But Publius hadn’t finished. ‘Senators, soldiers and slaves, men and women of all ranks, aye, to the very highest, even in the heart of the monster’s lair at the very centre of Nero’s court, are already waiting to replace me. I have only one last request, Praetorian, and I make it because I sense a decency in you that belies your words and your mission. Do what you can for my family.’
With his final words Publius Sulla placed the point of the gladius against his sternum and used all his strength to drive its length up into his heart.
‘No!’ Valerius dived across the room, but it was already too late. With a sharp cry, Publius fell back on the bed, his whole body shuddering, hands still locked on the sword hilt and eyes bulging as his boyish face turned old in a heartbeat. Valerius knelt at the young man’s side and cradled his head. ‘Publius,’ he whispered urgently. ‘I will help your family if I can. I will help them all. But you have to tell me how to find Petrus. I must find Petrus.’
Publius opened his mouth, but Valerius would never hear his answer. Dark blood welled up in the tribune’s throat and spilled like wine from his lips. He gave one last convulsion and was still. With a sigh Valerius looked down on the dead boy.
Gradually it dawned on him that with his emotional final words Publius might have revealed more than he had intended. ‘Senators, soldiers and slaves, men and women of all ranks … even at the very centre of Nero’s court.’ Cornelius had been a member of Nero’s court, but a peripheral figure, never at the very centre. It meant that someone at the highest level had a powerful incentive for thwarting the investigation, and, more important, the power to ensure that happened.
He pulled the tent flap aside and looked across the parade ground. Marcus, Serpentius and Heracles were talking together by a rampart where the cook’s fire had been set into the dirt mound. Valerius called them across. Inside the tent Serpentius produced a low whistle and Marcus gave the sign against evil. Heracles just stared with his mouth open.
‘We don’t have much time,’ Valerius warned them. ‘I suspect Publius was a popular officer and the likelihood is that the men will take their officer’s death badly. We are going to call the senior legionary. When he gets here, flank me, and for the gods’ sake try to look like Praetorians.’
He went to the door and asked a passing legionary to send Clodius to the tent. The man shot him a puzzled look, but saluted and ran off in search of the duplicarius. When Clodius appeared, Valerius drew him inside. Seeing the dead man, the veteran gave a low growl and his hand went to his sword. Before he could draw it he froze with the needle tip of Marcus’s gladius against his throat.
‘Soldier.’ Valerius kept his voice steady. ‘Do you recognize what this is?’ He held up the chain with the imperial seal. Clodius had to look twice, but eventually he nodded.
‘Publius Sulla was an enemy of Rome and has paid for his crime with his life. My name is Gaius Valerius Verrens, tribune of the Praetorian Guard, and I am taking temporary command of this outpost.’ Valerius paused and Clodius clearly expected the next order to be for his execution. ‘But when I leave, the fort will be your responsibility. Do you understand?’
Clodius frowned, but he risked another nod. Valerius’s next words surprised him.
‘I can’t order you to abandon your position, but with your officer dead and rations running out you would be justified in returning with us. If you choose to leave, the men have an hour to demolish the fort and pack up their gear. My report will state that the decision was made with my full support.’
Clodius hesitated. This wasn’t the kind of judgement he expected to have to make. He shot a frightened glance towards Publius’s body.
‘Whatever you decide nothing will happen to you,’ Valerius assured him.
The duplicarius shook his head. ‘No. I’ll stay, and if I stay the men stay. I was accused of cowardice after I discovered my officer had been selling horse feed to the merchants at the river market for his own profit. That’s why I am here. If I stay I have a chance to win back my honour. General Vitellius is not a bad man, just badly advised. Ask him to send a month’s rations and a new commander.’
‘Can you control your men when they hear that the tribune is dead?’
‘I think … yes. He wasn’t their regular officer. They liked him well enough, but most of them had only really known him for a few weeks. If I can assure them that help and food is on its way, they’ll behave. Will you stay the night, sir?’
Valerius shook his head. There was still enough light left to reach the river. ‘No, we’ll leave as soon as we’re ready. Put together what rations you can for us. I’ll speak to the men before we go.’
They felt like deserters as they rode from the fort with the demoralized garrison watching from the walls. For all his fine words about honour and courage and his pledge to send reinforcements, Valerius doubted any of the legionaries he left behind would ever return to Viminacium.
He kept his eyes to the front. Behind him came Marcus and Serpentius, and at the rear Heracles led Publius Sulla’s horse, with its master’s body across its back wrapped in a bedding sheet. Eight of the fort’s cavalry troopers escorted them for the first mile and when they left Valerius felt as vulnerable as when they’d been abandoned by the patrol. The others sensed it too.
‘If I ever see that bastard Festus again, I’ll cut his throat,’ Serpentius spat.
Valerius shook his head. ‘Vitellius will make sure he’s tucked away somewhere safe. I doubt if you’ll ever see him again.’
He couldn’t have been more wrong.
They rode for close to an hour before they found the first body. The Dacians had hung it by the heels from a tree with a leather strap cut through the tendons of both ankles. He had been stripped naked, but the pale torso and walnut brown arms tied behind his back marked him as a Roman soldier. His captors had suspended him head down a few inches above a large fire, and Valerius didn’t like to think about the agonies he had experienced before his skull had exploded.
‘Do we bury him?’ Marcus asked.
Valerius shook his head. ‘It would only tell them where we are and we don’t have the time.’ And where there was one, there would be more.
‘Could have been us. Serves the bastard right,’ Serpentius muttered without conviction.
Festus was recognizable when they found him, if you looked carefully, and alive, if you could call it alive. Strange that the young port prefect in Acruvium had described the Tungrian’s fate so accurately. The words had been chilling enough: Their favourite method of passing the time with a prisoner is to flay him alive and then impale him on the branch of a thorn tree. The reality was fit to drive a man to madness. Festus’s eyeballs danced in his skull like white beads in a jar. As well as his skin, his Dacian torturers had removed his lips, his eyelids, his nose and any other useful protrusions. He was no longer a human being, but a mess of blood and tissue wriggling obscenely on a four-foot stake. Valerius wondered why he hadn’t mercifully bled to death until he noticed that the gaping wound where his genitals had hung had been stuffed with earth to stop the bleeding and prolong his agony.
‘I’ll do it,’ the Spaniard said. Serpentius dismounted and approached the shivering horror that had once been a man. With a short prayer and a single, almost tender stroke of his sword, he sliced through the vertebrae at the base of Festus’s neck. The Tungrian’s head flopped forward and his body went still. After that they rode on in silence, each man alert for the first sign of danger and at the same time alone with his thoughts and fears.
It was Marcus who heard the shouts, away to their left. The survivors of the cavalry patrol must have believed they’d reached the relative safety of the plain when they were caught. From a nearby ridge Valerius saw immediately that their surviving leader had chosen to go to ground rather than fight his way out. It had been a mistake. Now the patrol was surrounded on three sides of a bare hilltop by a jeering horde of Dacians who danced among the trees and darted out to hurl spears, scream insu
lts and no doubt threaten them with the same fate as Festus. The only thing keeping them at bay was the wall of cavalry spears the Tungrians had set up on the approaches to the hill, which backed on to a sheer cliff face. The Dacians seemed in no hurry, but how long that would last only the gods knew. At least the auxiliaries still had their horses, hobbled together in a shallow dish at the base of the cliff.
He slithered back to where the others waited. ‘What now?’ Marcus whispered.
Valerius looked at each of them in turn. He had brought them to this. They owed him nothing. They owed Rome nothing. ‘Take Publius Sulla’s body. Once you’re out of the hills, keep riding west and you’ll arrive at the river. Just follow it upstream until you reach the bridge.’
‘What about you?’ Serpentius asked.
The question had only one answer. ‘I’m a Roman soldier. I can’t leave other Roman soldiers to die, not even these bastards.’
Serpentius and Marcus exchanged a glance of agreement. ‘This uniform says I’m a Roman soldier too,’ the Spaniard said. ‘Even if I’m not happy about it. Besides, if you get killed who’s going to pay us?’
‘And you, Heracles?’
‘If it wasn’t for you I would probably already be dead.’
‘Then this is what we will do.’
XXIV
VALERIUS LOOKED OUT from the cliff top into the black void below. A ring of Dacian fires blazed around the hill where the Tungrians were trapped, but they shed no light on the perilous descent he was about to attempt. He’d studied the cliff face while there was still daylight and thought he’d chosen the safest route, but now, seventy feet above the sheer drop, he was almost unnerved by niggling uncertainty. What if he reached a point where there were no holds? What if he became trapped until the power in his fingers faded and he plunged on to the rocks below? But there was no point in delaying. He allowed himself to slip backwards over the cliff edge, his feet searching for the first toehold. He was barefoot, the better to find the tiny cracks and hollows that would support him on the descent. The face of the cliff was composed of curious honeycombed rock which provided plenty in the way of hand- and footholds, but the stone was soft so he had to test each one to ensure it would take his weight. There would be no second chances. Just one mistake and he’d end up smeared over the valley floor and that wouldn’t do the auxiliaries any good at all.
When he’d explained his plan Marcus had stared at him as if he had lost his mind. ‘A one-handed man climbing down a sheer cliff in pitch darkness? It is beyond foolishness. You are committing suicide. Let me try.’
Valerius shook his head and continued unbuckling his armour with Serpentius’s help. ‘How many cliffs did you climb in all your years in Rome, old man?’ He saw Marcus flinch at the reference to his age and smiled to take the edge off the jibe. ‘You could do it, Marcus, so could Serpentius, but only I can do what needs to be done when I reach the bottom. They are soldiers, and they will only be led by another soldier.’
‘But your hand …’
‘When I searched the cliffs on my father’s estate for pigeon eggs, I often had to climb down single-handed. If anything this is simpler.’
Which was easy to say, but, now that he put it into practice, not so easy to do. It was true that he’d climbed one-handed, but he’d always carried the eggs in his left hand and he’d had the option of dropping them if he got into trouble. Now, he edged his way downwards in the certain knowledge that if the fingers of his left hand lost their grip nothing would save him. He was sweating heavily, and not because of the warmth of the night. Yet the further he descended, the more confident he became. He might only have a single hand, but it had gripped a sword every day for the past six years. The skin had the texture of part-cured leather and the fingers the strength of an iron claw. The walnut fist of his right hand could be used to jam into cracks in the rock, and, even where there were none, to steady and balance himself. At first he clung close to the surface, but gradually he became more confident as his bare feet unerringly found one toehold after another.
He was a third of the way down when his boldness betrayed him.
Valerius knew he’d made a mistake the moment he allowed his weight to settle on the outcrop beneath his left foot. The soft rock crumbled just as his left hand loosed the grip that anchored him to the face. He felt himself falling away and flailed desperately at the rock for some kind of hold. The cliff flashed past his face and he knew he was dead.
He would never understand how he did it. As he fell, his momentum took him in a half-turn away from the wall of rock, which was now out of reach of his left hand. Yet, somehow, he managed to lunge forward with his right. A jagged slash of pain tore at him as the walnut fist jammed into a narrow cleft and the leather strings binding the socket sliced into his flesh, driven by the entire weight of his body. A heartbeat later even that agony was overwhelmed by a sickening jerk that threatened to pull his arm from its socket. He bit his lip to stop himself from crying out and for a few awful moments hung suspended, praying the cowhide would hold him. Gradually, panic receded and he was able to reach out with his sound hand and pull himself back to the rock face. Once there, he drew himself upwards to take the weight off his arm and managed to unjam the wooden hand from the fissure. He spent the next minute clinging to the face, frozen by a combination of shock and pain, but eventually he willed himself to resume the descent.
When he reached the base of the cliff he crouched for a few moments in the darkness, attempting to get a sense of his surroundings. Ahead, he could see the hilltop silhouetted in the glow of the Dacian fires. The soft snicker of a cavalry mount confirmed that the horses were picketed somewhere to his right. But had the Tungrians set a guard? That was the next hurdle. To make himself known without getting a spear in the throat. He ghosted his way past the tethered horses. If they were watched, the sentry must be asleep because he saw no sign of him. On the brow of the hill prone figures lay scattered like odd-shaped rocks, the only sign of life the almost imperceptible movement of their breathing and the occasional animal whimper. He chose a shape on the outer edge of the group and drew the dagger he’d carried at his belt.
‘Careful, soldier,’ he whispered as he placed the point beneath the sleeping auxiliary’s chin. A pair of dark eyes flicked open and the man’s mouth gaped, before immediately closing as Valerius increased the pressure. Valerius nodded slowly and allowed himself a smile. ‘I want you to call whoever is in command. Do it in a normal voice and ask him to come over. Nod if you understand.’ Valerius lifted the knife point and the Tungrian complied. By now puzzlement had replaced the fear in his eyes. ‘Good. Now say it.’
‘Lucca?’ The call was hesitant, but loud enough to elicit an ill-tempered response.
‘What the fuck do you want, Fabius? If you haven’t thought of a way to get us out of here go back to sleep.’
‘Please, I need to talk to you.’
‘I hope it’s not what I think it is,’ the auxiliary grumbled. ‘Bad enough we’re all going to die tomorrow without you suddenly deciding you’re in fucking love with me.’ A dark figure rose from the ground a dozen paces away and scratched energetically before walking stiff-legged to where Valerius crouched beside Fabius.
Valerius stood as Lucca approached. He heard a sharp hiss of indrawn breath and the sound of a sword being drawn. ‘I’d have thought you’d lost too many men to go around killing your only reinforcement, friend.’
The man’s face was lost in the darkness but Valerius sensed him relax. ‘You’re supposed to be dead. Festus said—’
‘Festus is the one who’s dead,’ Valerius said brutally. ‘But we can discuss that later. For the moment let’s talk about our position. How many men do you have left?’
Lucca hesitated, but only for a moment. ‘Fifteen … no, fourteen … Brigio died after we got here. Three of the others are too badly injured to fight, but they can still ride.’
‘Horses?’
‘Enough for everyone and two spares, but we
only have fodder for another day and the water won’t last till noon.’
Valerius accompanied the auxiliary while he outlined the position. As they walked in the darkness, Lucca’s manner transformed from belligerent suspicion to a subordinate’s wary respect.
‘I’d have ridden for it, but we’d lost two men among the trees and Festus ordered us to hole up while he went back for them. An idiot, but a brave idiot. He never came back, but we heard him screaming. At least I think it was him. By then we were already in the shit. Hundreds of vermin crawling among the trees and no way out.’
‘And now?’
‘We were due back before dark. I thought maybe they’d send someone out after us.’ Valerius laughed and Lucca joined him. ‘I know, but … ah, shit!’ His shoulders slumped, an admission of defeat. ‘How did you get here? We all thought you’d been killed. Festus said …’
‘What did Festus say?’
‘He said you were here to arrest the legate and return him to Rome and we couldn’t let that happen. We were to take you out in the woods and lose you. The Dacians would do the rest. There’d been some kind of arrangement, and we were to ride away, free and clear. Only it looks like nobody told the Gets.’
‘The Gets?’
‘Getae. The Dacians. Anyway, the bastards ambushed us about half an hour after we left you.’
Valerius considered the story. It made sense, in a perverse, soldierly sort of way. If someone had convinced the Tungrians their respected general was under threat they wouldn’t take much persuading to mislay four of the despised Praetorian Guard and hope nobody back in Rome noticed. An unfortunate accident on the frontier. By the time any investigation was launched, the evidence would be a pile of wolf-gnawed bones, if the Dacians left any evidence. It also reinforced his suspicions: someone had known in advance where they were coming and why. They’d tried to stop him on the way east, and now they’d tried again. But Gaius Valerius Verrens was not going to be stopped. Publius had unwittingly given him another piece of the puzzle but he needed to get back to Rome if he was going to use it.
Defender of Rome Page 17