The Amber Road (38 page)

The
cyning
Isangrim stood off to one side with his court, Ballista among them. Ballista had been uncertain if he would return to Hedinsey in time. After the killing of Widsith, they had spent the following day burying the corpses that could be found, their own and those of the Brondings. Maximus had been evidently upset when it had come to interring the children. The Heathobard women they had released had said the boys were servants brought with Widsith. No one admitted to their killing. Most likely they had come by their death blows in the chaos of the slaughter under the fallen awning.

Ballista had been in two minds about the burials. Loitering on the deserted strand had brought disaster to the son of Unferth and his followers. Ballista had no wish that the same fate should fall on himself and his men. There were said to be other Bronding longships in those waters. He had been tempted to honour their own fallen, bury the innocent and leave the enemy for scavengers. Yet to do that would have been only one step removed from what Widsith had done at Cold Crendon. Many men found it hard to fight unless they believed their behaviour better than that of their opponents.

After a night on the beach, at first light they had heaped stones in the Bronding boat, until her sides were only a hand’s breadth above the water. They had taken her out into the deep. They had smashed holes in her hull. The coal-black water had poured in, and the longship had gone to the bottom. The rest of that day had been devoted to another act of decency. They had taken the Heathobard women back to the settlement to the east from which they had been abducted. The wind had shifted into the east, and it had involved hard rowing.

The
Warig
had moored there for the night. In the morning the Heathobard who remained of the two that had come to Ballista on Hedinsey had asked to join the other two of his tribesmen who were already followers of Ballista. Four more warriors from that place had made the same request. Ballista had counselled them to remain and see to the safety of their village. Cruel war was coming to the Suebian Sea. Brondings or other sea raiders might return. The Heathobards had not been swayed. The northern code of blood vengeance was too strong in them. If he would lead them against Unferth and his followers, they would gladly die for him. Ballista’s hearth-troop needed men, and he had accepted their sword-oaths.

The wind had stayed in the east. The
Warig
had raced across the whale road. They had made Hedinsey the previous night after two days’ fast passage. Their reception had been mixed. Isangrim had not been minded to forget his threat of outlawry. He had spoken terrible words from his high seat. His sons and their followers were as bound by his commands as any other of his
eorls
and warriors. As outlaws, Dernhelm and his men could be killed without recompense. From a leather bag, crusted with the salt in which it had been packed, Ballista had produced the head of Widsith Travel-Quick. The
cyning
had smiled. Glaum, son of Wulfmaer, had whispered in his ear. Isangrim had waved him away. Morcar and Oslac had glowered. In this one instance, the
cyning
had said, no penalty would be enacted. Let no other flout his words, but Dernhelm and his hearth-companions had done him a great service. They had earned their place back in his favour.

Rikiar had taken it on himself to give thanks on behalf of all of them:

‘Ugly as my head may be,

The cliff my helmet rests upon,

I am not loath

To accept it from the King.

Where is the man who ever

Received a finer gift

From a noble-minded

Son of a great ruler?’

The Vandal had come to them as a thief. He was ill-favoured, and in many ways kept apart from their fellowship. He remained an object of suspicion. Yet no one could deny his skill with verse.

And now a shout came from the top of the grave mound. The labourers had dug down to a row of timbers. It would not be long before they broke through these rafters.

This would be the third time the Angles had turned to their long-dead hero in time of need. Starkad had first opened the tomb of Himling when the Heruli came. As a youth, Isangrim had been with Starkad the second time, before they led the alliance that drove the Goths from the north. Like war itself, it was not a thing to be entered into lightly.

‘Sure, it must be a fine sword your great-grandfather used, to go to this trouble, the digging and the disturbing the dead and all, to get it back,’ Maximus said.

‘Great-
great-
grandfather,’ Ballista said. ‘He never carried the sword. It was made after his death. Himling is the sword.’

‘Your dead man
is
the sword?’

‘When Himling was killed by the Wuffingas …’

‘I thought they were your greatest friends.’

‘It was a long time ago. Unlike you Hibernians, we are not terrible people for holding grudges.’

‘For a man who has been there, you maintain an incredible ignorance about my people. If the people of my homeland were not much given to reconciliation, would you think either of us would have left Tara alive – given all the killing and the like?’

‘Possibly not.’

‘Your grandfather’s sword?’

‘
Great-great
-grandfather. After Himling was cremated, the smith put some of his bones with the charcoal in the bellows pit when he forged the blade. A part of Himling’s strength, spirit and luck passed into the steel of Bile-Himling.’

‘What happened to the rest of him?’

‘The rest of his bones are in the barrow. Hopefully, as he died in battle, his shade is in Valhalla, not waiting in there with the sword and the other bones.’

A hail from the summit of the mound told them the tomb was open. Looking up, Ballista saw the ladders against the sky, before they were lowered into the pit.

Everyone waited on Isangrim. The
cyning
leaned on his staff, eyes focused on things the others could not see. Perhaps, Ballista thought, his father was remembering the previous times he had been here, half a century or more before. Bile-Himling had granted Starkad victory over the Goths. But, ignoring dire warnings, Starkad had not returned the blade to the tomb. Things had not gone well for him after that. He had carried Bile-Himling two years later against the Langobards. It had done him no good. It had fallen from Starkad’s hand when the Langobards had cut him down. Isangrim had returned Bile-Himling to the dark, before he had made peace with the killers of his father, taken one of their sisters as his first wife.

‘I will not go into the tomb,’ Isangrim said. ‘I am an old man, too old to wield Bile-Himling. My sons will make the descent. They will bring Bile-Himling to me, and I shall decide which of them will carry the blade.’

With his brothers, Ballista took up the offerings and walked up to the top.

Morcar stepped between him and the ladder. ‘A newcomer will not go first.’

Ballista stood back to let them go down first.

It was dark inside the pit, just the light from above, and not altogether sweet-smelling. The scattered bones of a horse lay underfoot. Gold and precious things glowed dully at the edges of the darkness. There was an urn on the seat of the throne, the receptacle of those remains of Himling that had not been used by the smith. Above it, resting across the arms of the high chair, was a heavy, single-edged sword.

Ballista placed the silver bowl he carried on the floor. He went to the throne, put out his hand towards the sword.

‘No,’ Oslac said. ‘You will not carry Bile-Himling.’

‘I have done more since I returned than you did in all the years I was away,’ Ballista said.

‘You should have been outlawed.’

Both had their hands on their hilts.

Morcar stepped between them. He turned to Oslac. ‘Most of what you do will now turn against you, bringing bad luck and no joy.’

Oslac recoiled as if struck.

Ballista wondered what this was between the two of them.

‘As the eldest, Oslac will take the thing to our father.’ Morcar spoke smoothly.

Oslac stood for a time, as if still shocked, then picked up the blade and went to the ladder.

Back above ground, in the land of the living, Oslac had recovered. He held Bile-Himling aloft. The assembled
eorls
and warriors
hoomed
in awe. Oslac offered the weapon to the
cyning
. Isangrim did not take it.

With sudden insight, Ballista wondered if after all these years Isangrim blamed the sword for his father’s death, or perhaps himself.

‘A time of war.’ Isangrim raised his voice. It was cracked with age, perhaps emotion. ‘Unferth will come and seek revenge for his son Widsith. If he does not, his followers would count him a
nithing
. They would desert him, and he would leave the north as he arrived, an outcast. He will come, and we must be ready.’

All there – the gold-bearing men of violence, the three or four shield-maidens – nodded.

‘It will happen like this,’ Isangrim said. ‘My son Dernhelm will defend our allies on the Cimbric peninsula. My son Oslac will hold Varinsey. I will take my stand here in our home of Hlymdale. My son Morcar will be here with me on Hedinsey. Latris and the islands of the south will be in the charge of Hrothgar of the Wrosns. Let all of you, all our allies, summon the fighting men. Let the war-arrow travel throughout our realm and summon men to cruel war.’

Everyone waited.

‘Bile-Himling, the blade forged from our ancestor, has returned to the light. It will be wielded by my son Morcar.’

With no expression on his face, Oslac passed the weapon to Morcar.

Amantius put the stylus and writing block down on the ground next to him. He wiped his hands on his fleshy thighs. His back rested against the rough wall of a byre. Cattle regarded him from the other side of a fence. Gods, how low he had sunk. A eunuch of the imperial court sunk to the level of a banausic slave hiding among the beasts. But no other privacy was to be found in the sprawling barbarian settlement of Hlymdale.

He picked up his writing things again.

Publius Egnatius Amantius to Lucius Calpurnius Piso Censorinus, Praetorian Prefect,
Vir Ementissimus.

If you are well, Dominus, I can ask the gods for no more.

Amantius could think of nothing else to write. There was nothing to report about the embassy. As secretary, four times he had accompanied Aulus Voconius Zeno into the presence of Isangrim, the senile, petty kinglet of this squalid and insignificant Hyperborean tribe. The ambassador had uttered a few courtly platitudes – his pleasure in standing before the ruler of the Angles, his prayers that the favour of the gods would continue to fall on such a noble father of a harmonious house – all of which Amantius presumed had been translated. Not once had the imperial envoy mentioned the amber which was the ostensible cause of this hideous odyssey. There had been not so much as a hint of their true purpose. Even such diplomatic gifts as had survived the journey had not been handed over. It was as if Zeno had reneged on the sacred duty laid on him by the Augustus Gallienus. The charitable might decide Zeno was exercising discretion, biding his time until the moment was auspicious. Amantius was not of that mind. He had observed Zeno during their tribulations. Zeno was weak, a coward. Amantius knew himself little better. But he was a eunuch, and everyone, including himself, knew eunuchs did not possess the constitution of other men.

If you are well, Dominus, I can ask the gods for no more.

The words mocked him. Already he had asked the gods for much. There were no rings on his hands, no bracelets on his wrists. He had given all his fine things to the gods for his safety. Now he must ask for more.

It all made sense. At the outset, the storm in the Euxine that had driven them to the island of Leuce had been divinely ordained. It had been a test, and they had failed. They had not put their trust in the gods and gone back aboard the warship. They had defied the divine prohibition and spent the night on the island. They had brought down on themselves the implacable anger of Achilles. It all stemmed from that: the murderous fight in the bar, the attack on Olbia, nearly being crushed by the raft of logs on the Hypanis, the Goths on the Borysthenes, the Brondings off the Vistula and the tempest in the Suebian Sea. Time and again souls had been snatched from the midst of life, those without the coin to pay the ferryman condemned to wander for eternity.

Amantius knew the anger of Achilles was not played out. It would fall on them again when Unferth came for his revenge. Amantius’s possessions had all gone to the gods. Desperate need had made him bold. Eunuchs were always suspected of peculation. To cover his tracks he had hidden a few of the coins he had taken from the diplomatic gifts in the possessions of the Vandal called Rikiar and in the paltry things of one of Zeno’s slaves. The former had the reputation of a thief, and Zeno habitually thought the worst of his servants. Amantius had made the offering in the lake, the nearest thing he could find to a place he recognized as sacred. To salve his conscience, he had included both of them in his prayers.

Publius Egnatius Amantius to Lucius Calpurnius Piso Censorinus, Praetorian Prefect …

What did it matter? There was nothing to say. There was no way to send the report anyway. No one would ever know the things that happened on this doomed embassy.

Amantius got up, secured the writing materials to his belt. He smoothed down the barbarian tunic and trousers he was reduced to wearing. It was time to get back for the leaving feast.

Ballista waited outside in the dark under the low eaves of the hall. They had followed the old custom and drawn lots for who sat where at the feast. The lots had not been kind. Still, he had been surprised when the slave-girl whispered her message.