Glory of Rome: (Gaius Valerius Verrens 8)

by Douglas Jackson

  They shuffled down the wooden planking led by Marius and Hilario, nervousness making their steps tentative and almost childlike. Two sailors waited at the bottom to help them into the boat and they clambered over the benches to their assigned positions.

  ‘Regulus tells me you have the most experience of the eastern shore of any sailor in the Rhenus fleet,’ Valerius said to Antonius.

  ‘That’s true enough, I suppose,’ the other man agreed. ‘We’ve run up the Logana in Rapid Racer on no less than three occasions. Delivering the likes of your spy there.’ He motioned to the guide Regulus had provided, an insignificant, hairy creature dressed in soiled brown sackcloth. ‘But we have never been more than six miles upstream, whereas today you expect me to row you as far as twenty.’

  ‘Can you do it?’

  ‘That is for the gods to decide,’ Antonius said with grave formality. ‘A river is a creature of ever-changing geography. What is a navigable pool today could be a gravel bank after the next flood. It depends on the shoals and the shallows and whether your men are prepared to carry her over them. Whether the Chatti have suddenly been motivated to do what they should have done a decade ago and put a barrier across the river. Even a bastard fish trap in the wrong place could hole her. But time will tell, legate.’ He met Valerius’s gaze. ‘What is certain is that I will get you across the river and into the mouth of the Logana. After that it is up to Fortuna and the sorceress.’

  Valerius waited till Ceris skipped lightly down the gangway and hurdled the ship’s side before following at a pace commensurate with his age and dignity.

  He took his place at the back of the boat, close to Antonius, mildly concerned to find himself ankle deep in water. Rapid Racer had a sharp bow, a broad stern with a pair of short steering oars attached one to each side, and a central mast.

  As they cast off Valerius murmured encouragement to his men and tried to stifle his own nerves. They sat, rigid as statues, as Antonius quietly issued orders in a calm voice and his sailors manoeuvred the galley slowly out into the stream. The total darkness – the night sky entirely devoid of stars – and the constant drag and whisper of the river was unnerving at first, as if they were no longer in the hands of humankind, but of the gods. He tried to make himself comfortable on the hard bench, but he froze as the men propelled the little craft first eastwards, then downriver.

  ‘I thought the mouth of the Logana was upstream of Confluentes,’ he whispered to Antonius.

  ‘Only a fool would tell the enemy precisely where he intended to go.’ He heard the smile in the other man’s voice. ‘I have a feeling you never charged straight into the maw of the lion, legate.’

  Valerius felt the spray from the oars on his face. ‘Only when I needed to, captain.’ He laughed. ‘But you have my apologies. We are in your hands.’

  A few minutes later, Antonius whispered a new order. The galley spun within its own length and headed back upstream, hugging the east bank, the force of the current immediately apparent. Soon they passed Confluentes on the right, pinpointed by the soft glow of a hundred oil lamps. Valerius had a momentary pang for Tabitha before the darkness closed in again. He marvelled at Antonius’s ability to read the river when it was impossible to see a dozen paces ahead.

  A soft whisper in the night and he realized the galley master was speaking to him. ‘It is all about the current,’ he heard the other man say. ‘Swift as a galloping horse and soft as a woman’s touch. Sometimes a little to the east and sometimes to the west and then that jerk, as the Logana pushes you west as if you’ve been hit by a bullock cart. Wait, wait. Hard left.’ The men at the oars responded instantly to Antonius’s low shout. Within moments they were aware of a darker darkness and the oarsmen slackened their speed. ‘Easy, easy,’ the steady voice cautioned. ‘Wait for the sandbar.’ A momentary check and a flurry of oars and Valerius sensed Antonius’s relief. ‘That’s the easy part. The worst is yet to come. Straight ahead. But slowly. Kronos? Put out the pole.’

  ‘The pole?’ Valerius hissed.

  ‘Sometimes they string ropes across the river,’ Antonius replied from the darkness. ‘Better to know it’s there before it rips your head off.’

  No ropes, just the constant swish of the oars and the rush of the stream. As far as Valerius could tell the river was around three boat-lengths wide, but beneath the cloak of the all-enveloping night that was all he knew. He marvelled at the stamina of the oarsmen as they pulled hour after hour against the current. Their only respite came when Antonius sensed a backwater to the left and they rested for what felt like all too short a time.

  ‘Can we help?’ he asked the young sailor.

  Antonius laughed. ‘Not unless you can change the direction of the current. A stream joins the river three miles ahead. We anchored there last time. There wasn’t a sign of life within a day’s march, but you never know with the Germans. They move at a whim, or when the stink gets too much for them. We have to get there well before daylight and hide the boat.’

  Again, Antonius sensed their destination by the change in the current. By the time they reached the inlet the rowers were slumped over their oars with exhaustion and Hilario jumped into the shallows and dragged the galley in to the river edge. The cavalrymen scrambled ashore to set up a perimeter on the bank of the tributary stream and Shabolz and five others went deep into the woods to chop branches and used them to camouflage the ship. When the work was done Marius set guards and the others, soldiers and sailors alike, lay on the hard ground beneath the trees and got what rest they could. Dawn revealed a narrow platform of flat land at the bottom of a steep tree-lined slope and Antonius swam the river to be certain his craft was completely hidden from the other side. When he returned he collapsed without a word into the sleep of the dead. Valerius found a cloak to cover him.

  ‘My captain has been awake for the last thirty-six hours,’ one of the oarsmen said, dragging a bundle of ferns across himself. ‘He’s spent half the night on the oars himself.’

  ‘Who’s on guard?’ Valerius asked Marius.

  ‘Hilario, Nilus and two from the Ninth.’

  ‘Wake me in an hour and I’ll take the second watch.’

  ‘Lord …’

  ‘Wake me in an hour.’

  It must have been the seventh hour, with a weak sun slanting through the trees, when they heard voices. Valerius came instantly awake. Marius was already hustling the men further back into the forest. ‘Send Shabolz and three of his Pannonians to me.’ Valerius squirmed through the knee high grass to where Antonius watched over his ship like a mother hen.

  ‘What is it?’ Valerius whispered.

  Antonius gently parted the grass in front of them to give Valerius a view across the Logana. In the shallows on the near side, so close that Valerius almost jerked his head back, two ragged children worked over what looked like a wicker eel trap. Beside them, moored to a nearby rock, was a small round boat. As they checked the trap they argued in loud, shrill, but none the less good-humoured voices. Valerius saw that one was a scrawny waif of a girl of about eight, and the other a dark-haired boy about a year younger.

  ‘Maybe they’ll go away,’ he whispered.

  Antonius shrugged, but his eyes went to the galley. Close up their camouflage was a wispy confection of leaves and branches that did little to conceal the lines of the ship. All it would take was one look in the wrong direction and the entire mission would be compromised.

  Valerius felt a stealthy presence move up beside him. Shabolz and the men he’d asked for. He raised two fingers on his left hand and motioned with his right that two should go upstream of the children and two downstream. Shabolz nodded, but he hesitated for a moment. He drew a hand across his throat in an unmistakable gesture. Valerius could feel Antonius’s eyes on him and he knew the rest of the men would be watching.

  He shook his head. Not yet. It might not be necessary, and if it was, that decision could wait.

  When he looked again the boy was pointing directly at the inlet. The
girl shook her head. The boy picked up a lithe wriggling eel from the boat and made as if to eat it. The girl hesitated, her thin features suddenly uncertain. Valerius remembered a little patch of scorched grass he’d seen earlier. It hadn’t struck him as a threat.

  He breathed a sigh of relief as they slipped with surprising dexterity over the side of their clumsy-looking craft and set off downstream using a pair of short oars … only to turn immediately into the inlet.

  Antonius sucked in a breath. Valerius heard a little squeal of surprise. A pair of sudden splashes and a scream of fright. He got to his feet as Shabolz and one of his men dragged the squirming children up the bank and threw them at his feet.

  Valerius closed his eyes. ‘What in the name of all the gods are we going to do with them?’

  ‘I’m glad that’s not my problem, legate,’ Antonius said with some feeling.

  Cavalrymen and sailors emerged from the wood and gathered in a half-circle around Valerius and the terrified prisoners. The two children looked in horror at captors who appeared to have just emerged from some Stygian wormhole.

  ‘Tie them up,’ Valerius said. ‘And feed them. I’ll decide what to do with them later.’

  ‘What’s to decide?’ A harsh voice from the back of the crowd of cavalrymen. Serenus, one of Crescens’s and Florus’s tentmates from the Ninth legion. ‘Discovery is death, you said. Every man, woman and child is our enemy. I say kill them.’

  Valerius looked round the half-circle of men. Serenus had a few allies, but not many. Some couldn’t care one way or the other. One or two wouldn’t meet his eyes and he knew the foolish words he’d used to put fire in their bellies had cost him their respect. Hilario’s angry features had taken on a thoughtful cast that Valerius found difficult to read. He turned and went to the two huddled figures sitting on the grass.

  They had their heads bowed, but he crouched beside them and lifted their chins one at a time so he could look into their faces. The boy was still terrified and wouldn’t meet his gaze, but the girl’s eyes glittered defiance and her lip curled. He wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d spat in his face.

  ‘I think—’

  ‘This is not a matter for discussion.’ Valerius cut Antonius off. ‘It will be my decision.’ He turned back to the waiting men. ‘We will take them with us.’

  ‘No.’ Serenus shook his head. ‘We have Gellius to avenge.’

  ‘They’re just children,’ Valerius snarled. ‘Gellius is the last person who’d want them to die.’

  ‘They’re the enemy. One way or the other, when they don’t return their people will come looking for them. Probably before dark.’

  ‘Children on a river? They won’t look here. They’ll believe they drowned.’

  ‘Discovery is death, you said.’ Serenus threw Valerius’s words back at him.

  Valerius stared at him until the other man couldn’t meet his eyes. Eventually, he shrugged and plucked the dagger from his belt. He flicked it so it buried itself point up between Serenus’s feet.

  ‘If you’re so keen to cut their throats,’ he said, ‘why don’t you do it? I won’t stop you.’

  The defiance in Serenus’s eyes turned into a mixture of confusion and suspicion. He looked to left and right to see how much support he had. Valerius saw him square his shoulders.

  Before Serenus could move Hilario stepped forward. Not a man breathed as the big cavalryman marched up to Valerius. The one-handed Roman felt a moment of confusion. Had he miscalculated? What would he do if Hilario stepped past him towards the children? But when the trooper reached him he spun to stand by Valerius’s side.

  ‘If you won’t stop him, I will.’ The harsh grating voice was filled with something like contempt.

  ‘And I.’ Softer this time, but the words carried just as much force. Ceris stood by Valerius’s left hand with her fingers on the hilt of her sword and her eyes daring Serenus to move.

  ‘We’re taking them with us,’ Valerius snapped. ‘Now get what rest you can. We leave an hour after dusk.’

  But they were already dispersing. Only Hilario didn’t move.

  ‘You should have killed him,’ the trooper growled. ‘Instead you humiliated him. He won’t forgive that.’

  Valerius picked up his knife. ‘Then you’ll just have to watch my back.’

  ‘Ha!’ Hilario’s bark of laughter echoed through the trees.

  XVII

  A night so dark it could have been the inside of a grave, yet the air had a soporific quality, a gentle warmth that kissed the skin. Combined with the unceasing cadence of the oars and the whisper of the river beneath the keel, the atmosphere made it difficult to keep your eyes open. Again and again Valerius had to shake himself awake when he found his chin resting on his chest and his eyelids closing, his mind far away in Confluentes and his fingers stroking the soft contours of Tabitha’s hip.

  He suspected many of his men were already asleep, but he decided there was no harm in it. They’d wake quickly enough if anything happened. They knew their lives depended on it. Each stroke of the oars was accompanied by a low grunt, the only sound inside the galley apart from the soft murmur of the guide as he questioned the two young prisoners.

  Valerius had ordered him to seek out any information he could glean on the sorceress. The further inland they travelled the more the lack of specific intelligence about their target concerned the one-handed Roman. He felt like a blind man groping his way towards the edge of a cliff. All they knew for certain was that the witch’s settlement lay an unspecified number of miles north of the river. According to the guide a distinctive cliff of red sandstone on the south bank would give him his mark. It meant they’d have to make the final short leg of the river journey in daylight, but Valerius could see no other choice. The river gorge deepened the farther east they sailed and the chances of being seen were low. Once on land they’d make their way close to the settlement by night and find somewhere to lie up the following day. What happened next depended on what they found when they got there. Antonius would conceal the ship in some inlet and return to the red cliff at dawn the next two mornings. If they didn’t reappear by the height of the sun on the second day he had orders to return to Confluentes without them.

  A rustle and muttered complaints from the direction of the bow and the guide appeared on the bench in front of him. A native of the Tencteri tribe with a heavy brow and a nose like a well-used hatchet, the man had been vouched for by Regulus, but he had an evasive quality that made the Roman wonder whether he was quite as familiar with the area as he claimed.

  ‘They are of the Chatti, lord, as you suspected,’ the man whispered. ‘From a village an hour or so upriver by their reckoning. Their father is dead and their mother’s new bedmate takes no notice of them, so they will not be missed overnight.’

  ‘What of the sorceress?’

  ‘They know of her, lord.’ Valerius sensed a note of uncertainty in the guide’s voice. ‘She is called Aurinia.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘They say she does not live on earth, but has a house in the sky.’

  ‘Just a story.’ Valerius laughed, but he made the sign against evil with the fingers of his left hand.

  ‘The girl said it is where Aurinia devours her victims.’

  ‘I asked for information, not fairy tales. Is that all? Nothing about the settlement?’

  ‘No, lord.’

  ‘You will say nothing of this to the men.’

  Valerius could tell by the stars that the river twisted and turned through the mountains like a giant serpent. Once more he marvelled at Antonius’s ability to feel the subtle changes in the current that allowed them to make good progress through the night. Only once did his instinct desert him. The galley lurched as it struck bottom and Valerius was all but thrown from his seat.

  ‘Every man not at an oar must get out to lighten the ship,’ Antonius hissed. A flurry of splashes and Valerius was up to his waist in the freezing water with the rest, heaving at any projection th
ey could find to haul Rapid Racer over the hidden obstacle. When they were clear Antonius threw out the anchor and the cavalrymen clambered aboard with the aid of ropes lowered by the oarsmen.

  While they were still shivering, a great glow in the night sky forced them to back oars and hold position in the centre of the river.

  ‘What is it?’ Valerius whispered.

  ‘Some kind of fire,’ Antonius said. ‘But the gods only know what at this time of night. Should I anchor until it dies down?’

  ‘We don’t have time. Move ahead slowly and as close to the left bank as you dare.’

  The light grew brighter as they rounded the next bend. On a low mound above the river three great pyres threw towers of flame and sparks into the sky. As they came closer they could see that three houses were on fire. A large crowd of people had gathered to watch, but not a man made a move to extinguish the flames. It all took place in an eerie silence and the light cast by the blaze seemed to reach out across the surface of the river to the galley. Valerius heard muttered prayers and more than one man fumbled for the talisman or charm at his throat. It seemed they must be discovered, but very gradually the galley slipped upstream through the shadows beneath the far bank and the welcoming darkness closed about them.

  It was only when they were past that Valerius realized he’d been clutching the bench so hard with his left hand he could barely unclench his fist.