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.
Finally, the talking ended. Some tribesmen trotted off into the trees which grew up the hill. The navarchos waved for those on the trireme to come ashore. The herald the imperial authorities had attached to the envoys at Panticapaeum went first down the gangplank. At the bottom, the praeco called out in a stentorian voice in Latin: ‘The Legatus extra ordinem Scythica Marcus Clodius Ballista, Vir Perfectissimus, and his deputy, Gaius Aurelius Castricius, Vir Perfectissimus.’
Both men had held high prefectures, which had ranked them each as Vir Ementissimus. Hippothous noted they had been demoted. The praeco had not done that on his own initiative. But Castricius had been Prefect of Cavalry under two pretenders, one of them, briefly, Ballista himself. And it was not Roman practice to send men of the highest ranks as diplomatic envoys to the barbarians, especially not on missions from which they may well not return.
When the envoys had clattered down to the shore with their entourage and eleven-man escort, an individual slightly less grubby than the majority stepped out of the horde of Tarpeites.
‘Pericles, son of Alcibiades,’ he announced himself in heavily accented Greek. ‘Come, I take you to the palace of the king.’
Hippothous did not let himself smile.
Led by Ballista, they followed the barbarian with the ludicrously Hellenic name and patronymic up the path. It was dark under the beech trees, the path narrow. An ideal place for an ambush, Hippothous thought. Surreptitiously, he loosened his sword in its scabbard.
When they emerged from the tree line it was not yet full dark. A sward ran uphill. It was crowned with a rough palisade pierced by a gate with a rustic-looking tower.
‘The palace of the king,’ Hippothous said.
‘Golden Mycenae itself, the strong-founded citadel,’ Castricius replied.
The two men smiled, momentarily united in contempt for this place, if in nothing else except their propensity to violence.
‘You can quote Homer.’ Hippothous managed to sound surprised.
‘When I was in Albania last year, it was a bad time. There were … few people to talk to, nothing else to read. I have developed a liking for epic poetry,’ Castricius ended defiantly.
The hall of the King of the Tarpeites was wooden and thatched. Inside, it was dark, lit by smoking torches. There was a distinct smell of close humanity and smoked fish.
The monarch of all he surveyed sat on a crude wooden imitation of a Roman magistrate’s ivory throne. The imperial bureaucracy had provided the envoys with an interpreter from the Bosporus. It was claimed he could speak eight barbarian languages. His expertise proved unnecessary here. The king spoke Greek, the language of diplomacy throughout the east, if in an uncouth way. He and Ballista exchanged what passed for pleasantries. After a less than dignified interval, the king asked for a present. Expecting it, Ballista handed him a spatha with an inlaid hilt and fine sword belt. The king examined the gift with ill-concealed avarice. Seeming satisfied, he called for a feast.
Hippothous was placed some way down the hall, with Tarpeites on either side. The one on his left launched into an extended discourse on fishing in execrable Greek. There was no better place in the world for fish than Lake Maeotis. Bream; anchovy by the tens of thousand; given the name of the Rhombites, there were turbot of course; and the finest of all, sturgeon. And it was here that the tunny spawned in the spring. Their migration was interesting.
Despite it all, Hippothous was not unhappy. The last eight months had been hard. Last September, the familia had left the Caucasus in a hurry. They had travelled hard down from the mountains to Phasis on the Euxine. There they had chartered a ship to take them to the Kingdom of the Bosporus. As it was late in the season, the owner had charged an outrageous sum of money.
Wintering at Panticapaeum had not been a pleasure. The sights of the town were soon exhausted: the sword with which long ago the Celtic bodyguard had despatched Mithridates the Great, the famous bronze jar split by the cold, the decrepit palace of the kings, echoing of its past glories, the fire-scorched temple of Apollo on the Acropolis, the equally run-down temples of Demeter, Dionysus and Cybele. There had been nothing that passed for an intellectual life in that degenerate outpost of Hellenism, a polis where the citizens dressed like Sarmatian tribesmen and as often as not answered to barbaric names.
Come midwinter, Hippothous had never seen snow like it. A wall of cloud had come down from the north-west. The air had been clogged with big flakes like feathers. It had lasted for days, settled everywhere, drifting deep enough to smother a dog or a child. When the snow stopped, it got colder; the sky a clear, unearthly yellow; all frighteningly still. Then the sea froze. At first just by the shore, but soon it stretched as far as the eye could see; a vast white plain, with here and there jumbles of blocks forced up by the pressure. In February, Hippothous had joined Ballista, driving in a carriage across the straits to Phanagoria, the town on the Asian side. Well wrapped, they had watched men dig out fish trapped in the ice. They used a special pronged instrument like a trident. All their winters had to be as bad. Some of the sturgeon they hauled out had been nearly the size of dolphins.
Being quartered in one of the few houses that still had a working hypocaust had been a saviour. Without the hot air circulating under the floor, Hippothous was convinced he would have died of cold.
‘After streaming through the Bosporus, the great shoals follow the sun around the Euxine. By Trapezus, they have enough size to be just worth catching.’
Hippothous knew they did not have to be here. The ancients had vastly overestimated the size of Maeotis. They could have sailed from Panticapaeum to the mouth of the Tanais in a long day, especially with the wind set from the south-east. But in Panticapaeum both the king and his navarchos had insisted, almost pleaded, they break their journey twice; first here with the Tarpeites, and then with the Psessoi. Long ago, the kings of the Bosporus had ruled these tribes of Maeotae with a secure grasp, their control guaranteed by the might of Rome. Now Rhescuporis V, descendant of Heracles, of the line of Poseidon through his son Eumolpos, hoped the rare sight of a single imperial trireme and a handful of regular soldiers in company with one of his very few remaining little liburni
ans might give his claims to local hegemony just a mite of credibility.
In Alexandria, Hippothous had once heard a philosopher from the Museum lecturing on power and force. His argument was that they were distinct. Force consumed itself with the deployment of armed men. On the other hand, power was the result of the complex, possibly intangible, calculations the subordinate made concerning the consequences of disobeying instructions. As such, power might last for ever. Sat in this fish-reeking hall, Hippothous knew the philosopher was wrong. With the legions tasting defeat at barbarian hands – the emperor Decius cut down by the Goths, Valerian a prisoner of the Persians – or trapped in endless civil wars, Rome’s power was wearing threadbare, the edges of its imperium fraying loose.
‘Now, when they pass by Sinope, they are altogether riper for catching and salting.’
Hippothous liked fish as much as the next man. The black, salty fish roe he was spooning on his bread – he did not think it had a Greek name – might be poor man’s food, but it was good. However, this verbal tracking of tunny from watery cradle to grave was becoming intolerable. He looked around for distraction.
Practising the science of physiognomy did more than assuage boredom. If you got it right, it told you the true nature of those around you, gave you access to their souls. Ultimately, it allowed you to guard against the vices of the bad before you had to experience them. Hippothous let his gaze slide over the body servant Calgacus and the bodyguard Maximus, one too ugly, the other too scarred for clear results; maybe one day he would try to analyse them. The locals were too encased in filth. He suppressed a shudder at the sight of the two eunuchs.
He settled on Castricius. Hippothous had studied the little officer before but, then, his perceptions had been blunted by a raging hangover. Confronted by a grave issue, the Persians discussed it once sober, a second time drunk. Hippothous would revisit the soul of Castricius.
The little officer was seated opposite. He was talking to a young Tarpeites warrior who would have been attractive if he had not been so disgustingly dirty. Their conversation was animated. Hippothous could observe Castricius with little fear of detection. He no longer cared if his voluble and fish-obsessed neighbour thought him rude.
Hippothous stared at Castricius, emptied his mind, let his training take over. There were good aspects to the man: his protruding lower lip pointed to tenderness, and a love of well being. But the bad far outweighed the good. There was his sharp little nose, thin at the tip. It indicated a great anger. Then there was the short, angular chin, a sure sign of boldness, badness and killing, even entering into evil. Castricius had unexpectedly beautiful eyes. Nothing redeeming about that. Eyes were the gateway to the soul, and beautiful eyes concealed what was there, gave proof of treachery. All the evidence scientifically weighed, Hippothous was as convinced as before that Castricius was a bad man, a bad and very dangerous man.
A burst of loud, unseemly laughter from the head of the hall. It was the king. He was leaning across, roaring at Ballista, patting his leg. The king was drunk. Hippothous considered it unlikely Ballista was having a better time than himself. The big northerner’s face was set in an inscrutable mask of polite attention. In the three years he had served Ballista, despite repeated study, Hippothous had yet to reach a definitive conclusion. All the signs had to be considered, and they led to different, mutually incompatible results. The Hellenized barbarian was a complicated subject. His eyes were heavy-lidded, sloping towards the corners. The master physiognomist Polemon judged that this revealed a man contemplating evil. Yet the eyes were dark blue, almost bluish black, and they shone, sometimes like the rays of the sun. Such belonged to a man of compassion and caution, the latter maybe going as far as cowardice and fear.
The king was still laughing. Hippothous watched Ballista sigh and look down at his food. Certainly the big man had reason for melancholy. Ripped from his original home in Germania, he was now also banished from Rome and from Sicily, from his wife and sons – for whom he showed a striking tenderness. Anyone could see this mission was a dangerous fool’s errand – the sort landed on the very expendable. And there was the curse. The previous year in the Caucasus, Ballista had taken as a lover a princess of the royal house of Suania, a priestess of the bitch goddess Hecate. It had not ended well. As they left, Pythonissa – a modern Medea – had called up from the underworld the most terrible curse on Ballista:
Kill his wife. Kill his sons. Kill all his family, all those he loves. But do not kill him. Let him live – in poverty, in impotence, loneliness and fear. Let him wander the face of the earth, through strange towns, among strange peoples, always in exile, homeless and hated.
Hippothous thought Ballista might well cast his eyes down and sigh.
II
The trireme had rounded Pataroue point some hours before. They were now not far out from Tanais. The two tribes of the Maeotae – the Tarpeites and the Psessoi – they had been forced to visit were behind them, safely negotiated. It had taken three days. Now the Gothic people of the Urugundi lay ahead, and beyond them the endless expanse of grasslands and the Heruli.
The wind had dropped to a dead calm. The 170 rowers were earning their stipendium as they drove the vessel through the thick, oddly opaque water. The triple banks of oars rose and fell like the wings of some labouring waterfowl, never destined to fly. As the blades came free they were festooned with all manner of weeds.
Ballista inhaled the comfortingly familiar smells of a war-galley: the sun-warmed wood and pitch of the decking and hull, the mutton fat and leather of the oar sleeves, the stale sweat and urine of the crew. He was seated in a chair behind the helmsman, towards the stern. He would have been as happy to sit on the planking, but the majesty of Rome demanded a certain dignitas. Likewise, her never-to-be-denied maiestas insisted her envoy be accompanied by a suitably dignified entourage. Ballista looked down the long deck at them. There was his deputy, Castricius. There was his familia: Maximus, Calgacus and Hippothous, and the Suanian Tarchon, who had attached himself to them the previous year in the Caucasus. There also were his young slave, Wulfstan, and the two slaves owned by Castricius and Hippothous. Apart from the familia there was his escort sent up from Byzantium: Hordeonius the centurion and his ten men seconded from Cohors I Cilicium Milliaria Equitata Sagittariorum by the governor of Moesia Inferior. And then there was the official staff: the eunuch freedmen Mastabates and Amantius, the interpreter Biomasos, the herald Regulus, two scribes, two messengers, and Porsenna the haruspex to read the omens. Six more slaves, variously owned, brought the number of souls to thirty-five.
Ballista looked with particular disfavour at the group of officials around the eunuchs. At least two of these functionaries were bound to be frumentarii, imperial agents tasked with spying on him. Unless, of course, one or more of the frumentarii were hidden among the auxiliary soldiers. In an age of iron and rust, Roman emperors trusted no one. Once, long ago when they were young, Ballista and Gallienus had been held together at the imperial court as hostages for the good behaviour of their fathers. One father had been an important Roman senatorial governor, the other a barbarian war leader beyond the frontier. Ballista and Gallienus had become close, friends even, despite their origins – Gallienus had always been unconventional. But the elevation of the latter to the purple had banished such intimacy. Any trust that had survived had been killed when circumstances two years earlier had demanded Ballista himself briefly be acclaimed Augustus. That Ballista had set aside the purple in favour of Gallienus within days, and sent any number of letters containing oaths of loyalty since, had done nothing to revive it. Ballista realized he was lucky to be alive. So were all his familia, including his sons and wife.
‘I am still surprised that Polybius would run.’ Ballista spoke to no one in particular, more to take his mind off his wife and sons far away in Sicily than desiring an answer.
‘No mystery to it at all,’ Hordeonius the centurion said. He rapped his vine-staff of office on the deck in an assertive way.
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Ballista came back to his surroundings. Vaguely aware of Wulfstan nearby in attendance, he had not really noticed the approach of the centurion, Maximus, Calgacus and Hippothous.
‘No point in asking, Dominus,’ Hordeonius said. His abrupt, overtly military style of speaking had almost driven out the last vestiges of a North African accent. ‘Slaves are all the same – unreliable, untrustworthy rubbish. Every one of the whiplings would run, if they had the courage. Worse than soldiers; they have to be kept down by fear. All slaves are the enemy. Only the shadow of the cross keeps them honest.’
What Ballista had seen of Hordeonius so far had not endeared him. The centurion was of medium height, broad and physically powerful, with a face that promised little understanding but limitless brutality. Hordeonius’s men saw him as a petty, short-tempered tyrant. He probably saw himself as an old-style centurion: let them hate as long as they fear.
‘Sure, you do like a generalization, Centurion,’ said Maximus. ‘Consider where they come from. Some are born to slavery, others poor, unwanted babies exposed on dungheaps and raised by heartless slavers for profit. Then there are criminals condemned to the mines and the like.’
‘It makes no odds, they are all rubbish,’ Hordeonius snapped. ‘Slavery makes its mark, and not just whips and brands. It deforms the soul of a man enslaved.’
‘Are you saying my soul is deformed?’ Maximus spoke quietly.
Ballista watched Hordeonius’s face. He could see the retorts rising up, nearly escaping the cage of his teeth.
‘I was taken in war. There was a ring of dead at my feet, when I was struck from behind.’
Ballista smiled. It was not how Maximus always told the story of the cattle raid in Hibernia. In more comic versions he was running away, sometimes caught with his trousers down on top of his enemy’s wife.
The Wolves of the North Page 2