The Wolves of the North wor-5

by Harry Sidebottom

  ‘Safrax,’ Ballista said. ‘The name of the King of the Alani is Safrax.’

  ‘Fine,’ Maximus said. ‘Now, I am thinking, your man Safrax, when not bothering his herds, will be sitting in his tent brooding on the horrible revenge he will be taking, should his gods be kind enough to put us in his hands.’

  ‘Most likely.’ Ballista nodded.

  ‘And in the tent with him will be that nasty little shit Saurmag, dripping poison in his ear. For, by the look of him, the Suanian princeling is unlikely to have forgiven us for removing him from the throne of his native land.’

  ‘The Suanian royal house do not appear much given to forgiveness,’ Ballista said.

  ‘And just beyond the Alani, up in the mountains of Suania, will be Pythonissa, the priestess of Hecate you fucked and left, and who cursed you and all you care for in no uncertain terms.’

  ‘Delicately put.’

  ‘And then we have just run into Videric and his Borani, who are very hot for their bloodfeud against you. And now are who knows where.’

  Ballista put an arm around Maximus. ‘Never fear, little one, I will keep you safe from the nasty men.’

  ‘Grand.’

  ‘Anyway, think how the fates favour us. The other Gothic tribe who hold bloodfeud against us are nowhere near — the Tervingi live hundreds of miles away to the west.’

  ‘Excellent,’ Maximus said. ‘I feel wonderfully reassured. Looked at in that light, what on earth or below could possibly harm us?’

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

  If you are well, Dominus, it makes my heart rejoice.

  Your agent found me as we were leaving Panticapaeum. Thank the gods, he was discreet. Indeed so discreet that at first I took him for a most importuning sutler. He gave me your new instructions, and departed with the confidential reports I compiled for you last year in Albania and Suania. I had the temerity to include an unasked-for account of conditions as I found them in the Kingdom of the Bosporus over the winter. As argued there, I believe Rhescuporis V could be returned to complete obedience to Gallienus Augustus for but a modest stipend. After all, it was nothing but money that attached that impecunious monarch to the pretenders Macrianus and Quietus — may their names be forgotten. Yet I must stress again both the powerlessness of Rhescuporis externally and the suspicion of intrigue within his own house.

  As it was last year in the Caucasus, I have no way of despatching these reports to you from the field, so will keep them safe until our return. I must confess that when I received your new instructions I prayed to all the traditional gods that you were ordering me home. Although I was born in the wilds of Abasgia, I have lived in Rome since my early childhood. I know no life except that of service at the sacred court of the Augusti. Consider too that I am a eunuch, and our condition renders us less robust than other men. It is my earnest request that on our return from the sea of grass, I be summoned by your magnanimity back to the safety of the Palatine to bask in the glory of our Augustus Gallienus.

  Amantius put the stylus aside. He smoothed out his voluminous white robe and stretched out his feet in their soft slippers. Was the request too blatant? Did it come too soon in the letter? Should he sweeten it with an allusion to Homer? Censorinus often quoted Homer — but as often got the poetry wrong. Censorinus was a suspicious man, and if he thought he detected mockery the consequences would be too horrible. Amantius left it as it was, took up the stylus and wrote at some length his impressions of the embassy’s meetings with the two tribes of Maeotae and with Hisarna of the Urugundi.

  Amantius could not stop himself ending the missive with complaints:

  The Legatus extra ordinem Scythica does not keep the discipline looked for among an embassy of Rome. When we left Panticapaeum it was discovered that one of Marcus Clodius Ballista’s personal slaves had run. At Tanais, my own slave ran, taking with him a most valuable brooch. The Legatus turned down — and in public, in the hearing of all — my just and reasonable request that a search be made for the runaway. Furthermore, when the haruspex found the entrails were not propitious, the legatus had them thrown in the river, and instructed the Gothic priest sent by Hisarna to embark upon some dreadful barbaric ritual.

  In camp, the second night on the Tanais river, fourteen days before the kalends of June.

  V

  Mastabates watched some of the Urugundi warriors constructing a tent. They had cut six saplings and were trimming and stripping them. The gudja was overseeing the work. For once, that hideous crone was not with him. Other Goths were feeding an already blazing fire. The smells of fresh-trampled earth and woodsmoke were strong; still exotic, faintly unsettling in the sheltered nostrils of the palace eunuch. A life in the scented corridors and colonnades of the palace was not easily abandoned.

  It was the third camp they had made on the banks of the Tanais; the first one on the southern bank. It was not easy to judge how far they had travelled in those three days. The longboats were sleek, and Hisarna’s Goths skilled oarsmen. But they had rowed with little urgency, and the river meandered extravagantly, its slow but implacable waters ever against them.

  There had been a great sameness to their voyaging. The twists in the river conspired with the dense reed beds and the sparser trees to hem in lateral vision. Now and then, smaller branches joined or left the channel, opening glimpses of overhung, still backwaters, hazy with insects. Skeins of geese flew across the sedge. Once, a herd of wild horses had appeared on the floodplain, their chestnut coats so blazing in the evening sunlight as to become indistinct. Several times they passed blackened, abandoned settlements. Vegetation had almost completely overwhelmed those on the southern bank.

  The Goths had planted the ends of the poles in the ground, angled them in and tied them together at the top. On this edifice they set about draping felted blankets. The gudja evidently was urging them to take care to overlap the woollens, tie them tight. Nearby, fresh wood on the fire cracked and sputtered.

  Although almost everything about the nomads and the sea of grass filled Mastabates with revulsion, usually mixed with dread, the eunuch was glad the Urugundi Goths had adopted some nomadic ways. He was delighted to have been asked to join in a Scythian vapour bath. It was like stepping back into the past, like becoming a character in the writings of Herodotus. And Mastabates was not displeased for the excuse to be away from Amantius. Eunuchs were expected to keep together. After all, unable to start families of their own, they had no one else, except maybe the transient favour of a ruler. Who should know better than Mastabates that his colleague was not totally to be blamed for his high, effeminate voice, his blushing and sweating, even his womanly hips and breasts? All too often these things came with the condition. But Mastabates could not see that being cut must lead to an abandonment of all striving for male virtue. The relentlessness of Amantius’s tearful, womanish recriminations addressed to his runaway slave boy, the endless complaints about his stolen brooch, were beginning to sicken Mastabates. A eunuch did not have to give way to female lack of control or avarice. It would be good to be away from him for a few hours.

  The gudja walked around and inspected the tent. It was complete. The outlandish priest signalled to the Goths at the fire. They kicked away the burning branches. Clouds of sparks swirled up in the heat, threatening the foliage overhead. From the shimmering heart of the coals, using long metal tongs with precision, they took up white-hot stones. These were placed in a metal dish raised on four legs. A Goth wearing leather mittens gripped the birch-wrapped handle of the dish. Most carefully, he carried it to the tent, got to his knees and manoeuvred his scorching burden and himself through the low opening.

  With a courtly wave, the gudja requested the guests to enter the vapour bath. Ballista went first, his great barbarian bulk almost blocking the entrance. Maximus slipped through more easily. Dignitas suspended, Mastabates crawled in after him. He was glad he had adopted a normal man’s riding costume for thi
s expedition: boots, trousers, short tunic. He even wore a short sword and dagger. Some might snigger to see a eunuch so accoutred, but it was both practical and made him feel a little more complete.

  It was dark in the tent. Nervous of upsetting the smouldering dish in the centre, Mastabates clumsily crawled around to the right. He came up against the Goth who had carried the thing in, and tried not to show his uncertainty as he composed himself in a similar cross-legged pose. Ballista and Maximus sat beyond the Goth. Two or three more Urugundi entered, before the gudja brought up the rear. He placed a small Greek lamp by the cauldron, and laced shut the opening.

  Straight away, the air in the tent was hot and close. Mastabates felt the perspiration pooling in his armpits, his crotch, running down his back. The stones, or the dish itself, ticked with the intense heat. Lit from beneath by the little oil lamp, the faces looked suitably out of the quotidian world.

  The gudja produced a bag. It contained seeds. Mastabates knew what was coming. The seeds came from a plant which looked like flax, except that it was thicker stemmed and taller, much taller in Scythia. Mastabates knew more than Herodotus. But knowing is not experiencing. He stilled his nerves. There was a first time for everything. There must have been such a moment for the Goths. Since then, they had taken such a liking to the seeds one of their chiefs had rejoiced in the name Cannabas.

  The gudja threw handfuls of the seeds on to the glowing stones. Dense, aromatic smoke — once smelt, impossible to mistake — billowed out; much more than any vapour bath in Greece. The thick fumes stung Mastabates’ eyes, caught in his throat, made it hard to breathe. Across the tent, the gudja was talking in the language of the north. Nodding — obviously following instruction — Ballista leant over the cauldron and sucked in great billows of smoke. The northerner held his breath for an unlikely time. Letting it out with a whoosh, he grinned. The Goths laughed. Maximus was next. An amphora of wine began to go round.

  Mastabates inhaled in his turn. Holding the cannabis deep in his lungs was not unpleasant. When he exhaled, he coughed. It was surprising how little smoke emerged. A Goth patted him on the back, somewhat gingerly. Mastabates took a swig of wine — a strong, sweet Lesbian — and felt pleasantly numb.

  On the other side of the tent, Ballista and Maximus were laughing. The Goths were laughing with them. Even the stern gudja had unbent a fraction. Mastabates envied their strong congeniality; their ease as men amongst men. He had not chosen to be a eunuch. Castration was illegal in the empire. Yet emperors, and some other rich Romans, desired eunuchs in their homes — to look after their women, among other, less salubrious things. Abasgia was not in the imperium. Its kings profited from the need: castrating and selling the boys most conspicuous for beauty among their subjects. To avoid revenge, they killed all the male relatives of the boys. Mastabates had not wanted to be a child cursed with beauty; not for himself, not for his family.

  The man on his left passed Mastabates the wine. The Goth smiled. He was attractive. He looked like those statues from Pergamon of dying Gauls: barbaric, wild and frightening but rugged and virile, all man.

  Mastabates smiled back at the Goth, drank, inhaled more of the smoke. He felt light-headed. Time had overflowed its channels, spread wide. Mastabates seemed to have been in the tent for hours and hours. He wondered if it would have been very different if he had been one of those castrated after puberty, or one whose stones had been crushed rather than cut. Some of them could get an erection. Certain women sought them out. Eunuchs of that sort could give pleasure without the danger of pregnancy. His friend Eusebius had been such a one. Poor Eusebius had not liked women. Poor Eusebius — he had returned to Abasgia, had been man enough to seek vengeance. He had not succeeded. He had just found death, a lingering, dreadful death.

  Mastabates took more of the drug. If his sword had been able to stand erect, would he have played Ares rather than Aphrodite in bed? He could not help but giggle. It seemed ridiculous. He enjoyed taking the woman’s part in sex with men. It was not a physical failing that dictated his pleasures. Suddenly, the etiquette of the court washed out of him, and he laughed out loud. The whole idea of anyone ever worrying over an erection appeared absurd. How could such a momentary pleasure bear such weight of expectation, such a freight of concern and meaning? Mastabates let the fumes of wine and narcotic coil pleasantly through his mind.

  The figure sat on a fallen branch down by the waterside. In the moonlight, the Tanais shone silver and tranquil. The camp was some way off to the east. It had been surprisingly easy to slip away. Despite lying at the very end of Urugundi territory, where the disputed grazing of the Heruli and Alani began, no guards had been posted. Everyone in the encampment was drunk on alcohol and hemp. Intermittent bursts of inebriated, witless laughter tore at the quiet of the night.

  The solitary individual watched and waited. The river slid by nigh on imperceptibly. Thoughts of insanity and purity and danger ran in the figure’s mind. The gods sent madness and disease to an unjustified murderer who had the temerity to set foot in a sacred place. The killer had dealt justice to the eunuch’s slave in the temple of Hecate, the dark goddess of revenge herself. He had never been in better health, felt no tinge of the deranged. Yet, recently, in the dead of some dreadful nights, the daemon of a small girl had come to stand close by the bed of her killer. She had met her end far away the previous year. In that one instance the Hound of the Gods must have been in error. The rituals of purification were messy, yet an acceptance had to be made that now they were necessary. Somehow the appurtenances and privacy would have to be found.

  An owl hooted, stilling the scurrying of the small things of the night. The killer regarded the river rolling by, and thought about water, and Medea and her brother Apsyrtus.

  There was no wind, and the noise of another making his way to the tall stand of oaks on the riverbank was easy to hear. The watcher sat on. The other blundered nearer, twigs snapping, reeds rustling. A night bird took wing. Some things have to be, thought the one waiting.

  ‘Where are you?’ The voice was low and anxious.

  The watcher remained silent, reflecting on the retribution of the gods.

  ‘Are you there?’

  ‘Over here.’

  The slave emerged, furtive, from the shadows.

  ‘Over here.’ The watcher stood up, face bland.

  The slave came over, smiling. ‘I was not sure you would be here.’

  ‘You would do well to trust me.’

  ‘Yes, of course I do. I do. But it is just so hard to believe — that you will buy my freedom.’

  ‘Hard to believe, but true. You will be free, more free than any man alive.’

  A purse, weighed down with coins, passed from one to the other. Holding it reverently, like a token of salvation, the slave got down on his knees. He kissed the other’s hand. ‘I cannot begin to thank you.’

  ‘No, it is best you do not. Others should thank me — but would they, even if they knew?’

  Not understanding the gnomic utterance, the slave looked up. The other gripped his throat, thumbs driving into his windpipe. Taken unaware, the slave could do nothing but scrabble at the hands throttling him, ineffectually beat at the arms. The slave tried to wrench away. The killer, arms locked with the effort, held him. Slowly, the slave was bent backwards — almost double. And the remorseless pressure mounted.

  In the bright moonlight their struggling shadows were a hunched parody of some act of love. The efforts of the slave were weakening. His face was suffused, eyes bloodshot and protruding. Of a sudden, there was a sharp tang of urine.

  At length, the life choked out of him, the slave convulsed then was still. The killer got up stiffly, breath coming in short gasps. Stretching an aching back, flexing sore fingers — at least three fingernails broken — the killer went over to the bag and removed the accustomed instruments.

  Breathing more controlled, the killer stopped to listen. The faint sound of a lyre, some muted hubbub from the camp. Nearer, the tim
id rustling of nondescript small creatures disturbed by the murder from their nocturnal activities. The plop of a fish or something out on the river. Nothing at all to worry about. The killer sniffed — the river mud, dead reeds, the voided contents of bladder and bowels; soon to be joined by blood, a great deal of blood.

  The killer regarded the corpse. He had been a slave as evil, as full of vice, as any. The deed felt right, justified. The gods approved of this wild justice, the justice of the Steppe.

  This time, the killer started with the heavy work: the big cleaver and the feet. It went much better with a piece of fallen wood under the ankles. Two, three heavy chops, and the left foot was severed. This was an acquired skill. As the blood pooled black in the moonlight, he picked up the foot, and stood considering Medea and Apsyrtus. In some tellings, when her father’s men were overhauling her, she delayed their pursuit by casting the dismembered parts of her brother on to the waters. The killer threw the foot out into the river. As the ripples spread out, he hefted the other leg on to the makeshift butcher’s block. If the water was good enough for the age of heroes, it would more than serve in an age of rust and iron.

  VI

  In the morning, there was much fog. It hung a few feet off the water, slowly coiling up through the spars of the ships and the trees. Colour had leached out of the world, and everything was reduced to muted shades of grey. The camp was unnaturally quiet.

  ‘Where is it?’ Ballista asked as he buckled on his sword belt.

  ‘Downstream,’ the soldier said.

  They set off, two other troopers and Maximus and Wulfstan following, through the tents and shelters. Most of the fires had gone out. Amphorae and wine skins were scattered in the trampled grass. A few revellers lay, insensible, where they had fallen. Apart from the lack of blood and sobbing women, it resembled the aftermath of a sack.