The Amber Road

by Harry Sidebottom

  The wind had shifted to the north. It was blowing the smoke of the kilns and furnace over the wall of the lower town, over the docks. Ballista ran his gaze over the wall from the water up to the gate. The wall was too low. It had no towers. He knew that, on the inside, houses were built up against it. The houses meant there were few accesses to the wall walk for the defenders, but they would aid an attacker jumping down into the town. The gate itself was too wide, and it had no projections to enfilade those approaching. A single felled tree – and there were several suitable growing close by – would be sufficient to smash it, if the men wielding it were determined, were prepared to take casualties.

  This wall was the weak point of Olbia. The rest was good. The town formed an inverted triangle pointing south. The weak northern wall was its top. On its eastern side was the river; on its western a deep ravine. The citadel, at the tip of the triangle, was a fine strongpoint. It boasted massive stone walls built by the Roman army. They were studded with towers, each showing ports for artillery. It was true the walls had not been kept in good repair. Pocked with weeds, in places they were most shoddily patched with barely mortared, uncut stones. Yet nature aided their strength. On the river side, a cliff dropped nearly sheer down to the water. Opposite, the ravine was not so daunting. Indeed, it was planted with vines. There were even three wineries on narrow, cut terraces. But it was still not inconsiderably steep, and the cover the vines might give to an attacker ended in thirty paces of bare rock to the base of the wall. On the north side of the acropolis a deep moat separated it from the rest of the town. Unlike the main body of the city, the citadel was eminently defensible. Ballista wondered how it had fallen to the Goths some thirty years earlier. He would ask the strategos Galerius Montanus at the meal.

  Finally, an armed guard told the telones to let the cart enter. The crack of a whip and it and the cattle were moving. Ballista and the others followed, watching their step to avoid the green, flat cow-pats which fouled the street. Inside, the buildings were close together. More kilns and granaries were wedged up against wineries, cattle shelters, small workshops, stores and houses. Near the gate was a shop which, inexplicably, appeared to sell nothing but tiny, carved-bone pins. The smells of cooking mingled with excrement, spices and packed humanity and animals. The streets were dirty. From what Zeno had said, presumably the agoranomos Dadag had much else on his mind.

  They crossed the wooden bridge over the moat and walked under the arch of the citadel gate. Armed guards, fully equipped Sarmatian-style – pointed metal helmets, scale armour, bows and long swords – stood around in numbers.

  The house of Galerius Montanus was just inside the acropolis gate to the right. Like all Greek houses, it showed a forbidding blank face to the world. They told the porter they were expected, and waited in the street. Maximus began to tell the old joke about the young prefect and the camel. He had changed it into something he had witnessed himself in Mauretania.

  ‘Health and great joy,’ Montanus greeted his guests.

  ‘Health and great joy,’ they all replied with formality.

  They followed Montanus along a dark corridor which dog-legged and suddenly opened into a sunny courtyard ringed by Ionic columns. In the centre was a small pool with a water feature and ornamental fish. Couches were set for a meal in a room which opened off the far side. There was a mosaic underfoot – a straightforward geometric pattern in black and white – and sweet-smelling plants in strategically placed pots. It was quiet – just the splash of water – and immaculately well kept. All very simple, yet an oasis of urbanity amid the desuetude of the town.

  Montanus introduced them to his other guests: Callistratus, son of Callistratus, the first archon; Dadag, the agoranomos; another member of the Boule called Saitaphernes; and the deputy strategos, Bion. This was a small town. Its society was limited, and – despite the outlandish names of some of the citizens – it was clearly one where provincial Hellenic ways were maintained. There were no freedmen or -women waiting to greet them.

  When everyone had shaken hands and said, ‘Health and great joy,’ to everyone else, some several times, Montanus led them to their couches. Nine diners was a traditionally auspicious number.

  Ballista was guided to the place of honour to the left of the host. A boy moused up with a pitcher and bowl. With downcast eyes, he washed Ballista’s hands then removed the military man’s boots; finally, placed a garland of flowers on his head. Ballista unbuckled his sword belt and settled himself down on his left elbow. In his youth, no one would have borne weapons into the dining room. Now it was quite normal, apparently especially at the imperial court among the protectores of Gallienus.

  Montanus made a libation, calling on Zeus the Saviour, Apollo Prostates, Achilles Pontarches and Hecate the dark goddess to hold their hands over the city in this the two hundred and eighteenth year of its Roman era.

  Ballista noticed Montanus neatly tipped the wine offered to the gods not on to his mosaic floor but into the flowerbed. It saved any mess, and presumably the deities did not care where it landed.

  Tables were placed close to hand and the slaves brought out the first course. The inevitable eggs were soft-boiled with a sauce of pine kernels. There was a salad of lettuce and rocket. The main dish of the course was grilled carp.

  An older male slave mixed and poured out a tawny wine.

  ‘A Lesbian,’ said Montanus.

  ‘The wine or him?’ Maximus laughed.

  Montanus looked disapproving – although Ballista was uncertain whether this was a result of the implication of oral sex or at the temerity of a freedman speaking out.

  ‘He does not look like a cocksucker’ – Castricius addressed Maximus – ‘and being a Lesbian is no worse than being a Phoenician, and I am sure you have been down on more than a few women in your time.’

  This was not playing well with the Olbians. Montanus looked more than ever like the bust of some stern old Roman from the days of the free Republic – Cato the Censor, or whoever, returned to upbraid modern frivolity and loose ways.

  Ballista took a long pull at his drink. He was tempted to dismiss the censoriousness as backwoods prudishness. But had his familia been irrevocably coarsened by all the years in the army, or by the last two years among extraordinary barbarians? What did the Olbians think of them? Castricius would be none too unsettling, unless, as now, he was speaking in the language of the barracks, and provided they did not know that in his youth he had been condemned to the mines. But the rest of them were a different story: a Hibernian ex-slave with the end of his nose missing, a tribesman from the High Caucasus who mangled both Greek and Latin, often in the same sentence, and himself, a big northern barbarian with a veneer of civilization. Then – in one of those instantaneous flashes of insight – he knew that all that was only a minor part of the unease they created. How many men had they killed between them? Killing changes a man. It does something to the eyes. It was not always the same thing. Ballista had seen killers with eyes like cats in the sun, others with eyes like flat pebbles under water. He had no idea what his own eyes betrayed.

  ‘The wine is good, both hot and dry on the palate.’ Ballista spoke merely to move the talk on to less uncomfortable ground.

  Montanus inclined his head at the compliment. ‘You may not be familiar with the fish. It is only found in our northern rivers.’

  Ballista laughed. ‘And in the rivers further north of my youth.’

  Montanus looked vaguely put out, more at Ballista’s origins than any lack of tact on his own part.

  ‘I read somewhere that carp are neither male nor female.’ Castricius now spoke smoothly, in formal Attic Greek, no longer the rough soldier but the man of paideia.

  ‘Indeed.’ Montanus recovered enough to sketch a smile. ‘They become so when in captivity. My own fish tanks are on the other side of the river.’

  Conversation for a time became general on the subject of fish: the catching and keeping of, those good to eat, those less so, and the positively
harmful varieties.

  Bion, the young deputy strategos, cleared his throat. ‘May I be so bold as to ask our honoured guest to tell us of his victories over the Persians? An opportunity to hear how you made the Persian king flee the field at the battle of Soli is not to be passed up.’

  Ballista had no wish to talk about Soli, or the subsequent fight at Sebaste. He remembered little of them. It had been a bad time. He had been near out of his mind, believing his wife and sons dead.

  ‘There was not much to them.’ Ballista said no more.

  The somewhat strained silence was broken by Callistratus. ‘I wonder if we could prevail on you to put aside your becoming modesty and tell us instead how you saved Miletus from the Goths. It is a subject dear to our hearts. Miletus was mother city to Olbia, and many of us have connections there. I myself have the honour of being guest-friend of Macarius, the stephanephor of that great polis.’

  That was a happier time, and Ballista acceded to the request. Apart from the Goths’ lack of skill at siege works and the undoubted courage of those serving under him – Macarius notable among them – Ballista put it down to managing to cause panic among the attackers. The unexpected will often bring this about, and two stratagems had worked at Miletus: hidden stakes which the Gothic ships ran on to in the two harbours, and two hastily constructed siege engines unexpectedly raining down inflammable missiles. It was a carefully edited account, which omitted the underhand – if not treacherous – killing of the Tervingi leader Tharuaro.

  The uncomfortable memory of his Loki-like trick made Ballista’s final words less diplomatic than they might have been. ‘Looking at the defences coming here, I was wondering how Olbia fell to the Goths.’

  The brusque change of subject, on to what obviously was a delicate topic, seemed to instil a certain embarrassment among the Olbians. First Montanus, then Callistratus sought to remove their fathers from any blame. Both had been away. They had been campaigning across the estuary on Hylaea. Most of the fighting men of Olbia had been with them, the fathers of Dadag and Saitaphernes among them. The grandfather of Bion had been in Athens. A band of Goths had sacked the sanctuary of Hecate. It had been a cunning ruse to draw the militia out of the city. Olbia had been retaken almost at once.

  To everyone’s relief, the servants brought in the main course.

  ‘Spring lamb, roast in the Parthian style,’ Montanus announced. ‘My grandfather served in the eastern wars of the divine Septimius Severus.’

  As host, Montanus clearly thought it right he should hold centre stage, and guide the conversation back to where it reflected his family in a better light. Ballista was happy enough for it to be so. In this vein, he asked how they had become landowners and councillors in Olbia.

  ‘My grandfather was a centurion with the XI Claudia. He was posted here after the Parthian wars. When those with the eagles were allowed to marry, he took to wife a woman of good local family.’

  As Montanus’s family history unrolled, Ballista enjoyed the lamb. It was in a pepper and onion sauce with damsons. There were peas in cumin, too, one of his favourites.

  The peace of the afternoon was broken by noises from the other side of the courtyard. A man in armour burst from the passageway. He sought out Montanus.

  ‘Strategos, the barbarians are in the old town!’

  VII

  Olbia

  After his Lesbian joke fell flat, Maximus concentrated on eating. The lamb was good, and the unfortunately named wine had been replaced with a local vintage. The drink tasted of elderberry, but Maximus had got used to that. Montanus, the local pretend general, was droning on about his family.

  Maximus was not listening, his thoughts wandering with no idea of a destination. It was good they grew hemp here. He had grown to like inhaling cannabis the previous year out on the Steppe. He had missed it during the winter in Byzantium. There had to be a better way of smoking it than putting it between two knives, and you could not be building a tent every time like the nomads did.

  Montanus appeared to be listing every individual who had ever been related to him by blood or marriage; and fine people they were in the telling. There was something about this meal that reminded Maximus of another occasion in another backwater, the town of Priene in the province of Asia. They had left that place to go to fight at Miletus. They had left Calgacus behind with Ballista’s wife and sons in Priene. Maximus was surprised how much he missed the ugly old Caledonian. While he had been alive, Maximus supposed he had been fond of him – although not as fond as he would have been of a good hunting dog. But now it was different. In many ways, Maximus thought it would have been better if he had been the one killed. Calgacus had left the Jewish woman Rebecca and the small boy Simon. The old bastard had loved her, loved the slave boy like a son. It had seemed returned. There was nothing like that in Maximus’s life. He must be getting old: he had begun to wish there was.

  A man in armour was jabbering at Montanus. Everyone was scrambling off their couches. Shite, the Goths were in the old town.

  Maximus hauled on his boots, then buckled on his sword belt as he bundled up the stairs after Ballista. From the roof you could see for miles. The house of the strategos was well chosen. To the west, beyond the ravine, the land rolled off into the distance, green and peaceful. Below, to the east, the river glinted through a veil of smoke. And, to the north, the remains of the old town stretched away. Maximus had good eyes. He saw the grey column of infantry skirting a still-standing tower, pressing on south down what had been the main street, towards the ancient agora.

  ‘Hoist the signal for an attack.’ Montanus sounded controlled. Maybe he was less of a joke commander than Maximus had judged him.

  ‘Bion, get down and bar the northern gate. Make sure the bowmen are well spread along the wall. Callistratus, would you take your station down in the port. Dadag, assemble the reserve by the citadel gate; keep it open unless I give the order. Saitaphernes, keep a close watch from the acropolis walls. I will remain here. Let us remember our courage. Let us be men.’

  ‘Strategos,’ Ballista spoke urgently, ‘my men are in the agora. If Bion shuts the gate, they will be trapped outside.’

  ‘I am sorry, it cannot be helped.’

  ‘There are nearly thirty fighting men out there – too many to sacrifice.’

  ‘We cannot put the town at risk. There is no help for it.’

  ‘Then we will go to them,’ said Ballista. ‘If we return, and are not hard pressed, have Bion open the gate.’

  Montanus looked at Callistratus, who nodded. ‘It will be as you wish,’ Montanus said, ‘but if the Goths are on your heels, you will have to take your chances.’

  They turned to go.

  ‘Wait,’ said Montanus. ‘There is a postern into the acropolis, the second tower on the west face, overlooking the ravine. Saitaphernes will tell the guards to watch. But if the Goths …’ There was no point in him finishing.

  Maximus ran down the stairs after Ballista. By the time he reached the street, he was out of breath: too much soft living. They pounded after Bion, under the great arch, over the bridge, between the crammed-together buildings. There were many in the streets, but to give the Olbians their due, there was little panic. Militia men ran to their posts – pulling on their arms as they went – women herded children and animals inside. Living surrounded by enemies taught a hard lesson.

  At the gate Bion shouted orders, sending men up and along the wall walk. Maximus doubled over, panting; Ballista and Castricius likewise. Tarchon seemed in better condition. The Suanian was just a little younger. Gods, but Maximus was getting too old for this shite.

  Ballista used Maximus to haul himself upright. ‘Bion, would you get ropes?’

  ‘Ropes?’

  Ballista drew a couple of deep breaths, got the words out. ‘If you have had to shut the gates, you might haul some of my men to safety. My familia can hold the Goths off for a time.’

  ‘Where would –’

  ‘The docks – use ship’s
cables, anything.’

  The young officer smiled. ‘I will see to it. You had better go. I am going to shut the gate.’

  Outside, a boy was driving a herd of goats towards the town.

  ‘Leave them,’ Bion called. ‘Run!’

  The boy hesitated. He was a slave, and his owner would beat him if he lost the goats.

  ‘Now!’

  The boy sprinted past Maximus, sandals pattering on the road.

  The gate slammed shut. The sound of the bar being dropped.

  ‘Time to go,’ said Ballista. They set off through the unconcerned goats.

  As ill luck would have it, at that moment a family – a man and woman, two children – emerged from the ruins. They saw the shut gate and began to wail.

  Maximus paused.

  ‘Come on.’ Ballista called over his shoulder. He was right. Maximus knew there was nothing they could do. Holding his scabbard out to avoid it tangling in his legs, he jogged off after the other three.

  Running in the hot sun, a mailshirt dragging at your shoulders, a good meal and plenty of wine inside you, was never good. Castricius especially was suffering. Maximus had his breathing more under control. He overtook the little Roman.

  More Olbians, caught out by the suddenness of the barbarian descent, appeared in the narrow path. Swerving around them, Maximus hoped Bion would exercise mercy, or that they would make it to the postern.

  A largish body of men were fleeing down towards them. The crew of the Fides. They ran pell-mell, in no form of order.