Saviour of Rome

XIX

Of them all Floro impressed Serpentius most, ignoring the hunger pangs gnawing his guts and scampering up the steep inclines at the Spaniard’s back like a mountain hare. Clitus and Placido stumbled along far behind, the sound of their harsh, rasping breaths carrying twenty paces in the clear mountain air. Serpentius wouldn’t slow for them. He’d vowed not to make the mistake of slackening the pace again. Being soft had killed Felix, Elius and Gentilis. Or perhaps he was wrong and they’d been killed by their own fear? He shook his head. What did it matter? They were dead and in Serpentius’s world dead men had never existed. What mattered was that the Parthian auxiliaries would eventually find their way round the gorge and back on to the trail.

But these were Serpentius’s mountains and he was confident he’d find a way to escape. He reached the spine of one of the endless ridges and stared down at the familiar glittering expanse of a large reed-fringed lake. It must be a day and a half’s march round the bank, all clinging mud, endless bog and ancient, rotting trees.

Floro appeared beside him sucking in deep breaths. His eyes lit up when he saw the lake. ‘If we can cross that they’ll never find us.’ He shook his head as reality struck. ‘But how?’

Serpentius waited till the others caught up. ‘Follow me.’

He’d been prepared for it not to be there after twenty years, but his tribesfolk had always been people of habit, using the traditional places. This was the bay where fishermen had moored their boats for generations. It took him time to work out the right tree, but he found the rope – a surprisingly new rope – carefully camouflaged at the base of a stunted willow. He followed the rope into the water and his groping hands discovered the canoe in the fringe of reeds. It had been loaded with stones and submerged in three feet of water. A primitive thing, carved from a single trunk and four paces in length, but it had an oar and it would carry them all. With difficulty they managed to refloat it and bail it out. Serpentius, the only one among them with any experience of these unwieldy craft, steadied it as the others clambered nervously aboard.

‘Sit in the centre and stay still,’ the Spaniard ordered. He took his seat in the rear.

‘What do we do if it overturns?’ Placido asked nervously.

Floro turned his head to study him. ‘Can you swim?’

‘No.’

‘Then you drown,’ the bald man grinned.

No one drowned. When they reached the far side Serpentius ran them into a mud bank. Clitus and Floro slipped over the bow and started dragging the canoe further into the shore, but Serpentius shook his head. ‘No. Leave it to me.’ Placido tried to step over the side and fell face first into the stinking, black mud, which had the others howling with laughter.

Serpentius ignored them and pushed the little craft out into clear water. When he was waist deep he tossed the paddle over the side into the bottom of the canoe and thrust it out towards the centre of the lake. He saw the puzzled glances as he waded to the shore, but didn’t bother to explain. The prevailing wind would push it down to the western shore and his people – if it was his people – would find it again. If the auxiliaries happened to stumble on it they’d think that was where the escaped prisoners had disembarked and waste hours searching for them.

‘How far, lord?’ Clitus asked.

‘There,’ Serpentius pointed towards a great wall of mountains at the eastern end of the lake. The men groaned. ‘We will be safe when we reach the summit,’ he assured them. But did he believe his own words?

More effort. More climbing. Serpentius considered stopping for the night, but they had one last push in them and he doubted Clitus, who’d begun to cough up blood, would survive another night in the open. They found themselves on a height above a steep gully, filled with rock falls and cascades, where the stream fed the lake from the east. Serpentius’s heart quickened as he hurried the final four hundred paces to the head of a long slope that swept down to a valley filled with cultivated fields and lush meadows. The men and women who worked the fields were making their way home after the day’s labour. At the far end he could see a huddle of grey houses.

Avala.

A winding path led them down to the fields and they followed the stream towards the village, a walled settlement of twenty close-packed round houses built of local grey rock and thatched with reeds from the lake. Serpentius felt his throat tighten as they approached the little group of buildings. He knew every moss-covered stone. The house he’d built with his own hands for Lyda lay near the wall on the north side. To his eye it would always be fairer than the others. It was as far from the great opulent palaces he had seen in Rome as a man could be without living in a hole in the ground, but he had been as proud of it as Nero of his great Golden House. He felt a lightning bolt of anger and sorrow as he remembered that final day. Fighting the Romans to his last breath as the torches rained down on the thatch and in the doorway. The flames leaping up like a great red and gold curtain trapping them inside. Lyda’s screams as she burned alive. With his son. He only realized he’d bitten through his lip when the blood ran down his chin and into the hollow at his throat.

They were thirty paces from the settlement when a group of men emerged. Savage, uncompromising eyes stared at them from bearded faces hardened by wind and weather and bitter experience. A few of them held spears, but most carried axes and scythes and held them as if they were ready to use them. They wore familiar striped tunics and braccae leggings to below the knee. Serpentius watched them, gauging the threat they posed, and smiled as ten more appeared to the right, and others to the left.

The smile only made them angrier. Hands tightened on the shafts of spear and axe. ‘Lay down your weapons.’ He placed his spear on the ground and unhooked the sword belt at his waist.

Placido hesitated. ‘They’ll just slaughter us anyway.’

‘Just do it.’ Serpentius’s eyes never left the men in front of him. Placido’s sword clattered to the ground to join the rest. The Spaniard singled out a grey-bearded elder in the front rank of the men at the gate. ‘This is Castro Avala and you are of the Reburi clan of the tribe Zoela?’ The old language sounded unnatural on his lips, but he saw their puzzlement at hearing their own tongue from the mouth of a stranger. The men opposite handled their weapons uneasily and looked to the grey-beard for leadership. He glared at Serpentius for a long moment before he spoke.

‘And how would a foreigner know these things about us?’

‘What makes you think I am a foreigner?’ Serpentius drew himself to his full height and stepped forward. A rustle ran through the ranks facing him as they began to understand the manner of man who had appeared among them.

‘Because you wear Roman tunics and carry Roman swords.’ Serpentius was surprised that the voice came from the group to his right. ‘Yet you have the ragged appearance and pallor of escaped slaves and the Romans pay well for escaped slaves, even from the likes of us.’

Serpentius searched the men for the source of the words.

‘Whatever the pay, you will discover the price of earning it is too high,’ he assured whoever had spoken. He fixed on a pair of intense feral eyes in a face that might have been carved by an axe. A flick of long dark hair hung over a narrow brow and the man had a thin-lipped mouth that reminded Serpentius of a cobra he’d once encountered. Young, perhaps not much more than twenty, but a thrill of anticipation ran through him as he understood where the true danger lay. And the leadership. One thing was certain: if it came to a fight, this one would be the first to die.

‘Brave words from a ragged outcast,’ the young man said. ‘But we are thirty and you are four.’

‘You may be thirty now.’ Serpentius grinned and allowed his fierce gaze to travel over the men opposite. ‘But ask yourselves how many you will number when it is over. I see farmers and fullers and potters, able enough to see off a wolf or a bear, but who have never faced warriors.’

‘And I see a worn-out old man,’ the voice sneered. ‘They had a bear once, in Asturica, chained to a pole to be baited by dogs. It was old and scarred and beaten. You remind me of it.’

Serpentius sighed. ‘Who is this who makes a noise like a warrior, but isn’t prepared to show himself?’

The young man Serpentius had been staring at stepped out from the huddle. Tall and spare, he held a long spear in both hands and his dark eyes glowed with an arrogant, contemptuous certainty. The sudden realization was like being drenched in ice water. Those eyes … It couldn’t be? But the more he studied the face behind the beard, the more certain he became.

‘I am called Tito, stranger; look upon me and see your death. Pick up your spear.’

‘I don’t need a spear to kill you, puppy.’ Serpentius marched unarmed towards his enemy. A murmur went through the Reburi.

The young man frowned. ‘This is not right.’

‘You want to kill me?’ The Spaniard continued his advance. ‘I’m making it easy for you. So kill me.’

Tito moved to meet him, the spear balanced and the leaf-shaped iron tip aimed at Serpentius’s chest. The Spaniard didn’t flinch at the sight of the polished metal and when he came within range Tito rammed the needle point at his heart. It was a perfect thrust, fast and well-aimed. Tito was already experiencing an odd mix of exultation and regret when he realized his victim was no longer where he’d aimed. Serpentius had slipped past the point in a blur of movement and now he danced round his attacker so Tito had to spin to face him.

Anger clouded the younger man’s face. He’d felt almost sorry for the interloper, but now the man had humiliated him. With a snarl he rammed the spear at Serpentius’s throat. This time the Spaniard simply swayed aside and allowed the point to slide past his neck, flicking the shaft away with his right hand and dancing clear. It looked so easy that Placido laughed, and he was joined by a few of the men standing in front of the castro.

Serpentius wasn’t so cheerful. He’d made it appear easy, but Mars’ hairy arse the boy was quick. He had to end this soon.

Tito attacked again, with the same result, and now confusion replaced the anger on his savage features.

‘If you’re going to kill someone,’ Serpentius kept on the move so the spear point had to follow him, ‘don’t jab at them as if you only want to scratch them. Ram it in and twist, so their guts spill out on the ground when you withdraw. Of course,’ he kept his tone conversational, ‘some people don’t have it in them to kill another man. The thought of splitting another human being open makes them puke. They’re the men who die screaming in the arena and on the battlefield. Are you one of those, Tito?’

The jibe lit a fire in Tito’s head and he charged. This time there would be no mistake.

‘That’s better,’ Serpentius encouraged him. He let the spearhead almost touch him before he twisted clear and grabbed the shaft in both hands so he could rip it from Tito’s grasp. In the same movement he spun so the length of ash caught the younger man behind the knees and whipped the legs from under him. Before he knew what was happening Tito was on his back staring at the sky with the point of the spear at his throat.

Serpentius’s gaunt face appeared in his vision. ‘That’s how you kill a man,’ the Spaniard’s voice dripped ice-melt. ‘You know how to kill a man, but do you know how to die?’

Tito closed his eyes.

‘Does any among you remember a man called Barbaros,’ Serpentius continued, ‘who once lived in this castro?’

Tito opened his eyes and stared at the man above him. What was this? A moment passed before he heard the voice of Valuta, the grey-beard. ‘I know of Barbaros. He brought the Romans down upon this place and then left its people to their fate. He had a wife, called Lyda.’

‘Yes,’ said Serpentius. ‘And a son called Tito.’