Dido crouched over the reins, flicking them from time to time. The horses galloped along, manes streaming in the wind. Rumbling chariots were on either side. Flaminius gathered that some of the hunters came from outlying settlements. It felt like a war party.
They came out into the open now, the acacias and thorn bushes falling away on either side to reveal rolling grasslands, green and vivid in the winter sun. Dust clouds hung in the air, and Flaminius’ eyes were streaming, while sweat poured unabated down his face and neck. They were in the second rank of chariots, with Vabalathus and Claudius Mercator somewhere ahead of them. Flaminius didn’t recognise any of the chariot crews bouncing past on either side. Dark faces met his gaze, while the white feathers of their headdresses fluttered frantically in the wind of their passing.
A shout came from the vanguard. Flaminius rubbed his eyes, braced himself against the walls of the chariot and tried to see what the hubbub was about. But the dust was so thick, all he could see were dim shapes of speeding chariots. He tapped Dido on the bare shoulder with the haft of a javelin and she looked up irritably.
‘Looks like all the fun’s over there,’ he shouted over the noise of the wind and the rattling of the chariot. ‘Can’t you get some more speed out of these nags?
More shouting drifted on the dusty wind. A grove of trees and bushes stood in the middle of the plain, and chariots were shooting back and forth. As he watched, several things shot out from the trees and dash across the dusty plain. They were visible only for a second before the curtains of dust drew in and the careering chariots made vision impossible. But what Flaminius had seen left him feeling uneasy.
He crouched down to shout in Dido’s ear, ‘Did you see that?’
‘See what?’ she yelled back, still intent on the reins. ‘Have we flushed the quarry from the coverts?’
‘You could say that,’ he told her.
‘So don’t keep it to yourself,’ she shouted. ‘What are we hunting?’
‘I’m not sure,’ he bellowed. ‘I…’
He halted, unable to find the words, and she looked up puzzled. The chariot bounced over some snag in the ground and she hastily returned her attention to the four horses.
What exactly had he seen that so disquieted him? It had been only a brief glimpse. But surely it couldn’t have been… people. They had run too fast, more like cheetahs than men. Nevertheless they had run on their back legs, looking over their shoulders as men would when pursued…
‘Aegipans,’ Dido suggested when he managed to communicate this in broken shouts. ‘Aegipans or satyrs or some of the other manlike creatures that dwell in these parts.’
Flaminius had leafed through a scroll or two of Pliny’s Natural History before setting out on this mission, and he remembered all sorts of wild stories about Libyan fauna, including accounts of hairy men dwelling in the forests, satyrs and aegipans as they were called. But the shapes he had seen had not been hairy, as far as he could see. They had looked like nothing more nor less than men. Just what was going on here? Was this war, or some kind of punitive raid?
‘Try to get ahead,’ he shouted. ‘I want to see just what it is that we’re hunting.’
She whipped up the horses and skilfully guided them through a gap between two racing chariots, then past several more. Flaminius had followed the races in his time, supporting the Blues at one time, the Greens another. But watching slaves and peregrines hurtling about the Circus Maximus from the safety of the cheap seats was one thing, standing upright in a chariot as it was driven at speed across the uneven ground of a Libyan oasis was quite another.
He half crouched, half knelt and gripped onto the sideboard with his free hand. Every bump sent a shock through his entire body. He would never take up charioteering as a career, whatever happened to him, although he liked the feel of the air in his hair and the sense of speed was more exciting than riding even the fastest horse. It was like battle: he was caught in an ecstasy somewhere between exhilaration and profound fear for his life.
They burst from the line of chariots to see two more ahead, and beyond them a plain across which rolled clouds of dust. Skittering across the withered grasses were three or four figures.
Despite the dust and the grit in his eyes, Flaminius could now see that they were definitely man-shaped. Man, or woman. One seemed to be male, another female, and two or three others were smaller than them, as if they were children.
Dido drew level with one of the two chariots in the lead. Within it Vabalathus was lashing his horses onwards while Claudius Mercator clung rigidly to the juddering crossbar, staring in numb horror at the javelins in his hands. Ahead of them the headman’s chariot streaked after the fleeing figures. They were fast, whatever they were, Flaminius could give them that much. But he didn’t rate anyone’s chances against chariots.
The ground rose and in places there were outcrops of rock. He wondered how well the chariots would fare on uneven ground. Already he felt like he would be vibrating for the rest of his life from the shaking he had received.
He shouted across to Claudius Mercator. ‘What in Hades are we hunting? They look like people!’
The merchant turned. His face was pale, and he clung to the chariot in fear. He shook his head speechlessly.
Vabalathus looked up, grinning ferociously. ‘We can’t lose face in front of our hosts,’ he reminded him. ‘We must observe the customs of the country! If they hunt people rather than beasts, we must hunt people too…’ He broke off at a jubilant shout from the headman.
Their host had brought down one of the running figures with a lucky cast of a javelin. The others were still running towards the rocks as if they had yet to realise that one of their number was down. As the headman’s chariot rumbled to a halt, the fallen figure writhed in the dust like a speared fish.
It was one of the children.
The two chariots, one driven by Vabalathus, the other by Dido, screeched to a halt in a cloud of dust. Meanwhile, the headman jumped down from the running boards of his own chariot and strode towards the speared child. In the distance, on the edge of the rocks, the other figures had halted and were looking back.
They were very dark, Ethiopians like Menander.
The headman placed a triumphant foot on the fallen child’s flank, seized the javelin. Then he looked up and grinned at his guests as they climbed down from their chariots. He spread the fingers of his other hand to indicate the pride he felt at bringing down this quarry. The child twitched at the end of the javelin.
—12—
Phazania, 11th December 124 AD
Sweat poured down Flaminius’ face. Normally, he accepted whatever life threw at him, however distasteful, avoiding involvement unless it was necessary or part of his duty. This small boy spitted on the headman’s javelin like a speared fish should be nothing to him.
And yet, the moment Dido brought the horses of their chariot to a whinnying halt, even as Vabalathus drove up in a cloud of dust, Flaminius leapt down onto the sparse soil and strode over to the headman, shouting he didn’t know what. He shoved their host backwards so he staggered away a few steps, then seized the javelin and wrenched it from the black skinned little boy’s thigh. The boy was bleeding copiously. He looked up at Flaminius with the blank, fearful eyes of a wild animal. The others of his tribe were watching silently from the rocks.
Flaminius gestured at the prone boy, making shooing gestures as he would at a chicken. Abruptly, the boy leapt to his feet and shot off like a startled lizard. He was fast! He vanished into the rocks with his fellow tribes-folk even as Flaminius dropped the javelin and turned to face the headman defiantly.
The Garamantian was astounded. His mouth opened and shut, opened and shut as he stared in goggle eyed incredulity at this foreign guest who was so discourteous as to interfere with another man’s sport.
‘They’re people…!’ Flaminius raged. ‘Not animals, people!’ He picked up the javelin again and shook it, feeling foolish. ‘Keep this for game, not people! What h
ave they ever done to you? What….?’
The others had disembarked from their chariots and were watching him. Dido lounged by her chariot, arms folded across her bare breasts. Claudius Mercator peered from Flaminius to the headman and back, gaping like the latter. Vabalathus strode forwards forthrightly.
‘What’s got into you?’ he bellowed at Flaminius. ‘Are you sick, man? He’s sick,’ he added, turning to the headman with a conciliatory gesture. ‘Possessed by evil spirits, maybe.’ He scowled at Flaminius. ‘Is that it? What’s got into you, you fool? We need these people’s aid if we’re to open up this country for trade.’
‘He’s right, you know,’ said Claudius Mercator, barrelling up at this mention of something he understood. ‘You mustn’t alienate these people. They’re our only toehold in this country!’
He approached the headman and tried to speak to him in what Flaminius assumed was broken Garamantian, his tone as conciliatory as Vabalathus’ gestures.
Dido walked up to join them. ‘They’ve got a point,’ she said, hands on her hips. ‘You don’t want to make them angry. You…’ Her last words were lost in a thunder of wheels and a cloud of dust as the rest of the chariots halted in a ring round them.
Puzzled looking Garamantes looked down at the contretemps. The headman spoke with Claudius Mercator. The merchant wailed and cried, pointed to the heavens, put his hands to his heart, stamped his foot, and finally knelt on the floor and flung dust on his head. Then he rose and handed the headman all the gold and jewels he wore.
Excited, the rest of the villagers swarmed down from their chariots and surrounded them, asking questions, shouting, arguing. Flaminius stood in the middle of it all, feeling hot and irritable. He looked at the inaccessible stretch of rocks into which the people had vanished. They had been so fast! But who were they?
‘They’ve been here since the beginning,’ Claudius Mercator lectured him in the middle of all the jostling, having recovered a little after his demonstrative display. ‘On the coming of the Punic folk to their original lands, the Garamantes fled here from Lake Tritonis where had settled their heroic ancestor Garamas, grandson of Minos. The dark skinned people were here already, dwelling in caves, living by the chase. They raided cattle from the Garamantes, and a state of war has always existed. Except it’s not war. The Garamantes don’t think of them as human. They hunt them and ea…’ He broke off as the jostling of the crowd grew greater. White eyes rolled in dark, angry faces.
‘You see what you’ve done, you young Roman fool?’ shouted Vabalathus. ‘You’ve turned them against us with your high handed interfering ways. Typical Roman! You’d happily watch a criminal crucified or mauled by beasts, or two fools hacking at each other with swords in the arena. But faced with the customs of people beyond your experience…’
Claudius Mercator looked around apprehensively. The mood of the crowd was ugly. Now the headman, weighed down with the merchant’s desperate gifts, seemed to be trying to reason with them, despite the fact that it was the slight to his honour they wanted to avenge. The merchant put a pudgy arm round Flaminius’ shoulders.
‘You see, when you’ve dealt with barbarians as long as I have, you get used to this kind of thing. They can be very friendly! Usually they are, even if they always try to cheat you. You can’t let them do that, of course. But you have to turn a blind eye to… They have their ways, you see. Ways that are…’ Words failed him. He shrugged. ‘Barbaric.’
Next Claudius Mercator tried to speak to the headman, but his command of the Garamantian tongue was inadequate to express his feelings. Besides, the man was preoccupied with the complaints of his own people.
‘Tiro should have controlled himself,’ Dido said darkly. ‘We’re in danger now.’
‘I can’t seem to get through to this fellow,’ Claudius Mercator said dolefully. ‘I wish Menander had come with us.’
‘He probably didn’t want to go hunting children!’ Flaminius said. ‘This must be why he didn’t come with us! He knew what these barbarians were up to!’
‘If you want to profit from trading with barbarians,’ said Vabalathus, who was starting to look perturbed by the growing anger of the crowd, ‘you have to face facts. They’re not civilised, like we are.’
‘But you’re an Arab,’ said Dido. ‘Not a Roman citizen. Doesn’t that make you a barbarian?’ she added bitterly.
‘But I…’ Flaminius broke off when the headman fell back against him, his skull colliding solidly with the Roman’s ribs. He had been pushed by a group of his own people. For a moment Flaminius was sure that the Garamantes were going to set upon them. He set his hand on the pommel of his sword which he wore as usual at his hip. Then he halted, listening.
The rumble of chariot wheels reached his ears. Dust was billowing beyond the crowd, and it was this that had caught the people’s attention. The reverberation ceased abruptly, and then the dust began to settle, revealing more chariots.
The headman staggered to his feet with Flaminius’ aid. Together they stared at the newcomers.
‘More of your people?’ Flaminius asked. The headman shook his head, but whether this was in incomprehension or the reverse he didn’t know.
Ringed around them, cutting off every quarter but the impenetrable rock field behind them, the new chariots were filled with Garamantian warriors, these more splendidly clad than even the most pretentious of the villagers. The chariots were brightly painted and drawn by splendidly fettled horses, gaily caparisoned, snorting in apparent scorn of the nags that drew the villagers’ vehicles.
In the middle of the crescent that kept both the villagers and their guests penned was a larger chariot, from the back of which fluttered an emerald green banner. Standing in the car, dwarfing his charioteer who crouched before him, was a Garamantian chieftain at least seven feet tall, wearing a headdress of ostrich feathers and a brief robe of printed antelope hide. His face was serene, implacable, and cruel, fringed by a thick woolly beard; his eyes, even from this distance, were bright and compelling.
At his side cringed another man, almost as big, clad almost as splendidly, clutching a feathered spear as he spoke deferentially to the large chieftain. Flaminius thought he recognised him, but it was too far away to be sure. The chieftain turned and addressed the headman in a booming voice.
The headman’s face turned ashen. He shouted back in a stammering voice, but the chieftain interrupted him, gesturing with the assegai he held. All the villagers fell to their knees, dropping their spears as they did so. Silence settled over the scene, broken only by the moan of the desert wind. Flaminius looked uneasily around him. Each of the new chariots contained watching forms, fully armoured, well-built warriors who competed with Hadrian’s Praetorians for sturdiness.
The chieftain barked an order and a group of them got down and forced their way through the parked chariots of the villagers, over the prostrate villagers themselves, to approach the group of foreigners. As the spear carrying nobles swaggered towards Flaminius and the others, pausing only to lash out with spear butts at grovelling villagers, the chieftain spoke again, at length.
Claudius Mercator perked up. ‘Is that Punic he’s speaking?’ he said in surprise.
‘What’s he saying?’ asked Vabalathus impatiently. The warriors had halted, ringing round the merchant and his companions, spears levelled and glinting in the sunlight.
‘Now let me see,’ Claudius Mercator muttered vaguely. ‘I think he’s saying…’
‘He’s saying that the villagers have been harbouring Roman spies,’ Dido interrupted. ‘That they shall be punished for their treachery, their crops burned, their beasts slaughtered, their children sold into slavery…’
Flaminius glanced at her and she nodded. ‘Yes, he’s speaking Punic. He had a good teacher.’
‘Seems like an extreme way to treat the villagers,’ Flaminius commented.
‘Keep quiet,’ snapped Vabalathus. ‘It’s your sickly city bred ways that got us into this mess.’
Flaminius
rounded on him. ‘It’s my fault that this chieftain’s retinue has come here? I don’t think so. See that man in the chieftain’s chariot? Remember him?’
‘Look, he’s speaking with the chieftain,’ said Dido quietly.
It was true. An argument had broken out between the chief and the big, scar-faced man beside him. The big man was flinching at the angry tones of the chieftain, but still he spoke defiantly.
‘He was at the village,’ said Vabalathus thoughtfully. ‘He had vanished in the morning.’
‘Yes,’ said Flaminius. ‘We saw him leave, didn’t we?’ He nudged Dido.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said.
He scowled at her. What was she talking about?
Suddenly the chieftain struck Cicatrix across the face so he fell to the floor of the chariot. The chieftain turned to speak to the foreigners. Dido listened, then shouted back something. A shouted conversation ensued.
‘What are they saying?’ Flaminius asked Claudius Mercator, who was listening closely. He looked up.
‘The chieftain, I think, is saying that he will forgive the villagers for harbouring spies,’ he said, ‘but the headman will be dismissed. It seems that the big man has ambitions to replace him. The chieftain says he is merciful and will not create unnecessary suffering.’
‘And what’s Dido saying?’
Claudius Mercator frowned. ‘She seems to be trying to palaver with him. He says we must be taken to the city as well, to be tried for spying. Dido is speaking in our defence.’
Flaminius had never expected to have a retired gladiatrix represent him in a court of law.
Among the barbarians beyond the Rhine and the Danube it was customary for legal disputes to be settled by recourse to duels between champions, assuming that the gods would establish the innocence of one or other party by bestowing victory on their representative. He could imagine Dido excelling in such a violent role, but she had no legal training as far as he knew, and he could see from the stormy expression on the chieftain’s face that she was not making a success of her first case. As the argument wrangled on with no sign of any conclusion, he nervously watched the silent warriors who still surrounded their little group.
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