The Amber Road

by Harry Sidebottom

  The young Goth pressed his advantage. Feinting high to the left, he altered the blow and chopped down towards Ballista’s ankle. Awkwardly, Ballista brought his own blade down just in time and desperately hobbled away from the tangling clutches of the vines. If ever he needed Maximus, it was now. Him or the demented Suanian Tarchon.

  The Tervingi warrior stepped back, watchful but confident. He knew there was nothing his opponent could do to prevent him making his escape. He pushed the long fair hair out of his face and was about to turn to go when the recognition showed in his eyes.

  ‘You – Oath-breaker, the murderer – Dernhelm, son of Isangrim. I saw you at Miletus.’ He laughed. ‘If Gunteric had known you were here, he would have come himself. Now I will take him your head.’

  ‘His sons tried.’ Ballista answered him in his own tongue. He had to buy some time. He flexed his left leg gently, willing the feeling back.

  ‘Respa was a fool. But Tharuaro was a great warrior. You killed him with a low trick, the cowardly act of a nithing.’

  ‘I am alive, they are dead.’

  ‘You live as a slave of the Romans. Now you will die as a skalks at my hand.’ The young warrior spat, changed his grip.

  ‘Tharuaro was the fool.’ Ballista went to shift his stance. His leg nearly buckled. Where in Hel was Maximus? ‘No one can outlive what the Norns have spun. The gods had taken Tharuaro’s wits.’

  ‘Enough talk.’ The Tervingi dropped into the Ox guard – half turned, left leg forward, sword held high, palm down, jutting out like the horn of an ox – good for outmanoeuvring an incapacitated opponent.

  Ballista dropped into a defensive posture: side on, weight on his rear right leg, sword two-handed out in front.

  The Goth stepped right then left. Ballista countered; slow, lame and favouring his good leg but never taking his eyes from the bright tip of the three foot of steel which sought to end his life. Almost all men make a tiny involuntary movement before they launch an attack. Where the fuck were Maximus and that halfwit Tarchon?

  A slight tremor in the steel, and then the Tervingi cut down at Ballista’s leading leg. A bad mistake fighting without a shield. Automatically, Ballista started to withdraw the leg and shape a riposte to the head. Allfather, his bad leg. Clumsily, Ballista checked, dragged his blade down and across. The ring of steel on steel. The pain was excruciating as much of his weight came on his left leg.

  The Goth withdrew, reversed his blade and swung it underhand. Flat-footed, panting with distress, Ballista was driven nearly to his knees as he caught the attack a hand’s breadth from his face. Instinctively, he flicked his own spatha at the young man’s legs. Almost gracefully, the Goth leapt back out of reach.

  Again they circled, the Goth driving Ballista this way and that. The Goth was moving well; Ballista badly. The Goth had age on his side. All Ballista had was his mailshirt and experience.

  Ballista made a pass at the young raider’s head. Not trusting his leg, he knew it would prove ineffectual, but it was important not to surrender all initiative. What was that sound?

  ‘You suck cock like Tharuaro? You Goths are said to love it.’

  The young warrior laughed. ‘Insults will not help you, Oath-breaker.’

  ‘Sucking cock and running like girls – you miss the northlands my grandfather chased you from?’

  The sound again – running feet. The Goth heard it, too. His eyes flicked away. It was enough. Ballista lunged and jabbed to the face. The Goth flinched, instinctively covering himself with his sword. One-handed, Ballista slashed his sword down, almost vertical. It just caught the outside of the Goth’s left knee. The young man howled, doubled up. Dropping his weapon, his hands clutched the wound. Ballista’s leg gave. He staggered a few steps, righted himself and hobbled back.

  The Goth looked up.

  Maximus and Tarchon were nearly up with them.

  The young Tervingi looked at his fallen sword, then at Ballista’s blade, and abandoned the idea. ‘I will see you in Hel.’

  Ballista smashed the edge of his blade down into the face of the youth.

  Maximus and Tarchon came to a halt, breathless.

  ‘About fucking time.’

  IX

  Olbia

  ‘If I am remembering rightly,’ said Maximus, ‘you northerners will be going one of two ways when you are dead.’

  Ballista shifted slightly where he was sitting astride a roof beam of the winery. He had been there a long time, and his leg ached. He made a vague noise of assent.

  ‘You are either finding a good home with your gods, an eternity of fighting all day and drinking all night – and I think there may be women there to take care of your other needs – or you will be rotting forever in a dark, cold hall presided over by some hideous old hag.’

  ‘Not eternity,’ said Ballista. ‘Nothing lasts for ever.’ His eyes did not leave the red standard flying over the house of the strategos in Olbia.

  ‘Maybe, but you will be in either place for a very long time.’

  ‘Until the stars fall and the gods die.’

  ‘Now, you get to the good place by dying in battle.’

  Ballista rubbed his leg. ‘I suppose if you died just before Ragnarok, you might only be in Valhalla or Hel quite a short time.’

  Maximus, ignoring the line of speculation, continued with his own theme. ‘So, your young Goth this morning was wrong. He died in battle, so it’s the good place for him, and – no matter where you end up – he will not be seeing you in Hel.’

  Ballista looked at the Hibernian in mock-despair. ‘Have you spent all day thinking about that?’

  ‘It passes the time. As your Greek wise man said: “The unconsidered life is shite.”’

  ‘I think you will find he put it as “not worth living”.’

  ‘Same thing.’

  It had been hours since the death of the Goth. They had dragged his corpse back up to near the apple tree. Placing him face down, they had pulled the green cloak up to cover his ruined head and, taking three of the spent arrows, skewered them into his back. If his friends came back, with luck they would assume he had been shot while attempting to get away, and the bowmen up on the wall would deter them from coming too close.

  While they had been about it, and on their return to the winery, Ballista had worried the archers in the town might mistake them for more Goths. He had seen too many men killed by their own side in the confusion of war. It had been an anxious time, but no shafts came. The young Olbian Bion held that sector of the defences. Thankfully, he must have good eyes. Either that or the commotion had drawn Castricius down to take personal charge.

  They had waited. The sun ran across the sky in her relentless flight from the wolf Skoll that at the end of days will devour her. For at least four hours Ballista had perched under the tiles, always watching. Nothing of note had happened. Occasionally, he clambered down to relieve himself in one of the reservoirs. There were eighty-two men in that cramped confinement. The air was thick, fetid with their body odour and waste. Most had tied scarves around their faces. Ballista had done the same. It masked little of the stench, but it might serve another purpose. The young Goth had recognized him. It would be bad if others did in what lay ahead. Ballista’s shield was propped against the door-frame. Its metal ornament of a northern bird of prey was still muffled from the night before. He would leave it that way. The motif was repeated as a crest on his helmet. Likewise, he would leave the rags tied around that. He had ordered that no one should use his names, neither Ballista nor Dernhelm. Today he would fight under the name Vandrad. If the Allfather was kind, the Goths might not become aware there was bloodfeud between themselves and the warrior who opposed them – at least not until some time after he and his familia had left for the north.

  ‘Oath-breaker’ the young Goth had called him. While Ballista had spoken no words when he went out to fight Tharuaro in single combat, the thing had been implicit. The young Goth was right. The killing of Tharuaro had been an act of no ho
nour, the act of a nithing. Yet it had helped save the city of Miletus. When Ballista was young he had liked to listen to the scops who had come to the halls of his father. In their sagas the path of honour was always difficult, fraught with danger; frequently, it proved fatal. But most often it was clear. Since he had been taken into the imperium, Ballista had found honour and expediency often opposed.

  Oath-breaker. The young Goth had been more right than he knew. There were many oaths Ballista had broken. When he had been hauled into the imperium he had taken the military oath to the emperor Maximinus Thrax. No sooner had he sworn the sacramentum than he had broken it. Just sixteen winters old and, on a warm spring day outside the Italian city of Aquileia, he had killed the man he had sworn to protect. The other conspirators – the ones who had forced Ballista to join them – had beheaded the emperor, left his mutilated body to be devoured by birds and beasts. Denied Hades, the daemon of the emperor was condemned forever to walk in this world. In the long years since, Ballista had come to know well the nocturnal apparition; the dread as he woke, the smell of the waxed canvas cloak, the tall, grey-eyed figure grim in the dark of the night. Always the same words: I will see you again at Aquileia. Oath-breaker.

  Julia often had tried to rationalize the thing away. Maximinus only appeared when Ballista was exhausted, under great stress. It was a figment of his thoughts running uncontrolled as he slept. Neither daemons nor gods existed. If they did, they had no care for humanity. She believed these arguments. Ballista did not. Unlike his wife, he had not been raised as an Epicurean. Besides which, bad dreams did not leave a lingering smell of waxed canvas.

  Yet of all the oaths he had broken, that to Maximinus Thrax did not weigh most heavily. Four years before, he had been a prisoner of the Sassanid king. That ruler had sent him on an embassy back to the Romans. Before he left, Shapur had exacted an oath that he would return to captivity. The Greek words had not left him: If I break my oath, spill my brains on the ground as this wine spills, my brains and the brains of my sons, too. He had not returned to the throne of the Sassanid. The words ran together with those of Pythonissa’s curse: Kill his sons. Kill all his family, all those he loves. He tried to put his fear for his family from his mind. Julia and his boys were safe in Sicily. Far from the frontiers, away from the campaigns of civil war, there was nowhere safer in the imperium. They could not be more secure than in the villa in Tauromenium. The tenants, freedmen and slaves of Julia’s family were loyal. The few freedmen of Ballista who lived there were loyal. Isangrim and Dernhelm were safe; so was Julia. Nothing would happen to them.

  ‘Movement!’ said Maximus.

  The first thing Ballista saw were more defenders appearing on the town wall. They ran fast along the battlements, ducking into shelter at their appointed stations. In the city, trumpets rang out, summoning the laggards. Ballista looked up to his left. On the crest of the ravine, dark against the sky, a body of Goths was assembling about a hundred and fifty paces from the wall, just out of effective bowshot. The Goths were packing together into a shieldwall. Ballista could only see those on the extreme right flank. They were six deep. Beyond that, it was impossible to judge numbers. There would be many more, though; a solid mass of men facing the town, deepest opposite the gate. The phalanx would stretch all the way down to the river.

  Time slowed. A strange hush fell. Nothing moved, except a black banner fluttering above the Goths. Now and then Ballista thought he could hear it snap in the wind. A bird sang nearby in the vineyard. Ballista looked back at the house of the strategos. The red standard still flew there alone.

  A deep, low rumble came from above. Ballista knew it – the throaty growling of many northern warriors, the hooming sound of the massed Gothic hansa voicing its approval. Although invisible to him, Ballista could picture its cause. Individual champions, the gold bright on their arms, striding forward from the wall of shields.

  A different sound, rhythmic, repetitive – two quick beats, one slow; two quick beats, one slow. Hundreds upon hundreds of warriors stamping, beating their weapons on the shields. Up there, out of sight, the heroes were beginning their war dance. The Woden-inspired among them were drawing down into themselves the awful power of the fierce beasts beloved of the one-eyed god; wolf and hound, bear and big cat.

  Ballista wondered how many champions were dancing. Although few compared with the whole force, it was always important to know their numbers. Little heartened a northern war band more than seeing Woden the Terrible One move within many of those who would fight in the front rank. Experienced in war as Ballista was, trying to construct the preparations for battle from just noises and a few glimpses was disconcerting. Something from the philosophy he had been forced to study in his youth at the imperial court flickered in his thoughts.

  Wild, high, individual howls came to Ballista’s ears. In his mind’s eye he saw the champions. Whirling, leaping, their long hair flying. Some were drooling, ropes of saliva in their beards. Baying at the sky, eyes dead to all compassion and humanity.

  The hooming gave way to a rough, resonant roar. It grew and grew until it drowned out all else and then burst like thunder. The barritus faded, then rose again. Filled with wordless menace, the war chant reverberated back from the walls of the ravine. The strength of the barritus foretold the battle. Every northman knew that in his heart. As it echoed, distorted around the slopes, Ballista could not judge its true potency. It was like hearing the roar of the distant crowd rolling down one of the underground passageways of the arena, unable to guess its significance.

  The Goths silhouetted at the top of the incline shifted into a shield-burg, the rear ranks roofing the formation with their linden boards, locking it tight, metal boss to boss. Hunched over like malignant troglodytes, they began to shuffle forward.

  ‘Soon, the much killing start,’ said Tarchon. The prospect did not seem to displease him.

  ‘Tell me,’ Maximus said, ‘what do you think of dwarves?’

  Ballista smiled. ‘Ugly and misshapen, full of greed and lust, best avoided, so old Calgacus told me.’

  ‘Sure, he would have known,’ said Maximus.

  ‘But no man is their equal at a forge. The goddess Freyja gave herself to the four Brisings in return for a necklace they had made.’

  ‘Actually,’ said Maximus, ‘I meant midgets. I saw some exhibited in Rome once. Funny little fellows, they looked quite sad, although quite possibly full of lust and all the rest.’

  The brassy ring of the trumpets of the defenders cut through further discussion of homunculi, mythical or real.

  A dense cloud of arrows took flight from the walls. The visible shield-burg of Goths halted, seemed to contract. The barritus faltered. Ballista heard the awful whisp-whisp sound of the falling shafts. A few thunked into the close-lapped shields. The vast majority fell out of sight. Ballista could not see any Gothic casualties. The shield-burg edged forward. The barritus swelled again. Another volley came from the town. Again the shield-burg stopped, shrunk in on itself, then resumed its slow progress. This time, it left behind two of its number; one limping away towards the camp, the other motionless. Shooting from the walls became general. Hidden from Ballista’s view, Gothic archers replied.

  The advance of the Tervingi hansa was painfully slow. Again and again those that could be seen stopped; on occasion for quite a considerable time. After about a quarter of an hour they were directly up-slope from the winery, only about a third of the way to the walls. There was no evident reason for their sluggishness. The arrow storm on them was not intense; they had not taken many losses. Ballista conjectured that the broken terrain of the abandoned town was forcing the Goths to stop frequently to dress their line. Although, tantalizingly, it could be the result of some other development somewhere else on the battlefield. Certainly, now the barritus had faded to a murmur, he could hear confused shouting in the distance.

  ‘Like being in the slave seats at the spectacles,’ said Maximus. ‘Lots of noise, but you can see fuck all.’

/>   ‘Like being a prisoner confined from childhood in a dark cave, shackled so your only impressions of the outside world are shadows on the wall,’ said Ballista.

  ‘What the fuck are you talking about now?’ Maximus demanded.

  ‘It is an image in Plato’s Republic.’

  ‘I am not claiming to be a philosopher, but your love of wisdom might seem just a tiny bit intemperate.’

  ‘Intemperate? You have learned some fine words.’

  ‘Yes, I would not have you thinking I had wasted my time in the imperium on drink and women.’

  There was a distant cheering. The Goths started to move faster. As they did so, their formation necessarily loosened. More arrows flickered out from the defenders. More Tervingi began to fall. Their advance now was marked by increasing numbers of their wounded and dead. Yet the barritus returned, as far as Ballista could tell, confident, if not exultant. The Goths were running; no longer in an ordered shield-burg but more of a pack. They were fast closing the town wall.

  ‘Flag! Green flag!’ Tarchon said.

  There it was up above the citadel, alongside the red war standard. No one had noticed it being raised. The triple blast of the bucinator must have been lost in the uproar.

  ‘Now proper man-killing,’ said Tarchon. He sounded relieved. To be fair, Ballista thought, in part the Suanian might just be looking forward to getting out of the malodorous winery. You could not blame him for that.