Vespasian: Tribune of Rome (5 page)

They waited in silence, watching as the runaways advanced up the hill slowly so as not to startle the mules. Two of their number had stayed down at the gully, covering their retreat.

‘Pallo and his lads will deal with them,’ Sabinus said, relieved that the odds against them had gone down slightly.

Vespasian counted eleven of them. They were mounted on a variety of horses and ponies, all no doubt stolen from their estate or those nearby. They were dressed mainly in shabby clothes; some were wearing the trousers favoured by barbarians from the north and east. A couple had fine cloaks around their shoulders, presumably once the property of wealthy travellers who had fallen victim to their raids. None of the party had shaved in weeks; their ragged beards and long hair gave the group an air of menace that Vespasian imagined would hang over a tribal raiding party on the borders of the Empire.

They reached the mules. Six of the company dismounted and crept up to the tent. At a signal they stabbed their spears through the leather to skewer anyone hiding inside. Finding it empty they returned to the mules and started to untether them. The rest of their comrades circled slowly, keeping the anxious animals in a group, their javelins and bows ready to fell the mules’ minders should they return.

Sabinus kicked his horse forward, yelling at the top of his voice as he broke cover. ‘Get the bastards, boys, don’t let any escape.’

The others followed him at full pelt, in dispersed order, yelling the different war cries of their own people. Within moments they were halfway across the open ground to the confused runaways. Those that had dismounted struggled to find their horses amongst the panicking mules, which dragged their tethers around entangling the legs of men, mules and horses alike.

Baseos and Ataphanes let fly their first arrows. Vespasian forgot to yell as he watched in awe as they drew, released, reloaded and drew their bows again with such speed that they were able to have two arrows in the air at any one time and still maintain perfect control of their mounts with just their legs.

The first shafts thumped into the chaotic crowd, felling two runaways and a mule that went down whinnying shrilly, kicking out at everything around it, causing the rest to start rearing and bucking in panic.

‘I said watch out for the fucking mules, you cretins,’ Sabinus screamed at Baseos and Ataphanes as they wheeled their horses away to the left to pass around the top of the mêlée.

The mounted runaways had disentangled themselves from the chaos and turned their horses uphill to face the onslaught, releasing their arrows as they did. Vespasian felt the wind of one buzzing past his left ear and felt a wave of panic. He froze as Sabinus, Ludovicus and Hieron hurled their javelins. The momentum of the downhill charge gave added weight to the shots; two slammed into their targets with such force that one passed clean through a horseman’s belly and on into the rump of his mount, leaving him skewered to the beast as it tried, in its agony, to buck its screaming rider off. The other exploded through a horse’s skull; it dropped stone dead, trapping its rider beneath it, spattering him and his colleagues with hot, sticky blood. This was enough for the remaining three, who turned and fled towards the gully that was now devoid of their two companions who had been left there as a rearguard.

‘Leave them to Pallo’s lot,’ Sabinus shouted as he and Ludovicus wheeled their horses back round towards the mules. Vespasian, burning with shame for having faltered, followed, leaving Hieron to deal with the unhorsed runaway who had now managed to pull himself free from his horse. He struggled to his feet, wiping the horse blood from his eyes, only to see Hieron’s blade flashing through the air at neck height. His severed head fell to the ground and was left staring, in disbelief, at his twitching, decapitated body as the last of his blood drained from his brain and with it his life.

Baseos and Ataphanes had been busy. Three more of the runaways lay on the grass, feathered with arrows, and the sixth was making a
break for it. Sabinus drew his sword and galloped after him. The slave looked over his shoulder and, although he must have known that he stood no chance of escape, put on another turn of speed – but to no avail. Sabinus was upon him in an instant and, with the flat of his sword, struck him on the back of the head, knocking him cold.

Vespasian looked down the hill towards the gully to see one of the three fleeing horsemen fall backwards off his mount, pierced by an arrow. His companions, seeing their escape blocked and their two erstwhile comrades lying on the ground with their throats ripped open, immediately wheeled their horses left and headed north, along the line of the gully, at full gallop. Vespasian urged his horse into a gallop, realising that they would escape unless he could cut them off. His desire to prevent the two men avoiding justice, heightened by the urgent necessity to redeem himself, produced a strange new sensation within him: blood-lust. The wind pulled at his horse’s mane as he raced diagonally down the hill, closing in on the two riders. He was aware of Sabinus and Hieron following behind him, shouting at him to wait, but he knew that there was no time.

The angle between him and his targets quickly narrowed, he raised himself in his saddle and, with all his strength, launched a javelin at the lead rider. It buried itself deep in the horse’s belly, sending the creature spinning head over hoofs to land on its rider, snapping his back with a sickening crunch. The second man had to check his speed to negotiate a path around the thrashing animal, giving Vespasian the advantage that he needed to draw level. His adversary slashed wildly with his sword at Vespasian’s head. He ducked it and, at the same moment, launched himself at the now off-balanced rider. They came crashing to the ground, rolling over and over each other, trying to find a firm grip on any part of their opponent’s body, an arm, throat, hair, anything. Coming to a stop, Vespasian found himself underneath the runaway, winded and
disorientated. As he struggled for air, a fist smashed into his face and he felt a searing pain and heard a sharp crack as his nose was flattened; blood sprayed into his eyes. Two rough hands closed around his throat and he realised that he was fighting for his life; the desire to kill was replaced by the instinct to survive. Terrified he twisted violently left then right in an unsuccessful effort to prevent his assailant tightening his grip. His eyes began to bulge. He peered through streaming blood at the man’s face; his cracked lips tightened into a broken-toothed leer and his rancid breath flooded Vespasian’s senses. Vespasian’s flailing arms slammed wild punches into the side of his head, but still the downward pressure on his windpipe increased. On the point of blacking out he heard a dull thud and felt his attacker shudder. Vespasian looked up. The man’s eyes were wide open with shock and his mouth had gone slack; a bloody javelin point poked from out of his right nostril.

‘What did I say about heroics, you stupid little shit?’

Vespasian focused through the blood and made out Sabinus, on foot, holding a javelin in two hands, supporting the weight of the now limp runaway. Sabinus tossed the body contemptuously aside and held out his hand to help his brother up.

‘Well, now.’ He grinned maliciously. ‘Whatever good looks you may have thought you possessed have been ruined by that little escapade. Perhaps that’ll teach you to listen to your elders and betters in future.’

‘Did I kill the other one?’ Vespasian managed to ask through a mouthful of blood.

‘No, you killed his horse and then his horse killed him. Come on, there’s one left alive to nail up.’

Vespasian held a strip of cloth, torn from the dead runaway’s tunic, over his bleeding nose as he walked back up the hill; it stank, but that helped him to remain conscious. His head pounded with pain now
that the adrenalin had subsided. He breathed in laboured gasps and had to lean on Sabinus. Hieron followed behind with the horses.

They reached the mules, which were calming down after their ordeal. Baseos and Ataphanes had rounded up those that had run off and had captured eight of the runaways’ horses. Pallo and Simeon were busy tying the animals together into a column. Only two had been killed; four others had flesh wounds that would heal with time.

‘Not a bad day’s work, eh boys? Two mules down, eight horses up, Father won’t have to take you to court for careless shooting,’ Sabinus chuckled at Baseos and Ataphanes.

Baseos laughed. ‘We’d have had three horses more to take back if you stick throwers had bothered to aim at the riders and not their mounts.’

Ataphanes clapped him on the back. ‘Well said, my squat little friend, the bow is a far more effective tool than the javelin, as my grandfather’s generation proved over seventy years ago at Carrhae.’

Sabinus did not like to be reminded of Rome’s greatest defeat in the East, when Marcus Crassus and seven legions had been almost annihilated in a day under the continuous rain of Parthian arrows. Seven legions’ eagle standards had been lost on that day.

‘That’ll do, you lanky, hook-nosed horse-botherer; anyway you’re here now, having been captured by proper soldiers who stand and fight, not shoot and run away. What happened, ran out of arrows?’

‘I may be here but I’m free now, whereas the bones of your lost legions are still lying in the sand of my homeland and they’ll never be free.’

Sabinus could not bring himself to rise to the argument; the lads had fought well and deserved to let off a bit of steam. He looked around for their prisoner, who was trussed up on his stomach still unconscious.

‘Right, let’s get him up on a cross and get home. Lykos, dig a hole to plant it in right here.’

Ludovicus and Hieron appeared out of the wood a short time later carrying two sturdy, freshly cut branches. With the tools that they had brought along especially for the purpose they cut two joints in the timber, then laid the cross out and started to nail it together. The noise brought the prostrate prisoner to; he raised his head to look around and started to scream as he saw the cross. Vespasian saw that he was a little younger than he.

‘Sabinus, don’t do this to him, he can’t be more than fourteen.’

‘What do you recommend then, little brother? Smack his wrists, tell him he’s a naughty boy and not to steal our mules again and then send him back to his owner – who will crucify him anyway, if he has any sense.’

The terror that he’d just felt at the prospect of losing his life at so young an age made Vespasian sympathise with the young thief’s plight. ‘Well, we could take him back and keep him as a field slave. He looks strong enough and decent field workers are hard to come by, and very expensive.’

‘Bollocks. The little bastard has run away before; who’s to say he won’t do it again? Anyway we need to nail one up and he had the misfortune to get caught. Would you feel better if he was lying over there, full of arrows, and we had an old, grizzly one to crucify? What difference would it make? They’ve all got to die. Come on, let’s get him up.’

Vespasian looked over at the hysterical boy, who had fixed him with a pleading stare, and, realising that Sabinus was right, turned away.

Pallo and Hieron lifted the screaming captive, fighting for all he was worth – which was not much – on to the cross.

‘Please, mercy, please, I beg you, masters. I’ll give you anything. I’ll do anything, anything. I beg you.’

Pallo slapped him around the face. ‘Quit your snivelling, you little shit. What have you got to give anyway, a nice tight arsehole?
It’s vermin like you that murdered my father, so I wouldn’t even give you the pleasure of one last hard fucking.’

Spitting at him he cut his bonds and he and Lykos pulled his arms out and stretched the struggling youth over the cross. Hieron and Baseos held his legs as Ludovicus approached with a mallet and nails. He knelt by his right arm and placed a nail on his wrist, just under the base of the thumb. With a series of crashing blows he drove the half-inch-wide nail through the wrist, home into the wood, splintering bones and tearing sinews. Vespasian had not thought it possible for any creature, let alone a human, to make the noise that the boy emitted in his torment. It was a cry that pierced his very being as it rose from a guttural roar to a shrill scream.

Ludovicus moved on to the other arm and quickly skewered it to the cross. Not even Pallo was enjoying it any more as nails were forced through each of the writhing boy’s feet. The cry stopped abruptly; the boy had gone into shock and just stared at the sky, hyperventilating, his mouth frozen in a tortured grimace.

‘Thank the gods for that,’ Sabinus said. ‘Get him up, then haul the two dead mules over here and leave them under the cross; that should leave a clear enough message.’

They lifted the cross into the hole and supported it whilst wedges were hammered in around the base. Soon after they’d finished the cries started again, but this time intermittently as the lad ran out of breath. The only way he could breathe was by pulling himself up by his wrists whilst pushing down on the nails through his feet; however, that soon became too painful to endure and he would let himself slump down again, only to find himself suffocating. This ghastly cycle would carry on until finally he died in one or two days’ time.

They rode away up over the hill with the cries echoing around the valley. Vespasian knew that he would never forget the boy’s face and the horror that had been written all over it.

‘What if his friends come and cut him down, Sabinus?’

‘They may well come, but they won’t cut him down. Even in the unlikely event that he did survive he would never be able to use his hands again, or walk without a severe limp. No, if they come they’ll stick a spear through his heart and go home. But they’ll have learnt a lesson.’

The screams followed them for what seemed like an age, and then were suddenly cut short. The boy’s friends had come.

I
T WAS STILL
dark when Sabinus’ right foot connected with Vespasian’s left buttock, sending him rolling out of bed and on to the floor.