Rome's Executioner (Vespasian) Page 11

  ‘Well, what have we here?’ he drawled, staring coldly into Vespasian’s eyes. ‘A tribune disguised as a Getic warrior.’ He looked around at the rest of the party and recognised Sitalces and the other Thracians. ‘All of you dressed the same . . . not really messengers from the Queen, eh? Spies, more like.’ He turned back to Vespasian. ‘I knew you were up to something with these hairy bastards back up in the pass when you gave them orders. You hadn’t spoken to them once on the journey yet you knew Sitalces’ and Artebudz’s names. Now I understand why you put all our lives in danger, you’re on a secret mission for someone that couldn’t wait. The general will be very interested, I’m sure, when I tell him what’s going on.’

  ‘Centurion, you will do no such thing,’ Vespasian ordered futilely. ‘Faustus, grab him!’

  Caelus jumped to his right, away from Faustus as the primus pilus made a lunge for him, and swung his torch round, narrowly missing Faustus’ face, causing him to back off. Then, with a sneer, he sidestepped between his two accompanying legionaries and sprinted off into the night.

  ‘You two get back to your century,’ Faustus ordered Caelus’ two legionaries, ‘and don’t say a word about this to anyone unless you want to spend the rest of your service on latrine duty and having the skin whipped off your backs at regular intervals.’

  The two men, looking suitably terrified at the very real threat, nodded quickly, saluted their primus pilus and beat a hasty retreat.

  ‘Bugger it,’ Vespasian snapped, ‘he’s going to cause us a shitload of trouble.’

  ‘Yeah, but what can Poppaeus do? He might guess that we’re going to try and enter the fortress but he doesn’t know how, and by the time Caelus reaches the camp we’ll be getting in the boat,’ Magnus pointed out.

  ‘You’re right, I suppose; we’d best get a move on.’

  Vespasian scrambled down the steep riverbank towards the eight-oared, flat-bottomed oak boat, twenty paces long and three across at its widest point. It was moored on a jetty amongst the reeds at the bottom of the bank and guarded by two of Faustus’ men. It was mainly used for transporting supplies to and from the ships stationed out in the river; their stern- and bow-lamps could be seen, bobbing lethargically in the oil-dark night, sending sparkling ruby reflections in thin, rippling lines across the gently flowing water.

  ‘Get the gear stowed as fast as you can, Varinus,’ Vespasian ordered as the three legionaries brought the hand-cart down the slope accompanied by much swearing.

  ‘I’ll have some men waiting a couple of miles or so downriver from our camp, with your horses and one for the priest,’ Faustus informed them as they started to clamber into the boat. ‘They’ll have torches so you can see them. From there Tomi is one day’s hard ride; you will need to follow the river until the old fortress at Axiopolis where it bends sharply to the north, leave it there and head towards the coast just south of east.’

  ‘Thank you, my brother,’ Sabinus said, taking Faustus’ hand in a strange grasp. ‘May our Lord keep you in his light.’

  ‘And you also, brother,’ Faustus responded as Sabinus turned to go.

  ‘Live through tomorrow night,’ Vespasian said, clasping the centurion’s forearm.

  Faustus smiled. ‘Oh, don’t worry about me; it’ll take a lot more than a pack of horse-fucking savages to send me to the warmth of Mithras’ light.’

  ‘I’m sure it will.’ Vespasian turned to get into the boat. As he took his place in the stern next to Sabinus at the steering-oar a series of bucina calls broke out from the Roman siege lines above them.

  ‘Shit!’ Faustus exclaimed.

  ‘That’s “all cohorts to stand to arms”. What is it, do you think?’ Vespasian asked.

  ‘Well, either the Getae are attacking the whole wall instead of one section, which is unlikely and we would have heard their heathen war cries by now, or Poppaeus has just brought forward the assault to tonight, If he has he’s mad, it’ll go off half-arsed and will be an almighty fuck-up.’

  ‘Shit,’ Sabinus spat, ‘he’s guessed what we’re doing from what Caelus has told him and he means to beat us to the priest.’

  ‘I’d better go,’ Faustus called back to them, as he scrambled back up the bank followed by his men. ‘If it is the assault I’ll still make sure that your horses are waiting for you. Poppaeus has just helped you unwittingly; if we are attacking now, the Getae will be manning the walls and the courtyard should be clear.’

  ‘Yes, but every one of the buggers will now be wide awake,’ Magnus grumbled, ‘and where will the priest be?’

  ‘I can’t imagine that slippery little shit defending the walls if he’s got a nice warm room to hide in,’ Vespasian said, grabbing the steering-oar. ‘Cast off, Varinus.’

  ‘Aye aye, trierarchus,’ the grizzled veteran called back with a grin as he loosed the mooring rope and pushed his oar against the jetty. Vespasian frowned at this over-familiarity but knew better than to reprimand a man to whom he was shortly going to entrust his life for a bit of harmless banter.

  The boat eased out into the flow of the river and began to glide downstream towards the fortress half a mile away. Although all the oars were manned Vespasian did not order the men to start pulling; the current was doing the work for them and the efforts of eight untrained scullers would, in all likelihood, have hindered rather than helped their progress. The half-moon was obscured by a thick layer of cloud and, even though they were only ten paces or so out into the river, it was almost completely dark now that they were away from the torch-lit Roman lines. On shore, to their right, the high-pitched blare of bucinae gave way to the deep bass rumblings of cornua, horns used by the army to give battle signals, their deeper tones being more easily heard over the sharp clash of weapons and the shouts and screams of men in combat.

  ‘That’ll be the attack starting,’ Vespasian whispered to his brother beside him. ‘The bastard brought it forward and a lot more of the lads will die because of the chaos.’

  ‘When cornua blow, blood will flow,’ Sabinus said, quoting an old legionary truism.

  Vespasian peered towards the shore trying to get some measure, from the noise, of what was going on. He could make out a soft, orange glow that silhouetted the riverbank and guessed that it was the torches in the fortified settlement a hundred paces inland. ‘Faustus said it will take half an hour to roll the towers forward but they wouldn’t start until that village was secured.’

  ‘Assuming they stick to the original plan, which at the moment they most certainly aren’t,’ Sabinus pointed out. ‘Anyway, it’s pointless worrying about it, it’s out of our hands; we’ve got to concentrate on our own problems, the first of which is where are we going to land.’

  Vespasian nodded and turned his attention to keeping the boat going in a straight line. He felt a knot begin to develop in his belly and realised that the wound he had received in the Succi Pass was the first time he’d had blood drawn in combat and, although only small, it had made him far more aware of his own mortality; if he had not been wearing a breastplate he would in all probability have been killed. He was not wearing a breastplate now and he was feeling decidedly vulnerable. Images from his childhood working on the family estates flicked through his mind and for a few moments he longed to be safely home, where the most he had to fear was a kick from a belligerent mule. He banished the thought, knowing it was futile; he had made his choices and they had led him far from home to this boat. All he could do now was steel himself to face the oncoming danger and override the fear of death by trying to concentrate on the practicalities of the task in hand.

  Looking ahead, he saw that a few small points of light from the fortress keep’s windows were now visible; they were getting close. When they were about level with the centre of the fortress he started to ease the boat towards the shore in an effort to find, in the deep gloom, a spot where the reed beds thinned out and he could get the boat adjacent to the bank. The wall, 150 paces away, appeared as a long slab of intense darkness haloed by a t
hin light from the few torches burning within the courtyard. At its extreme left the keep towered over them, its shape only definable by hints of torchlight that rose from the courtyard reaching partway up the inner wall and the odd glimmer of light from open windows in the outer wall that fell to the riverbank.

  In the distance the rumblings of the cornua continued.

  Eventually the boat hit the solid earth of the bank. Varinus secured the mooring rope to the base of a scraggy bush as Vespasian and his party scrambled out on to dry land. Lucius and Arruns passed them the crowbars and ropes and their Getic weaponry: bows, quivers of arrows, sleek knives and the long-handled axes, with six-inch blades and spikes on their reverse, which the tribe favoured for fighting hand to hand on horseback. Sitalces and his Thracians had also brought their rhomphaiai, which they strapped to their backs. Artebudz and Sabinus each slung a thick coil of rope over their shoulders.

  ‘Hide the boat amongst the reeds, Varinus,’ Vespasian whispered, attaching a quiver to his belt. ‘We’ll come back to this spot as quick as we can.’

  ‘Right you are, sir, good luck.’

  Vespasian grunted something unintelligible, turned and led his men off, crouching low as he cautiously made his way up the bank. As he neared the summit the sound of movement close by, dead ahead, caused him to stop suddenly.

  ‘What is it?’ Sabinus hissed next to him.

  ‘Something’s moving at the top of the bank,’ Vespasian replied, pulling an arrow from his quiver and straining his eyes to peer through the gloom; as they adjusted he began to make out two or three shapes, then a few more, on the ridge of the bank. He notched the arrow; behind him he sensed his comrades doing the same. One of the shapes moved fractionally. Vespasian did not dare to breathe; then he heard a soft, flaccid-lipped exhalation followed by a snort and a couple of hard stamps on the grass-covered ground.

  ‘It’s just horses, lots of them,’ he whispered, lowering his bow and breathing a sigh of relief. He moved on cautiously up the hill. The others followed.

  The tightness in his stomach that had been growing since they had got in the boat was now excruciating and, despite the chill of the night, he had begun to sweat with fear. It was a fool’s mission that they had embarked on and he began to resent the ease with which Antonia, from the safety of her sumptuous villa back in Rome, could expect him and his brother to accomplish it. Then he remembered his grandmother’s words of warning: do not get involved with the schemes of the powerful because they use people of his class to do their dirty work and then tend to dispose of them once they knew too much and were of no further use.

  ‘Having second thoughts about this, sir?’ Magnus asked, as if reading his mind as they crested the bank and paused; ahead of them the forms of countless horses at rest fell away into the darkness.

  ‘What makes you ask that?’

  ‘Well, stands to reason, don’t it? Here we are about to take on thousands of savages who anyone in their right mind would steer well clear of, in order to get a disgusting little man whom, having made his acquaintance once, no one with any sense would ever want to meet again; and all for what, I ask you?’

  Vespasian smiled in the darkness. ‘Well, I suppose we’re doing it for Rome.’

  ‘Rome, my arse! You may be doing it for Rome but I’m doing it because you’re doing it and I’m obliged to go with you because of the debt that I owe your uncle; that’s why I was wondering whether, by any luck, you’d come to your senses and were having second thoughts.’

  ‘Are you two going to sit and chat all night?’ Sabinus hissed from the gloom.

  ‘That sounds like a much better option to me,’ Magnus muttered, only half to himself.

  Buoyed by the fact that his friend was evidently as scared as he was, and surprisingly reassured by the presence of his brother, Vespasian pulled himself together. Remembering Sitalces’ Thracian adage with a half-smile, he led the group, zigzagging carefully, through the hundreds of resting Getic horses that, recognising the smell of their Getic clothes, parted slightly for them and, with the occasional whicker or snort, let them pass.

  It took a while to cover the hundred paces over the rough ground through this living obstacle to the steep slope below the fortress. As they reached the foot of the slope, they could hear, from above them, shouts and the sound of hundreds of feet running.

  ‘Sounds like they’re all awake now,’ Magnus complained.

  ‘But they’re up on the walls,’ Vespasian said, feeling that they might have a chance after all. ‘Let’s find this sewer outlet.’

  They made their way up the slope to the base of the wall and began to follow it towards the keep.

  They smelt the sewer long before they saw it. Nearly four hundred years’ worth of sewage had poured out of it, creating a reeking, septic marsh below its discharge point.

  Eventually they heard the trickle of flowing liquid and they stopped by a circular grill, three feet in diameter, emitting an even worse stink than the marsh.

  ‘Pluto’s unwashed arse, that smells even worse than these clothes,’ Magnus gasped; he had just about got used to the stench of his disguise.

  ‘A good choice of expletive, my friend,’ Vespasian observed. ‘I think it is Pluto’s unwashed arse and we’re just about to climb up it.’

  ‘Imagine how we’ll smell when we get out the other end,’ Sabinus said, trying not to retch.

  ‘Sitalces, Ziles, bring the crowbars over here and get this thing off,’ Vespasian ordered, realising that there was no point in delaying the inevitable.

  Seemingly impervious to the reek, Sitalces and Ziles placed their crowbars under the lip of the grill. With a couple of powerful wrenches it came loose from the wall and Drenis and Bryzos pulled it free.

  ‘Let’s get this over with,’ Vespasian muttered, drawing a deep breath and forcing himself inside the pitch-black tunnel.

  There was only enough space to crawl and for the first time since he had put on the oddly unfamiliar and constricting trousers he felt thankful for them; they protected his knees from the centuries of shit that coated the tunnel floor. But his hands had no such protection and squelched through the slimy effluence clinging to the rim as he eased his way up the dark, narrow passage.

  After what seemed like an age of breathing in the noxious gas produced by decomposing faeces, but was in fact only the time it took to cover fifteen gruelling feet, Vespasian heard harsh voices ahead and could make out a faint flicker of orange light at the end of the tunnel. Torn between his desire to get out into the open air quickly and his fear that the exit was guarded, he kept going at the same pace: as fast as was possible. Upon drawing closer to the end, he realised that the light was not coming directly into the tunnel but was in fact reflecting off a wall a few feet from its opening. He forced himself to slow down and came to a halt three feet from the exit; he felt Sabinus bump into his hindquarters, then the added pressure of the man behind pushing him forward and so on down the line, as they all came to an unexpected, concertinaed halt in the bowels of the sewer.

  Vespasian craned his neck forward in an attempt to see out of the tunnel and over the wall beyond; he was rewarded by the sight of two very hairy Getic arses in action, their owners talking vigorously as they perched on top of the wall, which was one of three that surrounded the sewer’s exit, forming an open and well-used latrine. Another arse appeared over one of the side walls as the first two came to their noisy finale and were withdrawn, to be replaced, almost instantaneously, by two more.

  ‘What the fuck’s going on? Why have we stopped?’ Sabinus hissed from behind.

  ‘Not surprisingly we’ve come out in their latrine and a few of them are taking the opportunity to have a last shit.’

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, how long are they going to be?’

  ‘How should I know?’ Vespasian whispered, craning his neck again. ‘There’re now five of them up there at the moment; two of them seem to be quite scared,’ he added with a grin.

  A few moments
later the unmistakable sound of a bollocking being administered along with a couple of cuffs around the ears caused the arses, two of which were still in full flow, to hasten away. Vespasian counted to one hundred and, when no more appeared, deemed it safe to move forward and out of the sewer. Despite squatting calf-deep in fresh turds he felt like a new man as he sucked in the comparatively fresh air above the open latrine and wiped the shit from his hands on to his trousers. It had fallen unnaturally quiet. He edged closer to the front wall, peeked over and found, to his surprise, that he was surrounded by horses; they had been corralled in the northeast corner of the courtyard to keep them as far away as possible from the gate and out of the way of the main fighting. They were all displaying an understandable reluctance to get too close to the latrine. Looking beyond the horses, as the others started to emerge from the sewer, he could see that the south and west walls were crammed with Getae, two or three deep, almost shoulder to shoulder, bows at the ready, staring out towards the Roman lines with the still silence of men watching their fate coming inexorably towards them.

  Sabinus joined him. ‘That’s a bit of luck,’ he whispered as he took in the situation.

  ‘I’ve never heard someone standing knee-deep in shit consider themselves lucky,’ Vespasian observed, ‘but yes, it is. Let’s go.’ He looked around at the others to make sure that they were all present and then started to creep over the wall.

  A deep cornu signal rumbled through the air.

  ‘Shit,’ Sabinus hissed pulling him back, ‘that’s “artillery open fire”. Get down.’

  All eight of them squatted behind the wall. The distant hiss of many approaching fast-moving projectiles suddenly filled the air; it quickly intensified before exploding into a series of shattering impacts as rock and iron missiles crashed into the fortress; some punching men, sometimes whole but more often in pieces, back off the walls, others striking stone, in a shower of sparks, and sending a deluge of sharp chippings cascading down to hit the ground, kicking up puffs of dust. Above the screaming, the Getic chieftains roared a series of orders. The defenders raised their bows and began to release volley after volley into the night sky at a speed that astounded Vespasian.