It was almost a relief when Titus saw him, standing on the spur of a rock, looking straight at the spot where he himself stood. That it was Brennos he had no doubt even if he had never seen the man; the simplicity of the dress alone was nearly enough to identify him, but what was most telling was the feeling that he was subject to some outside influence, that the man staring at him was trying by the powerful exertion of a mystical force to crack his will, to make him turn and run away. Titus held the stare, and prayed with fierce determination to Strenua, the Goddess of strength and vigour. His will nearly cracked when he heard the first of the screams, horrible in themselves and made louder by the way they echoed off the surrounding hills.
They were still ringing out when the first of the naked Romans came stumbling down the track, soon followed by another, both hunched over with one arm couching the other. When they got close Titus could hear the sobbing and it was only another moment before he saw the reason. Both had had their right hands hacked off, and when the first man came abreast the smell of cauterised flesh almost made Titus wretch. With that knowledge the screams made sense; first they had sliced of the hand, then plunged it into fire to stop the bleeding.
The next hour, as the sun fell in the sky, was mental torture, listening to the suffering of Roman soldiers as each was subjected to the same treatment. Sure that he was not going to be attacked, certain this was a demonstration of cruelty to distress him, he had his men tether their horses and give what succour they could to their wounded comrades. One rider was sent back to the settlements to fetch wagons, for these men, naked and in agony, could not walk back to safety. Then he took up station again, eyes locked with those of the man on the spur, determined to show that whatever he chose to do would not make Rome bow the knee to him.
It was hardest when, with the sun nearly gone and Brennos a silhouette against the western sky, a group of tribesmen brought forth the centurion. They had not stripped him, no doubt so that he would be recognised, but they had strapped him to some kind of frame which almost crucified the poor fool, with his legs swinging loosely. Titus wondered if they were just going to throw him into the brushwood well below, where if he did not die he would be so broken as to do so soon. Within minutes the ridge was a mass of men, all seeming to look in his direction.
‘You see, Brennos,’ said Trebener, ‘there is always a middle way. The Romans are alive, but they will never be soldiers again.’
‘I would have killed them, you know that.’ His head jerked towards Titus Cornelius, wrapped in his red cloak, now barely visible as the gloom darkened the lower ground on which he stood. ‘Including him.’
‘And then you would be gone, Brennos.’
‘Yes. It was a Roman who said about one of their enemies, let them hate us as long as they fear us. It is one lesson I am happy to take from them.’
‘I am minded to grant to you the fate of our friend here. I had in mind to remove his legs so that he would remember, and perhaps pass on to others, that had he used them a little less he would still have them.’
Titus saw Brennos turn, lifting a heavy sword as he did so, recognisably a falcata, the most fearsome weapon in the armoury of the local tribes. Too unwieldy for most, it was carried only by those of great strength and martial skill. The shaman raised it above his head and it took no great leap of imagination to envisage the fear in the victim’s eyes.
‘You are a fool, Trebener.’ Then he shouted, in a voice that Titus heard more than once as it bounced and echoed around the surrounding hills. ‘There is only one way to deal with Rome.’
With that he brought the blade down, striking at the join between neck and body, with such force that it crunched through bone and flesh as Brennos nearly cut the centurion in half. Another sweeping blow removed the lolling head, two more the legs twitching in the throes of death. Drenched in blood from the fountain that sprang from the victim’s jugular, Trebener cursed Brennos, but he could say nothing. Even if he had, it would not have been heard over the sound of his own men cheering a man they saw as a hero.
It took two days to get the wounded back to civilisation, two days in which Titus Cornelius planned the revenge he would take on those who had mutilated them. For once he would put aside any thought of humanity or understanding and react as a Roman. He would surpass his father in the way he chastised the tribes, wondering if, years ago, Aulus had been too lenient. Let him hear of this and the great Macedonicus would want to lead another army to this place to finish what he had failed to achieve ten years past.
In his mind Titus imagined himself riding at his father’s side again, saw slaughtered men and cattle, for no beast or man would live, and a line of slaves. The women and children they would march into captivity. If the enemy had fields of crops they would be sown with salt, if they had wells they would poison them, forests they would burn so that anyone surviving would freeze in winter for want of the means to make a fire. Each thought of retribution piled on each other, but at the head of it all was the image of that Druid shaman hacking the centurion to death. Brennos he and his father would burn, patiently, over charcoal, and watch as the flesh fell slowly in strips off his pain-wracked body.
His commander was waiting for him as he marched, tired, hungry and covered in dust, into the command tent. That he was standing was unusual, for he was a person to have a care that his rank should be recognised. Just about to make a report, a raised hand stopped him.
‘Titus Cornelius, I have for you some very sad news. Your father, the great Macedonicus, is no longer with us. You are to return to Rome immediately.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Fulmina rubbed her belly again, trying to ease the pain that had been with her for months, getting steadily worse as if some beast was inside her eating at her vitals. The visit to the local healer had done little good: it had cost her a big slice of her meagre savings to be told something she already knew; how to brew an infusion of herbs, something her mother had taught her when she was a slip of a girl. She had asked Drisia to cast her bones and look into the future, but the soothsayer had claimed she could not see anything. Fulmina knew, deep down, that Drisia was lying, though she did not say so since there was nothing to do about it; it would either get better or get worse.
She had a peasant woman’s attitude to life and death, accepting the one with little joy and the other as inevitable, but she had realised that she was lonely; for all his faults she missed Clodius. He was not much of a husband, but he had a good, if wayward nature and he had never beaten her. She wanted him to come home, not just for herself but to take care of the boy if anything happened to her. As she cast her mind back over the last seven years she bitterly regretted the callous messages she had sent back to him. These had been carried by men who had had the money to buy their time off, unlike poor Clodius, who had forgotten to include that provision in his bargain with Dabo. Her mind turned to her own children. Demetrius, the eldest, had opened a bakery in Rome and was doing well.
‘That’s one in the eye to all those doubters,’ she said out loud, pulling herself to her feet. They had laughed at him when he said what he intended to do, but he had been right: city folk were sick of baking their own bread, so they flocked to his little shop, morning and afternoon, to buy it fresh. ‘Maybe Demetrius will take the boy in. He’s only got two of his own.’