The Return

by Harry Sidebottom

  Paullus thought he half heard something from higher up the mountain. Surreptitiously, he nudged the horse to make it play up. Then, as it stamped and shouted, he made a loud play of soothing it.

  The leader waited until he could make himself heard over the sounds of the agitated animal. ‘What is your crime?’

  ‘Fratricide.’

  ‘Not much of an inducement to trust you – a man who has killed his brother.’

  ‘Bad things happen. We are at the whim of fate.’

  ‘Your crime might bring us bad luck. Some might fear the pollution of blood-guilt.’

  ‘Then they are in the wrong profession.’ Now it was quiet, Paullus was alarmed that he could hear nothing from up the higher slopes.

  ‘Tell me why we should not kill you, and take the fine horse and armour you have stolen?’

  Time was running out. Paullus had to keep talking. ‘I am a trained soldier. When the boy returns, he can vouch for my skill at arms.’

  ‘He already has.’ Again the chief laughed affably. ‘Let one of the men take your horse. We will discuss it over a drink. You can take the oath in our camp.’

  ‘No, I will take the oath here.’ This was near the end, Paullus knew. It had been a good plan – distract the brigands while Dekis guided Lollius and the others along the trail from Blood Rock to the camp and down to the pass – but it had failed.

  ‘It was not a request. Get off that horse.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  There was a crashing in the undergrowth. Someone was coming down the incline at breakneck speed. The heads of all the brigands jerked round.

  ‘Keep your eye on him!’ All affability had gone from the leader’s voice.

  Paullus forced himself to sit very still. But the hunter could sense his tension. Muscles quivered in its shoulders. Like its rider, it was poised for flight.

  The man racing down the hillside lost his footing. He pitched forward and rolled in a cloud of dust.

  Any moment now, Paullus thought. Just let him distract them for a moment.

  Grazed and bloodied, the man tumbled out onto the road. ‘The camp,’ he said.

  ‘What about the camp?’ The leader snapped.

  ‘They have overrun the camp.’ The chief looked at the newcomer. The gaze of the others followed his.

  Paullus yanked the bridle. The horse reared up and turned on its rear legs.

  ‘Get him!’

  Paullus brought his boots into his mount’s sides. It leapt forward. The brigands blocking the way he had come did not want to be run down. They scattered, hurling themselves out of the path.

  Paullus felt his spirits soar, and then the shaft punched deep into the shoulder of the hunter. It stumbled, then recovered. The fletchings were bright against the glossy dark hide. The horse lost its rhythm, began to stagger. Blood was rising up around the feathers. The hunter was going to fall. Paullus levered himself out of the grip of the saddle. The horse was toppling towards the slope. Paullus jumped clear the other side.

  The surface of the road rushed up, hard and unforgiving. Paullus landed in a jangle of armour. The breath was knocked out of his chest. Pain lanced up his right arm. Thrown out to break the landing, perhaps it was broken. He clattered to a stop, horribly near the precipice.

  The brigands did have archers in the scrub, he thought inconsequentially.

  Paullus’ head was ringing. Shouts and the sounds of fighting seemed to assail him from every direction. He went to push himself up. His right arm gave way.

  Amid the chaos, a pair of boots was walking calmly towards him. Their owner wore a cuirass. ‘I am going to take you with me,’ the brigand chief said in a tone that was almost conversational.

  Paullus rolled to his left, scrambled to his feet. He went to draw his blade, but his right arm would not respond. He fumbled the sword out with his left, got it into an inadequate guard.

  The chieftain thrust, knocking Paullus’ sword straight out of his grasp. Paullus stepped back. He felt the edge crumble under his heels.

  ‘Surrender!’

  Lollius and Dekis were closing in from either side. The bandit leader half turned. Paullus lurched away along the edge. Small stones slid out from under his feet, rattling down into the chasm. A few strides and he collapsed behind Lollius.

  ‘Throw down the sword!’ Lollius said.

  ‘So you can take me back, kill me at your leisure, make a spectacle of it?’ The brigand grinned ruefully. ‘I do not say that the stars lie, but the astrologer was wrong. I am not destined to die on the cross.’

  Without another word, he stepped off the path.

  CHAPTER 14

  Patria

  609 Ab Urbe Condita (145 BC)

  THE FARM WAS QUIET IN THE early morning. Hirtius had sent his wife and daughter into town the day before. They would stay with his sister for the festival of Minerva tomorrow, and return the following day.

  Hirtius walked outside. The farmstead on the western slope was still shaded, the sheds indistinct dark shapes, the olive trees silver and ghostly in the gloom. Far below, the mountains threw long blue shadows out over the sea. Further out the water shimmered in the sun. Tiny in the distance, the last fishing boats were putting in to Clampetia. Sunrise always raised the onshore breeze. It moved up the inclines and brought the salt smell of the sea to the smallholding in the hills.

  At least it was safe again to work the outlying farms and fields. The brigands taken at Blood Rock and above Erimon had been crucified along the inland road out of Temesa. Well spaced, it was said, they stretched as far as the bridge over the Sabutus. There had been more than twenty of them. It had been only three days, and one or two might still be just about alive on their cross. Hirtius had never really believed the rumours about the daemon. Why should the Hero return after all these centuries? Polites had been soundly beaten, had been driven to take refuge under the sea for eternity. But the murder of Junius, the horrible desecration of his corpse, had rattled Hirtius. Although he had not admitted it to his family, nor to anyone else – not his few and distant neighbours, nor those men he had met on his infrequent visits to town – Hirtius had been scared. The life of a hill farmer was lonely and tough enough without having to look over your shoulder all the time. The flushing out of the nests of bandits had brought a modicum of peace. Yet it nagged at Hirtius that apparently, even under the lash, none of the outlaws had confessed to the killing of Junius.

  The shadows retreated from the sea, fled towards him up the slopes, and then the smallholding was bathed in a gentle yellow light as the sun inched over the crest. Hirtius regarded the neat trenches he had dug around the olive trees. They still needed manuring. It was an inconvenient time for his wife and daughter to be away. September was a busy month. The apples and pears were not quite ready to be picked, but it was time to sow the turnips and lupines.

  Yet there were not many festivals in September: apart from that of Minerva, there were only those of Ceres and Venus towards the end of the month. If his daughter were ever to marry, she had to be seen. The festivals of September were for women; the men were labouring in the fields. But a man looking for a wife would take the time to attend the celebrations. It was when things often were arranged. For those wanting reassurance, it was legal to consult astrologers at the festival of Minerva.

  Hirtius worried about his daughter. She was plain, and not getting any younger. It was a pity that young Paullus had come to nothing. His mother had talked to Hirtius’ wife. The girl had not been unwilling. Paullus owned twenty-five iugera; with the ten of Hirtius, it would have made a decent holding for their offspring. And there were stories of vast wealth, stores of plunder from the east, buried on his land. Yet something was not right about the boy. Before he went away, he had been wild: always drinking or hunting, or up to something with Lollius and Alcimus. After his return from the wars, he had become quieter but more solitary. There was something haunted about him. The new maid he had bought his mother had told Hirtius’ wife that he s
lept badly, sometimes woke with an inarticulate cry.

  The wind stirred the tops of the trees in the woods to the south. In previous years another autumn task would have been cutting leaves. Poplar, elm and oak leaves made good winter fodder, if stored before they were too dry. But that was when it was common land. Last spring Ursus had produced a piece of papyrus claiming it gave him sole use of the woods. The priest was no better or worse than other rich men. They had the money to ensure that the law always worked in their favour. After the enclosure, when Hirtius could no longer let his pigs and sheep forage there, the animals had had to be sold. Now Hirtius had to take in work.

  Reluctantly, Hirtius went to light the fire pit. The oak barrels were ranged nearby. Once the fire had caught, he fetched some bundles of straw from the shed. Placing some handfuls in each cask, he took a brand from the fire and lit them one after another. The straw flared and burnt out quickly. He scraped out the embers. It was important that the insides of the barrels were warm and dry.

  Pitching casks was a hard and dirty job. The vintner in Temesa had been only too glad to pay Hirtius. Although, like any tradesman, he had haggled the price down. At least these barrels were small enough for one man to manoeuvre, if with difficulty.

  Grunting with effort, Hirtius hung the big copper cauldron on the chains over the fire pit. He put in the blocks of pitch to melt. Almost at once the yard was enveloped in thick, acrid smoke. Some said it smelt of incense. Hirtius found the resinous fumes cloying and repugnant.

  The pitch needed stirring almost continuously as it came to the boil. When it was liquid and bubbling, came the hazardous business of the ladling. Only one cask could be pitched at a time. It had to be done with the utmost care. Any splash of molten pitch welded itself to the skin, burnt through flesh down to the bone. Once the pitch was in, the lid was hammered down and the barrel turned: rolled from side to side, stood on its top and base to coat all the interior. Finally, a bung was knocked out, releasing a jet of steam, and a tap opened at the bottom, to drain the excess pitch. It was a time-consuming, exhausting and filthy process.

  Soon the pitch was viscous. The first big fat bubbles rose to the surface and burst, flicking gobbets of scalding pitch into the air. Hirtius stirred, standing well back, using a long metal pole. The gases caught in his throat and made it hard to breath. The stench was nearly overpowering.

  The blow to his back came without any warning. A sharp, stabbing punch that made him stagger forward. Only a desperate thrust of the pole stopped him falling forward into the cauldron and the fire. The liquid pitch sloshed back and forth, threatening to spill over the sides as the cauldron rocked on the chains. Hirtius tottered back a pace or two. Turning his head, he saw the goose feathers, the cane shaft: a hunting arrow. Then the shock and pain welled up. His knees gave way, and he fell to the ground.

  Lying on his side, he saw the two figures approach through the swirling smoke. Both wore wolfskins, the masks over their heads. Their naked torsos were dyed the colour of the earth. Was he seeing double? No, the older was broader, the younger carried a bow and was much slighter built.

  ‘Pity,’ the younger said, ‘I had hoped to have more fun with this one.’

  ‘You are getting a taste for this,’ the older said. ‘I had a hound like you once. He had to be put down.’

  The voices were vaguely familiar.

  ‘Give me a hand,’ the younger said. ‘Another example is needed.’

  As they lifted him, Hirtius felt the barbs of the arrowhead move in his lungs, the ends of his broken ribs grate together. He tried to scream, but the only sound was a low, harsh panting.

  They moved forward. Hirtius’ head and shoulders were over the bubbling cauldron. No, by all the gods, no! He wanted to shout, plead for his life, but his own blood was in his throat.

  And then they pushed his face down towards the roiling black pitch.

  CHAPTER 15

  Militia

  One Year Earlier

  608 Ab Urbe Condita (146 BC)

  NO TIME TO WASTE, break camp at dawn. Always the same rumour ran through the army. But normally nothing happened. Perhaps this time it just might be different. They were in Dyrrachium, a seaport on the Greek side of the Adriatic.

  ‘The guards at headquarters told me, they swear it is true.’

  Paullus and Alcimus did not take much notice of the ex-ploughboy from the Sabine hills. They had heard it all before, and their attention was elsewhere. Tatius was telling a joke. He was good at jokes. Half the bar was listening. It was the one about the man who could not find two fifteen-year-old girls in the market, so bought a thirty-year-old woman instead.

  Although it was little over a year since he had enlisted, Paullus now seldom thought about the time before the army. Under the standards every aspect of life was different. Swift justice replaced long-winded appeals to juries, and summary execution the right to retire into exile. The hours of the day were not estimated by the sun, but structured by trumpets and watchwords. With darkness, no longer the domain of sleep or revelry, came the long enforced watches of the night. Words themselves changed their meaning. A vineyard became a covered siege work, and a mouse a mantlet. A bad camp was a stepmother. Legionaries looked up at the night sky and saw not Orion, but the old sodomite. Fellow soldiers, above all tent-mates, became a new family. They called each other brother or boy. It was a brotherhood of honourable servitude. Apart from small children, only a soldier or a slave answered to boy.

  ‘An idiot goes sailing in stormy weather. All his slaves start screaming. Don’t worry, he says, in my will you are all set free!’

  Paullus grinned as Tatius wheeled out the old joke. It was amazing how active service could change one’s attitudes. After they escaped the mob that had set upon Orestes’ embassy at Corinth, on the voyage back to Italy an unspoken truce had come into force between them. Alcimus had helped broker the deal. Over the winter outside Rome – when the legion was dissolved, and then, by a legal fiction, instantly reformed as a different unit – they had all become friends.

  In the spring the legion had marched down to Brundisium. There they had camped with the other forces assembling to constitute the army of the Consul Mummius. Altogether they waited for almost three months, kicking their heels, impatient for action. No reason was given for the delay. None of the news that reached the legionaries from across the Adriatic was good. The Achaeans had declared war on Sparta, which meant war with Rome. Critolaus had replaced Diaeus as the Achaean supreme commander. The new general was active, and had taken the offensive. The Achaeans had marched north out of the Peloponnese. The great cities of Thebes and Chalcis had joined them. Heraclea on Mount Oeta, which had sought to follow the instructions of Rome and leave the league, had been put under close siege by Critolaus, and was not expected to hold out long.

  By the time they had finally embarked, the tent-mates had separated into two amicable groups. On the one hand were the five Sabine farm boys, on the other Paullus, Alcimus and Tatius. The latter had developed the closeness that could only exist among men without women, men who lived and served together, and who, in the face of authority or danger, had nothing to rely upon except each other. It was during that choppy crossing to Dyrrachium that the seasick Centurion Naevius had sourly dubbed them the Three Graces.

  ‘A Sabine heard that a crow can live for two hundred years, so he bought one to see if it was true.’

  ‘Fuck off, you sewer rat,’ one of those being mocked said, without any trace of animosity.

  The laughter stopped. Naevius had entered the bar. Instead of his customary ill temper, the centurion’s face expressed a badly concealed excitement.

  ‘How many of you can ride a horse?’

  They all claimed that skill, although with very varying degrees of enthusiasm.

  ‘Good,’ Naevius said. ‘Then sup up your drinks and follow me. The quartermaster will issue you with your mounts.’

  ‘Do we get a new officer,’ Tatius asked, ‘now we are transferred t
o the cavalry?’

  ‘Sordid plebeians like you would never be allowed to join the equestrian gentlemen in the cavalry.’

  They all waited expectantly.

  Naevius pointed at Paullus and Alcimus. ‘This is your fault again. Orestes has asked for you.’

  ‘Jupiter’s bollocks, not another embassy,’ Tatius said. ‘We were lucky to survive the last one.’

  ‘No, not another embassy.’ Naevius looked at the other customers. There were civilians in the inn, as well as soldiers from other units. ‘I might as well tell you. It will be all round the camp in half an hour. Caecilius Metellus, the governor of Macedonia, has marched south. His legions have crossed Thessaly, and lifted the siege of Heraclea. Somehow he got through the pass at Thermopylae and he has defeated the Achaeans at a place called Skarpheia.’

  A groan of disappointment went up from the troops.

  ‘That is right,’ Naevius said. ‘If we don’t move fast, he will finish the war before we even get there. No glory for the Consul Mummius, and no wealth of Corinthian plunder for us.’

  *

  Only one or two of the original horses remained, and they were ruined. Twenty-five riders had left Dyrrachium: the Consul Mummius and his legate Orestes, each with one slave, the nine soldiers and the twelve lictors, the ceremonial attendants of a consul. Not all had stayed the course. Both slaves had fallen behind, as had two legionaries. Accustomed to a less vigorous life, no fewer than five of the lictors had lagged behind.

  The number of stragglers was unsurprising. They had been in the saddle for almost a month. First they had ridden east, across the wild mountains of Macedon, then south through the green lowland meadows of that recently conquered kingdom and the broad pastures of Thessaly. This was horse-rearing country, and they requisitioned remounts as they went. But the relentless pace broke down men and beasts. Ruthlessly, both were left behind. At Heraclea they learnt that Metellus had captured Thebes and was advancing on Megara, the city at the north of the isthmus, the strip of land that connected the Peloponnese to mainland Greece. Without pause, they had pressed on in the footsteps of his troops.