The trail led, as expected, up a narrow way, folded into a notch in the mountain. Libo’s party had marched through here the night before, up into a dense, but small, stand of trees, and had not come out. Nor had they come back. A large body of men would have torn up and marked the loose, rocky soil of the slopes, but there was no sign that they had left the path. If they had been ambushed, where were their bodies, the blood, the cast-off helmets, the broken gear? It was impossible; they had gone into that copse of trees, they had not come out, they had not retreated, and their bodies did not lie dead beneath the trees.
Grumio sent word back to Pompelo and marched deeper into the mountains.
Four days later, he returned with six captives: all of them Vasco shepherds who looked nothing like the other kind of people, whom Libo’s party had been seeking. The most prominent Vascones contended with Grumio indefatigably to save the lives of these captives and eventually, by going to Felix himself, managed to win clemency for all but one, who was crucified for failing to give adequate warning to Libo and his men. The remaining five, all very much the worse for wear, were quietly remanded to the custody of their own families.
Grumio had been compelled to admit that he had not been able to turn up a single one of the other kind of people. He had not even managed to discover the remains of any of the bonfires that eyewitnesses had reported seeing on that night, burning on the mountain tops.
News from Rome: the senate, the magistracy, all of Rome was aghast, baffled. Filling so many vacancies in high positions all at once was too much like reordering the world in a dream. When they had appointed Publius Strabonius Libo to the proconsulship of Hispania Citerior, they had believed they were rewarding an excellent citizen, not sending him to his doom in an unknown land. Felix was commended for swift action. The failure of Grumio’s expedition elicited indecision from the authorities. In the weeks that followed, a tacit conclusion was reached in Rome: it had been a supernatural thing. It had been the work of those nameless, monstrous gods of the mountain people. By all accounts, the thing had been impossible. At a stroke, a handfull of savages had somehow contrived to wipe out a cohort of three hundred legionaries. Lucius Caelius Rufus, a quaestor. Gnaeus Domitius Balbutius, the legatus of the twelfth legion, gone with them. And Sextus Pomponius Asellius, one of his tribunes, well-liked in Rome. And Strabonius Libo worst of all, the proconsul himself. He had insisted on joining the expedition to the mountains, and vanished with his lictors, with all of them, leaving no trace behind. Sorcery alone could have done it. The senators visited the temples and consulted their diviners. New temples were endowed and old ones were lavishly reappointed.
In the meantime, Felix was officially appointed proconsul, and his selection of Grumio was ratified. A high bounty was placed on those mountain people. The tenth legion, Gemina, was dispatched to the province, and the twelfth legion moved its camp from Calagurris north to Pompelo, fortifying the city and attempting to reassure its people that they were still under Roman protection. In response to rumors that some of the Vascones were known to join the mountain people at their revels, Grumio imperiously summoned the leaders of the Vasco clans to appear before him at Pompelo and give a thorough accounting of all their households, ordering them to surrender any witches that might be among them. The Vascones balked both at this request and at his tone, but Grumio began making arrests shortly thereafter, and whomever he arrested, he crucified.
This response did seem to reassure the people of Pompelo that something was being done, even if it did outrage the Vascones. It also upset Tiberius Annaeus Stilpo, the aedile whose letters had called proconsul Libo’s attention to the problem of the mountain people in the first place. With Felix’s appointment, his propraetorship was open. Stilpo hoped to get it, but he was been passed over in favor of a new man. And now Grumio was rooting out all the witches that it had been Stilpo’s duty to find.
Ruin was looming over him, and the prospect of losing the confidence of the senate and the comitiae chased all tranquility from his mind and home. He decided to try to rehabilitate his reputation by conducting his own investigation, gambling on the possibility that a smaller, less conspicuous party of men, disguised as travellers, could turn up something that a legion of infuriated soldiers might have missed, or frightened away. If his own men discovered a village of those mountain people, then Grumio would march on it, get out of Pompelo, and stop doing Stilpo’s job. In his absence, Stilpo would take over, the tact and discretion of Stilpo would shine all the brighter for the contrast with Grumio’s harshness and indecorum, and the way forward would open again, or, at least, close no further.
He would send Lucius Hosidius Nicostratus, known in Pompelo as Nicostratus Tutor, who had been Rufus’ lictor. Nicostratus was a shrewd man; originally from Athens, he was well-travelled, and had a reputation for being a reader. He’d had his skull cracked defending Rufus from the attack of a madman and was still recovering the night Rufus disappeared, which is why he had not gone with the others. He was fit now, but was no longer a lictor, and made his living as a scribe. Apparently, he was waiting for something better to come along, or for a chance to get back to Rome, and start over. He had debts. Stilpo would pay them.
Tullus Durio was a retired gladiator who had come to Calagurris to open his own ludus. He was a little long in the tooth, but still stout and wiry. His reserves of stamina were bottomless, and nothing fazed him. For a consideration, he would be Nicostratus’ bodyguard.
Finally, they would need a guide. For this duty, Stilpo settled on Otson, a Vasco from the other side of the mountains, up near the border with Gaul. He had been sent south by his family to learn more about Roman ways, and had performed some miscellaneous services for prominent families, both Vasco and Roman, with whom Stilpo had dealings. He seemed like a reliable man, not quite a blockhead for all that he was a rustic, and he had been all over those mountains. Stilpo asked him what he knew about those mountain people, and he said he knew only stories.
“What stories?”
Otson paused, and seemed to steel himself to the recollection.
“There was a man whose name we no longer say. He was going to betray us to some of the Aquitani who were our enemies. He was caught, and we gave him to them.”
“To the mountain people?”
“Yes. Both my parents were there. He was bound and left at one of their circles. He was pleading for death. To make sure he didn’t escape, he was watched from a distance, from a hidden place. They said he was calling to them constantly, over and over, until the sun set. The watchers knew he was still there, because, when it got dark, two torches appeared, coming to the circle from the far side, and his calls became screams. Then stopped. The watchers said they heard the mountain people’s voices speaking, and that there was another voice, that was different. They wouldn’t say anything else about it, only that the traitor was gone that morning when they went to the circle again.”
Before they parted company, Stilpo said, with an attempt at sly joviality that did not suit him, “I have heard, Otsonus, that you have recently lost your dog.”
“Last week,” Otson said, looking a bit bewildered by the change of subject.
At Stilpo’s summons, a servant entered, accompanied by an unleashed dog who trotted along beside him.