The ceiling of cloud was getting lower, the day darker. The horses were very tired. They rode on at a pushed canter but sitting straight, well back in the saddle.
When they had not seen or heard those chasing them for some time, Ballista called a halt. No sight of the sun, but he thought it about mid-morning. The mountain horses were tough, but needed spelling. They dismounted, let them drink just a little, led them onward.
The sound of a horn – echoing through the granite hills, impossible to tell how far – drove them to horseback again. They rode on downriver. The threatened rain still did not fall. Out of the murk, high on a terrace, a work of man suddenly would emerge, each one startling in its incongruity. Here a ruined stone tower, there a shepherd’s hut; never anything that offered them safety.
When the horses were staggering, they got down again, walked by their heads.
‘Have we crossed into the territory of Iberia?’ Ballista asked. ‘Will they not turn back?’
‘In the Croucasis, territory is a fluid concept,’ Pythonissa said. ‘Its only meaning is where a ruler can get away with what he wishes.’
‘It has always been a rule that the weak should be subject to the strong,’ Ballista said.
She gave him a strange look. ‘The Athenians in Thucydides. It is easy to forget you have become a Greek.’
‘I have been in the imperium a long time.’
‘If my brother’s men recognized us, they will not dare turn back.’
They struggled on through the afternoon. Riding, walking, riding, walking – the times in the saddle getting ever shorter. It was amazing what a horse or a person could do when forced. Eating, drinking, relieving themselves on the track; even Pythonissa taking but a few steps for privacy. Humanity and beasts rendered near one in extremity.
Eventually, Ballista saw a large, tumbledown stone building off up one of the slopes. They could not go on. They would camp there. He sent Maximus back to the last turn of the valley. He would replace him in a couple of hours. The rest plodded into the ruin. It looked as if it had been a barn. Now, roofless in this bleak place, it seemed a monument to misguided optimism.
They lit no fire. After perfunctorily rubbing down and seeing to the horses, they slumped to the floor. Too tired to eat more than a mouthful or two, they tried to settle themselves to get what sleep they could. The Suanian warrior sat a little apart, sobbing quietly but unceasingly.
‘What is the matter with him?’ Ballista asked not so he could hear.
‘Kobrias is mourning. His brother Oroezes was the one we left behind,’ Pythonissa said.
Ballista could think of nothing to say. He went to sleep.
About two hours later, he woke, cold and stiff in every joint. His first thought was of his sons. He forced himself to saddle his horse, and lead it out to go and take over the watch. Maximus walked his animal to the barn. The rain still had not come. But the clouds were there, blotting out the moon and stars. Even when Ballista had been out some time, visibility was negligible.
It was cold. Ballista wriggled his toes in his boots, kept the hand that was not holding the reins under his coat. He did not want to move too much: it would make him easier to spot. Sometimes, however, the cold forced him to get up, stamp his feet, walk the horse about. He did not really think the hunters would come up in the night. There may be Alani among them, as Maximus had said, but if so the nomads had no spare mounts with them. Their horses would be as done in as those of their quarry.
Time passed incredibly slowly. The river lapped past in the dark. From far away came the sound of jackals; once, the howl of a wolf. He calmed the horse. Ballista sat in the dark on the abysmal hillside. He thought of his sons, his wife. They would be asleep in warm, comfortable beds in the villa in Tauromenium. He wished he were in Sicily with them. Sicily, in these troubled times, the age of iron and rust: he could not think of a safer place. No Roman army had campaigned there since the civil wars as the old Republic died, nearly three centuries previously. No barbarian incursion had troubled the island for much longer. Nothing since the great slave uprisings, and they were what? – three and a half, four centuries ago. He wanted to be at home with his family. As he framed the thought, Pythonissa’s words slid into his mind. It is easy to forget you have become a Greek . But he knew it was not true, not completely true. He would never be wholly a Greek. Yet now he would never again be wholly an Angle of Germania. Separated from the culture of his birth, he knew he would never fully be accepted as either Greek or Roman. Wherever he went he would be in exile. Whatever, all he wanted now was not to be on this dismal fucking hillside in the middle of nowhere.
The eunuch came along to take his place. Ballista took his horse back to the barn. Maximus was fast asleep. The Hibernian twitched and muttered, caught in a dream of who could tell what lubricious nature. Pythonissa and the other Suanian were awake, heads close together, talking. Ballista felt a pang of jealousy. He dismissed it – she was not his woman. At least the barbarian had stopped crying. Ballista hunkered down, fell asleep thinking again about his sons.
They were up an hour before dawn. Kobrias was on watch. They ate, fed the horses. They were tacking up when the Suanian galloped back. The hunters were coming. Still more than a mile before the turn in the valley, but riding fast. Ballista and the others climbed into the saddle, the threat banishing their fatigue.
Pythonissa led the Suanian warrior aside. She spoke urgently to him in their own tongue. Ballista said they should set off. She gestured for him to wait. She spoke some more to the Suanian. The warrior obviously agreed. She passed him a phial. He drank. She embraced him. ‘Now we go,’ she said.
As the others turned their horses down towards the track, the Suanian sat motionless.
‘What is he doing?’ Ballista asked.
‘He will lead them to the barn. With luck, they will think they have trapped us all inside.’
‘Why?’
‘Yesterday he left his brother to die. Today Kobrias will make amends.’
‘He will die.’
‘And save us. He will have made amends. The thing I gave him will keep his courage up.’
They splashed across the stream, and around the next corner, out of sight.
XXVIII
By nightfall, the four riders came to the confluence of the Aragos and another river flowing from the north. Here, Pythonissa said they should leave the valley and strike due east into hills covered in stands of trees. They did not go far before camping. Again, they made no fire but, away from the valleys, in the immensity of the wilderness, their pursuers were unlikely to discover them.
They rode on the next day across gentle slopes of birch, ash and hazel. In the glades were lupins and hollyhocks. The big rainclouds had gone and the day was warmer, alternating between short showers and soft sunshine. They made camp early, mid-afternoon, by a stream fringed with raspberry bushes. Pythonissa showed them how the locals caught trout by digging under the stones to uncover creatures muck like small black scorpions, fitting them to hooks. They bathed in an upland pool. First Ballista and Maximus, then, as they built a fire, Pythonissa and her eunuch.
‘You know,’ said Maximus, ‘some eunuchs can get it up. It all depends on what age they were castrated and how.’
‘You know,’ said Ballista, ‘I could not give a fuck.’
They cooked the trout, ate them with toasted flat bread.
When they had finished, Pythonissa came to Ballista, led him away, back to the pool. They had sex almost fully clothed, without talking. There was a chill to the evening. Afterwards, they lay together.
‘Tell me about your brothers,’ Ballista said.
‘Saurmag and Azo…’
‘No, the two who were killed.’
She was silent.
‘What happened to them?’ he prompted.
‘In Suania, the more sons a warrior has, the more he is thought a man. Often, if a girl is born, they put a
