The Wolves of the North by Harry Sidebottom

Author:Harry Sidebottom
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3, epub
ISBN: 9780141935263
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

XX

Calgacus had taken longer than the others to get up on to a wagon. It was not just the splint on his right arm impeding him; when he moved, things deep in his shoulder grated together painfully. None of the demented running, clambering, jumping or fighting had helped. And he had long accepted he was far from young.

Finally achieving a point of vantage, Calgacus peered out across the plain. He was not going to admit either to the pain, or that he could see little apart from a blurred cloud of dust that marked the retreating Alani horsemen.

‘Quite a few of them are carrying wounds,’ Maximus said.

‘But, again, they are leaving their dead,’ Andonnoballus said. ‘They will return.’

As they watched the Alani ride away, Ballista and Andonnoballus discussed what had happened, re-creating in detail the ebb and flow of events.

Calgacus had no patience with such futile endeavours. The face of battle was no stranger to him. Battle was nothing but chaos, every man isolated in his own few yards of fear and exertion. Every participant saw a different battle. Yet, afterwards, some primal urge forced the survivors to impose a pattern, to tell a clear, linear story. It was as if their own memories lacked the necessary validity unless they could be placed within something generally agreed.

‘Their plan was sound,’ Ballista said. ‘They made two diversions; one across the watercourse, the other some mounted skirmishers looking like they might attack the centre of the wagon line. These tied down some of our men, while their two main assaults came in on foot at either end of the laager.’

Calgacus watched three vultures coast in just outside the laager on their feathery wings. All their grace was lost when they came to earth.

‘And it nearly worked,’ Ballista continued. ‘At the western end they were fighting hand to hand around the wagon of the gudja. Here in the east they got inside the defences. If we had not blocked the breach and killed the few already inside, it would have worked.’

‘But it did not work,’ Andonnoballus said. ‘There is nothing nomad horse archers hate more than trying to storm a wagon-laager, even if it is defended by only a few desperate men.’

‘It is not just on the Steppe,’ Ballista said. ‘There is nothing harder in the world than taking any fortification manned by just a handful of brave, well-equipped men who will obey orders and dig in their heels. The casualties of the attackers will always be horrendous.’

The Alani had indeed suffered many casualties. No fewer than thirty-nine nomadic corpses were counted. Luckily for the prospects of the majority of these Alani in the afterlife, the three surviving Heruli were too tired and too busy to scalp and strip the skin from the right arms of more than a couple each.

Only eight of the defenders had fallen: the Heruli Ochus and Aordus, three soldiers, including the one who had been lying already close to death in their wagon, and three Sarmatians.

For the moment, all the corpses were given the same treatment.

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