‘Release,’ the decurion yelled with fifty paces to go.
More than thirty javelins hurtled towards the oncoming camelry, quickly followed by a second volley as the troopers endeavoured to cause as much damage as possible with their primary weapons. Scores of iron-tipped shafts slammed into the Marmaridae punching through the chests and heads of men with bursts of blood or burying themselves deep into their mounts, crashing them to the ground in a cacophony of guttural, animal bellowing.
Whipping long, straight swords from their scabbards and screaming death from behind their cloth face masks, the seven survivors of the onslaught, black cloaks billowing out behind them, thundered into the turma as they drew their spathae.
The strong, unfamiliar smell of the camels caused the riderless horse next to Vespasian to shy abruptly to the left; it crunched into his mount’s withers as a shimmer of burnished iron flashed down towards him. Agonised by the pain of the blow, his horse raised its head, whinnying madly, and took the vicious sword cut, aimed at Vespasian’s neck, in the throat. Blood sprayed over Vespasian’s face as he brought his spatha down, severing the sword arm of his adversary who howled as his camel crashed into the now side-on riderless horse. Both beasts and the one-armed tribesman, blood spewing from his freshly hewn stump, plunged to the ground with a cracking of bones and bestial roars of anguish.
With the severed hand still gripping the sword embedded in its throat, Vespasian’s horse galloped on for five paces and then crashed onto the desert floor. Vespasian hurled himself forward so as not to be crushed beneath the dead weight of his erstwhile mount and tumbled across the rough ground. Jarring to a halt he looked back and immediately leapt to his left, narrowly avoiding being trampled under the galloping hoofs of a rolling-eyed horse whose blood-spurting, decapitated rider sat firm in the saddle, the muscles in his thighs still gripping his directionless mount.
‘Are you all right, sir?’ Magnus shouted, pulling his horse up next to Vespasian.
‘I think so,’ he replied watching, with a morbid curiosity, the progress of the headless rider; within a few dozen paces the thigh muscles gave out and the body slithered from the saddle, leaving the horse charging off towards the deep-blue horizon.
Looking around, Vespasian counted another couple of riderless horses as the turma pulled up and rallied. The ground was littered with dead camels and their riders but fifty paces away, back towards the outcrop, one camel remained standing; the Marmarides pulled it around to face them, brandished his sword above his head and then charged.
‘He’s got balls, I’ll give him that,’ Magnus commented, jumping from his horse and grabbing his hunting spear. ‘He’s mine, all right, pull back,’ he shouted at the troopers who did as they were ordered, grinning in anticipation of the interesting contest.
Magnus stood four-square to the charging camel, holding his eight-foot-long oaken-shafted spear across his body; the leaf-shaped iron head glinted in the sun. The troopers shouted encouragement at him as the rider closed, screaming the ululating war cry of his people and slapping the flat of his bloodstained sword against his camel’s side to urge it into more speed.
Magnus remained motionless.
An instant before the camel hit him, Magnus dodged to the left, ducking under the wild swipe of the Marmarides’ fearsome sword, and jammed his spear, point first, sideways between the animal’s forelegs. Its right shinbone snapped as it cracked against the solid shaft; its forward motion twisted the spear around and, as Magnus let go, forced it up into the belly of the beast. With a terrified bellow the camel sank onto the spear as its right leg buckled unnaturally beneath it, catapulting its rider from his saddle; its momentum pushed the weapon up through its juddering body, shredding its innards, until it burst through the beast’s back in a shower of gore just above the pelvis. Screeching and snorting violently, the camel thrashed its back legs in a vain attempt to lift itself off the cause of its torment. Magnus grabbed the unconscious Marmarides’ discarded sword and raised it two-handed into the air; with a monumental growl of exertion he sliced the blade down onto the writhing creature’s neck, cleaving through its vertebrae and almost severing its head.
The body convulsed with a violent series of spasms and then went still.
A mass of cheers and whoops went up from the watching troopers.
Vespasian walked over to his friend, shaking his head in mute admiration.
‘I saw a bestiarius deal with a camel like that in the circus,’ Magnus admitted, ‘so I thought that it’d be fun to have a go myself, seeing as they don’t put up much of a fight.’
‘Paetus would have appreciated that,’ Vespasian replied, thinking of his long dead friend, ‘he loved a good wild-beast hunt.’
‘I think I’ve lost my spear, though. I’ll never pull it out of that.’
A moan from behind distracted them and they turned to see the Marmarides stirring.
Vespasian turned the man over. His headdress had fallen off; he was young, no more than twenty, short and wiry, curly-haired with a thin nose and mouth and three strange curved lines tattooed on each of his brown-skinned cheeks. ‘We’d better get him back for questioning; he might have seen Statilius Capella’s party.’
‘If you’re thinking about torturing him, forget it,’ Magnus said, standing over the prostrate man, ‘see if there’s another one alive.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean you’re not going to hurt my property. He’s now mine, I’m going to keep him; I think I won him fairly.’
‘You’re in luck,’ Vespasian said, kicking the recumbent form of Magnus awake as the sun glowed red on the eastern horizon the following morning. ‘I’ve just been to see Corvinus; Aghilas the guide is going to pull through, the arrow was removed from his shoulder without too much loss of blood and he seems to be fine this morning.’
‘Why does that make me lucky?’ Magnus asked groggily, unwilling to come out from under his blanket.
‘Because it means that we won’t have to force your new little friend to show us where the next well is,’ Vespasian replied, looking at the young Marmarides sitting against a rock with his hands bound behind his back. ‘If you want any breakfast you’d better hurry, the turmae are saddling up. We need to get a move on; it’s five more days to Siwa.’
Refilling the water-skins of one hundred and twenty men at the well had taken most of the rest of the day after the skirmish, so they had camped at the outcrop. One of the tribesmen had been found sufficiently alive to be able to confirm through a translator – with the help of the skilled use of one of the trooper’s curved knives – that Capella and a couple of his men had been captured by the Marmaridae; they had been taken to Siwa to await the departure of the next slave caravan bound for the distant city of Garama, seven hundred miles to the southwest.
Grumbling, Magnus roused himself and rummaged in his bag for a strip of dried pork and some semi-stale bread; his new slave looked greedily at the food.
‘I think he’s hungry,’ Vespasian observed, ‘you’d better feed him otherwise you’ll find yourself owning a dead playmate.’
Magnus grunted. ‘Keep your sword handy while I untie him, then.’ He moved over to the Marmarides and manhandled him round to get at the knot. ‘You’d better behave yourself, savvy?’ he hissed in the man’s ear as the rope came loose. Understanding the tone of voice the captive nodded.
Magnus cut a hunk of bread and a slice of pork and handed them to him; taking them gratefully in one hand he touched the other to his forehead while saying something in his own language.
‘I think he’s thanking you,’ Vespasian commented.
‘So he ought to, he owes me his life.’
After quickly swallowing a couple of mouthfuls, the young man looked up at them and pointed to himself. ‘Ziri,’ he said nodding, ‘Ziri.’
Vespasian laughed. ‘Oh dear, you know his name now, you’ll have to take him home.’
‘Ziri,’ he said again and then pointed at Magnus.
‘Master,’ Magnus said, pointing to himself, ‘master.’ He then pointed to Vespasian. ‘Sir. Sir.’
Ziri nodded vigorously, looking pleased. ‘Master. Sir,’ he repeated.
‘Well, that’s got that sorted out,’ Magnus said, biting into a lump of bread.
Aghilas, much weakened by his wound, guided them without mishap to the second well, just two days from Siwa. Here the landscape changed; the hard-baked ground gave way to sand. At first it was just a thin coating on the desert floor but as they journeyed further from the well it became thicker until by late afternoon they were travelling over sand dunes as tall as a man. Their horses started to struggle in the soft footing and eventually they were forced to dismount and walk. The scalding hot sand on their sandalled feet was a torment to them all.
‘I’m beginning to think that this is much too much effort to go to just so that you can get yourself a good breeding wench,’ Magnus grumbled as they crested yet another mound of loose and treacherous sand with Corvinus and Aghilas; behind them the four turmae trailed into the shimmering distance.
‘We’re also rescuing a Roman citizen from a life of misery as an agricultural slave in the middle of nowhere,’ Vespasian reminded his friend.
Magnus grunted and battled with his unwilling horse, trying to encourage it to make the descent down the other side of the dune.
‘Horse, go!’ Ziri shouted, whacking the recalcitrant beast on the rump; it jumped forward and skidded down the dune, sitting on its back legs, taking Magnus with it in a flurry of sand, much to Vespasian’s and Ziri’s amusement.
‘I’m going to stop teaching you Latin, you fuzzy-haired little camel-botherer, if that’s the use you put it to,’ Magnus spluttered, trying to pull himself out from under his struggling horse.
Vespasian laughed as he led his horse down the dune. ‘I thought that was a perfect use of the language; he chose exactly the right two words from his vocabulary of at least twenty to make the horse go.’
Ziri grinned broadly, displaying his ivory teeth as he came down to Magnus. ‘Ziri master help?’
‘I don’t need your fucking help, desert-dweller,’ Magnus replied as he managed to extract himself. He brushed the sand from his tunic and began to lead his horse towards the next dune; with another grin Ziri followed.
‘Why’s Ziri so cheerful?’ Vespasian asked Aghilas as they struggled up the loose sand. ‘If I’d just been enslaved I think I’d be pretty upset.’
‘It’s the way of the Marmaridae. Because they’re slavers they would rather die than become a slave, that’s why they were so suicidal at the well. Their honour required them to exact a blood price for our taking their water but then, when it was obvious that we would catch them, they chose to fight and die. As far as Ziri’s concerned he died as a Marmarides in that battle; the fact that Magnus beat him in single combat, yet let him live and made him his slave, means that he can never go back to his people. He now has a completely new life and accepts his fate.’
‘So he’s happy to be a slave and never see his family again?’
‘Yes, it’s the only thing he can do. If he was married and had children he is dead to them; to go back to them would mean a slow and painful death at the hands of his own family. All he has left is a new life serving Magnus.’
‘So Magnus can trust him?’
‘With his life, yes.’
‘Even against the Marmaridae?’
‘Especially against the Marmaridae.’
Vespasian looked at the young Marmarides following Magnus up the dune like a faithful hound and wondered what he was going to make of Rome. His musing was brought to an abrupt end by a cry of alarm from Ziri who stopped suddenly and pointed to the south. Vespasian squinted into the sun, shading his eyes with his hand. The horizon, normally a straight, sharp divide between light brown and blue, appeared smudged and indistinct.
‘Gods help us,’ Aghilas muttered.
‘What is it?’ Corvinus demanded.
‘Sandstorm, and it looks like it’s coming this way; if it is, it’ll be here before dark.’
‘What can we do?’ Vespasian asked.
‘I’ve never been caught in one so I don’t know, but nothing, I think; it’ll catch us out in the open, there’re no rocks to shelter behind for miles. We must just keep going as fast as possible and pray that it misses us, because if it doesn’t and if it’s a big one it’ll bury us alive.’
For the next couple of hours they pressed on over the unforgiving terrain with all possible haste; the sun had sunk onto the western horizon. News of the impending maelstrom had filtered down the column and the men glanced nervously south at the ever enlarging threat, now no more than ten miles away in the half-light. It had turned from a smudge on the horizon into a massive dark brown, land-based cloud and was increasing in size at an alarming speed.
‘Make your peace with your gods,’ Aghilas said, ‘there’s no avoiding it now; we’re dead men.’
Ziri ran up to Aghilas and said something in his own language; a brief conversation ensued.
‘He says the only way to have a chance of survival in a sandstorm,’ Aghilas announced, ‘is to make your camel lie down on the top of a dune and shelter behind it; he doesn’t know if horses are big or heavy enough but it may work.’
‘Pass the word down the column,’ Corvinus shouted, ‘shelter behind the horses or mules on top of the dunes.’
Vespasian pulled his horse down next to Magnus and Ziri. Sensing an imminent change for the worse in the weather conditions all the animals were skittish and needed to be firmly held in place. He peered over his horse’s back and felt the wind start to stir on his face.
‘Vulcan’s boiling piss, look at the size of it,’ Magnus exclaimed, ‘that’s got to be three or four hundred feet high.’
Vespasian stared at the rolling brown cloud in amazement; it was as least as tall as Magnus’ estimate but that was not as awe-inspiring as its speed. Now only a couple of miles away it rolled across the desert at a pace that not even the fastest chariot horse in the circus could outrun. As he watched wide-eyed it raced towards them, like a massive moving mountain eating up the ground before it.
Suddenly it went dark.
Then it hit them.
Within an instant the wind had accelerated from a moderate breeze into a howling gale that strained the ears. The temperature rose and visibility plummeted, so that he could only just make out Magnus sheltering behind his horse two paces away, as the air filled with tiny, sharp particles of sand moving at colossal speeds; they cannoned into the horses’ sides, stinging them sorely even through their coats. Vespasian jerked down his mount’s bridle as it attempted to stand and flee from the all-encompassing rage that surrounded them; despite the horse’s struggling he held it down with every fibre of strength until it acquiesced and lay still. Breathing became increasingly difficult. He pulled his tunic up over his nose, curled into the foetus position and squeezed his eyes tight shut, offering up prayers to every god he could think of, as the wind ripped around him, tearing the hat from his head and dragging relentlessly at his cloak, which cracked like a whip with the unremitting pressure.
The sun went down and darkness became complete.
Vespasian lost all sense of time.
‘Pull, you curly-haired little bugger!’ Magnus shouted, startling Vespasian back to consciousness.
He felt strong hands grasping his ankles, stretching his legs and then he started to slide downhill. Suddenly he could see stars, thousands of them.
Magnus loomed over him. ‘Are you all right, sir?’
Spitting out a mouthful of sand, Vespasian raised his head. ‘I seem to be,’ he replied with difficulty; his mouth was desert-dry.
Ziri held a water-skin to his lips. ‘Sir, trink.’
Vespasian drank and felt the lukewarm liquid course into his body.
Ziri pulled the skin away from him. ‘Sir, stop.’
‘He’s right, I’m afraid,’ Magnus said, holding out his hand to he
lp Vespasian up. ‘It’s the only water we’ve got unless we can dig some more out.’
Vespasian got unsteadily to his feet and looked around. It was peaceful, there was no wind. The three-quarter moon splashed the rippling sand dunes with silver; to the north the monstrous shape of the sandstorm could just be discerned, ravaging its way towards the coast. Here and there Vespasian could see a few figures, no more than twenty, singly or in pairs, digging in the sand. ‘Where’s Corvinus?’ he asked, looking back to where he last saw the cavalry prefect and his mount.
‘He’s fine,’ Magnus replied, ‘he’s organising the search parties, although I don’t know how fruitful they’ll prove to be. Most of the horses bolted, only the lads that kept theirs down have survived. I’m afraid that Aghilas didn’t have the strength to hold onto his.’
‘Shit, we’re lost then.’
‘Not quite,’ Magnus said with a grin, patting Ziri’s frizzy hair like a favoured pet, ‘Ziri knows how to get to Siwa.’
The Marmarides nodded. ‘Master, sir, Ziri, Siwa, yes.’
‘He’s becoming quite talkative,’ Vespasian observed.
‘He is,’ Magnus agreed, ‘and so are we when we should be digging to see what we can salvage.’
The first rays of direct sunlight hit Vespasian’s face and it felt so good to be alive as he scrabbled in the sand searching for his precious water-skin. He had despaired during that timeless oblivion that he had spent curled up in the lee of his now dead horse.
At first he had been able to push away the sand as it piled up near his face but as the storm had intensified great swathes of it had been deposited all around and over him; keeping above it had meant that he was slowly rising and would eventually be higher than his protective mount. Giving up the unequal struggle he had managed to pull his cloak over his head and concentrated instead on keeping a small air pocket in front of his face, which, with the help of his long cavalry spatha acting as a tent-pole, he had maintained until he had lost consciousness in the stifling conditions.
How he had survived he did not know. He could only surmise that the goddess Fortuna had held her hands over him and that she really was safeguarding him for whatever destiny the gods had decreed for him, as he had, at the age of fifteen, overheard his mother profess. That day he had heard his parents speak of the omens surrounding his birth and what they prophesied. Since then no one had been willing to tell him of their content, bound as they were by an oath administered by his mother to all those present on the day of his naming ceremony, nine days after his birth.
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