‘Herul just means warrior. Our slaves fight alongside us.’
‘You do not blind them?’
Aluith laughed. ‘You have seen them. Why would we do something so stupid? If a slave shows courage, he wins his freedom. Of course, he cannot become one of the Rosomoni, but he becomes a Herul.’
‘Rosomoni?’
Aluith touched the bright-red hair on his elongated head. ‘You are born one of “the Red ones”, the brothers. But several of Naulobates’ leading Heruli warriors were slaves. One was even a Greek slave taken out of Trapezus — imagine that.’
Wulfstan drank some more.
‘We should get back,’ Aluith said.
Wulfstan went to remonstrate.
‘We will practise more tomorrow. I will get you a ring for your thumb.’
The Herul helped Wulfstan to his feet, on to his horse; whistled for his own, and jumped into the saddle.
They rode back together in silence. Wulfstan’s thoughts were full of new ideas of slavery and freedom.
XI
Ballista was riding with Calgacus and Maximus, as he had been for several days. Always travelling, never arriving; the Steppe stretched on without limit. Time stagnated. It took an effort to remember it was only eleven days since the discovery of Mastabates’ body, only fourteen since they set out on to the alien world of the Steppe.
As they trudged into the east, kurgans would appear in the distance. Slowly, the barrows got closer, were passed, and left behind. Watercourses were stumbled upon, each one somehow a surprise. The ox-wagons were braked down hard into the streams, hauled up the other side. Occasionally there would be a glimpse of white up ahead in the distance, a fixed point in the shimmering sea of green. Not until they were on top of it could the travellers tell if it was a boulder or a blanched skull. A lot of cattle and other creatures had died out here.
Ballista watched a lapwing swooping and diving around the head of the column, screaming outrage and distress at the threat to its unseen nest.
‘At least we have not seen hide nor hair of the Alani since the river,’ Maximus said.
‘That means shite,’ responded Calgacus. ‘The dust, the campfires; making only ten miles a day — we could not be easier to follow. There could be any number of the bastards out there tracking us.’
‘Child’s play,’ Ballista agreed. His mood was as glum as any. ‘The main body could hang back miles away. Have a couple of scouts watch our dust cloud from over the horizon; nothing to stop them riding in to have a closer look in the dark.’
‘Not at all,’ Maximus said. ‘A couple of horsemen on their own would not last a night out there alone — the daemons would get them.’
Both Ballista and Calgacus gave him a dubious look.
‘The plains are crawling with daemons and other foul, unnatural creatures. Ochus the Herul told me so.’
‘And you believed him,’ Ballista said.
‘And why not? Your long-headed fellow was born out here. He should know.’
Calgacus made an unpleasant grating, coughing sound — what passed for laughter.
‘Go on, laugh, you old fucker,’ Maximus said. ‘See if you are still laughing when one of them is pulling your guts out, drinking your blood.’
‘Like a retarded fucking child,’ Calgacus muttered.
‘Ochus said that your Gothic witches, like that old bitch with the gudja, go out and copulate with them, breed more of the things. At Ragnarok, a whole horde of them — daemons, half-daemons, all sorts — will come out of the Steppe, kill everything in their path.’
‘I think they might be one of the lesser things to worry about at the end of days,’ Ballista said. ‘Especially once the stars have fallen, the sun has been devoured, and the dead risen — there will be a lot on our minds.’
‘Say what you like, you would not catch me out there at night on my own.’ Maximus was reluctant to give up the otherworldly threat of the Steppe. Something about the strangeness of the landscape encouraged credulity.
‘Fine bodyguard you are,’ Calgacus said.
Maximus rounded on him. ‘You miserable old bastard, only the other day you said the killings might be the work of a daemon.’
‘Aye,’ Calgacus agreed, ‘but I was thinking of a real one, not a silly story. You know as well as me, ever since Ballista here killed Maximinus Thrax, he has been haunted by his daemon. When the other mutineers cut off his head, denied him burial, they condemned the dead emperor to walk. It might have been half a lifetime ago, but Maximinus has eternity.’
Ballista considered this. He had told very few people of the terrifying nocturnal apparitions: Calgacus and Maximus, his wife, Julia, his one-time secretary young Demetrius, and a friend, Turpio. The last was dead.
‘I do not think so,’ Ballista said. ‘It has been months since Maximinus troubled me. When he appears, the daemon offers no violence — just the threat he will see me again in Aquileia. We could hardly be further from northern Italy.’
‘It might be the two of you have forgotten, but we have been cursed by a priestess of Hecate,’ Maximus said. ‘Pythonissa summoned the dark bitch goddess and all her creatures up from the underworld against us.’
‘And you are frightened she might set an empusa on us; one of those nasty shape-shifters that frighten small children. I remember Demetrius mistook a man for one once in Mesopotamia — terrified the little Greek, it did.’ Calgacus’s amusement turned into a coughing fit.
‘Actually, I was thinking more of the Kindly Ones. Dog-headed, snakes for hair, coal-black bodies and bloodshot eyes; you do not want to meet them. Any fool knows the eumenides are relentless.’
Ballista noticed even Calgacus surreptitiously put his thumb between his first two fingers to avert evil. Live long enough in the Roman empire, and it seemed even a Caledonian became a little bit Hellenized.
‘Someone else has been in my thoughts,’ Ballista said. ‘Well… in my dreams really — old Mamurra.’
‘It was not your fault,’ Maximus said, quick as a flash.
‘Aye, you had to do it,’ Calgacus agreed.
They were both far too quick to exonerate. The three rode in slightly awkward silence. Some clouds were coming down from the north. An inevitable vulture was riding the wind very high above the caravan. Below it, a couple of rooks circled. The Steppe ahead was somewhat less flat, beginning to roll just a little.
‘Do you think he could have survived?’ Ballista asked.
‘No,’ Calgacus said. ‘If the collapse of the tunnel did not kill him, the Persians would have finished him off.’
‘No chance at all. For all we know, he was dead before the tunnel came down.’
‘If he had got out, he would blame me,’ Ballista said.
‘There is absolutely no fucking possibility he survived,’ Maximus said. ‘A man could not be more dead.’
‘No one down there would have given him an obol for the ferryman,’ Ballista said.
‘In that case, as I think your Greeks and Romans have it, he would just spend forever waiting by the banks of the river Styx.’ Maximus was waving his hands around to emphasize his point. ‘So he would not be roaming around these empty grasslands chopping up people he had never met.’
‘Shite, you two are as bad as each other,’ Calgacus grunted. ‘Retarded fucking children both of you, imagining things to scare yourselves. It is just where we are. This gods-forsaken shitehole of endless grass is unlike anything we have known, and it is preying on our minds.’
‘Well,’ Maximus said, ‘that and the two dead, horribly mutilated corpses.’
‘I still think it could be three or four,’ Ballista said.
‘Someone is coming,’ Calgacus said.
A Herul was cantering out from the line of the wagons. It was Andonnoballus. He looked very serious.
‘Dernhelm, son of Isangrim, I have a favour to ask.’ The Herul put the palm of his right hand to his forehead. ‘It is on behalf of my brother Philemuth.’
Ballista woke to the thunk, thunk of axes chopping wood. The Heruli and their slaves were using the oxen to drag the timber up from the banks of the small river. The Sarmatian drivers had been deputed to help. The beasts lowed as the whips lashed across their backs.