Harry Sidebottom
The Wolves of the North
Prologue
(Panticapaeum, The Kingdom of the Bosporus, Spring AD263)
This god Death takes many shapes and puts at our disposal an infinite number of roads that lead to him.
The killer stood in the empty courtyard, sniffing the air, listening. The smell of charcoal, the distant sounds of metalworking; there was nothing untoward. The house, like all in the row, was long abandoned. Yet it had been worth checking; derelict buildings attracted drunks, vagrants, and — a grimace crossed the killer’s face — lovers with no place else to go.
The sun was shifting down towards the great West Gate, towards the double walls and ditch which repeatedly had failed to protect the city of Panticapaeum. In the opposite direction was the acropolis. There the thin spring sunshine caught the Pharos that no one dared light for fear of the ships it might draw, and the temple of Apollo Iatros, the home the archer-god had proved unwilling to defend. In front of these symbols of a threatened Hellenism spread the fire-blackened, much repaired palace of the King of the Bosporus. Rhescuporis V, Lover of Caesar, Lover of Rome, styled himself Great King, King of Kings, and much else. The surrounding barbarian nomads knew him as the Beggar King. The killer felt nothing but pleasure in the evidence that evil men brought evil on their own heads.
It would be easy now just to walk away. But night would soon fall. If the necessary actions were not taken, the killer knew only too well what the dark could bring. The self-appointed Hound of the Gods, the Scourge of Evil, walked back into the house.
The corpse lay on its back, naked in the rectangle of light shaped by the door. The killer went to a leather bag, and drew out a piece of string, a scalpel, a knife with a serrated blade and a big cleaver like those used in the meat markets. Hard experience had taught these terrible things were necessary.
The killer laid out the instruments in a neat line by the corpse, and considered them. Better to do the delicate work first. The other way around, and muscle fatigue might cause a nasty slip. There was no point in delaying. The horrible things had to be done. Even in this run-down area of the town, delay might bring discovery.
Taking up the scalpel and kneeling over the body, the killer made an incision the length of the left eyelid. The honed steel cut easily; blood and fluid seeped. The killer pushed the thumb of the hand not holding the blade into the wound, worked it around and down, and drew out the eyeball. It came free with a sucking sound. When the orb was well out of its socket, a neat stroke of the scalpel severed the optic nerve. Although there was a reasonable length of the bloody cord, it proved difficult to tie the string around the slippery, repulsive object.
The Hound of the Gods did not pause, but got straight on with the other eye. Night was approaching, and there was much to be done.
The killer removed both eyes and secured them to the string then exchanged the thin scalpel for the more robust knife with the serrations. The latter were a help. A human tongue was remarkably tough, and there was so much gristle to saw through with the nose, ears and penis. The heavy cleaver came into its own with the butchery of the hands and feet.
It was done, the extremities removed, tied to the string, packed under the armpits. The killer was tired, daubed in gore. Just one last thing. On hands and knees, head right down, the Hound of the Gods licked up some of the blood from the corpse, and spat it out. Three times, the iron taste of blood, disgusting in the mouth, and three times the retching expectoration.
‘Barbaric! Gods below, how could anyone do such things?’
Khedosbios, the eirenarch of Panticapaeum, did not reply to the new recruit. Instead he looked around the big, desolate room. Shards of amphorae, some recently smashed, lay about. In a corner, an indeterminate pile of sacking and wood was mantled in dust. There was an old mattress in the opposite corner, unpleasantly stained. No other furniture, no graffiti, no clothes, implements or weapons. There was nothing of note except the horror lying on its back near the middle of the floor.
The magistrate turned his attention to the corpse. ‘Not barbaric at all. In some ways, fitting.’
The young man of the watch accepted the correction without demur.
Khedosbios crouched down by the body. At least the weather was still cold, and there were not many flies. He took one of the hideously truncated legs in both hands and pulled, manipulating it this way and that. He did the same to an arm. Seemingly satisfied, he lifted the head a little and withdrew the string from underneath. It was stiff with dried blood. Deftly, he unpacked the body parts from under the armpits. They were similarly bloodied, but slimy beneath the dark crust. Stepping back, he ordered the two public slaves to wash the corpse.
As the libitinarii got busy, Khedosbios sluiced one of the severed hands with water and carefully examined it. He had been appointed eirenarch just the previous year. He was young and only dissimulated his ambition when he thought it served. Since childhood, learning his letters with the Iliad, the example of Achilles had always been with him: Strive ever to be the best.
The libitinarii stood back. The reek of mud and blood was strong in the room now. Khedosbios gave the detached hand to the recruit, and got back down over the corpse. His boots squelched in the newly formed sludge. No matter, only a fool would go to the scene of a murder in anything other than old clothes. Khedosbios scanned the body from the cut ankles upwards. He found nothing of interest on the limbs or torso; the man had been cleanshaven. Khedosbios tipped back the chin and studied the purple groove running around the neck. Then he prised the jaw open and inserted his fingers into the bloody ruin of a mouth, delicately feeling about.
Standing again, he told the libitinarii to turn the body over and wash the back.
‘Who founded this city?’
Thrown by the unexpected question, the recruit was a moment answering: ‘The Milesians.’
‘No, before that, in the age of heroes.’
‘Medea’s brother Apsyrtos. He was given the land by the Scythian King Agaetes,’ the boy said with a certain civic pride.
Khedosbios nodded and crouched low. He peered at some small purple blotches on the back of the corpse, wondering at their meaning. Then his fingers traced several rows of tiny indentations. Close inspection revealed they were linked by faint white lines.
The eirenarch got up and wiped his hands on his already stained Sarmatian trousers. ‘When Medea and Jason had stolen the golden fleece, her father sent Apsyrtos after them. When her brother caught them, they murdered him and dismembered his body. It is in the epic Argonautica by Apollonius of Rhodes, although I do not remember anything about the tongue or penis.’
‘Why?’
‘To stop the daemon pursuing them. How can a spirit follow with no feet, or hold a blade with no hands?’
‘No, Kyrios, why in real life?’
‘Is there a difference? Rich, eupatrid families forge an ancestry going back to Agamemnon or Ajax. Perhaps the Romans are right: we Hellenes live too much in the past. Reading too many books can be dangerous.’
‘He was strangled?’ The recruit politely phrased it as a question.
‘With a ligature. He was a slave.’
‘The rough, calloused hands?’
Khedosbios smiled. The boy was keen. ‘Not really; many free men have the like — farmers, stevedores. No, it is the scars of old beatings on the back, and the teeth.’
‘The teeth, Kyrios?’
‘Slave bread is made with the sweepings. It is full of husks, grit — wears the teeth down.’ Khedosbios recognized hybris as a vice, in himself as in others, but at times the paradigm of Achilles overcame his avoidance of the pride that found expression in the belittling of others.