The Wolves of the North (31 page)

He lay thinking about the words of Naulobates. After the
meadow, out of hearing of the Heruli, the others had sniggered nervously. They were fools. He had no doubt the daemon of Naulobates was as real as that of the dead boy Wulfstan. As real, and as deadly. If he continued his work here among the Heruli, most likely he would be caught. His own fate was of little consequence. But if he were killed, his work, the task the gods had entrusted to him, would end. He should do no more while they were under the eye of the daemon Naulobates called Brachus. When they departed it would be different. Then he could act again.

Of course, it would pain Ballista when he killed the man. Ballista did not see the soul of his friend. But it could not be helped. The gods had made their Hound, their Scourge. If he let the man live, much evil would follow. For a long time he had been unsure, but now he knew he needed to kill him as soon as he could. Perhaps there might yet be a chance while they were still here. Some moment of confusion, the chaos of a battle or the turmoil of a hunt, when the daemon of Naulobates would be distracted. No man lives when the gods want him to die.

The day after Andonnoballus’s visit, Ballista walked through the ordered tents and wagons up to the market. Calgacus and Maximus went with him. Tarchon again had disappeared on some business of his own.

It was eight days before the
kalends
of July, and very hot. Heruli sat in the shade; some under the parked wagons. There were more men now that the warriors with Uligagus had returned. Camp discipline was good. Each dwelling was a stone’s throw apart from its neighbour. There was little rubbish to be seen and, despite the heat, there were none of the noxious smells one might have expected from a camp of this size.

The market was large, busy and tightly controlled. There were Heruli overseers everywhere, inspecting the traders’ permits and
collecting taxes on their sales. An extraordinary array of goods was on offer. From the Rha river and the north there was honey, wax, wood and arrows, sheep and cattle, slaves, and many types of fur: sable, ermine, marten, squirrel, fox, beaver and rabbit. There was much amber, some an unusual yellow. From the east, caravans had travelled incalculable distances, bringing silks and spices. Out of the
imperium
to the south had come wine and raisins, olive oil and some fancy metalwork, most of it weaponry. Trade was brisk. There was no shortage of gold among the Heruli. Not just the Rosomoni wore silk.

Ballista was inspecting some river fish: how fresh were they, and how far had they come from the Rha river? Maximus was regaling Calgacus with an improbable account of his sexual performance the night before.
And then she asked if I minded if her sister joined us.
They did not see the messenger arrive. He was just there in their midst. The First-Brother wished to see them now.

Walking back down, Ballista reflected it was just as well. The sooner they were dismissed and on their way back to the
imperium
the better. Once Maximus had remembered to tell him Hisarna of the Urugundi had been closeted with Naulobates, it was obvious the Roman mission had no hope of success. Hisarna had got the
gudja
to bring them slowly, by a round-about route, while the king himself had come straight to confer with Naulobates. The alliance between the Heruli and the Urugundi was as tight as it had been when they sacked the town of Tanais.

Naulobates was holding court in the meadow. The place itself was the same, an unsettling mixture of rural idyll and killing field. The cooling breeze that moved the verdant foliage and sweet grass also turned the black, fly-blown hunks of human flesh strung in the branches. No living miscreants were perched in the treetops this time.

Naulobates was in the same wooden chair. His leading men
sprawled on the grass about him. Castricius and Hippothous were standing a little to one side. In front of the Heruli First-Brother, and the object of everyone’s attention, was a strange-looking individual. He was swarthy and had curly black hair. He wore a sky-blue cloak, and yellow-and-green-striped trousers. In his hand was a long ebony cane. Ballista had seen someone similar somewhere before.

‘The envoy of the Roman emperor, Marcus Clodius Ballista, better known to my people as Dernhelm, son of Isangrim, son of Starkad, of the Angles.’ Naulobates waved Ballista to join the other members of the embassy. As the Heruli were seated, Ballista sat down too. Those with him followed. None of the Heruli complained. The elaborate introduction, Ballista thought, had to be for the benefit of the man in the striped trousers.

‘This is Mar Ammo.’ Naulobates pointed. The First-Brother seemed in an expansive mood, excited even. His eyes gleamed strangely. ‘Mar Ammo has come from the domain of Shapur the Sassanid king. He is a missionary from Mani, the self-styled Seal of the Prophets. He is going to tell us the Gospel of Light.’

A snigger ran through the assembled Heruli. Naulobates’ tone had been one of disbelief. The missionary seemed unabashed. Ballista was unsure he would have stood up to it so well. Perhaps the man in the odd trousers had not noticed the decomposing body parts, or perhaps his faith sustained him.

Ballista remembered where he had seen a similar man. It had been in the town of Carrhae, four years earlier. A warm spring dawn, on the top of the citadel, Ballista had been hauled before the Sassanid king. Cledonius, the old
ab
Admissionibus
of the captive emperor Valerian, had been with him. To Shapur’s left, among the priests, had stood another man with an ebony cane and the same clothes.

‘You say you speak the language of the north,’ Naulobates said.

The missionary bowed.

‘Tell us how Mani claims to know the truth about the deity.’

The missionary squared his shoulders. ‘Mani is the
paraclete
of Truth, the very spirit of truth. When he was a boy, at the end of his twelfth year, his divine twin first appeared to him. The twin, his
syzygos
, drew him aside and told him he must remain unblemished and abstain from desire. Yet the time was not right for him to appear, for he was still young. When the
paraclete
turned twenty-four, his
syzygos
returned. Now was the time for him to appear and call others to his cause.’

Ballista had attended the
consilium
of enough emperors to know how to mould his face into a mask of interested attention, while his thoughts roamed far away. He wondered why Naulobates had summoned him and the others. It could be he wished to demonstrate to them, and through them to Gallienus and the Roman world in general, his piety and the power of his intellect. Ballista had no doubt Naulobates would cross-examine the missionary. Who would – in Naulobates’ eyes – win the exchange was not in doubt. It would have all the lack of dramatic tension of a Socratic dialogue as imagined by Plato. Perhaps Naulobates also thought it would nicely illustrate the geographic spread of his power – men came to him from the Sassanid realm.

‘Equipped with his five sons, as if in readiness for war, the First Man came down to fight the darkness. However, the Prince of Darkness fought back.’

The missionary had moved on to telling an incredibly complicated story concerning a war between the Father of Greatness of the Realm of Light and the King of Darkness. This struggle between good and evil was ongoing, and fought at a cosmic level and within every man. It had a confusingly large cast and, Ballista thought, would have been much improved with better battle scenes and a good chase sequence. The only sex appeared to be a few cases of daemonic premature ejaculation.

The missionary droned on. The sons of the First Man, somehow or other, had sacrificed themselves into the darkness. But, unsurprisingly, redemption appeared to be on its way.

Perhaps, Ballista thought, this display was all the other way around. Perhaps Ballista and the Romans were the ones on show to the missionary from the Sassanid kingdom. See, you easterners, how the Romans honour Naulobates and the Heruli.

Ballista’s thoughts gathered pace. Perhaps they were on show to others as well. It could be that the Roman embassy, above all Ballista himself, had been slowly trailed across the disputed grasslands in the hope the Alani would attack, and thus give the Heruli and the Urugundi a just cause for war. The Alani had broken whatever oaths had secured the peace on the Steppe. In the eyes of the gods, the world and themselves, Naulobates and Hisarna would be justified in their fight. Look, they could say, they attacked the Roman ambassador Ballista. It was sacrilege. Yet here he is in our midst, the living proof of their perfidy and our pious desire for revenge.

‘Enough!’ Naulobates’ high voice cut through the missionary’s recommendations of celibacy and vegetarianism and other joyless things that would make God happy.

‘Poor Mani,’ Naulobates continued. ‘He means well. But he is like a promising student who listens to philosophers when drunk. No matter how he tries, the words elide and confuse him.’

Naulobates smiled, with an air of avuncular forbearance. ‘And he is naughty, very naughty. He denies he was born a slave boy called Corbicius.’

‘That is a calumny spread by his enemies,’ Mar Ammo said. ‘His father was Pattikios, a citizen of Ecbatana, and his mother, Marmaryan, a descendant of the Arsacid royal house of Parthia.’ The missionary did not lack courage.

Naulobates fixed him with his strange eyes. ‘Have you seen the
syzygos
of Mani?’

‘No.’ The missionary looked uncomfortable.

‘I have.’ Naulobates sighed. ‘How it fled from my Brachus! But no matter where it went in the other world, Brachus followed. Brachus caught him, as the gods caught Loki. For nine nights and days Brachus tried to enlighten him. But the fumes of wine still clouded his understanding.’

‘The Seal of Prophets does not touch wine.’ The missionary really had the courage of his convictions.

Naulobates wagged a finger.

The missionary subsided into silence.

‘You will stay with me,’ Naulobates said to Mar Ammo. ‘You will learn the truth. Mani has shown you some aspects. All deities are aspects of the One. Mani was right, the Kingdom of Light is in the north, and working the soil is for lesser men. Yet, in his stubborn drunkenness, he failed to see that the kingdom was already to be found here among the Heruli.’

The missionary looked horrified.

Naulobates clapped his hands. ‘Tomorrow we will give a practical demonstration of a field where Mani is very misguided. We will go hunting. It is time for a royal
battue
.’

Two hours before dawn, Ballista and Maximus got dressed in the dark. They had laid out their hunting clothes and equipment the night before. They did not talk and were as quiet as could be managed. They woke Calgacus anyway. He cursed them as clod-hopping, clumsy bastards making enough din to raise the fucking dead. Neither the Caledonian’s injured arm nor being told the previous evening that he was to remain in the camp had done anything to improve his habitual waspish temper.

It was cold outside, with a chill bite to the wind. Ballista pulled on a thick leather coat, stamped his feet. Tarchon led up two of the Sarmatian horses. Working as much by feel and habit as sight, Ballista and Maximus tacked up and slung their weapons and gear. The breath of the horses was sweet in their faces. Tarchon held the bridles as each mounted.

They waited as Castricius and Hippothous emerged from the next tent. Biomasos brought round their horses. Soon the four who had been invited to join the hunt were in the saddle. They said farewell to Tarchon and the interpreter, and reined about to set off.

The dim form of Calgacus emerged from the tent. ‘A creaking bow, a croaking raven, a yawning wolf, a grunting wild boar; never be such a fool as to trust such things.’

‘We will take care,’ Ballista said.

‘A coiled snake, a burning flame, a flying arrow.’

‘Enough.’ Ballista clicked his tongue on the roof of his mouth, and his horse walked on. He grinned in the darkness. The old Caledonian was getting protective like a nursemaid. He had noticed it in himself: the older you got, the more you worried.

Men were stirring all through the camp. Ballista and the others joined a stream of warriors walking their horses southward between the tents.

Out on the plain, several large fires had been lit. The ceaseless north wind pulled sparks away high into the night sky. Standards flew upwind of the fires, and the Heruli assembled in their stations. The royal hunt was a great undertaking. A division of four thousand riders had already left the afternoon before under the command of Andonnoballus. In all, another thousand would follow this morning with Naulobates.

Ballista and his
familia
joined those under the banner of three wolves pursuing a
tamga
that resembled three circles pierced by an arrow. Ballista greeted Pharas, but the Herul looked distracted and only nodded. It was slightly offhand, but the twenty or so men waiting to ride with the First-Brother were all quiet. The clicking and cracking of the fire sounded sharp over the creak of leather and the jink of bridles.

Naulobates trotted into the circle of firelight. He was flanked by Uligagus and Artemidorus, the former slave from Trapezus. Behind them rode Mar Ammo. The Manichaean looked thoroughly miserable. Naulobates raised his hands to the dark sky and intoned a prayer to Artemis and an eclectic range of other more obscure deities of the chase. Nomads did not make libations. His
words ended, Naulobates made the signal, and they moved off south into the Steppe.

The sun was not yet up, but the sky promised a good day. The wind had dropped a little, lost much of its cold edge. To the east, the horizon was a band of pale blue-gold. Above it, fanning out from the south-east, were ribbed, purple-gold clouds, as solid as dunes in a desert. High above, gaps in the clouds showed a heaven of pure aquamarine. A flight of birds, half a dozen black shapes, gave a sense of scale, of the sheer majesty of it all.

They were riding at an easy canter that ate up the miles. At the head of the small column, Naulobates was bare-headed, laughing. Uligagus and Artemidorus also looked happy. Pharas, the other Herul with them, appeared rather more subdued.