“He fled the field alone?”
“Some of his men went with him. Maybe thirty. His closest companions.”
“And where will Rufio and these thirty companions have fled to?”
Maximion shrugged. “Wherever he is, it won’t be long before he learns that Emperor Lucius is dead and the dream that was New Rome in ashes.”
Lucan was surprised. “Surely you’ll rally to fight us again? You still have forces in Brittany.”
Maximion shook his head. “Most of the Senate and the High Command — those beyond the Emperor’s select band of flatterers — were questioning this reconquest long ago. The sheer cost of maintaining it, even had Albion surrendered, would have been prodigious. It won’t take much to persuade those who are left to go home in peace.”
“And where is home for Felix Rufio?”
“He owns two houses, to my knowledge. One is in Rome, one in Tuscany. You’ll easily locate both, and he knows that. Hence there’s only one refuge left for him now — his ancestral home, Castello Malconi in the mountains north of Italy.”
“He has a castle as well?”
“His family are the Dukes of Orobi. His mother, Zalmyra, currently holds the title. She presides over Castello Malconi, which guards one of the highest passes.”
“So he abandoned his troops to the slaughter… and ran home to his mother?” Lucan looked genuinely perplexed. “And this is the creature my wife abandoned me for?”
“Be warned, Earl Lucan. Zalmyra is no ordinary mother. She has many cruel arts at her command.”
“No matter,” Lucan replied. “So do I.”
Twenty-Two
King Arthur pitched his main camp at the south end of the Vale of Sessoine, and for several days after the battle his army scoured the surrounding woods and valleys for Roman survivors. They also located the main Roman baggage train, which had simply been abandoned. Arthur was able to replenish his material losses several times over — not just weapons, munitions and other armaments, but also medicines, foodstuffs, and sacks of pay in gold and silver.
His men spent dismal hours working on the battlefield, extricating those too badly wounded to stand or walk, and taking them to the hospital tents, though these were already overloaded with groaning, bandaged forms and thick with a miasma of sweat, blood and despair. Chief physician Morgan Tud and his staff worked tirelessly, repairing what damage they could. Where possible — usually in cases where mangled limbs must be amputated — they offered the patients cheap wine laced with gall. This was so bitter that many at first refused it.
“If it was good enough for Christ on the cross…”27 the grey-bearded doctor would sternly say, insisting they take a draught.
“It wasn’t,” the patient would whimper. “Our Lord refused.”
“Because he was man enough to endure his pain,” the doctor would reply. “That option is also open to you.”
The matter of the deceased was even less easily resolved. Large companies of troops were employed sorting out the corpses, laying their own dead in long rows which priests could say Masses over before burial. The Romans, they piled in mountains for cremation though they too, at Arthur’s insistence, received holy rites first.
The holding of prisoners was also a tricky issue. Captured Roman grandees were installed in the separate camps of the British lords and captains who had taken them, and were given comfortable quarters, including private tents, changes of clothes, good food and clean water, though in nearly every case they were also put in leg-irons — a state of war still existed. The ordinary prisoners were herded into special pens made with the hafts of their own pikes, roped into fences. They were fed from great cauldrons with thin soup or gruel, which had been taken from the Romans’ own baggage train and which Arthur suspected was all they had been fed on before.
The only hostage in Earl Lucan’s camp was Tribune Maximion, who washed and shaved and allowed the gash on his arm to be stitched, but insisted on wearing his own clothes, soiled rags though they were. He cut an isolated figure, his ankles manacled together, watching without seeing as the knights and men-at-arms went about their duties. On the second day, he was summoned to Earl Lucan’s pavilion.
Lucan was seated in a blackthorn chair which his men had pilfered from the baggage train. He’d dispensed with full armour, and now wore a mail shirt over leather breeches, and cross-strapped riding boots. Maximion was given a stool, and sat. Two of Lucan’s knights stood in attendance, Turold and Gerwin — they too were stripped to shirts and breeches, but leaned on their ungirt longswords.
“The accommodation is to your satisfaction?” Lucan asked.
“It’s certainly more than I expected,” the Roman replied.
“Enjoy it while you can.”
“I wouldn’t say I was enjoying it, my lord.”
Lucan gave a wintry smile. “Compared to what may lie ahead, this camp is the lap of luxury.”
“I see.”
“When we last spoke about Felix Rufio, you gave an impression that you held little admiration for him.”
Maximion shrugged. “I never admire folly. Not even the folly of a child.”
“How well do you know the Malconi family?”
“I only personally know Rufio and his uncle, Bishop Malconi. But they are all cut from the same cloth — they are vain, ambitious and treacherous.”
“In short, typical of the Roman gentry.”
“How well you think you know us.”
“I’ll be blunt, tribune… my war with New Rome has now become personal.”
Maximion looked surprised. “It wasn’t from the beginning?”
Lucan ignored the remark. “At the first opportunity I intend to divert from this army, and pay a visit to Castello Malconi and this fearsome woman, Duchess Zalmyra.”
“You won’t get near the place.”
Lucan’s eyebrows lifted. “Is it so hard to find?”
“It won’t be easy for one who doesn’t know that region. And, as I’ve already told you, she is a mistress of dark lore. Not only that, it’s now late July, and in high Liguria the autumn comes early.”
“The weather does not concern me. Nor does my ignorance of the region… because you, Lord Maximion, will be showing me the way.”
Maximion looked surprised. “You wish me to accompany you?”
“As my prisoner, you must earn your keep. And acting as a guide in your own country will hardly be taxing for you.”
“I won’t do it if I’m to be chained like an animal.”
“The chain can be removed if you give your word as a Roman officer that you will not try to escape.”
Maximion pondered. “I’ll give you my word. There’s no shame in that. Thus far, you’ve been a fair captor.”
“I’m always fair with those who serve me,” Lucan replied. “But to those who oppose me I am the perfect opposite.”
“I don’t know when you plan to embark, but before we do, I’d like permission to leave your camp and search this bloody field for my son.”
Lucan nodded. “You may search tomorrow. But listen, tribune… you have given your word, so now I will give mine. If you fail to return to my camp at dusk, I will hunt you down and kill you. They call me the Black Wolf of the North. Have you heard this?”
“I have.”
Lucan’s steely eyes gleamed. “When I have killed you, I will hunt your son in Brittany and I will kill him as well. And then I will hunt your other son, wherever he is in your disintegrating empire, and he too will perish. Do you believe this?”
“Yes,” Maximion replied, earnestly.
“Good luck on the morrow. I’ll have your shackles removed at first light, and you’ll be issued with a ticket of leave so that none other may lay hands on you.”
All through that night, bands of unarmed Roman soldiers approached Arthur’s camp, waving improvised white flags. Many who were wounded had become feverish with infection, while others — after a couple of nights in the surrounding mountains, wet, cold and hungry, with wolves howling and no sign in the vale below of the mass hangings and decapitations they’d been led to expect — were only too willing to be put in custody.