Sextus brought some bread and cheese over to them and then started to bury all traces of the fire, whilst Marius struggled to fill the water skins in the stream.
‘Which way should we go?’ Vespasian asked through a mouthful of cheese.
‘My guess is that the Praetorians know you are wounded and will have realised that we’d have had to stop fairly soon after dark to tend to you, which we did. So they would calculate that if they rode on for another two or three hours into the night they would most certainly pass us. Then all they need to do is block the road and maintain patrols on either side to stop us skirting round.’
‘It sounds like they’ll have got us trapped,’ Marius said, still struggling with the water skins. ‘Perhaps we should head east to the Via Aemilia Scaura; it can’t be more than twenty miles away and it ends up in Genua as well.’
‘I thought about that, mate, but they know where we’re heading so I’m sure that they’ll have that road covered too.’
‘So where does that leave us, Magnus?’ Sextus asked. ‘Going back to Rome?’
‘No way, they’ll be checking everyone going into the city for days to come. No, lads, we’ve just got to go forward cross-country, keeping a sharp lookout, and try to slip past them.’ Magnus got to his feet. The first rays of the sun had appeared over the horizon sending long shadows through the wood. ‘Come on, lads, mount up. You’d best not wear that red cloak, sir, it’s a bit of a giveaway, if you take my meaning? Here, take mine.’
Vespasian didn’t argue and wrapped the warm woollen cloak around his shoulders, and then packed his military one in his kit bag. He managed to get back in the saddle unaided but the exertion made his head spin and he had to hold on to his horse’s neck to steady himself.
‘Are you all right, sir?’ Magnus asked, concerned.
‘I’ll be fine, thanks,’ he replied as his vision steadied.
‘At least we’ll be going slowly, as we don’t want to go carelessly blundering into any of their patrols. So you just hang on, sir, and shout if you need to stop.’
Magnus kicked his horse and moved off; Vespasian followed, praying to the gods that he would have the strength to last the day.
Keeping the Via Aurelia a mile or so to their left they picked their way across country. The undulating landscape was mainly farmland criss-crossed by small tracks and dotted with woods and olive groves. Here and there they saw a farmhouse or a country villa and skirted around it, keeping as far away from prying eyes as possible, but always maintaining a north-westerly direction. The occasional glimpses they had of the sea, a few miles to their left, helped them to keep on course, the sun now being visible only intermittently through the steadily thickening clouds. After a couple of hours, during which they’d covered over ten miles, Magnus stopped and turned to his companions.
‘By my reckoning we should be nearly level with the roadblock so watch out for their patrols. From now on we’ll try to keep as much as possible to the woods, olive groves and river beds.’ He looked at Vespasian, who seemed to be very pale. ‘Sextus, get something to eat for the young gentleman.’
A quick rummage through his pack produced some more salted pork that he gave to Vespasian, who ate it thankfully as they pressed on with caution.
By midmorning it had completely clouded over and a light drizzle of rain was falling. They were threading their way through an alder wood when a series of shouts stopped them dead.
‘What was that?’ Vespasian whispered, coming out of the reverie that he had fallen into and now suddenly alert.
‘Fuck knows,’ Magnus replied, looking around. ‘But whatever it was, it was close.’
Another shout, which seemed to come from up ahead of them to the right, echoed around the wood. Suddenly, about fifty paces away to their front, three horsemen dressed in dull travel clothes crashed through the wood from right to left pursued by half a dozen red-cloaked, spear-toting Praetorian troopers.
Vespasian and his escort stayed motionless, hearts pounding, as the Praetorians raced through the wood in pursuit of their quarry. So concentrated were the troopers on navigating their way through the trees and dead undergrowth that they could neither look right nor left. They drove their horses furiously as they sped out of sight, enveloped by the wood.
‘The bastards must think that was us,’ Magnus said as the last red cloak disappeared.
‘Then they’re not very good at counting, are they?’ Sextus pointed out.
Magnus looked at him with raised eyebrows. ‘That’s rich, coming from you. Anyway, who cares? The main thing is that they’re occupied so let’s take advantage of it.’ He moved off quickly; the others followed. As they crossed the line of the chase more shouting came from their left, then a scream.
‘It sounds like they’ve got us,’ Marius said, smiling grimly.
‘Poor buggers; still, they must have been up to no good if they ran when challenged,’ Vespasian observed, feeling much revived by his racing heart.
‘Even if I was as innocent as a Vestal Virgin I think I’d run from a Praetorian patrol that wanted to ask me a few questions; they’re not known for their politeness, you know,’ Magnus said, quickening his pace as the wood thinned out.
On reaching the last of the trees he stopped and looked ahead. In the distance, five miles off, was a line of hills, but before that was mainly rolling, open grassland used for sheep grazing. Here and there were little stone shepherd’s huts that were connected by paths marked out by lines of trees and bushes.
Magnus dismounted and handed his reins to Sextus. ‘Hold these, mate, I’m going for a little scout around to check whether we’re clear to leave the wood.’
He darted off to the left, leaving his companions wondering how they were going to cross such a large area of open grassland unnoticed by a patrol.
Vespasian took a long slug of water and then another bite from the strip of salt pork. He was feeling stronger than he had first thing, but he still had a long way to go before being fully fit. He wrapped his cloak tightly around his shoulders in an effort to keep out the rain and shivered slightly. He turned to Marius, who had his reins wrapped around his left forearm whilst he used his right to scratch his back.
‘How did you lose your hand, Marius?’
‘In the navy, sir, I was a deck-’
Magnus came dashing back, interrupting Marius. ‘They killed one of the unlucky sods and three of the guards are taking the other two back towards the road. The other three are a mile off and heading back towards the wood, I assume to look for what they must believe is the missing fourth member of the party.’
‘We’re trapped, then,’ Marius said. ‘If we go forward they’ll see us, and if we try to hide they’ll probably find us.’
‘If you can’t beat them, join them,’ Vespasian said.
The crossroads brothers looked at him quizzically.
‘What?’ Magnus asked, not understanding at all.
‘We’ll join them; we’ll take them out and borrow their cloaks, helmets, shields and spears. That way from a distance we’ll look like just another patrol and we should be able to cross that open ground unchallenged,’ Vespasian explained.
‘But there’s only three of them,’ Magnus said.
‘I’ve got my military cloak and helmet; the plume is longer than a Praetorian’s but from a distance it will do. Marius couldn’t hold a spear or a shield in any case; it’ll work, it’s not as if we’re going to try and go through a roadblock by passing ourselves off as Praetorians, is it?’
‘You’re right, sir,’ Magnus agreed, pleased to have a plan. ‘But before you pluck a chicken you have to wring its neck. So let’s get further back into the wood and find a place to ambush them.’
They retraced their steps to the line of the chase, turned left along its path and followed it for a couple of hundred paces where, to their right, they saw a dell about ten feet deep and thirty paces across.
‘This’ll do us,’ Magnus said, the beginnings of a plan formulating in his head. ‘Now, sir, they’ll be looking for a young military tribune, and you’re the only one of us that fits that description so it has to be you that leads them here. Go back along the track and when they see you race back here, down through the dell and up the other side there.’ He pointed to a gap between two large alders perched at the top of a steep bank on the far side of the dell. ‘As they’re following you up the bank we’ll unhorse them and finish them off.’