The Amber Road

by Harry Sidebottom

  Back on the water, Maximus felt a little put out. He thought he had managed the steering paddle well. If you could sail a coracle, as he had in his youth, you could handle any vessel. Admittedly, it was a bit smoother with the Olbian at the helm, but it was just a matter of a bit of practice. Maximus seldom thought about his home. Muirtagh of the Long Road he had been called then, not with any great seriousness. In those days he had not travelled far, but he had always told a fine story. Sure, he had travelled long roads since the cattle raid had gone wrong and he had been captured. Of course, if he had not been knocked unconscious, he would never have been taken. He had been sold to a Roman slaver, shipped to Gaul and resold into a gladiatorial troop. The latter had not been a bad time. At first he had been a boxer, then fought as a murmillo. He was good at killing, and the adulation of the crowd was good – that and the women it brought. He had won a fight in the great arena in Arelate the afternoon Ballista had bought him. The Angle had been on his way to Hibernia and needed an interpreter and bodyguard. Maximus had taught Ballista his language and fulfilled the latter function ever since. Back in Hibernia on that journey, he had seen High Kings made and overthrown. Indeed, he had near killed one himself. But their path had not led him to the far west. He would like to return home one day; not for ever, not even for very long. Just for long enough to kill his enemies, burn their homes and rape their women.

  They made slow progress. All were tired. The two slaves of Zeno and the eunuch’s pretty boy were of but little use. After no more than a quarter of an hour, they had been drooping, their paddles trailing in the water.

  It was near full dark, just a residual glow on the water, when they reached the village. Mudflats made the approach to the landing stage difficult. To give the guide his due, he remained at his post, and conned them through, despite the pain from his arm.

  The settlement was on the bank from which the ambushers had struck. But it was well fortified, and, on receipt of the news, the villagers mounted a good guard. Ballista, Zeno and the other men of any account among the mission were invited to dine with the headman.

  As there was no doctor, Maximus remained with the guide in the barn assigned as their lodgings. By candlelight, with care and much gentleness, he sawed through the shaft of the arrow, removed the fletching. As it was barbed, the arrowhead could not be withdrawn. Maximus gave the injured man drink and a leather belt to put between his teeth. Two Olbians held him down. Considerable force was needed to push the arrowhead through the arm to the other side. It was not a thing that could be hurried. Maximus had to make first one, then another incision to grip the arrowhead and work the slimy thing out. When it came free, the blood flowed fast. The guide grunted a few times, but bore it well. If he did not die from loss of blood, infection or some malign fate, this Olbian – Hieroson by name – could be thought a man of some regard.

  The meal was all but over when Maximus entered the house of the headman. The diners were talking over nuts and dried fruit.

  ‘If there had not been so many of them, they would never have dared such an attack.’

  Zeno sounded drunk. No one corrected his estimate of the numbers.

  Maximus was passed some food Ballista had saved. There was more to drink here than at Cape Hippolaus or the other place. Maximus still had some cannabis in his bag. If there were women later, reasonably clean women, this could all be fine.

  ‘The pirates have never been known so far upriver,’ said the headman.

  Ignoring the local, Zeno began to recite some Greek poem:

  ‘A howling …

  That brought tremendous Laestrygonians swarming up

  From every side – hundreds, not like men, like Giants!

  Down from the cliffs they flung great rocks a man could hardly hoist

  And a ghastly shattering din rose up from all the ships –

  Men in their death-cries, hulls smashed to splinters.’

  ‘There were not many of them,’ said Maximus.

  Zeno rounded on Maximus. The Greek’s eyes were unfocused, as if there were a different thought behind each of them:

  ‘One man . . .

  Who knew within his head many words, but disorderly;

  Vain, and without decency.’

  Keep going, thought Maximus; every day takes us further from your imperium.

  Ballista interrupted Zeno’s recitation. ‘I had a friend who looked more like Thersites than Maximus here does. Old Calgacus’s skull went up to a point, sparse hair covering it.’

  Everyone, including Zeno, regarded Ballista in silence. Maximus wondered if the Angle also was drunk.

  ‘Our ambushers were not just the runaway slaves turned pirates,’ said Ballista.

  Maximus could tell Ballista was sober.

  ‘Back in Olbia,’ Ballista said, ‘Montanus and Callistratus thought the Goths might have established the runaway slaves on Hylaea as a diversion. The warrior in the dugout, the one who drowned, was a northerner; most likely a Goth.’

  ‘A Goth?’ Much of Zeno’s bluster had vanished. ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘The leader on the bank wore a white fur cloak, like the Tervingi reiks outside the gate at Olbia.’

  Maximus nodded. ‘And a gilded helmet – the same man.’ His eyesight had always been good.

  ‘Why would the Tervingi pursue us?’ Zeno sounded as if he wanted reassurance that such a thing was unlikely.

  ‘Perhaps they covet the gifts you carry from Gallienus to my people. Perhaps they would like revenge on the men who defeated them at Olbia.’ Ballista raised his cup towards Zeno. Maximus decided he might be drunk after all.

  Tarchon joined the discussion. ‘Why fuckers be attacking with so few fuckers?’

  ‘My guess,’ Ballista said, ‘is the reiks rushed on ahead with a couple of men, collected those pirates he could find, and was using them to delay us, while the rest of his men caught up.’

  ‘How far behind are they?’ This was all surprising, and very unwelcome to Zeno.

  Ballista shrugged. ‘The gods know.’

  ‘How long before we are out of the territory of the Tervingi?’ Zeno asked.

  ‘The lands of the Grethungi begin at the rapids,’ said the headman.

  ‘How far is that?’

  ‘Five, maybe six days rowing upstream at this season,’ said the headman. ‘You will be safe from the Tervingi there.’

  In the morning, one of the severely hurt Olbians was dead. Less expectedly, so was one of the Roman crewmen. Ballista arranged for their burial. The wounded were to be left at the village. As they had seen, convoys of trading boats still ran to Olbia occasionally. Those that recovered could take their chances on one of them. From Olbia, the Romans should be able to get passage back to the imperium. They were to tell the captains of the ships they would be paid by the army at their destination. Ballista wrote a letter for each man authorizing the payment. He admitted to Maximus they might not be honoured, but he would not leave the soldiers money. They would just spend it on drink. Maximus went with Ballista to visit the wounded. Money passed hands here, from Ballista to their hosts, generous provision being made for their care.

  As the morning wore on, Zeno fretted and complained. They had been entrusted with a sacred duty by the most noble emperor. The mission was of greater account than any individuals. The importance of the mission could not be overstated. Nothing should be done to endanger it. Gallienus would hear of any who did so. Time was of the essence. They should leave at once.

  As far as he could, Ballista ignored Zeno.

  Maximus had asked Ballista who was this Thersites from the Greek poem the night before. The answer – an ugly rabble-rouser among the men before Troy, justly beaten by his betters – had not further endeared Zeno to him.

  Finally, through the headman, Ballista had called for volunteers from the village to fill the benches of the boats. Not one man had come forward.

  Just before midday, when they went down to the boats, for the first time Zeno and Amantius ha
d eagerly helped stow their own belongings.

  For three days they journeyed north. Knowing the river well, Hieroson the Olbian guide had refused to be left behind. He led them back and forth from one bank to the other to use the ebb flows and as far as possible avoid moving against the main stream. The Borysthenes here had cast off the aspect of a marsh and revealed itself as a great river, although still filled with obstacles. They paddled around and between green flats that broke the surface, great rafts of lily pads and floating islands of pale reeds like misplaced fields of wheat. In the distance, hills came and went, but the banks never changed, an endless screen of reeds with mud at their feet, walls of dark-green trees beyond.

  The majority of the paddlers fell into a rhythm. It was a rounded, smooth motion – reach, stroke, pause and twist the blade free – not too hard, soothing in its monotony. In the rear, the crew of Heliodorus’s boat was not so good. The two slaves, Amantius’s boy and one of Zeno’s, still splashed and floundered, contributing little but confusion.

  The boats glided upriver. The Romans sang softly. The marching songs of the legions easily adapted to the tempo of these labours. They sang old songs about Caesar, Gaul and whores, but often they returned to a newer one in honour of Ballista’s friend the great general Aurelian.

  Thousand, thousand, thousand we have beheaded now.

  One man, a thousand we have beheaded now.

  A thousand drinks, a thousand killed.

  So much wine no one has as the blood that he has spilt.

  Maximus knew both the song and its subject well. Such adulation was dangerous. Sometimes, he thought, only an outsider could see things clearly. In Rome there were only two places the love of the soldiers could lead: to the throne, or the suspicion of the emperor and an early death.

  The first two nights they slept safe behind the walls of inhabited villages. The third, where the Borysthenes made a great bend to the east, they camped on a headland. The beach here was sandy, littered with pines fallen from the eroded cliff above. They made beds from the boughs. It was quiet. The river slid past. In the evening light its water had the thickness of milk.

  As the sun came up they pushed out from the shore. Once on the river they saw their pursuers. The distant boats looked black, glimpses of white where the prows cut and where the paddles broke the surface. There were eight of them, about a mile downstream.

  Maximus had been expecting them. He had never doubted the Tervingi would learn the identity of Vandrad. He had never doubted they would follow, do all they could to kill Ballista. It was a bloodfeud. The Romans knew all about revenge. They held ultio as a duty. But it was a pale shadow of a northern bloodfeud. They did not sing songs about it, did not pass it down generations beyond number. If these Tervingi killed Ballista, his father and his half-brothers must take vengeance, or each become a man of no account in the eyes of the world, a nithing in their own eyes. When Ballista’s sons came to manhood – if they were not too Roman – they, too, must seek out their father’s killers, them and their families. The sagas of the north were punctuated with the flames of burning halls.

  There was no singing now. They paddled east. For the twelve hours of daylight they did not cease. They ate at their benches. They shat over the side, their buttocks bare to the wind and the cold slap of water. Their humour did not desert them. When the eunuch had to defecate, they called out: show us your prick, mind the fish do not get your balls. They hooted and jeered when Zeno had to haul up his tunic.

  Maximus paddled with the rest. Blisters soon formed on his palms. They burst, and blood and clear pus smeared the handle of his paddle. His shoulders and arms felt as though they had been wrenched on the rack. He put it all from his mind as of little importance. Through the long morning he watched the bank, studied the river. On the water nothing but low islets of vegetation. Once he saw a herd of wild horses crashing away through the reeds on the shore to his left, but no convenient tributaries.

  On the broad face of the Borysthenes there was nowhere to hide. By mid-afternoon Maximus was numb with repetition and fatigue. His whole body felt as though it had been flayed. He saw nothing but the shoulders of the man in front. At the end of each stroke this man half toppled forward. But he never fell. None of those at the benches despaired. Ballista and the helmsman reassured them the Tervingi were not gaining. Soon the night would take them in its embrace and conceal them.

  As the sun went down it turned the river to molten metal, edged the shoulders and head of the man in front with fire. Maximus had assumed they would stop when darkness fell. They did not. Ballista worked his way down the boat, talking low to each man. Keep going, just a little longer. The Tervingi would expect them to stop. The Goths would make one final effort to overhaul them. Just keep going a little longer.

  Maximus kept paddling. It was just another example of life being a bastard. Reach, stroke, pause and twist the blade free; over and over, without cease, like some eternal punishment.

  Ballista reached the front, hunched there with the guide. Heads close together, they whispered. Sounds carry a long way on the water.

  The moon rose. It changed the river into the silvered fur of some nocturnal beast. There was a slow swell, like the breathing of an old wolf. Dead trees stood stark on the bank, like dead men rising from the ground. Their blind eyes and thin, fleshless arms reached towards the moon. They were the dead men the river had taken. It was a ghastly corporal resurrection, the hideous final day longed for by insane sects, prayed for in locked, darkened rooms by outcast priests.

  Ballista was talking to the man on the bench in front. The man put down his paddle, slumped over. Ballista was talking to Maximus. Take us in to the islands. Maximus did not break stroke. Ballista was behind him, muttering instructions to the helmsman, the boat heeling on to a new heading.

  Dark-blue water, a black tree line, a steel-blue sky, the moon dragging its tail from the depths. They nosed through reeds and overhanging branches. Ballista reaching out to tie a mooring rope around the trunk of a half-submerged tree. The other boats bumping against them. Maximus dropped the paddle, bundled his cloak as a pillow and curled up on the bench. He heard men groan, felt the boat shift and was enveloped in a more profound darkness.

  A light touch behind his ear and Maximus was awake. Ballista smiled down at him. For a moment Maximus was fine, then the pain came. Every muscle was locked. A white agony in his shoulders and arms. His palms had been skinned. The tiniest movement brought more pain. Gingerly, he unfolded himself from the hard bench, dragged himself upright, took the flask Ballista held out, and drank. The unwatered wine was harsh in his throat, sour in his stomach. He managed not to be sick. Panting with discomfort, he ate the flatbread he was handed. Ballista moved on. Maximus dug out some dried beef from his wallet, forced himself to chew. It was hard to swallow, but he would need the sustenance.

  The sky was lightening. Around them the trees were emerging from the dark, taking on more definite shape. They must cast off soon. His breathing harsh as a torn cloth, his limbs clumsy, Maximus hauled up his mailshirt and tunic, dropped his trousers and got his arse over the side. The tension, then the relief. The foul stench of shit, soon lost in the pervasive smell of mud, dead leaves and decay.

  Out on the water it smelt better, cleaner. Once he had worked through the pain and his muscles were warm, Maximus slipped back into the rhythm as if he had never known anything else: reach, stroke, pause and twist the blade free.

  The sky was layered with purple and gold. As the sun came up behind a distant hill it threw a long, raking light through the trees out on to the river. The blaze faded, and the clouds showed high and white. It was going to be a fine spring day.

  They had rowed for perhaps two hours when a long vista revealed the pursuit. The Tervingi boats were dark specks, a good deal further behind than the day before, but still there, hateful in their remorselessness.

  The river narrowed. Its flow increased. Leaves and small branches slid by fast. The paddling became harder. T
he previous day had sapped the stamina of the men at the benches. The boats laboured upstream.

  Ballista had gone to sit with the guide. They squatted in the prow like a pair of demented ferrymen leading damned souls to the underworld. A coin would not pay the fare; this crew must work their passage, get a taste of the punishments to come.

  The river narrowed further. It was less than a bowshot wide. The Borysthenes was surging against them, as if set on sweeping them back to their fate. Every advance was hard won. The banks inched past. The men were sweating, gasping with the effort. And Ballista and the guide sat and talked. As they talked, they gestured upriver, waving their hands here and there. Maximus found it hard not to hate them.

  ‘Not far now.’ Ballista was standing. He raised his voice to reach the other three boats strung out behind. ‘Another mile and you can rest. We will be safe.’

  There was no telling how long it took to win through the narrows. Suddenly, the shores receded and there was open water all around. Ballista laughed with the guide, then waved for the other boats to follow them over to the right-hand bank.

  Away from the main stream, the water was very still. It was bliss no longer to have to fight the river. The boats glided in towards a huge raft of timber moored by a lumber camp. If there were loggers there, they hid themselves from those approaching. The boats ground to a halt against the floating logs.