Caros spied the lone figure expertly riding his mount down a scree littered slope and then up towards them. It was clear he had ridden hard; the horse was lathered and blowing while the scout’s tunic was darkened with sweat. The man pulled up before Aksel and licked his lips at the proffered waterskin. Before he drank, he spoke quickly. “There is a ship beached north of here. Farinas remained behind with the rest of the party to keep watch.”
Caros and Aksel glanced at one another in surprise while the scout took a moment to take a drink.
“How many oars?” Caros asked.
He peeled his lips back, thinking. “Maybe a score each side. We did not count the oars, we counted the sailors. A score and a half washing and collecting water from a stream than runs where they beached.”
“Warriors?” Aksel shot back.
“They have those odd half-wood, half-iron spears like we suffered under at Sagunt, but they wear no armour. One alone carried a fancy looking helmet with a red crest, he also wore a breastplate and sword belt.” The scout passed the skin back to Aksel.
Caros looked back towards the crest of the hill they had been about to climb. Two of their men had ascended the hill and lying prone at the brow, were peering south.
“Let us go have a look at this place, Long Spears. I would have thought any ship would have beached there for supplies.” They walked their mounts up the hillside and dismounted near the crest before edging up on hands and knees beside the men already there.
One man glanced at him and shrugged. “All quiet down there.”
Caros squinted against the sun reflecting off the flat ocean. The little village straddled a small rocky slope above a shallow bay. An ideal place for a fishing village.
“I do not see any horses.”
Aksel shook his head. “Nothing out of the ordinary. We either beat them here or this was not their destination.”
Caros ground his teeth and looked beyond the village. “They are not coming here. They are going to the galley.” He was certain of it. Gualbes or the Romans had planned for this escape and considered the possibility of ambush at the fishing village. It was the only feasible explanation. He jumped to his feet. “We must ride for that galley. If the sailors are still ashore, we have a chance to capture it.”
The four men scrambled to their mounts and filed down the hill to the waiting column. Caros smiled grimly at the village warrior. “I fear they have another destination in mind. We will be riding hard to reach it.”
Stavros swelled in anger before reconsidering. “Go then. I hope that I have done enough to ensure you succeed. May Saur’s hounds feed on their shades.” He nodded at Aksel and without another word turned back up the track.
Aksel shrugged. “We had best not waste any time.”
They set off north and as they rode, Aksel spoke with the scout who explained what he had seen of the ship and the sailors’ positions.
“They have sentries posted on a hill overlooking the ship, but we slipped past them easily enough without even dismounting.” The rider reported.
Caros grinned. “The ship, what of it? Is it afloat or beached?”
“It is beached; its sail removed.” As an afterthought, he added. “It has an eagle emblem mounted on one end. A golden eagle.”
“That is the emblem of Rome. This is surely the ship Gualbes is heading for.” Caros’ heart beat hard and he grinned in anticipation. He quickly quashed the brief flicker of worry at the implications of attacking a ship of Rome. Rome had declared for war; it would be rude not to give them a taste of what they sought.
They splashed through a stream that was beginning to thin and dry up as spring took hold on the land. With hooves cracking across rocks and their blades hacking through the thick foliage, they broke out of a narrow gorge that ran down to a wide sandy beach. A mere stade away stood a bald, rocky promontory. The scout pointed. “Their guards are up there and the galley lies just beyond!”
Crossing one last stagnating pool of brackish water above the high tide mark, the column hit the beach. Small waves rolled up the shore and the riders soon found they could gallop fastest along the hard packed sand where the waves crested.
Javelins at the ready, Caros flew along, reveling in the fresh salt-tanged air that whipped through his long hair and his horses black mane. A horn sounded nasally from ahead. He caught the urgency in the strident tone and smiled coldly as they rounded the headland. There before them was the Roman galley, pitched on its side and helpless. Figures scurried about the vessel and a score or so men appeared from a narrow defile, running frantically for the galley. On reaching it, they threw their shoulders against the hull and heaved. Caros was surprised at the speed with which it was shoved back into the ocean. He leaned over the neck of the stallion and urged it to greater speed. Beside him raced Aksel and others of the column, each urging his horse on. The ship began to right itself as more and more of it lifted on the waves. It was a wasted effort by the Roman sailors and the single Roman officer in a shining cuirass, must have realised this. He stood between the sailors and the approaching horsemen and Caros studied him curiously, admiring the man’s bearing in the face of overwhelming odds. The Roman barked an order, his voice traveling to Caros. His eyes locked on Caros’ while behind him, sailors snatched up pilum and shields and scrambled to form a line. Their officer deigned to finally strap his helmet on, its rich red plume bristling in the sea breeze. The man drew his sword and held it high, the sun reflecting dazzling from its polished surface. He seemed unafraid as he stared at his oncoming death and Caros’ respected him for his bravery.
The Masulians struck mercilessly. At one with their mounts, their favored weapon was an extension of their speed and they judged their timing with precision. Even as the Roman officer bellowed and chopped his sword down, signaling the sailors to launch their heavy pila, the Masulian javelins hissed across the beach. Caros threw a heartbeat later and watched as the neat row of sailors became a staggering line of dying men. Javelins flattened and scythed the men down, punching through shields and chests, killing and maiming terribly. The Roman officer spun at the impact of multiple javelins and crashed to his knees, his lower jaw dropped open, allowing blood to gush down his splendid, useless armour.
They were amongst the Romans in a heartbeat, sliding from their still galloping mounts to stab and hack at any sign of resistance. A small group had somehow survived the initial slaughter and savage follow through to back up against the hull of their ship, quivering with hands palm up, beseeching mercy in their foreign tongue. Aksel’s roar pulled up the advancing Masulians who ululated and tore instead into the lifeless bodies, savagely cutting away rings, pendants and everything of worth or interest. Jinkata and a few others stood growling at the surviving sailors, javelins ready to whip forward and faces twisted with battle fury. The sailors, four of them, fell to their knees, panting strangled sobs. A pounding of hooves from beyond the galley and a chorus of suddenly choked screams signaled the death of a few sailors who had tried to slip away out of sight beyond the vessel’s hull. Caros stepped over bodies that stared lifelessly at the Iberian sky above, while their heels drummed the dance of the dead, their lifeblood ebbing away into golden sand stained crimson. He stood in the shade cast by the galley and stared murderously at the four captives.
Chapter 15
The stern of the galley, half-afloat, washed back onto the beach so that the ship lay parallel to the surf, like some dead behemoth coughed up by the tide. Masulian riders stripped and dragged the petrified sailors up the beach, their wrists bound with lengths of rope taken from the galley. They taunted them with curses and lashed them with javelin shafts, leaving the skin of their buttocks crisscrossed with angry red welts. Above them wheeled two flocks, one of gulls and the other of ravens. Their raucous calls filled with anticipation at the feast of dead below them. Riders bored at the taunting, came to inspect the galley and within moments, they were yelling and shouting.
Caros paused his inspection of the Roman
officer’s armour and sword and strode over to the canted deck. Here he could hear the plaintive sobs issuing from the galley and watched as a Masulian threw aside cloaks and oars to reveal a tangle of naked flesh. The rider jerked back at the sight, grimaced and shook his head. Aksel growled and Caros went pale. More riders converged to clear the debris covered bodies. In a matter of moments, they lifted a pale figure from the galley to the beach. This was no sailor, but a young woman, a girl just reaching child-bearing age and she cowered on her knees at the centre of the ring of curious men, a few who smirked at her nakedness. Two more women were pulled out of the galley and deposited on the sand beside the first. Their wrists were bound and while two of them were silent, the third sobbed and shook.
Aksel glared at the riders in the galley. “What are you waiting for, throw some of those cloaks down!” The men hastily grabbed up armfuls of strewn clothing and threw them to the women. Aksel grunted and stepped forward, taking the oldest and calmest of the three by her bound wrists, he caught her eye and indicated the bindings, then slowly unsheathed his long knife and cut them loose. The woman released her pent-up breath and crossed her arms over her chest. Aksel pointed at her companions before offering her the knife hilt. He stepped back judiciously as she took the knife and a flicker passed across her eyes before she turned to her companions and cut their bindings. Freed, they quickly pulled on the tunics and cloaks scattered at their feet.
“Aksel! We had better have a talk with the prisoners.” Caros called a warning, his guts still roiling at the bruises he had seen on the women. He gestured up the beach to where the riders circled the Romans with renewed intent. Despite the day’s heat, the Romans lay visibly trembling on the dunes above the beach. They were bloodied and broken, but far from seriously injured and as the warriors crowded about them, they started to babble in fear. Caros and Aksel raced quickly ahead of the warriors, shoving riders aside as they fought to get to the Romans. A warbling scream issued from a prisoner and the others cried and cursed in their foreign tongue. Aksel roared at his warriors and they at last gave way. They found three prisoners well and the forth bleeding to death while choking on the part of him that had been cut away and rammed deep down his throat. It was no honorable death this, but Caros watched silently as the prisoner finally stopped his thrashing and choking. His body felt like stone as he turned his gaze on the three remaining Romans. Slowly he forced a smile across his features, thinking if a snake could grin, this must be what it would look like. He kicked the dead man over onto his back so that his mutilated body was in front of the prisoners, the gruesome wound a mute threat. He looked to Aksel. “I hope to the gods they did not kill the only one that spoke Greek.” He spat on the dead man’s face and then fired questions at the prisoners in Greek. “What are you doing here? Who are you here for? Where do you come from? Who is your leader? What are you doing here? Who do you…”
A sailor propped himself up awkwardly on an elbow and stared belligerently at Caros. “Free us Iberian and I’ll speak.”
Caros rammed his foot into the man’s ribs and flipped him neatly onto his stomach. Stamping his foot onto the sailor’s neck, he drove his face into the ground. The sailor had no chance to catch his breath and drowning in the fine sand, flailed his limbs wildly. Eyeing the other sailors, Caros asked the again. “Speak quickly or he dies.”
One of the sailors spoke rapidly in his own tongue, shaking his head. Caros glanced at Aksel who shrugged. He lifted his foot and the pinned sailor rolled weakly onto his side and took a breath, his face blood red, nose and mouth full of sand. When his breathing had eased a little Caros spoke. “I will be frank with you. You are dead men. Answer our questions and your ending will be swift.”
The sailor who spoke Greek spat more sand from his mouth and lifted his head blindly towards Caros, eyes still clogged with sand. “Worms eat you alive you bastards! Kill us already, we will not tell you a thing.”
Caros grimaced and spoke slowly in Greek to Aksel. “They are always so defiant to begin with. Less so later; when their nails have been torn free and their teeth drawn. Then they cannot talk enough.” Aksel nodded sagely. Directing his words to the sailor still blinking to rid his eyes of sand. “The women you raped. What do you suppose they might do with you should we offer them the opportunity?” He looked pointedly and the dead man’s mutilated crotch. “Is that the way you want to die Roman? Under the blade of a woman, your sack shoved down your throat, choking you while a splintered oar is driven up your hairy arse?” He let the question hang because he could tell the image he had painted had dented the sailor’s bravado. It may have been the manner of death or perhaps that it was a woman who would administer the treatment, but the sailor clamped his jaws and grunted. He took a breath and spoke. “I will speak. Swear to kill us clean.” He shook his head, his eyelids batting uselessly at the lumps of sand in his eyes. “Kill us clean, Iberian. It is what you promised before the gods.
Caros dipped his chin. “You have my word. Speak.”
We were under orders to wait for a party of men, Romans. We have been up and down this coast for days and were to wait five more and then leave for Rome, with or without them.” Strings of snot hung from his nose and blood streamed from split lips. “This is all I know and these lads with me only speak their mother tongue. Kill us clean like you said you would Iberian.”
Caros looked beyond the ring of watching Masulians. The three women were sitting in a tight group. “Where did you capture the women?”
“Three days south of this place. We did not plan it. They saw us while we were taking on fresh water. We could have killed them there and then but…” His voice trailed away.
Caros nodded to Aksel who gripped the man’s greasy hair and jerked his head back savagely. The long knife whipped through skin and cartilage before sawing bone. Blood fountained in a frothy plume and fell with a loud splatter across the prisoners. There was just time for an audible inhalation from the two watching sailors before they were stabbed through with javelins wielded by the closest Masulians. Caros walked away from the butchery, his part played.
After ransacking the galley and looting the bodies of valuables, they dragged the corpses onto the ship before firing it. The Roman ship burned readily, the caulking of pitch and resin sending a tall column of black smoke high into the clear sky. Caros cursed. “Gualbes might guess the cause of that bloody great beacon.”
Aksel laughed. “We are between him and Rome. Where can he go?”
Caros looked east. The Aeronosii and the Romans would not stay here where every hand would turn against them. They might find a merchant ship that would take them, but it would be too risky waiting at any local harbour for such an opportunity. “They will head north. It is not so far to ride to Massalia.”
“How many days ride is this Massalia then?”
“This time of the year, not more than ten days. Unless they find a galley along the way.”
“That many men, we’ll find their tracks and have them long before then.” Aksel shouted to his men and ordered his scouts to begin the search. “What about the women? That village, Long Spears, is not far from here.”
Caros eyed the huddled women. “A couple of riders could escort them there and let the villagers take them in. I will speak with them and see if they can tell us anything more about these Romans first.”
The three women had made their way onto a rocky knoll beyond the beach. They sat in a tight circle, hands clasping their cloaks tightly to their bodies. Caros dismounted with a waterskin and some dry rations. “Greetings. Here, wine and bread for you.” The woman who had taken the knife stood and with a trembling hand took the food and drink.
“We wish you no harm, in fact there is a small village not far south of here. We will see to it you arrive there safely so you can make your way home.” Caros fell silent. The woman placed the provisions on a rock, but made no move to eat. Instead, she looked at him cautiously. “We must go north. That is where our clan is.” Her voice had a strange
cadence to it and she spoke in the manner of the oldest of the Bastetani.
“I had thought you were from the south?”
“Is that what those daemon told you? They lie. We were taken in the north, that is where we must return.” Her eyes burned angrily.
Caros held his hands up to pacify her. “Then we’ll provide you with enough food so that you can return to your homes.” Then he cautiously asked. “Who are your people, I have not heard speech such as yours except in the old songs of the Bastetani?”
The woman smiled gently. “Then you know of us. We are of the Clans of Shade.”
The words drove Caros back a step in surprise and fear. “The Speakers of Oracles! You are…” His mind raced to find the right words. It was true that he had heard of the Clans of Shade, but he had thought their time long passed. They were the ancient ones who had first walked these lands. Their ways were a mystery and it was believed the shades of the dead could speak through them. Finding his tongue, he spoke. “I had never thought I would encounter such as yourselves…”
“We are few and prefer to avoid others. The songs of the ancient ones are growing dim and in their place is only the steady beat of the war drum. It is this drumming that drowned out the warnings of the ancestors and why we were captured. I am called Shawnwa and these two are daughters of a clan sister.”
“Greetings, I am Caros of the Bastetani.”
“You and your companions have saved our lives. Will you now bear that responsibility?”
Embarrassed by her mention of the ancient code where one who saves a life bears a responsibility for that life, Caros reluctantly acquiesced. “Until you are reunited with your clan we will do so. How many days to the north are your people?”
Her face paling, she whispered. “Four days and three nights they held us on their vessel.” She turned her wrists up. “I don’t know how far that might be on foot or by horse.”
Maharra Page 17