by Peter Tonkin
Once he had overseen this, Artemidorus turned to the others. They needed to finalise their tally of injuries, deal with Epatus as reverently as they had dealt with the bones of the family they had found beneath the undergrowth. And then with the bodies of their would-be murderers, many of which still lay out there at the edge of the firelight. One of the cart-drivers had had his foot crushed beneath a horse’s hoof. Another had a nasty gash on his thigh. A third was still stunned and disorientated from being bashed on the crown of his head by the solid club of a panicking horse’s chin. Hercules, Ferrata and Mercury boasted an assortment of gashes and bruises – none too serious. Quintus and Gretorex were both unscathed but Artemidorus himself was surprised to discover a long, shallow gash running the whole length of his left forearm. And that seemed to be all. It was only when they reached this stage that Artemidorus noticed one vital, shocking fact.
Puella was gone.
iv
‘Mercury! Ferrata!’ he spat. The two exhausted men looked groggily towards him. ‘You were fighting at Puella’s side! What happened to her?’ he demanded, shaken by the enormity of her loss. Not just as his lover but as one of his best warriors.
Both men shook their heads sheepishly. ‘We were pretty well occupied,’ said Mercury defensively.
‘Assumed she could look after herself as well as any of us.’ Ferrata rumbled.
‘Better than most of us,’ added Hercules.
Artemidorus stood, frozen, his mind racing. Visions reared of the skeleton of the woman they found beneath the undergrowth. The missing skirt. The wide-splayed legs. If Puella had been captured, the best she could hope for was the chance to give herself a swift and painless death. Especially given the likely frame of mind amongst the decimated and defeated Gauls. Unless Artemidorus and his men could gain on the fleeing robbers and rescue her, her death would be neither swift nor easy. He glanced around his companions, all too well aware that their chances of catching up with the raiders – let alone rescuing Puella – were diminishing with every heartbeat. He cursed himself for not starting the post-battle evaluation with a headcount – a mistake he would never repeat.
‘Quintus, Gretorex, Hercules, come with me.’ he snapped, turning to the least exhausted members of his command. ‘Ferrata, you’re in command until we get back!’
He had hardly finished speaking before a head sailed in out of the shadows, bounced on the ground at his feet and rolled into the fire. They had only an instant to register what it was before the hair burst into flame and the heavily-bearded face was obliterated by a vicious, crackling blaze.
Puella stepped into the golden circle, apparently unaware of the tension within the group she was so casually rejoining.
‘That was the leader of whichever gang attacked us,’ she said. ‘At least he was the one shouting the orders and getting on everybody’s nerves. I guess the rest will be quite relieved that he’s gone. And I don’t think they’ll be coming back.’
***
She came to him almost immediately after they had at last removed their armour and settled down. As sometimes happened, her reason for doing so was not clear. And in any case it seemed to change as the night wore on.
At first he was only aware of a chill followed by immediate warmth as he lifted the edge of the cloak he was using as a blanket and then slid beneath it to lie close. He stirred, wondering sleepily whether she had been aroused by the action. But apparently not. The body lying beside him was shivering with something other than lust. And, scarcely half-awake though he now was, he could feel the liquid warmth of tears on his cheek and neck. Coming closer to wakefulness, he rolled over enough to slip his arms around her, hugging her to him. He drew in a breath to question her, but his words were stopped by one simple fact. Although they often visited each others’ beds in the contubernium’s tents or camps shared with the rest of his command, they always did so in strict silence. They harboured no illusions that the others had little idea what was going on – but propriety at least seemed to demand that they should keep the proof to a minimum. Certainly in terms of sound, which seemed to be clearer and to travel further at night.
Artemidorus himself was aroused by the action – or, perhaps, he thought, by the emotions that rose from surviving danger. But, as Puella had wept, he controlled his urges while she curled against him and fell into restless slumber. He lay, dreamily wakeful, wondering about the nature of these things. That a soldier, faced with death in battle, should find the fact of his survival arousing. The poets and some philosophers spoke of the renewal of the vital spirit; the reaffirmation of life. Even amongst those, like his demi-god and hero Achilleus who sought immortality through a glorious death. But still loved not only his brother soldier Patroclus but Briseis his captive, Chiron his Centaur teacher and – at the end the lovely Polyxena who betrayed him and whose sacrifice his ghost demanded.
Which explained, he supposed, the ease with which victorious soldiery fell to raping their vanquished enemies, their wives, sons and daughters. As though of right. Was not Rome itself, after all, based on the murder of one brother by another; the kidnapping and rape of the women from a defeated tribe – the Sabines? But Puella’s reaction to the night’s events made him fleetingly wonder about the opposing point of view. If victorious soldiers saw rape as their right and a re-emphasis of their masculinity, the regeneration of their family and gens – could their victims see it as anything other than a brutal act of unforgivable violence? As his experiences with Spartacus in the Servile War had taught him – even slaves have souls.
Just as he was on the point of drifting off too, he found that Puella was moving against him. He never knew whether she was awake or asleep to begin with. Whether it was something that she dreamed, some visitation of the warlike Goddess Bellona whose child she seemed to be, or whether it was simply her awareness of his own arousal. But he was recalled from the shores of Lethe by her increasingly urgent movements as, one leg over his loins and pulling his thighs against her, she was moving rhythmically and increasingly urgently. She paused. Took hold of him. Slid astride him, and raised herself so that he could ease himself into her. Then she silently resumed her motion. He answered her, forcefully, stroke for stroke. For there was no doubt now that she was wakeful, though their love-making still had a strange, dream-like quality. Nevertheless, he was just wide enough awake to withdraw on the point of climax and they rolled so that his seed spread across her belly.
A moment later, after they regained their breath, they tip-toed silently down to the stream to wash, like Pan pursuing Syrinx or Apollo hunting Daphne in the legends. Not even the shock of the icy water could push them any closer to full wakefulness. This time when they lay down once more, they both almost instantly slept the dreamless sleep of victory, exhaustion and satiety.
v
Three days later, after two carefully-prepared, well-guarded but undisturbed nights, they crossed the pass that Gretorex had been heading for. It was a low col, which hardly rose above the pine-forested mountain slopes on the western side of the massif. Certainly nowhere near high enough to reach into the icy heights of perpetual winter far above. With the least precipitous of gradients and the easiest of pathways. The riders made it with no trouble and even the wagons had little difficulty in breasting the rise. They paused in a breathless group at the watershed ridge, on a wide path clinging to the side of a precipice which reared above their sinisra left hands, obscuring whatever lay to the north. On their dexter right, the southern edge of the track fell away into a rocky slope which swung round ahead of them too. Down which the path they were lingering upon wound in a series of snake-like loops to vanish into the brown-green wall of the pine forests far below.
With the westering sun behind them, they looked down into distant Gallia Cisaplina, where misty blue shadows were already creeping out of the eastern distance. The gentlest of still balmy breezes blew up the naked slopes above the pine forests and into their faces.
‘That’s odd,’ said Quintus quietly
. ‘This time I can smell smoke.’ His eyes raked the blue-grey distance searching for darker columns blowing in the wind.
‘Cooking fires?’ wondered Gretorex. ‘We’ll be lighting one ourselves soon. And a big one...’ he patted the flank of the mountain goat that lay dead across his saddle-bow.
‘I don’t think so,’ answered the old soldier. ‘More like the smoke I would have expected to smell from the ruins of the taberna three nights ago.’
‘So,’ mused Artemidorus. ‘Burning buildings. As though we’re just about to enter a war zone. Perhaps the reports of Decimus’ legions running wild up here are true. It would certainly explain why the Gaulish men attacked us that night. Perhaps even why they needed to – as well as wanted to.’
‘Too much philosophising, Septem,’ said Ferrata. ‘They attacked us in order to rob us and kill us. Nothing more.’
‘I agree with Septem,’ rumbled Gretorex. ‘The mountain tribes have generally been peaceful. This is a rich land. Tribes too busy farming, raising cows, sheep, crops and families to go robbing and raiding. If Quintus is right about what he can smell and Septem is right about why the locals have turned brigand, then things have changed up here.’
‘And the thing most likely to be driving the change,’ emphasised Artemidorus darkly, ‘is Decimus Albinus.’
‘So,’ said Puella brightly. ‘We jump out of the olla into the flammae out of the stock-pot into the flames.’
‘We certainly need to behave as though we have,’ nodded Artemidorus. ‘We’ll stop even earlier in the afternoons to prepare the strongest castrae that we can. Especially if we can find somewhere easy to defend against all-comers.’ He rose in his saddle, looking down the easterly slope. ‘Starting now...’
***
It was strange, thought Artemidorus, that although the burned taberna, the slaughtered family and brutal attack had all been part of the climb up the western slopes, it was their descent down the eastern ones that really felt dangerous. It was more than the smell of smoke, which they all soon registered. It was the strange manner in which the wind, even in the pine-forests, occasionally seemed to carry the sounds of warfare. The thunder of hooves. The clash of swords. The roar of uncontrolled fire. The shouts of attackers. The screams of the defeated and dying. They could smell warfare. They could hear it – albeit distantly and occasionally. But they could not see it.
Until they came out of the pine forest late on the second day of their descent.
The uneasiness which the sounds and smells made them all feel – even the horses which grew more skittish by the hour – had the positive effect of making Artemidorus, Gretorex and Quintus prepare the rest of the undercover crypteia for presenting their various cover stories at a moment’s notice. They assumed that under most circumstances they would explain themselves as a small legionary command with a Gallic cavalry escort. The closer to the truth the better. And a fiction supported rather than questioned by the range of hurts and bandages liberally spread amongst them. Next after that was the pretence that they were a legionary command escorting Gaulish prisoners – again, having survived some sort of skirmish. Third and last was the fiction that they were a Gallic cavalry alae wing turned traitor accompanying some captive legionaries. This last to be used only in the unlikely event that they came across some sort of Gaulish army revolting against Roman occupation of their lands.
But in the final analysis, Artemidorus could simply not conceive of any situation in which one or another of the explanations would fail to work. Though, just in case, they spent the evenings, as haunches of mountain goat were being prepared for cena, in sharpening their weapons once again. Because all the cover stories relied on someone among them having the time and opportunity to explain things to whoever came to confront them. And Artemidorus was as well aware as Quintus and Gretorex, that confrontations in war-zones rarely gave much leisure for explanations.
vi
The first confrontation came early on the third day as they came out of the pine forest and on to the summer bright alpine meadows. ‘What in the name of Achilleus...’ Artemidorus urged his mount over a ridge and found himself looking down into a fold of valley. The lush grass was covered with the bodies of perhaps half a hundred women and children who at first glance appeared to be dead. But closer inspection revealed the group to be interspersed with older men, who were obviously keeping watch. ‘The rest of you, wait here,’ he ordered. ‘Gretorex, with me.’ And he urged his mount over the edge and onto the downward slope.
As soon as they saw the Centurion’s uniform, the watch-keepers set about rousing their charges, so that by the time Septem and Gretorex reached the spot, almost all of the crowd had vanished. As fortune would have it, however, a couple of elderly men were too halt and lame to keep up with the rest. Artemidorus and Gretorex slid down out of their saddles beside the hindmost of these who was limping away as fast as he could with the aid of a crude crutch.
‘What’s going on here old man?’ asked Artemidorus in his best Gallic.
The old man stopped and looked back. His mouth remained resolutely shut as his baggy, weeping eyes swept over the Centurion’s armour. The shaggy white eyebrows folded down in a glower of simple hatred.
Artemidorus turned to Gretorex. ‘You can tell us, father,’ said the Gaulish cavalry legate gently. ‘We mean you and your people no harm.’
The old man hunched his shoulder and turned away. ‘You can kill me any way you want,’ he grated. ‘But I’ll never give them up!’
Artemidorus and Gretorex exchanged glances. The spy’s mind raced. ‘Legionaries did this to you?’ he asked, again in Gallic. ‘You and your village?’
‘Took everything we had!’ The old man was too full of outrage to stay silent after all. ‘Burned us to the ground. Took everything of any worth. Our grain stores and cattle. Our young men. The prettiest girls...’
‘This village,’ said Gretorex gently. ‘Where is it?’
‘Down the valley!’ spat the old man, gesturing with his free hand. ‘But don’t waste your time. There’s nothing worth your attention left there. No one alive. Nothing worth anything that isn’t on fire.’
As the old man hobbled away, the pair of soldiers turned to look in the direction he had indicated.
‘Our prettiest girls...’ Artemidorus repeated. ‘Whoever attacked their village had the time and inclination to pick and choose.’
‘Sounds like they took all the young men though,’ argued Gretorex.
‘So they need more fighters. But they seemingly have enough slaves if they’re going for quality over quantity. What does that sound like to you?’
‘Decimus Albinus,’ said Gretorex. ‘Giving his legions something to do while he’s waiting for Cicero and the Senate to send sufficient troops to help him come after Antony...’
‘For orders, support or gold,’ nodded Artemidorus. ‘One of which he seems to have in abundance - courtesy of Cicero, as you say. But not the other two, as I understand it. Meanwhile, he’s hoping to keep them active and occupied in case they desert or – worse – turn on him. They can’t be all that happy after being cooped up by General Antony in Mutina for the better part of five months. And of course things will be worse for the cohorts who followed Pontius Aquila, Decimus’ right hand man. Whose head, as I remember, we managed to split in two between us at the battle less than ninety days ago last Aprilis. They’ll feel leaderless as likely as not. And I doubt general Decimus has the charm to seduce them fully into his command. I doubt very much whether he has the gold to buy their loyalty.’
The wind, which had been blowing gently from behind them, suddenly backed and blew straight up the valley into their faces. The smell of burning that it now carried was strong enough to make them both cough. But at least it gave them clear warning of what they were about to find. So they mounted their horse and trotted off to find it.
vii
It clearly hadn’t been much of a village. Maybe forty huts of various sizes - some surprisingly large. A temp
le, a meeting-house and a space that might have served as a forum. No statues, shops, triumphal arches, columns or baths – nothing civilised; nothing Roman. And nothing made of brick, stone or marble. It had all been made of wood. So it was now mostly ash and smoke. Clearly many more villagers had lived here than the crowd they had seen escaping. More even than those the old man said had been taken; the young men, the pretty girls. For there were a good number of villagers still here. Of various ages and both genders. Clothed, semi-clothed and naked. In differing states of disrepair. All dead.
Just about the only wooden artefacts that hadn’t been torched, thought Artemidorus, looking grimly around, were the stakes with severed heads on their tops which crowded the makeshift forum. The headless corpses sprawled at their feet. Gretorex reached over and tapped his shoulder, gesturing. A legionary pilum spear leaned against a blackened wall, a baby’s body impaled upon it. As Artemidorus looked around the ruined village he saw several more. Gripped by something indefinable that overcame his gut-deep revulsion, Artemidorus nudged his nervous mount into motion once more and walked it towards the centre of the village. Where the staked heads were. And the mingled stench of burned wood and roasted flesh was strongest. Gretorex settled just behind his right shoulder.