‘I would take it myself, but they are your men.’
‘Yes,’ Ballista agreed. ‘They are my men.’
They brought him his own bow, the one he had loaned to the slave down by the river, and gave him some space to concentrate.
A bright, sunny June day, not much past noon. As hot here as it would be in Sicily. A steady wind from the north. He would have to allow for that. The grass shimmered in the nearly three hundred paces between him and the twisted figures on the stakes. Silkweed and side-oats waved above grass. He drew the composite bow — two-fingered, back to the ear, sighted down the shaft — released, and missed. The arrow slid past the right of the central figure. He had overcompensated for the breeze.
The second arrow missed as well; same side, a touch closer. The third took the man in the leg. Ballista killed him with the fourth. In all, it took nine arrows to kill the three men. It took quite a long time.
When he had finished, Ballista walked alone down to the stream. Calgacus followed him at a distance. Ballista sat and stared out across the water. Calgacus sat not far away and watched him. From things Maximus had said, Calgacus imagined that Ballista might be thinking about hauling the haruspex off Tarchon’s horse and leaving the diviner to his fate. Right from the start, from the days by the Suebian sea, Calgacus had said Dernhelm was no natural killer. He had always said that. Now, the boy was a man called Ballista, as proficient a killer as varied training and extensive experience could make. Yet, in some ways, nothing had changed.
Maximus walked down to where Calgacus was sitting. ‘The Alani are stirring.’
‘How long?’
‘No great hurry. Their outriders are just leaving the camp.’
Calgacus nodded and levered himself to his feet. Hercules’ hairy arse, his shoulder hurt. ‘You go back. I will fetch him.’
Ballista was looking away, his gaze fixed a distance upriver. Some birds were darting among the reeds. They were small, fast; maybe a brace of snipe. Calgacus could not tell. ‘The Alani,’ he said.
Ballista looked at him, a question on his face.
‘Plenty of time. The main body is still in the camp.’
Ballista motioned for Calgacus to sit down. ‘Herodotus says the nomads blind all their slaves; presumably, to stop them running away. He must have been misled. Having blind slaves would not work. The herald would not have found our camp. It is hard to think of a worse place for a slave to make a run for freedom. There is nowhere to hide on the Steppe, except for the grave mounds that have been opened and in the watercourses.’
Calgacus said nothing. He had long grown used to Ballista’s oblique approaches to what troubled him.
‘A story in the Toxaris of Lucian is set out here, on the Tanais river. The Scythians lose their camp and herds to a surprise Sarmatian attack. A Scythian warrior — I forget his name — is among those who escape. But his blood-friend has been captured. I do not remember his name either. The one who escaped goes to ransom his blood-friend. The King of the Sarmatians laughs in his face. What will he use for ransom, as the Sarmatians have already taken all his possessions? He answers his own body. The Sarmatian king says he will only take a part of the ransom offered — he will take his eyes. The Scythian lets himself be blinded. Somehow, the two swim the Tanais to safety.’
Calgacus sat, waiting for Ballista to talk himself out.
‘But does the story end well? Inspired by the sacrifice, the Scythians rally and defeat the Sarmatians. The two friends live out their days honoured by their people. But the one who was ransomed cannot bear to see his friend’s sightless eyes. Maybe the empty orbs are a constant reproach to him. Anyway, he plucks out his own eyes. Presumably, they sat out the rest of their lives in the wagons with the women and the children, in their shared darkness.’
Ballista stopped.
‘What happened to the staff,’ Calgacus said; ‘it was not your fault.’
‘Not even Porsenna the haruspex?’
‘From what Maximus says, he was endangering Tarchon’s life; all of your lives. You did what you had to do.’
‘You always find a path to it not being my fault.’
Calgacus frowned, obviously framing his words with care. ‘Not always. The things you did the year before last in Cilicia — those you did not have to do. Torturing the Persian prisoners — or at least your pleasure in the torture — killing the Sassanid king’s eunuchs in cold blood, raping his concubine Roxanne; you did not have to do any of those things. But at that time you thought your sons and Julia had been killed by the Persians. Your grief and desire for revenge had driven you mad.’
‘So, again, you would say it was not my fault,’ Ballista said. ‘If you had been a Greek, you could have been a Sophist.’
Calgacus wheezed. ‘You read too many Greek books.’
Ballista smiled at his old friend. ‘I was reading Euripides back then in Cilicia; I have not read him since.’
‘The Alani will not wait for your philosophizing.’
‘Euripides was not a philosopher. He was a poet, a tragedian.’ Ballista got up, and helped Calgacus to his feet.
‘Probably much the same bollocks,’ Calgacus grunted.
‘In some ways,’ Ballista said.
The Alani arrayed themselves in a loose but complete circle around the wagon-laager, all mounted, about three hundred paces out.
‘The battue,’ Andonnoballus said. ‘The hunting formation of the Steppes. It drives the game into the centre.’
‘So, they are thinking to hunt us down like animals,’ Tarchon said.
‘No, for us it will be different.’ Andonnoballus seemed remarkably cheerful. ‘I imagine they will ride in fast, putting a lot of arrows in the air. They will come close, maybe only twenty paces from us. Some will stay in the saddle, shooting. Behind them, the rest will dismount. The ones on foot will move into…’ He struggled for the right word in the Greek he was speaking. ‘Into chisel formations — is that right, chisel? The pointed thing sculptors use?’
‘Yes, chisel,’ Ballista said.
‘Good. Then they will storm the laager in chisel formations.’
‘How many points of attack?’ asked Ballista.
Andonnoballus laughed. ‘I have no idea. But as there are so few of us, providing they attack in at least two places, they will overrun us.’
Doomed, Calgacus thought, fucking doomed. And it was odd Andonnoballus could recognize the poetry of Sophocles, but claimed he was not sure of the Greek for ‘chisel’. Strange people, these Heruli.
‘But,’ Andonnoballus said, ‘I do not think the gods will let that happen. I have been observing the heavens. From the flight of birds, I know the gods are watching over us. And I heard a wolf howl not long ago.’
‘And that is good?’ Ballista questioned.
‘Very good,’ Andonnoballus replied.
Not far away, the other surviving one of the Rosomoni, Pharas, was laughing. He seemed at ease, content with the way things were. From the other side of the laager, the last Herul, Datius, looked across with comparable equanimity.
Out of their minds, Calgacus thought. Absolutely fucking out of their minds. Surrounded, outnumbered beyond measure, in the middle of nowhere, and a wolf and a few birds convince them we will be fine. Had they not noticed the Steppe was full of fucking birds, probably lots of wolves too? It was certainly full of fucking Alani warriors. Obviously, having your skull bound into a point as a baby did something to your brain.
‘What are they up to now?’ Maximus asked.
‘They are going to sacrifice some of our oxen,’ responded Andonnoballus.
‘Sure, I could do with some roast beef myself,’ Maximus said.
Ignoring the irreverence, Andonnoballus, who seemed now in an expansive mood, decided to explain the ritual. ‘You see the naked sword? It catches the sun, just to the right of the oxen. That is Akinakes.’
‘I had a horse called that once,’ Maximus said.
‘The Alani, like the ancient Scythians, are simple, childish in their religion. They worship but two gods: Anemos and Akinakes. They say there is nothing more important than life and death. So they worship Anemos and Akinakes because Wind is the source of life, and the Sword the cause of death.’ Andonnoballus pointed to one of the drivers. ‘Their Sarmatian cousins hold the same view.’