The Wolves of the North by Harry Sidebottom Page B

young slave, Wulfstan, was sitting up front alongside the Sarmatian driver. Hippothous had approached him before, the previous year back in Byzantium. The boy had turned him down flat, using words the servile should not utter. Hippothous had not taken much offence, none of it to heart. He knew the reason. The youth had been forced and mistreated by several owners before Ballista. Still, time had passed. His own slave, Narcissus, was getting past his first bloom. The young barbarian was more than attractive; he was beautiful.
    Hippothous put himself out to be charming. It was hard to make yourself heard over the cacophony of the wagon. Although studiedly polite, the boy quickly made it abundantly clear he was uninterested. Rejection never sat well with Hippothous, especially dished out twice by a slave. Outwardly maintaining an affable demeanour, talking lightly about trivial things, he turned the searching eye of a physiognomist on Ballista’s pampered pet.
    The boy did not have the form of a typical northerner. While he was tall for his age, with the expected red-blond hair and blue eyes, his skin did not look rough to the touch, nor did his ankles appear thick. In some ways, he was close to a pure Hellene: erect posture, beautiful in face and appearance, a squareness to the face and a slimness in his lips. His head was finely proportioned, between small and large, from which one could judge intellect, perception and clemency. His ears also were evenly proportioned, which showed alertness. His hands were well made, with the broad white nails of understanding and memory. He was heavy in his speech, a sign of sadness but also of long-lasting ambition and strong desire. But, as ever, it was the eyes that were the key. The eyes are related to the heart, and it is through them you look to the conversation of the soul.
    The youth’s beauty would blind many, but to the close scientific study of a trained physiognomist his eyes revealed the terrible story of his soul. His cow-like blue eyes inclined downwards and had a shade of green; the eyes of one vehement in thought and force, a lover of killing, a lover of blood. His eyes were flurried, with much movement – the eyes of one governed by a rebellious and angry daemon; a vengeful daemon which will visit harsh trials upon him and all those around him.
    ‘Ahead! Heruli!’ The voice of the
gudja
broke Hippothous’s concentration. The wagons were grinding to a halt. Reaching for his sword, Hippothous reined his horse away from the column to see.
    About half a mile away, a line of six horsemen were silhouetted on a low rise. Immobile, the Heruli looked like black sentinels to another world.

PART TWO
The Wolves of the North
(The Steppe, Spring–Autumn, AD263)

    The Heruli observed many customs not in accord with other men.
    –Procopius VI.14.2

VIII
    It was true. The Heruli were not as other men. Ballista tried not to stare. The six Herul horsemen were identical, and like nothing he had seen before. Each had bright, dyed-red hair, moustaches and goatee beards. Almost every bit of skin visible – faces, necks, hands and wrists – was covered in red tattoos like heraldic symbols or letters from some outlandish script. But it was not any of this, and not their clothes – bulky nomad coats – which made them so very strange. It was their heads: great, pointed skulls, nearly twice as long as they should be, slanting up and back like those of antediluvian predatory beasts or creatures from the underworld.
    ‘We are sorry we are late,’ one of them said. He spoke politely in the language of Germania; his accent close to that of Ballista himself. ‘We would have met you at the river, where our grazing lands begin, but my brother Philemuth was unwell.’
    Now he looked, Ballista saw there were differences of age and physique. The one indicated looked old. He was slumped forward in his saddle. Behind the dyed hair and tattoos, his face was pale and drawn; there were blue-green