‘The north wind that quickens their mares?’ Ballista said.
‘And the wind that is their breath. They are simple people. They build no temples. Nothing but thrust a drawn sword into the ground. See, now they are offering the blood of the oxen to Akinakes.’
‘The Heruli do not worship Akinakes and Anemos?’ Ballista asked.
‘Of course we do.’ Andonnoballus sounded surprised. ‘But we are not so foolish as to ignore all the other gods: Air, Earth, Sea, Springs, Woden, Orestes, Abraham, Apollonius, Christ, Mithras. There are many, many gods. All must have their due. My…’ He paused. ‘My king is a most devout man. Naulobates has summoned holy men from different religions to his court. This summer, they will debate their beliefs in front of him; Persian mobads, Christian priests, Platonic philosophers, Manichaeans. He asked Mani himself, but he could not come. Perhaps it will happen while you are in his camp.’
‘A delight to anticipate,’ Maximus said, straight-faced. ‘If we survive today.’
Andonnoballus laughed again. ‘Have I not told you, the gods have their hands over us.’
The great war drum of the Alani began to beat. Akinakes having had his fill of blood, the ring of warriors began to whoop.
‘Not long now,’ Andonnoballus said.
Castricius ran up from the zereba. As he did, the whooping of the Alani faltered.
‘Over the river,’ Castricius said, ‘the Alani are moving. They are riding away.’
‘Did I not tell you?’ Andonnoballus said.
The war drum lost its rhythm and was silent. Anxious shouts replaced the exultant Alani whooping.
As Calgacus watched, the Alani formation broke apart. In moments, the nomads were dashing away to the south. In no order, individual horsemen scattered like so many terrified animals before a brush fire.
Andonnoballus turned to the north. Like a great wave born in the depths of the ocean, a wall of dust bore down on them. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of cavalry riding fast, bright banners flying in the choked air above them.
‘The wolves of the north,’ Andonnoballus said. ‘The Heruli are come.’
XXI
Maximus checked the girths of his mount and the packhorse. He kicked the latter hard in the stomach. It let out the breath it was holding. As he tightened the strap, it tried to bite him. It was a wilful, cunning brute. The Herul who had handed it over had said as much.
They were all nearly ready to leave. The scale of things, the speed with which everything had happened, had staggered them all, Maximus as much as the others. Less than forty-eight hours before, he had been reconciling himself to death. Not a bad life by his own lights. He had travelled the world, had his fill of drink and women. Not what a philosopher would call a considered life, but he had been a man. All that had remained was to die like a man by the side of Ballista and that old bastard Calgacus. He loved Ballista. There were worse men to die with than the ugly old Caledonian. Maximus had always known it had to come.
Then the ground had trembled and the air had been filled with the thunder of hooves and the yip-yipping of the approaching Heruli. A lifetime of experience had allowed Maximus to judge there were almost exactly two thousand of them. They were riding two deep in a line that swept over a mile of the Steppe. Standards alive with tamgas and wolves snapped above them.
And then something almost more wonderful had happened. The Alani, the majority of whom had been fleeing south, came haring back. Some fool in the wagon-laager had called out, What were they thinking, had the gods driven them mad! It should have been obvious to a child. The keen eyes of Maximus had looked beyond them and spotted it straight away — the mile-wide cloud of dust coming up from the south. It had been the work of moments to find the matching clouds rolling in from east and west.
The Alani, careless in their good fortune, had been transformed from arrogant hunters of men to the hapless human quarry at the centre of an enormous battue. Afterwards, the Heruli said, with much plausibility, that not a single Alan had escaped. Many were killed, shot down in high spirits. Yet 107 survived to be taken prisoner; among them the chiefs with the horsetail and tamga banners.
Dismounted, the Alani had been divested of their weapons and portable wealth, often including their belts and boots. Several suffered unpleasant indignities after Maximus had mischievously suggested they hid coins up their arses. That very afternoon, sullen and often a little bloodied, they were put to work. One detail collected the dead. It was a demanding task. There were more than two hundred corpses, spread widely across the Steppe. Around the laager, those killed the day before were becoming noisome in the June sun. After the members of the caravan had salvaged what of their belongings had not been spilt, bloodstained or otherwise ruined by being enlisted as part of the barricade, a second group of Alani was set to breaking up the wagons. As this progressed, the final detachment had moved from gathering brushwood and begun to build pyres. As the Sarmatians took their dead away for inhumation, there were three pyres. Two were small, one each for the fallen Heruli and the Romans. The final one was for the Alani. Although it was large, clearly it would not be able fully to consume the number to be cremated. No one but the Alani seemed to care, and their opinion had been of no account.
The work had gone on through the night and into the next day. Relays of Heruli wielding their vicious horsewhips had ensured it never ceased. The pyres had been lit at midday. By late evening, they had been able to rake the smaller two. The bones were collected and placed in any suitably sized, suitably reverent vessels that happened to have survived the fighting. These were then stowed in panniers strapped to some of the numerous packhorses.
It was not at all the same with the Alani dead. Even now, the following day, Maximus could see places still burning in the heart of the big pyre. At the extremities, where the fire had retreated, were half-burnt bodies. These attracted no more than macabre curiosity. Only their kinsmen would have mourned, and the surviving Alani could no longer see the sight.
As soon as their labours were complete, all but three of the Alani had been herded into a line. Surrounded by Heruli, they had been roped together by the neck. One by one, they had been hauled to the block. Each was held down. An akinakes rose and fell. A hideous scream. Sometimes it took more than one blow. The Alan’s right hand was severed. Another blade was pulled from a brazier, the hot steel pressed to the stump. The next Alan — struggling, kicking — was dragged into place. The akinakes rose again.
It had taken a long time, blunted five akinakes, but it was nothing to what had happened next. Four of the Alani had died; of fear, the shock of it, loss of blood, or — Tarchon suggested — humiliation and despair. The remaining ninety-nine mutilated Alani again had been pulled forward one by one. Maximus had not stayed to watch. He had seen many dreadful things over the years. Before the walls of Arete, the Persian mobads had poured boiling oil into the eyes of their Roman prisoners. He had crossed the river with Ballista and Calgacus and ridden north out on to the Steppe to avoid witnessing the blinding of the Alani.
Not all had shown such delicacy of feeling. Hippothous, Castricius and young Wulfstan had stayed to watch. The surviving soldiers had regarded it as a good spectacle, initially. Yet even they, by the time Maximus and the other two returned, had become quiet.
The Alani were haltered together in a long file of mutilated men. They had been ordered to move. Whips had cracked above their heads. In a sightless world of pain, they had shuffled slowly forward in response to the rope around their necks. The Heruli had left one man with a single eye to guide the others.