The Wolves of the North Read Online Free

eyes. Nothing redeeming about that. Eyes were the gateway to the soul, and beautiful eyes concealed what was there, gave proof of treachery. All the evidence scientifically weighed, Hippothous was as convinced as before that Castricius was a bad man, a bad and very dangerous man.
    A burst of loud, unseemly laughter from the head of the hall. It was the king. He was leaning across, roaring at Ballista, patting his leg. The king was drunk. Hippothous considered it unlikely Ballista was having a better time than himself. The big northerner’s face was set in an inscrutable mask of polite attention. In the three years he had served Ballista, despite repeated study, Hippothous had yet to reach a definitive conclusion. All the signs had to be considered, and they led to different, mutually incompatible results. The Hellenized barbarian was a complicated subject. His eyes were heavy-lidded, sloping towards the corners. The master physiognomist Polemon judged that this revealed a man contemplating evil. Yet the eyes were dark blue, almost bluish black, and they shone, sometimes like the rays of the sun. Such belonged to a man of compassion and caution, the latter maybe going as far as cowardice and fear.
    The king was still laughing. Hippothous watched Ballista sigh and look down at his food. Certainly the big man had reason for melancholy. Ripped from his original home in Germania, he wasnow also banished from Rome and from Sicily, from his wife and sons – for whom he showed a striking tenderness. Anyone could see this mission was a dangerous fool’s errand – the sort landed on the very expendable. And there was the curse. The previous year in the Caucasus, Ballista had taken as a lover a princess of the royal house of Suania, a priestess of the bitch goddess Hecate. It had not ended well. As they left, Pythonissa – a modern Medea – had called up from the underworld the most terrible curse on Ballista:
Kill his wife. Kill his sons. Kill all his family, all those he loves. But do not kill him. Let him live – in poverty, in impotence, loneliness and fear. Let him wander the face of the earth, through strange towns, among strange peoples, always in exile, homeless and hated.
    Hippothous thought Ballista might well cast his eyes down and sigh.

II
    The
trireme
had rounded Pataroue point some hours before. They were now not far out from Tanais. The two tribes of the Maeotae – the Tarpeites and the Psessoi – they had been forced to visit were behind them, safely negotiated. It had taken three days. Now the Gothic people of the Urugundi lay ahead, and beyond them the endless expanse of grasslands and the Heruli.
    The wind had dropped to a dead calm. The 170 rowers were earning their
stipendium
as they drove the vessel through the thick, oddly opaque water. The triple banks of oars rose and fell like the wings of some labouring waterfowl, never destined to fly. As the blades came free they were festooned with all manner of weeds.
    Ballista inhaled the comfortingly familiar smells of a war-galley: the sun-warmed wood and pitch of the decking and hull, the mutton fat and leather of the oar sleeves, the stale sweat and urine of the crew. He was seated in a chair behind the helmsman, towards the stern. He would have been as happy to sit on the planking, but the majesty of Rome demanded a certain
dignitas
. Likewise, her never-to-be-denied
maiestas
insisted her envoy be accompanied bya suitably dignified entourage. Ballista looked down the long deck at them. There was his deputy, Castricius. There was his
familia
: Maximus, Calgacus and Hippothous, and the Suanian Tarchon, who had attached himself to them the previous year in the Caucasus. There also were his young slave, Wulfstan, and the two slaves owned by Castricius and Hippothous. Apart from the
familia
there was his escort sent up from Byzantium: Hordeonius the centurion and his ten men seconded from Cohors I Cilicium Milliaria Equitata Sagittariorum by the governor of