Harry Sidebottom - The Wolves of the North

‘It comes naturally, when you have learnt as a small child. Now you try again.’

Gamely, Wulfstan nocked another arrow. His thumb hurt. The blisters had burst, and they were bleeding. He squeezed the barrel of the horse with his thighs. As it set off, Wulfstan felt momentarily light-headed. The grass accelerated under him; bright flowers flashed by. The sack seemed to blur in his vision. The pressure of the string cut into his thumb. Wulfstan felt dizzy. He released the bow. The arrow went nowhere near the target. He reined the horse back to a standstill.

In the distance, the horizon shifted. It and the sky ebbed away. They were retreating faster and faster, dragging the Steppe after them. The grasses, the wormwood shrubs, the bright dots of flowers were racing away. Wulfstan felt it pulling at him. There was a great heaviness in his body, behind his eyes.

‘Are you hurt?’

‘No, I do not think so.’ Wulfstan was on the ground.

Aluith cradled Wulfstan’s head, put a flask to his lips. Wulfstan coughed it up.

‘I am sorry. I forgot some outlanders do not like fermented mare’s milk. I will get something else.’

Wulfstan lay back, closed his eyes again.

‘Try this.’ Aluith lifted Wulfstan’s head once more, put another flask to his lips. It was watered wine. Wulfstan drank. He sat up, opened his eyes. The Steppe had stopped moving.

‘You have been out here a long time. I should have made you drink more,’ Aluith said.

‘No, it was not that. It was… strange. The Steppe seemed to move.’

‘Yes, it can do that; even to those born here. The spirits try to pull you to them. Many die from it.’

Aluith, squatting on his haunches, took Wulfstan’s hands, looked at the deep cut on his thumb. ‘You have tenacity. You put aside the pain. You would make a good Herul.’

‘How? I am a slave.’ There was no disguise to the bitterness in Wulfstan’s voice.

‘Herul just means warrior. Our slaves fight alongside us.’

‘You do not blind them?’

Aluith laughed. ‘You have seen them. Why would we do something so stupid? If a slave shows courage, he wins his freedom. Of course, he cannot become one of the Rosomoni, but he becomes a Herul.’

‘Rosomoni?’

Aluith touched the bright-red hair on his elongated head. ‘You are born one of “the Red ones”, the brothers. But several of Naulobates’ leading Heruli warriors were slaves. One was even a Greek slave taken out of Trapezus — imagine that.’

Wulfstan drank some more.

‘We should get back,’ Aluith said.

Wulfstan went to remonstrate.

‘We will practise more tomorrow. I will get you a ring for your thumb.’

The Herul helped Wulfstan to his feet, on to his horse; whistled for his own, and jumped into the saddle.

They rode back together in silence. Wulfstan’s thoughts were full of new ideas of slavery and freedom.

Ballista was riding with Calgacus and Maximus, as he had been for several days. Always travelling, never arriving; the Steppe stretched on without limit. Time stagnated. It took an effort to remember it was only eleven days since the discovery of Mastabates’ body, only fourteen since they set out on to the alien world of the Steppe.

As they trudged into the east, kurgans would appear in the distance. Slowly, the barrows got closer, were passed, and left behind. Watercourses were stumbled upon, each one somehow a surprise. The ox-wagons were braked down hard into the streams, hauled up the other side. Occasionally there would be a glimpse of white up ahead in the distance, a fixed point in the shimmering sea of green. Not until they were on top of it could the travellers tell if it was a boulder or a blanched skull. A lot of cattle and other creatures had died out here.

Ballista watched a lapwing swooping and diving around the head of the column, screaming outrage and distress at the threat to its unseen nest.

‘At least we have not seen hide nor hair of the Alani since the river,’ Maximus said.

‘That means shite,’ responded Calgacus. ‘The dust, the campfires; making only ten miles a day — we could not be easier to follow. There could be any number of the bastards out there tracking us.’

‘Child’s play,’ Ballista agreed. His mood was as glum as any. ‘The main body could hang back miles away. Have a couple of scouts watch our dust cloud from over the horizon; nothing to stop them riding in to have a closer look in the dark.’

‘Not at all,’ Maximus said. ‘A couple of horsemen on their own would not last a night out there alone — the daemons would get them.’

Both Ballista and Calgacus gave him a dubious look.

‘The plains are crawling with daemons and other foul, unnatural creatures. Ochus the Herul told me so.’

‘And you believed him,’ Ballista said.

‘And why not? Your long-headed fellow was born out here. He should know.’

Calgacus made an unpleasant grating, coughing sound — what passed for laughter.

‘Go on, laugh, you old fucker,’ Maximus said. ‘See if you are still laughing when one of them is pulling your guts out, drinking your blood.’

‘Like a retarded fucking child,’ Calgacus muttered.

‘Ochus said that your Gothic witches, like that old bitch with the gudja, go out and copulate with them, breed more of the things. At Ragnarok, a whole horde of them — daemons, half-daemons, all sorts — will come out of the Steppe, kill everything in their path.’

‘I think they might be one of the lesser things to worry about at the end of days,’ Ballista said. ‘Especially once the stars have fallen, the sun has been devoured, and the dead risen — there will be a lot on our minds.’

‘Say what you like, you would not catch me out there at night on my own.’ Maximus was reluctant to give up the otherworldly threat of the Steppe. Something about the strangeness of the landscape encouraged credulity.

‘Fine bodyguard you are,’ Calgacus said.

Maximus rounded on him. ‘You miserable old bastard, only the other day you said the killings might be the work of a daemon.’

‘Aye,’ Calgacus agreed, ‘but I was thinking of a real one, not a silly story. You know as well as me, ever since Ballista here killed Maximinus Thrax, he has been haunted by his daemon. When the other mutineers cut off his head, denied him burial, they condemned the dead emperor to walk. It might have been half a lifetime ago, but Maximinus has eternity.’

Ballista considered this. He had told very few people of the terrifying nocturnal apparitions: Calgacus and Maximus, his wife, Julia, his one-time secretary young Demetrius, and a friend, Turpio. The last was dead.

‘I do not think so,’ Ballista said. ‘It has been months since Maximinus troubled me. When he appears, the daemon offers no violence — just the threat he will see me again in Aquileia. We could hardly be further from northern Italy.’

‘It might be the two of you have forgotten, but we have been cursed by a priestess of Hecate,’ Maximus said. ‘Pythonissa summoned the dark bitch goddess and all her creatures up from the underworld against us.’

‘And you are frightened she might set an empusa on us; one of those nasty shape-shifters that frighten small children. I remember Demetrius mistook a man for one once in Mesopotamia — terrified the little Greek, it did.’ Calgacus’s amusement turned into a coughing fit.

‘Actually, I was thinking more of the Kindly Ones. Dog-headed, snakes for hair, coal-black bodies and bloodshot eyes; you do not want to meet them. Any fool knows the eumenides are relentless.’

Ballista noticed even Calgacus surreptitiously put his thumb between his first two fingers to avert evil. Live long enough in the Roman empire, and it seemed even a Caledonian became a little bit Hellenized.