The Wolves of the North by Harry Sidebottom Read Free Book Online

leather bag previously stowed behind one of the columns, and took out a length of string and the favoured implements. What had to be done next were the hard, terrible things. The killer briefly wondered about their necessity. The justly killed leave no visitant against anybody; their daemon does not revenge. But a mistake had once been made. The killer knew the ghastly consequences. Far better to be doubly safe.
    Afterwards, the killer wended an obscure, unfrequented way down to the riverbank. It was dusk. The ducks were flighting. Taking out the gilded ornament, the killer looked at its sapphires and garnets, dull now in the gloaming. He thought briefly about vanity and threw the pointless thing out into the dark water.

IV
    The
haruspex
Porsenna thrust the steaming liver under Ballista’s nose.
    ‘The gods are not well disposed. You can see for yourself, the organs are not propitious. They are all deformed, the liver worst of all.’
    Ballista looked at the offal in the priest’s bloodstained hands. Witness to innumerable Roman sacrifices, he had never brought himself to study the technicalities of their art. Not that he had ever seriously denied the existence of the gods of the Romans, or that they might indicate their disposition through such signs. Yet, despite all his years in the
imperium
, they were not his gods, and these were not the rites of divination his people employed. But he knew the Romans put much store in such things. The morale of the party would suffer.
    ‘Get another beast to sacrifice,’ he said. It was the right thing to do.
    The
haruspex
washed his hands carefully in the lustral water. Another sheep was led to the bank of the Tanais river. Scenting blood, it bleated fitfully. At a gesture from the priest the hiredflautist started playing again; too late to drown the ill-omened sounds.
    This was not good – an irritating delay at the least. The boats were waiting. They needed to start upriver. Ballista wondered how much the hands of gods were in this, and how much the desire of the
haruspex
to assert his importance. The priest, like all his
ordo
, had a well-developed self-regard. Since Panticapaeum, Porsenna had made little secret that he felt generally slighted, and that he cared neither for this mission, nor for serving under what he saw as a barbarian.
    The little fire on the portable altar hissed and spat as the offerings of wine and incense were made.
    The tall, pointed hat of his calling bobbed as the
haruspex
tipped wine on the sheep’s forehead. Unsurprisingly, it shivered; seen with the eyes of faith, it nodded acquiescence at its own sacrifice. The priest sprinkled salted flour on its back, passed the sacred knife over its back, intoned a low prayer.
    A slave lifted the beast, smothering its spasmodic movements. The
haruspex
pulled back its tufty head and deftly slit its throat so its lifeblood splashed out on to the altar.
    Almost tenderly, the slave laid the sheep on its back on the ground. Despite the breeze from the water, the air was close with the smell of blood and wine and incense, hot animals and men. The
haruspex
slit the belly. The entrails slithered out: large, white and sausage-like, faintly marbled with pinks and blues. Porsenna’s practised, strong hands delved inside.
    One after another he cut and wrenched free the organs – heart, lungs, liver – a grim parody of a demented midwife.
    Ballista watched him turning them over, studying them close, frowning. No mystery how this judgement would fall. He remembered a story of Alexander, or was it the Spartan Agesilaus? Thwarted of good omens, he had inscribed propitious letters on his palm; taking the liver he had impressed them on its underside.Clever – you would have to write the letters backwards. A cynical trick, or maybe a deity put the idea in his mind.
    ‘No better,’ the priest announced. ‘Either another animal, or we must wait until tomorrow. One hour, even a moment, ruins those who start too early against