Sword of Rome

XXVIII

‘He says we cross here.’

The road turned east after Bilitio and continued on through the high passes to Curia, from where a man could find his way to the Danuvius and distant Noricum and Pannonia. Valtir had reined in beside a ford where the river tumbled melt-green and foaming, knee deep, over the rocks. Beyond the ford a valley with a faint track at its centre cut through the otherwise unbroken wall of mountains to the north-west. Valerius studied the narrow opening in the iron half-light of the predawn. They had discussed this during the night. The traditional route was the safer and more reliable option. With half the normal levels of winter snow even the highest passes would be crossable. It was a well-travelled path and if they lost their way they would be able to find some outpost or village to set them back on the road. If it had not been for the unrest among the mountain tribes, Valerius would not even have considered the second option. The other road meant they would be entirely dependent on Valtir and entirely lost without him. With a nod and a prayer to Jupiter, controller of wind, snow and storm, Valerius urged his mount into the river.

At first the valley was relatively broad, making the going easy, but soon it narrowed and divided into two at a place where they passed a small settlement. Valtir didn’t even acknowledge the right-hand path, which appeared the more inviting, but carried on unerringly. Now the valley walls closed in and the mountains seemed to grow higher with every step. Snow capped the peaks and it began to fall in silken nuggets from leaden clouds that seemed to touch the mountain tops. Valtir led, followed by Valerius, Dasius and the four Thracian troopers, with Serpentius, ever alert, in the rear. One of the Thracians, Laslav, who couldn’t be more than seventeen, whooped and reached out to catch as many of the gently falling flakes as he could and cram them into his mouth before they melted. Soon, though, what had been a pretty diversion was transformed into a threat as a white curtain dropped between the riders and the world around them. Valerius darted a glance at Valtir, but the Celt barely seemed to notice the change. If a track existed, only he could see it, and they followed carefully in the hoofprints of his little pony. Eventually, he turned off the road and led them through a clump of scrub to a low shelter carved from the hillside by some long-dead optimist hoping to find gold, tin or lead. They tethered the horses close to the cave mouth, made a small fire and spread their bedding on the cold, hard rock. After a long day in the saddle Valerius slept the sleep of the dead.

He woke shivering, to be confronted by a world of black and white. Valtir stood at the entrance of the cave, silhouetted against the ankle-deep snow that blanketed everything outside. Valerius knew the mountain man would be evaluating the conditions, and everything depended on his decision. Dasius had spoken to the little Celt before they bedded down and he had warned of hard climbing ahead. The Roman suppressed a shiver at the thought of the jagged peaks that had formed an honour guard for their progress and imagined what the words ‘hard climbing’ would entail. ‘Dasius? Ask him if this changes anything.’

The Thracian dragged himself away from the tiny fire and joined the slight figure at the cave mouth for a whispered conversation. When he returned Valtir remained in the entrance as if his presence alone was keeping an enemy at bay.

‘He says it will make it more difficult, but not impossible.’ Dasius’s stolid face twisted in a grimace of concern. ‘That is his assessment and I have been with him often enough to believe it will be correct, but … My knowledge of his language is slight. Sometimes when he says one thing I think he means another. When he talks of what lies ahead, he sees it only through his own eyes and his own experiences. If I ask him about the horses, he shrugs and says he has made the journey in these conditions before. But I believe he considers only his mount, which is mountain bred, not our own, which are not. When he talks of climbs and obstacles, it is his own capabilities that are foremost in his mind. If there is more snow …’ He hesitated. ‘Sometimes when I look into his eyes I think I see fear there.’

They set off after dawn, with Valtir, as always, in the van, the horses’ flanks steaming gently in the frosty air and their hooves crunching the undisturbed white carpet underfoot. The mountain peaks towering over them were hidden behind a curtain of low, grey cloud that held the threat of more snow, and now the trail rose steadily to meet it. Unusually, it became even colder as the day progressed and they wrapped their cloaks tighter and breathed on their freezing hands to provide some semblance of warmth. After a steady climb, the valley curved west and the hills formed an unbroken barrier between Valerius and his goal. Studying the barren, scree-covered slopes he felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cold. It did not seem possible that any man could scale those heights, never mind with horses. He heard awed murmuring of the cavalrymen behind him and knew they were thinking the same. Yet Valtir rode on unconcerned, his pony plodding steadily through the snow. After another hour he allowed the beast to amble to a halt and frowned through narrowed eyes at the snow-covered scarp to his right.

‘Here,’ he said.

The word was greeted by a gasp from one of the Thracians and a mutter that might have been a curse or a prayer. Dasius rode to Valerius’s side and together they studied the soaring slope, which looked exactly like every other hillside they’d passed. Perhaps a little less sheer, but still unscalable.

‘Can it be possible?’ Valerius whispered. The cavalryman shook his head and hissed a question at Valtir. The little man’s reply was accompanied by a shrug.

‘He says it is an old cattle raiders’ trail. If they could get cows over it, we can take horses. They will have to be led, but this is the steepest part, and once we are over the rise he claims it becomes easier.’

Valerius locked eyes with Serpentius, who had been born and raised in mountains just like these. After a moment’s consideration the Spaniard nodded. ‘If he says it can be done, I believe it can be done.’

Valerius turned to the Thracian commander. ‘Dasius, you have escorted us further than I had a right to ask. I release you and your men from your duty with my thanks.’

The young auxiliary’s chin came up and he pointed to where his men stood in a huddle by their horses. ‘We have spoken about this. Without me, who would translate for the guide? So I stay. And these brigands will not leave me, even when given a direct order and faced with a climb that would daunt an ibex.’ The nut-brown faces broke into a collective grin. ‘So they stay, too.’

Valerius nodded slowly, embarrassed. He wanted to tell them how he valued their loyalty and their courage and that the hardship they were enduring was worthwhile. But he hesitated because he wasn’t certain if that was true. It had all seemed so simple when they had set off from Rome. Find Vitellius and persuade him to bring his legions to heel. Succeed and they would save countless lives. Fail and … well, they would cross that ford when they came to it. But here in these gods-cursed mountains he was beginning to think they might never reach Colonia Agrippinensis. Yet what choice did they have but to continue? Dasius answered his doubts with a fierce grin and turned away to help his troopers share the supplies equally between all the horses. Before he went, Valerius reached out with his good hand and touched the Thracian’s arm. It wasn’t much as a gesture of thanks, but Dasius treated it as if he had been awarded another phalera to add to the medals on his armoured chest. His eyes turned grave and he saluted as if he were on the parade ground.

When he was out of earshot, Serpentius said quietly: ‘We are fortunate in our friends.’

Valerius couldn’t meet his eye. ‘Yes, we are.’

Dismounted, Valtir led them in single file, not directly up the mountain as Valerius had feared, but diagonally across the slope. The guide’s little pony skipped across the rocks, but the other mounts had to be coaxed, placing a hoof at a time on a path that was barely discernible to the naked eye. At first it was relatively easy, but soon the track took a sharp turn and they were climbing rapidly, the valley floor suddenly dizzyingly far below. Valtir set such a brisk pace that the breath turned to fire in Valerius’s chest. They worked their way up the slope in a series of diagonals, always gaining height and every step increasing the agony in muscles unused to the mountains. The higher they went, the deeper the snow and the more treacherous the going. A pack horse would baulk at the incline and they would halt while it was manhandled from before and behind until it kicked and bucked its way to the next level. Eventually they reached a point where Valtir disappeared over a rise and Valerius found himself looking down into a narrow, snowbound valley that had been hidden by the ridge. His heart raced as he realized that it offered a comparatively safer route through the mountains. Each man who followed stopped to take in the panorama and rest weary legs. If anything, the descent was worse than the climb.

By the time they reached the valley floor, it was too late to continue and men and horses were exhausted. Valtir marked out a circle on the ground and began to clear it, piling the waist-deep snow in a wall along the curve he had drawn. Valerius ordered the others to follow the Celt’s lead and eventually they had an enclosure that protected man and beast from the worst of the cold wind. After a mouthful of bread and a swig of wine they collapsed exhausted into their blankets, leaving Serpentius to take the first watch.

Next morning Valerius nudged them shivering and cursing from their beds. Ahead of them the ground rose steadily, but nothing like as steeply as the first climb, and Valtir said they would be able to ride again. They mounted and urged their beasts through the snow, the pack horses trailing alongside. In the thin strip between the snow-capped peaks, the sky cleared to a pristine azure blue, but no sunlight reached them in the valley bottom and the raw cold gnawed at their bones. As they climbed, the gorge narrowed still further and Valerius could see Valtir studying the peaks to the left and right, his head darting like a fearful sparrow searching for a hawk. A boulder-strewn stream surged its way down the centre of the pass in foaming cascades and gradually it forced them deeper into the shadow of the mountains to their right.

Not everyone felt oppressed by the conditions. The irrepressible Laslav and another of Dasius’s hardy Thracians, Yoni, began a playful snow fight to warm themselves up, cackling noisily. Valtir hissed a warning.

‘He says we should not disturb the gods of this place.’ Dasius frowned and made the sign against evil. ‘We are close to their home and he is fearful of their anger.’

‘Then let us hope we are welcome.’ Valerius kept his voice light, but his hand instinctively reached for the golden amulet at his neck.

They were nearing the head of the pass when a sharp crack split the cocooned silence, as if someone had snapped a rotten tree branch. Valerius exchanged a puzzled glance with Dasius, but Valtir was already on the move, kicking his pony violently into motion. A desperate cry echoed from Serpentius at the rear of the column.

‘Ride! Leave the pack horses and ride for your life!’

Valerius hesitated and Dasius looked to where his troopers milled in confusion. Serpentius urged his horse past them, grabbing Valerius’s reins as he went by.

‘Ride, you idiot! Avalanche!’

Valerius dropped the rope to his pack horse and dug his heels into his mount’s ribs. His eyes searched the hills above for some hint of the danger that had sparked such fear in Serpentius, but he could see nothing. Was it possible that the Spaniard and Valtir were starting at shadows? Even as the thought formed, his mind was struggling to evaluate the impossible change happening before his eyes. The entire mountain top seemed to slip towards him in a single graceful movement, transforming in moments to a twenty-foot wall of snow the size of a legionary parade ground. It began slowly, so slowly that it didn’t seem to pose any threat. Surely they could outride the danger? But, as he watched, the great snow bank began to break up and increase in speed, pushing a blizzard of particles before it. Its advance was accompanied by the surging roar of an approaching thunderstorm, but Valerius’s eyes and ears seemed out of time, as if the sound was trying to catch up with what he was seeing. Now he needed no urging and he screamed at his horse for more speed, lashing its flanks in a desperate effort to gain ground. He braved a glance back to see Dasius and his cavalrymen on the move at last, although Yoni stubbornly refused to abandon his pack horse and was already ten or fifteen paces behind. Another crack froze the blood in his veins and he realized that a second piece of the snow shelf had broken free. A despairing look told him it was twice as large as the first, which already powered towards him like a grasping hand, fingers of thundering white powder extending from the main break as if a river had broken its banks and created separate streams. With each passing second the streams grew in power and speed, demolishing everything before them and snapping mature trees as if they were reeds. He heard a sharp cry and looked back to see the man with the pack horse go down in a flurry of white. Now the thunder was so deafening he thought his ears must explode and he dared not look up for fear of what he would see. It was only when his world turned to white shards of ice and something enormous kicked him out of the saddle that he knew they were all dead men anyway.

A moment when time stood still. Darkness. The thunder of his heart and the sound of harsh breathing. Something moved against his chest and he opened his eyes to a world of glacial blue and glaring white. He tried to move his right arm to push the snow from his face, but it was frozen in position. The left too. Gradually it came to him. He twisted and struggled with every ounce of energy he possessed. Kicked out with his legs. He could not move a single inch. He was buried alive. Somewhere close by, another poor soul was mewing pathetically like a newborn child and it took a moment to realize it was the sound of his own terror. The movement on his chest again. Something large smashed into his jaw and pushed his head back. Pain blinded him, but the disturbance had created a small air pocket that allowed him to breathe more easily. He realized that his horse had fallen beside him when the avalanche struck, and was equally trapped, with its head across his body. He willed himself to stay calm. How long would the air last? He wondered idly if he would suffocate or freeze to death, and which was the easier. The horse wriggled again, creating more space, and he realized that their combined heat was melting the snow. That thought gave him the strength to attempt another movement, but the result was the same as before. He was not only entombed, but encased. This time there was no escape.