There was more of a swell than before, the sea oilier, but still no airs worth speaking about. The rowers bent to their task. With the current still flowing strong to the east, the Armata forged ahead. They cruised past the mouths of the rivers Sangarios, Hypios and Lykos, past the trading posts of Lilaion and Kales. Bruteddius had intended to try for another long day of rowing, all the way to the harbour of Amastris. But, shortly after they passed the emporion of Kales, the day dulled. A line of dark clouds appeared to the north-east. Sharp buffets of wind started to catch the ship crosswise, outriders of the coming storm. As the trireme skewed, Bruteddius consulted the pilot, then spoke to Felix. The consular needed no persuading. Bruteddius ordered the rowing master make all speed, and the helmsman shape a course for Cape Acherousias and the port of Heraclea that sheltered beneath its high rocks.
They had cut it fine. No sooner had they run into the Soonautes than the river lived up to its name: the ‘Saviour of Sailors’. Walls of wind-driven rain screamed up the estuary and, in relentless succession, flailed across the ship. In the driving downpour, they made the trireme fast, wrestled the storm canvas into position, and huddled ashore.
The northern gale had no intention of relenting. Once, on the second day, Boreas teased them. The wind dropped, the sun even shone. They got as far as getting the rowers to their benches. The storm blew back in from the sea. Chastened, they all scrambled ashore again.
Heraclea was an ancient colony of the Megarians from mainland Hellas. It had all the amusements expected to be on offer in an ancient port city. Maximus and Hippothous, separately, and most of the crew of the Armata in groups, vanished into the backstreets near the wharves. After the abortive attempt to put to sea, Ballista had embarked on an epic drinking bout. He spent the subsequent day recovering. From then, Ballista decided to be more abstemious.
On the fourth day, bored, Ballista employed a local guide and ventured out of the town. On hired nags, the rain hard on their backs, they plodded inland up the road by the riverbank. The Soonautes river had once been called the Acheron. The entrance to Hades was a cave. As soon as he saw it, Ballista realized he had made a mistake. It was the narrowest of clefts in the rock. Inside, it was worse: a dark, twisting passage, slippery and descending precipitously. Sweating, heart racing, he forced himself to inch his way down. After an agony of time, they emerged into a great underground cavern. In the intervals when he managed to stop thinking about the pulverizing weight of rock above him and the narrowness of the passage back into the light, it was not too bad. There was a pool of water, statues, offerings of all sorts. The torchlight flickered atmospherically on the dripping walls. It was cold.
After the Mouth of Hades, they rode up to the tomb of Tiphys, the helmsman of the Argo. This was set high on Cape Acherousias, backed by a sacred grove of plane trees. The monument itself held little interest, but it commanded a magnificent view. Pummelled by the wind, leaning into it, Ballista revelled in the fury of the storm spread out before him, howling all around him. White-topped, great waves rolled down out of the murk. They crashed and roared on the rocks below. The spume, flung high, was snatched away. At the foot of the cliff, the sea had turned yellow. With some terrible, insentient anger, the wind scoured the headland and thrashed the plane trees, wrenching and torturing their branches, threatening to cast them down, god-loved or not.
‘We should go, Kyrios.’ The guide had to cup his hands and yell to be heard. Ballista laughed. The man was frightened. He was a coward. Ballista knew himself neither. He had descended to the Hades of the Greeks and Romans; had mastered his fear. Now, the reek of it was purged from him in the fierce embrace of this clean northern storm. At such rare times, his very own vitality made immortality, in Valhalla or elsewhere, seem certain.
‘ Kyrios, the trees, the horses… it is dangerous.’
Blinking the rain out of his eyes, Ballista smiled at the man, and turned to leave.
Like most towns, and many villages in the empire, Heraclea had an official rest house of the cursus publicus. In his room in the mansio , Ballista was drinking warm, spiced wine with Mastabates. The conditum tasted good. They had a brazier. It was snug, comfortably fuggy. Outside, it was still atrocious.
A tap on the door, and young Wulfstan’s head popped round. ‘That ferret-faced little fucker Castricius is here; big, ginger Rutilus with him.’ The boy spoke in the language of the Angles. He was much recovered.
‘They might understand,’ said Ballista.
‘These Romans and Greeks only learn each other’s language.’
‘Show them in.’ The boy had a point.
‘At once, Atheling.’
Ballista was finding it good to be addressed again by his title among his own people.
Mastabates bowed, blew a kiss to Castricius and Rutilus.
Ballista jumped up and embraced the newcomers. The northerner was glad to see them. Castricius was the older friend – all the way since the siege of Arete – and the more demonstrative. Yet Ballista owed much to both. At Zeugma, Castricius had saved Calgacus, Maximus and Demetrius. At Emesa, without the actions of the two, Ballista considered it unlikely that either himself or Julia and the boys would have survived. Such profundities aside, they were good company. Ballista was easy with them.
There were only two couches. Castricius got on one with Ballista. With just the faintest unease, Rutilus climbed on the other with Mastabates. Wulfstan brought more cups, more conditum.
‘Mastabates here was about to tell me something of where we are going,’ said Ballista.
‘In the Caucasus they live off roots and berries, and all fuck outdoors like herd animals,’ Castricius stated.
‘You have read your Herodotus.’ Mastabates’ words were smooth, complimentary.
Castricius’s small, lined face broke into a grin. ‘No, just what I hear.’
‘Even Maximus would be pushed in this weather,’ said Ballista. ‘Possibly Mastabates might give us a more informed view. Please start with the Albanians. It might help if Castricius loses some of his presuppositions before he tries to bend the king’s daughter over in a field. It might hamper our diplomacy.’
Mastabates bowed, unsmiling. ‘Albania is well watered. There is grass in the pastures all year round. The soil is fertile. But the Albanians lack foresight. They use wooden ploughshares, and only prune their vines every fifth year. Even so, they would be rich, if they did not bury all their wealth with their dead. Yet, oddly, once buried, the dead are never spoken of again.’
Typical of a Greek, thought Ballista, to start with the land; it is always the land that shapes the people.
‘The Albanians favour a Cyclopeian lifestyle; living apart, each making his house where he will. They are a handsome race, large bodied. Most are shepherds but, despite that, they are not particularly ferocious.’
‘How many men can they put in the field?’ Castricius was nothing if not a long-service soldier. ‘How do they fight?’
‘It is said they resisted Pompey the Great with over eighty thousand warriors; more than a quarter of them mounted. They use javelins and bows, but some have armour and fight at close quarters. Often they are aided by the nomads from beyond the Caspian Gates.’
‘And they are ruled by a king?’ Ballista asked.
‘Yes, the king is Cosis. Second in honour to him is his uncle, the high-priest Zober.’
Rutilus broke in. ‘Tell me about the Iberians I will meet.’
Mastabates paused, as if choosing his words from a well-stocked store. ‘They are different; to some extent, more civilized. They have tiled roofs and public buildings. There are four castes in Iberia: the royal family, the priests, the warriors and farmers, and the royal slaves. The next in line to the throne, the pitiax, commands the army and dispenses justice. King Hamazasp has no son, so his younger brother Oroezes is pitiax.’
Castricius laughed. ‘Hamazasp has no son because our Ballista killed him at Arete.’
Ballista remembered the twang, slide, thump of the artillery piece, the long, steel-tipped bolt hurtling away, punching the young man from his horse; arms, legs, the long, empty sleeves of his coat, all flapping like a six-limbed insect. And he remembered Hamazasp. Himself a prisoner; Hamazasp coming into the cell under the palace at Edessa. He pushed down the thought of what had happened, what Hamazasp had nearly done to him; pushed it far down. But if he met the bastard again…
Mastabates was answering a question from Rutilus. ‘… armed like Persians, the ones from the mountains more like Scythians. There are fewer of them than the Albanians, but still tens of thousands.’
‘Finally, what of my Suani?’ Ballista asked.
‘Very dirty people, no less filthy than the Phtheirophagi. They have to import grain from the lowlands. But they are not poor. They pan the mountain streams for gold. There are gems as well. They are ruled by King Polemo.
