The Wolves of the North
( Warrior of Rome - 5 )
Harry Sidebottom
Harry Sidebottom
The Wolves of the North
Prologue
(Panticapaeum, The Kingdom of the Bosporus, Spring AD263)
This god Death takes many shapes and puts at our disposal an infinite number of roads that lead to him.
— Lucian, Toxaris, or Friendship 38.
The killer stood in the empty courtyard, sniffing the air, listening. The smell of charcoal, the distant sounds of metalworking; there was nothing untoward. The house, like all in the row, was long abandoned. Yet it had been worth checking; derelict buildings attracted drunks, vagrants, and — a grimace crossed the killer’s face — lovers with no place else to go.
The sun was shifting down towards the great West Gate, towards the double walls and ditch which repeatedly had failed to protect the city of Panticapaeum. In the opposite direction was the acropolis. There the thin spring sunshine caught the Pharos that no one dared light for fear of the ships it might draw, and the temple of Apollo Iatros, the home the archer-god had proved unwilling to defend. In front of these symbols of a threatened Hellenism spread the fire-blackened, much repaired palace of the King of the Bosporus. Rhescuporis V, Lover of Caesar, Lover of Rome, styled himself Great King, King of Kings, and much else. The surrounding barbarian nomads knew him as the Beggar King. The killer felt nothing but pleasure in the evidence that evil men brought evil on their own heads.
It would be easy now just to walk away. But night would soon fall. If the necessary actions were not taken, the killer knew only too well what the dark could bring. The self-appointed Hound of the Gods, the Scourge of Evil, walked back into the house.
The corpse lay on its back, naked in the rectangle of light shaped by the door. The killer went to a leather bag, and drew out a piece of string, a scalpel, a knife with a serrated blade and a big cleaver like those used in the meat markets. Hard experience had taught these terrible things were necessary.
The killer laid out the instruments in a neat line by the corpse, and considered them. Better to do the delicate work first. The other way around, and muscle fatigue might cause a nasty slip. There was no point in delaying. The horrible things had to be done. Even in this run-down area of the town, delay might bring discovery.
Taking up the scalpel and kneeling over the body, the killer made an incision the length of the left eyelid. The honed steel cut easily; blood and fluid seeped. The killer pushed the thumb of the hand not holding the blade into the wound, worked it around and down, and drew out the eyeball. It came free with a sucking sound. When the orb was well out of its socket, a neat stroke of the scalpel severed the optic nerve. Although there was a reasonable length of the bloody cord, it proved difficult to tie the string around the slippery, repulsive object.
The Hound of the Gods did not pause, but got straight on with the other eye. Night was approaching, and there was much to be done.
The killer removed both eyes and secured them to the string then exchanged the thin scalpel for the more robust knife with the serrations. The latter were a help. A human tongue was remarkably tough, and there was so much gristle to saw through with the nose, ears and penis. The heavy cleaver came into its own with the butchery of the hands and feet.
It was done, the extremities removed, tied to the string, packed under the armpits. The killer was tired, daubed in gore. Just one last thing. On hands and knees, head right down, the Hound of the Gods licked up some of the blood from the corpse, and spat it out. Three times, the iron taste of blood, disgusting in the mouth, and three times the retching expectoration.
‘Barbaric! Gods below, how could anyone do such things?’
Khedosbios, the eirenarch of Panticapaeum, did not reply to the new recruit. Instead he looked around the big, desolate room. Shards of amphorae, some recently smashed, lay about. In a corner, an indeterminate pile of sacking and wood was mantled in dust. There was an old mattress in the opposite corner, unpleasantly stained. No other furniture, no graffiti, no clothes, implements or weapons. There was nothing of note except the horror lying on its back near the middle of the floor.
The magistrate turned his attention to the corpse. ‘Not barbaric at all. In some ways, fitting.’
The young man of the watch accepted the correction without demur.
Khedosbios crouched down by the body. At least the weather was still cold, and there were not many flies. He took one of the hideously truncated legs in both hands and pulled, manipulating it this way and that. He did the same to an arm. Seemingly satisfied, he lifted the head a little and withdrew the string from underneath. It was stiff with dried blood. Deftly, he unpacked the body parts from under the armpits. They were similarly bloodied, but slimy beneath the dark crust. Stepping back, he ordered the two public slaves to wash the corpse.
As the libitinarii got busy, Khedosbios sluiced one of the severed hands with water and carefully examined it. He had been appointed eirenarch just the previous year. He was young and only dissimulated his ambition when he thought it served. Since childhood, learning his letters with the Iliad, the example of Achilles had always been with him: Strive ever to be the best.
The libitinarii stood back. The reek of mud and blood was strong in the room now. Khedosbios gave the detached hand to the recruit, and got back down over the corpse. His boots squelched in the newly formed sludge. No matter, only a fool would go to the scene of a murder in anything other than old clothes. Khedosbios scanned the body from the cut ankles upwards. He found nothing of interest on the limbs or torso; the man had been cleanshaven. Khedosbios tipped back the chin and studied the purple groove running around the neck. Then he prised the jaw open and inserted his fingers into the bloody ruin of a mouth, delicately feeling about.
Standing again, he told the libitinarii to turn the body over and wash the back.
‘Who founded this city?’
Thrown by the unexpected question, the recruit was a moment answering: ‘The Milesians.’
‘No, before that, in the age of heroes.’
‘Medea’s brother Apsyrtos. He was given the land by the Scythian King Agaetes,’ the boy said with a certain civic pride.
Khedosbios nodded and crouched low. He peered at some small purple blotches on the back of the corpse, wondering at their meaning. Then his fingers traced several rows of tiny indentations. Close inspection revealed they were linked by faint white lines.
The eirenarch got up and wiped his hands on his already stained Sarmatian trousers. ‘When Medea and Jason had stolen the golden fleece, her father sent Apsyrtos after them. When her brother caught them, they murdered him and dismembered his body. It is in the epic Argonautica by Apollonius of Rhodes, although I do not remember anything about the tongue or penis.’
‘Why?’
‘To stop the daemon pursuing them. How can a spirit follow with no feet, or hold a blade with no hands?’
‘No, Kyrios, why in real life?’
‘Is there a difference? Rich, eupatrid families forge an ancestry going back to Agamemnon or Ajax. Perhaps the Romans are right: we Hellenes live too much in the past. Reading too many books can be dangerous.’
‘He was strangled?’ The recruit politely phrased it as a question.
‘With a ligature. He was a slave.’
‘The rough, calloused hands?’
Khedosbios smiled. The boy was keen. ‘Not really; many free men have the like — farmers, stevedores. No, it is the scars of old beatings on the back, and the teeth.’
‘The teeth, Kyrios?’
‘Slave bread is made with the sweepings. It is full of husks, grit — wears the teeth down.’
Khedosbios recognized hybris as a vice, in himself as in others, but at times the paradigm of Achilles overcame his avoidance of the pride that found expression in the belittling of others.
‘As you say, Kyrios.’
‘How many slaves have been reported missing or run in the last couple of days?’
‘Four: a girl, a child and two adult males.’
‘Who owned the men?’
‘One was the property of Demosthenes, son of Sauromates, the metalworker.’
‘An occupation that leaves marks on the hands.’
‘The other belonged to the envoy Marcus Clodius Ballista. Shall I send a messenger to tell him?’
‘Too late,’ said Khedosbios. ‘His mission sailed this morning.’
The young man of the watch averted evil, thumb between index and middle finger. ‘The gods willing, the murderer did not sail with them. Even being under the same roof as a murderer pollutes, and everyone knows a ship on which one sails comes to grief.’
Khedosbios laughed out loud. ‘Not to mention being confined in dangerous proximity to a man who enjoys killing and has a taste for mutilation.’
PART ONE
The Country of Strange Peoples
(Lake Maeotis and the Tanais River, Spring AD263)
He shall pass into the country of strange peoples; he shall try good and evil in all things.
— William of Rubruck, Preface 2 (misquoting Ecclesiasticus 39.5)
I
‘I did not think Polybius would run,’ Ballista said. The tall northerner spoke in Greek. He turned to look at the other four men.
They were leaning against the stern rail of the big Roman warship. Wrapped in dark cloaks, bulky with covered weapons, the spindrift whipping around them, they looked like gloomy harbingers of some as yet unspecified violence.
A blustery spring wind from the south-west was pushing a following sea under the ship, driving it on. The waters of Lake Maeotis rolled away, very green. A small Bosporan galley bobbed in their wake.
‘He never lacked courage,’ Maximus replied in the same language. Against the pain of the hangover from the previous night in Panticapaeum, the Hibernian bodyguard had screwed his eyes almost shut. Coupled with the scar where the end of his nose should have been, it gave him an extremely off-putting demeanour. ‘Certain, you could not fault him last year when the Goths came to Miletus and Didyma, and he did not disgrace himself in the Caucasus. After all that, a trip to ransom a few hostages from the Heruli should hold few fears.’
The little officer Castricius pushed his hood back from his thin, pointed face. ‘Going out on the sea of grass among the nomads might give any man pause. Like all Scythians, the Heruli are not as other men. Despite all their raids into the empire, there may be no one alive to ransom. Some say they sacrifice their prisoners, dress in their skins, use their skulls as drinking cups. Going among the Heruli should give any man pause for thought — even a man such as me, protected by a good daemon.’
‘They say they fuck donkeys too,’ Maximus said.
‘And they say the kings of your island fuck horses,’ Hippothous responded. The Greek secretary’s shaved head shone in the thin sunshine. ‘All nonsense. People place any strange thing they wish at the ends of the world.’
‘Well…’ Maximus looked vaguely embarrassed.
‘A serious man of culture’ — Hippothous talked over him — ‘one who really belongs among the pepaideumenoi, should welcome the prospect of travelling among the nomads. Do not forget that one of the seven sages, Anacharsis, was actually a Scythian.’
‘I thought he left the tent dwellers to live in Athens,’ Ballista said.
Maximus grinned.
Hippothous took no notice of either. ‘To a student of physiognomy, such as myself, it presents both a challenge and an opportunity. Herodotus tells of many fascinating peoples out there. The Budinians all have piercing grey eyes and bright-red hair. Then there are the Argippaei: bald from birth — men and women alike — with snub noses and large chins. For a physiognomist to see the soul behind such strange faces, that would be a triumph. But most extraordinary of all are the Heruli.’
‘Did you not just say people believe any nonsense about the ends of the earth?’ Castricius interrupted. ‘Herodotus also tells of men with goat feet, whole tribes of the one-eyed, and others who turn into wolves for a few days each year.’
Hippothous smiled urbanely. ‘You know your literature, Legate. Men misjudge you when they describe you as an ill-educated soldier, jumped up from the ranks. You have transcended your origins.’
Castricius’s thin lips were pressed tight in his small mouth.
‘Of course,’ the Greek continued, ‘most such things may be travellers’ tales and myths. Herodotus claimed only to report what others told him, he did not vouchsafe the truth of it. Yet it is universally acknowledged that he was correct to state that climate and style of life shape the character of a people. The sea of grass does not change. So neither do the nomads.’
The fifth man, who had neither spoken nor seemed to have been listening, turned inboard from the sea. He was a strikingly ugly older man; sparse tufts of hair on his great domed skull, a thin, peevish mouth. ‘If Polybius discovered the real reason we have been sent, he had reason to run.’ At Calgacus’s words, the others fell silent. Instinctively, they looked down the length of the warship. There was little privacy to be had on a trireme, especially one burdened with an extra thirty-five passengers on deck.
The trierarch and the helmsman were some paces away. The commander was talking earnestly to the latter. No one else was particularly near. If the men at the stern kept their voices down, they were unlikely to be overheard.
‘Apart from us and the two eunuchs, no one knows,’ Ballista said.
Calgacus snorted with derision. ‘Shite,’ he muttered, perfectly audibly.
Ballista sighed. Since his childhood among the Angles of northern Germania, Calgacus had always been there. When Ballista had been taken as a hostage into the Roman imperium, Calgacus had accompanied him. First as a slave then, after manumission, the old Caledonian had looked after him — always complaining, always there. Tolerant patronus that he was, Ballista would allow such latitude only to one other of his freedmen. That man spoke next.
‘The old bastard is right,’ Maximus said. ‘The whole boat knows. Eunuchs are like women. They love to gossip.’
‘Emperors are fools to trust their sort,’ Castricius put in. ‘Neither one thing nor the other, they are unnatural, monstrous — like crows. It is an ill omen just to meet one, let alone travel to the ends of the earth with a couple.’
‘Neither doves nor ravens,’ Maximus agreed.
‘Eunuchs or not,’ Calgacus said, ‘whether there are any hostages to ransom or not, you have fuck all hope of succeeding in the real mission. You will never persuade the Heruli to turn on their Gothic allies. They will take the emperor’s gold, little enough as it is, then slit our throats, turn our hides into cloaks, bowcases or some such shite, and no one in our great emperor Gallienus’s consilium will give a fuck.’
‘Not necessarily,’ Ballista said. ‘Felix and Rutilus will have a worse time in the north trying to get the Grethungi to attack their fellow Gothic tribes, and Sabinillus and Zeno not much better in the west getting the Carpi, Taifali and Gepidae to fight any of the Goths.’
‘Good,’ said Calgacus. ‘We can take comfort in them being as doomed as us. A whole range of men in imperial disfavour will have died serving the Res Publica. Of course, the donkey-fucking Heruli may not get the chance to kill us — we have to survive the Maeotae and the Urugundi Goths before we reach them.’
Suitably chastened, the five men relapsed into silence. Ballista judged that Calgacus might well be right, but there was no point in admitting it. Of all the daunting imperial mandata Ballista had received from Gallienus and his predecessors, these orders gave him the worst feeling.
The breeze was freshening, cresting the thick, green waves. The little
Bosporan liburnian forged ahead, its double banks of oars flashing, spray flying. It turned to the south-east. The trireme followed, angling across the sea towards the low, dark land. Ballista looked out at the unprepossessing sight, dark thoughts in his head.
The trierarch, a short, stubby centurion with a beard, walked to the stern. ‘Almost there, Domini.’ He spoke in Latin to Ballista and Castricius, as the envoy and his deputy. ‘We will make Azara in a couple of hours.’ He smiled. ‘I give you joy of it. Apparently the locals call the place Conopion — Mosquito-town.’
When the ship slipped into one of the many channels of the Lesser Rhombites river, Hippothous was struck by the stillness. The wind was gone. Reeds and sedge pressed in on both sides. The water was black and heavy, glossy in the lowering sun. The creak and splash of the oars, the clicking and chattering of insects and birds, both seemed thin and insubstantial against the oppressive quiet of the delta.
The trireme rowed in the glassy trail of the liburnian, until both were manoeuvred to rest stern on against a dilapidated jetty at the foot of a low, overgrown rise. The Maeotae were waiting for them in arms. The isolated wooden look-outs they had passed jutting up out of the water obviously gave notice of the arrival of men as well as shoals of fish. These tribesmen belonged to a tribe of the Maeotae called the Tarpeites: fishermen on the coast, farmers inland, said to be brigands in both elements. There were a hundred or so of them, dirty, poorly armed, but obviously dangerous in their barbarian irrationality.
The marines on the trireme and the auxiliary soldiers escorting the embassy held themselves very still, weapons to hand. All told, there were about forty Roman fighting men.
The sun was going down, but it was warmer away from the open sea. Hippothous slapped at the insects settling on him and watched the Bosporan ship run out its boarding ladder and the navarchos disembark. The grandly titled commander of the fleets of the Great King of the Bosporus talked for some time with the tribesmen. There was an amount of gesticulating. The armed men on the Roman vessel grew bored, put up their weapons, leant on their shields and the gunwales, talked under their breath. Hippothous did not relax. He had not survived a lifetime of violence as bandit, Cilician chief and, for the last few years, accensus to Ballista, only by luck. The post of secretary usually did not involve much violence, but in the familia of Ballista it was almost the norm.
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