The country beyond the river, while still flat, was not featureless. It was patterned with dry watercourses. The sides of these dropped down suddenly, as if they had been cut by the spade of a giant. Greyish shrubs grew in them, back flush to the level of the surrounding grass. They curved like dark tattoos across the face of the Steppe.
That night, Ballista lay watching sheet lightning on the northern horizon. Rain would come soon, Rudolphus had said.
The third day, the Steppe reverted to type, a flat run of brown-black grass as far ahead as could be seen. The north wind had brought down the clouds. Black and without a break, they slid south low overhead. As the travellers rode south-west, it was as if they were trapped between two solid planes, like the hemp between Maximus’s blades.
By noon, it was dark enough to be evening. The thunder welled up in the clouds. The sheet lightning accentuated the gloom with its sporadic flashes of pure white. In one of these Ballista saw three men on ponies riding parallel to them in the south. A quarter of a mile away, half a mile? It was impossible to judge.
‘There are many broken, tribeless men on the Steppe,’ Rudolphus said. ‘More now, after Naulobates’ victory; many Alani, riders from the Sirachoi, Aorsoi, their subject tribes.’ The guide shrugged. ‘Heruli too. Fear made some of the brothers slip away from the fighting. They were fools. It is better to stand up to the arrow-storm and the steel for an hour or two, better to take the wound’ – he held up his right hand, with the truncated digits – ‘better even to die, than live as an outcast. It is a hard life; bad for the soul. Those men have seen our horses and pack-ponies and the baggage. They may try to steal them. But, unless there are many of them, they will not try and fight us for them.’
They made camp early, under a loud, angry sky. Ballista decided they would set pickets. To keep them sharp, prevent any falling into a routine, they would be chosen by lot each evening. After dinner, Ballista and Maximus took the first watch. They sat, cloaks pulled around them, at either end of the horse lines, to the west of the camp.
Ballista could sense the rain in the storm. Nine more days to Tanais, some of them would be wet. A day or two in the town hiring a boat, another day or two crossing Lake Maeotis. Would there be an imperial official with new orders waiting for them in the Kingdom of Bosporus? If so, they might have to winter in Panticapaeum again. If not, they should be able to get passage across the Euxine to Byzantium before the weather closed the shipping lanes. If no mandata awaited them there either, he was minded to journey on by land. The weather would be bad, but he still had diplomata to use the cursus publicus. They could use the imperial posting service up through the Danubian provinces, across the Alps – if the snow had not closed the passes – and report to Gallienus at Mediolanum, assuming the emperor was there with the field army.
He was not unduly worried how Gallienus would receive them. True, he had ransomed no Roman prisoners, and had failed to turn the Heruli against the Urugundi and the other Goths. Yet there was war on the Steppes. Having fought in the Caucasus, he did not think Naulobates and Hisarna were likely to attain a quick victory over the Alani. The remote passes and upland pastures were studded with forts and made ideal terrain for ambush. That was three tribes too occupied to raid the imperium. And half the gold with which he had been entrusted was returning.
The thunder and lightning were spooking the horses.
Time was passing since Ballista had been forced briefly to assume the purple. Gallienus had not had him condemned in the immediate aftermath. There was no reason to think the emperor would do so now. Unless …
Lightning illuminated the whole Steppe with a fleeting brilliance that had no perspective, and was gone in a moment. The blackness after was impenetrable.
Unless there had been an outbreak of usurpations, and the consilium thought a purge was necessary to reassert the authority of the central government. Ballista had been away from the imperial council for a long time. He had never fully understood its inner machinations. Undoubtedly, he had enemies there. Yet he also had friends. The last he had heard, Aurelian and Tacitus still stood high in the favour of Gallienus.
Lightning tore across the sky.
Ballista wondered how Rutilus had got on in his embassy to the other Gothic tribes, the Borani and the Grethungi. Being yoked with the old consular Felix would have been no joy.
Halfway along the line, a horse reared against its tether. Ballista got to his feet, stretching the knots out of his muscles. A figure was at the horse’s head.
‘Maximus?’
A gust of wind snatched the word away.
Ballista walked down the line of white-eyed horses.
There were two men by the plunging horse.
‘Maximus!’ Ballista threw off his cloak, drew his sword. ‘Horse thieves!’
Ballista ran at them. One figure swung up on to the animal, the other holding its head.
‘Maximus!’
The second man jumped up behind the first. The horse bolted.
Something warned Ballista. He turned, weapon ready. A blade sliced towards his head. He parried, and riposted. But the man had leapt aside, and was running off into the darkness.
‘Maximus!’
A dark shape in front. ‘Is that you?’
‘Of course it is fucking me.’
Other men were running up from the campfire.
‘They just got the one.’
The next night, the storm returned, but still the rain did not fall. About midnight, someone shook Calgacus awake.
‘Enough, enough, you ham-fisted fucker.’
Tarchon stopped shaking him. ‘Your turn with the pederast.’
Calgacus clambered to his feet. His shoulder hurt. It seized up when he slept. He yawned, coughed, hawked, spat and farted; all as loudly as possible, inspired by a half-realized resentment at others sleeping when he was awake. The noises were lost in the clamour of the storm.
Hippothous was waiting by the fire with one of the soldiers. Sparks whirled away to die in the darkness.
The change of pickets was shite. Calgacus would tell Ballista in the morning. If both men on watch came in to rouse their replacements, it would not take the most intelligent horse thief in the world to work out when to strike. Although if any of the fuckers were out on a night like this, good luck to them.
The horses were tethered in two lines running north–south out to the west of the camp. Between the lightning flashes, it was so dark they were barely visible from where the men slept around the fire. Hippothous disappeared off to the northern picket.
Calgacus walked through the lines to the southern post. The horses shifted and whickered at him as he passed. He liked the sweet smell of them. He muttered soothing things. A Herul pony tried to nip him.
Out beyond the shelter of the animals, the wind buffeted him. There was no cover, so he sat with his back to it. He pulled his cloak around him. Since they had been there, he had never liked the night on the Steppe.
Up above, the storm roared. There were no stars. All the constellations, the Pleiades, the Eyes of Thiazi – whatever different men called them – were gone. The moon had vanished as surely as if Hati the wolf had devoured him.
It was Ragnarok weather. At the end of days, Fenrir the wolf will break his bonds, Jormungand the serpent rear up from the sea, the dead rise from Hel, and Naglfar – the ship made from dead men’s nails – bring doom to gods and men.
Calgacus wondered if he believed it, any of it. They were the first stories of the gods he could remember. The Angles had seemed to believe. But it had been made very clear he was not an Angle. He was a nithing, a Caledonian slave.
He had grown up an outsider in Germania. All these years with Ballista, he had remained an outsider among the Greeks and Romans. When the traditional gods were always beings other people worshipped, it made his own belief in any of them improbable. Those religions he had encountered which offered a new identity – Manichaeism, Christianity – struck him as the self-evident results o
f human ingenuity.
Something warned Calgacus. He shifted, and peered out from under his hood. Hippothous was ghosting down the horse lines. He had a sword in his hand.
No daemon then; all the time, just a man’s murderous insanity.
Calgacus did not move. Under his cloak, he eased his sword in its scabbard. He watched out of the corner of his eye; waiting, waiting. As Hippothous closed, Calgacus rose, turned, drew his weapon and thrust in one fluid motion.
Caught by surprise, the Greek sidestepped. Too slow. The edge of Calgacus’s blade scraped down his ribcage.
Hippothous stepped back. He seemed not to feel the pain. In the lightning, his eyes were mad.
Calgacus roared as he cut at Hippothous’s head. Sparks as Hippothous blocked the blow, countered, and was blocked in turn.
They circled. Intense concentration made it hard for Calgacus to shout. Hippothous led on one foot then shifted his weight to the other and launched a flurry of blows.
The heavy impacts jarred up into Calgacus’s shoulder. The steel rang against the thunder. The horses were calling, fighting against their tethers. That would bring the others. Just stay alive.
Something turned under Calgacus’s boot. He staggered. Hippothous struck. Calgacus brought his sword across. Not quick enough. The breath grunted out of him, as the steel punched up into his stomach.
As the blade was pulled out, Calgacus doubled up. He used his sword to push himself near upright, drew the long dagger from his right hip, got it out in front. The blood was running hot down his groin on to his thighs.
Hippothous stepped in, chopping down at his head. Calgacus met it with the dagger. The force almost drove him to his knees. Movement, shouting off towards the fire. Just stay alive.
Like an animal seeking the warmth of his blood, the steel cut at him again. He blocked – slower, the pain hindering his movements.
The horses were rearing as men ran through the lines.
Hippothous looked over his shoulder, then turned and ran into the darkness.
Calgacus felt his knees give. He was face down, the grass coarse under his cheek. The blood was hot on his hands pressed to the wound.
How long would it take the fuckers to get here? From a great distance, he heard yelling, above the howl of the wind.
With surprise, he realized he was not thinking of Ballista, and not of Rebecca and Simon. He heard the crash of waves on rocks, caught the scent of a peat fire, glimpsed a woman’s half-remembered face.
XXXI
‘There!’ The Herul guide Rudolphus pointed.
Ballista shaded his eyes, though there was no sun coming through the low, fast-moving clouds. The air was misted with dust and debris picked up by the north wind. He could see nothing else.
‘To the right of the three barrows, well beyond.’
‘I see it,’ Maximus said.
Ballista screened the right-hand side of his face to try to keep out the grit. His eyes were watering. A thin smudge of more solid dust, glimpsed for a moment, then merging back into the general obscurity.
‘How far?’ Ballista asked.
The Herul considered. ‘Four miles, maybe a bit more.’
‘A fair distance,’ Ballista said.
‘Not far enough.’ The Herul nudged his pony on, and the other two did likewise. ‘He has made bad time. We will run him down today.’
How had Hippothous hoped to get away with it? Maybe, if he had caught Calgacus unaware and had managed to kill him with no outcry, he might have tried to pass it off as the work of horse thieves. Not trusting in that outcome, Hippothous had untied a horse from the line, saddled it, and left it tethered out in the darkness of the Steppe.
And that had been his fatal mistake. The Greek had not learnt from his time on the Steppe. He had taken one horse. The three men pursuing him had nine; eight now that one had gone lame and been turned loose.
Not that it would have done them any good without Rudolphus. How the Herul had tracked Hippothous west for the last two days amazed Ballista. The surface of the Steppe was baked too hard for hoof prints. Now and then, Rudolphus lost the line, and had to cast around. He would drop from his mount, peer at the scorched grass and feel the dirt. Eventually, he would grunt in satisfaction, and swing back into the saddle. Only once – a pile of horse droppings – had Ballista been able to detect any sign.
They rode on at a fast canter. Each time the thunder cracked, the red Sarmatian Naulobates had given Ballista flinched and laid his ears flat. The Heruli ponies gave it less mind. The rain would fall at any moment. By the look of the clouds, it would be heavy.
Back at the camp, there had been chaos after they had found Calgacus. Chaos, then hard decisions. Holding the old man’s head in his lap, Ballista had lost his temper, yelled at the others to be quiet – shut the fuck up and let him think.
A lone rider, even with only one horse, would outrun the column. Only some could give chase, and they had to have spare mounts. Ballista had known right away he needed Rudolphus. And he would not be without Maximus, not now of all times.
Tarchon had begged to come. He had ranted. He had failed in his duty. He had to redeem his honour. His passion led him to revert to his native Suanian. No one else understood the words, but his meaning was still clear.
Ballista had remained adamant. The column could not be too stripped of its fighters; the Steppe was full of broken men. Besides – he had told the Suanian – one of them had to stay with Calgacus.
Ruthlessly, they had thrown away baggage, and taken six of the ponies as remounts. Castricius had been left in charge. He still had two auxiliaries and the two ex-military slaves, as well as Tarchon. Six armed men should be enough. The interpreter Biomasos had shown spirit. They should be enough to see off any but the most committed or desperate bandits.
Castricius had taken instructions from Rudolphus. These amounted to little more than to keep on south-west. Eight days’ easy march, and they would come to Lake Maeotis, if not straight to the port of Tanais itself. The interpreter spoke all the local languages. There was water along the way, and they had ample provisions. Ballista had few fears on that score. A man like Castricius – a man who had survived the mines, the sack of Arete, and whatever else had happened to him in Albania – was unlikely to fail.
Ballista felt guilty for the times he had thought Castricius might have been the killer. A much greater guilt tried to force itself up into his thoughts. He stamped it down. Time enough for that when this chase had run its course. Allfather, all these years and he had never bothered to ask what funeral rites Calgacus wanted.
The first drops of rain dimpled the dust of the plain. Soon it was falling hard, beating in at an angle, running down his face, sluicing off his riding cloak.
Ballista called over to Rudolphus. ‘There will be no dust to follow.’
The Herul turned, squinting against the downpour. ‘There will be tracks. His horse cannot hold out for much further.’
They changed mounts, and ate some dried meat and drank milk. The Herul stepped from one pony to another, not bothering to dismount even to urinate. When they moved off, Rudolphus had them spread out across the plain.
Riding alone on the right flank, Ballista remembered something Julia had said years before. The dead do not suffer; that is for those left behind.
Calgacus had been alive when he reached him. But with eyes beyond hope, mouth beyond speech … Ballista began to cry again.
Down in the darkness of the tomb, Hippothous waited. They would not be long now. He had seen them coming from the top of the kurgan. Three riders, each with a string of ponies on a lead rein. There had been no mistaking them, even through the rain at that distance: Ballista, Maximus and the Herul guide.
Hippothous hoped they had seen him silhouetted on the skyline. He had tethered the horse right outside the opening to make sure they knew he was here.
It was a story from Polemon’s Physiognomy that had started him on the long journey to this dark place. There was a wo
man in the city of Perge in the land of Pamphylia. The women there go veiled – as decent Hellenic women should – you can only see the eyes and nose. It had been enough for Polemon. ‘What a great evil is about to descend on this woman,’ he had announced. The sign was that her nostrils had darkened, and her eyes widened and turned green. Her head moved much, and as she walked her feet knocked together, as if from fear. To the astonishment of Polemon’s companions, someone ran up, shouting that the woman’s daughter had fallen into the well at their house and been drowned. The woman ripped off her veil, tore the front of her dress and threw off her clothes – even her loincloth of Egyptian or Greek linen. Naked, she fell on her face, sobbing for her beloved daughter.
It had been the first step on Hippothous’s journey. Physiognomy not only let you look into someone’s soul, it allowed you to see their future.
Polemon had also met a man from Lydia. His colour was dark, tending to redness, as if he had drunk wine or were angry. He was strong, his ankles were thick, the digits of his hands and feet were short, and in his voice was an ugly hoarseness. Of course, his eyes were evil. Often, he bared his teeth, like a wild pig when it turns on its hunter. It was evident to Polemon that the man was full of tyranny and enmity, often threatening evil; a killer, and a shedder of blood. Yet no one but Polemon was aware of the horror the man would perpetrate.
The man’s neighbours were celebrating a festival. The man sent them a basket of food. The basket was put among the offerings, and opened. On top were saucers of oyster shells. But underneath was a severed head.
The story had been a revelation to Hippothous.
The Wolves of the North Page 31
