Of the second development I am almost too frightened to write. While we were still in camp on the Tanais, twelve days before the kalends of June, the body of a slave owned by Gaius Aurelius Castricius, deputy to the Legatus, was found in the river. It had been horribly mutilated. Just six days later, the morning after we encountered the Heruli, my colleague Publius Egnatius Mastabates — my only amicus in this cavalcade of savagery — was discovered in an ancient barbarian tomb. He too had been cruelly killed and his body desecrated. One of the barbarians laughed and said it was just a eunuch, easy to replace. Some bloodthirsty killer or daemon preys on this caravan and, as the victims are but slaves and eunuchs, no one cares. May the gods hold their hands over me.
In camp on the Steppe, by my reckoning seven days before the ides of June but, on the Steppe, even time becomes uncertain.
XII
Maximus was glad he had not had to kill the old Herul Philemuth. It was a couple of days ago but, oddly, still on his mind. It had not done Ballista any good. Maximus remembered Calgacus talking one night when they were drinking. Where had it been? In Ephesus? No, before that. Maybe it was one of those small, ravaged towns in Cilicia. No, it was Cyprus; Keryneia in Cyprus. It was in the small bar with the blonde with the generous mouth. What was she called? Callirhoe, or something like that; claimed she was a high-born virgin who had been kidnapped. Likely story, she went at it like a sparrow when you got her going — and everyone in the world knew how depraved sparrows were; worse than quails. When Maximus had come back from his first bout with her, Calgacus had started going on about how Ballista was not a natural killer, unlike Maximus. The old Caledonian was drink-taken, but he might have been right.
Killing had never bothered Maximus. It was what warriors did. If you did not want to be a farmer and shovel shit, or a slave and be fucked up the arse, you learnt how to fight and kill people. There had been little call for sophists or philosophers in Hibernia, and Maximus was hardly cut out to be a priest.
Most of the men Maximus had killed had been trying to kill him. And the others? Well, most men were vicious bastards. Probably, they were better off dead. It could be he had done them and those they would have run into a good turn. Anyway, Calgacus was on thin ice — he had never shown any inclination towards turning the other cheek, like one of those demented Christians.
Cutting the elderly Herul’s throat seemed to have upset Ballista. He had not been himself since Pythonissa cursed him the year before. Having to kill Philemuth had made him worse. He could still make the odd joke, but something boyish in him had been lost. He looked withdrawn, glum. He rode along with the expedition like a passenger, caught up in it by mistake, rather than the leader it required. He needed something to take his mind off the Herul. Maximus was worried about Ballista. He could think of nothing better than a fight to bring Ballista out of his passivity, to bring him back to himself.
Of course, part of it was that Maximus owed a great debt to Ballista. The Angle had purchased him from a gladiatorial troop. Most would consider that a good turn beyond price. But it was not all that. Maximus had not minded fighting as a gladiator. Actually, he had enjoyed the applause of the crowd. Killing men in the arena, on a battlefield; what difference did it make? He had slaughtered people in all sorts of strange places. His mind wandered to the enormous aqueduct outside Nemausus in Gaul. Nasty, long way down for the fellow.
It was nothing to do with the arena or any of that. The debt was more recent. It went back to Africa. Ballista had saved his life there. Maximus could still picture the moment clearly — losing his footing on the marble floor, his sword jarred out of his reach — always attached it by a wrist loop since then — the fierce brown face, the raised sword, and Ballista cutting the man down.
Maximus had sworn he would not take his freedom until he had repaid Ballista. Yet he had accepted manumission anyway, on a burnt hillside among the remnants of a defeated army. They had all thought they were going to die. But that made no difference. They had not died, and the debt still existed. Maximus would settle it with Ballista one day. They were bound together, and, if truth be told, Maximus loved the man. It was that simple.
They were riding, the three of them, with the Suanian Tarchon tagging along behind. They were well to the north of the dust and noise of the column. Young Wulfstan and Ochus were yet further out. The Heruli were still trying to help Wulfstan master the nomad draw from a galloping horse. Ochus now took over when Aluith was needed elsewhere. The Steppe spread all around. It was less flat here. There was a wind. The grass rolled in waves. Flowers flashed on the dark-green surface. The Steppe looked like an ocean when the sun was on it, but the storm was swelling.
Ballista and Calgacus were banging on the same drum about the murders.
‘It was a lone madman,’ Calgacus said.
‘If I were you, I would not be so sure,’ Maximus put in.
‘Not more daemons,’ Ballista said.
‘Yes, lots of daemons. It is not just your male daemons fucking horrible Gothic harridans. Hippothous told me about the nomads. They descend from Heracles mating with a female daemon out on the Steppe. And her relatives are still out here. You are riding along, in the middle of nowhere, and there is a beautiful woman. She shows you her tits — fine, they are. She gets you all stirred up. You jump off your horse, ready to jump on her. And what do you find? Not a nice warm delta ready for the ploughing, oh no. From the waist down, those daemons are snakes. And they crush you to death. Your body starts to go rotten in an instant.’
Calgacus rolled his eyes in comic exasperation.
‘I hear the same thing happens quite often in Libya,’ commented Ballista.
‘Hippothous may be off his head, but sure he has prodigious learning,’ Maximus said.
‘The killings are the work of a madman.’ The Caledonian addressed himself to Ballista. ‘You say it is all in some old Greek books, but only the insane would mutilate men like that in reality.’
‘Who?’ Ballista asked.
‘There is no shortage of probable lunatics among our travelling companions,’ Calgacus said. ‘That gudja; bones in his hair, muttering incantations all the time, claims he talks to the other world. Come to that, there is the hideous haliurunna with him.’
‘She looks a bit old and feeble to be strangling and stabbing grown men, even if it is only eunuchs and slaves,’ Maximus said. ‘And there is all the effort of cutting them up afterwards.’
‘If she really is a witch, maybe she gets one of your endless daemons to help her,’ Calgacus replied. ‘And what about that centurion Hordeonius? Nasty bit of work, and he hates slaves and eunuchs with a vengeance.’
‘We do not know anything about the interpreter Biomasos, the haruspex Porsenna, or any of the official staff,’ Ballista said. ‘And the same goes for the auxiliaries. Apart from it is a certainty there are a few frumentarii among the two groups.’
‘It could be Hippothous,’ Maximus said. ‘Always peering into your face, he is, going on about seeing people’s souls. Or Castricius — do not get me wrong, he has been through a lot with us — but all that stuff about the good daemon on his shoulder scaring off the spirits of death. And who knows what happened to him in Albania? If you ask me, they are both as mad as each other; as demented as a follower of Bacchus or Cybele, or whoever it is who cut their own balls off.’