‘Thank you, centurion. Have the men collect their packs.’
‘Sir!’
‘First century to the ropes; Vespasian, Faustus, take a rope each,’ Corbulo ordered as the last of the second century struck out into the river. ‘And, Mauricius, start crossing upstream of us, it will help ease the current.’
As the cavalry splashed in past the legionaries, a roar went up from the Thracians. For the third time in the day they started to tear back down the hill.
Panic spread through the legionaries; to have achieved so much in the past few hours only to be caught so close to safety seemed to be against the will of the gods. They started to push and shove to try to get on to a rope.
‘Easy lads, easy!’ Faustus roared at the downstream station, cuffing a few round the ears. ‘Don’t lose your discipline now.’
Vespasian looked behind; the Thracians were halfway to them, and there were still at least fifteen men to get on each rope.
‘When I give the order, cut the ropes,’ Corbulo shouted.
The men pulled themselves out into the river; arrows flew over their heads from the archer support on the north bank. With the Thracians fifty paces away it was apparent that they would not all make it.
‘Cut the ropes!’
Vespasian realised that Corbulo was right; it was more important to deny the Thracians the means of crossing than to save the last ten or so men, including himself. So much for fate; it was to be a death at the hands of these savages after all. He knew his duty was to the greater good and not to himself. He slashed down with his sword on the hemp rope; it parted, swinging its passengers out into the current. He then turned to face the enemy. They had stopped ten paces from them.
‘To me, to me,’ Corbulo shouted from the middle station, where he stood next to two terrified-looking young legionaries. Vespasian ran to his side with Magnus and the two men that had been left at his station. Faustus and three others joined them.
‘Right, lads,’ Corbulo said grimly, ‘we’ll sell our lives dearly.’ He charged. The others followed. They swept into the Thracians slashing and stabbing, but received no counter-strikes, just blows from the wooden handles of rhomphaiai. As he went down and blackness enveloped him Vespasian realised that this time the Thracians had not come to kill. That would come later.
CHAPTER XXII
Vespasian came to. It was dark. He felt a sticky substance in his eye and went to rub it away but found his hands firmly tied behind his back. Then he remembered the blow to his head that had felled him. Blood, he thought, blood from the wound.
His throat was dry and his head ached; in fact, his whole body ached. He groaned as his consciousness cleared and the pain started to register.
‘Welcome back, sir, although I don’t think that you’ll be very pleased to be here. I certainly ain’t.’
Vespasian turned his head. Next to him was Magnus.
‘Where are we?’ It was a stupid question; he already knew the answer.
‘Guests of the Thracians; and after what we did to them not very welcome ones, I should imagine.’
Vespasian’s eyes started to clear. All around small orange glows started to come into focus: campfires. In their light he could see huddled figures sleeping on the ground. His eyes gradually got used to the light. Closer to him, in the gloom, he saw a mesh of poles; he looked above him, the same, they were in a wooden cage. There were two others in there with them. He squinted and made out the uniforms of Corbulo and Faustus, both still out cold.
‘Where are the others?’ he asked, wondering about the remaining legionaries.
‘I don’t know. I only came to a short time before you, I haven’t had time to have a wander round and suss out the accommodation arrangements.’
Vespasian smiled; Magnus had not lost his humour.
‘Get some rest, sir, there’s nothing we can do at the moment. The ropes are well tied; I’ve been trying to loosen them but have only managed to rip the skin off my wrists. We’ll have to wait until our hosts untie them for us, then we’ll need our wits about us.’
Vespasian knew Magnus was right – if they were untied he would need to be fresh and alert. He closed his eyes and fell into an uneasy sleep.
At dawn the camp stirred. Vespasian woke to find a Thracian in the cage giving sheep’s milk to his fellow captives. He waited his turn and when it came sucked the warm liquid in gratefully, overcoming the disgust that most Romans felt for milk in its natural form. He felt it filling his stomach and realised that he hadn’t eaten since the midday break the day before.
‘If they’re bothering to feed us they can’t be planning on killing us immediately,’ Corbulo observed. His hair was matted with dried blood and his right eye swollen and dark blue.
‘We kill you when we ready,’ the Thracian growled in broken Latin as he secured the cage’s gate.
‘What charming hosts,’ Magnus muttered. The Thracian glared at him and then walked off, leaving three others, armed with spears, to guard them.
‘Tell your man not to antagonise them, Tribune,’ Corbulo hissed. ‘If we’re to keep our strength for an escape, we would do well to avoid a beating.’
Vespasian looked at Magnus who nodded and gave a half-smile.
‘The men must be exhausted,’ Faustus said, looking over Vespasian’s shoulder. Vespasian swivelled round. Half a mile away, on the north bank of the river, the first and second cohorts stood formed up, with the cavalry on either flank. The baggage was corralled a little way behind them.
‘Good man, Gallus, he didn’t panic,’ Corbulo said. ‘The Thracians won’t dare to cross now, they’ll have to withdraw unless they want to sit here and live off roots and berries.’
‘And with our archers keeping them away from the river they’ll run out of water in a day or so,’ Faustus pointed out.
On the slope leading down to the river parties of Thracians moved around collecting their dead, piling them up in a huge mound laced with wood. The Romans were left to rot in the sun.
‘Bastards!’ Faustus spat. ‘Leaving our lads like that. It’s bad enough them not having a coin to pay the ferryman.’
‘I think we would have done the same, centurion,’ Corbulo said.
‘Besides, they have different gods to us,’ Magnus said. ‘I wouldn’t like to end up in the Thracian version of Hades, would you?’
‘Especially not speaking the language,’ Vespasian quipped.
They all turned and looked at him; he sat straight-faced with a twinkle in his eye. Even Corbulo, for all his aristocratic seriousness, could not resist laughing.
As the morning wore on the upper slopes were cleared and the Thracians had to venture closer to the river, where a line of mangled bodies marked the position of yesterday’s final battle by the ropes. The retrieval party came forward waving a branch as a sign of truce. They got to within thirty paces of the bank when a volley from the archers, on the far side, thumped into them. A dozen went down, feathered with shafts; their screams could be heard all the way up the hill. The rest scampered to safety, a couple with arrows protruding from their shoulders.
‘That’s going to piss them off,’ Magnus said.
Corbulo looked pleased. ‘Good. They can’t expect to collect their dead under truce but leave ours: that is not how it works.’
‘Fucking savages!’ Faustus opined.
From another part of the camp, fifty paces to their right, voices were raised; a heated argument had broken out. A tall, grey-haired Thracian with a long, forked beard that came almost down to his round belly was remonstrating with a smaller, weasel-faced man with a shaven head. A young man, in his early twenties, sat between them on a folding stool. He listened with a calm air of authority to the altercation as tempers rose, never once looking at the protagonists, always keeping his eyes on the line of dead by the river. Weasel-face shrieked at the older man, dipped his hand into a bag that hung from his shoulder, pulled out a human head and brandished it in his opponent’s face. This apparently settled the argument one way or another in the young man’s mind; he stood up and issued a series of orders to some waiting warriors, who rushed off to do his bidding.