Free The Wolves of the North by Harry Sidebottom

the
Choephoroi
.’ The interpreter was rapidly becoming insufferable. ‘After she has got Aegisthus to murder Agamemnon, Clytemnestra mutilates the body of her husband.’
    Ballista was sure he was not the only one to be thinking of another wronged woman with murder in her heart. Pythonissa was not far away in Suania, just beyond the Alani; and her brother Saurmag was with the nomads.
    ‘You will find it is better known from the
Electra
of Sophocles,’ Mastabates stated. ‘But I still think there is something more pertinent somewhere in epic.’
    Ignoring the bookish Hellenes, Ballista concentrated on the mutilations. The cuts and slices were neat, as if done with practice. That was not at all good.
    ‘Someone must know who he is,’ Maximus said. ‘Who is missing from the Roman party?’
    ‘My slave was not in the tent just now, when the noise woke me,’ Castricius said. ‘I have not seen him yet.’
    ‘Is this him?’ Ballista asked.
    The short Roman put his sharp, pointed face very close to the ghastly face of the corpse. ‘It could be.’
    The fog did not lift that day, nor the next. Under it, the camp was subdued, out of sorts. The clammy entrapment was part of it, but more was down to the after-effects of the debauch. There was much idle speculation, but the death of the slave secretary seemed not to weigh that heavily on most, not even on his owner, Castricius. Urugundi guards were posted, and most felt the death was not their concern. Slaves often died – of disease and deprivation, at the hands of their owners or each other; the free were above such things.
    Wulfstan was in attendance on Ballista. Both days, the bigwarrior mostly remained in his tent, Maximus and old Calgacus with him. As men with hangovers do, they ate and drank vast amounts, shifted about desultorily. Maximus moved on to wine mid-morning of the first day – a hair of the dog, nothing like it to straighten you out; the other two did not join him. Conversation in the tent was disjointed, rambling, but, like a dog returning to its own vomit, always circled back to the killing.
    ‘It is not the style of the Goths,’ Ballista said. ‘Videric and his Borani would come straight for me. They would think less of themselves if they did not pursue the bloodfeud openly.’
    Maximus belched. ‘I am thinking it is more likely the Alani, or that evil Suanian bastard Saurmag, or maybe his poisonous sister. The mutilation would appeal to your girl Pythonissa. As the Greeks said, you could see a woman’s spite there.’
    ‘Loving a woman is like setting out over ice with a two-year-old colt, restive and unbroken.’ Calgacus was sometimes given to wheeling out the proverbs of the north. ‘Of course,’ he added, ‘it may be nothing of the sort. The slave was in Albania with Castricius, his fate could have followed him from there – it is not that far. Your little Roman has not been the same since. It was after that he started claiming to be Macedonian, and we all know the little shite is from Gaul; and all that bollocks about daemons – the good one that sits on his shoulder, and the spirits of death being shite-scared of him. He is as gone in the head as Hippothous with his physiconom …’
    ‘Physiognomy.’ Ballista wondered if Calgacus could say the word if he chose. He picked at some chicken. ‘And it could all be something else altogether.’
    Wulfstan was up before dawn on the third day. In the night, a north wind had torn the fog away. There were spits of rain in the air. He prodded the fire back to life, cooked breakfast forBallista and the other two: bacon, lots of it, fresh bread, and thin ale.
    When a weak sun came up he went down to the river to wash the mud and blood from Ballista’s clothes. The water was still, like a black, polished stone. A carp flashed out in the stream, the ripples of its passing spreading wide. A big Urugundi warrior on guard watched it in a bored way
    This was not the life Wulfstan was born to live.