The Wolves of the North

by Harry Sidebottom

  The Alani who had survived the ill-fated attack were scrambling back across the riverbed, up the opposite bank and into the shelter of the trees and undergrowth. The ones who had remained there were still shooting. They continued to pose a threat. It was best to keep your head down. Yet the intensity had gone. An Alan would pop out, shoot a wildly aimed missile and duck back. Given Ballista and his men were helmeted and armoured, to come to serious harm they would have to be either unlucky, slow or stupid.

  Ballista leant his back against the sticky bark of the lime tree. There was a gash on his left forearm. Not serious, but he had no idea how it had got there. Now he had noticed it, the thing stung abominably. He wiped something else sticky off his face. A mess of blood and brains came away on his hand; from the man he had killed with his sword. It tasted as if some were in his mouth. He took a drink of wine, rinsed his mouth and spat. He stoppered the flask and checked on the enemy. Nothing new. He nocked an arrow. With more incoming than outgoing, there was no need to conserve arrows. He scanned for a target, found one, waited and shot. He missed, but it was good to keep their heads down.

  ‘Keep shooting,’ he called.

  One of the messengers puffed up to Ballista and sketched a Roman salute. He was a slave of the military and had a sword in one hand. ‘Dominus, Andonnoballus asks for help. The Alani have got into the laager. They have taken the wagon at the eastern end. They are throwing in men. They will roll up the whole line.’

  Now that the fighting on his own front was not so pressing, Ballista could hear clearly the din of battle behind him. Some of it was hand to hand. Thinking, he released another arrow. It shaved past the head of an Alan in the bushes opposite.

  ‘Dominus?’ The messenger was shifting on his feet in his impatience for an answer.

  Ballista stood, turning it over in his mind. Could he make a difference with but a few men? And if he did strip his own defences, would the Alani recover their spirit and overrun the zereba?

  The interpreter, the one who had done well in the fighting in the original ambush, came from the opposite direction. He skidded to a halt, doubling up. He was very out of breath. He had a blade in his left hand and his right forearm was heavily bandaged.

  Ballista could not remember the man’s name. ‘What is it?’ He could wait no longer. It was not going to be good news.

  ‘The Alani have dismounted.’ The interpreter’s chest was heaving. It was not that far to run; he must have been fighting. ‘They are assaulting the wagon of the gudja. The Goth needs more men.’

  ‘Fuck.’ Ballista swore monotonously as his mind raced. The Alani over the river had taken casualties. They had been held by the zereba. Perhaps it would be fine if he went with some men. And – the thought struck him – the Alani had taken riders from over the river last night. Perhaps the river was never anything but a diversion. He would take Maximus, Tarchon, the injured Calgacus and young Wulfstan with him. It would leave only Castricius and Hippothous. Two men to hold off forty or more. Ridiculous.

  Ballista looked at the expectant faces of the messenger and the interpreter. Fuck! Where to go? To the gudja? To Andonnoballus? He turned to the interpreter – Biomasos, that was his name.

  ‘Had the Alani actually got through the defences when you left?’

  The interpreter shook his head. ‘But they were …’

  Ballista motioned him to silence. A plan fully formed – as in some improbable, queasy-making Greek myth of the birth of a divinity from a parent’s head – had appeared.

  Ballista turned to the interpreter, and pointed west. ‘Biomasos, you see the last of the limes, where Tarchon and Calgacus are fighting? Go and send them both to me here. You will take their place; use Tarchon’s bow.’

  ‘But Dominus, I am a poor shot, and my arm is wounded.’

  ‘No matter, just show yourself now and then, take the odd shot, let them know there are still men defending the zereba.’

  ‘We will do what is ordered, and at every command we will be ready.’ It was good the interpreter had done a great deal of work for the military.

  As Ballista waited, he took another arrow and aimed very carefully at an Alan lurking in a thick patch of brambles across the stream. He took his time. He dismissed from his mind a nomad arrow that came from nowhere and crashed through the foliage not far from the right of his head. Gently, he released. The arrow sped away. Like a striking hawk, it flashed over the water. A foot or two from the chest of its prey, a briar deflected it. The tribesman yelped, and dropped hurriedly out of sight.

  Tarchon and Calgacus arrived.

  ‘The best hunting is the hunting of men,’ the Suanian said. He was beaming. The mountaineer liked killing people. ‘There is no boar nor lion that can compare.’

  ‘Fucking half-wit,’ Calgacus muttered.

  ‘You all follow me,’ Ballista commanded.

  Running, bent low, they reached Maximus at the right of their line without mishap. There was something comical about six of them attempting to find cover behind one tree, broad though its trunk was.

  Ballista addressed the slave. ‘You will take the place of Maximus here. You heard what I said to the interpreter.’

  The slave looked aghast.

  ‘If you play a man’s role here, I will purchase your freedom – if we survive,’ Ballista said. He saw that the bracing effects of his words were somewhat undercut by the last phrase. ‘If I fall, one of these men will buy your freedom.’

  ‘We will do what is ordered, and at every command we will be ready.’ The slave took the bow and gorytus that Ballista passed over.

  ‘Let us be men,’ Ballista said in Greek. ‘Maximus and Tarchon with me. Calgacus, watch our backs, finish off any wounded. Wulfstan, use your bow, try to keep out of the melee. Ready?’

  ‘Ready.’ Maximus, Calgacus and Tarchon gave a quiet, personal acknowledgement. It had none of the bravado of the Roman call and response. Wulfstan said nothing.

  The five of them checked their swords, hefted their war gear.

  Ballista spoke in his own language, two lines of epic poetry.

  Wyrd will often spare

  An undoomed man, if his courage is good.

  Calgacus spat. ‘If you are doomed, no courage will change the course of events.’

  ‘You really are a miserable old bastard,’ Maximus said.

  They were all laughing, except Wulfstan. The young Angle’s face was clouded.

  Ballista drew his dagger, snapped it back; drew his sword, snapped it back; touched the healing stone on his scabbard. All the time, he looked at Wulfstan, thinking. Then he cursed himself for not realizing more quickly.

  ‘Wulfstan’ – Ballista spoke in their own language – ‘if you live through this, I will give you your freedom. If I fall, these men can witness, I wish you manumitted in my will.’

  The boy’s face broke into an enormous smile. ‘Thank you, Atheling. No doom can touch us now.’

  ‘Huhn,’ Calgacus snorted.

  They pushed through the undergrowth away from the river, up to the tailgate of the wagon at the eastern end of the semicircle. It was deserted. There was fighting in and around the wagon beyond.

  Ballista waved Wulfstan out into the open centre of the laager and led the other three along the inner side of the wagon.

  The defences between the two wagons had been breached. A Herul and a Roman soldier lay dead there. Alani were treading on them as they clambered through. All the attention of the tribesmen was on the wagon where there was still resistance.

  Ballista caught the eyes of the others. He held up three fingers. They nodded. One – two – as he lowered the third finger, they hurled themselves around the corner of the wagon. The first Alan looked round. Ballista’s spatha sheered half his face away. Maximus darted past Ballista’s right shoulder and thrust his shorter gladius deep into the chest of a second. Tarchon moved up on the left. A third, climbing through the gap in the barricade, opened his mouth to scream, threw up his arm to shield himself. The soun
d never came. The arm was severed at the elbow. The nomad looked at the stump stupidly. It was fountaining blood. Tarchon drove the point of the blade into his throat, then pushed him away with a boot. Another Alan had been clambering into the wagon with the fighting. He turned, went to shout a warning, and an arrow took him in the neck. He turned slowly, as if taking a last stock of the sunshine of the mortal world, and fell off the wagon. Four Alani dead in about as many heartbeats.

  Ballista gestured for Wulfstan to come close. Calgacus was making sure the downed Alani were dead with the point of a sword. Another one, blissfully unaware, appeared through the gap in the fortification. With a wild yell, Tarchon smashed him backwards. Cries of consternation arose from outside.

  ‘Tarchon, Wulfstan, stop any more getting through here.’

  They moved into position, Wulfstan sending a couple of arrows whipping out, to leave no doubt in Alani minds that the defences were manned again.

  Ballista and Maximus jumped up into the rear of the next wagon. Calgacus, his right hand still near useless, slowly hauled himself up after. Bodies were strewn across the floor of the wagon; six or seven of them, defenders and attackers, piled indiscriminately. Otherwise, it was empty. The fighting had moved on. The three followed through the body of the wagon, stumbling over the corpses.

  Outside on the Steppe, over the boom of the war drum, horns blared out afresh. Most likely they were telling of the closing of the breach, Ballista thought. But were they summoning reinforcements or admitting defeat? Wyrd will often spare an undoomed man, if his courage is good. The lines ran in his mind.

  There were half a dozen Alani preparing to storm the third wagon. They had their backs to Ballista. As he saw them, two slipped off around the inside of the wagon to outflank the defenders.

  Side by side on the tailgate, Ballista and Maximus looked at each other. They both mouthed, ‘One-two-three.’ Together, they jumped down. The Alani heard them, glanced back, expecting their own. Horrified, they started to turn. Ballista staggered a little on landing. Rather than try to regain his balance, he carried on forward – half running, half falling – blade first, at the Alan on his right. The nomad was wheeling around, bringing his sword across to guard himself. It was all too late. The tip of Ballista’s steel sliced through the side of the nomad’s tunic and on into the delicate flesh. It grated on rib, and kept going. Ballista used the impact to halt his momentum.

  Ballista heard Calgacus curse as he dropped from the tail of the wagon behind.

  Pushing the incapacitated, probably dying, man away, Ballista turned to face the one to his left. He used his shield to parry a wild swing to his neck. Both stepped back. Ballista got into an ox guard; shield parallel to the fighting line, sword held overhand, sticking forward from the side of his brow like the beast’s horn. The Alan held his shield in the same way, but had his sword down by his right thigh. Both shifted on their feet; waiting for the other to move, waiting for an opening.

  Ballista could hear the clash of steel, stamping footfalls and grunts to his left, heavy feet and Calgacus swearing to his right. No time to look; both his friends were still alive.

  With no warning, Ballista thrust at the face. His opponent brought his shield up. Ballista rolled his wrist and changed the blow into a downward slice to the left leg. The Alan withdrew the leg, stepped forward on to his right, and made an inside-edge thrust to the head. It was the obvious response; the one Ballista had expected. With a speed that belied his size, Ballista twisted his entire body, bringing sword and shield up and across almost together. The impact ran through his left arm as the shield blocked the Alani’s blow, but he more heard than felt his own sword cut into the nomad’s exposed right arm. It was like a knife in cabbage. The man shrieked, dropped his weapon, reeled around. Quite calmly, Ballista chopped his sword down into the man’s right thigh. He could be ignored for now.

  A glance to his left. One Alan down, Maximus driving the other back. Ballista looked to the right. The two outflanking Alani were coming back, heading for Calgacus. They were moving cautiously, swords and shields well up. Ballista edged over towards Calgacus; close, but not so close they would get in the way of each other’s swordplay.

  A strange quiet seemed to descend as the four became isolated in their minimalist, deadly dance – a half-step here, a slight change of balance there. Sunlight flashed on the questing steel. Ballista only part registered a lithe shape drop softly from the wagon behind the Alani. An elegant lunge, and the Alan in front of Ballista dropped like a poled beast. A movement like a mere tremor in the hot air, and the other pitched forward, coughing out his lifeblood.

  ‘Thank you,’ Ballista said.

  ‘Think nothing of it,’ Andonnoballus said. ‘And thank you for coming.’

  Maximus had killed his man. Calgacus shuffled over and finished the second Ballista had felled. The four men stood, panting.

  ‘They are withdrawing.’ A voice could be heard from somewhere. As if in confirmation, there was a diminishing thunder of hooves and a bray of distant horns. It took a moment to realize the war drum was silent.

  XX

  Calgacus had taken longer than the others to get up on to a wagon. It was not just the splint on his right arm impeding him; when he moved, things deep in his shoulder grated together painfully. None of the demented running, clambering, jumping or fighting had helped. And he had long accepted he was far from young.

  Finally achieving a point of vantage, Calgacus peered out across the plain. He was not going to admit either to the pain, or that he could see little apart from a blurred cloud of dust that marked the retreating Alani horsemen.

  ‘Quite a few of them are carrying wounds,’ Maximus said.

  ‘But, again, they are leaving their dead,’ Andonnoballus said. ‘They will return.’

  As they watched the Alani ride away, Ballista and Andonnoballus discussed what had happened, re-creating in detail the ebb and flow of events.

  Calgacus had no patience with such futile endeavours. The face of battle was no stranger to him. Battle was nothing but chaos, every man isolated in his own few yards of fear and exertion. Every participant saw a different battle. Yet, afterwards, some primal urge forced the survivors to impose a pattern, to tell a clear, linear story. It was as if their own memories lacked the necessary validity unless they could be placed within something generally agreed.

  ‘Their plan was sound,’ Ballista said. ‘They made two diversions; one across the watercourse, the other some mounted skirmishers looking like they might attack the centre of the wagon line. These tied down some of our men, while their two main assaults came in on foot at either end of the laager.’

  Calgacus watched three vultures coast in just outside the laager on their feathery wings. All their grace was lost when they came to earth.

  ‘And it nearly worked,’ Ballista continued. ‘At the western end they were fighting hand to hand around the wagon of the gudja. Here in the east they got inside the defences. If we had not blocked the breach and killed the few already inside, it would have worked.’

  ‘But it did not work,’ Andonnoballus said. ‘There is nothing nomad horse archers hate more than trying to storm a wagon-laager, even if it is defended by only a few desperate men.’

  ‘It is not just on the Steppe,’ Ballista said. ‘There is nothing harder in the world than taking any fortification manned by just a handful of brave, well-equipped men who will obey orders and dig in their heels. The casualties of the attackers will always be horrendous.’

  The Alani had indeed suffered many casualties. No fewer than thirty-nine nomadic corpses were counted. Luckily for the prospects of the majority of these Alani in the afterlife, the three surviving Heruli were too tired and too busy to scalp and strip the skin from the right arms of more than a couple each.

  Only eight of the defenders had fallen: the Heruli Ochus and Aordus, three soldiers, including the one who had been lying already close to death in their wagon, and three Sarmatians.

  For th
e moment, all the corpses were given the same treatment. Defenders and Alani alike were merely rolled and thrown out beyond the defences. Lack of manpower, time, even energy, precluded anything more elaborate and either denigrating or respectful.

  Calgacus felt that at this place – Blood River, as it was in his mind – the spirits of death hovered close. He knew Ballista’s people saw the choosers of the slain as beautiful young women. These white-armed, white-breasted girls would carry the chosen to Valhalla, and there in the golden hall of the Allfather they would serve them mead, maybe take them as lovers. For Hellenes like Hippothous, or Romans like Castricius it was different. For them, two grim-eyed warriors, Sleep and Death, bore them away to the underworld, where all but a tiny few would flit and squeak like bats in the dark and cold for an eternity. Calgacus had no idea of the views on the afterlife of his own native tribes in Caledonia. He had been taken too young. He hoped a lifetime among the Angles and serving one of them in remote places would make him eligible for Valhalla. You had to die in battle. There were worse ways to die. Your passing would be one of pain, but that might seem a low price to enter one of the better afterlives. Although the many willing virgins of Manichaeism – was it seventy or more? – also had a strong appeal. And it might be you did not have to die a violent death to get there. Maybe, if he lived through this, he would find out more about the strange new religion.

  At any event, Calgacus hoped the souls of those killed had departed, for there were any number of vultures arrived. Ungainly in their haste and greed, they set up a flapping uproar as they squabbled over this sudden, rich bounty. Things would get worse later, when the darkness allowed the scavengers of the earth to overcome their fear of living men and slink out to devour the dead.

  The majority of those being consumed were Alani. The losses of the defenders had been light, but they could ill afford them. Ballista and Andonnoballus rearranged the defence. The river remained held by Hippothous and Castricius. Each was as skilled a killer of men as the other, Calgacus thought, and each as dangerously insane as the other. They were aided by the interpreter and the soon-to-be-freed slave of the soldiers. A reserve of six was to be held back. It consisted of Ballista, Andonnoballus, Maximus, Tarchon, young Wulfstan, and Calgacus himself. It would be certain to be called upon. The actual wagon line now was held only by the gudja, two Heruli, three Roman auxiliaries, four Sarmatians and the other military slave. The latter had also been promised his freedom, conditional on both his martial valour and his survival. The latter seemed the larger impediment to his manumission.