The Amber Road

by Harry Sidebottom

  ‘We die before them take you,’ Tarchon said. ‘Best you dead too.’

  ‘Sure, he does have a point. From what we hear, your Bronding lord Unferth would love to be getting his hands on a son of Isangrim.’

  Ballista was finding little enjoyment in this conversation. ‘They are heavier ships; in a gentle wind we should outrun them.’

  Within the hour, Ballista regretted his words. Usually he was careful to tempt neither gods nor fate. The wind got up, raising white caps on the waves which now rolled out of the east. The Warig began to pitch and slide slightly as she rode the sea. The motion brought no danger, but both Zeno and one of his slaves were violently sick on the deck where they huddled. Men roared at them to get to the leeward side.

  Ballista took the Rugian guide to Wada the Short in the stern. All three knew the Suebian Sea. They agreed it would be madness to try to sail direct to Hedinsey. It would be a run of at least two days and a night. Even if they had the supplies and the crew still had the stamina – neither of which was the case – the Brondings would overhaul them. ‘A heavier ship for heavier weather,’ Wada announced. There was a storm coming, the Rugian said, a bad one. The tall, black clouds piling up on the eastern horizon made this hard to gainsay. They must look to find shelter from both weather and pursuit.

  As they brought the ship around to the south-west, the first shower swept over them. With that and the spray coming inboard from the rougher sea, men had to be set to bailing regularly. It kept the men with the scoops warm, and, Ballista thought, it gave the whole crew the impression they were more than passengers being delivered helpless to their fate. Wyrd will often spare an undoomed man, if his courage is good.

  They ran the whole day, angling first towards the shore then standing out again. The coastline here was flat, remarkably featureless, with little offer of refuge. It would be difficult to beach. There were frequent sandbanks offshore, the surf breaking on them. The beaches themselves were often studded with jagged, half-submerged tree stumps and drift wrack, which might tear the bottom out of a boat. They did pass inlets. Only dire emergency would force them to turn into one. The lack of landmarks meant they were unsure how far they had travelled. But they had left behind the known shoreline of the Rugii. Any channel might be nothing more than a dead end. They were a long way yet from the territory of the Farodini, who were allies of the Himlings. This inhospitable coast was held by the Heathobards, and they were friends to neither Angles nor Rugii.

  Wada was getting the best out of the Warig. She was a weatherly craft. Clinker-built, her lashed planks flexed and creaked, but she was not taking much water and sailed taut and responsive to the helm. Through the drizzle, the Brondings did not seem to have narrowed the distance. Ballista took turns at the stern-rudder and at bailing. The steering gave Wada a chance to check the rigging, bolt some cold food and snatch a little rest. Their commander bailing was intended to hearten the men.

  In the gloom, night succeeded day with no great show. In the first hours the rain blew over, but the wind did not slacken. Weary, cold and soaked to the skin, they raced on over a silver sea, the shore black to larboard, the sky between the tattered clouds a strange, threatening yellow. In the glinting light among the rushing shadows the dark shapes of the Brondings could still be seen.

  In the dead of night, when the moon and stars were obscured, Ballista was bailing. He filled the scoop, handed it up to Maximus, who threw the contents to the wind, handed it back down, and Ballista filled the scoop again. Over and over: the repetition numbed the mind. The screws and pumps of Mediterranean vessels were equally monotonous and hard work. But you did not have to crouch, were not actually in the water. They should not be hard to fit on a northern longboat. Ballista came out of his daze. The water was slopping around his boots. It was gaining. Telling Tarchon to take over bailing, he got to his knees. The water was cold on his legs. In the darkness, he ran his hands under the surface along the bilges. The wood seemed sound. As he worked along, he found no cracks, no holes. Perhaps it was nothing.

  The Warig came down the leading edge of a wave, bottomed out in the trough. A jet of water hit Ballista’s forearm. Carefully, not wanting to trap a finger, he felt the overlaps between the side planks. He found the wadding. A clump of it came out in his fingers. The material was still sticky, but it came apart in his hands. Whatever it had been treated with was being washed out by the seawater. As the ship flexed more water squirted through.

  They bailed in shifts. There were only three scoops. The others bailed with their helmets, bowls, whatever would hold water. Some mutton fat was produced from the supplies. Rikiar and Heliodorus rubbed it into torn-up strips of clothing. Down below the waterline, working by touch, Ballista and the Rugian pilot packed it into the overlaps where the water seemed to be coming in worst. They hammered it home as best they could with wooden mallets. It was cold, filthy work. Time and again Ballista swore as the mallet caught his numbed fingers. After an hour or so, the water stopped rising, even fell. But there could be no stopping the bailing.

  In the dawn, they were about half a mile offshore. The gods had not been kind. The Brondings were still there. They were closer, much less than a mile astern. The sun played on the water between. But behind them a great curtain of lurid purple-black cloud stretched across the eastern horizon. Lightning flickered in its heart.

  ‘This will be bad,’ Wada said. The evident profundity of the oncoming danger banished all fatigue. The crew leapt to lower the yard halfway down the mast. Wada had them brail up the sail so that there was only enough showing to keep steerageway. Back on the benches, the men feverishly tied their oars to the thole pins ready to be run out. Eight men were kept bailing.

  With terrible speed the Brondings disappeared behind the outlying squalls.

  The noise of the wind in the rigging rose to near a scream. The sun vanished.

  A gust of spattering rain, then the storm was on them. It smashed the stern of the Warig to the right. She heeled, her starboard gunwales in the water. Men crashed from their benches. Wada was fighting the helm. Ballista scrambled across the sloping deck to help. The Warig was near side on to the sea, a tall wave bearing down. Ballista threw his weight on the steering oar. Agonizingly slowly, she began to come around, get her stern to the storm.

  The wave towered over them, green and immense. The Warig shifted, heeled even further. Somehow, she did not tip but climbed crabwise up the wave. At the crest, she twisted, righted herself and slid down the far side.

  The following wave was looming. Ballista and Wada strained. Her prow began to turn. The wave kicked in under her stern, throwing it high. Her bows lost in white water, again slantwise she rose up the awful incline.

  A crack of wood, loud even in the uproar. The steering oar suddenly limp in Ballista’s hands. A moment of blank incomprehension.

  ‘Out oars!’ Wada was bellowing.

  The steering oar had broken just below the handle.

  ‘Row! Larboard side, row hard. Starboard steady. Bring her round.’ Wada’s voice carried.

  Ballista scuttled across the moving deck, grabbed an unused oar, hauled it back. Together with Wada, he shoved it over the side. The force of the water near tore it from their hands. The impromptu stern-rudder was far from effective, flimsy and likely to break any moment, but it was something to help control the ship.

  ‘Keep her stern to the waves.’

  The rowers needed no urging. They bent their backs to the fraught task. The makeshift rudder groaned ominously. The wooden idol on the prow crept around to the west. The next wave hit, but now the Warig lifted as it drove almost square under her stern.

  Ballista yelled to Maximus to lash two oars together to make a better rudder to steer them to shore.

  ‘It will break,’ Wada shouted in his ear.

  ‘If we just run – the men cannot row and bail – she will waterlog and go down,’ Ballista shouted back.

  The rain fell hard now. Lightning hissed and threw fleeting hard-edg
ed illumination.

  Maximus and the Rugian lugged the ungainly thing they had created to the stern. They lashed it to a thole pin.

  ‘Rowers ready to turn to larboard. On command, starboard side full pressure, larboard easy.’

  Ballista and Wada ran out the slender, inadequate-looking double oar.

  ‘Now.’

  In the maelstrom, some blades missed the surface, others dug far too deep. One snapped altogether, flinging its rower down. Ballista and Wada braced the lashed-together oars. They kicked and struggled in their hands. Water streamed through the boat. The air was full of it. Yet little by little their head came around and they pushed across the storm.

  Ballista realized he was praying. Ran, do not take me with your drowning net; spare me the cold embrace of your nine daughters.

  ‘Breakers!’

  Ballista could not see anything. Unable to let go of the steering oar to wipe his eyes, he shook his head, trying to blink the spray out of them.

  A line of white straight ahead. A dreadful roaring, like a hundred mill wheels.

  The Warig surged into the wild water. She trembled, paused in her way. The deck vibrated under Ballista’s boots. A long way to the beach. She was on a sandbar. The next wave lifted the boat, threw her forward. She raced through the surf until her keel rasped into the sand. A big wave pushed her further in. The backwash began to drag her out. Another wave crashed clean over the stern, grinding her forward half clear of the water.

  All discipline gone, men hurled themselves over the prow.

  ‘Anchor out!’ Ballista shouted. He was largely ignored. Slipping, Ballista joined Maximus and another figure wrestling with the awkward, heavy iron. As soon as it was over the side, they all followed, running and falling in their anxiety to get to safety away from the hideous sea.

  There were men all over the beach. None of them was moving. Most stood, some were on their knees, a few, despite the wind and rain, had thrown themselves down as if to sleep. Ballista pushed his hair out of his face. It was stiff with salt. His hand came away filthy. His things were still on the boat. He should get them ashore. Waves broke around the stern of the Warig. Beyond, the sea raged. It seemed impossible that anything could live out there. The boat might survive, or the storm might yet break her up. Ballista was too tired to care.

  Allfather, what was he thinking. ‘Diocles, get the men on their feet. Get a rope around her prow. We need to pull her clear of the water.’

  No one moved. Fatigue fired Ballista’s temper. Diocles was a few paces away, staring away from the ship. Ballista marched over. ‘Centurion, I gave you an order.’

  ‘Dominus.’ Diocles pointed inland.

  The beach shelved up for about forty paces. It ended in a low, crumbling cliff of sand. At the top, back from the edge so only their heads and shoulders could be seen, were warriors. At least a hundred of them, helmeted, carrying weapons. Heathobards.

  Zeno felt like Ixion bound to the wheel. First he had been raised up. He had prayed to Zeus and Poseidon, promised each an ox and other fine things. They had heard his prayers, nodded in acceptance. When all seemed lost, they had rescued him from the howling, daemonic gale. The gods had cast him up on shore. Filthy, cold and exhausted, he had been saved. Honest earth under his feet, rather than treacherous, shifting planks, the retching sickness had receded.

  With no pause, the wheel had begun its downward turn. Strange warriors had sprouted from the cliff, like barbaric sown men. Heathobards, someone said. In the face of this new threat, all courage and resource had deserted Ballista and the others. They had stood as if themselves rooted to the ground. They had dropped their weapons, and with no resistance let these seeming autochthonous warriors take them all captive.

  The wheel had dipped still lower. With the unthinking arrogance and brutality of barbarians, the Heathobards had manhandled their prisoners into a rough line. Two huge, hairy warriors had seized Zeno. They had tied his hands and put a halter around his neck. A rope ran from his tether to that of Amantius in front and to the oarsman behind. At a stroke, Aulus Voconius Zeno, Vir Perfectissimus, had become part of a slave chain; an Abasgian eunuch in front, a pleb behind.

  In the slanting rain, the Heathobards had driven them up a narrow, slippery path which climbed the cliff. Zeno had found it difficult to keep his footing. Each time his boot skidded or he hesitated, the shackle had tugged him forward, the rough hairs of the rope burning his neck. At the top they were herded for what seemed an eternity across an open, storm-blasted heath. They had trudged through the downpour to a stockaded settlement on a rise in the distance. On arrival, they had been led down a muddy lane between mean timber buildings. Water dripped off the thatch. Grimy barbarian children and huge women, as pale and monstrous as their menfolk, had come out in the rain to stare at them.

  Their prison was a large, empty barn. The halters had been removed, but their hands remained bound. When the door was shut, it was dark. A heavy bar thumped into place.

  Zeno sat, head in his bound hands, his back against the log wall. As far as he could tell, the others had flopped down to sleep like dumb beasts. Certainly some were snoring. Zeno did not sleep. Like Odysseus in the cave of the Cyclops, his mind kept weaving, weaving cunning schemes. Physical escape was impossible: they were bound, it was too dark to see, the walls were stout, and he had seen that the ceiling was high. If they got out, they were in the middle of the territory of their captors, the boat miles away, most likely damaged, and probably guarded. Brute force and violence would not win their freedom.

  Escape would take intelligence and cunning. It would take words. Zeno was skilled with words. That he had acquired only an inconsiderable smattering of the language of Germania on this ghastly journey need not be an insuperable barrier. His hands were eloquent, and his slaves had learnt more and could interpret for him. From what he knew, the tribe of the Heathobards had never had diplomatic dealings with Rome. Simple appeal to her maiestas, as reflected in his own person, her envoy, was unlikely to be effective. Yet while they might not be predisposed towards Rome, they might not be intensely hostile. They would have seen what her imperium could achieve. Roman gold and Roman-made swords had raised the Angles to wealth and hegemony among the barbarians of the far north. It had been said the Heathobards were not friends of the Angles. If they did not already know who they had captured, Zeno could offer them Ballista. A son of the king of the Angles should make a useful bargaining counter in the politics of the Suebian Sea. And Zeno could go further. He could offer them what the Angles had been given: Roman money and weapons. If they let him return south to win them the friendship of the emperor, they could keep Castricius and the others as hostages. Of course, out of imperial favour as he was, it was most improbable he could achieve anything of the sort. But that was no great matter. Once safely in the imperium, the whole course of the embassy could be recast in a very different light.

  Outside, the bar was lifted. The door opened. Warriors with torches stood there. The light shone on their helmets and mailcoats. One of them spoke. Ballista and the Harii called Wada got to their feet and went to the door. Their wrists were untied. Zeno followed them. The Heathobard who had spoken before said something to him; from its tone, a question. Zeno gave him his full name and rank, trying to make the Latin sonorous and impressive. He announced his mission, repeating ‘envoy’ and ‘emperor’ in what he thought were the Germanic words. The Heathobard grunted, and unbound Zeno’s hands as well. He gestured for them to leave.

  ‘I need one of my slaves,’ Zeno said to Ballista.

  ‘We are going to talk for our lives, not to the baths.’ Ballista turned and left. Zeno had no choice but to follow.

  It was difficult to tell the halls of northern kings apart. Outside, enormous beams set at unexpected angles and overhanging thatched roofs; inside, they were gloomy, always smoky despite their height, the benches packed with fierce-looking warriors. The hall of the Heathobards could have been that of the Rugii, the Harii, or any of the other
oddly named tribes through whose territories they had passed. Zeno had plenty of time to study the interior. The talk was entirely in the northern tongue.

  The king of the Heathobards was elderly. He spoke for some time, his tone neutral. First Ballista answered, Wada afterwards. Then two councillors, each of an age with their king, spoke. There was disagreement between them. One appeared not unkindly disposed. Zeno noticed him smile at Wada. Finally, the king made a brief pronouncement.

  A Heathobard brought Ballista his sword, the barbaric blade the chieftain Heoden of the Harii had given him. The Angle unsheathed it. Placing the flat of the blade in his left palm, and holding the ring at the end of the hilt in his right, he delivered a solemn monologue.

  The king drew his sword. He unclipped one of the golden rings on his right arm, slid it on to the point of the blade and held it out. Ballista put the tip of his sword against that of the king. With a rasp, the precious thing slid down on to Ballista’s weapon. He took it, and slipped it on to his arm.

  The Heathobards hoomed their approval.

  ‘What happened?’ Zeno tried to sound as if he were back in the imperial court, questioning an underling about a meeting he had been too busy to attend.

  ‘We are free to go. The Heathobards would show us their hospitality first. They will help us repair the Warig.’

  ‘Why?’

  Ballista smiled. ‘The enemy of their enemy has become their friend. The Brondings were here last year. It seems they hate Unferth and his son now more than the Himlings.’

  ‘You took an oath.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did you swear?’

  Ballista gave him a sharp glance. ‘It is of no concern to Rome.’

  Zeno looked at the great, hulking, dirty barbarian. Now was not the moment, but he would bring this impertinent savage to heel. Fabius Cunctator had overcome Hannibal by patience, had won his cognomen through provident delay. Zeno would wait, but in the fullness of time, when the moment was right, he would reassert his command of this expedition, would bring Ballista down.