Harry Sidebottom - The Amber Road

‘Another shitehole,’ said Maximus.

‘Yes,’ Ballista agreed with his bodyguard.

A citadel on a cliff dominated the south of the town. The narrow pediment of a temple and a jumble of other roofs jutted above its curtain wall and rectangular towers. At the northern foot of its slope, quays, slipways and sheds huddled against more walls. Several fishing boats and some local river boats were pulled up out of the water. Near the indigenous craft four small trading vessels from the south and one small warship were moored. Behind the docks the incline was steep. It was terraced, close packed with houses, tiled roofs overlapping, seemingly built on top of each other. A line of mean one-storey dwellings backed on to another low wall, which snaked up towards the gate of the acropolis and marked off the inhabited quarter. Beyond it, away to the north, was desolation. Smoke hung over parts of it. Isolated towers, once part of a much greater defensive circuit, showed here and there through the haze, and a couple of huge conical barrows for the dead had been erected in what once must have been the heart of a thriving Greek polis.

Ballista had no more wish to be here than in any of the places he had been since the dreadful events of the previous autumn. It had been months of unhappiness and frustration. From the even more far-flung polis of Tanais they had crossed Lake Maeotis to the faded splendour and vicious political infighting of Panticapaeum, capital of the Roman client kingdom of the Bosporus. From there, just before the close of the sailing season, they had taken ship across the Euxine to Byzantium. At the Hellespont an imperial official had waited, the bearer of new, most unwanted orders. The pleasures of Byzantium — the famed seafood and wine, the games and chariot racing, the public displays of wisdom by philosophers and sophists — had meant nothing as they were constrained to winter there. Now they were heading north again, misery unabated, vengeance unfulfilled.

As the warship edged in to Olbia, a lifetime of training took over and moved Ballista’s thoughts from his troubles. A closer study of the acropolis revealed vegetation growing in fissures in both curtain wall and towers. In places some of the dressed stones had fallen, tumbled down the gradient and been replaced with makeshift rubble. Despite this the cliff made the river side of the citadel almost impregnable, if defended with any application. There was nowhere to site artillery against it, no way to bring up rams let alone siege towers, no chance at all of undermining. A storm with ladders would bring incalculable casualties, almost certainly fail. The only access there would be surprise or treachery.

‘Clear fore and aft,’ the trierarch called. ‘Bring her about. Ropes for mooring.’

The long galley slowly swung around. Her triple banks of oars took the way off her, and then gently backed her up against a ramshackle jetty. Deck crew jumped ashore and secured the vessel. Others ran out the boarding ladder from one side of her stern ornament.

Toga-clad and purposeful, Aulus Voconius Zeno, sometime a Studiis to the emperor Gallienus himself, before that governor of Cilicia, processed down the ramp, his usual display of dignitas only slightly marred by a less than dignified stumble as his feet stepped on the unmoving ground.

With even more self-regard, and far more exotic in a floor-length, gold-fringed red cloak over snow-white tunic, the portly eunuch secretary Amantius went next. He, too, was unsteady as his silk slippers trod the dock.

Ballista followed with Castricius, who would be his deputy when he assumed command of Zeno’s escort. The rest of the party, Maximus and Tarchon, the two fighting men from Ballista’s familia , and the five slaves, trooped down in the rear.

Zeno looked up and down the quayside. He was as clearly unimpressed by what he saw as might be expected in a man who had once advised the emperor on things of culture, and much else more political.

‘We must make our arrival known to the authorities,’ he announced.

‘You do that,’ said Ballista.

Zeno bridled. ‘Gallienus Augustus has despatched us on an official mission.’

‘Tell the local magistrates about the amber,’ said Ballista.

Zeno glowered. As the real mission could not be mentioned, he was unsure what to reply.

‘Take Amantius with you,’ Ballista continued. ‘The slaves can unload our baggage, look after it until we have been assigned lodgings. The rest of us are going for a drink.’

‘Our escort, the crew of that warship from Moesia …’

‘Will find us.’ Ballista spoke over him. ‘Now, I need a drink.’

‘Where?’

Outside a shed, unimpressive even on that waterfront, two elderly men sat drinking. ‘Over there.’

Zeno and the eunuch swept off, waving away a customs official who tried to speak to them. The telones next approached the men with Ballista.

‘Fuck off,’ said Maximus.

The telones regarded Maximus and the other three armed men, and withdrew.

The inside of the bar was bigger than the exterior suggested, although possibly even less appealing. A rough wooden counter ran down the left-hand side. Storage jars sat in holes cut into its surface. Amphorae were stacked behind, and there was an oven next to a closed door at the far end. The only light was from the front door, but nothing looked very clean. Ballista had no intention of eating here.

‘A pitcher of wine, please, one quarter water,’ he said.

‘The best you have,’ added Castricius.

As they took places at benches around a plank table, the only other customers, six men and two whores sitting together, hard-eyed them. Maximus and Tarchon stared back. Ballista and Castricius pretended not to notice.

‘The best,’ said the barman. ‘A local speciality.’

He poured it and they drank. It was not too bad, although it tasted oddly of elderberry. They drank some more.

‘Another,’ said Maximus.

As the barman returned, Ballista checked over the other table. The men wore military-style belts with daggers. They were evidently drunk. It was mid-afternoon. He motioned Maximus to look less challenging. There had been several unpleasant incidents in Byzantium over the winter. Not surprising, given the amount everyone in the familia had been drinking and what had happened before out on the steppes.

From where he sat Ballista could see a section of the dockside through the open door. An old fisherman was sitting cross-legged in the spring sunshine, mending his nets.

Outwardly at ease, Ballista listened carefully to everything in the bar. The knife men had turned to a loud, drunken conversation among themselves: women, money, drink — the usual subjects. They laughed, moronic in their cups. The whores simpered. The violence had retreated from the room. For now, at least.

Outside, the fisherman was using pot shards as weights. He must have bored a hole in some, as he was stringing them on to the net. Others, he was tying. Perhaps he had scratched a groove in those, so the sharp edges would not cut the cords. An amphora was easy to break, but when broken its fragments were nearly indestructible. Almost a paradox, Ballista thought. A philosopher could make something of that.

Ballista drank more. He felt the wine buzz in his head. The false wellbeing and confidence of alcohol were creeping over him. The melancholy would come later.

Castricius was talking. The short, pointy-faced Roman officer was teasing the other two members of the familia . ‘You pretty barbarian boys had better watch out. Men from Miletus founded Olbia. Brought the love of boys with them. The locals here are addicted to it, like sparrows in their lechery. Their lust will be inflamed at the sight of you two — a pretty Hibernian and a tender little Suanian.’ Maximus and Tarchon gazed back at him with no expression. Each of their lined, battered faces showed its owner’s forty-odd years. The Hibernian Maximus was missing the end of his nose.