It was the day after the assembly, and Maximus knew he should not attend the ritual. But something compelled him. If he had been Castricius, or maybe Naulobates, he would think it was his daemon. Ballista and Calgacus had been so strong against him going, Maximus had lied. He had said he needed to ride out on the Steppe to get far away from it, to make sure he was not tempted to intervene. He had ridden south out of the main Heruli camp but then had circled back, crossed the river and passed the meadow. The burial ground was in a copse. He stopped at the tree line, where the horses were hobbled. Through the foliage, he could see a crowd on foot: twenty or so Heruli, mostly Rosomoni. He could see Olympias.
The day Andonnoballus had come to their tent, Maximus had visited Olympias for the second time. She had seemed pleased that he had come. They had made love. She had seemed to enjoy it. Yet, afterwards, when they talked again, there had been a strange distance about her, some deep sadness in her eyes. It had been the same every time he went to her tent. On the fourth visit, he had asked her what was wrong. She had looked at him with surprise, and simply said she was the widow of Philemuth. It had taken a moment for Maximus to remember the old Herul; the one Ballista had been asked to kill out on the Steppe.
Later that night, Ballista had told him what would happen. Maximus had ranted against the perverse innovations of Naulobates. He would not let it happen. They could not just stand by and let it go ahead. Ballista had said there was nothing they could do. This was not a new thing thought up by the deranged First-Brother. The Heruli had always had customs not in accord with those of other men. They had done the same in his grandfather’s day. It had been one of the things that made the Heruli notorious in the north. If Olympias laid claim to virtue and wished to leave a fair name, she would go through with it. It would be her choice. They could do nothing.
Maximus sat on his horse and watched. Philemuth’s weapons were spread out on the grave where his bones lay. They were garlanded with flowers. His favourite warhorse was led forward. It was dappled in the sun. The Heruli sang. Maximus was too far away to catch the words. A long blade flashed, and the horse bled and died by the grave.
Maximus heard the riders coming up behind. He did not look round. Ballista and Calgacus reined in on either side.
‘Do not fear,’ Maximus said, ‘I will not do anything.’
Ballista put a hand on his shoulder.
Maximus watched Olympias step forward. She was dressed in white, golden ornaments in her dark hair. She stood straight. She spoke words he could not hear.
Two other women helped Olympias up on to the bench under the bough. She put the noose over her own head. The other women adjusted the knot. Olympias kicked the bench away herself.
Maximus watched her feet kick, until the two women caught her thighs and pulled hard down.
Four days after the death of Olympias, in the meadow across the river, Naulobates, war leader of the Heruli, sat on the hide.
At dawn, a bull was brought forth. Naulobates had killed it with an axe. He had skinned and butchered it himself. His wounds had constrained his movements. Others had built the fire, wheeled out an enormous cauldron, erected it on a tripod and filled it with water. Naulobates had put in the joints, and lit the fire.
While the smoke billowed, Naulobates had spread the hide of the bull. He sat cross-legged on it, his hands held behind his back, like a man bound by the elbows.
The first day, when the meat was cooked, one by one the leading men of the Heruli had come. There were ten of them. Andonnoballus, Uligagus, Artemidorus and Aruth were among their number. Each had taken a portion of meat and eaten it. Having finished, each placed his right boot on the hide and pledged to bring one thousand horsemen of the swift Heruli to the gathering.
The following days had seen the great men of the tributary and allied tribes pledge men according to their numbers and ability. There had been chiefs from many peoples. First had come the Eutes, the grandsons of men who had followed the Heruli down from the Suebian sea. Second had been the Agathyrsi, their swirling blue tattoos as intricate and dense as the red patterns that blossomed on the skins of the Heruli. Next had been the fabled Nervii. They wore the skins of wolves, and were said once a year to change into those terrible animals. After these had come the leaders of tribes along the Rha river — Ragas, Imniscaris, Mordens — all the way to the Goltescythae of the northern mountains.
After the chiefs came less reputable men. These lean, scarred warriors were from no recognized tribe. Each had a comitatus of no more than a dozen at most behind him. The uncharitable might call them bandits. Naulobates did not. He spoke to them with courtesy. Their men helped bring the number of his war band to near twenty thousand.
Seven days Naulobates had sat upon the hide. He had not moved from it. On the hide he had slept. On it he had eaten the food men brought him, and defecated in the bowls they took away.
Ballista had been there throughout, watching. Although it might put himself and his familia at risk, he had resisted the unspoken pressure to place his right boot on the hide. He was the envoy of the Roman emperor. He was an Angle; the grandson of Starkad, who had driven the Heruli from the north. He may have been used to start this war, but he had no intention of fighting in it.
The sun was sliding down in the west. The ritual would end at dusk. Ballista reflected on it and on the strangeness of the Steppes. Let him wander the face of the earth… among strange peoples. Some things among the nomads had proved to be exactly as Greek and Latin literature had led him to expect. The Agathyrsi and the Heruli painted themselves and shared their women. Other things had turned out very differently. Herodotus had written that the nomads blinded their slaves. Far from mutilating them, the Heruli offered them brotherhood, if they showed valour.
The sky was the purple of a bruise that goes down to the bone. No one had placed their boot upon the hide that day. But the crowd was not diminished. It had about it a curious, unfulfilled demeanour.
Ballista had read in Lucian of the sitting on the hide. But Lucian had been writing of the Scythians of at least two centuries earlier. Had the ceremony survived on the Steppe, surviving changes of peoples, somehow hibernating and waiting for the Heruli to adopt it? Or had Naulobates himself also read of it? Certainly, he and his son Andonnoballus had read many books. Had Naulobates also read Lucian, and decided the long-dead, maybe fictional ceremony would fit very well into his God-given reforms? It was too simple merely to think how literature reflected life; to judge how accurately a book captured reality. It could all go the other way. Things in books could alter the real lives of individuals and peoples.
A stir in the crowd broke the path of Ballista’s thoughts. ‘He is come,’ someone nearby said, ‘the Iron One.’ A thickset figure emerged.
Hisarna, son of Aoric, King of the Urugundi, scooped up a little morsel of meat from the stew and chewed it. He unsheathed his father’s famous sword Iron and placed his right boot upon the hide. In his melodious and gentle voice, he pledged ten thousand Gothic warriors.
Between Hisarna and Naulobates passed the look of men whose deep-laid plan has come to fruition, unspoilt by neither gods nor men.
XXVI
The Steppe was dry by late July, the grass yellowing and beginning to wither. The passage of nearly twenty thousand men and over forty thousand horses could not be hidden or disguised. The dust rose up around them like thick smoke, as if one of the great cities of the imperium, Ephesus or Antioch, was burning. The wind arched it high across the southern sky. There was no way the Alani could fail to know they were coming. Even if the gods struck blind every spy and scout they possessed, the noise of the army carried several miles downwind, and a man with any fieldcraft could put his ear to the ground and feel the reverberations further away still.