They saw to the horses, lit a fire, dried out themselves and the baggage, and ate lunch. Afterwards, while most rested in the shade of some willows, Maximus inhaled some hemp with Rudolphus. The Hibernian had grown to love that stuff.
Hot and dirty, and not in the mood for narcotics or company, Ballista walked back down the gulley to the Tanais to bathe. Down by the water were the remains of a tiny settlement. The jambs and lintel of the doors of the two huts still stood. Their four-square solidity was strange against the rest. The walls were sagging or gone, and above the roofs were partial skeletons of joists and beams. The wattle of the stock pen wall had fallen and unwoven. Its warped sticks were strewn across the dust, while the sets of twin posts that had once held it upright stuck up at crazed angles, white like bleached bones.
Ballista walked through it, held by the common human fascination for desuetude. How did this happen? Where did everyone go? Any portable possessions had long ago been robbed out. The dust sifted grey and fine on his boots. There was no sign of burning, but somehow he had no doubt violence had been involved in its abandonment. There were fish in the river, wildfowl would flight here, the soil was fertile. He had a vision of two hardworking families, models of rustic virtue. Maybe one had a daughter to betroth to the son of the other. They would sacrifice a specially fattened calf for their bucolic nuptials. And then the riders had come. They had steel in their hands, and quite likely they had red tattoos.
The country beyond the river, while still flat, was not featureless. It was patterned with dry watercourses. The sides of these dropped down suddenly, as if they had been cut by the spade of a giant. Greyish shrubs grew in them, back flush to the level of the surrounding grass. They curved like dark tattoos across the face of the Steppe.
That night, Ballista lay watching sheet lightning on the northern horizon. Rain would come soon, Rudolphus had said.
The third day, the Steppe reverted to type, a flat run of brown-black grass as far ahead as could be seen. The north wind had brought down the clouds. Black and without a break, they slid south low overhead. As the travellers rode south-west, it was as if they were trapped between two solid planes, like the hemp between Maximus’s blades.
By noon, it was dark enough to be evening. The thunder welled up in the clouds. The sheet lightning accentuated the gloom with its sporadic flashes of pure white. In one of these Ballista saw three men on ponies riding parallel to them in the south. A quarter of a mile away, half a mile? It was impossible to judge.
‘There are many broken, tribeless men on the Steppe,’ Rudolphus said. ‘More now, after Naulobates’ victory; many Alani, riders from the Sirachoi, Aorsoi, their subject tribes.’ The guide shrugged. ‘Heruli too. Fear made some of the brothers slip away from the fighting. They were fools. It is better to stand up to the arrow-storm and the steel for an hour or two, better to take the wound’ — he held up his right hand, with the truncated digits — ‘better even to die, than live as an outcast. It is a hard life; bad for the soul. Those men have seen our horses and pack-ponies and the baggage. They may try to steal them. But, unless there are many of them, they will not try and fight us for them.’
They made camp early, under a loud, angry sky. Ballista decided they would set pickets. To keep them sharp, prevent any falling into a routine, they would be chosen by lot each evening. After dinner, Ballista and Maximus took the first watch. They sat, cloaks pulled around them, at either end of the horse lines, to the west of the camp.
Ballista could sense the rain in the storm. Nine more days to Tanais, some of them would be wet. A day or two in the town hiring a boat, another day or two crossing Lake Maeotis. Would there be an imperial official with new orders waiting for them in the Kingdom of Bosporus? If so, they might have to winter in Panticapaeum again. If not, they should be able to get passage across the Euxine to Byzantium before the weather closed the shipping lanes. If no mandata awaited them there either, he was minded to journey on by land. The weather would be bad, but he still had diplomata to use the cursus publicus. They could use the imperial posting service up through the Danubian provinces, across the Alps — if the snow had not closed the passes — and report to Gallienus at Mediolanum, assuming the emperor was there with the field army.
He was not unduly worried how Gallienus would receive them. True, he had ransomed no Roman prisoners, and had failed to turn the Heruli against the Urugundi and the other Goths. Yet there was war on the Steppes. Having fought in the Caucasus, he did not think Naulobates and Hisarna were likely to attain a quick victory over the Alani. The remote passes and upland pastures were studded with forts and made ideal terrain for ambush. That was three tribes too occupied to raid the imperium. And half the gold with which he had been entrusted was returning.
The thunder and lightning were spooking the horses.
Time was passing since Ballista had been forced briefly to assume the purple. Gallienus had not had him condemned in the immediate aftermath. There was no reason to think the emperor would do so now. Unless…
Lightning illuminated the whole Steppe with a fleeting brilliance that had no perspective, and was gone in a moment. The blackness after was impenetrable.
Unless there had been an outbreak of usurpations, and the consilium thought a purge was necessary to reassert the authority of the central government. Ballista had been away from the imperial council for a long time. He had never fully understood its inner machinations. Undoubtedly, he had enemies there. Yet he also had friends. The last he had heard, Aurelian and Tacitus still stood high in the favour of Gallienus.
Lightning tore across the sky.
Ballista wondered how Rutilus had got on in his embassy to the other Gothic tribes, the Borani and the Grethungi. Being yoked with the old consular Felix would have been no joy.
Halfway along the line, a horse reared against its tether. Ballista got to his feet, stretching the knots out of his muscles. A figure was at the horse’s head.
‘Maximus?’
A gust of wind snatched the word away.
Ballista walked down the line of white-eyed horses.
There were two men by the plunging horse.
‘Maximus!’ Ballista threw off his cloak, drew his sword. ‘Horse thieves!’
Ballista ran at them. One figure swung up on to the animal, the other holding its head.
‘Maximus!’
The second man jumped up behind the first. The horse bolted.
Something warned Ballista. He turned, weapon ready. A blade sliced towards his head. He parried, and riposted. But the man had leapt aside, and was running off into the darkness.
‘Maximus!’
A dark shape in front. ‘Is that you?’
‘Of course it is fucking me.’
Other men were running up from the campfire.
‘They just got the one.’
The next night, the storm returned, but still the rain did not fall. About midnight, someone shook Calgacus awake.
‘Enough, enough, you ham-fisted fucker.’
Tarchon stopped shaking him. ‘Your turn with the pederast.’
Calgacus clambered to his feet. His shoulder hurt. It seized up when he slept. He yawned, coughed, hawked, spat and farted; all as loudly as possible, inspired by a half-realized resentment at others sleeping when he was awake. The noises were lost in the clamour of the storm.