Scourge of Rome

XV

Serpentius walked in without warning as Valerius prepared for their departure the next day. ‘It seems you’re not the only Roman who will be riding with Sohaemus’s archers,’ he said. ‘A broad stripe tribune rode in last night with an escort of cavalry from Tripolis. According to Gaulan he was on his way to join Titus, but Judaean fanatics cut the coast road and he came inland rather than wait for a ship to Caesarea.’ Valerius considered the news as he dried himself. A broad stripe tribune meant a senior officer, probably the second in command of a unit. ‘He’ll be joining his legion as aide to the legate, perhaps even an aide to Titus himself.’ He felt Serpentius’s eyes on him. ‘It would be best if we didn’t meet. Tell Gaulan to structure the column to ensure it doesn’t happen.’ The Spaniard nodded, but Valerius could see something was troubling him. ‘You think I’m being over-cautious?’

‘You can never be too cautious when people are trying to kill you.’

A grunt of acknowledgement. They’d discussed who might have murdered Ariston, raising a dozen possibilities but coming no nearer to an answer. The likelihood was that someone wanted to separate Valerius from Serpentius. Without the gladiator guarding his back he’d be a much easier target. But then why kill Ariston and not Serpentius, who’d been as vulnerable as he ever would be, drunk and alone in the Emesan alley? Then again, perhaps Ariston had been marked as a spy, or already had enemies in the city. Valerius would have liked to discuss the question with Tabitha, but he could hardly go pursuing her through the palace. It seemed likely they’d never know.

He finished dressing just as light began to filter through the courtyard window. Now, a dilemma few other men had ever faced. The thought brought a wry smile to his face. Which hand should he wear today? He oiled the stump of his arm and laid out the two artificial fists on the bed.

Serpentius studied the wooden twins. ‘What …?’

Belatedly Valerius remembered he hadn’t mentioned the armourer’s gift to Serpentius. He picked up the new hand and pressed the button. Serpentius’s eyes lit up admiringly as the lethal little blade snapped out.

‘I like it,’ he grinned. ‘A proper lifesaver.’ He saw Valerius’s look of puzzlement. ‘That’s what we called a hidden blade in the arena. Even if your opponent smashed your shield away and bludgeoned you into the dust you always had a chance with your lifesaver. A quick thrust into his balls or even his thigh and he was yours for the taking. It took timing and nerve, but it worked. You should wear it all the time. Just in case.’

‘You don’t mind?’ Valerius indicated the other fist, which had taken Serpentius countless hours to carve.

‘This?’ The former gladiator laughed. ‘It’s just a rough old thing. It probably has woodworm. You should be ready for your audience with the king.’

Valerius reached for the armour and, with the help of Serpentius, transformed himself into a glittering example of a Roman officer, clad in armour forged for a god, with the scarlet cloak of a legionary legate over his shoulder. When they met, King Sohaemus apologized for Ariston’s murder and made a pledge to hunt down his killers that Valerius doubted he intended to keep. There was no mention of the attack on Valerius himself, which presumably meant that Tabitha had managed to suppress all mention of it. Sohaemus was polite, but wary; perhaps a hint that the Roman had worn out his welcome. Nevertheless, he asked him to convey his regards to General Titus, greetings to the Emperor and assurances of Emesa’s continued loyalty to Rome. He pledged to send more troops if they came available and he would attempt to persuade Chalcis to do the same.

‘I have not had the opportunity to thank you for your magnificent gift, majesty,’ Valerius said with overblown courtesy. ‘It is far beyond my expectations and the value of any service I have provided. I will wear it with pride against your enemies and the glory of it will strike them blind.’

The king’s lips twitched to show he understood the compliment’s underlying message. ‘I also have a more personal gift.’ He waved forward a servant bearing a scroll case and Valerius opened it to find the papyrus copy of Aeneas on sieges he’d been reading in the library. ‘No thanks are required,’ Sohaemus assured him. ‘I have other copies and I believe the contents may be of some use to you when you reach General Titus.’

An hour later, Valerius joined the column of archers formed up beneath the cheering crowds lining the walls of Emesa. There were five hundred of them, in addition to Gaulan’s Chalcideans, a full cohort divided into ten squadrons each led by a standard-bearer carrying a flowing pennant. As a reinforcement for Titus’s army of forty thousand, they’d barely be noticed, but Gaulan assured Valerius that Titus desperately needed archers and their value went far beyond their numbers. Few or not, they were well equipped. Every man wore a padded tunic beneath a chain vest polished by rolling in barrels of sand, and on his head a shining brass helmet with chain neck guard.

Valerius had spent time watching them exercise and he’d been impressed by their horsemanship and skill with the bow. They could half turn in the saddle, fire three arrows over the horse’s tail and return to a normal riding position in the time it took to blink. Their bows were short, double curved weapons of wood and sinew that could launch an arrow twice as far as any hunting bow, and with the same accuracy. Though the archers carried the bows unstrung in pouches strapped to their backs it was the work of a moment to attach the cord and pluck an arrow from the leather quiver attached to their saddles at the knee. Fiercely independent men, they could have been brothers to the Parthians he had faced in Armenia.

To the rear, a baggage train of fractious, roaring camels and braying donkeys hauled supplies for the journey. A legionary cohort would have used bullock carts and been half the length, but the journey time would be double. Gaulan estimated it would already take two weeks or more if, as the king had hinted, Titus was already at, or close to, Jerusalem.

The column’s departure was delayed by King Sohaemus’s speech from a tower by the city gate. Valerius only heard a few unintelligible words on the breeze as he sat taking in the scent of nervous horse and fresh manure while the men shifted impatiently in their saddles and their officers fretted at the wait. Finally, the king waved a hand and they were on their way. Gaulan, who had overall command, rode at their head with Valerius at his side, but the Roman had seen no sign of Tabitha.

They’d been on the road for less than an hour when the sound of cantering hooves heralded the arrival of Serpentius at the front of the column. ‘A certain person is comfortably housed in a sprung wagon at the front of the baggage train, as befits her status,’ the Spaniard quietly informed Valerius. ‘Sohaemus has allocated twenty horses to ensure the pace of the column is not impeded and to show his love for his niece. She is protected by twenty of our Chalcidean friends who change guard every two hours.’

They followed the Orontes through a patchwork of lush fields and meadows and that evening they camped on a height above the banks on grass spun with spring blossoms. A legion would have fortified the temporary camp with walls and ditches, but the Emesans simply built fires and unrolled their blankets before cooking the evening meal. Valerius mentioned this to Gaulan, but the Chalcidean only shrugged. ‘They know their business. We are safe enough while we are in Emesan territory. It will be different after Heliopolis when we turn into the mountains. Ambush country,’ he said significantly, ‘and the Judaeans are masters of ambush, as your Twelfth legion discovered to their cost.’

Valerius woke to the usual military dawn chorus of coughs and farts, the familiar rattle of equipment, groans of complaining men and the rasped commands of their officers trying to get them moving with kicks and curses. The closest Emesans looked on with frank amusement as he oiled the mottled purple stump of his right arm. He ignored them and slipped the cowhide socket in place, tying the leather thongs with practised movements of his left hand and teeth. When possible he liked to exercise with his sword every morning, something he’d learned from Serpentius. He searched for the former gladiator, but Serpentius’s bedding still lay where he’d slept and there was no sign of the Spaniard. Valerius was unsure whether to be relieved or disappointed he wouldn’t face that lightning sword and relentless savagery today.

He shrugged off his tunic and slipped the ceremonial sword from its sheath, shivering slightly in the still air. Men watched curiously as he walked through the camp and down the slope through the trees until he found a small clearing. He instinctively checked his surroundings for potential threats, but the only sound was the gentle twitter of birds somewhere close among the branches and the soft rush of the river from further down the slope. Satisfied he was alone, Valerius began a series of cuts and thrusts, parries and counter-thrusts, dancing first backward then forward, switching his weight from one foot to the other. Gradually he increased the pace until his mind began to soar to the rhythm of the movements and the sweat coursed down his back. Now the sword wove increasingly more intricate patterns and he darted from one side of the clearing to the other, performing pirouettes and changing direction without warning, ducking and weaving. Attack low, change in mid-thrust to a controlled throat-high slash, and use the movement to sweep aside the point that’s about to skewer your liver. Dance left away from another attack. Regroup and counter. Hear a rustle in the bushes behind you, spin and … thrust.

The stranger didn’t even blink as the gladius point came to a halt a belt notch from his eyeball.

‘So it is you? An impressive display.’ Valerius ignored the cosy familiarity in the words; the voice a little slurred, but with a cultured, educated Latin. The reason for the slur wasn’t difficult to work out. One side of the man’s lips – the left – hung lifelessly, as if they’d given up on the rest of his features. Like most of that portion of his face they were a wrinkled, mottled purple, the colour and texture of a turkey crop.

‘You don’t recognize me?’ Valerius’s sword point didn’t stray the width of a hair. ‘Perhaps …’ the newcomer moved his head only to freeze again as the point touched the flesh at the base of his throat, ‘perhaps if you allow me to show you my more attractive profile?’

Valerius’s expression didn’t change, but his eyes shifted from the disfigured features to the trees beyond the newcomer’s shoulder. Tabitha stood silently twenty paces away, a ghostly, ethereal figure dressed all in vestal white. How long had she been there? Had she seen the man approach? Her face remained unreadable and when he looked again all that remained were leaves fluttering in the soft breeze.

He turned his attention back to the scarred interloper. The sword point moved an inch away from the man’s throat, allowing him to turn his head to reveal the uninjured side of his face. A handsome profile, fine-boned, with an aquiline nose and thin lips that curved slightly upwards in a smile that, for all its allusions to friendship, remained devoid of any humour or warmth. Dark hair flecked with grey flopped over his brow above an eye as cold as a misty Iceni morning. A man whose visible scars were not the only ones he bore, but Valerius knew all about that.

‘No?’ The other man broke the silence. ‘I am disappointed. Britannia? The Twentieth? You were returning to Rome while the rest of us cursed and sweated trying to prepare for Paulinus’s march on Mona. Of course,’ the eye drifted to Valerius’s wooden fist, ‘you didn’t get there. I heard about your exploits at Colonia and winning the Corona Aurea. That came later, of course, after Paulinus had us patrolling in the woods and some Celts decided I should make closer acquaintance with the coals of their fire.’

Valerius studied him more closely. Still no hint of recognition, but that wasn’t surprising. When he thought of Britannia it was the faces of the dead who came to him, as if those still living and breathing had never really existed.

‘Claudius Florus Paternus,’ the newcomer introduced himself. ‘We served together for two weeks and I was the most junior tribune. I’m not surprised you don’t remember me, but I remember you. There was a Celtic hill fort on the Silurian border. Legate Drusus reckoned he’d never seen an assault better planned or led.’

Valerius frowned. This he did remember. The stink of sweat and fear at the centre of a testudo formation as the spears and boulders battered down on the roof of shields. A grinning gap-toothed face that disappeared in a spray of scarlet. He still had the scar on his leg from the burning fat, and the memory of a soldier’s worst nightmare: the enemy who decided that the pleasure of killing him was worth dying for. He allowed the sword to drop, but not so far that Paternus was out of range.

‘Why are you here?’

‘No joyous welcome for an old comrade?’ Despite the admonition, Paternus visibly relaxed. ‘Given your particular circumstances that’s probably understandable. I am ordered to join the army of General Titus as aide to his chief of staff Tiberius Alexander. A storm forced us into Tripolis, but the rebels had cut the coast road. My guide advised that the Emesans might provide safe passage, and here I am.’

‘No, I mean why did you follow me here?’

The disfigured face twisted into what passed for a grin. ‘I caught glimpses of a legate’s helmet and cloak during the march yesterday and it naturally made me curious. The Emesan cavalry troopers of my guard talked of a Roman officer with one hand who had won King Sohaemus’s favour. The single hand stirred a memory. I was under the care of Paulinus’s personal medicus when we camped somewhere close to Verulamium. He’d given me some herb concoction and I was only semi-conscious, but I remember him treating a man who’d lost his hand. He was quite proud of the leather cover he designed to protect the stump. When I saw you leaving the camp I decided to follow. It seemed the best chance to introduce myself.’

A plausible enough explanation for his sudden appearance, with the added advantage that Valerius remembered the man who’d treated him in the hospital tent. A Greek. What had his name been? Cornelius? No, Calpurnius, that was it. Tiberius Calpurnius. He’d wanted to remove more of Valerius’s arm for the sake of neatness, and been quite put out when Valerius refused. Still, something didn’t quite fit.

‘You say it seemed the best chance to introduce yourself, but wouldn’t it have been a little odd if I’d been at the latrine?’

The scarred face creased into a perplexed frown. ‘What kind of man takes a sword to the latrine?’

Valerius raised his gladius so the point touched the other man’s breastbone.

‘A careful one.’