave’s right leg. He went down. On all fours, leaking blood like a pig at a sacrifice, he crawled forward. The other kept pace; treading carefully, boots avoiding the bloody paste created by the slave’s agonized passage.

The slave was pleading, begging, promising anything and everything, things that should not be promised. The Hound of the Gods gazed down dispassionately, rejoicing in the rightness of it. Again, there had been no mistake.

Enough evidence forthcoming for the moral faultlessness of the deed, the Scourge of Evil brought down the sword in a flurry of short, chopping killing blows to the back of the head.

Leaving the body, the killer stepped outside. All was quiet, as expected. Back in the temple, the killer went to the leather bag previously stowed behind one of the columns, and took out a length of string and the favoured implements. What had to be done next were the hard, terrible things. The killer briefly wondered about their necessity. The justly killed leave no visitant against anybody; their daemon does not revenge. But a mistake had once been made. The killer knew the ghastly consequences. Far better to be doubly safe.

Afterwards, the killer wended an obscure, unfrequented way down to the riverbank. It was dusk. The ducks were flighting. Taking out the gilded ornament, the killer looked at its sapphires and garnets, dull now in the gloaming. He thought briefly about vanity and threw the pointless thing out into the dark water.