The Amber Road

by Harry Sidebottom

  ‘For a man who has been there, you maintain an incredible ignorance about my people. If the people of my homeland were not much given to reconciliation, would you think either of us would have left Tara alive – given all the killing and the like?’

  ‘Possibly not.’

  ‘Your grandfather’s sword?’

  ‘Great-great-grandfather. After Himling was cremated, the smith put some of his bones with the charcoal in the bellows pit when he forged the blade. A part of Himling’s strength, spirit and luck passed into the steel of Bile-Himling.’

  ‘What happened to the rest of him?’

  ‘The rest of his bones are in the barrow. Hopefully, as he died in battle, his shade is in Valhalla, not waiting in there with the sword and the other bones.’

  A hail from the summit of the mound told them the tomb was open. Looking up, Ballista saw the ladders against the sky, before they were lowered into the pit.

  Everyone waited on Isangrim. The cyning leaned on his staff, eyes focused on things the others could not see. Perhaps, Ballista thought, his father was remembering the previous times he had been here, half a century or more before. Bile-Himling had granted Starkad victory over the Goths. But, ignoring dire warnings, Starkad had not returned the blade to the tomb. Things had not gone well for him after that. He had carried Bile-Himling two years later against the Langobards. It had done him no good. It had fallen from Starkad’s hand when the Langobards had cut him down. Isangrim had returned Bile-Himling to the dark, before he had made peace with the killers of his father, taken one of their sisters as his first wife.

  ‘I will not go into the tomb,’ Isangrim said. ‘I am an old man, too old to wield Bile-Himling. My sons will make the descent. They will bring Bile-Himling to me, and I shall decide which of them will carry the blade.’

  With his brothers, Ballista took up the offerings and walked up to the top.

  Morcar stepped between him and the ladder. ‘A newcomer will not go first.’

  Ballista stood back to let them go down first.

  It was dark inside the pit, just the light from above, and not altogether sweet-smelling. The scattered bones of a horse lay underfoot. Gold and precious things glowed dully at the edges of the darkness. There was an urn on the seat of the throne, the receptacle of those remains of Himling that had not been used by the smith. Above it, resting across the arms of the high chair, was a heavy, single-edged sword.

  Ballista placed the silver bowl he carried on the floor. He went to the throne, put out his hand towards the sword.

  ‘No,’ Oslac said. ‘You will not carry Bile-Himling.’

  ‘I have done more since I returned than you did in all the years I was away,’ Ballista said.

  ‘You should have been outlawed.’

  Both had their hands on their hilts.

  Morcar stepped between them. He turned to Oslac. ‘Most of what you do will now turn against you, bringing bad luck and no joy.’

  Oslac recoiled as if struck.

  Ballista wondered what this was between the two of them.

  ‘As the eldest, Oslac will take the thing to our father.’ Morcar spoke smoothly.

  Oslac stood for a time, as if still shocked, then picked up the blade and went to the ladder.

  Back above ground, in the land of the living, Oslac had recovered. He held Bile-Himling aloft. The assembled eorls and warriors hoomed in awe. Oslac offered the weapon to the cyning. Isangrim did not take it.

  With sudden insight, Ballista wondered if after all these years Isangrim blamed the sword for his father’s death, or perhaps himself.

  ‘A time of war.’ Isangrim raised his voice. It was cracked with age, perhaps emotion. ‘Unferth will come and seek revenge for his son Widsith. If he does not, his followers would count him a nithing. They would desert him, and he would leave the north as he arrived, an outcast. He will come, and we must be ready.’

  All there – the gold-bearing men of violence, the three or four shield-maidens – nodded.

  ‘It will happen like this,’ Isangrim said. ‘My son Dernhelm will defend our allies on the Cimbric peninsula. My son Oslac will hold Varinsey. I will take my stand here in our home of Hlymdale. My son Morcar will be here with me on Hedinsey. Latris and the islands of the south will be in the charge of Hrothgar of the Wrosns. Let all of you, all our allies, summon the fighting men. Let the war-arrow travel throughout our realm and summon men to cruel war.’

  Everyone waited.

  ‘Bile-Himling, the blade forged from our ancestor, has returned to the light. It will be wielded by my son Morcar.’

  With no expression on his face, Oslac passed the weapon to Morcar.

  Amantius put the stylus and writing block down on the ground next to him. He wiped his hands on his fleshy thighs. His back rested against the rough wall of a byre. Cattle regarded him from the other side of a fence. Gods, how low he had sunk. A eunuch of the imperial court sunk to the level of a banausic slave hiding among the beasts. But no other privacy was to be found in the sprawling barbarian settlement of Hlymdale.

  He picked up his writing things again.

  Publius Egnatius Amantius to Lucius Calpurnius Piso Censorinus, Praetorian Prefect, Vir Ementissimus.

  If you are well, Dominus, I can ask the gods for no more.

  Amantius could think of nothing else to write. There was nothing to report about the embassy. As secretary, four times he had accompanied Aulus Voconius Zeno into the presence of Isangrim, the senile, petty kinglet of this squalid and insignificant Hyperborean tribe. The ambassador had uttered a few courtly platitudes – his pleasure in standing before the ruler of the Angles, his prayers that the favour of the gods would continue to fall on such a noble father of a harmonious house – all of which Amantius presumed had been translated. Not once had the imperial envoy mentioned the amber which was the ostensible cause of this hideous odyssey. There had been not so much as a hint of their true purpose. Even such diplomatic gifts as had survived the journey had not been handed over. It was as if Zeno had reneged on the sacred duty laid on him by the Augustus Gallienus. The charitable might decide Zeno was exercising discretion, biding his time until the moment was auspicious. Amantius was not of that mind. He had observed Zeno during their tribulations. Zeno was weak, a coward. Amantius knew himself little better. But he was a eunuch, and everyone, including himself, knew eunuchs did not possess the constitution of other men.

  If you are well, Dominus, I can ask the gods for no more.

  The words mocked him. Already he had asked the gods for much. There were no rings on his hands, no bracelets on his wrists. He had given all his fine things to the gods for his safety. Now he must ask for more.

  It all made sense. At the outset, the storm in the Euxine that had driven them to the island of Leuce had been divinely ordained. It had been a test, and they had failed. They had not put their trust in the gods and gone back aboard the warship. They had defied the divine prohibition and spent the night on the island. They had brought down on themselves the implacable anger of Achilles. It all stemmed from that: the murderous fight in the bar, the attack on Olbia, nearly being crushed by the raft of logs on the Hypanis, the Goths on the Borysthenes, the Brondings off the Vistula and the tempest in the Suebian Sea. Time and again souls had been snatched from the midst of life, those without the coin to pay the ferryman condemned to wander for eternity.

  Amantius knew the anger of Achilles was not played out. It would fall on them again when Unferth came for his revenge. Amantius’s possessions had all gone to the gods. Desperate need had made him bold. Eunuchs were always suspected of peculation. To cover his tracks he had hidden a few of the coins he had taken from the diplomatic gifts in the possessions of the Vandal called Rikiar and in the paltry things of one of Zeno’s slaves. The former had the reputation of a thief, and Zeno habitually thought the worst of his servants. Amantius had made the offering in the lake, the nearest thing he could find to a place he recognized as sacred. To salve his conscience, he h
ad included both of them in his prayers.

  Publius Egnatius Amantius to Lucius Calpurnius Piso Censorinus, Praetorian Prefect …

  What did it matter? There was nothing to say. There was no way to send the report anyway. No one would ever know the things that happened on this doomed embassy.

  Amantius got up, secured the writing materials to his belt. He smoothed down the barbarian tunic and trousers he was reduced to wearing. It was time to get back for the leaving feast.

  Ballista waited outside in the dark under the low eaves of the hall. They had followed the old custom and drawn lots for who sat where at the feast. The lots had not been kind. Still, he had been surprised when the slave-girl whispered her message.

  ‘Kadlin.’

  She stood in the light from the doorway. She was as he remembered her: tall, slender, standing very straight. Her long hair framed her face, her very dark eyes.

  ‘Over here.’

  She looked back into the hall, and quickly all around, before stepping into the dark passage between the wall and the overhanging thatch.

  He took her hand and drew her further away from the light.

  They stopped behind a pile of stacked logs. He let go of her hand. She moved a little back from him. Her face was a pale oval in the gloom, not much lower than his own. He had forgotten just how tall she was.

  ‘It has been a long time,’ he said.

  ‘A very long time.’ He sensed as much as saw her smile.

  ‘You look well.’ After all these years, he found nothing but banalities to say.

  ‘Your have broken your nose and teeth.’

  She moved towards him. She was very close, almost touching. He could smell her perfume, her breath, the warmth of her body.

  ‘Did you …’ What did he want to say? Did you miss me? You know I did not want to go. Do you still love me? He could not say any of them.

  Her hand came up, touched his face. She was smiling again, her eyes bright in the gloom. ‘How long have you been waiting out here?’

  ‘Long enough.’ He was smiling, too. ‘You took your time.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The slave-girl, your message.’

  She stepped away. ‘I sent you no message. Quick, we must go back.’

  As he followed her into the light, Oslac came out from the hall.

  Kadlin half turned to Ballista. ‘Thank you for escorting me.’ She spoke formally. ‘I hope we will have a chance to speak before you leave tomorrow.’ She turned back to her husband.

  Oslac stood very still, his eyes moving between the two of them.

  ‘Kadlin.’ Ballista nodded to his brother. ‘Oslac.’

  Ballista could not make out Oslac’s words as he walked back into the hall, but the tone of interrogation was unmistakable. Oslac was a jealous man; all the Himlings were. If he harmed her, he would answer for it.

  XXVIII

  The Inlet of Norvasund on the Cimbric Peninsula

  The forest was full of the sounds of axes biting into hardwood, the smells of fresh-cut timber, disturbed earth and animal dung. Ballista walked down towards the inlet of Norvasund. Sixty men were employed cutting down trees. They had been working in shifts for three days. Every draught animal, all the plough horses and oxen from miles around on the east coast of the Cimbric peninsula, had been gathered. Harnessed in teams, they hauled the felled trees. Ballista stopped to watch one begin its short but laborious journey to the water. The mighty oak lay entire and untrimmed on the ground. Its crown fanned up to the sky, the leaves still green and vigorous. Stout ropes lashed around the severed trunk and lower branches ran to the complicated harnesses of the twenty waiting bullocks. The man in charge gave the command. The long whips of the drovers flicked out. Bellowing with pain and effort, the oxen strained against their traces. For a moment, the trunk did not move. The whips snapped again, and men shouted. With a deep rending sound, punctuated by the sharp cracks of breaking boughs, the huge oak inched forward on to the waiting rollers. Dust billowed up from the dragging foliage. The gentle incline was with them, but it would take hours before the oak reached the water.

  Ballista went on down to the strand. The inlet of Norvasund ran north-west into the Cimbric peninsula. Some way inland from the sea, a promontory on the western side, the far side from where Ballista stood, narrowed the water to less than four hundred paces. He surveyed the progress of his defences. The seaward line of some hundred vertical poles already stretched all the way across, hammered down hard and roped together. The first dozen oaks were braced to them, in a row, their crowns all to the east. Two longboats were towing the next into position. The crew of another vessel were working along, fixing the inner poles, roping the whole barrier together. The final two boats were further out. Their task was to drive individual sharpened stakes in at an angle.

  It would be a formidable obstacle to attack from the sea when finished. Some enemy ships should run foul of the outlying stakes, perhaps even tear their bottoms out. The oaks floated low in the water, no more than a foot or so of their trunks above the surface. But their branches would hinder any attempt to ride over them. With archers on both shores and on the five defending longships deployed inside the barrier, any attempt to sever the many binding ropes and breach the structure by towing trees away would bring large numbers of casualties. It would be a formidable obstacle, if it was finished before Unferth arrived. Ballista estimated it would take at least forty oaks. They were only a third of the way there. And it would be as good as useless if the land defences on either side were not completed.

  ‘Food, Dominus?’ Diocles said.

  ‘What have you got?’

  ‘Re-heated stew; not sure what is in it. I think there is some rabbit, some chicken, and definitely cabbage – very good for you, cabbage. There is bread from yesterday.’

  ‘If there is enough, thank you, yes.’

  ‘It is not Lucullan, but there is plenty.’

  There were eight men, Romans and Olbians together. With Maximus and Tarchon, his two constant shadows, Ballista joined them. The firewood and kindling had already been gathered. Diocles fished out his fire-making kit. He took tinder from a pointed oval wooden case. Using a firesteel, he angled sparks from a special striking stone. With the ease of long practice, he had the fire going in no time at all.

  As the food heated, they sat and watched the activity on the water.

  ‘It is good your father has so many grown sons, Dominus,’ Diocles said to Ballista. As with everything he did, the young Danubian gave his words a great seriousness.

  Ballista made a noise which might have been interpreted as assent.

  ‘There are enough leaders he can trust to defend several places at once.’

  Ballista made no reply, just gazed out over the water.

  Diocles stirred the stew, his brow furrowed with earnestness. ‘It has never been that way in the imperium. If a general does well against some barbarians when the emperor is elsewhere, that general’s soldiers insist he takes the purple. It leads to civil war. No matter who wins, the frontiers are stripped of troops, and more barbarians seize their opportunity. If a local Roman commander does well against them, it all starts again.’

  Ballista and the others agreed.

  Diocles went on. ‘No imperial dynasty has had enough men to cover all the frontiers. Take Valerian. Before the Persians captured him, he could hold the east and Gallienus one of the frontiers in the west. But that left either the Rhine or the Danube in the charge of a child. If Saloninus had not been so young, would the revolt of Postumus have succeeded? Perhaps our emperors should marry several women, breed more sons.’

  ‘You Romans would have to change your ways,’ Ballista said.

  ‘As everyone says, it is an age of iron and rust. Perhaps it demands change, even from the mos maiorum.’ At times, Diocles was weightiness personified.

  ‘In my countries Suania,’ Tarchon said, ‘brother often killing brother, fratricide very good, very popular.’

  �
��And,’ Maximus interrupted, ‘there is no telling the son will be half the man the father was.’

  ‘There could be another way,’ Ballista said. ‘If the emperor could find a man to really trust, he could share his power. Then each of them could adopt a younger man of abilities. Four men holding imperial power: one for each of the Euphrates, Danube and Rhine, and one in Rome or somewhere else. They would form something like a collegium of emperors.’

  ‘Not a fuck of a chance that would last,’ Maximus said.

  Diocles said nothing, but looked more serious than normal.

  ‘You so sure the arse-fucking-cunt Unferth come?’ Tarchon had developed a rare talent for creating compound obscenities in different languages.

  ‘Yes,’ Ballista said.

  ‘Come here for fucking sure? Not other fucking Angle place?’

  ‘No,’ Ballista said. ‘Not other fucking Angle place. No other fucking Angle killed his son.’

  ‘Fuck, indeed,’ said Tarchon.

  ‘Yes, fuck, indeed,’ said Maximus.

  After they had eaten, Maximus and Tarchon rowed Ballista over to the other side in a skiff. Mord, son of Morcar, and Eadric, son of eorl Eadwine, were waiting. They made their reports. The work was progressing. Nothing too bad had happened that morning: two broken limbs and a near-drowning. With over a thousand men doing heavy work in a desperate hurry, accidents would happen. So far, no one had died.

  They walked past the big stacks of planks and up to the low hill where the village had been. Half a dozen other young Angle nobles stood there. In all, twenty had accompanied Ballista. The glamour of serving the war leader who had killed the Roman emperor Quietus with his own hands, who had briefly worn the purple himself and who had now beheaded Widsith Travel-Quick, was strong. Ballista wondered whether the adulation of these young warriors would seem more natural to him if he had spent his life in the north.