‘Enough. Back to the boats.’
Maximus sheathed his sword. With the greatest care in the world, he stepped back over the remaining logs and dragged himself into the boat and back down on to his bench.
‘Cast off.’
Maximus took up his paddle. Its handle was polished with his blood and sweat.
‘Paddle.’
Reach, stroke, pause — his whole body rebelled as he set to the horrible work again.
He saw nothing but the back of the man to his front, until the steersman angled them across towards the bank opposite the lumber camp. His curiosity could not be denied. He stopped paddling and stood up. Finally able to look downriver, what he saw was good.
Already the main logjam was a distance away, moving at great speed. The river beyond it was full of bobbing baulks of heavy timber. From almost one bank to the other they were swept fast downstream. They surged and clashed together, threatening inexorable destruction to anything in their path. Tervingi boats paddled desperately towards the banks. As Maximus watched like some curious god detached from the sufferings of humanity, one of them disappeared beneath the onrushing doom.
XV
The Rapids on the Borysthenes River
Ignominy and discomfort had been piled upon danger, Mount Pelion heaped upon Ossa. The whole journey had been one of constant humiliation for Zeno. Yet this day was the nadir. He found it difficult to imagine how things could get worse.
After the barbarians had been scattered by the timber sweeping down on them, the expedition had reached its next temporary haven in a few hours. The island seemed secure. It was set in a broad expanse of water. There were cliffs on three of its sides. The mooring place was on the fourth. The village, the very last Olbian settlement, was encircled by a deep ditch and tall rampart topped with a rustic but strong-looking stockade.
Great oaks grew on the island and in the centre was a sacred grove with a bucolic temple dedicated to Achilles. Zeno had left his slaves to attempt to make his accommodation vaguely fit for him to occupy. Ballista could deal with the barely Hellenized locals headed by a sly slave trader called Potamis. As Zeno made suitable offerings to the hero for their deliverance, there was a certain equanimity in his mind. He was even toying with the idea of immortalizing their journey in dactylic hexameters, a Homeric epic for a modern Odyssey. It could be titled the Borysthenetica. Perhaps Achilles might appear to suggest the stratagem of the logs, or Borysthenes stir from his watery sleep. The river god could shake his weed-tangled locks and dash the impious barbarians to destruction — although too much divine intervention might detract from the role of Zeno himself. He knew he had displayed admirable andreia; showing quiet courage as others dashed about in near-panic.
The calm of mind necessary for literary composition had been shattered when Zeno had returned to the village. He had found all the expedition drunk; some sleeping, some still gorging themselves with food. All discipline abandoned, they had made swine of themselves with no need for the sorcery of a Circe. When Zeno had remonstrated, Ballista had said the men needed to recover after their exertions. There had been no civility at all in his words. Of course, the barbarian himself had been half drunk, his eyes drooping. Worse yet, Ballista had announced they would not be leaving for three days. He had tried to cloak the innate indolence of his kind with some words about the demanding nature of the river ahead.
When the expedition belatedly pulled out, the first day of travel had not struck Zeno as too daunting. Admittedly, the Borysthenes had narrowed again. There was a ford no wider than the Circus Maximus. But the difficulties of those paddling had more to do with their hangovers than the flow of water against them. Any lingering frowziness was dispelled when they had come to the first rapids. There the majority of the crews had been compelled to strip and get in the chill water to manhandle the boats through. Having been advised they were now in the territory of the Grethungi, a tribe of Goths well disposed to Rome, at least temporarily, Zeno had risked — all alone, with just one of his slaves — taking a bracing walk along the cliff path. It had been amusing to look down from the heights at those below. The men still in the vessels had wielded poles like inexpert acrobats; of those in the water, no more than their heads and shoulders could be seen. Their cries had floated up to him like the calling of sea-birds. That evening they had made camp on a small islet. The lapping of water had lulled Zeno to sleep.
The second day there were two more sets of rapids which had to be negotiated in the same fashion. These had been less pleasant. There were no convenient footpaths. To avoid a lengthy detour, with its concomitant risks of going astray or having unwelcome encounters with wild animals and supposedly friendly barbarians, Zeno had been compelled to remain in the boat. As it was hauled forward, the boat had lurched and pitched. He had clung tightly to the thwarts, almost like Odysseus tied to the mast. Twice at the second cataract the clumsiness of those in the water had let the vessel yaw sideways, nearly overturning Zeno into the turbulent river. Needless to say, his cloak and tunic had been sodden. When they pitched camp, it was discovered water had got into his baggage and his changes of clothing were almost equally damp. Zeno had beaten both his slaves, although, mindful of the dangers of loss of self-control, he had first called for his stick and not in any sense given way to anger.
Yet all that had been as nothing compared with the degradation of today. They had come to another run of bad water. The noise was appalling; a constant deep roaring which drowned out all else. The river was nothing but white water and spray seething over jagged rocks. The local Ballista had got to accompany them from the village on the island had called it the Pelican, although Zeno could not imagine why. The shifty-looking fellow had said there was nothing for it but they must unload the boats and carry first them and then the cargo overland.
The portage was no less than three miles. Naturally, Zeno was prepared to make the march. Had his ancestors not tramped the dusty road from Arcadia to Boeotia in full armour to face the Persians and secure the freedom of Hellas at Plataea? Had he ever spared himself as governor of Cilicia? In all weathers he had ventured deep into the mountains to bring justice and the majesty of Rome to boorish and ungrateful villages of goat herders. But this thing today was beyond all reckoning.
The boats had been emptied and a number of small pines felled and trimmed. Ballista, flanked by his two vicious-looking familiars — it was hard to conceive of barbarians uglier than the Hibernian and Suanian — had walked up to where Zeno was sitting pondering the precise metrical requirements of Homeric verse. The barbarian had announced that all hands were needed. If they were to make the portage in one day no one could be exempt — not Zeno’s slaves, not even the imperial envoy himself. So unexpected and outrageous was the demand, Zeno had been unable to reply.
At least he had been spared the hauling of the boats; even Ballista had not dared suggest that. It was backbreaking labour, fit only for a slave. They had to make two journeys, moving two vessels each time. Ropes had been tied to the prows and were then turned around trees uphill to act as pulleys. Some men had heaved on these; others lined the gunnels, leaning into the slope, while two unfortunates put their shoulders under the stern of each boat. The fate of the latter, should the weight prove too much, was almost too horrible to contemplate. Zeno had tried to disassociate himself from the whole wretched business by returning to the technical challenges of composition in the Homeric style. Yet even his trained mind had not succeeded. Both times, the squealing of the keels on the pine rollers and the gasps of the men as they dragged each boat a few feet forward, paused and then did it again had proved impossible to ignore until they were almost out of earshot.