Ballista had had just sixteen winters when he had killed the emperor at the siege of Aquileia. Maximinus Thrax had been a tyrant, a savage tyrant. But Ballista had sworn the military oath to him. He had broken his sacramentum. The other mutineers had decapitated the emperor’s corpse. Since then the daemon of that terrible man had pursued Ballista. The appearances were infrequent, but utterly petrifying. Ballista’s wife said it was nothing but bad dreams brought on by exhaustion or stress. It was easy for Julia. She was an Epicurean. Ballista was not. But he wished she was right.
Suddenly, like a dam giving way, the dream came back to him, bizarre in its clarity. Poor, poor Mamurra. Ballista had left his friend to die alone in the dark.
The boats did not come the next morning. The familia and the rest ate lunch together in the hall.
‘Why did Hisarna call the Heruli long-headed?’ Ballista asked.
‘Skull-binding,’ said Hippothous. ‘They are the Macrophali of whom Hippocrates wrote. They tie tight bandages around the soft skulls of infants, before they are properly formed. Their heads grow long, pointed, hugely deformed. After a generation or two, nature begins to collaborate with custom. If bald parents often have bald children, grey-eyed parents grey-eyed children, if squinting parents have squinting children, why should long-headed parents not have long-headed children?’
‘That is a grand idea,’ Maximus said. ‘If your nomads turn their enemies’ skulls into drinking cups, the bigger the skull the more drink in your cup.’
‘You should not joke,’ the eunuch Mastabates said, speaking in public for the first time since they had arrived in the town of Tanais. ‘They are like no other people. They sacrifice prisoners to their god of war. The first captive in a hundred, they pour wine over his head, cut his throat, catch the blood in a jar, tip some over their swords, and drink the rest. They cut off the right arms of the others and behead them. They skin the arms and use the skins as covers for their quivers. With the heads they make a circular cut at the level of the ears, shake the scalp away, scrape it clean with a cow’s rib, sew them together to make patchwork coats. The skull is lined with gold inside and leather outside. When they have important visitors to impress, they bring out these grisly cups and tell their story. They call this courage. The grasslands are a terrible place, inhabited by terrible people.’
Hippothous laughed. ‘It should suit you well, eunuch. Hippocrates wrote that because of their moist, womanish constitution, and the softness and coldness of their bellies, nomad men lack sexual desire. They are worn out by riding all the time, so are weak in the act of sex. Rich nomads are the worst. The first time or two they go to their women and it does not work, they do not despair. But when it never works, they renounce manhood, take up the tasks of women, begin to talk like them. They have a special name for them, the anarieis. You will fit in well with them.’
Ballista looked up, chewing on a mutton bone. ‘They only kill one in a hundred? In the north, when the Angles and Saxons go sea raiding, we sacrifice to the sea one in ten of the captured.’
‘No, Kyrios,’ Mastabates said. ‘They drink the blood of one in a hundred, but they kill and decapitate them all.’
‘Takes away the point in raiding.’ Castricius grinned wolfishly.
‘That strange-looking gudja is here again,’ Calgacus said.
Charms and bones clinking, the tall priest entered; as ever, the old hag scuttled behind him. ‘The boats will be here tomorrow. It is the will of my King Hisarna that I accompany you upriver.’
Everyone knew that if an unjustified, unpurified murderer set foot in a sacred place, madness or disease would descend on them. The gods could not be deceived. Nevertheless, the figure standing in the temple of Hecate thought it should be safe.
The small temple was in the north of Tanais. The harbour, the road up from it, the agora and the handful of streets leading to the few areas of reoccupied housing might have been cleared, but the majority of the town, including the northern quarter, remained deserted. The sack ten years before by the combined warriors of the Urugundi and the Heruli had been savage and thorough. The homes of mortals had been ransacked and burnt; their occupants enslaved. The homes of the gods had been partially spared. While their contents — statues and offerings, both precious and otherwise — had been looted or smashed, the structures had not been fired.
The figure looked around the dusty bareness of the temple. It was dark, suitably Stygian. The only light was from a small, unshuttered window high at the rear and what leaked around the slightly ajar door. Two columns stood two thirds of the way down the space. Beyond them there was nothing to see except the pitiful remains of some broken terracotta figures. These had been of no value to anyone except the devotees whose piety and trust had been so cruelly disabused.
A squeal of rusted hinges, and another figure slipped through the door. He had come.
‘Did you get it?’
The newcomer jumped at the question, his eyes flicking this way and that as he tried to locate the speaker in the gloom.
‘Back here.’
Locating the voice, the new arrival stepped forward. In those moments his face was bland and trusting, unburdened by anything except a childish avarice. He smiled placatingly, and hurried to unwrap the parcel in his hands. What else could you expect from a true slave? By nature untrustworthy, they were utter rubbish by definition.
Blue and dark-red stones caught, refracted and seemed to amplify the dim light. The slave handed across the small, heavy object. The other took it, pretended to examine it.
‘You said…’ The slave’s voice trailed off.
‘Yes, I did.’ Tucking the jewelled thing into a belt, the speaker passed over a purse, heavy and loud with the desired chink. The slave loosed the drawstring, tipped the contents in his palm. In the untrusting, unseemly way of his kind, he began counting the coins openly, his mouth moving.
The killer turned away, and drew a sword. The blade came free with a whisper. Lost in who could know what sordid material ambitions, the slave noticed nothing.
In one fluid motion, the killer spun around and swung. As the steel hummed through the still air, startled, the slave looked up. He had time to open his mouth to scream. The blade cut heavy and deep into his left thigh. He screamed now, and fell away like some toppled statuette. He rebounded from one of the columns. The wounded leg dragging, he began to flounder towards the door; blood sluicing out on to the dusty floor.
Two quick steps and the killer slashed the sword into the slave’s right leg. He went down. On all fours, leaking blood like a pig at a sacrifice, he crawled forward. The other kept pace; treading carefully, boots avoiding the bloody paste created by the slave’s agonized passage.
The slave was pleading, begging, promising anything and everything, things that should not be promised. The Hound of the Gods gazed down dispassionately, rejoicing in the rightness of it. Again, there had been no mistake.
Enough evidence forthcoming for the moral faultlessness of the deed, the Scourge of Evil brought down the sword in a flurry of short, chopping killing blows to the back of the head.
Leaving the body, the killer stepped outside. All was quiet, as expected. Back in the temple, the killer went to the leather bag previously stowed behind one of the columns, and took out a length of string and the favoured implements. What had to be done next were the hard, terrible things. The killer briefly wondered about their necessity. The justly killed leave no visitant against anybody; their daemon does not revenge. But a mistake had once been made. The killer knew the ghastly consequences. Far better to be doubly safe.
Afterwards, the killer wended an obscure, unfrequented way down to the riverbank. It was dusk. The ducks were flighting. Taking out the gilded ornament, the killer looked at its sapphires and garnets, dull now in the gloaming. He thought briefly about vanity and threw the pointless thing out into the dark water.
IV
The haruspex Porsenna thrust the steaming liver under Ballista’s nose.
Ballista looked at the offal in the priest’s bloodstained hands. Witness to innumerable Roman sacrifices, he had never brought himself to study the technicalities of their art. Not that he had ever seriously denied the existence of the gods of the Romans, or that they might indicate their disposition through such signs. Yet, despite all his years in the imperium, they were not his gods, and these were not the rites of divination his people employed. But he knew the Romans put much store in such things. The morale of the party would suffer.
‘Get another beast to sacrifice,’ he said. It was the right thing to do.
The haruspex washed his hands carefully in the lustral water. Another sheep was led to the bank of the Tanais river. Scenting blood, it bleated fitfully. At a gesture from the priest the hired flautist started playing again; too late to drown the ill-omened sounds.
This was not good — an irritating delay at the least. The boats were waiting. They needed to start upriver. Ballista wondered how much the hands of gods were in this, and how much the desire of the haruspex to assert his importance. The priest, like all his ordo, had a well-developed self-regard. Since Panticapaeum, Porsenna had made little secret that he felt generally slighted, and that he cared neither for this mission, nor for serving under what he saw as a barbarian.
The little fire on the portable altar hissed and spat as the offerings of wine and incense were made.
The tall, pointed hat of his calling bobbed as the haruspex tipped wine on the sheep’s forehead. Unsurprisingly, it shivered; seen with the eyes of faith, it nodded acquiescence at its own sacrifice. The priest sprinkled salted flour on its back, passed the sacred knife over its back, intoned a low prayer.
A slave lifted the beast, smothering its spasmodic movements. The haruspex pulled back its tufty head and deftly slit its throat so its lifeblood splashed out on to the altar.
Almost tenderly, the slave laid the sheep on its back on the ground. Despite the breeze from the water, the air was close with the smell of blood and wine and incense, hot animals and men. The haruspex slit the belly. The entrails slithered out: large, white and sausage-like, faintly marbled with pinks and blues. Porsenna’s practised, strong hands delved inside.
One after another he cut and wrenched free the organs — heart, lungs, liver — a grim parody of a demented midwife.
Ballista watched him turning them over, studying them close, frowning. No mystery how this judgement would fall. He remembered a story of Alexander, or was it the Spartan Agesilaus? Thwarted of good omens, he had inscribed propitious letters on his palm; taking the liver he had impressed them on its underside. Clever — you would have to write the letters backwards. A cynical trick, or maybe a deity put the idea in his mind.
‘No better,’ the priest announced. ‘Either another animal, or we must wait until tomorrow. One hour, even a moment, ruins those who start too early against the will of the gods.’
‘No,’ Ballista said. ‘We are far from Rome. In this time of troubles the Roman gods have many pressing concerns in the eternal city, the provinces, with the legions. We are in the north. We will follow the rites of the north.’
‘But…’ The haruspex looked stunned. ‘That is barbarity.’
‘We are in barbaricum,’ Ballista said. ‘ Gudja.’
Nothing seemed to surprise the Gothic priest. This was no exception.
‘The rites of the Urugundi Goths are not far from those of my birth people, the Angles. Tell me the will of the gods,’ Ballista said.
‘No,’ the haruspex erupted, ‘you cannot get this skin-clad savage…’
‘I am the one holding imperial mandata. I will answer to the emperor and the gods.’
‘You endanger the whole expedition. The natural gods will turn against us. You will bring their anger down on us. The Augustus Gallienus will hear of this.’
‘I do not doubt it,’ Ballista said, and indicated to the Goth to carry on.
From his sable cloak, the gudja produced a rolled, white cloth. The old woman who attended him spread it out on a dry place on the jetty. She scuttled away. Then the gudja, turning his face to the sky and raising his arms, began to call the gods in a song whose words ran together.
The summoning of the deities of northern forest, marsh, sea and river was not quick. There were many of them; their names and epithets numerous. Most of the Roman party looked askance. Ballista thought the Gothic holy man magnificent; more than a little frightening, as he should be. The wind shifted his long hair, chiming its amulets and bones, its very movement pointing to his otherwise hierarchic stillness.
When he felt the attention of the gods, the priest stopped singing. Keeping his eyes to the heavens, he lowered his arms and took out the rune sticks. Without a glance, he dropped the thin pieces of willow on the cloth. Then, his face still averted, he knelt and without hesitation picked up three of them. Now he bent over them, scrutinizing the markings on them.
With an air of certainty, the gudja looked up at Ballista.
‘There is much danger. Men will die. But not today. It is in the future.’
‘How far?’
‘The runes do not say.’ The priest swept up the sticks.
Ballista nodded. He felt confidence in the old ritual of his youth. The Goths used willow, the Angles wood from a nut tree. It made no odds.
‘Load the ships. We sail as soon as everything is stowed.’ Ballista turned to the slaves by the two carcasses. ‘Butcher them, cook the meat. We will eat on the boats.’
As men bustled about, the two eunuchs approached Ballista. For once, it was Amantius, the one who had been with Castricius in Albania, who spoke.
‘ Kyrios, would you order some of the soldiers to search the town? My slave is missing. And…’ the eunuch looked close to tears ‘… my brooch, the one with the sapphires and garnets I bought in Panticapaeum, is gone.’
‘I am sorry for your loss of them,’ Ballista said, ‘but there is no time. He may well have fled the town; more than one merchant vessel has already put out this morning. If he is hiding in the ruins, there are not enough of us to find him easily.’
Amantius was going to say more, but his colleague Mastabates laid a hand on his arm. Led him away.
A slave, his forearms plastered with gore, made a subtle noise. Ballista indicated for him to speak. ‘ Kyrios, what should we do with the gods’ share?’
Ballista looked at the organs set aside from the unsuccessful sacrifices of the haruspex. ‘Throw them in the river. If the gods do not want them, the fish will.’
At Lake Maeotis, the waters of the Tanais thickened to become a huge, swampy delta. The mission was distributed haphazardly between two long Gothic ships. Maximus sat amidships in the leading vessel, with Ballista. The Gothic warriors at the oars pulled them out from the quayside and up the quiet branch of the river that served it. On either side was a thick, feathery-topped wall of reeds. The occasional willow grew down by the water. There were more trees — oaks, ashes and limes — running in ranks along low rises in the mid-distance. There was nothing else to see, except the big sky above.
The eunuch Amantius was still very upset. ‘I would have given him his freedom. And he knew how much the bracelet meant to me.’
‘Why you Romans free so many slaves? In Suania is not our way,’ Tarchon said. ‘Oh no, with us, you will die in your bonds; no hope whatsoever. We are most exemplary in cruelty.’
Maximus chuckled. ‘The Romans would tell you it is from their innate generosity, the greatness of their soul. Maybe for some, but for most it is just another way to display their wealth; like owning villas or fish ponds, or breaking precious things when drunk. Look at what a great man I am; material things mean nothing to me; I cannot count the number of slaves I have freed.’
‘Aye, for once you are not totally wrong,’ Calgacus said. ‘But, as always, you miss the real thing. Gra
nting freedom is the carrot that goes with the sticks of beating, irons and branding, crucifixion. If you run or rebel, boy, you will end on a cross, but if you are a good little puer, you might, just might, one day be given freedom.’
‘Only a fool expects loyalty from a slave,’ Hordeonius said.
Maximus looked away as the centurion settled into another lengthy diatribe against the servile; tactless at the least, given the life story of several in earshot. Some movement beyond the southern bank caught Maximus’s eye. It was gone before he could take it in.
‘The only argument against branding all of them is that the bastards would realize their numbers. Even cowards draw audacity from numbers.’
There it was again — something moving on a low hill among the trees. More than one thing, keeping among the shadows well back from the riverbank.
‘The old Spartans had the right idea with their helots — let the young go out and hunt some of them down; kill a few, and keep the rest in perpetual fear.’
A break in the cover, and Maximus saw them clearly for a moment. Three riders, clad in furs and pointed hats, trotting their nomad ponies.
‘Yes, I have seen them,’ Ballista said softly. ‘Alani?’
‘Alani — three of them, shadowing us.’ Maximus’s eyesight was sharp.
‘The gudja has seen them too,’ Ballista said.
The Goth was looking out over the black water.
‘He does not appear too concerned,’ returned Maximus.
‘No, not at all.’
On the benches behind them, Castricius was arguing with Hordeonius. ‘Slavery changes nothing, Centurion. A fool with any education knows there is a spark of the divine logos in all of us. Now, me, when I was in the mines, my good daemon did not desert me.’
Maximus leant close to Ballista, spoke in his ear. ‘Now let me get this right. We are on our way to deal with the chief of the bloodthirsty Heruli. To get to him, we have to travel for days past the grazing lands of the almost equally bloodthirsty Alani, whose king’s invasion of Suania we defeated last year at the Caspian Gates.’
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