A minute later they stepped from the end of the bridge on to Dacian soil. They were beyond the edge of the Empire.
At first, the country on the east bank of the river mirrored that which they had just left. A great flat plain stretched into the distance, with only a thin line on the far horizon to give the impression of rising ground. The cavalrymen rode in pairs, at the trot, the points of their seven-foot ash spears glinting in the first rays of sunlight and the coats of the big horses steaming in the cool air. Festus positioned Valerius and his men at the rear of the little column, which surprised the Roman. Normally the less experienced men would ride in the centre where they couldn’t get into trouble. The Tungrian dismissed his concerns. ‘If they hit us in the open, we’ll see them in plenty of time to run, and I want you at the back where you’ll have a head start. If we have to run my lads won’t slow up to hold your hands, so put your heels to your horses and your heads down and ride.’
‘The Dacians. What kind of fighters are they?’ Valerius asked.
‘Animals,’ the decurion spat. ‘If they aren’t fighting us, they’re fighting the Sarmatians or the Thracians, or each other. You kill all you can find and still there are more, like ants, and each one who dies thinks he goes to sit at the right hand of their heathen god Zalmoxis, who’ll give him twenty big-titted wives, so he doesn’t give a fuck. They fight with long curved knives. Not killing knives, gutting knives. And they like to decorate their spears with Roman balls. You understand?’ Valerius felt an involuntary tightening in his stomach. ‘The only good thing about them is that their horses are no match for ours and their warriors have no discipline.’
Valerius attempted to draw him on Publius Sulla, but with no success.
‘Cavalry and infantry don’t mix. I saw him about the fort. Just another beardless Roman boy. The kind the Dacians eat for dinner.’ He gave a sour smile. ‘Just like you.’
As they travelled further south the terrain changed and the country became dotted with bushes, then stunted thorn trees. The ground began to rise, the trees closed in on them and the feeling of being vulnerable pieces on a flat gaming board was replaced by the nerve-jangling tension of never knowing what might be round the next bend in the track. Valerius noticed the knuckles gripping the spear shafts go a little whiter and carefully tested the draw of his sword.
After less than two hours, the column halted at the head of a small tree-lined defile and Festus rode back to them.
‘One of the scouts thinks he saw something ahead. I’m going to take the patrol to investigate. Wait here and I’ll send a man back for you once we’re clear.’
Valerius felt Marcus bridle at his side, but he put a hand on his arm. This was Festus’s command. He knew the enemy and he knew the ground. Only a fool would question his orders. He nodded agreement and they watched uncertainly as the spear points disappeared into the trees ahead.
Minutes passed and the only sound was the irritating whine of insects and the heavy snort of horses’ breathing. Valerius waited for the clink of brass that would herald the patrol’s return, but gradually it became clear they were alone and likely to stay that way. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck bristle and exchanged glances with Marcus.
‘Anyone else feel like the lamb that’s separated out and made to feel very special just before Saturnalia?’ Serpentius asked conversationally. The tumble of trees and bushes around them was suddenly much more sinister. Even the birds which had been singing a few moments earlier were silent now.
‘We can go on, or we can go back,’ Marcus said. ‘But we can’t stay here.’
Valerius had already made his decision. ‘We go on. We have a job to finish, with or without them.’
‘Without. They’ve fucked us.’
Valerius nodded. No point in discussing it. For whatever reason, Festus had abandoned them. The only question was: to what? He saw Serpentius fumbling in the large cloth bag tied to the pommel of his saddle. The Spaniard extracted a short, curved bow and a sheath filled with arrows. Valerius raised an eyebrow.
Serpentius shrugged. ‘A gift from the Thracians in the caravan escort. I’ve never used it from the back of a horse, but it might put one of the bastards off their stroke.’
Valerius took the lead, and they moved ahead cautiously, Marcus covering the right flank, Heracles the left and Serpentius continually glancing over his shoulder to check the rear. The heat of the morning had become oppressive, thickening the air around them. Every tree and every hummock concealed a potential threat and Valerius felt the tension growing in his arms and neck. He adjusted the strap of his helmet and wiped the sweat from his eyes.
‘What if the outpost has been abandoned?’ Marcus asked, keeping his voice low.
‘We’ll give it another half an hour and then turn back.’
Serpentius sniffed the air. ‘They’re out there. I can smell them.’
Valerius searched the treeline, which opened out on the left before converging again into a narrow funnel. The immediate threat seemed to come from the opposite side, the right, and that made the funnel a natural escape route, a welcoming refuge from the storm. To his front was an area of boulder-strewn slope that might have been designed as a trap for their horses. He sensed a dark shadow spreading through the trees.
‘Ready,’ he called.
They came with a howl, a mass of bare-chested, bearded warriors carrying painted oval shields and the wicked curved knives Festus had described. Swords, too, of similar design but heavier and wielded two-handed.
‘Now! Ride on!’ The three men reacted instantly to Valerius’s roared command. The opening to the left was where the Dacians wanted him to go, which meant that beyond the gap would be a carefully set ambush. Better to take their chances in the open. He kicked his mount to the gallop, aiming for an almost imperceptible break in the line of boulders ahead, and heard a welcome roar of frustration from behind.
But his enemy hadn’t entirely neglected the hillside and a line of warriors rose from the scrub in front of Valerius. He heard the zip of an arrow and felt the wind of something past his right ear. At first he thought it was a near miss, but the arrow took one of the Dacians in the centre of the chest and he realized Serpentius was shooting from behind his shoulder. Another horse might have checked at the howling barrier ahead, but this was a trained cavalry mount. Time and again on the practice ground he had been forced to ride through alarming, screaming men like these until he had become certain of his own invulnerability. Without any urging from Valerius the horse surged ahead, teeth bared and screaming his own battle cry. Valerius kept his head down and his sword ready and concentrated on staying in the saddle. A sickening crunch followed by a momentary check. A snarling face appeared below and to his left and he felt hands scrambling for his foot. The sword sliced down and the face disappeared in an explosion of bright blood. More faces among the rocks, mouths gaping in surprise. Then he was through and into the trees beyond the boulder line. He glanced over his shoulder and felt a surge of relief. Marcus galloped a few paces behind, a broad grin on his leathered face. Behind him Serpentius roared with laughter. Heracles rode at his side wearing a grimace of concentration and holding a severed Dacian head between his teeth by its long hair.
‘You’ve never seen anything like it,’ Serpentius called. ‘A single cut and it spins up into the air, then the crazy bugger catches it with one hand. I told him to get rid of it, but he seems attached to the bloody thing.’
Marcus shouted something at the young Sarmatian, and with a grin Heracles allowed the head to drop free.
Valerius’s heart still hammered from the mad charge, but his mind was frantically attempting to work out where they were. He recalled some details of the map in Vitellius’s quarters, but the tracks Festus had followed had twisted so much it was difficult to know just what direction they had taken. He looked up at the sun, which was over his right shoulder. Late morning, perhaps approaching noon, which meant it was now in the south. If they turned back and travelled
due west, they would eventually reach the river, but that would take them straight to the Dacians. The safest way back was to ride north-west, take a wide arc to avoid the ambush and work their way through the hills until they reached the plain. After that they should be home free.
But he hadn’t ridden all this way to give up now.
‘Publius Sulla’s outpost can’t be more than a couple of miles ahead,’ he said. ‘We go on.’
Marcus wiped blood from his sword with a piece of saddle cloth. ‘Do you think he’ll still be there?’
‘I think there’s only one way we’re going to find out,’ Valerius said grimly. He had no doubt that the patrol’s vanishing act and the Dacian ambush were linked to the man he sought, but he would worry about that later. His first priority was to survive. He ordered the three men to conserve the contents of their water skins and Marcus handed out the food he’d brought. The rest of the rations had been with the patrol.
After about ten minutes they came across a path. Serpentius studied the ground. ‘Old tracks, but too big for native horses. Roman cavalry mounts, probably a few mules.’
They followed the trail for a mile and a half before they came to a broad, man-made clearing. At its centre stood a small temporary fort surrounded by three wide ditches and a six-foot turf rampart mounted with sharpened wooden stakes. The only entrance was across an earth causeway and the wooden gate was protected from direct attack by a raised bank that restricted the approach. The defences looked pathetically inadequate against the primeval forces they’d met earlier. As Valerius studied the fort, the blast of a horn was followed by shouting and a line of polished helmets appeared above the palisade.
Valerius drew to a halt short of the triple ditch. ‘Couriers from General Vitellius,’ he shouted. ‘With orders for the fort commander.’
From behind the earth barrier came the sound of a gate creaking open.
XXIII
A POWERFUL VOICE called from the rampart. ‘Approach, friend, but do it slowly and keep your hands where we can see them.’ Valerius heard Marcus laugh. It was a typically cautious frontier welcome. Better to be nervous than dead. He took a deep breath and kicked his horse forward.
To meet Publius Sulla.
At first sight, the interior of the camp was as unimpressive as the exterior. He doubted whether familiarity would improve the experience. Lines of worn leather tents, sufficient to house a full century, filled the centre, beside a larger tent which would be the commander’s quarters. Horse lines and latrines had been set up beside the turf banks of the parapet, all contained within a dusty space sixty paces square. A painfully small squad of men went about the daily business of the fort while the rest manned the ramparts. Two weeks in this place would wear down any soldier’s morale. Two months would drive him mad.
Publius Sulla, tribune of the Seventh and brother of the traitor Cornelius, waited alone in the centre of the dirt square that passed for the parade ground. A terrible melancholy overcame Valerius as he recognized the man he had come to take back to Rome. When last he’d looked into those pale eyes they’d been staring at him from a blackened skull. He’d expected a likeness, but no one had warned him that Publius Sulla was Cornelius’s identical twin. Different characters, certainly – Publius was leaner, harder and more earnest than his brother – yet in looks they were indistinguishable. A vision of a writhing column of flame engulfed Valerius’s mind and whatever he had meant to say died stillborn in his mouth.
‘Is this all?’ The young commander broke the silence. ‘I was expecting a column with a month’s rations. What I see is four more mouths to feed.’
Valerius handed his reins to Marcus and the veteran gladiator led their mounts to the horse lines. ‘Gaius Valerius Verrens, at your service. I apologize, tribune, but we were parted from our escort and ambushed a few miles south of here.’
‘Ambushed?’ Publius instantly forgot the missing rations. ‘That’s impossible. We have a truce with the Dacian king and I spoke with his representatives not five days ago. If the situation had changed my spies in Coson’s camp would have informed me before now. Clodius!’ A veteran legionary appeared from his place at the parapet. ‘Increase the alert and send out a patrol. I want to know if there’s any movement within a mile of the fort. It’s possible we have a renegade band trying to stir up trouble. But tell them to act defensively. I need information, not heads.’
Valerius was impressed by the young man’s professionalism. He issued his orders without any sense of panic or confusion. The ambush was just a new dimension of this complicated command to be dealt with. ‘An interesting posting to volunteer for, tribune,’ he ventured.
‘Volunteer?’ Publius’s laugh betrayed his bitterness. He led Valerius up a set of wooden steps to the top of the rampart. ‘No one would be foolish enough to volunteer for this. You’ve seen our position. This should be an auxiliary command. Instead, those men lining the walls are the dregs of the legion; the moaners and the shirkers and the brawlers. I have eighty of them, plus twenty horse, to cover fifty miles of frontier, and they stay alert because I’ve managed to convince them that if they do not they will die here. Not that they should need much convincing. We’re ten miles beyond the Danuvius and any chance of reinforcement, and we’ve been down to half rations for five days. The moment Coson decides to break the truce, which he will, the Dacians will gobble us up like a wolf pouncing on a newborn lamb. This post is meant to be a show of Rome’s strength. The reality is that it is a sacrifice to my general’s vanity.’ He looked directly into Valerius’s eyes. ‘Now, to your business, Praetorian. Even a lowly junior tribune knows that it does not take four men and an auxiliary escort to deliver orders.’
Valerius nodded distractedly. He had been wondering why Vitellius had lied to him about Publius Sulla’s posting. If he’d lied about that, what else had he lied about? He had planned a quick, dispassionate arrest the moment he arrived at the post. Any hope of that had disappeared when he saw Cornelius’s eyes in his brother’s boyish face. The longer he was with Publius, the more he found himself liking this young man he was about to destroy. ‘Perhaps we may discuss it in private,’ he suggested quietly.
Publius caught something in the other man’s voice and produced a bleak smile. ‘As you see, privacy is in short supply in our little home from home. Join me in my tent. My orderly will see that your men are fed what little we can offer.’
He pulled back the flap and they entered a dusty, humid interior lit by vents in the ceiling which allowed in the sun. The tent was perhaps five paces wide by ten long with a floor of beaten earth. The only luxuries were a portable desk and stool to one side, which were faced by a second chair, and a campaign bed set against the rear wall. The tribune removed his helmet and gladius and invited Valerius to do the same. Valerius realized he should have insisted that Marcus and Serpentius accompany him, but he could hardly refuse now. He placed his sword belt on the bed beside the other man’s.
Publius took his seat at the desk and Valerius sat facing him. ‘Please.’ The tribune nodded for Valerius to begin.
‘I am here to escort you back to Rome.’
Valerius saw the colour drain from Publius Sulla’s face, but otherwise there was no reaction to what they both knew could be a death sentence.
‘And may I know the reason?’ Somehow the young tribune kept his voice steady.
‘Only that it is by the direct order of the Emperor.’
The younger man breathed out a long sigh. ‘So. That means Cornelius is taken and …?’ He looked to Valerius for confirmation of his unspoken question. Valerius nodded. For a moment Publius’s face twisted in pain and he shook his head like a man fighting the iron of a sword buried deep in his vitals. He struggled to regain his composure but when he spoke again his voice held only defiance. The earnest blue eyes drilled into Valerius. ‘Our work will continue, you know. All through the Empire men like Cornelius are spreading the message of Jesus Christus. Every day, more and more are willing to do God’s
work, and I doubt that even Nero can kill us all. He seeks to destroy us because he fears us, and he is right to fear us, because no matter what he does to us we will only become stronger. You might think that the legions are stony ground in which to plant the seeds of change, Praetorian, but you would be wrong. Who needs his god by his side more than a soldier about to march out and die? Tell him they are out there, waiting for the day. When the day comes it is God’s will that must prevail. But then I doubt you understand what I am talking about.’
‘I understand.’
Publius looked up in surprise and something flickered in his eyes. Hope? ‘You know about the great forces at work here, yet you still do his bidding?’
Valerius straightened. ‘Like you, tribune, I am a soldier, and soldiers follow orders.’
Publius rose to his feet and walked in three strides to the bed. Too late Valerius remembered where he had left his sword. He heard the familiar, almost musical hiss of a gladius being drawn from its scabbard. Publius kept his face to the tent wall so that Valerius couldn’t read his expression. ‘Cornelius was strong, but he lacked physical courage. It was something he was always ashamed of,’ he said softly.
‘He did not lack courage at the end.’ Valerius remembered the crimson streak running down the tar from the young aristocrat’s torn lip. ‘I have never seen a braver man.’
Publius nodded to himself. ‘Yet he would not have fought them. He would have gone with them like a lamb. A lamb to the slaughter. Well, know this, Gaius Valerius Verrens.’ He turned at last, the naked blade bright in his hand. ‘Publius Sulla is a soldier and will die like a soldier. I will not go gently like a lamb to Nero’s slaughter.’
Valerius tensed, ready to meet the tribune’s attack. He knew he had little chance of surviving if Publius was as comfortable with the sword as he appeared but he vowed to die trying. When he was dead, Publius would have Marcus, Serpentius and Heracles arrested on some trumped-up charge, perhaps even for Valerius’s murder, and there would be an unhappy accident on the way back to Viminacium. Maybe this was the way General Vitellius had planned it all along.
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