The Imperial Banner (16 page)

‘Not to you, Skinny. Never.’

Lollius laughed; Venator too.

Cassius lashed the Celt across the head, catching him just above his ear. Estan shut his eyes for a moment but then looked up and smiled. Cassius raised his arm high, and brought the crop down hard on his neck. He kept hitting him there, until Estan turned his head away; then Cassius shifted to his left, and swung the crop up into his face. The Celt’s head snapped up, and Cassius unleashed a flurry of blows down on him, not caring where he struck him, as long as every ounce of his strength went into each blow. Only when Estan grunted with pain did he stop.

Cassius stood there, sweating, trying to think through the rhythmic pounding in his head. He was gripping the crop so hard that his fingernails were biting into his palm.

Estan’s face and neck were heavily marked. The skin had opened up in several places. He was no longer smiling.

‘Not bad, not bad,’ said Venator. He looked down at Estan. ‘Well, ready to speak yet?’

Estan spat on to Cassius’s tunic.

Venator tutted. ‘Tough son of a bitch, isn’t he? Now I know why we never managed to conquer Caledonia.’

He nodded to Lollius; and the quartermaster drove a knee into Estan’s back, sending him head first into the mud. Then he put the same knee between the Celt’s shoulder blades, pinning him. He reached down and tried to grip Estan’s manacled left forearm but the Celt was struggling.

‘Help him there, Corbulo,’ ordered Venator. ‘Stand on his arm.’

‘What?’

‘Address me correctly, damn you. You heard me: stand on his arm.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Cassius stammered.

Lollius had drawn his dagger.

‘Keep him still!’ ordered the quartermaster.

Venator pushed Cassius towards them. Lollius bent Estan’s arm towards him, so that the Celt’s hand was in reach. Cassius placed his boot on the forearm.

‘Stand on it!’ Lollius yelled.

Cassius pressed down harder. Mud oozed out from beneath Estan’s arm. He was still struggling.

Venator tutted again, then came forward and planted his foot on Estan’s other arm.

‘Do hurry up, Lollius.’ He then called out to his servant: ‘Amandio, get some more wine on, my tribunes will be here soon.’

Estan’s face was flat against the mud, twisted towards Cassius.

Lollius gripped the Celt’s wrist with his spare hand.

‘Just say it,’ Cassius told Estan. ‘Just say it.’

‘Which finger, sir?’ the quartermaster asked.

‘Who cares? Just hurry up.’

Say sorry. Just say sorry.

Lollius pushed down so that the Celt’s fingers splayed out in the mud. He placed the edge of the blade against the little finger. Estan was still trying to pull his hand free. Lollius dug in his knee. ‘Hold still, damn you.’

He put the blade against the finger again.

Cassius squeezed his eyes shut.

Say it, say it, say it.

Lollius began to slice through the finger just below the knuckle.

‘I’m sorry!’ cried Estan. ‘I’m sorry!’

Lollius stopped cutting. Cassius removed his boot. Lollius looked down at the finger. ‘Only just into the bone. You might just keep it, Celt.’

The quartermaster stood up.

The first thing Estan did was to grip the mutilated finger with his other hand to hold it in place. Then he dragged himself to his knees, half his face covered in mud.

Cassius reached into his belt and took out the handkerchief Simo insisted on giving him every morning. He handed it to Estan, who took it and wrapped it around his finger.

‘That wasn’t so hard, was it?’ said Venator. ‘Back to the stockade with him, Quartermaster. And apologies for taking up so much of your evening.’

‘Sir.’

Lollius hauled Estan to his feet by his tunic, then directed him on to the avenue and to the left. The Celt hobbled away, slowed by the shackles. Lollius followed, still taunting him.

Venator fixed Cassius with an imperious stare. ‘Leave the crop just inside the tent. Amandio will clean it later.’

Cassius did so. When he returned outside, Venator nodded at the departing Celt.

‘A lesson for you there, Corbulo. You’ll not last long in the Service if you’ve no stomach for the rough stuff. How do you think your friend Abascantius gets answers when he needs them? Lollius and I are but novices in the dark arts of coercion compared to him.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Think on it. You’re dismissed.’

Venator went inside. Cassius stood there for a moment, listening to the low hiss of the oil lamps, staring down at the hollows and lines where Estan had struggled in the mud. He walked to the avenue, turned right and started back for the tent.

What a day it had been. A terrible, violent day. And he knew it wouldn’t be the memory of those Celts trying to throttle him that would stay with him. It would be the sight of himself – as if observed through another’s eyes – whipping a kneeling, manacled prisoner until he bled.

Approaching a junction, he saw four tribunes coming round the corner. To avoid an awkward encounter and conversation, he ducked quickly out of sight, moving into the shadows of a cart piled high with tent canvas.

The tribunes were in good spirits as they headed for their evening drink with the prefect. Cassius stood still, waiting for them to pass; and he listened intently to their conversation. They were talking about art.

Though not as green as Palmyra itself, the lands north-west of the city were more than fertile enough for farming. The road that led eventually to Antioch turned north after the Damascus Gate and was surrounded by fields, orchards and vineyards. It was one of the best maintained roads in Syria: fully twelve feet wide and built of square slabs of stone, with a narrow gravel track for pedestrians on either side. After more than an hour on this road, Cassius had seen just a handful of people, most of them close to one of the grand, sprawling villas they had passed. Few of the fields were being properly tended: some of the crops had spoiled, others were yet to be harvested. Even this quiet, affluent corner of the Palmyran empire had suffered the effects of war.

Quartermaster Lollius was ten yards ahead, riding alone. He seemed even more contemptuous towards Cassius after the events of the previous evening and had said nothing since setting off from the encampment just after dawn. Cassius rode alongside Indavara and the sentry who’d seen Gregorius and his group – a keen young legionary named Mico. Simo was back at the encampment. One of the legion veterinarians had decided his horse would not recover quickly, so he had to find a new mount.

Cassius watched a large group of people filing on to the road up ahead, bound for the city.

‘Followers of Bel,’ announced Mico.

At the head of the procession were four priests wearing high cylindrical hats decorated with woven images of the stars, the sun and the moon. The silent worshippers behind them ranged in age from six to sixty and there were as many women as men. Not one of them acknowledged the presence of the watching riders.

Half a mile further on, Lollius turned left and led them between the grounds of two villas. They negotiated a wide ditch then came to a small stone hut. Lollius shouted something and two legionaries appeared. They stood stiffly to attention as the four men dismounted and tied their horses to a fence. Lollius hurried past the two sentries. Cassius and Mico followed him.

‘What are you doing?’ asked the quartermaster. ‘I’m going for a piss. It would take both of you to hold it for me, but after all these years of practice I can just about manage on my own.’

Mico and the other legionaries waited for Lollius to disappear behind the hut before they started laughing. Cassius wandered away from them and looked to the west. After a couple of miles, the patchwork of fields ran into flat, dusty steppe. He called Mico over.

‘This is the edge of the picket line?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Directly to the south was the edge of the city; they could still see the tops of the tomb towers. To the north, perhaps ten leagues away, was an undulating line of hills.

‘So tell me what you saw.’

‘It was the third hour of night. I was here with Colias.’ Mico turned to check that Lollius was still out of earshot. ‘We were both supposed to stay awake but as usual we took it in shifts. I went first. I saw these lights coming up from the south, parallel to the road. When they got close, I woke Colias and we went over to have a look. It was unusual – what with the curfew and everything.’

‘So they must have turned off the main road earlier than we did.’

Mico nodded. ‘There were about a dozen of them and a cart. I recognised a few faces.’

‘They were carrying torches?’

‘Two at the front, two at the back. This one fellow came forward and showed us his papers. Seemed a bit odd – them being out of uniform – but we saw the prefect’s stamp and let them go on their way.’

Lollius returned from behind the hut, tightening his belt as he walked. He stood next to them, dabbing his weeping eye with a cloth.

‘Now, this is most important,’ said Cassius. ‘Try to show me the exact direction they took.’

Mico got his bearings, then walked back to the hut. ‘We were sitting inside here, looking out of the window. I reckon it was something like this.’

Cassius examined the direction of the legionary’s outstretched arm then looked up at the sun.

‘North-east. After how long did you lose sight of the torches?’

‘Perhaps an hour.’

‘We must try to find their trail.’

Lollius summoned the two sentries and pointed at Cassius. ‘Do whatever this officer tells you. I’ll man your post. Got any food?’

‘Just our lunches, sir,’ volunteered one of the men meekly.

‘That’ll do.’

As Lollius headed back to hut, Cassius asked him a final question.

‘This cart, sir. How wide apart would the wheels have been?’

Lollius answered over his shoulder without stopping. ‘Eight or nine feet.’

Cassius waited for the quartermaster to go inside then turned to Mico.

‘You’d agree with that?’

‘Yes, sir. Big one. And well-laden. Would have left deep ruts.’

Cassius called Indavara over. With a concerned glance up at the banks of grey cloud sliding in from the west, he led the four men out to where the fields ended.

‘So you spoke to them somewhere round here, Mico.’

‘About exactly here I would say, sir.’

Cassius dug the toe of his boot into the ground. There was a top layer of dark sand with pebbles and firm soil underneath. Cart-tracks would surely show – but the only marks visible were hoof-prints.

‘Goats, sir,’ said Mico. ‘The locals bring them through here all the time, for grazing where the fields have overgrown – might have covered the tracks.’

‘We must still look. Men, you are searching for a cart-trail – lines about eight or nine feet apart. Two horses towing it, men walking in front, behind or at the sides. Call out if you see anything.’

Cassius placed himself in the middle, then positioned Indavara and Mico to his left, the two sentries to his right. He stationed the men ten yards apart then ordered them forward, directly north-east.

After half an hour, they were a mile from the picket line. Cassius called the men together. All five of them had seen multiple trails made by boots or animal hooves but there had been no sign of carts. Either the marks had since been obscured, or they had simply missed them. As cloud continued to roll in above them, Cassius set the men back to work.

By the time another mile had been covered, his eyes were stinging from staring intently at the ground. Moments earlier, Indavara had called him over to a cart-trail. The wheel marks had been clear, maybe even wide enough; but they were accompanied by only a single set of hoof marks. It couldn’t have been Gregorius’s group.

Cassius called a halt once more, and shook his head as the others joined him. ‘They must have come through here.’

‘I’m sure of it, sir,’ answered Mico.

‘We shall turn back and check this area again. The further we go, the more likely we are to stray off their path.’

‘Sir, I have an idea.’

Mico pointed to a dwelling a mile to the north. Smoke was rising from a chimney.

‘Goat-herder lives there. Nice old boy – we bought some milk off him the other week. I’ll wager he knows this area like the back of his hand. Can’t hurt to ask if he’s seen anything.’

‘Go.’