Ballista leant close to Calgacus, put an arm around his shoulder, spoke softly into his ear. ‘I am sorry I have brought you all into this.’
‘You were ordered here. It was our duty to accompany you.’
‘I should have found us a way out before now.’
Calgacus gave a wheeze of laughter. ‘Oh, we are deep in the shite, and believe me, I have been looking for a way out, but I have not seen one.’
Ballista squeezed Calgacus’s shoulder, then stood, stretching until you could hear his joints crack. The big man sat down again to wait.
Maximus, Tarchon and Alaric moved on to discussing hunting dogs and horses. Say what you like about the Alani — and there was much to be said against them — they bred fine hounds. Maximus thought he would try to take a couple back with him. Hippothous and Castricius remained silent, wrapped in whatever clandestine and sanguinary thoughts motivated men like them.
The sun came up, a burnished plate of electrum on the horizon. The sky above the camp was empty, shining and translucent. But the wind had set in the south, and down there a storm was gathering, big black clouds trailing tentacles of night.
In the slanting clarity of the light, even Calgacus’s old eyes could make out the whole battlefield. It was demarked in the north by the camp and the stream. Three miles to the south, he could just discern the dark line of trees bordering a parallel stream. It would all be played out in this wedge of Steppe. It struck him as a small, nondescript place to host any such momentous event.
The horde of the Heruli was easy to see. It was assembled just fifty yards away. Despite all the herdsmen of the outlying flocks having been summoned, the losses from the first battle meant there were no more than fifteen thousand warriors. Unsurprisingly, no further reinforcements had arrived from the subject and allied tribes. The host was arrayed in three equal contingents, each ten deep and five hundred broad. On the left were the Agathyrsi and Nervii led by Artemidorus. The centre was held by Naulobates with the Rosomoni. Pharas on the right commanded what was left of the Eutes combined with the remaining Heruli.
The ponies were in ordered ranks. Through the gaps between the units, Calgacus could see the leaders and their aides walking about, their mounts held by handlers. The majority of the warriors were out of sight, sitting on the ground by the heads of their ponies. Above, banners cracked in the freshening air. Below, innumerable horse tails swished. The latter seemed always to be on the verge of forming some pattern, one that remained tantalizingly beyond comprehension.
Calgacus wondered how hard the Agathyrsi and Nervii would fight. They were not bound to the Heruli by bonds lasting generations like the Eutes. Calculations of flight, or accommodation with the Alani, if not outright desertion, had to have entered the thoughts of their leaders. Defeat bred desertion.
And the ambush of the hunt still nagged him. Someone had to have told the Alani where the Herul battue would end that day, and that someone had to have been a Herul. Naulobates was a reformer; in his own eyes, a visionary imbued with the divine. Not all men welcome either reforms or epiphanies.
The thoughts of betrayal pressed on, almost of their own accord. All that remained of the embassy that had left the port of Tanais was gathered around the wagon on which he sat. Somewhere near — no further than he could toss a bean — was the man who had mutilated the eunuch, the cruel bastard who had murdered young Wulfstan. Unless, of course, it had been the gudja, who was riding with Naulobates, or the soldier killed in the last battle. Or unless the killer had not been a man at all, but a daemon.
Calgacus was glad he was in full armour and that the big Sarmatian warhorses were hitched near the foot of the ladder.
The sun tracked up into the sky, and they waited. It got hotter, much hotter. So much for those Greek writers poor old Mastabates and the others had quoted who said it was always cold up here, and summer lasted but a few days. Calgacus had never liked the nights on the Steppe. The uncanny scale of it always made you feel insignificant, somehow pointless. But on the journey up in the spring he had enjoyed the days. He had taken pleasure in the bright colours of the flowers, in their varied scents. Now there was nothing but friable earth showing through scorched grass, and depressing clumps of brown knotgrass and grey wormwood. The only smell was dust and the bitter tang of the wormwood.
Calgacus again longed to be back in Sicily, back with Rebecca and Simon. The image of him with them in Tauromenium — under a warm Mediterranean sun, all happy — struck him with the intensity of a dream. Its very vividness made him weary.
A gust of wind advanced on them across the Steppe. It raised dust devils. Tall and swirling, they bore down with mindless ferocity, trailing great lateral branches before being torn apart. Behind them, the storm was building; malignant black thunderheads, pierced by points of flickering flame.
‘The scouts are coming in,’ Maximus said.
It took Calgacus some time to locate them. Four black dots, well spaced but converging towards the centre of the Heruli line, where the big banner with the wolves and the arrow flew. There was no point in asking the news they brought to Naulobates.
The others on the wagon stiffened then stood up to get a better view. Calgacus took his time.
Down below, the Heruli stirred. Heads popped up in the serried ranks of the horde as men got to their feet. The leaders swung up into the saddle. Messengers galloped here and there with last-moment instructions or words of encouragement.
The first Alani outriders were moving fast, raising occasional, random puffs of white dust which drifted in their wake before dispersing. At the sight of them, Calgacus felt the familiar tension in his chest.
The outriders reined in about half a mile away, strung out across the field in an extended screen of individuals. From away by the far stream, a broad, dark column of riders appeared. Just behind the skirmish line, the main body divided, fanning out at speed left and right.
Calgacus admired the neatness of the manoeuvre. Where before there had been empty Steppe, a solid battle line was formed. The dust raised coalesced into a shifting, opaque mist. Through it, the colours of individual ponies could be seen, but the riders were a vague blur. Standards floated in the murk, apparently unattached to the men below.
The Alani occupied the same frontage as the Heruli, but even Calgacus could see their formation was deeper. Even more than before, the Heruli were outnumbered.
The south wind was bringing the storm up behind the Alani. The hulk of purple-black clouds was lit from within by vivid stabs of phosphorescence. The first clearly enunciated clap of thunder reached the Heruli.
‘It is very bad,’ Alaric said.
‘It is nothing. Another of those storms of thunder and lightning, but no rain,’ Ballista said. ‘Andonnoballus told me you get them all the time out here in high summer.’
‘A dark cloud over your enemy, a clear sky over yourself — on the Steppe there can be no more forbidding portent.’ Alaric looked downcast.
‘Hercules’ hairy arse,’ Calgacus muttered, ‘this is getting worse by the fucking moment.’
Ballista studied the enemy. The Alani were chanting, brandishing their weapons. The movements and sounds were curiously disjointed. Ballista was searching for the banner with Prometheus on the mountain. He found it in the centre of the enemy line, near that of Safrax.
High, indistinct shouts came across the plain, then the low rumble of hooves and the clatter of equipment. Saurmag’s banner and several others were moving behind the Alani ranks. Through the fresh waves of dust, Ballista could see that the enemy were extending their left flank.