‘Not eternity,’ said Ballista. ‘Nothing lasts for ever.’ His eyes did not leave the red standard flying over the house of the strategos in Olbia.
‘Maybe, but you will be in either place for a very long time.’
‘Until the stars fall and the gods die.’
‘Now, you get to the good place by dying in battle.’
Ballista rubbed his leg. ‘I suppose if you died just before Ragnarok, you might only be in Valhalla or Hel quite a short time.’
Maximus, ignoring the line of speculation, continued with his own theme. ‘So, your young Goth this morning was wrong. He died in battle, so it’s the good place for him, and — no matter where you end up — he will not be seeing you in Hel.’
Ballista looked at the Hibernian in mock-despair. ‘Have you spent all day thinking about that?’
‘It passes the time. As your Greek wise man said: “The unconsidered life is shite.”’
‘I think you will find he put it as “not worth living”.’
‘Same thing.’
It had been hours since the death of the Goth. They had dragged his corpse back up to near the apple tree. Placing him face down, they had pulled the green cloak up to cover his ruined head and, taking three of the spent arrows, skewered them into his back. If his friends came back, with luck they would assume he had been shot while attempting to get away, and the bowmen up on the wall would deter them from coming too close.
While they had been about it, and on their return to the winery, Ballista had worried the archers in the town might mistake them for more Goths. He had seen too many men killed by their own side in the confusion of war. It had been an anxious time, but no shafts came. The young Olbian Bion held that sector of the defences. Thankfully, he must have good eyes. Either that or the commotion had drawn Castricius down to take personal charge.
They had waited. The sun ran across the sky in her relentless flight from the wolf Skoll that at the end of days will devour her. For at least four hours Ballista had perched under the tiles, always watching. Nothing of note had happened. Occasionally, he clambered down to relieve himself in one of the reservoirs. There were eighty-two men in that cramped confinement. The air was thick, fetid with their body odour and waste. Most had tied scarves around their faces. Ballista had done the same. It masked little of the stench, but it might serve another purpose. The young Goth had recognized him. It would be bad if others did in what lay ahead. Ballista’s shield was propped against the door-frame. Its metal ornament of a northern bird of prey was still muffled from the night before. He would leave it that way. The motif was repeated as a crest on his helmet. Likewise, he would leave the rags tied around that. He had ordered that no one should use his names, neither Ballista nor Dernhelm. Today he would fight under the name Vandrad. If the Allfather was kind, the Goths might not become aware there was bloodfeud between themselves and the warrior who opposed them — at least not until some time after he and his familia had left for the north.
‘Oath-breaker’ the young Goth had called him. While Ballista had spoken no words when he went out to fight Tharuaro in single combat, the thing had been implicit. The young Goth was right. The killing of Tharuaro had been an act of no honour, the act of a nithing. Yet it had helped save the city of Miletus. When Ballista was young he had liked to listen to the scops who had come to the halls of his father. In their sagas the path of honour was always difficult, fraught with danger; frequently, it proved fatal. But most often it was clear. Since he had been taken into the imperium, Ballista had found honour and expediency often opposed.
Oath-breaker. The young Goth had been more right than he knew. There were many oaths Ballista had broken. When he had been hauled into the imperium he had taken the military oath to the emperor Maximinus Thrax. No sooner had he sworn the sacramentum than he had broken it. Just sixteen winters old and, on a warm spring day outside the Italian city of Aquileia, he had killed the man he had sworn to protect. The other conspirators — the ones who had forced Ballista to join them — had beheaded the emperor, left his mutilated body to be devoured by birds and beasts. Denied Hades, the daemon of the emperor was condemned forever to walk in this world. In the long years since, Ballista had come to know well the nocturnal apparition; the dread as he woke, the smell of the waxed canvas cloak, the tall, grey-eyed figure grim in the dark of the night. Always the same words: I will see you again at Aquileia. Oath-breaker.
Julia often had tried to rationalize the thing away. Maximinus only appeared when Ballista was exhausted, under great stress. It was a figment of his thoughts running uncontrolled as he slept. Neither daemons nor gods existed. If they did, they had no care for humanity. She believed these arguments. Ballista did not. Unlike his wife, he had not been raised as an Epicurean. Besides which, bad dreams did not leave a lingering smell of waxed canvas.
Yet of all the oaths he had broken, that to Maximinus Thrax did not weigh most heavily. Four years before, he had been a prisoner of the Sassanid king. That ruler had sent him on an embassy back to the Romans. Before he left, Shapur had exacted an oath that he would return to captivity. The Greek words had not left him: If I break my oath, spill my brains on the ground as this wine spills, my brains and the brains of my sons, too. He had not returned to the throne of the Sassanid. The words ran together with those of Pythonissa’s curse: Kill his sons. Kill all his family, all those he loves. He tried to put his fear for his family from his mind. Julia and his boys were safe in Sicily. Far from the frontiers, away from the campaigns of civil war, there was nowhere safer in the imperium. They could not be more secure than in the villa in Tauromenium. The tenants, freedmen and slaves of Julia’s family were loyal. The few freedmen of Ballista who lived there were loyal. Isangrim and Dernhelm were safe; so was Julia. Nothing would happen to them.
‘Movement!’ said Maximus.
The first thing Ballista saw were more defenders appearing on the town wall. They ran fast along the battlements, ducking into shelter at their appointed stations. In the city, trumpets rang out, summoning the laggards. Ballista looked up to his left. On the crest of the ravine, dark against the sky, a body of Goths was assembling about a hundred and fifty paces from the wall, just out of effective bowshot. The Goths were packing together into a shieldwall. Ballista could only see those on the extreme right flank. They were six deep. Beyond that, it was impossible to judge numbers. There would be many more, though; a solid mass of men facing the town, deepest opposite the gate. The phalanx would stretch all the way down to the river.
Time slowed. A strange hush fell. Nothing moved, except a black banner fluttering above the Goths. Now and then Ballista thought he could hear it snap in the wind. A bird sang nearby in the vineyard. Ballista looked back at the house of the strategos. The red standard still flew there alone.
A deep, low rumble came from above. Ballista knew it — the throaty growling of many northern warriors, the hooming sound of the massed Gothic hansa voicing its approval. Although invisible to him, Ballista could picture its cause. Individual champions, the gold bright on their arms, striding forward from the wall of shields.
A different sound, rhythmic, repetitive — two quick beats, one slow; two quick beats, one slow. Hundreds upon hundreds of warriors stamping, beating their weapons on the shields. Up there, out of sight, the heroes were beginning their war dance. The Woden-inspired among them were drawing down into themselves the awful power of the fierce beasts beloved of the one-eyed god; wolf and hound, bear and big cat.