At first this had irked him but gradually his curiosity had waned out of necessity and he had put it to the back of his mind. His curiosity had been briefly reawakened, four years previously, after he and his brother, Sabinus, had been read a deliberately obscure prophecy at the Oracle of Amphiaraos in Greece. This had alluded to a brother telling the truth to the King of the East. Whether it had meant anything to Sabinus he did not know as his brother had been unforthcoming, claiming to be still bound by their mother’s original oath.
In the two years between completing his time as one of the triumviri capitales and being elected quaestor, time mainly spent running the estate at Cosa left to him by his grandmother, he had thought little about it; until now. Now he was convinced that he had been preserved by some unseen hand; how the others had survived he did not know but he knew that he should have suffocated last night, buried in the sand on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his birth.
‘It’s not looking too good,’ Corvinus said, tight-lipped, walking up behind Vespasian with Magnus as he finally managed to find his water-skin, ‘there are twenty-six survivors, plus us four, and only eight water-skins, all of which are half-empty.’
‘Nine now, prefect,’ Vespasian replied, pulling the skin from the deep hole in the sand. ‘Surely we can work out where the horses were and dig down to them?’
‘We’ve been trying to but most of the horses and all but one of the mules bolted taking the provisions with them. They’re all lost out there somewhere,’ Corvinus snapped, waving his arm around, ‘we’ll never find them. All we’ve been digging up is dead auxiliaries; I’ve lost three of my four decurions. They didn’t deserve to die like that, it’s a fucking shambles.’
‘Well, if there’s no hope of any more survivors then we should get going quickly before the sun gets too hot.’
‘Go where?’ Corvinus shouted.
‘To Siwa as planned, prefect; it shouldn’t be more than a day away.’
‘And what are we going to do when we get there? We’ve got hardly any men left; you’ve managed to lose most of them on this mad scheme of yours.’
‘Let me remind you who you’re talking to, prefect,’ Vespasian retorted, pointing a finger at the young cavalry prefect’s face.
‘I don’t need to be reminded that I’m talking to an upstart of a New Man with no breeding and a Sabine accent.’
‘Whatever your patrician prejudices might make of me, Corvinus, I am the Governor’s, and therefore the Senate’s, representative in Cyrenaica and you will do as I order without question. And if you think that saving citizens from slavery is a mad scheme then I pray that should that fate befall you there is someone like me around willing to come after you. Now get the men ready to-’
A distant, mournful, wailing cry from high overhead cut him off.
Vespasian looked east towards its source. ‘What the fuck was that?’
‘Another poor sod who’s had the misfortune to follow you into the desert,’ Corvinus spat. He turned on his heel and stormed away, barking orders at the surviving auxiliaries who were looking nervously at the sky.
‘I think that you should have made it clear,’ Magnus said, watching Corvinus go, ‘that you’d only come after him if he has an attractive woman in tow, if you take my meaning?’
Vespasian shot his friend a venomous look. ‘Very funny!’
‘I thought so; and not so far from the truth either.’
Vespasian grunted; he could not deny it to Magnus: if it had not been for his desire for Flavia, they would not be here and a hundred or so men would still be alive. But then, if a man’s destiny was pre-ordained, those men must have been destined to die here; Fortuna had only held her hands over a few of them to be spared for other tasks and deaths. What, he wondered, was the task for which he had been spared?
CHAPTER III
‘Siwa, Siwa!’ Ziri shouted, sending his arms and legs flying out at all angles in a wild, capering, silhouetted dance on top of a sand dune.
Vespasian looked up at him wearily through eyes squinting against the sun’s midday ferocity; his lips were cracked and his head throbbed from the heat beating down directly onto it in the absence of his hat.
It was the second day after the sandstorm and they were all in a weakened state having only had three cups each of their precious water on the previous day and one cup each at midmorning today. Only Ziri seemed to be unaffected by the conditions and he carried on his exuberant jig as his companions struggled up the dune.
‘Not a moment too soon,’ Magnus croaked, working his feet hard to get purchase in the soft sand. ‘I’ve been dreaming all morning about drinking my piss.’
‘That’s a coincidence,’ Vespasian replied with as much of a grin as his parched lips would allow him, ‘I’ve been dreaming all morning about drinking your piss too.’
‘You’d have had to fight me for it.’
Vespasian’s reply stuck in his dry throat as he crested the dune. Two miles in front of him, stretching away beyond the horizon, was nothing but green; an oasis of life in an otherwise barren and hostile terrain. Fifty miles long and over ten wide it covered the desert floor like a lush, verdant carpet.
Corvinus stopped next to Vespasian. ‘Thank the gods, we’ve made it.’
‘Yes, but how do we get back?’ Magnus muttered.
As they stood marvelling at such an expanse of fertility after days of nothing but brown, wasted land and intense blue sky, the distant sound of rhythmic drums, sonorous horns and clashing cymbals drifted up through the air.
‘What’s that?’ Vespasian asked.
‘Dunno,’ Magnus replied, ‘but it sounds as if someone’s having a party.’
Having drunk the last of their water, the final couple of miles felt easier and within an hour they passed under the first date palms. The sound of the music grew steadily but there were no other signs of human habitation. The temperature started to drop considerably until it felt like no more than a scalding hot summer’s day in Rome.
Working their way forward for another mile through the gradually thickening trees, enjoying the ever growing shade, they came suddenly, and unbelievably, to a lake. Without hesitation all of them rushed forward and plunged into the cool, life-giving water and drank their fill while submerging their overheating bodies in its fresh depths, diffusing, at last, the sun’s relentless intensity.
Refreshed, they made their way deeper into the oasis in the direction of the music. Coming upon a well-used track they followed it; the sound of chanting could now be heard under the drums, horns and cymbals. After a few hundred paces they passed a couple of low, flat-roofed, mud-brick houses. Vespasian and Magnus looked through the open windows; they were deserted.
‘I suppose everybody’s at the party,’ Vespasian observed as they carried on towards another larger collection of similar dwellings.
The music was now very close. The road turned sharply to the right and passed between two more houses, then opened up into a huge, crowded, square agora surrounded by mud houses seemingly piled one upon the other. The music and the chanting came to a crashing crescendo; everyone in the agora jumped into the air raising their arms above their heads.
‘Amun! Amun! Amun!’ they shouted to the crash of cymbals and the beating of drums.
Then silence.
At the far end of the agora a priestly-looking man, dressed in a leather kilt with a broad, golden belt, stood on the steps of a small temple; on his head he wore a tall, brimless, black leather hat with golden images of the sun fastened to it. He lifted a crook into the air; his congregation prostrated themselves.