‘Only there are fifteen of us and one of you, and we’re all going to be dead in the morning anyway.’
‘Exactly. Or I can get us out of here and we can forget this ever happened.’
The auxiliary’s teeth shone in the darkness. ‘I don’t know how you’re going to do it, but I like the second option a lot better.’
Valerius looked out beyond the fires and tried to imagine the Dacian positions as he’d seen them from the top of the ridge. They surrounded the approaches to the hill, but the keys to this trap were two slight gaps in the trees that potentially provided an escape route for the horsemen. An organized force would have barricaded the openings, but from what he’d seen the Dacians were happy to fill them with warriors and invite the Tungrians to try their luck. What he needed was to draw the Dacian warriors away from one of those gaps.
He’d outlined his plan to Marcus before he’d set out on the treacherous climb. ‘The signal will be a burning brand waved three times from the top of the hill. Count slowly to one hundred then create the diversion.’
To Lucca he said, ‘Get your men ready, in the saddle and prepared to fight in five minutes. Assign one trooper to each of the wounded. Fabius!’
‘Sir!’
‘I want a small fire on the rear of the hill where the enemy can’t see it, and prepare a torch.’
As he waited for the flames to take hold, a young trooper approached with a saddled horse and Valerius ordered him to hold it until he was ready. He ran to the fire, picked up the torch Fabius had laid beside it and thrust it deep into the flames. The dried grass and twigs caught immediately and he carried the flaming brand to the top of the hill and arced it three times above his head in a blazing rainbow.
‘All mounted,’ Lucca called. ‘Now?’ he asked as Valerius leapt into the saddle.
Valerius shook his head. ‘Wait.’
It seemed to take an eternity, but it must have been less than two minutes.
‘There,’ one of the troopers behind him hissed.
‘Quiet. Do nothing that might alert them.’
A tree exploded into flame two hundred paces away on the far side of the Dacian ring. Marcus and Serpentius had done their job well. The blaze began in the lower branches, but quickly spread to the dry leaves in the canopy and jumped to its neighbour, which instantly added to the fiery spectacle.
‘Wait!’ Valerius ordered. The burning trees were close to the further gap and he was gambling that the diversion would draw the Dacian blockaders to it. But he had to give them time to react. He could hear the tension in his own voice. ‘Wait. Remember, follow me straight to the trees and once we’re through turn along the line of the hills. We stop for nothing or nobody. Slaughter anything that gets in your way. Now!’
The horses had been sawing at the bit for minutes and the moment their riders gave them their heads they lumbered into motion across the upper slope, picking up speed with every stride. The Tungrians plucked their long spears from the makeshift palisade as they crossed the bank and ditch, instantly bringing them to the ready. Valerius felt the ground falling away beneath him. No question of worrying about fox or rabbit holes. Just pray. The trot swiftly developed into a headlong gallop. He could hear the thunder of hooves all around him, but he focused every ounce of his concentration on finding the gap. It was out there somewhere in the darkness beyond the Dacian fires. If he had his directions wrong by even a few yards his men would ride straight into the trees where they’d be swept from the saddle and butchered. But the fires would be his guide. From the top of the hill he’d noted that the near gap lined up with a large boulder at the base of the hill and the midpoint between the second and third pyres. The pale blur of the boulder swept by on his right and he set his horse for the narrow opening between the fires. With unnerving timing the wind came up, flames and sparks shooting high in the air before they swept across the space he was aiming for. But Valerius dared not check. His life and those of the Tungrians depended on this mad dash through the fires. Like his own mount, the animal beneath him had been bred for battle and trained for war; flame, smoke and noise held no fears for her. Shouts of alarm came from his left front and in the fiery light he saw a small army of Dacians racing to cut the riders off. It would be very close but there could be no stopping now. He dug in his heels and pushed the mare to her limit, feeling her surge beneath him. All around him the Tungrians did the same. By now the space between the fires was filled by a wall of flame and it passed in an explosion of yellow and red, a blast of heat and the stink of smoke and singed horse hair. They were through and if he’d calculated correctly the gap in the trees and the relative safety of the forest should be fifty paces ahead. The Dacian warriors had lost the race and they howled in frustration as the riders galloped past. But they had bows and spears and the air swiftly filled with flying missiles. A spear hurtled across Valerius’s front a foot from his nose. He heard a sharp cry accompanied by a sickening thud as a body hit the earth at high speed, but he had no time to think of reining in. The dark line of the forest was only half a dozen strides away.
He almost shouted in relief as he realized he’d struck the treeline exactly where he’d planned. In the same instant he saw shadowy figures moving hurriedly among the trees and as he charged through into the deeper darkness his horse smashed into one, hurtling a Dacian warrior aside with the sickening crunch of broken bone and a shrill scream of pain. The impact knocked the mare off her stride, allowing the surviving cavalrymen to pass them. An agile, clawing savage with a knife between his teeth scrambled at Valerius’s legs and hauled himself half into the saddle behind him. Valerius knew he was dead the instant the warrior retrieved the knife, and using all his strength he smashed back with elbows and skull in an attempt to knock the Dacian clear, at the same time knowing that to lose control of the horse would be just as fatal. But nothing would shift his assailant. Valerius heard a cry of triumph as the man hooked an arm around his throat, and screamed in impotent fury as he anticipated the deadly sting of the knife point in his exposed back.
With a crack like a branch snapping, the grip on his neck weakened. He darted a glance back just as the Dacian tumbled clear with the shaft of an arrow buried deep in his skull. At the same time a welcome presence loomed out of the darkness and Serpentius appeared grinning at his side, the Thracian bow in his right hand, his horse matching stride with Valerius’s own.
They were clear.
XXV
‘This is an unexpected honour.’
Aulus Vitellius might have been greeting a guest at his townhouse on the Esquiline Hill instead of in the heart of a rough frontier fortress. Valerius had to remind himself that this man had just tried to have him killed. When he burst into the legate’s headquarters still dressed in a tunic stained with Dacian blood he had fully intended to kill him if it became necessary, but Vitellius met him with a disarming smile and graciously proffered a cup of wine. It was difficult to stay angry in the face of such charm.
‘I came here on the Emperor’s authority to question Publius Sulla,’ Valerius said. ‘You deliberately put him out of the way.’
Vitellius shook his head regretfully. ‘He was a good officer, but I had my doubts about the boy. It seemed safer to isolate him.’
‘And you sold us to the Dacians.’
‘Of course.’ The smile never faltered. ‘It’s not what I would have chosen, but one does what one must.’
‘Why? Five of your soldiers are dead. Festus the decurion.’
‘Auxiliaries.’ Vitellius tutted dismissively, as if the butchered men were chickens from the quartermaster’s store. ‘If they had done their job properly they would still be alive and we would not be having this inconvenient conversation.’