The Wolves of the North Read Online Free Page A

Moesia Inferior. And then there was the official staff: the eunuch freedmen Mastabates and Amantius, the interpreter Biomasos, the herald Regulus, two scribes, two messengers, and Porsenna the
haruspex
to read the omens. Six more slaves, variously owned, brought the number of souls to thirty-five.
    Ballista looked with particular disfavour at the group of officials around the eunuchs. At least two of these functionaries were bound to be
frumentarii
, imperial agents tasked with spying on him. Unless, of course, one or more of the
frumentarii
were hidden among the auxiliary soldiers. In an age of iron and rust, Roman emperors trusted no one. Once, long ago when they were young, Ballista and Gallienus had been held together at the imperial court as hostages for the good behaviour of their fathers. One father had been an important Roman senatorial governor, the other a barbarian war leader beyond the frontier. Ballista and Gallienus had become close, friends even, despite their origins – Gallienus had always been unconventional. But the elevation of the latter to the purple had banished such intimacy. Any trust that had survived had been killed when circumstances two years earlier had demanded Ballista himself briefly be acclaimed Augustus. That Ballista had set aside the purple in favour of Gallienus within days, and sent any number of letters containing oaths of loyalty since, had done nothing to revive it. Ballistarealized he was lucky to be alive. So were all his
familia
, including his sons and wife.
    ‘I am still surprised that Polybius would run.’ Ballista spoke to no one in particular, more to take his mind off his wife and sons far away in Sicily than desiring an answer.
    ‘No mystery to it at all,’ Hordeonius the centurion said. He rapped his vine-staff of office on the deck in an assertive way.
    Ballista came back to his surroundings. Vaguely aware of Wulfstan nearby in attendance, he had not really noticed the approach of the centurion, Maximus, Calgacus and Hippothous.
    ‘No point in asking,
Dominus
,’ Hordeonius said. His abrupt, overtly military style of speaking had almost driven out the last vestiges of a North African accent. ‘Slaves are all the same – unreliable, untrustworthy rubbish. Every one of the whiplings would run, if they had the courage. Worse than soldiers; they have to be kept down by fear. All slaves are the enemy. Only the shadow of the cross keeps them honest.’
    What Ballista had seen of Hordeonius so far had not endeared him. The centurion was of medium height, broad and physically powerful, with a face that promised little understanding but limitless brutality. Hordeonius’s men saw him as a petty, short-tempered tyrant. He probably saw himself as an old-style centurion: let them hate as long as they fear.
    ‘Sure, you do like a generalization, Centurion,’ said Maximus. ‘Consider where they come from. Some are born to slavery, others poor, unwanted babies exposed on dungheaps and raised by heartless slavers for profit. Then there are criminals condemned to the mines and the like.’
    ‘It makes no odds, they are all rubbish,’ Hordeonius snapped. ‘Slavery makes its mark, and not just whips and brands. It deforms the soul of a man enslaved.’
    ‘Are you saying my soul is deformed?’ Maximus spoke quietly.
    Ballista watched Hordeonius’s face. He could see the retorts rising up, nearly escaping the cage of his teeth.
    ‘I was taken in war. There was a ring of dead at my feet, when I was struck from behind.’
    Ballista smiled. It was not how Maximus always told the story of the cattle raid in Hibernia. In more comic versions he was running away, sometimes caught with his trousers down on top of his enemy’s wife.
    ‘Slavery is nothing but a roll of the dice,’ Maximus concluded.
    ‘Not so, Marcus Clodius Maximus,’ Hippothous interjected. The Greek launched into a philosophical discourse. ‘What the world calls slavery and freedom are nothing of the sort;