When he was young, he had not been good at waiting. Often, he had prayed to the gods to make it end, or, conversely, to postpone the approaching event indefinitely. In those days, he had had a child’s or young man’s belief that his life had a purpose and a goal; that its course could be determined by his will. He had seen it like the trajectory of an arrow. If he were not the bowman or the arrow itself, he was at least the breeze that could affect the arc and influence where the shaft fell. Forty-one winters on Middle Earth had disabused him of such juvenile fallacies. His life meandered. He went where he was sent. In Greek tragedy, the characters were playthings of the gods. He was at the whim of the yet more immanent gods who sat on the thrones of the Caesars. There was no point fighting. It was best to accept it, and wait.
There were worse places to wait. The hall was new-built, still clean, roomy enough for thirty-three men and two eunuchs. It reminded him of his father’s hall in Germania. There was little privacy, but Ballista knew his desire for it was unusual. The hall overlooked the harbour: both the trireme and the Gothic longships were gone. He watched the shallow draught merchant vessels come and go, listened to the scream of the gulls. Early the first morning, he sat looking at the mist coiling up from the broad, silty river. The trees on the far side grew straight out of the water. There were ducks and moorhens over there.
Later that first day, a Gothic priest came. The gudja was festooned with bracelets, his long hair braided with amulets and bones and other, unidentifiable things. He was followed by a quite exceptionally hideous old woman, hunched and filthy beyond description. The priest said his name was Vultuulf; much beyond that, he was not inclined to talk. He brought livestock for them — some chickens, two pigs and four sheep — and grain: wheat and rye.
By the second day, they had settled into routines to which their interests led them. The official staff, the herald and his like, kept to themselves; the interpreter apart even from them. The centurion drilled his men, stamping bad-temperedly along the quay. Maximus and Castricius each disappeared separately into the inhabited parts of the town, presumably searching for drink and women. Hippothous likewise, although Ballista assumed the human objects of his desire were different. The two eunuchs remained in the recesses of the hall, cloistered close together. Calgacus sat staring out at the river; Tarchon with him in companionable silence. The Suanian did not care to be far from one or other of Calgacus or Ballista since they had saved him from drowning in the Alontas river the year before. When drinking — for him a not uncommon activity — he was given to swearing blood-chilling oaths in very bad Greek concerning his readiness, eagerness even, to repay the debt by dying for them. All reckoned, Ballista thought he had a reasonable chance of it happening, probably quite soon, somewhere out on the Steppe.
Ballista ate, slept and read. There had been few books for sale in Panticapaeum — little enough of any luxury goods, although the eunuch Amantius had spent some of his almost certainly corruptly acquired money on a gilded brooch studded with sapphires and garnets. Of what books there had been, Castricius had bought all the epic poetry. Ballista did not mind. The northerner liked Homer and, last year, sailing the Kindly Sea, he had quite enjoyed listening to Apollonius of Rhodes being read to the elderly senator Felix, but, in general, more recent epic was not his choice. Ballista had purchased cheaply all of Sallust’s Histories and the Annals of Tacitus. He had finished the many rolls of the former during the winter. Now he was reading Tacitus’s account of the reign of Caligula. The hard-edged, practical pessimism of both authors appealed to him. Most human nature is weak, politics corrupt, freedom unattainable, libertas in fact no more than a word.
By the fifth morning, Ballista had had enough of waiting. He called Calgacus and Tarchon to him, and set out to see Hisarna. It had rained in the night. Little rivulets of milky water ran off the hill of ash before the town walls. It steamed slightly in the sun. The Urugundi guards at the gates seemed neither surprised nor interested to see them. At their appearance, however, one of them strolled off ahead of them into the town.
The agora was quieter than the first time. The slaves were still working on the gymnasium, but their efforts seemed desultory, unmotivated. There was no one outside the council house. The door was shut.
Ballista pushed it open, walked in. The big room was empty, the untenanted benches stretching up to the gloomy rafters. The throne of the Iron One was gone. Motes of dust turned slowly in the light from the door.
Ballista sat down, thinking. Calgacus sat next to him. Apparently unnerved by the emptiness, Tarchon prowled about, glaring into the shadows, as if expecting the apparition of a threat.
‘The Borani were here; now they and the Urugundi are gone,’ Ballista said.
‘Aye, it could signify something or nothing,’ Calgacus responded.
‘Bad feeling, Kyrios,’ Tarchon gravely announced. ‘Much malignity.’
With theatrical abruptness, a long shadow was thrown into the Bouleuterion. The gudja stood haloed in the doorway. The sunshine glinted in the things in his hair. The old woman was behind him.
‘Hisarna, son of Aoric, has gone,’ the priest said.
‘Where?’ Ballista asked.
‘To another place. The boats will come for you soon.’
‘When?’
‘Soon. You should go back to the hall.’
‘Why?’
‘It is safer. Many men hate you. Some of the gods hate you. Dernhelm or Ballista, many would rejoice to see you dead.’
There was no point in denying it, no point in arguing.
He was in a hot eastern city. There was dust everywhere. People were running, shouting. Maximus was with him in the street, looking absurdly young.
The men were running out of the hideous dark mouth of a tunnel. They were Roman soldiers. They were running away. Where was Calgacus? The old bastard was over there — thank the gods for that. Soldiers were rushing past, jostling, panic stricken. If Ballista did not give the order, the Persians would take the town. But Mamurra was still down there.
Maximus was shouting something. A soldier knocked into Ballista. There was no choice. Ballista gave the order. Maximus was yelling — no, no, you cannot leave him in there. The men with axes moved forward — the thunk, thunk as they got to work. Calgacus was saying it had to be done — they would kill everyone.
Soil was sifting down from the roof of the tunnel. A sharp series of cracks. The pit props gave. The tunnel caved in. A cloud of dust rolled out.
Mamurra was still in there.
Ballista jerked awake. The dream slipped away like smoke, leaving a feeling of utter dread.
Heart racing, he tried to force his eyes open, fearing what he would see. He looked towards the opening in the hangings, his eyes wide now. Nothing. No tall, hooded figure. No grey eyes filled with hatred. He looked all around the small, curtained-off area. There was no lamp, but enough light from the main body of the hall to see it was empty. Maximinus Thrax was not there.
Ballista had had just sixteen winters when he had killed the emperor at the siege of Aquileia. Maximinus Thrax had been a tyrant, a savage tyrant. But Ballista had sworn the military oath to him. He had broken his sacramentum. The other mutineers had decapitated the emperor’s corpse. Since then the daemon of that terrible man had pursued Ballista. The appearances were infrequent, but utterly petrifying. Ballista’s wife said it was nothing but bad dreams brought on by exhaustion or stress. It was easy for Julia. She was an Epicurean. Ballista was not. But he wished she was right.