As he came out of the trees, the wind from the water hit him. In the distance, torches were burning, and he could see a white sail run up a mast. Arctos and his followers were down by the harbour. Everyone was leaving. And Flaminius must join them, or else he would be lost on Karpathos, marooned until the next galley visited the island. And by then it would almost certainly be too late.
Not too late for Flaminius. With his military training he would be able to survive here for months. But too late for the emperor.
Too late for the empire.
He reached a vantage point where he had a clear view of the little harbour. The river ship stood at anchor, but figures were visible coming up and down the gangplank, and others were busying themselves about the rigging. A small group stood on the shore, watching the proceedings but taking no part. Flaminius tried to get a good look at them but despite the torches two of them held, they were too far away. Yet one of them surely was Arctos—presumably that tall, gaunt fellow in the middle. Now that he had discarded his false beard, he would be recognisable. Unless he had adopted some other disguise.
Flaminius wormed his way forwards through the reeds. The chatter of the crewmen drifted towards him on the cold breeze, bringing with it the smell of the water. Mud squelched beneath his knees and elbows. At last he came out of the reeds just south of the harbour. It was dark here and he ran no risk of being seen. Should he swim out to the boat now and sneak aboard on the seaward side while embarkation was under way? It was his only hope, but something held him back.
He wanted to see Arctos’ face.
It might be his last chance. Even if he was able somehow to rescue the emperor and the empire, it would all be futile if the arch conspirator escaped to plot another day. If Flaminius could recognise him, well, he was one man in six hundred—the Roman Senate. It wouldn’t take long to track him down.
The sword was hindering him. Whether he was to swim out to the boat under cover of darkness or crawl closer to Arctos in the hopes of getting a good look, he would have to leave his weapon behind. Besides, there were too many of Arctos’ men around for him to risk any kind of sword fighting. The way forward lay in stealth, not swashbuckling. He would climb aboard when no one was looking and conceal himself somewhere in the hold, then stay hidden until they reached their destination. Then…well, then he would find out where that took him, and what he could do.
For now, the priority was Arctos. Carefully he put the sword down on the edge of the reed bank and began making his slow, painful way down the shore towards the harbour. Each time he moved, the nasty, sucking mud seemed to reach out to grab him, and it was reluctant to let him go. Now he was passing the first of the huts that made up the warehouses, boathouses or whatever they were. He made no attempt to investigate them. His mind was on the prize.
At last he was close enough to hear what they were saying, those people gathered at the foot of the gangplank. It seemed like an aeon since Flaminius had begun his crawl, but barely any time had passed at all. But—Jove curse it! —the tall, gaunt figure had his back to him.
He was bald. Flaminius could see that much. Bald and bare headed, despite the wind off the water. The rounded dome of a head ringed by a fringe of white hair. Arctos was tall, no longer stooping as he had in the villa, taller than the burly gladiators who he was addressing. He moved his hand in an imperious gesture and torchlight glinted on his signet ring. But he would not turn around.
Flaminius could go no closer for fear of being seen. He strained his ears to listen to what they were saying. To his shock he realised that his fate topped the discussion.
‘Brutus should have got here by now,’ Arctos was saying, his voice the harsh grate Flaminius remembered from the encampment in the Delta. ‘What’s keeping him?’
‘That spy is a tough bastard,’ said one of the gladiators. ‘You should have sent more than one man.’
‘Brutus can manage him,’ said Arctos confidently. ‘Finally I am rid of that pestilential fool.’ He turned abruptly towards the gangplank. Flaminius caught a brief glimpse of a beaky nose before he turned back to his companions. ‘We can come back for Brutus another day. He has wasted my time enough as it is. We’ll see how he likes being left to fend for himself. A salutary lesson. Come, the boat is ready.’
Surrounded by torch-bearing men, Arctos swept up the gangplank.
Alarmed, Flaminius glanced at the vessel. Intent on identifying Arctos he had not realised the truth. The boat was ready. The tide must be turning. The sails were bellying in the night wind. The gangplank was raised as Arctos and his companions went up onto the quarterdeck.
‘Let go aft,’ came the cry.
Slowly the boat began to move off into the wide waters. Flaminius rose, horrified.
He had left it too late. Now Arctos was getting away from him again. For one desperate moment, he considered diving into the water, swimming after the boat. But that was a crazy idea. He couldn’t hope to keep up with it. Already it was drawing off.
Turning about, it began to cut through the dark water, the lights from the stern growing smaller and smaller until at last they resembled a single distant star in an empty night sky.
And Flaminius was left there, all alone on the shore of an island deserted except for, back in the villa, the mortal remains of the man who had come to kill him.
—23—
Flaminius sat down on an upturned box and rested his head against his fist, a dark expression on his face. Was it worth trying anymore? Here he was, marooned on an unknown shore, with who knew how many miles between him and Alexandria. What had he been hoping to accomplish? To warn the emperor? To stop Arctos? He didn’t even know how the renegade senator intended to assassinate the emperor. He gave a bitter grin. Unlike himself, Arctos had not been forthcoming. He stared out across the waters, into the night.
A boat bobbed in the water a short way from where Arctos’ vessel had been moored. For a moment, Hope stirred him, and he half rose. Then he slumped back down. The boat was a one- or two- or at most three-man transport, like the one in which he had traversed the Delta on his journey to the rebel encampment. He could not hope to cross the sea in that cockleshell.
There were quicker ways to end his life.
He remembered the sword he had left among the reeds. Was that it? Should he go and find it, then fling himself upon it like some noble Roman of old? Like Paulus Alexander? Was everything lost? Had he brought chaos to the empire, and shame to his house?
He pictured his father in his mind’s eye, nodding approvingly at the Republican sentiment. Of course he should end his life. There was no other way he could atone for the havoc he had inadvertently wrought. As soon as he had realised that he was in Arctos’ presence, he should have throttled the man with his bare hands.
As he rose on shaking legs to search for the sword, his eyes fell upon the boat again. It really was oddly reminiscent of the boat he had crossed the Delta in. He stood gazing at it. Would he meet Camilla again? Would they meet once more on the banks of the Styx?
Going to the water’s edge he studied the boat more closely. It was built of reeds, in an Egyptian design. That was why it reminded him of his Delta journey. He frowned, puzzled.
He went to find the sword. After some searching in the darkness, his groping fingers closed round its hilt. Going back down the shore, he waded out to the boat, flung the sword aboard, then climbed in after it. With a single swing of the sword blade, he sliced the mooring rope in two, then began to push out into the open waters.
A short way out from land, there was enough of a breeze for Flaminius to chance running up the sail. Soon the white linen expanse was fluttering above him while the cordage thrummed in the cold wind. Running a three-man vessel single handed would have been hard going for a Phoenician sailor, and for a landlubbing Roman it was very difficult. At one point he almost knocked himself into the water with the boom. But at last he broke this steed of the waves and sailed south, guiding himself by the stars when he could see them thr
ough the clouds.
What kind of world he would find when he came ashore? Would everything be the same? Or would Hadrian be dead and Arctos be emperor? The man’s claim would be contested. Even with a stranglehold on Egypt, controlling its vast supply of grain that provided the Roman mob with bread, Arctos could not hope to rule the empire from Alexandria. And if he ventured north across the sea, he would meet resistance. But that would spell civil war, far worse than any uprising these parts had seen in a long time. Even if Arctos was defeated, the destruction would be terrible. Innocent people like Ozymandias and his sister would starve in the streets, if they were not murdered or raped by marauders. The only real option was to stop Arctos before he could wreak such havoc. But how could Flaminius hope to achieve that, lost and alone in the midst of the waters?
Really, he thought as the wind dropped and he began paddling again, he had been up against too much. How could he hope to fight magic? Skimbix’s temple was where it had all gone wrong. And as for being spirited away to this forsaken island, even Ulysses had not had to put up with anything like it, and he’d fought witches, sirens and a cyclops. Not even Alexander the Great in the wildest and most improbable tales of the marketplace storyteller had known the like. It shouldn’t be allowed. Not in this modern Roman world.
He knew what his father would blame it on: all these Greek loving young fellows, with their beards and their philosophy. The only philosophy a Roman needed was to make sure the crops were planted on time and the slaves didn’t sleep on the job. Flaminius gave a cracked smile, imagining his father’s fond old face. He’d have to go back home one day, see the family again. If there was still a home to go to, if civil war had not burnt those crops by the time Flaminius got back to Italy. He kept rowing.
The wind caught up again, and he rested on his oars. All around it was the blackest midnight. The clouds had rolled up the scatter of diamonds in the sky above, and the waters stretched, cold and windswept and endless, on every side. He glanced over his shoulder to see much the same beyond the prow of his little boat. He yawned. He was exhausted. He had been active today, very active all his life, it seemed. And now he was tired. Alone in the middle of the sea, alone and weary. His head drooped. He leant on his oars.
He slept.
With a guilty start he awoke from dreams plagued by his father’s nagging voice. Dawn light spread grey and dismal across the waters. The sea was still. The wind had dropped and was barely stirring the waters. Was that why the boat was no longer moving? Above him, the sail fluttered like a war banner, but the boat was going nowhere. It wasn’t even bobbing on the water. It was still, motionless, as if rooted in rock.
Wincing at an eruption of aches and pains—that was the last time he went to sleep sitting up! —he turned around, then gave another start. He stared in utter bewilderment at the scene before his eyes. No wonder the boat had stopped moving, he told himself. He had run aground.
He hauled himself over the side and his sandaled feet splashed down in mud. Standing up, he stretched and yawned, his vertebrae giving a resounding crack, as he surveyed the endless expanse of reeds that vanished into the early morning haze. As far as the eye could see, reed bank after reed bank. Everywhere else, a waste of waters stretched to the horizon.
He had come ashore on an island. An island of reeds. He’d hoped to reach the mainland, wherever that might be. Somewhere he could find help. Now he had no idea where he was.
He looked back at the boat. It was half buried in thick mud. He’d have a hell of a time freeing it. Maybe there were people on this island. Even if they were barbarians, they might help him.
Sword in hand, he took a walk up a reed grown slope to see what lay beyond the horizon. In many ways, that had always been his job, even when he was tribune of auxiliary cavalry. Certainly, it was the main purpose of the imperial agent. To look beyond the horizon, see what dangers were lurking.
He saw nothing but reeds, an endless expanse of them tossing in the breeze. And in the far distance, a glimmer of blue. Sea? Then this was definitely an island. But where?
Rotating on his heels, he caught sight of columns of smoke trailing into the sky. A settlement. Quite a large one. Questing about amongst the reeds, he found a waterlogged track; whether it was animal or manmade he lacked the skill to determine. Gripping his sword firmly, he set off, squelching.
The track wound through the reeds, and several times he lost sight of the smoke trails and all hope of finding any kind of civilisation. Twice he slipped and slithered in the mud, the second time losing his sword irretrievably in a pool of muck, try as he might to find it again. On his second dive, he noticed something strange. The water, though foul, was sweet when it touched his lips. Sweet, as in not salt.
Surely even a coastal marsh would have salt water, let alone one on a smallish island in the middle of the sea. How far had he come? To what land had Skimbix’s magic and his own sailing taken him? A sea of sweet water? Impossible. According to the latest philosophical thinking, the water of the sea was the sweat exuded by the earth due to the heat of the sun. Naturally it was salty, because all sweat is salty. It would be against nature for there to be a sea of sweet water in the world. Wouldn’t it?
He gave up trying to retrieve his stolen sword. Let it lie there until some fisherman or hunter found it. If he met with robbers among these islands, he would just have to trust to his fists, or his wits. He splashed off down the path with redoubled vigour.
As he turned a corner, the reeds opened up, revealing a stretch of water. Something else he saw caused him to halt in his tracks, then duck back into cover.
Peering out, he narrowed his eyes. Several reed boats were crossing the water, too far off for him to make out much of their crews, but he could see that the men were carrying spears, as the sun winked upon blades. Several of them seemed to be wearing helmets too. Gladiator helmets? Flaminius watched until they had vanished from sight.
The smoke trail was to his right now, in the opposite direction from that taken by the martial looking reed boats. He headed in that direction. As he did, ibis flew overhead, giving their weird screeching cries. He watched them fly as he strode onwards. Ibis. Reeds. Reed boats. It all seemed strangely familiar.
Coming around the corner, he saw the source of the smoke trails was a town. Water surrounded it on all sides but the water was shallow: he could see a man leading a herd of cattle through it. A few boats sailed to and from the town, a cluster of white walled, flat roofed buildings on a mound above the waters, interspersed with the occasional temple or larger building. A few people were out in the early morning streets.
Flaminius waded out to join the herdsman, a scrawny, brown skinned man wearing little more than a mud splashed linen loincloth.
‘What town is this, friend?’ he asked in Latin. The man scowled, shook his head, mimed incomprehension. Flaminius had come to a land where Latin was unknown, it seemed. He tried Greek.
The man’s face cleared. ‘Buto,’ he said. ‘The town is Buto. Are you a some kind of barbarian?’
‘Buto?’ Flaminius said. The man nodded. ‘Then all that water out there…’
‘It is the Butic Lake in the Nile Delta,’ said the herdsman tranquilly. Flaminius reeled.
He was still in Egypt.
—24—
Nile Delta, Sebennytic Branch, 3rd September 124 AD
Half an hour later, he was rowing a stolen boat through the shallow waters of the Nile inundation.
He could have used his lancehead brooch to requisition the vessel—which he had found tied to the roots of a palm tree and unattended—but since its owner wasn’t about, and besides, he didn’t want to draw attention to his presence in the Delta, he thought it better just to take it. He’d do his best to make amends at a later date—If he remembered. Saving the empire was his chief priority. Small matters like law and morality had to come second.
His sense of time had received a thorough drubbing recently, but if he was right, it was the final day of the Days of Ha
drian celebrations. When would the emperor make his appearance in the imperial box? At noon, the prefect had said, at the cusp of the final day’s festivities, between the beast fights of the morning and the gladiatorial combats of the afternoon—the time when judgement was seen to be done in the eye of the sun, when condemned criminals were flung to the beasts. It was still early morning. Hadrian was on his way.
And Arctos would be waiting for him.
Flaminius rowed on, face grim. If only he knew Arctos’ plans. Now the tables were turned; Arctos knew what Flaminius had been keeping from him, but Flaminius had learnt very little about the rebel’s plans, except that he meant to murder the emperor. If only he could get back to Alexandria before noon! It seemed likely. that the assassination attempt would come when the emperor made his appearance. At no time before that would Hadrian’s presence be public knowledge.
Maybe Flaminius could get into the amphitheatre beforehand, into the imperial box. That was it. He would get in there somehow. It would be difficult, what with the prefect and his men still harbouring the crazy idea that it was him, Flaminius, who was the assassin. Somehow, he would enter the imperial box unnoticed, and warn Hadrian before the emperor made his presence publicly known. But how could he hope to get there? He toyed with ideas of disguising himself as a civic guard. Security would be tight. But he would have to get past it. He would have to call upon all his ingenuity as an imperial agent. One man against an empire, and all to save that empire from chaos.
There was only one thing in his favour right now: the low draught vessel he had stolen was capable of crossing what would be dry land outside the time of inundation. The last time he had been in these waters, he had been taken by a long and weary route south towards Memphis and then back along another branch of the Delta, which had wasted a lot of time. Now the conspiracy was coming to its awful climax, and he had to reach Alexandria straightaway. Due to the inundation, he would be able to row straight across the Delta. But it was still a long, long way. And his arms were already ablaze with pain from the rowing he had already done, the sweat of exertion was bedraggling his hair and running down his face. He wasn’t going to make it in time.
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