Harry Sidebottom: The Wolves of the North

‘Slave bread is made with the sweepings. It is full of husks, grit — wears the teeth down.’ Khedosbios recognized hybris as a vice, in himself as in others, but at times the paradigm of Achilles overcame his avoidance of the pride that found expression in the belittling of others.

‘As you say, Kyrios.’

‘How many slaves have been reported missing or run in the last couple of days?’

‘Four: a girl, a child and two adult males.’

‘Who owned the men?’

‘One was the property of Demosthenes, son of Sauromates, the metalworker.’

‘An occupation that leaves marks on the hands.’

‘The other belonged to the envoy Marcus Clodius Ballista. Shall I send a messenger to tell him?’

‘Too late,’ said Khedosbios. ‘His mission sailed this morning.’

The young man of the watch averted evil, thumb between index and middle finger. ‘The gods willing, the murderer did not sail with them. Even being under the same roof as a murderer pollutes, and everyone knows a ship on which one sails comes to grief.’

Khedosbios laughed out loud. ‘Not to mention being confined in dangerous proximity to a man who enjoys killing and has a taste for mutilation.’

(Lake Maeotis and the Tanais River, Spring AD263)

‘I did not think Polybius would run,’ Ballista said. The tall northerner spoke in Greek. He turned to look at the other four men.

They were leaning against the stern rail of the big Roman warship. Wrapped in dark cloaks, bulky with covered weapons, the spindrift whipping around them, they looked like gloomy harbingers of some as yet unspecified violence.

A blustery spring wind from the south-west was pushing a following sea under the ship, driving it on. The waters of Lake Maeotis rolled away, very green. A small Bosporan galley bobbed in their wake.

‘He never lacked courage,’ Maximus replied in the same language. Against the pain of the hangover from the previous night in Panticapaeum, the Hibernian bodyguard had screwed his eyes almost shut. Coupled with the scar where the end of his nose should have been, it gave him an extremely off-putting demeanour. ‘Certain, you could not fault him last year when the Goths came to Miletus and Didyma, and he did not disgrace himself in the Caucasus. After all that, a trip to ransom a few hostages from the Heruli should hold few fears.’

The little officer Castricius pushed his hood back from his thin, pointed face. ‘Going out on the sea of grass among the nomads might give any man pause. Like all Scythians, the Heruli are not as other men. Despite all their raids into the empire, there may be no one alive to ransom. Some say they sacrifice their prisoners, dress in their skins, use their skulls as drinking cups. Going among the Heruli should give any man pause for thought — even a man such as me, protected by a good daemon.’

‘They say they fuck donkeys too,’ Maximus said.

‘And they say the kings of your island fuck horses,’ Hippothous responded. The Greek secretary’s shaved head shone in the thin sunshine. ‘All nonsense. People place any strange thing they wish at the ends of the world.’

‘Well…’ Maximus looked vaguely embarrassed.

‘A serious man of culture’ — Hippothous talked over him — ‘one who really belongs among the pepaideumenoi, should welcome the prospect of travelling among the nomads. Do not forget that one of the seven sages, Anacharsis, was actually a Scythian.’

‘I thought he left the tent dwellers to live in Athens,’ Ballista said.

Maximus grinned.

Hippothous took no notice of either. ‘To a student of physiognomy, such as myself, it presents both a challenge and an opportunity. Herodotus tells of many fascinating peoples out there. The Budinians all have piercing grey eyes and bright-red hair. Then there are the Argippaei: bald from birth — men and women alike — with snub noses and large chins. For a physiognomist to see the soul behind such strange faces, that would be a triumph. But most extraordinary of all are the Heruli.’

‘Did you not just say people believe any nonsense about the ends of the earth?’ Castricius interrupted. ‘Herodotus also tells of men with goat feet, whole tribes of the one-eyed, and others who turn into wolves for a few days each year.’

Hippothous smiled urbanely. ‘You know your literature, Legate. Men misjudge you when they describe you as an ill-educated soldier, jumped up from the ranks. You have transcended your origins.’

Castricius’s thin lips were pressed tight in his small mouth.

‘Of course,’ the Greek continued, ‘most such things may be travellers’ tales and myths. Herodotus claimed only to report what others told him, he did not vouchsafe the truth of it. Yet it is universally acknowledged that he was correct to state that climate and style of life shape the character of a people. The sea of grass does not change. So neither do the nomads.’

The fifth man, who had neither spoken nor seemed to have been listening, turned inboard from the sea. He was a strikingly ugly older man; sparse tufts of hair on his great domed skull, a thin, peevish mouth. ‘If Polybius discovered the real reason we have been sent, he had reason to run.’ At Calgacus’s words, the others fell silent. Instinctively, they looked down the length of the warship. There was little privacy to be had on a trireme, especially one burdened with an extra thirty-five passengers on deck.

The trierarch and the helmsman were some paces away. The commander was talking earnestly to the latter. No one else was particularly near. If the men at the stern kept their voices down, they were unlikely to be overheard.

‘Apart from us and the two eunuchs, no one knows,’ Ballista said.

Calgacus snorted with derision. ‘Shite,’ he muttered, perfectly audibly.

Ballista sighed. Since his childhood among the Angles of northern Germania, Calgacus had always been there. When Ballista had been taken as a hostage into the Roman imperium, Calgacus had accompanied him. First as a slave then, after manumission, the old Caledonian had looked after him — always complaining, always there. Tolerant patronus that he was, Ballista would allow such latitude only to one other of his freedmen. That man spoke next.

‘The old bastard is right,’ Maximus said. ‘The whole boat knows. Eunuchs are like women. They love to gossip.’

‘Emperors are fools to trust their sort,’ Castricius put in. ‘Neither one thing nor the other, they are unnatural, monstrous — like crows. It is an ill omen just to meet one, let alone travel to the ends of the earth with a couple.’

‘Neither doves nor ravens,’ Maximus agreed.

‘Eunuchs or not,’ Calgacus said, ‘whether there are any hostages to ransom or not, you have fuck all hope of succeeding in the real mission. You will never persuade the Heruli to turn on their Gothic allies. They will take the emperor’s gold, little enough as it is, then slit our throats, turn our hides into cloaks, bowcases or some such shite, and no one in our great emperor Gallienus’s consilium will give a fuck.’

‘Not necessarily,’ Ballista said. ‘Felix and Rutilus will have a worse time in the north trying to get the Grethungi to attack their fellow Gothic tribes, and Sabinillus and Zeno not much better in the west getting the Carpi, Taifali and Gepidae to fight any of the Goths.’

‘Good,’ said Calgacus. ‘We can take comfort in them being as doomed as us. A whole range of men in imperial disfavour will have died serving the Res Publica. Of course, the donkey-fucking Heruli may not get the chance to kill us — we have to survive the Maeotae and the Urugundi Goths before we reach them.’