‘I still have the coins. Let me go, and I will not go back to them.’
‘A man is nothing if he does not keep his word,’ Paullus said.
‘I will go north, right now. Not stop until I reach Rome. Start a new life.’
He was still talking, when, in one sweep, Paullus unsheathed his blade and struck. The backhand cut caught the youth in the throat. His head snapped back, and the blood gushed out to splatter on the road.
CHAPTER 13
Patria
609 Ab Urbe Condita (145 BC)
THE PRISONER WAS STRUNG UP naked in the marketplace of Temesa. His hands had been bound, the rope thrown over the beams of the portico, and he had been hauled upright. The whole town had come to watch. Babilius the shoemaker had arranged the benches from his stall at the front, so that a few of the leading men could view the spectacle in some degree of comfort. Obsequiously, he had produced cushions. Somewhat against his will, Paullus had been prevailed upon to take a seat. It was thought only fitting as he was the one who had brought in the brigand. The role of the Bruttian Dekis was quietly forgotten. For the last hour and a half Paullus had sat with the two chief magistrates, Ursus the priest, Fidubius and Vibius.
The audience was accustomed to blood. In every court case the evidence of a slave, whether he or she was the defendant or just a witness, was only admissible after torture, and the process was public. Among the slave owners in the crowd, there would not be many who had not laid open a servant’s back with the lash. Blood, human and animal, was ingrained in the patina of life. The necessary worship of the gods demanded cutting the throat of the appropriate beast, slitting its stomach and dragging out its steaming and slimy entrails.
The familiarity with blood was just as well. Temesa was a small town. The torturer, one of the civic undertakers, was no specialist. Lacking the refinements of Rome – having no rack, horse, wheel, pincers, claws or hot irons – he relied on a whip and brute force. The sharp iron knotted into the rawhide had torn the flesh of the brigand and sprayed blood all over the colonnade. It had splattered the flagstones by the feet of the dignitaries in the front row.
The iron smell in his nostrils, Paullus wondered if he was the only one who felt slightly sick.
‘Tell us about the mutilation.’ Fidubius had asked many questions, this one repeatedly.
The man managed to raise his head a little, but he did not answer. Paullus thought that now he might be incapable of speech.
The captive had been vocal enough at the start. It was an outrage. Only a slave should be tortured. He was a freeman, a Roman citizen, born in Sicily. The latter might be true, but the rest was given no credence. Anyway, a life of brigandage put a man beyond the clemency of the law. At the first bite of the whip, he had protested that he was an innocent traveller. That man there – the one there with the mark of death on his belt – had set upon him in the Sila, had murdered his two companions with the help of a Bruttian woodsman. It was not the first time he had done it: previously he had spared the youth, but not in this encounter. One or two in the crowd stole a glance at the charm Paullus wore. Theta was the first letter of the Greek word for death. Yet no one was ever going to take the word of a stranger against that of a son of Temesa, especially a citizen who had won the civic crown.
The undertaker had not spared himself. It was a hot morning, and soon his torso was running with sweat. After a time Roscius the innkeeper and another bystander had helped him haul on the rope and tie it off, so that the bandit was clear of the ground, all his weight coming down through his arms and shoulders. To increase the agony, a heavy weight was bound to one of the bandit’s feet. With a steady rhythm, the whip struck.
The man had begun to talk, but the information gained was generally thought unsatisfactory. Yes, he had robbed wayfarers on the road to Consentia. What else could he do? There was no work. All the estates in Sicily employed slave labour. No, he knew nothing about the killing of a farmer called Junius. He had never heard of brigands mutilating their victims. Yes, there was a band of outlaws in the hills above Erimon, but he had thrown in his lot with those living in the caves beyond Blood Rock. There were about twenty of them, but men came and went. Why would there be brigands on the upper Acheron river? There was nothing there to take.
Fidubius nodded. The torturer threw a bucket of water to bring round the brigand.
‘Tell us about the mutilation of Junius,’ Fidubius said.
In extremis, with all hope gone, the bandit glowered defiance. ‘None of you are any better than me. You rich men drive the poor off their farms, enclose the public land. You embezzle public funds, cheat state contracts. You threaten and you beat and you steal. You rob honest men of their livelihoods and ancestral homes, their freedom.’
Perhaps reviving him had been an error.
‘You want a scapegoat for this Junius you say was murdered. Look closer to home. Behind your respectability you are as heartless as wolves. You would mutilate your mothers if you thought there was a profit in it.’
Fidubius signalled to the torturer and the lash swung. A flurry of blows silenced the insolence. Unconscious, the body of the brigand turned under the repeated impacts. The white of bone showed through the ruin of his back.
‘Enough,’ Ursus said.
The brigand’s head lolled forward. Only a fluttering in his chest indicated that he was still alive.
‘We have heard enough,’ Fidubius said. ‘Bandits did not kill Junius. It was the Hero – the daemon has returned.’
‘Men will say anything under the pain of the lash,’ Ursus said.
‘Torture is the touchstone of truth,’ Vibius said. ‘It is enshrined in law, a thing universally acknowledged. Why should he lie?’
There was a murmur of general agreement at the words of Lollius’ father.
‘To spare himself further pain.’ Ursus was undeterred that most of those present were gripped by the supernatural explanation. ‘To admit he had any knowledge of the mutilation would bring further refinements of suffering. At the end he sought to provoke us to earn a quick death.’
Paullus intervened. ‘This bandit may know nothing, but Junius was not killed by a daemon, but by a man. Does a daemon use a bow and arrow?’
Fidubius looked at him with detestation. Even the suave face of Lollius’ father showed a certain annoyance. Why, Paullus thought, are they so set on summoning up the Hero? Could they not see that it would terrify the populace, open the door to any dark imaginings, that it would lead to nothing but panic?
‘Whoever murdered Junius, we have discovered enough to remind us of our duty.’ Ursus’ furrowed and desiccated face surveyed the crowd, as if the priest himself were some avatar of stern, antique morality. ‘The colonists of Temesa are exempt from service in the legions on condition that we suppress brigandage. We have been remiss in our duty. The assembly has already decided to mount an armed expedition. Now we know where it must march: Erimon and Blood Rock. All able-bodied citizens should report here at dawn tomorrow, with their arms and three days’ rations. The council will retire to plan the expedition.’
The crowd lingered, as if hoping the entertainment had not ended.
‘Are we agreed that nothing more is to be learnt from the miscreant?’ Ursus asked.
Everyone accepted that was the case.
‘Then have him taken to the main gate and nailed to a cross.’
*
As the only citizen with experience in the army, Paullus was requested to aid the deliberations of the council. The basilica was shaded and cool. The benches were well padded and comfortable. Servants waited in attendance. Food and drink was placed to hand.
Picking up a cup, Paullus wondered if it had crossed anyone else’s mind that out under the hot sun, only a few dozen paces away, a man was being nailed to a cross, the sharp steel cruelly hammered through flesh and tendons. Killing a man was often necessary, and frequently commendable. In war it was unavoidable. Mutilating a corpse to put a daemon off your scent had its r
easons, as did the use of torture to obtain the truth. Yet he found it harder to accept the infliction of slow agony merely as a potential warning to others, or perhaps for nothing better than revenge. After all a turn of fate, or a realignment of the stars, and those now at their ease in this elegant room might find themselves hoisted aloft and exposed in public torment. Paullus had lived through the sack of Corinth. He drained the cup in one draught.
Temesa was a small colony. Its council consisted of just thirty men, not all of whom were present. The councillors were the serving magistrates and those who had previously held office. As such, all were of a certain age. Magistrates received no stipend; indeed they were expected to contribute to civic expenses from their own funds. The council was an affluent gerontocracy.
As the leading magistrates, the duoviri nominally oversaw the meeting, but official posts counted for less than wealth and force of personality. The same men who had taken the initiative in the forum continued to hold the floor.
‘We are not crafty little Greeks or sly Carthaginians,’ Ursus said. ‘No need for cunning strategies. In the morning, we select the hundred best-armed men, all Romans of good courage. March openly to Erimon, flush out the brigands in the hills, crucify the lot of them along the road. Then we go to Blood Rock and do the same.’
In the gloom silver heads nodded approval.
‘Exemplary cruelty serves as the finest deterrent.’ As the old priest’s head turned to survey his fellows, his scrawny neck reminded Paullus of that of a tortoise Lollius had owned as a child.
‘Indeed the punishment of the bandits must fit the savagery of their crimes,’ Vibius said. ‘Yet a measure of caution may be apposite.’
If not for his old-fashioned manners, Ursus would have snorted with derision. ‘Outlaws will not resist Roman steel.’
‘Quite so.’ Vibius was as emollient as ever. ‘And that may be why we should exercise a certain foresight. Once we have dealt with the brigands at Erimon, the news will reach those at Blood Rock. They will disperse, slip from our grasp and escape justice.’
For all his bland exterior, Lollius’ father was no fool.
‘Let us take advice from one who has been on campaign.’
Paullus was pouring himself another drink. He took his time, collecting his thoughts, then he outlined a plan.
It was agreed that only treachery could unhinge its execution.
*
The brigands must have seen him coming a mile or more off. Paullus was wearing a bright scarlet cloak, and his mail coat and the fittings on his belt were burnished so that they shone like mirrors in the afternoon sun. Alone, and quite openly, he rode the horse at a steady walk down the road to Croton. The road twisted and dipped. At times the trees of the Sila crowded the track, obscuring the view ahead of Blood Rock and the pass beyond. The singing of the birds, the clop of hooves and the creak of harness, all somehow were small and lost in the vastness of the forest.
Emerging from the final shade, he reached Blood Rock. It was a triangular outcrop of granite. Grey-white, like the rest of the mountain, it must have earned its name from the deeds of men. Paullus did not pause, or turn his head, as he went by. He made no attempt to trace the goat path that Dekis had said snaked up the slope and below the crest to come down above the pass. No one knew the Sila better than the Bruttian huntsman. If he said there was a track, and that it was passable, his knowledge could be trusted.
The road ran straight for about four hundred paces up to the pass. There the slope to the right continued much the same – not too steep, and covered in scrub oaks and briers. But to the left the mountain fell away, as if cut with an axe. The sheer face of the cliff dropped to jagged boulders in a stream far below.
Paullus kept the horse to a slow walk. It chafed against the bit. The big black hunter he had borrowed from Lollius’ father was still full of running. It showed no ill effects from the long ride last night, after they had left the main party and doubled back up the road from Erimon. All morning they had holed up in the deserted Bruttian village that Dekis knew was hidden in the hills after the turning to Croton.
Reining in his mount, Paullus halted no more than a hundred paces from the pass. Well within effective bowshot. At this range an arrow could punch clean through the links of his mail. But that could not be helped. Paullus needed to be seen. Shading his eyes, he scanned the incline above the pass and the ridge beyond that. He moved ostentatiously, like an actor on the stage. If they were there, he wanted them to know that he was expecting them to appear. Nothing moved through the scrub except the occasional darting sparrow or other small bird. Paullus found himself hoping there was no one there. He dismissed the cowardly thought. This was his plan, and he had volunteered himself as bait. When the rest had protested at the danger, he had not revealed his true motives. Paullus had learnt that to put himself at risk kept away the Kindly Ones. Better an arrow in the guts than suffer the attentions of the dark sisters.
Paullus took the hunting horn from his saddle, raised it to his lips and sounded one loud, clear note. The sound echoed away along the slope. If they had not spotted him before, they knew he was here now.
The horse sidled, head down, snuffling for any hint of vegetation. Paullus waited. What he was about could not be hurried. Everything depended on timing.
Flies pestered horse and rider. The hunter swished its tail and Paullus leant forward to brush them from its eyes. There was no breeze, and the sweat was running down between his shoulder blades under the heavy mail coat.
It was still too soon. Paullus swung a leg over the horse’s neck and dismounted. He led it to the side of the path, where there was some grass, and hobbled its legs. Then he walked back to the middle of the road.
Paullus stood stock still for a while. Suddenly, he swept back his cloak, drew his sword and began to dance. Two steps back, the blade up to block, three forward, then a lunge. To the left, to the right, his boots raised the dust as they stamped out the time. Cloak billowing around him, he leapt and turned. The blade flashed in the sun as he brandished it high then low in fast, complicated measures. To the Greeks it was the pyrrhic dance, to the Romans the armatura, the dance in armour. Any watchers would think him insane, but that was unimportant. The only thing that mattered was that he had all their attention.
He danced until his breath was burning in his chest, beads of sweat stinging his eyes. A final flourish and he stopped. Sheathing his sword, again he stood in the road. His flanks heaved as he fought to catch his breath. Now, surely, it was time.
Walking back, he took a drink before he unhobbled the horse. Gripping the horns of the saddle, he gathered himself and leapt onto its back. It was never easy to mount in armour. The sudden weight coming down on its back, the hunter snorted and bucked. Settling into his seat, Paullus let it circle, caracoling under him, controlling it with just the pressure of his thighs. He was a good horseman. Lollius and he had learnt when they were children in Vibius’ stables.
Taking up the reins, Paullus walked his mount into the pass.
Of course they might shoot him down out of hand. That would unravel his cunning plan. And death would bring him no release. Even if they put a coin in his mouth and he crossed the Styx, the Furies would not cease their torment in Hades.
Paullus heard them before he saw them. A scatter of dislodged stones as they came down the scree. There were men behind, as well as in front. Turning the horse to face the slope, he stopped. There was nowhere to go.
They did not run out from the scrub. They were in no hurry. He was surrounded. Eight men to his left, a similar number to his right. They were dressed in ragged finery, the remnants of past plunder. Several had swords. Those that did not carried javelins. Paullus noted that none were archers. Perhaps they remained concealed on the hillside.
Weapons at the ready, the brigands edged closer. Paullus made the horse circle. Its powerful quarters made them step back. When they were stationary, a few paces off, he stopped the hunter. Again he faced uphill, so
he could watch both sides of the track.
‘Nice horse.’ A brigand wearing an elaborate moulded cuirass stepped out from those clustered on the left. There was no doubt he was in command.
‘That is far enough.’ Paullus raised his palm, as if ordering a hound to stay.
The brigand chief shook his head in mock wonderment. ‘You are not really in a position to give orders.’
Paullus did not reply.
‘Good quality mail too.’ The bandit looked like an astute trader valuing merchandise. ‘You must be from a wealthy family.’
‘No.’
‘So, no one to ransom you.’ The brigand leader sounded almost regretful.
‘No.’
‘Then where did you get them?’
Paullus smiled. ‘Their previous owners had no further use for them.’
The outlaw chief laughed, an unexpectedly pleasant sound. ‘So your extraordinary display was to get our attention. You have come here hoping to join us.’
‘Yes.’ Paullus swept back his cloak, so his sword belt could be seen.
It had the desired effect. While the others started and readied their weapons, recognition dawned on the leader’s face. ‘I know who you are – the theta on your belt.’
Paullus said nothing.
‘You are the one who spared the boy.’
‘Where is he?’
‘Away.’
‘A pity, I thought he would serve as an introduction.’ It was good that they had not already learnt that the youth was dead.
‘He said you were mad. You gave him money, told him to find a new way of life.’
Paullus shrugged. ‘That was my plan too. It did not work out.’
‘It seldom does for a veteran.’ The brigand considered his next words. ‘I am not the slave-king of Nemi, always looking over my shoulder, sword in hand, waiting for the next challenger. A band can only have one leader. The brotherhood elected me. Until I die, or they cast votes for my replacement, my word is law.’
‘I did not come to supplant you,’ Paullus said. ‘I came here for sanctuary.’
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