heard was the hiss of the torch.
Be a …
The sword thrust down. Pain like nothing Mastabates had known. His body arched. He could not scream; could not breathe. He was choking on his own blood. Dimly, he noticed his own legs drumming on the ground. Blackness in all the corners of his vision. Horribly swiftly, the dark edged in, and closed over him.
IX
‘The same killer,’ Ballista said.
None of the men contradicted him. There were eight of them in the tomb: five Romans, Castricius, Maximus, Hippothous, the centurion Hordeonius and Ballista himself, the Gothic
gudja
, and two Heruli, Andonnoballus and Philemuth. There had been many more, a packed crowd, gawping. Ballista curtly had told Calgacus to herd them out. Ballista knew his temper was short, and he knew why: thousands of tons of earth poised above his head, and the only ways out two long and narrow, obviously unsafe tunnels dug by robbers. He would have given a lot to be able just to leave.
The scene in the chamber did not help. It was infinitely macabre. The freshly mutilated corpse lay among the bones of ancient violence. In the torchlight, the shadows of the living shifted on the rough walls as if souls already halfway to flitting like bats in Hades. All too easy to imagine being trapped here for eternity.
‘Why stuff the body parts under his armpits?’ Maximus asked.
‘Offerings to the infernal gods,’ Hordeonius replied. ‘As we offer the heart, liver and organs of a sacrificial beast. The murderer turns his victim into a sacrifice; turns away the anger of the gods, buys their protection.’
‘Or something more practical,’ Ballista said. ‘A daemon cannot accuse you with no tongue, cannot harm you with no hands.’
‘And cannot fuck you with no cock,’ Maximus added. ‘Although that might not be too much of a problem with a eunuch.’
‘The murderer will kill more than just slaves,’ Ballista said.
‘Possibly not – the eunuch was a freedman,’ the centurion said. ‘Once a slave, always a slave. You can always tell. I remember being in the baths at Byzantium. It was in the
apodyterium
, I was just putting my clothes in a locker.’
Ballista let Hordeonius run on. The fumes of cannabis and alcohol were still in his head. It was easier to think without having to talk. Both bodies had been found outside the camp. The first could have been killed anywhere. It had drifted down the Tanais. The blood showed that this one had been killed in the corridor of the tomb. Mastabates was unlikely to have ventured outside the camp on his own. He had to have been lured out.
‘The man barged past me, almost knocked me over. Not a word of apology.’
Mastabates would not have left the camp with a stranger, certainly not to this ghastly place. The killer had to be travelling with them. But who?
‘So I punched him to the ground. His slave came at me, so I knocked him down too. Beat them both like dogs; used my fists, feet, a wooden clog.’
And why?
‘You see into a man’s soul when you beat him.’
Of course, the killer might be in the pay of an outsider. Not the Borani. Somehow, it was not the way of the Goths, not the northernway of doing things. It could be Safrax, the King of the Alani. Certainly, he would hold a grudge from his defeat at the Caspian Gates. But, on such grounds, it was much more likely either Saurmag or Pythonissa; a prince denied a throne, and a woman scorned. The Suanian royal family were brought up in a world where murder was common currency. They prided themselves on their ingenuity in killing: poison, steel, drowning, suffocation. And Pythonissa had cursed him with that terrible curse.
‘He was nothing but a dirty little freedman from Lycia who had made some money.’
Yet the killer’s motives might have nothing to do with the outside. Like his person, they could be contained inside this strange caravan plodding across the Steppe.
‘Even naked, as we all were, I could tell what he really was.’
Ballista
Be a …
The sword thrust down. Pain like nothing Mastabates had known. His body arched. He could not scream; could not breathe. He was choking on his own blood. Dimly, he noticed his own legs drumming on the ground. Blackness in all the corners of his vision. Horribly swiftly, the dark edged in, and closed over him.
IX
‘The same killer,’ Ballista said.
None of the men contradicted him. There were eight of them in the tomb: five Romans, Castricius, Maximus, Hippothous, the centurion Hordeonius and Ballista himself, the Gothic
gudja
, and two Heruli, Andonnoballus and Philemuth. There had been many more, a packed crowd, gawping. Ballista curtly had told Calgacus to herd them out. Ballista knew his temper was short, and he knew why: thousands of tons of earth poised above his head, and the only ways out two long and narrow, obviously unsafe tunnels dug by robbers. He would have given a lot to be able just to leave.
The scene in the chamber did not help. It was infinitely macabre. The freshly mutilated corpse lay among the bones of ancient violence. In the torchlight, the shadows of the living shifted on the rough walls as if souls already halfway to flitting like bats in Hades. All too easy to imagine being trapped here for eternity.
‘Why stuff the body parts under his armpits?’ Maximus asked.
‘Offerings to the infernal gods,’ Hordeonius replied. ‘As we offer the heart, liver and organs of a sacrificial beast. The murderer turns his victim into a sacrifice; turns away the anger of the gods, buys their protection.’
‘Or something more practical,’ Ballista said. ‘A daemon cannot accuse you with no tongue, cannot harm you with no hands.’
‘And cannot fuck you with no cock,’ Maximus added. ‘Although that might not be too much of a problem with a eunuch.’
‘The murderer will kill more than just slaves,’ Ballista said.
‘Possibly not – the eunuch was a freedman,’ the centurion said. ‘Once a slave, always a slave. You can always tell. I remember being in the baths at Byzantium. It was in the
apodyterium
, I was just putting my clothes in a locker.’
Ballista let Hordeonius run on. The fumes of cannabis and alcohol were still in his head. It was easier to think without having to talk. Both bodies had been found outside the camp. The first could have been killed anywhere. It had drifted down the Tanais. The blood showed that this one had been killed in the corridor of the tomb. Mastabates was unlikely to have ventured outside the camp on his own. He had to have been lured out.
‘The man barged past me, almost knocked me over. Not a word of apology.’
Mastabates would not have left the camp with a stranger, certainly not to this ghastly place. The killer had to be travelling with them. But who?
‘So I punched him to the ground. His slave came at me, so I knocked him down too. Beat them both like dogs; used my fists, feet, a wooden clog.’
And why?
‘You see into a man’s soul when you beat him.’
Of course, the killer might be in the pay of an outsider. Not the Borani. Somehow, it was not the way of the Goths, not the northernway of doing things. It could be Safrax, the King of the Alani. Certainly, he would hold a grudge from his defeat at the Caspian Gates. But, on such grounds, it was much more likely either Saurmag or Pythonissa; a prince denied a throne, and a woman scorned. The Suanian royal family were brought up in a world where murder was common currency. They prided themselves on their ingenuity in killing: poison, steel, drowning, suffocation. And Pythonissa had cursed him with that terrible curse.
‘He was nothing but a dirty little freedman from Lycia who had made some money.’
Yet the killer’s motives might have nothing to do with the outside. Like his person, they could be contained inside this strange caravan plodding across the Steppe.
‘Even naked, as we all were, I could tell what he really was.’
Ballista
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