Each man carried a water-skin that held just enough for him and his mount to last for two days; that, together with the extra water, as well as grain for the horses and spare rations for the troopers, carried by the trail of pack-mules following the column, meant they could last for three days without resupplying. Navigation through the almost featureless landscape was therefore crucial as they were obliged to travel via two wells, part of a network of ancient wells dug throughout the desert by the Marmaridae, generations ago, to enable them to make the crossing from their grazing lands in the north, near the coast over a hundred miles east of Cyrene, to the oasis at Siwa and beyond.
‘How the fuck does Aghilas find his way out here?’ Magnus asked Corvinus as they approached the outcrop where, their guide had assured them, they would find the first well of their journey. ‘There’s nothing to navigate by.’
Corvinus looked haughtily at Magnus before deigning to reply. ‘He was taken as a slave by the Marmaridae when he was a boy and lived with them for ten years before escaping. He’s made countless trips across the desert; I’ve used him before and he’s never let me down.’
‘When was the last time you were out here?’ Vespasian enquired, trying to be friendly to this aloof patrician; he had not had much contact with Corvinus, who spent most of his time at Barca, southwest of Cyrene, where the auxiliary cavalry were based.
‘Just before you arrived, quaestor.’ There was almost a tone of mockery in his voice as he used Vespasian’s official title. ‘We chased a raiding party for a couple of days; didn’t catch them, though. Their camels aren’t as fast as horses in a gallop but they can do eighty or ninety miles in ten hours without stopping for water; at that speed and in this heat our horses just collapse.’
‘Have you ever caught any?’
‘No, not once in the seven months that I’ve had the misfortune to be stationed here. And I don’t know what makes you think that it’ll be any different this time; you’d have to surprise-’
A sharp cry from Aghilas as he fell from his horse cut Corvinus short; an instant later his own mount reared up, tipping him onto the ground. Vespasian heard the hiss of an arrow passing just over his head followed immediately by the cry of a trooper behind him.
‘Form line by turma,’ Corvinus shouted, jumping to his feet as his horse crashed, screeching, to the ground next to him; a blood-soaked arrow protruded from its chest.
The four thirty-man turmae fanned out across the desert; the whinnying of wounded horses and the shrill blare of the lituus, a cavalry horn, filled the air.
A hundred paces away among the rocks Vespasian could see their attackers breaking cover and sprinting towards a dozen or so similar-coloured, smaller, more rounded rocks. A few moments later these rocks seemed to spring to life as the fleeing men jumped on them and they rose from the ground, as if they had suddenly grown first back legs then front; they turned and galloped away southwards.
‘Decurion, take your turma and get those camel-fucking Marmaridae bastards; we’re close enough to catch them. I want one alive,’ Corvinus bellowed at the nearest Latin-looking face.
As the turma peeled away Vespasian shot Magnus a questioning glance.
‘I don’t hold with fighting mounted but I suppose it’ll make up for not hunting lions,’ Magnus said, kicking his horse forward.
With a grin Vespasian followed, urging his mount into a gallop. The wind immediately tore his hat from his head and it fluttered behind him attached by the loose, leather strap around his throat.
They quickly cleared the outcrop and Vespasian felt that they were gaining on the slower but more durable camels, less than two hundred paces ahead; he could count about twenty of them. The turma had spread out into dispersed order, the troopers expertly guiding their horses around the larger stones that littered the baked, cracked ground. The occasional wild shot passed overhead or to one side but there were no hits — accurate archery from a moving camel at an enemy behind you would prove difficult, Vespasian surmised from the ungainly gait of the strange beasts.
After a half-mile, the Marmaridae were less than a hundred paces away; sensing that they would certainly catch their attackers, the troopers urged their horses to greater efforts. Sweat foamed from under their saddles and saliva flecked from their mouths as they responded to their riders’ wishes.
Vespasian reached behind him and pulled one of the ten light javelins, which each man carried, from the carry-case strapped to his saddle and slipped his forefinger through the leather thong halfway down the shaft. Their target was now little more than seventy paces ahead and Vespasian felt the familiar thrill and tension of imminent battle; he had not been in combat since the attack on his parents’ estate at Aquae Cutillae over four years previously and his desire for it was heightened by the ennui of the last few months.
With only sixty paces separating the two groups, the Marmaridae, realising that they had no chance of escape, suddenly turned their camels and charged the turma, releasing a volley of arrows. To Vespasian’s right a trooper was punched out of the saddle with a scream; his horse raced on, taken up by the excitement of the charge.
‘Release,’ the decurion yelled with fifty paces to go.
More than thirty javelins hurtled towards the oncoming camelry, quickly followed by a second volley as the troopers endeavoured to cause as much damage as possible with their primary weapons. Scores of iron-tipped shafts slammed into the Marmaridae punching through the chests and heads of men with bursts of blood or burying themselves deep into their mounts, crashing them to the ground in a cacophony of guttural, animal bellowing.
Whipping long, straight swords from their scabbards and screaming death from behind their cloth face masks, the seven survivors of the onslaught, black cloaks billowing out behind them, thundered into the turma as they drew their spathae.
The strong, unfamiliar smell of the camels caused the riderless horse next to Vespasian to shy abruptly to the left; it crunched into his mount’s withers as a shimmer of burnished iron flashed down towards him. Agonised by the pain of the blow, his horse raised its head, whinnying madly, and took the vicious sword cut, aimed at Vespasian’s neck, in the throat. Blood sprayed over Vespasian’s face as he brought his spatha down, severing the sword arm of his adversary who howled as his camel crashed into the now side-on riderless horse. Both beasts and the one-armed tribesman, blood spewing from his freshly hewn stump, plunged to the ground with a cracking of bones and bestial roars of anguish.
With the severed hand still gripping the sword embedded in its throat, Vespasian’s horse galloped on for five paces and then crashed onto the desert floor. Vespasian hurled himself forward so as not to be crushed beneath the dead weight of his erstwhile mount and tumbled across the rough ground. Jarring to a halt he looked back and immediately leapt to his left, narrowly avoiding being trampled under the galloping hoofs of a rolling-eyed horse whose blood-spurting, decapitated rider sat firm in the saddle, the muscles in his thighs still gripping his directionless mount.
‘Are you all right, sir?’ Magnus shouted, pulling his horse up next to Vespasian.
‘I think so,’ he replied watching, with a morbid curiosity, the progress of the headless rider; within a few dozen paces the thigh muscles gave out and the body slithered from the saddle, leaving the horse charging off towards the deep-blue horizon.