‘We obey orders. That is Roman discipline. Never leave the line. That is why we win. Mummius ordered us to stand and fight here.’
‘But sir—’
‘You know better than the consul, do you?’
‘No, sir, but the dust – the general can’t see. He has no idea what is happening here.’
Naevius turned his back on Paullus. He gazed out at the dust-shrouded battle line. The rear ranks of the triarii were giving ground. They were not ready to turn and run, but step by step they were being driven back.
‘Fuck it!’ Naevius shouted. ‘Right face! Form column!’
He bellowed to the centurion of the maniple on the left to follow him, pass the word down the line.
It was almost joyous to be doing something, not just watching helplessly.
Naevius brought his face very close to that of Paullus. ‘If this does not work, and we are punished for disobeying orders, for leaving the line, I will make sure that you are executed with me.’
Before Paullus could frame any reply, Naevius stalked off to the head of the column.
‘At the quick step, forward!’
There was no time to lose. The triarii might break at any moment. They almost jogged towards the blue water, before wheeling to the left. Paullus felt exhilarated, but also bone weary. One last effort would decide this day.
Seeing them coming, the velites did more than cheer. Most attached themselves to the column. The Achaean light infantry took one look and fled away to the south.
‘Keep moving!’ Naevius was bellowing. ‘At the run!’
They were pounding past the fighting line. The Achaeans in the rear ranks looked over with horror. The front fighters were too busy trying to stay alive.
‘Halt!’ They were no further from the flank of the phalanx than a boy could throw a stick. ‘Face left!’
Paullus felt as if a rope had been tightened around his chest. Each breath was like inhaling smoke.
‘Swords!’ Naevius shouted. ‘Thrust at the face or the crotch!’
Paullus realised that his sword was not in his hand. He must have sheathed it without knowing. He dragged the blade from the scabbard.
‘Charge!’
The outer files of the Achaeans were trying to turn and bring their pikes to face this unexpected threat. The great long shafts were getting entangled.
Paullus set off with the others.
There were only two spear points facing him. He caught them on the face of his shield, deflected them to the side. But then a third jabbed at his chest. Paullus pivoted. But he was not advancing any more.
A blade smashed down and lopped off the head of the pike that was groping for Paullus. Dropping his shield, Tatius dived forward and rolled under the spears. Coming up, he stabbed the nearest Achaean in the groin.
‘With me,’ Tatius yelled.
Awakened from his daze, Paullus shoved the other two pikes aside and rushed into the fray.
An Achaean let go of his spear and fumbled for his sword. Paullus punched the tip of his sword into his face. With a backhand blow, he cut another man down.
Tatius was fighting like a man possessed. He was in the midst of the enemy, his sword moving like lightning. Paullus tried to reach him. Another Achaean got in the way. With two swings, Paullus chopped the man’s small shield into firewood. The silver decoration offered no resistance. The general had been right – man to man the Achaeans were helpless against Roman arms.
And then the Achaean gave up. His arms fell to his sides. From the right, Alcimus slashed open the man’s thigh. The Achaean fell to his hands and knees. Paullus killed him with a blow to the back of the neck.
And then it was over. Like a huge tree hollowed out by termites, the Achaean phalanx collapsed. Where there had been fighting men was now a panicked throng. They shoved and clawed each other out of the way. Thousands of men were streaming away to the south. But their escape was blocked by the wagons containing their women and children. This was going to be a massacre.
Paullus stood, mind empty of any thoughts. He leant on the top of his shield. It was the only way he could stay on his feet. There was a cut he had not noticed taking on his thigh. There was blood and gore on his blade, on his hands, up his forearms. So this was glory.
Tatius was bent over, searching the corpse of the man Paullus had butchered.
‘He was mine,’ Paullus said.
‘Too late, brother,’ Tatius replied. ‘You have a farm to return to. The wealth of Achaea is going to earn me one. My need is greater than yours.’
CHAPTER 23
Patria
609 Ab Urbe Condita (145 BC)
THE SHARE BEAM WAS OAK, the plough beam holm oak, and the poles and stilt were made of elm. Paullus was ploughing the top field, the one over the crest on the far side of the Sabutus. As the field was on a hillside, he drew the plough across the slope, with the share alternately pointing uphill and down. The furrows ran smooth and straight. Their ordered rows reminded him of the files of the Achaean phalanx at the isthmus, before the latter had collapsed in mortal panic. The memory did not trouble him. It was better to think of the battle than what came after.
The metal blade of the share caught on a thick root and he halted the oxen. They were a new pair. Nine years old, in their prime, they were accustomed to the yoke and to each other. They would not fight in the furrow. Paullus had not wanted to spend the money. It was not parsimony, but a reluctance to give credence to the rumours about his hidden wealth. After the unsettling conversation with Fidubius and Vibius at the hunting party, he was very sensitive to the stories that he had brought a fortune back from Corinth.
Paullus took down the billhook from where it hung on the stilt. Bending to the work, laboriously he sliced through the tough root. Twice he had to stop with a fit of coughing. The fever had come on him after the hunt. It had lasted only four days, but had left a persistent racking cough. Finally the task was done. It was worth the effort. Better he work up a sweat than tear the root out with the plough and risk either breaking the share or straining the oxen.
Rehanging the billhook, he stood and stretched his aching back. There was a bitter wind. It blew over the crest, down the wild, rocky cliff, through the olives and vines, and then out across the open plough land. It was cold enough to flay an ox. Paullus rubbed his hands together. His cloak and sword belt would have got in the way, and he had left them with his lunch by the water trough at the lower side of the field. In this weather it was better to be moving. He gathered the whip and reins, and stirred the beasts back into motion.
Paullus cast a lonely figure as he plodded behind the team, crossing and recrossing the windswept hillside. Pastor had driven the flock down from the Sila ready for the winter, and Paullus had left Eutyches with the shepherd to settle the sheep into their sheds. Paullus had wanted to be on his own. The eternal rhythm of ploughing, the rich, clayey smell of the turned soil, helped him think.
Perhaps it was the lingering illness that had made him more taciturn than usual with Minado the previous evening. But he had much on his mind. Four or five nights ago there had been an intruder on the farm. Paullus had been the last to leave the barn and the first there in the morning. He had noticed at once that some of the implements were not exactly where he had left them. Nothing had been stolen, but someone had been there. Paullus had questioned Eutyches and Pastor. They said they had not stirred from the slave quarters all night. There was no reason to disbelieve them. A stranger had crept into the farmyard. It was strange that Niger had not barked. But the hound was getting old, and he slept a great deal.
Two mornings later, the theta charm had been missing from his belt. It had been hanging with his armour by the fireplace. His mother had accused the new maid. The girl had denied the theft. The ornament was copper. It had no value. Of course, it could have been lost the day before, fallen off somewhere in the fields, but Paullus was certain that he would have noticed when he took off the belt. From then on Paullus had locked the far
mhouse door at night.
And then last night the Kindly Ones had returned. There had been no hint of their presence since the Temple of the Hero. Paullus had dared to hope that saving Minado had been some sort of redemption. That fragile optimism had been shattered when he awoke to hear their rasping breath and smell their foul corpse odour. All three sisters had been standing in the dark at the foot of the bed. The old women did not speak to him, but murmured to each other. Their words were inaudible, but their demeanour was that of a jury considering the verdict.
‘The past cannot be undone,’ Paullus had said. ‘What happened in Corinth was not my fault. I did not wish it to happen. I should not be cursed.’
They had not replied, but regarded him with deliberation. And then they were gone.
Paullus pulled the oxen to a stop and cleaned the share with a stick tipped with a scraper.
Sometimes he wondered if it was all in his mind, if what he had done in the last house in Corinth had permanently unhinged some delicate mechanism that ordered his perceptions. He would not be the first man driven mad by guilt. Hercules had locked himself in a dark room, shunning all contact with humanity after he had flung his own children into the fire. Alexander had tried to starve himself to death when he had drunkenly murdered his friend.
Paullus checked the oxen were yoked as tightly as possible. It kept their heads up and prevented their necks getting chafed.
The Macedonian army had begged Alexander to eat and drink, to preserve himself for them. Hercules had been told the road to redemption by the Delphic Oracle. No deity or army was going to intervene for Paullus. Deliverance could only come from within.
The team was nearing the plantation. Wheat would be sown between the rows of olive trees. Paullus fitted the oxen with muzzles of soft basketry to stop them nibbling the leaves.
Deliverance could only come from admitting what he had done.
Paullus cracked the whip above their heads, and the great strength of the oxen took the strain. As the plough got moving, Paullus doubled up coughing.
It saved his life.
The arrow hissed through the air where his neck had been. It was close enough to feel the wind of its passing. Instinctively, Paullus threw himself to the right. He rolled, then scrambled to his feet, getting the team between him and his assailant.
Leaning against the broad shoulder of the near ox, he was paralysed with shock. Someone was trying to kill him. Not in Corinth, but here in his own field. Not a foreigner, but one of his own fellow townsmen. Someone he must know was trying to kill him. The thing was incredible.
Think, you fool. Think, or you are dead.
Paullus risked a peek around the beast’s head. The arrow had come from down the slope, from somewhere near where he had left his belongings. He saw movement behind the drystone boundary wall of the field.
Stay here, and the bowman will shift his position. Easy enough to work round the edge of the field, get a clear shot and pick him off. The plantation was only some thirty paces off uphill.
Paullus set off. He ran as fast as he could, trying to keep the oxen between him and the archer.
Twenty paces to the safety of the olives and vines.
Another arrow. This time from ahead, and off to the left. It seemed to accelerate as it closed. Paullus threw himself down. Stones grazed his arms, mud splattered his face.
Before his mind had accepted that the shaft had missed, he was up again. Now he angled to the right. It took him away from the lee of the oxen. Both bowmen could take a shot. He jinked and sidestepped. To the left, then to the right, then to the right again – anything to throw off their aim, to avoid a predictable pattern.
He heard rather than saw another arrow. It thrummed behind his back. Another whipped past his face.
Ten paces to the treeline. The damp earth was pulling at his feet, weighing down his boots. Paullus felt his luck running out. He dived forward, hit the ground, rolled, then scrabbled like an animal on all fours into the plantation.
The olives were in widely spaced rows. The vine trellises ran between their trunks. They made it hard to see up the slope, but looking from side to side there was nothing but lanes of bare earth waiting to be ploughed between the trees.
Paullus crashed through the first row of vines, snapping the thin poles, trampling the tender plants. He dashed across the open space and burst through the next line. They could track his progress by the noise. But that was less important than getting deep into the trees.
Seven or eight rows in, he risked turning and running down the avenue between the trees. He ran for forty paces, then worked his way quietly through the next trellis uphill. Panting, he cowered against the silvery trunk of an ancient olive.
He turned and peered back down through the foliage to the ploughed land. The oxen stood passively, untroubled by this human activity that meant nothing to them. Then Paullus glimpsed what he had expected. The first archer was crossing the field. A slight figure in a dark tunic, limbs blackened, face disguised by the mask of a wolf. Bow in hand, arrow nocked, he was scanning the plantation, but moved confidently, without hurry. There was something familiar about his gait, but there was no time to dwell on that.
The other bowman now would be somewhere off to Paullus’ right. He would be sneaking up through the trees, seeking to finish what they had started. This was the time for Paullus to act, while the two men were separated. Ghost up to the one in the plantation. Turn the hunter into the hunted. Get in close, so he could not use the bow, and kill him. It did not have to be done quietly. Once he was dead, Paullus would have his bow. If the slender figure in the field did not flee, Paullus could shoot him down.
But Paullus had no weapon. Not even a knife. That was on his belt with his sword. The billhook! Hades, he was a fool. He had forgotten the billhook. It was still hanging on the stilt of the plough.
If he could not fight, then he must hide.
This was no good. In a forest he could have concealed himself. But not in the ordered lanes of this plantation. All the second bowman had to do was move upslope, carefully checking each open avenue, and sooner or later he would run his quarry to earth. There was nowhere to hide among the olives, and above was only the cliff. Dotted with wild junipers and brambles, it offered no cover. The hopelessness of utter despair. There was nothing he could do.
The brambles! Of course, the brambles on the rock face above that screened his childhood hiding place. All he had to do was reach the tiny cave unseen. No one else knew it was there.
Now Paullus went with more caution. The cave was uphill and to the right. Thank the gods, it was away from the bowman already scouring the plantation. Paullus scurried down each avenue until he spotted a gap in the vines where he could crawl through without making a sound. His ascent was noiseless, but painfully slow. A rising tide of panic urged him to haste. At any moment the point of an arrowhead might punch into his defenceless back. Fighting down the fear, he continued his stealthy progress.
Eventually – it seemed an age – he reached the final line of trees. He had come out where he intended. There, not twenty paces away, at the foot of the cliff, were the bushes that obscured the entrance to the cave. The incline to them was not steep, but it was completely bare. And there were loose stones. Paullus hesitated in an agony of indecision. Cross the exposed rock fast and risk being heard, or slowly increasing the chance of being seen?
Somewhere close behind a branch snapped.
Paullus went up fast, but watching where he placed his feet.
There was no cry of alarm.
The gap between the brambles and the rock was narrower than Paullus remembered. The bushes had grown, or he was bigger. He used an arm to sweep back the wiry branches, ignoring the barbs tearing his skin. Sideways he forced himself through, shielding his face with his other arm. And there was the entrance. It was only half as wide again as his shoulders. He wriggled into the dark.
The floor of the little cave ran upwards. It stretched no more than eight fee
t into the cliff. There was no room to turn round. Paullus wedged himself as far in as possible, drew up his legs.
There was nothing to but wait. There was no point in praying. The gods did not listen to men like him. The odds against some neighbouring farmer coming to this remote place were enormous.
Once his eyes became accustomed to the gloom, and his body was blocking most of the light, he looked with wonder on the small relics left from his childhood. His name scratched in the wall, the letters lighter than the rest of the rock. A small, crudely carved toy soldier. He had whittled it himself, an image of the man he had always wanted to become. He had become that man, and it had brought him wealth, but nothing else that was good. And now he was reduced again to hiding in the dark, like the child he had once been. Except now he was hiding from much worse than his father’s disapproval and the lash of his belt. There was no way out of here. If they found him, he would be dragged out feet first, and butchered.
Paullus heard the stones sliding out from under boots. Each step produced a small cascade. They were getting closer. Had they seen his furtive scurry up to the cave?
The footsteps were very loud, the chink and scrape of each pebble audible.
Paullus stilled his breathing.
The footsteps stopped by the bushes.
The scratches on Paullus’ arm were stinging. Dear gods, was there blood on the brambles? Would they see?
Moving inch by inch, Paullus craned his neck and looked down over his huddled body. In the sunlight beyond the undergrowth, he could see a pair of boots. The man was standing right there. The boots were solid, workmanlike, the boots of a countryman. The figure was so close Paullus could smell him: the feral reek of the pelt of a wolf, human sweat and something sweeter, cinnamon or spikenard.
Suddenly Paullus felt the tickling in his throat, the desperate need to cough. He tried to swallow. The sensation was worse. He buried his face in his arm, breathed very shallowly through his nose. At any moment he would lose the unequal fight.
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