‘The stupid little brown sod,’ Magnus hissed through gritted teeth as he jumped up onto his horse. ‘I told him to empty the water from his skin but the idiot thought it would bring him bad luck to waste it.’ He kicked his horse up the bank.
Vespasian followed as the first of the Chatti made it into the river. ‘Now he’s going to be drinking water for eternity just because he wouldn’t throw a few drops away.’
‘That’s what I call a fucking irony.’
Vespasian and Magnus drove their mounts as fast as they would go as they strove to catch the Batavians now a quarter of a mile ahead of them. With the looming, smoke-oozing, fortified hilltop settlement of Mattium blocking their way east and the knowledge that the other half of the Chatti cavalry were in front of them following the river to the north, they were heading in the only viable direction: northeast.
So close to the Chatti’s major settlement the farmland was well cultivated and they were forced to hurdle low stone walls and hedgerows.
‘My horse ain’t going to last much longer,’ Magnus called over to Vespasian as he landed ungracefully after another leap.
Vespasian did not reply, he knew that his own mount was gradually fading, although not as quickly as some of the Batavians in front of them. In an effort to stay together the column was travelling at the speed of their slowest animal and they were now less than one hundred paces ahead; Vespasian and Magnus were gaining all the time. Glancing behind, Vespasian saw the chasing Chatti starting to swarm through the trees on the north bank, just over a mile away.
‘Shit, I don’t like the look of that!’ Magnus exclaimed, pointing up to Mattium.
The gates had opened and horsemen were making their way along the winding track leading down to the plain.
Paetus too had obviously seen them because the column veered slightly more to the north; then after a few moments on the new course it changed back to its original direction. Vespasian knew immediately what that meant without having to look: the Chatti who had followed the river had left its course and were heading across country to cut them off. They were surrounded.
Paetus brought the column to a halt and Vespasian and Magnus finally caught up. ‘We’ve got no choices but to fight or surrender,’ he said to the brothers as they halted next to him.
‘Then I’d say that we have no choice,’ Vespasian replied. ‘If we fight we’ll all die. Gisbert offered to escort our men back to the Rhenus if we surrender, at least that way they’ll survive.’
‘Batavians do not surrender,’ Ansigar spat, ‘and especially not to Chatti; we would never be able to return home again if we did, such would be the shame.’
Paetus smiled without mirth. ‘Well, gentlemen, it looks like a bloody death in the middle of Germania Magna for us, however you look at it. I have to say that I’d much rather go down fighting than be executed by some barbarian who calls himself king just because his great-grandfather came down from the hills and chopped everybody else’s head off. Ansigar, form the men up to the north, we’ll try to break through that way.’
The decurion saluted and rode away growling orders; the turmae started to form line with the Chatti no more than five hundred paces away on three sides.
‘I’m sorry, Vespasian,’ Sabinus said with a surprising dose of sincerity in his tone, ‘it was my fault that got you into this.’
Vespasian smiled at his brother. ‘No, it was Claudius’ freedmen playing politics with each other.’
‘Bastards.’
‘So it looks like the prophecy made at my birth was false; unless of course it said that I was to die at the age of thirty-one butchered by Germans?’
‘What? Oh yes, I see what you mean. No, it didn’t predict that so it was all bollocks; I never believed it anyway, but Mother insisted that that was what the marks on each of the three livers meant.’
‘Meant what?’
Sabinus shrugged, looking around at the three oncoming Chatti units, which had slowed and also formed a line.
‘Come on, Sabinus, you might as well tell me now seeing as it was rubbish.’
Sabinus looked at his brother appraisingly. ‘Very well. Father sacrificed the normal ox, pig and ram at your naming ceremony. When he took out the livers for examination they all had blemishes on. I can remember being very excited about that because I was sure that meant that Mars was not going to accept you; I hated you, you see?’
‘Why? What had I done?’
‘I’d heard Father promise Mars to nurture you well, to take great care of you, even over me; I was seethingly jealous of you. But the blemishes did not mean that Mars was rejecting you, far from it. Each liver had a different mark, they were all recognisable, uncannily so, but now what seemed like a blatant pictorial message turns out to be no more than-’
‘Romans!’
The brothers looked behind them; the Chatti who had come from Mattium had stopped fifty paces away. One man came forward.
‘Shit! That’s the bastard that led us here,’ Vespasian exclaimed, recognising their erstwhile guide instantly. ‘He must have crossed the bridge.’
He shouted a couple of sentences in German.
‘Perhaps this is not the end, brother,’ Sabinus mused. ‘Thank my Lord Mithras I didn’t break my oath.’
Vespasian looked at Sabinus, enraged, as Ansigar rode over to them and translated. ‘They do not ask for our surrender but they do ask that we come with them to avoid any more bloodshed. We may keep our weapons and our honour. It’s a fair deal.’
‘What do they want from us?’ Sabinus asked, ignoring his brother’s frustration.
‘Their King wants to talk with the officers; you are invited to the hall of Adgandestrius.’
The gates of Mattium swung open to reveal a mass of rectangular wooden huts of varying sizes, jumbled together without any thought of civic planning. Constructed with thick poles hammered into the earth, there were no windows in the walls, and the doors were no more than sheets of leather; smoke spiralled out of holes in the centre of each hut’s thatched roof.
The guide led the column along the main street of compacted earth that twisted and turned as it climbed higher. Narrow alleys ran off into smoky gloom on either side; the tang of wood smoke and reek of human waste filled Vespasian’s nostrils. Women and old men peered curiously from doorways at the strangers as they passed and flaxen-haired children stopped their play and scuttled out of the road, away from the horses’ hooves.
‘Uncle Gaius would like it here,’ Vespasian mused, looking at a couple of particularly beautiful, if rather grubby, young boys.
Sabinus laughed. ‘Perhaps we should see if we can buy a couple to take home for him.’
‘We should. He’s always saying that it’s so hard to find fresh ones in the slave markets; he enjoys breaking them in.’
‘Well, they don’t come much fresher than these. Sluice off the dirt and they’re ready to be broken into.’
As the brothers laughed, Vespasian glanced at Magnus who sat glumly in the saddle, clearly still in no mood for jokes.
Eventually the road opened out into a clear area with a few market stalls around its circumference; on the far side was a large longhouse, at least twenty feet tall with a sloping thatched roof streaked with green moss.
The guide dismounted and spoke to Ansigar.
‘We’re to stay here,’ the decurion translated, ‘where we will be fed. You three are to meet the King in his hall.’
‘Do you want to come?’ Vespasian asked Magnus as they slipped from their horses.
‘Better not, I might spoil the meeting by exacting some vengeance for Ziri.’
‘As you wish.’ Vespasian patted his friend’s shoulder and then, with Sabinus and Paetus, followed the guide into the longhouse.
Stepping through the entrance, Vespasian’s eyes took a few moments to adjust to the dim light. Four rows of long tables, with tallow candles placed at intervals down them, filled the first half of the hall up to a blazing, circular log fire whose smoke partially obscured the high vaulted ceiling as it struggled to get out through the round hole in its centre. Antlers, boar tusks and horns lined the wall interspersed with shields, swords and other accoutrements of war. Beyond the fire the hall was empty apart from four huge warriors standing at each corner of a dais upon which, on a high-backed chair, sat an old man with a long, grey beard and silver hair tied in a top knot. A band of gold was placed upon his head. ‘I am Adgandestrius, King of the Chatti,’ he said in unaccented Latin. ‘Come forward.’