The Wolves of the North (12 page)

As he neared the surface, Ballista could hear the wailing of the other eunuch, Amantius.

The tunnel was almost pitch dark. Men were screaming. The sounds of fighting were coming nearer. The flickering of distant torches gave it the look of Hell.

Mamurra was down, wounded. He was shouting something. Ballista could not hear. He felt the crushing weight of the earth above them. It was hard to breathe. He was choking. Far away behind him was the faint light of the outside world, the light of safety.

Mamurra shouted again. His hand reached out to Ballista. The Persians were getting closer. Earth drifted down on to Ballista’s head, like flour on a sacrificial animal. He felt as much as heard the
thunk
,
thunk
of axes biting into the pit props. He had to get out. He took a last look at Mamurra. His friend’s eyes were wild. Ballista turned and ran.

He stumbled out into the light …

The dream scrambled and retreated.

Ballista lay in the darkness. Poor old Mamurra. Poor square-headed old bastard. A man you could trust. A man who had trusted him.

Ballista had not been in the tunnel at Arete. But he had given the order. What in Hell else could he have done? Spare one and let the others die? He had given the order, and left his friend entombed in the dark for ever.

The Steppe was like nothing Calgacus had ever seen. It was another world. The ox-wagons had rumbled east for four days since the discovery of Mastabates’ corpse. They must have covered forty miles. But it could have been four hundred, or no distance at all. The Steppe gave no indication of having any beginning or end.

Many found it monotonous. But Calgacus was comfortable with the sameness. Although there were occasional bursts of rain – it was still May – most of the time, the sun shone. Calgacus enjoyed each day’s travel. The plain spread flat in all directions. There were
spring flowers in the grasses: blue, lilac and yellow. There were milkwort and wild hemp, and tall candelabras of mullein flowers. And everywhere was grey wormwood; everywhere the bitter aroma of wormwood.

Not all was monotony. Groups of rounded barrows of the dead came and went. Then, abruptly, the convoy would come upon small watercourses. Hidden in their own declivities, the streams sparkled, refreshing the eye. Snipe flew up, and there were chub, tench and pike, even crayfish, to be caught. Mice and larger rodents dived into holes and burrows. Maximus claimed to have seen all sorts of other animals – wild asses and goats, a vixen playing with her cubs – but Calgacus’s old eyes were not sharp enough to catch them. The Hibernian was probably lying.

The days were one thing, but the nights were another. In the day, unless you rode away from the din of the caravan, you could not hear the Steppe singing. But, at night, when men and beasts slept, there was no escaping it. The wind – and there was almost always wind – sighed through the fresh spring grasses. The sibilant whistling and whispering insinuated thoughts of regret and loss, instilled a feeling of trepidation. Nightingales and the call of owls added to the melancholy. On those nights when there were no clouds, the moon was bright enough to illuminate every blade of grass. The unfathomable immensity of the sky made Calgacus uneasily aware of the fleeting insignificance of man. He thought of Rebecca and the boy Simon, of his own hopes of comfort and domesticity. If he survived this – and in the face of such alien vastness it seemed somehow implausible – he would marry her. Ballista might hanker for a return to the north, at least in half his heart, but Calgacus wanted none of it. He had been a slave there. In the south, he had freedom. He wanted nothing more than to live out his days under the hot Sicilian sun, a son of his own playing at his feet.

On the fifth morning, Calgacus rode with Ballista and Maximus away from the others.

‘So, would now be a good time for you to be telling me how you and the longheads are so well informed about each other?’ Maximus asked Ballista.

‘You might as well know,’ Ballista said. ‘Once, the Heruli lived in the north, on the island of Scadinavia, across the Suebian sea, north-east from my people. In my grandfather’s time, the Heruli killed their king, for no better reason than they did not want to be ruled by him any more.’ Ballista smiled.

‘We Germans do not exalt our rulers like the Persians or Romans, but among the Heruli their kings enjoyed practically no advantage over any other warrior; all claimed the right to sit with him, eat with him, insult him without restraint.’ Ballista smiled again.

A brace of partridge flew up, their whirring wings making the horses skitter. Ballista soothed his mount, and took up the story once more.

‘They chose a new king, Sunildus. He was more to their taste. They were numerous and warlike. They soon conquered most of the thirteen neighbouring tribes on Scadinavia. Both the powerful Gauti and the savage Scrithiphini fell under their sway. Their king tried to call a halt, but they reviled him, called him effeminate, a coward. Their natural avarice was aroused. He did not dare try to curb them. They crossed the sea. The Eutes were subjected. The Heruli moved south, raided far and wide. The terrible things they did roused the other tribes against them: the Varini, Farodini, Reudigni, Saxones, Aviones and the Angles.’

Ballista stopped. Calgacus was half listening; he knew the tale of old.

‘And?’ Maximus prompted.

‘And, my grandfather had been away when the Heruli came.
They raped and killed his first wife, their two daughters. It was Starkad who formed the tribes into alliance against the Heruli, persuaded their subjects to revolt. He killed their king Sunildus with his own hands. The Heruli were driven from their lands. Sunildus’s son, Visandus, led them into exile. Many of the Eutes went with them. Now they are here.’

Maximus laughed, and turned to Calgacus. ‘Did you know this?’

‘Aye.’

‘And you both thought telling anyone might cast a further blight on the spirits of your companions?’

‘Something on those lines,’ Ballista said.

‘I can see your point,’ Maximus said. ‘Being tracked by an unknown murderer through a wilderness utterly forsaken by the gods but seemingly crowded with your enemies; that I am sure they can take in their stride. But should they discover that if, by some miracle, we are lucky enough to reach our destination alive, we will have delivered ourselves into the hands of a people who have good reason to want to see your entire family, and probably anyone connected to you, dead, now that might depress anyone a little.’

‘Like hunting bear across ice with a cracked bow and a torn hamstring,’ Calgacus said.

The other two ignored him. He wheezed his own amusement.

Then, for a while, they rode in silence.

‘Who do you think it is?’ Ballista said, breaking into their thoughts.

‘A man who does not like slaves or eunuchs,’ Maximus said. ‘It could be me.’

‘So you do not think it is the old witch?’ Ballista asked.

‘Sure, you can never tell,’ Maximus said. ‘She is a villainous-looking old bitch.’

‘Never succumb to the soft words of a witch, or her snaring
embraces; every sweetness will turn sour, you will take to your bed broken with sorrow,’ Calgacus said.

‘Stop it,’ said Ballista, smiling. ‘When you get happy enough to start quoting northern aphorisms, it always depresses me.’

‘Aphor-what?’

‘Sayings.’

‘Are you sure it is not the Borani?’ Maximus asked.

‘Quite sure. They want me dead, not some slave and an imperial eunuch.’

‘Pythonissa cursed you and all you love. Now, unless your girl thinks you have taken to loving eunuchs, it is not going to be her behind it. Come to that, it is not going to be her brother Saurmag or the Alani either.’

Ballista nodded in acceptance.

‘I have been wondering if it might be the King of the Urugundi,’ Maximus said. ‘He will not be wanting to be attacked by the Heruli, and he has that old
gudja
on hand, and he is a nasty piece of work.’

‘If Hisarna knew we are meant to set the Heruli on him, he would not have let us cross his lands. He could have sent us back, or just had us killed.’

Again they rode in silence. Another group of barrows was looming.

‘But you might be right that it is political,’ Ballista continued after a time, as if he had not stopped speaking. ‘We are in the middle of nowhere, cut off from all news. But out there the dance of emperors and kings goes on, and for all we know we may be a small part of it. The Persians do not want the Urugundi fighting the Heruli. The easterners want them and the other Goths free to raid the
imperium
. As
Corrector
of the Orient, Odenathus of Palmyra has been taking the fight to the Persians. They would rather he was distracted chasing northerners around the southern shores of the Euxine. There again, Postumus the pretender in the west
must know Gallienus is preparing to attack him. It is better for him if Gallienus has to deal with Gothic raids in the Aegean and Greece.’

‘How is killing a eunuch and a slave going to make the embassy fail?’ Maximus asked.

‘If the Heruli think there is a killer with us, they might not want us coming too close to their king,’ Ballista said. ‘It could be politics.’

Calgacus hawked and spat. ‘Was it politics drove you to kill those two eunuchs in Cilicia?’

Ballista shot him a fierce, unhappy look.

‘You were out of your mind,’ Calgacus continued. ‘Same here; no politics, no deep reason – it is the work of a madman.’

‘Who?’ Maximus raised the question.

‘Of course,’ Calgacus went on, ‘it might not be a man at all. No one has seen the killer. Maybe not a man, but a daemon.’

They rode past the first of the tombs. From its summit, an ancient stone effigy of a warrior holding a sword gazed down.

Hippothous felt like a character in a novel. Not one of those centred in the Hellenic world, but an adventure story that roamed to the ends of the earth; something like
The Wonders Beyond Thule
. Certainly, this journey was tough, brought its dangers:
Numberless are the challenges which lie before you on
your outward journey and on your return. But I am destined by the hateful decision of a god to die far away
, as Idmon had prophesied to the crew of the
Argo
. Hippothous was sure the first line was the one that was relevant to him.

The sea of grass was a constant delight. That afternoon, they had ridden into camp across a carpet of hyacinth and tulip. The scent of the thyme crushed by their horses’ hooves mingled with the intoxicating tang of wormwood. The customs of the Steppe were fascinating, well worth study. Hippothous was not one of those Hellenes who, no matter where they went, just found Hellas. He saw himself more like Herodotus; interested in other peoples for their own sake, not in a hurry to judge, prepared to accept that, everywhere,
custom is
king
.

Like Herodotus, like those men of culture who accompanied
Alexander, he was venturing beyond the known, opening new fields of enquiry. That was why Hippothous was so pleased to be able to attend the ritual that was to unfold after the feast.

The fire was sawing in the perpetual wind, tongues of flame drawn away into the night. The air was pungent with mingled woodsmoke, animal dung and roast lamb. Philemuth, seated on the left of Hippothous, knew some Greek. As the participant in the forthcoming ritual, it was unsurprising the sickly Herul did not want to talk. On the other side of the fire, Ballista was talking to Andonnoballus; Maximus and Calgacus with a couple of other nomads. They were using one of the languages of the north. Hippothous, of course, could not understand a word.

Unable to join in the conversations, Hippothous ate his lamb quietly and sipped his drink. He was very sober; the significance of the evening did not encourage heavy drinking or much levity. With nothing else to do, as so often, he gave way to his passion for physiognomy. He was not in the mood to study the Heruli. Although they
were
interesting. Once you looked beyond their artificially distorted skulls and pale, rough, northern skin, they were surprisingly normal; some even evidently of good character. But they could wait until they reached the court of King Naulobates. Now Hippothous wanted to practise on two subjects he had put off for far too long, for three years – four, if you counted inclusively.

Calgacus was in direct view, well lit by the fire, and caught up in discussion with his neighbours. It was an ideal moment for prolonged scrutiny. The test of skill would be to penetrate behind the natural ugliness of the subject; to tear that unlovely veil aside and reveal the soul. No squeamish feelings of revulsion should be allowed to stand in the way.

The old Caledonian had a large head. Usually that was good, indicating intelligence, understanding and high ambition. But
Calgacus’s head was too large; a horrible great dome-like thing. That must mean the opposite: a lack of knowledge and understanding, and a complete indifference. And his head was crooked, pointing to a failure of modesty and a dissolution of covenants. Not a man to be trusted, but nothing too bad so far.

Calgacus had a big chin. Which should denote the ability to suppress anger, but the tendency to talk at the wrong time. The latter rang true to Hippothous, but he was unsure about the former.

Calgacus shifted, scratched his crotch. From various trips to the baths, Hippothous knew Calgacus possessed a very large penis. Maximus often called him
Buticosus
, the ‘big-stuffer’ in Latin. Calgacus was the sort of man the
frumentarii
would have kidnapped in the reign of the pervert Heliogabalus to give the emperor pleasure. Although Hippothous could remember nothing at all in the
Physiognomy
of Polemon or that of Loxus about penises – an odd omission – a big cock was obviously a very bad thing. Everyone knew a small penis was the mark of a civilized man. The opposite was barbaric irrationality and loss of self-control.

The eyes are always the truest witness. Hippothous peered across at Calgacus. The northerner’s eyes were somewhat bleared. That was nothing but old age. They were an indeterminate shade of blue. Little to be made of that. They were small. That was more revealing – small like kinds of snakes, monkeys, foxes and the like. They most resembled the eyes of a serpent: malicious, intelligent, tyrannical, wary, timid, sometimes tamable, quick to change, and bad-natured. Hippothous thought the last obviously correct.