As Calgacus regarded Ballista, he felt a not unfamiliar stab of jealousy. Ballista had been loved from birth. His mother, of course, but also a fierce pride and affection from his father. Isangrim, war leader of the Angles, had other, older children by other women. Politics, not desire nor love, dictated a man of his position in Germania would most likely marry more than once, sometimes concurrently. His relations had not been good with all his offspring, especially with his eldest son, Morcar. Ballista — Dernhelm, as he was called then — the solemn but affectionate, golden-haired child had been another chance, a chance to make things right.
Calgacus had never known his parents. He had been too young when the Angle slavers came. A faint, half-recalled woman’s face, a strange tugging at his memory with the smell of a peat fire, that was all he had of a childhood.
The Caledonian cuffed the jealousy down like an unruly dog. He had been with Ballista since the boy was little more than a babe in arms. The boy had suffered too. It was not Ballista’s fault, none of it. He had always done his best, tried to do the right thing — by the world, by Calgacus. They could not be closer. Once in a while, they talked openly. Usually, the grumbling on one side, the teasing on the other, both masked and expressed their strong affection. Calgacus loved the man he would always think of as a boy, and knew it was returned.
Calgacus wished he had not made the graceless comment on the boat about freedom. He had been thinking about Rebecca, the Jewish woman, a slave of Ballista’s wife in Sicily. Calgacus had grown close to her. He wanted her freedom; hers and Simon’s, the Jewish boy she had been bought to look after. If they returned from the grasslands, he would ask Ballista for her freedom, maybe marry her. Ballista would grant it, would feel guilty he had not offered it. Old as he was, Calgacus thought it would be good to have a son of his own. He grunted an obscenity. With luck the child would have her looks.
If they returned from the grasslands and the Heruli… The curse lay heavy on Ballista. Let him wander the face of the earth… among strange peoples, always in exile, homeless and hated. Not just on Ballista. Kill his sons… all those he loves. The Suanian Pythonissa was a hot bitch. You could not really blame Ballista for fucking her. But what a choice: a priestess dedicated to Hecate. Calgacus had no doubt the dark goddess of the underworld would heed her priestess. You could never tell how, but he had no doubt the curse would play out some way or another.
The time in the Caucasus the previous year had not been good, and not just because of the curse. For weeks, Calgacus had been besieged by a force of the nomadic Alani in a tiny stone tower, just a few paces across. There had been a few others in that close, evil confinement. Most had endured, the eunuch Mastabates, the young Angle slave Wulfstan among them. But it had done Hippothous no good. By the end, the Greek accensus ’s interest in the nonsense he called something like ‘physiognomy’ had grown to an obsession. Endless drivel about the eyes as the windows of the soul, peering into your face, him watching you unnervingly in odd moments. It had nearly driven Calgacus mad. After but a few days, he would quite happily have killed the man.
Hippothous was not the only one the mountains had changed. Little Castricius had been away in Albania. The gods knew what had happened there, but he had returned altered. There had always been something about him, something secretive and dangerous. Some undisclosed crime had condemned him to the mines in his youth. Against the odds, he had survived, somehow in the face of the law joined the legions, and since risen to equestrian status and high command. He had always joked that the daemons of death were scared of him, that a good daemon watched over him. But now there was a repetition and an earnestness to these claims that was unsettling, that nodded towards madness.
A tall Goth, taller even than Ballista, walked out. He had long hair, and the muscles of his arms were hooped with finely wrought gold torques.
‘I am Peregrim, son of Ursio.’ He spoke the language of Germania. ‘If you are minded, the King of the Urugundi would talk to you now.’
It was dark inside the Bouleuterion. As his sight grew accustomed to it, Calgacus saw it was roughly square, stone benches running up into the gloom on the other three sides. It reminded him of the council house at Priene. But here there were not just a few Greeks in tunics. The benches were packed with armed Gothic warriors.
Halfway up the opposite side, the benches had been cut away. A large dark-wood throne sat there, two ravens carved on the back. On it sat Hisarna, son of Aoric, King of the Urugundi. He was a heavyset man, broad shouldered, in middle age. Across his knees rested a drawn sword; his father’s famous blade, Iron. The king’s name — Hisarna — meant the Iron One. He was a man to be reckoned with, this Woden-born ruler, as his father had been before him. Thirty years ago, the Urugundi had been no more than a comitatus of a dozen or so men who had wandered down from the north, practising brigandage and selling their swords for hire on the shores of Lake Maeotis and the banks of the Tanais. Led by Aoric then Hisarna, they had fought, schemed, negotiated and slaughtered their way to become one of the major groups in the loose Gothic confederation.
‘Dernhelm, son of Isangrim of the Angles, why are you here?’ Hisarna spoke in the language of the north. His voice was surprisingly gentle, melodious.
Ballista replied in Greek. ‘I am here as Marcus Clodius Ballista, envoy of the autokrator Publius Licinius Egnatius Gallienus Sebastos. My kyrios has charged me with ransoming prisoners from the Urugundi and the Heruli.’
Hisarna smiled, and continued in Germanic. ‘A thankless task in both parts. The Urugundi hold no prisoners from the empire. When my nephew Peregrim returned from the Aegean last year, outside Byzantium he allowed the official the Romans call the Procurator of the Hellespontine Provinces to ransom all those he had taken. Those Greeks and Romans who lived in Tanais now are my subjects by right of conquest.’
Ballista said nothing.
‘As for the Heruli, I wish you well trying to reason with Naulobates and his long-headed warriors.’
From the ranks of the Goths came a deep hooming sound of amusement.
Ballista switched to Germanic and spoke politely. ‘Then I would ask your permission to cross your lands, and try my luck with the Heruli.’
‘It shall be as you wish,’ Hisarna said. ‘It may be fortunate for you that you are a guest in my hall. There are men here known to you.’
Some Gothic warriors at Hisarna’s right hand stood. Calgacus saw both Ballista and Maximus stiffen. In the poor light, Calgacus did not recognize them.
Hisarna did not take his gaze from Ballista. ‘Videric, son of Fritigern of the Borani, also is my guest. No bloodfeud will be played out in my hall.’
Calgacus found he was gripping the hilt of his sword. Some years before, Ballista had killed the entire crew of a Borani longship. They would not surrender, so he killed them — shot them down with artillery from a distance, then, when they were past resistance, used the ram of a trireme to finish them off.
‘Videric and his men leave tomorrow,’ Hisarna said. ‘Dernhelm, your men and you will stay in one of my halls by the harbour, until boats are ready to take you up the Tanais river.’
Videric the Borani spoke, hatred tight in his voice. ‘I am a guest in the hall of Hisarna, and would not go against my host. It will not be here, but between me and the slave the Romans call Ballista there will be a reckoning. Let the high gods warlike Teiws and thundering Fairguneis bring the skalks Ballista before my sword.’
Ballista replied, almost wistfully, ‘Wherever you go, old enemies will find you.’
III
There was nothing to do but wait. Ballista did not much mind. It was an experience he knew well. Over the years, he had become used to its ways. Usually, he had been waiting for bad things to happen: for the centurion to take him as a hostage into the imperium, to be admitted into the pavilion of the emperor Maximinus Thrax, to be hauled before a murderous Hibernian chief with designs on the throne of the high kings of that island.