Avenger of Rome

XXIV

Valerius’s Thracian cavalry escort set up camp outside Antioch close to the temporary mud-brick fort that was currently home to the Legio Tenth Fretensis. When they were settled, Valerius rode out to greet its commander, a solemn, bearded young man who introduced himself as Claudius Hanno, a Roman citizen, but born and brought up by his Syrian parents in the oasis city of Palmyra.

The main Thracian force remained at Cyrrhus, halfway to the crossing point of the Euphrates. Hanno reported their readiness was high, although he produced the usual list of complaints about the quality of the replacement horses and equipment they had been given.

‘It will be good for once to have a friend at headquarters. Anything you can get for us in the way of harness and saddlery would help. Boots, too. The desert air is not kind to leather.’ Professional eyes ran over Valerius’s horse. ‘Though I see from your mare that it is not worth begging for a new batch of remounts.’

Hanno’s mood brightened when Valerius revealed Corbulo’s order for the cavalry to carry extra javelins.

‘He has something special in mind for us, then.’ The Syrian grinned. ‘The general always thinks two moves ahead of any other commander. He is a great man,’ he said, almost reverentially. ‘When he led us to Artaxata, he cut through the enemy like a sword piercing a beating heart. The booty we collected there made me a rich man, may the gods give me time to spend it.’

On the Rhenus or in Britain, an auxiliary ala milliara would be a flexible mixed unit equally split between cavalry and infantry. In Syria, since the threat from the Parthians was mainly horse-borne and because of the vast distances they had to patrol, the Third Thracians were a thousand-strong wing of mounted archers and spearmen. Valerius watched as Hanno put the fifty men of his escort detachment through a series of exercises designed to show off their skills. The Roman had worked with cavalry often enough, but he was impressed by the horsemanship, speed and agility of the Thracians. The spearmen would ride full pelt at a man-shaped target, launch a pair of spears and turn almost in the same instant, and they never missed the mark. They rode in twos and swapped mounts in mid-stride; they leapt from the saddle and raced round behind their horses before remounting at the run. The archers could turn backwards in the saddle, fire three unerringly accurate arrows over their mount’s tail and return to a normal riding position in less time than it takes to tell it. Afterwards, Hanno showed him the bow his men used, an exotic recurved weapon made of wood, bone and sinew that was half the length of the hunting bow Valerius had once owned, but shot arrows twice as far.

Valerius commented that the auxiliaries, whether carrying bow or spear, seldom touched the reins to control their mounts.

Hanno nodded gravely. ‘All of our horses are trained to respond to heel and knee as well as to harness. It is a skill you will be familiar with?’ the Syrian suggested, nodding in the direction of Valerius’s wooden hand.

Valerius smiled, remembering the long hours of practice and the number of times he and Hercules had parted company as they decided to go in different directions. The horse he had been given at Seleucia was only trained to the rein. That didn’t matter too much on the road, but it would be different in battle when he would need his left hand for a sword.

‘I will require such a horse when we cross the Euphrates,’ he said.

‘Of course.’ Hanno bowed. ‘But if you are prepared to wait, I will choose him personally from our herd at Cyrrhus. You will have plenty of time to get to know him on the march. By the time we reach Tigranocerta you will have a proper cavalryman’s swagger and a proper cavalryman’s backside. Made of leather.’

Valerius joined in the laughter and decided he was fortunate to have this man under his command.

Dusk had fallen by the time he returned to the palace, but he decided it would be unwise to ignore Corbulo’s instruction to report on his progress. He walked quickly through tiled corridors lit by oil lamps that created shadows on the painted walls and the statues of great men which lined them. Two guards checked him before he entered the general’s private quarters, but there were none outside the study where he had met Corbulo that morning, which presumably meant he must be elsewhere in the palace. Valerius turned to go.

And froze.

It was the rhythm his mind detected first. Not his ears, because the sound was barely even a sound. His mind. As if he could feel someone’s heartbeat in the air.

Slowly, he turned back to the doorway and moved the curtain a handspan aside. Now the sound was clearer, a gentle rhythmic hiss as if a hunted deer had stopped to listen with the breath blowing softly through its nostrils. Everything seemed peaceful, yet he could feel the danger as if someone had doused him with a bucket of ice water. His eyes ranged over the small area of the room he could see through the gap and his heart stopped as they fell on the kitten, Puss Puss. She lay on her side in the centre of the marble floor, with her front legs stretched out straight and two tiny spots of red halfway along the pale fur of her side. He froze as he noticed the animal’s face: her eyes were wide and her lips drawn back in a rictus of agony, showing every tiny fang. Puss Puss was dead, but what had killed her? What was making the noise?

His hand crept to his belt and he cursed as he remembered he had handed his sword in at the palace entrance. Still, he couldn’t ignore the threat. An inch at a time he squeezed through the doorway, careful not to move the curtain and alert whatever or whoever was waiting for him inside.

Gradually, more of the room came into view. On the far side, partially obscured by a high-backed couch, Domitia crouched in a corner. At first she seemed to be frozen in place, then he noticed that her head was rocking from side to side, the movement so slight that it was barely noticeable. He could see her face clearly, but Domitia’s wide eyes were fixed on something in front of her hidden by the bulk of the couch. He edged his way carefully to the right, towards Corbulo’s work desk. Still he could see nothing. He dropped lightly to the floor so he could look between the legs of the couch. At first whatever was there was lost in the gloom, but slowly a heap of sinuous, dark coils came into focus and his blood turned to ice.

He must have made a sound, because Domitia seemed to see him for the first time and her mouth opened. He raised a hand for her to be still, but too late, because from behind the couch came a sibilant, drawn-out hiss and Domitia drew her head back so it was touching the wall. Her body started to shake and he willed her to stop, because he knew that any sharp movement would provoke whatever kind of snake had her trapped. He looked again at the coils beneath the couch and a memory came to him of Africa. A hooded, swaying column of pure copper-scaled spite. Cobra!

Think!

She had backed into a recess beside a statue of the Emperor and she had no way of getting out without passing the snake, which must be close enough to strike. He had to draw it away from her. Draw it away and kill it. But with what?

The only furniture in the room was the general’s desk and chair, a pair of couches for his guests and the cabinet on which the gaming tower sat, all of them too cumbersome to use as a weapon. The statue of Nero was one of a number in the room, including a painted bust of Corbulo himself. They might be used as missiles, but they were heavy and unwieldy and the chances of hitting such a difficult target slim. All he would do was provoke the snake into attack, which might be only seconds away in any case.

Domitia gave a convulsive sob and he knew time was running out. She was as courageous as any woman he had ever met, but courage had its limits and she was close to that limit now. He had to do something, quickly. Could he face it unarmed? The idea filled him with panic. But he must not panic. Find it. Find the calm that allowed him to win the memory game. With that thought his mind cleared and everything in the room came to him. The wax tablet and stylus. The rolled-up scrolls in their leather pouches. The ceremonial swords on the wall. Without taking his eyes from Domitia he reached behind him and groped across the painted plaster until his hand closed on a jewelled grip. Some decorative swords were just that, an empty scabbard with a decorative pommel. But this one wasn’t empty and he breathed a silent prayer of thanks. The blade drew easily from the elaborate sheath with only the barest imitation of the snake’s hiss. The gem-studded hilt made it a little awkward in his hand, but the weight and balance were perfect. The sword was a locally made replica of a cavalry spatha, forged from the blue-sheened iron that made for the strongest blades. It was longer and heavier than the gladius Valerius normally carried, but he was as proficient with the one as the other.

With three strides he crossed the room and pushed the couch aside. The sight of the huge snake almost paralysed him with fear. It was so big that its flared head, with its glinting bronzed scales and pale throat, was on a level with his chest. The raised body pulsed with energy and was the width of his arm at its thickest point. It turned to face him in a single smooth movement and its fanged head drew back ready to strike, the unblinking eyes like obsidian beads as they fixed him in their deadly glare.

Domitia made an involuntary movement and the monster’s awful gaze was drawn back to the crouching figure. Valerius raised his right hand to still her. Instantly, the black beads fixed on him. He feinted with the sword, staying just out of range, and the giant head threatened once more. He found that each move he made was replicated by the flared hood, so it became almost a dance as the snake followed his sword hand. There was his solution. To save Domitia he must become the snake’s only target. But how to do it without sacrificing himself and leaving her to its mercy? He could see the wicked hooked fangs in the creamy white mouth and he imagined the glistening drop of poison in each tip. One scratch from those needle points and the venom would condemn him to a terrible, agonizing death. The snake let out a long hiss and he sensed that its patience was at an end. As he edged closer it became visibly more agitated. He held the sword high and ready to swing. He must draw the strike and draw it so that in the same instant the blue blade swept down to bite into that scaled body.

He stepped towards the snake, reaching out with his right hand, and immediately the great serpent’s head whipped forward with an astonishing speed and power. Valerius flailed with the sword, but the cobra was already inside his swing and he felt a shocking blow that numbed his right arm and made him cry out in horror. From somewhere close he heard a scream that echoed his own fear. He had gambled that the snake would be drawn to the walnut fist, but the gamble had failed. The whiplash strike had taken the flared head beyond the wooden lure to the thick muscled part of Valerius’s forearm. Yet even in the instant his mind told him he was dead, he realized that Fortuna had favoured him. Instead of plunging into unguarded flesh the terrible fangs were hooked into the thick leather stock that held the walnut hand in place, jets of pale venom already darkening the tanned cowhide. Panicking, he swung the sword again, but the cobra’s writhing coils made an almost impossible target as they whipped forward against his legs, horrible, clinging and sinuous. He only managed to inflict a cut which enraged the beast further. He felt the moment when it tried to withdraw and come erect for a second, lethal strike, the wide head shaking his arm with incredible force as it tried to free itself. But the fangs were sunk deep in the tough leather like a pair of barbed hooks. Valerius knew he had only moments. With a last convulsive heave the snake broke clear, but even as its head swayed back and the power flowed into its neck the young Roman’s brain had calculated speed and distance and angle and the long blue sword flashed out to meet the snake’s strike and this time the edge cut deep into the body just below the flared hood. The cobra thrashed back and forth in its agony and the fanged head whipped by a hair’s breadth from his face. It was dying, but not dead, and Valerius placed himself for another cut as it fell back to writhe on the marble floor. The long sword rose and fell, the bright iron cleaving the sinuous body in two and clanging against the stone.

Breathing hard, Valerius took a step back and stood head bowed over the still twitching body of the giant serpent.

He heard a slight noise behind him and turned with the blade raised to strike.

‘That is no way to treat a fine sword, tribune. See, the marble has nicked the edge.’ Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo’s voice was controlled, but his face had the sheen of polished ivory and his hand shook as he held it out to take the ceremonial spatha, which he wiped and replaced in its scabbard. He raised Domitia to her feet on trembling legs. ‘Come my dear, you are safe now. You were not touched? Nevertheless, you should see my physician.’

Before they reached the door she dropped her father’s hand and walked slowly back to where Valerius still stood, half-paralysed and as spent as he had ever been after a battle. He saw the dark eyes flinch as they looked again on the cobra, lying in two pieces, its blood staining the white marble. For a moment it was as if they were the only two people in the world and he wanted more than anything to take her into his arms and comfort her. He knew that a single movement from him would make it happen. But he also understood that to make the movement would bring disaster. He could feel Corbulo’s stare and hear his hoarse breathing. Domitia saw it and took strength from the decision he made for them both. She drew herself up to her full height.

‘It seems that once again I must thank you for saving me, tribune. You should know that I came to my father’s quarters to continue the game of Caesar we had begun. I had pondered a move that would confound him and thought to astonish him with it on his return. It was only when the snake killed my kitten that I became aware of its presence. You must have heard my cry.’

There had been no cry, but it was a convenient explanation and avoided further questions. It wasn’t only in politics that innocence was sometimes no defence.

Valerius bowed his head. ‘It was fortunate that I came to deliver my report at just the right moment. I am only glad I was able to help.’ He turned to her father. ‘What I don’t understand is how such a large snake should be able to make its way so far into the palace unseen.’

Corbulo’s eyes went cold. ‘Stranger still that it is a species I have never heard of being found so close to the coast. This was no accident, tribune. You have many duties, but I must ask you to carry out an investigation. Question my guards. Find out who was in a position to deliver the snake and find out who gave the order. We have an assassin among us.’