The others on the wagon stiffened then stood up to get a better view. Calgacus took his time.
Down below, the Heruli stirred. Heads popped up in the serried ranks of the horde as men got to their feet. The leaders swung up into the saddle. Messengers galloped here and there with last-moment instructions or words of encouragement.
The first Alani outriders were moving fast, raising occasional, random puffs of white dust which drifted in their wake before dispersing. At the sight of them, Calgacus felt the familiar tension in his chest.
The outriders reined in about half a mile away, strung out across the field in an extended screen of individuals. From away by the far stream, a broad, dark column of riders appeared. Just behind the skirmish line, the main body divided, fanning out at speed left and right.
Calgacus admired the neatness of the manoeuvre. Where before there had been empty Steppe, a solid battle line was formed. The dust raised coalesced into a shifting, opaque mist. Through it, the colours of individual ponies could be seen, but the riders were a vague blur. Standards floated in the murk, apparently unattached to the men below.
The Alani occupied the same frontage as the Heruli, but even Calgacus could see their formation was deeper. Even more than before, the Heruli were outnumbered.
The south wind was bringing the storm up behind the Alani. The hulk of purple-black clouds was lit from within by vivid stabs of phosphorescence. The first clearly enunciated clap of thunder reached the Heruli.
‘It is very bad,’ Alaric said.
‘It is nothing. Another of those storms of thunder and lightning, but no rain,’ Ballista said. ‘Andonnoballus told me you get them all the time out here in high summer.’
‘A dark cloud over your enemy, a clear sky over yourself — on the Steppe there can be no more forbidding portent.’ Alaric looked downcast.
‘Hercules’ hairy arse,’ Calgacus muttered, ‘this is getting worse by the fucking moment.’
Ballista studied the enemy. The Alani were chanting, brandishing their weapons. The movements and sounds were curiously disjointed. Ballista was searching for the banner with Prometheus on the mountain. He found it in the centre of the enemy line, near that of Safrax.
High, indistinct shouts came across the plain, then the low rumble of hooves and the clatter of equipment. Saurmag’s banner and several others were moving behind the Alani ranks. Through the fresh waves of dust, Ballista could see that the enemy were extending their left flank.
Nearer at hand, Naulobates yelled orders. The rear five ranks of the Rosomoni in the central contingent wheeled their ponies and cantered off to the right to form up as a new unit and prevent the horde being outflanked. The elongated, red head of Andonnoballus could be seen getting them into order.
With his narcotic-fuelled dreams of the spirit world, Naulobates might well be considered insane, but he could still manage a battle. He had done the right thing. It left the ranks of the centre and new right wing dangerously thin, but the countermove had prevented the Heruli being overlapped.
Like a festival or a dance, a battle has its own rhythms. A hush spread across the almost motionless field, as if all those thousands of men stood in awe of the deeds they were about to commit. The thunder boomed above them, an unseen blacksmith working at some celestial forge.
The keening note of a trumpet was joined by the whooping of the Alani. The enemy surged forward, and the lines of the Heruli went to meet them.
Watching a battle in which he had no part had an air of unreality for Ballista. He watched the gusts of arrows fall, the ponies racing and turning, the men tumbling beneath the hooves. The choking dust slid across everything. The confused roar of it all was loud in his ears. Yet it had a theatrical quality. It touched him no more than the imperial spectacles in the Colosseum. Men died there; men were dying here. It was almost nothing to him.
A battle confuses perceptions of time. Ballista thought he had been watching the deadly show for hours. Yet when the day darkened as the first storm clouds reached out to smother the sun, he saw it was still early morning. The unseasonable gloom invested the battle with a sombre gravity. The air hissed as the lightning speared overhead, illuminating the black thunderheads from within. The earth shook from the battle. The end would be like this, when the wolf Fenrir killed the Allfather, and the nine worlds would burn, and the gods die.
Ballista wanted it to be over. If, outnumbered though they were, the Heruli won, he would drink and feast with them. If, as must be more probable, they were worn down by exhaustion and the day was lost, he would gather his familia. They would mount the remaining big Sarmatian chargers and small Heruli ponies and try to cut their way out of the chaos.
‘Fuck,’ Maximus said.
Ballista looked where the Hibernian pointed to the west. A pillar of dust, at its base; when the lightning flashed, the glint of metal. A large number of mounted men were riding along the line of the northernmost stream. Still a way off, but travelling fast. They were heading for the camp or the rear of the Heruli line. Naulobates’ overstretched warriors had no reserve to check them.
‘No chance they are Urugundi?’ Castricius said.
‘No chance at all,’ returned Ballista.
‘The daemons of death are afraid of me.’ Castricius had a far-away look.
‘The portent could not have been worse,’ Alaric said. ‘Now, we must look to defend the camp.’
‘It would be no use,’ Ballista said.
Alaric continued to talk.
Ballista did not listen. He was looking all around, thinking. It was difficult to take everything in: the approaching cavalry, the confusion of the battle line, the camp, with the boys looking after the restless mass of cattle, and the pitiful number of wounded guards in the wagons. The noise of the oxen reminded him of something that had happened when the Alani had attacked the embassy on the way out. A stratagem he had read was in the back of his mind.
‘The boys with the oxen are herdsmen?’ Ballista asked.
‘Yes,’ Alaric said.
‘They could drive that herd?’
‘Of course.’ Alaric looked exasperated. ‘The camp?’
‘How many of the injured can still sit a horse?’
‘Twenty, maybe thirty. Why?’
‘Here is what we will do. Alaric, get the boys and all the men that can ride mounted. Have the others cut free four wagons, drag them out of the laager to make an opening. All of us here, get on horseback.’
Everyone was staring at him.
‘I think it was Hannibal, maybe in Polybius. When the Alani outflanking riders get near, we are going to stampede all those oxen into them.’
‘The First-Brother was right about you,’ Alaric said. ‘Loki himself could teach nothing to you. You are Starkad’s grandson in your cunning.’
‘What if it does not work?’ Hippothous asked.
‘Then we fall back on my other deep plan,’ Ballista said.
‘Which is?’
‘Which is every man runs as if all the daemons of the underworld were snapping at his heels.’
Mounted, armoured, flanked by his two closest friends, Ballista felt the usual apprehension. Maximus never seemed to feel it, but Ballista always did. No matter how many battles he survived, he always feared he would die, or, somehow even more oppressive, would let down those around him, would disgrace himself. He pulled the dagger on his right hip out an inch or two, snapped it back, went into the vaguely soothing pre-battle ritual of his own devising.
Behind him, the seething mass of oxen bellowed. The herders kept them back from the opening with difficulty. The crack and sting of the long, knotted hide whips added to the frenzy of the animals.
Ballista had led out eleven Roman riders. The eunuch Amantius, the scribe and the messenger, and the two slaves had been left in the laager as being of no use. With twenty wounded Heruli warriors and a hundred herdboys, those Romans considered martial enough were drawn up in a mounted line masking where the wagons had been hauled c
lear.
The oncoming Alani had seen them and deployed into a deep line, at least five hundred wide. They were bearing down, whooping. As Ballista had hoped, the nomads had proved unable to resist the obvious chance to get among the booty of the camp.
The Alani were closing fast, the bouncing, short-legged run of their ponies eating up the distance. Five hundred paces; four hundred. It had to be judged right. Three hundred. The Alani rode with their bows or weapons held out wide to the right, not to catch the sides of their mounts. Two hundred paces. They were committed. It had to be now.
Ballista made the signal with his bow — the arrow with the bright fletchings shot almost vertical into the dark sky.
Neat as could be, the screen of horsemen parted, making two lanes. There was a terrible sound, like stones being ground by a river in spate. Bucking, kicking, snorting in fury, the first of the near-maddened bullocks thundered past. In moments, there was a solid flood of oxen.
The Alani sawed on their reins, pulled their ponies back on to their haunches as they tried to stop, to get out of the way. Their numbers, the depth of their formation, were against them. Ponies barrelled into each other. Riders fought to stay in the saddle.
The onrush caught the Alani. The solid weight of the close-packed bullocks crashed into and through them. Men and ponies went down beneath the thousands of pounding hooves. Ballista watched with horrified revulsion the body of one of the Alani bouncing off the ground as it was stamped again and again, and was reduced to a broken bundle of blood-stained, fouled rags, the shattered white of a bone protruding obscenely.
It was accomplished almost before Ballista could comprehend the totality. The outflanking column of Alani no longer existed. The Steppe where it had galloped so proudly was dotted with knots of fleeing horsemen and a widening spread of escaping oxen.
The majority of the Alani were running south past the western edge of the battle line.
‘With me! With me!’ Ballista pushed the big Sarmatian into an in-hand gallop after them.
Already, individuals at the rear left of the Alani main fighting line were turning and slipping away. The sight of their fellow tribesmen routing past them had undermined their resolve, filling their minds with shapeless but awful visions of catastrophe.
A tight group of riders was battering its way across the path of the fleeing Alani. Their arms waved, their mouths were open, shouting unheard reproaches. A banner with a picture of a giant chained to a mountain flew above them.
Caught up in the insanity of the violence, Ballista laughed. Saurmag thought to halt the flight of the outflanking column. The Suanian had no hope of success. Instead, the gods were delivering him to Ballista.
‘With me! With me!’ Ballista angled through the dust and chaos towards the banner. Memories of a tiny underground cell, himself crouched naked, jagged rock cutting his flesh, overwhelmed him. The man who had had him flung into that place was a few paces away. Revenge was here for the taking.
Saurmag saw him coming. The Suanian pulled up, drew a blade. He was yelling at his men. Would he run? Would he fight? His indecision was evident.
Two riders, braver than their master, pushed past Saurmag.
Maximus reached them first. He went for the one on the right. Calgacus crashed his mount into the other. Ballista urged his mount between the duels. Saurmag was just ahead.
Another Alan surged into Ballista’s path. The nomad cut at his head. Ballista ducked under the swish of the blow. He thrust back, missed. He tried to keep moving, but the Alan was persistent. Ballista blocked another blow. Saurmag was pulling the head of his horse around. The little bastard was going to run.
A jarring impact — a searing pain in his right arm. Ballista had paid the penalty for his distraction. He could feel the blood running hot down his arm. The Alan cut at his head. As he took it on his own blade, Ballista felt the broken rings of mail cutting into his bicep.
Hampered by the wound, Ballista could only defend. His arm was stiffening, weakening. Watch the blade, watch the blade. He had to put Saurmag out of his mind, summon all his will to survive.
The Alan was pressing his advantage, his steel a living thing seeking Ballista’s life. There was nothing in the world except the flickering shine of steel. Watch the blade.
Another flash of light, from an unexpected quarter. The Alan rocked in the saddle. Maximus struck again, and the Alan — his head a thing of horror — toppled from the saddle.
The sound of the outside world rushed back, an almost physical blow in its confused immensity.
The Alani were fleeing; not just this wing, the whole horde. When panic grips an army, it is over in moments, completely irreversible.
Tarchon was in front of Ballista, grinning like a madman, like a devotee of some ecstatic cult. He was jabbering in his native tongue. He had a bloody sword in one hand, something heavy in the other. He held it out to Ballista like a proud child.
‘See, I bring you Saurmag.’
XXIX
Maximus had been drinking for three days. He had stopped the afternoon before, when Naulobates rode back into the main camp. Waiting for the Heruli to return from their murderous harrying of the Alani across the Steppe, Maximus had consumed indiscriminately vast quantities of fermented mare’s milk and wine, and had inhaled so much cannabis his lungs ached. And it was not just the drinking. He had never had more sex… with the possible exception of one time in Massilia.
He raised himself on one elbow and looked at the Herul girl sleeping. He drank some water and tried to put the events of the last few days in order.
The panic had swept through the Alani like a wildfire. The Heruli had tried to get to Safrax. They had failed. The king had a bodyguard of a thousand or so of his nobles. Unlike the majority of the Alani, they wore armour — mail, scale or lacquered — and rode big horses, some armoured like the men. As their enemies closed around them, they had drawn up in a circle and fought. They had sacrificed themselves to the last man — no quarter had been shown — to win their monarch a start. When the nobles were dead, the Heruli had pursued the fugitive monarch south for days. They had killed many, but Safrax had escaped. It was said he was in the foothills of the Croucasis mountains, rallying his remaining warriors to face the inevitable assault.
Ballista and the familia had not been asked to join the chase, and they had not volunteered. With the others, Maximus had ridden back to the northern camp. They had spent two days there while the women and children returned, driving in some of the flocks, then three days moving south to the main summer camp by the river. When they had got there, Maximus had started drinking. Now Naulobates was back, and there would be a feast.
Maximus drank more water. He slid back next to the girl, moved against her until she woke, then took her gently. It was one of the few things that made a man in his condition feel better, if only briefly.
Afterwards, she slept again. Maximus lay on his back with his arms behind his head. He did not feel good. He had slept badly, sweating out the alcohol. Strange dreams had troubled him; the hanged woman Olympias, the other women pulling down on her legs.
Maximus got up and dressed quietly so as not to wake the girl. As he left, he wondered what she was called.
The sun was up, but the heat of the day had not yet come down. The sky was a bowl of pure blue. There was a cool breeze off the water as he walked down to the river.
A gaggle of Heruli boys were playing by the bank. They called out happily. No-nose, No-nose. Bring me more drink. He picked up a stone, and threw it at them. It missed. They ran off, laughing. No-nose, No-nose.
His clothes and body stank; drink, sweat, women, smoke. There was food spilled down his tunic and a leg of his trousers. His hair was matted, and his head hurt. He felt queasy, his limbs uncoordinated and heavy. He stripped naked and waded out. The water was cold, a fine silt giving under his feet. He swam to midstream, and floated on his back, letting the current take him.
In the altered state after his debauch, he thoug
ht about Olympias. The pointlessness of the blur of the last three days oppressed him. He thought about love. Ballista had Julia. Old Calgacus had the Jewish woman. And he had endless women, but nothing near love. Now he was older, he often wondered who would mourn him. Ballista, of course; probably Calgacus; and definitely Ballista’s sons. He might have sons of his own, scattered across the world. Perhaps he had fathered a few more in the last three days. He remembered Ballista once telling him how the old Spartans had believed the more vigorous the fuck, the more vigorous the child. Perhaps he would leave behind some strong, healthy young Heruli warriors who would ride the Steppe. Vitality was the only patrimony they would get from him, but it was not to be underrated.
It was quiet, just the remote sounds of the camp audible. The riverbank was deserted. He watched a brace of snipe darting about downstream. Self-pity could creep up on him in this condition. Not all men were made to love women. Some — young Demetrius, the insane Hippothous — found pleasure in other men. That had never interested Maximus. In truth, he could not understand it. But he had to accept that he preferred the companionship of men to the cloying demands of women. Constructing fantasies about a woman he had barely known, and who had hanged herself on the grave of her husband, would do him no good.
He swam upstream, back to his clothes. He regarded the filthy things, then scooped them into a bundle. Naked as he was, the malodorous garments under an arm, his sword belt in the other hand, he walked through the camp up to the big tent he shared with Ballista, Calgacus and Tarchon. As he passed, Herul warriors laughed indulgently, the women and older girls giggled, and the children ran after him, calling out, No-nose, No-nose; more drink.
The sun was going down as they rode to the feast in the meadow. They splashed through the ford. A flight of cranes were over the river, the undersides of their wings scarlet with the light of the dying sun. Maximus was alongside Ballista and Calgacus. The rest — Castricius, Hippothous, Biomasos and Tarchon — clattered after in no particular order.
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