Castricius was a complex case, but a bad, dangerous man. That was what physiognomy was for, to guard against the vices of the bad before having to experience them.
A real master of the science could go much further than generalities of that man is bad, that one good. A real master could read the specific actions that both had been and would be committed by any man. If Hippothous studied hard, devoted his mind to the science, he felt he might achieve that god-like mastery.
A question from Ballista brought Hippothous back from his physiognomic studies. ‘Mastabates, at Heraclea you spoke of a problem at the Suanian court – the widow of the Iberian prince I killed.’
‘Yes, Pythonissa. Despite her name, she is a priestess not of Apollo but Hecate. With her husband dead, there was no place for her in Iberia. She had produced no children and was not needed for the succession. Hamazasp has a brother, Oroezes. He in turn has grown sons, and they are married with sons. Pythonissa was sent back to her father. He proposed marrying her off to the ruler of the lice-eaters. She is a wilful young woman, said to be skilled with poisons. She would not accept the marriage, thought it beneath her. Pythonissa wished to marry her own father-in-law, old Hamazasp, become queen of Iberia, and breed an heir to the throne. Even Suanian sensibilities, such as they are, were revolted by the idea. So she remains, a discontented woman at the court of Polemo.’
Ballista grunted. ‘What of the rest of the royal house of Suania?’
‘We know of no other evident difficulties. Polemo has two surviving sons, Azo and Saurmag. They had a good Hellenic education. There is nothing to suggest a problem.’ Mastabates smiled. ‘Polemo had two other sons. They both died violent deaths, one recently. Nothing surprising there. It is hard to find a subject of Polemo that does not have at least one or two murders to his name.’
XXII
From the fort at Sarpanis to the Caspian Gates, as a bird would fly, Ballista guessed, was not more than one hundred miles. It had taken them fifteen days, and the village outside which they were now halted was still one short stage – maybe five, six miles – from the fortified pass.
Of course, no one in their right mind ever tried to travel in a straight line in hill country, let alone in mountains. Paths sometimes switched from low, clinging to the valleys and water- courses, to high, the shoulders or even the ridgeways. They often made wide detours around ravines or particularly severe slopes, as they tried to thread their way from one pass to another. Yet it was not so much the terrain that had detained them as the natives.
The travelling party was small, ten in all: Ballista himself, Hippothous, Maximus, Calgacus, and Mastabates, with just five servants – the boy Wulfstan; Agathon and Polybius, the slaves Ballista had bought at Priene; Hippothous’s Narcissus; and the eunuch’s man, who was called Pallas. Such a number needed only a small baggage train; the diplomatic gifts they carried were expensive but readily portable. Little was called for in the way of food, fodder or lodgings. Yet the difficulties in procuring these things had been legion. The Roman cursus publicus did not run out here. In this debatable zone of influence, rather than direct rule, it was uncertain if they were still in the imperium or not. Certainly, flourishing purple-sealed diplomata in Latin did not produce animals, men or materials. To achieve anything, coins had to appear, a surprising number of coins. The locals wanted old coins. Given the radical debasement of precious metal in recent imperial coins, that was to be expected, but they seemed to take caution to excessive lengths, preferring coins minted more than two and a half centuries before, in the reign of the first Augustus. Significantly, they were quite happy to take eastern coins, recent Sassanid ones as well as those from the previous dynasty, the Parthians.
Finding the right coins and enough of them had been merely the beginning. Local horizons were narrow. The owners would only let their animals go so far – two, maybe three valleys – then new ones had to be hired. The beasts never turned up on time, sometimes never arrived at all. When they did, either the animals themselves or the price had changed. It was the same with porters for the sections where the locals insisted that the going was too bad for animals, and little different with supplies. The majority of the negotiating fell on Hippothous, with Mastabates translating. The Greek often looked as if he wanted to kill someone, but then, to some extent, the irritation infected everyone. For sure, the delay was shared by all.
Yet when they were moving, out in the country, the early days of the march had been glorious, even uplifting. It was a land of rolling wooded hills and valleys; birch, beech and laurel, with white rhododendrons underneath. There were mists and showers, usually in the afternoons. Sometimes the latter were heavy, but both alternated with soft, warm sunshine. Broad, defined tracks, dappled in sunlight, ran alongside clear, babbling streams.
The villages had been another matter. Walled compounds clustered together, seemingly as much in suspicion of each other as for defence. Each was surmounted by one or more stone towers, tapering and forbidding. There was mud everywhere. Hairy pigs, geese and mangy dogs wallowed in it, or wandered, snapping and posturing in mutual hostility. There were children everywhere. They were half or totally naked, indescribably dirty, faces often bestial. Sometimes, they would ignore the arrivals, carry on playing noisy games involving stealing what little the others might possess. At other times, they joined the adults in silence, their dark stag eyes watchful, all unwelcoming.
The lodgings obtained – an upper room of a tower, the floor of a barn – matched the young in filth. The thick, dark smoke from the fires of moss and pine chips did nothing to discourage the biting insects. At least the food, although monotonous, was wholesome enough: roast mutton or pork, boiled fowl, the meat on flat bread, washed down with goatskin-tasting wine.
Further into the mountains, there were fewer trees: here a sheltered slope of firs, there an upland pool ringed by maple and beech, the occasional, isolated birch. But up there the flowers had come into their own: thick tangles of cream rhododendrons shot through with purple, and banks of yellow azaleas perfuming the air. Underfoot, the turf was enamelled with lupins, bluebells and cowslips.
There were still habitations in the higher reaches. But the party had mainly passed by those lonely, closed-in towers, stark up on their ridges. The locals had likewise ignored them. Ten heavily armed travellers – now the slaves were armed too – might have been a bit too tough a target. The party had camped where seemed good in the open: flattish spaces, as far as possible, with a view all around. It had been cold in the tents, and every night some lost sleep, as a watch had to be set.
It was healthy. So Ballista had claimed. Clean, fresh air, aromatic fires of rhododendron stalks and roots, trout caught by hand in the backwaters, flatbread toasted on the blades of their daggers. Ballista’s slave Agathon was developing into a fine camp cook. Hippothous had not been convinced. The most elementary knowledge of medicine indicated that water from snow and ice was very bad for one; the light, sweet, sparkling part vanished when frozen and did not return. Drinking from these icy upland streams could only lead to gravel in the kidneys, stones, pain in the loins, and eventually rupture. Only Calgacus seemed to give his gloomy prognosis much credence.
One morning, the thick, thick mist had lifted suddenly, and there was the big mountain, still far away, seen beyond a jumble of boulders and between the green shoulders of its lesser brethren, but incredibly massive, snow covered and solitary. ‘ Strobilos,’ the guide had said. ‘Where Zeus chained Prometheus.’ The mountain shone in the sun. In a moment, the mists had returned, and it was gone.
In the clinging, grey vapour, they had been walking up from a deep, green basin. A vague, tall shape shambled down out of the fog. Ballista and the others stopped. Bears were said to be common. They had drawn their weapons. Maximus had actually grunted with anticipation. The fog swirled. In it, the bear had started singing. Realizing it was a man, their guide had said something incomprehensible, and made the sign of the evil eye. The man came forward. Even by the standards of the mountain men, he was ragged and soiled. His body was emaciated. He was bleeding freely from several cuts and abrasions. His clothing appeared to consist of a stained, torn sack. The man had looked closely into Ballista’s face. There was no comprehension in his eyes. He stank. The guide had given the creature food, spoken gentle things to him. ‘One taken by the moon goddess Selene,’ the guide had explained. ‘When the servants of the goddess find him, he will live like a lord for a year.’
‘One year?’ Ballista had asked.
‘One year.’
‘And then?’
