‘Maybe half an hour to dawn,’ Calgacus said.
Ballista had slept for a couple of hours. In that time, the wind had dropped altogether, and it had clouded over. The moon was hidden. The sky now was a uniform blue-black, except for a few rents in the clouds where it was a translucent yellow-tinged blue. With no wind, the Steppe grass had ceased to sing. Other sounds had come to the fore: the lapping chuckle of the stream, a background chirring of insects — it was a warm June night — and the strange whistling of those large mouse- or squirrel-like rodents that seemed to inhabit every hollow in the Steppe. Now and then, a horse stamped or coughed.
With difficulty, Ballista got to his feet. Allfather, he was too old for this. Forty-one winters on Middle Earth; far too many to be sleeping on the ground in a war shirt of mail. He walked, stiff in every joint, to the thorn fence. He pulled up his mail, fumbled with the clothes under it and pissed on the zereba.
When finished, he walked back and sat down heavily next to the old Caledonian.
Calgacus passed him a beaker of warmed, watered wine.
‘Thank you.’ The northerner sipped. It was too hot to drink. Calgacus passed him some dry biscuit and a hunk of cold fat bacon. Ballista put the bacon on the leg of his trousers; it was no time to be over-fastidious about grease. He dipped the biscuit in the drink and, as each bit softened, nibbled it.
‘Anything?’ Ballista asked.
‘Horsemen moving from the little camp over the river, about an hour ago.’
‘How many?’
Calgacus shook his head. ‘It had already clouded over, black as Niflheim.’
‘And they were leaving the camp opposite us?’
‘It sounded like they went to the big camp to the south.’
‘Any sign of men withdrawing from there?’ Ballista asked.
‘No.’
They sat in silence. Beyond the wine and the bacon were other smells. The Alani dead had not started stinking yet. There was the scent of clean water, of leaf mould, of crushed grass. Against the bitter aroma of wormwood were other, sweeter scents of those flowers not yet scorched by the heat of summer. The smells of horse and unwashed humanity may have been there, but Ballista could not tell; he was inured to them. The smell of the bacon was there. It came to dominate. Ballista started to gnaw at it.
The Alani had not asked for a truce to reclaim their dead. That was not good. It meant they were going nowhere. They had moved some horsemen from the camp opposite Ballista to the main one. It might help Ballista’s men, but was not good for those holding the wagons.
Ballista could not see how the main defensive line might be improved. The wagon-laager would be near impossible to move or burn, and it would be slow and difficult to get across. Its real weakness had no remedy: there were too few defenders. In each of the six wagons were a Roman soldier and one of the Sarmatian drivers; except the third from the left, which had two Sarmatians but no soldier. In four of the five fortified gaps between the wagons, one of the Heruli was stationed; two of them, Ochus and Datius, were carrying wounds. In the last gap on the right, the gudja had taken post, thus freeing Andonnoballus to move about as the commander.
Andonnoballus had with him the two slaves owned by the soldiers to act as runners. The arrangement was the product of much thought and discussion. It was the best they could do. But it was desperately inadequate. There was no reserve. There were just far too few men.
Behind the clouds, the eastern sky had lightened a little. A lone bird began to sing. Almost inconspicuously, others — dozens, then hundreds, if not thousands — joined, until, before the listeners really noticed it, the air was full of birdsong.
‘Do you think the Sarmatian drivers will fight to the death?’ Calgacus asked. ‘They are kin to the Alani.’
Ballista did not reply at once. He was still listening to the dawn chorus, trying to hear any sounds beyond it that signified danger.
‘The Urugundi have their families. While the gudja lives, they must fight.’ Calgacus answered his own question.
‘Even if the Gothic priest falls, and the old witch too, it is too late for the Sarmatians. They have no more freedom in the matter than we do,’ Ballista said.
With the coming day, the wind returned. The rents in the cloud were ripped wider, revealing a sky turned pale, silver-gold. Soon, all that was left of the blanket of the dark were isolated clouds fleeing south, the tattered survivors of some celestial rout.
As the light improved, Ballista, Calgacus and every man in the beleaguered laager peered out across the Steppe. Rather than serried ranks of Alani, their mounts literally champing at the bit, there was nothing to be seen except the quiet, dark shapes of the two nomad camps and the smoke rising above them.
The defenders watched and waited. The Alani presumably took their breakfast. The mingled smells of woodsmoke, dung burnt as fuel, and food drifted over.
‘After yesterday, they are reluctant to attack,’ Wulfstan said. He sounded at once both hopeful and disappointed.
‘It may well be,’ Ballista said. ‘But it also means they think they have plenty of time.’
‘And that means Naulobates’ ugly fucking Heruli were nowhere fucking near by last night,’ Calgacus said.
‘They are nomads; they travel fast. They could outrun the news of their coming.’ Ballista felt he had to say something encouraging.
When Arvak and Alsvid, the horses of the sun, hauled the bright chariot over the horizon, the Alani stirred. A dozen outriders rode out of the camp in front of Ballista and formed a screen. The rest followed, forming up into a compact body under the tamga standard, out of bow shot. There did indeed seem fewer of them than the day before.
The Alani standard bellied out in the north wind. The tamga looked a bit like an upside-down Greek omega with a stylized bird perched on top. Ballista wondered if it had any meaning beyond signifying this particular nobleman.
A messenger, one of the soldiers’ slaves, ran up and told Ballista that much the same was happening at the other camp. There, the Alani had split into three divisions; one aimed at each end of the wagon-laager, one at the middle. There were fewer riders in the latter group.
Ballista thanked the messenger, told him what little news there was and sent him back to Andonnoballus. The main attacks would come here across the river, and at either end of the line of wagons.
The Alani across the river remained where they were.
Maximus started laughing. ‘Keeping out of harm’s way today,’ he called. Ballista and Wulfstan joined in the laughter.
‘Why are you fuckers giggling like girls?’ To Calgacus’s eyes, the Alani were an undifferentiated blur.
‘The priest or nobleman Ballista shot in the leg yesterday is summoning their gods again,’ Wulfstan said. ‘He is rather further away, and hardly in front of the others at all.’
The deep percussion of the nomad war drum carried across the plain. It reverberated in every man’s chest. High, peeling horns rang out. The enemy trotted forward.
The Alani set to with their customary whooping. The handful of Heruli answered with their high yipping sound.
‘Are you ready for war?’ Ballista’s battlefield Latin carried across the martial sounds of the Steppe.
‘Ready!’ The familia and the auxiliaries huddled in the wagons shouted back. The voices of the latter were muffled and faint.
‘Are you ready for war?’ Three times the call and response rang out. Yet it was a thin and insubstantial thing against the nomadic uproar. Ballista wondered if the traditional Roman battle call had ever been heard so far out beyond the frontiers. This was not the imperium, but another world. This was barbaricum, and it demanded something else. His youth in Germania told him a battle can be won or lost in the shouting, before a blow is struck.
‘Out! Out! Out!’ Ballista bellowed the age-old war cry of the Angles. Wulfstan, Calgacus and Maximus picked it up. ‘Out! Out! Out!’ Tarchon shouted something similar. Ballista wondered if the Heruli behind him heard, and if it held any folk memories for them.