Aise and Rian were bound with ropes of rawhide, strung to long wooden pickets hammered deep into the ground at Sertorius’s side. Their wrists were bloody and inflamed, scabbed and welted like raw meat, but they scarcely felt the pain any more.
Phaestus was asleep, wrapped in his own blankets and those of his son. He moaned and muttered in his sleep, muscles working in his face, every sinew tight against the skin. He had taken the flux a few days out of Andunnon, and Aise knew that he had been passing blood for some time now. Philemos hovered over him like a protective hound, watching the three other men at the fire.
They were all drunk now, these three, the wineskin drained almost flat. The strong yellow wine that Aise and Rian had trodden out in the big tub the summer before, the grapes popping and breaking under their bare feet. A last remnant of a life destroyed.
Sertorius, Bosca and Adurnos. They were sat side by side, their boasting and horseplay done with, the wine working in their minds, setting their thoughts to other things.
A silence fell across the little campsite, broken only by the snap and spit of the wet wood in the fire, Phaestus’s stertorous breathing, and the whimpering of the sleeping child at Aise’s side.
“What’s so special about this Rictus fellow that his bitches will make a difference to Machran?” Bosca asked. In the firelight, his bearded face was a mask of fur.
“You never heard of the great Rictus of Isca?” Sertorius said. “Ignorant fuck; he led the Ten Thousand. He’s a hero, a stone-hard red-cloaked mercenary with his own army.”
“So he’ll chuck it all away for the sake of these?” Bosca asked. “What is he, soft in the head or something?”
Sertorius grinned. “He’s a thing you can’t understand, Bosca, a family man. A man of honour. Phaestus here reckons Rictus would do pretty much anything to keep his women safe.”
Big Adurnos was running his eyes over Aise and Rian. “They’re not so pretty as they was, but I like the young one. I bet she’s never been popped. They start late, the girls up in the hills.”
“You think?” Bosca said with a yellow grin. “Phobos! I can’t remember the last time I dipped into a virgin’s cunny.” He turned to Sertorius. “What do you say, boss? We’ve been good boys -how about allowing us a little taste before we have to hand them over?”
Sertorius blinked slowly. He looked at Aise and Rian across the fire, his eyes black and cold as stones. He seemed to be rolling the idea around in his head.
“I can’t see what the harm would be,” he said at last.
Philemos shook Phaestus violently. “Father -father, wake up!”
Rian shrank closer against her mother. Her face was set and white beneath the filth encrusting it. “No,” she whispered.
The three men on the other side of the fire got to their feet.
“You can go first, boss,” Adurnos said. “Fair’s fair – you held on to that wine for us.”
“We’ll do the older one while you have the girl,” Bosca said. “She’s got a nice face on her yet.”
Aise and Rian struggled to their feet, constrained by the rawhide ropes anchoring their wrists. Ona woke up and uttered a thin cry, then clung to her mother’s knees.
“No!” Philemos shouted. He slapped his father about the face. Phaestus stirred sluggishly.
The boy rose with a snarl, drawing his knife.
“Don’t you touch them, you fucking animals!”
Sertorius grinned. “Careful, son – you might nick yourself with that thing.” “Out of the fucking way, you little shit,” Bosca growled.
Phaestus was awake. He struggled to his hands and knees, saw what was going on, and levered himself erect using his spear. Then he stood holding the aichme out level.
“What’s all this, Sertorius?”
“Nothing to get in a twist about, my friend. Call off your son. His heart’s in the right place, but I don’t like having a knife pulled on me by anyone, and if he don’t put it away there will be blood. I warn you fair and square.”
A second’s silence. Sparks cracking in the fire.
“Phaestus,” Aise said calmly. “Are you going to allow this?”
Phaestus stood still. The weight of the spear made his arms quiver, and there was sweat running down the side of his face.
“Father -”
“Shut up, Philemos. Put the knife away. You stand against Sertorius and you’ll be dead before you can so much as blink.”
“Listen to the old man, boy,” Sertorius said. “You have quality in you – I can see that. This is not worth the fight.”
“Father,” Philemos said again. He stared at Phaestus and there were tears in his eyes. “You cannot allow it.”
“This is a time of war, Philemos. These things happen. It is the way of the world.”
Philemos turned and looked at Aise and Rian. They were frozen, mute.
“Not the girl,” he said at last, desperation cracking his voice. “Leave her alone.”
Bosca guffawed. “So that’s his game, eh? He wants the tenderest meat for himself.”
Philemos walked over to the women crouched on the far side of the firelight. He knelt beside them.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered to Aise. Then he took his knife and cut the bindings that anchored Rian to the pickets. He grabbed the stub of the rope and dragged her after him, standing by his father. Raising his voice, he said; “This one’s mine.”
“You cocky little bastard – you think you can keep the choice cut for yourself?” Adurnos snapped. He started forward, reaching for his own knife.
The spearhead swung round, bringing him up short. Phaestus stood holding it out at waist height.
“My boy knows what he wants. Let him have it.” Phaestus’s face was set and hard. “Take the woman, if you have to. The girl is Philemos’s.”
Sertorius slapped his thigh. “Good for you, lad!” he chortled. “I didn’t think you had it in you!”
He strode past the fire, lifted Aise to her feet and slashed her picket-rope. He looked into her eyes. “You’ll have to do us all.”
“Mother!” Rian screamed, and Ona began to wail.
Aise bent and kissed her youngest daughter. “It’s all right, honeybun. Go to Rian. It’ll be all right.”
Rian tried to lunge at Sertorius, but Philemos held her back. “Don’t, for God’s sake.” Ona tottered over to her sister and Rian buried her face in the child’s shoulder, sobbing.
“Come on, sweetheart,” Sertorius crooned. “Come out into the dark with us. We’re not barbarians; we’ll spare your brats the sight.”
The three men gathered around Aise. Bosca gripped her dress at the shoulder and pulled at it. There was a ripping sound, and the material slid down her torso.
“Nice,” Adurnos said. He grabbed at one of her breasts and dug his fingers in. “I’m first,” Sertorius said.
The three of them dragged Aise beyond the firelight, out into the wet darkness of the olive trees.
PART THREE
NINETEEN
Rictus knelt on one knee in the freezing mud. The timber under his hand creaked as he leaned his weight upon it. His breath frosted out in the moonlight.
“Wait,” he said in a low voice. “The cloud’s coming again.”
The wind high up above his head tumbled a broken fretwork of black cloud about the sky. Through rents in the cloud, pale Phobos leered down, and Haukos glowed red and low on the horizon, almost set.
He gripped the rough-hewn wood of the ladder on his left and turned his head this way and that, nodding as he caught the bright feral glow of Ardashir’s eyes beside him. The tall Kufr smiled, a gleam of teeth in the flickering moonlight. Rictus’s vision was heavily circumscribed by the bronze shell of his helm. He longed to take it off, but knew he would need it for the work ahead.
To his right, Druze crouched with a line of men along another ladder. For hundreds of paces, a host of men were kneeling in the frozen mud, formed along the siege ladders like legs on a centipede. Half a pasang to their front, the walls of Machran loomed up huge and black in the night, as solid as a cliff-face.