Shadow & Dust Read online

  ‘Where are Phillyrio and Faraxen?’ Given his mission, Capelianus saw no reason for pleasantries.

  ‘Gone, sir.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Two days ago.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘To the west.’

  ‘The west?’

  Verota hesitated. ‘Through the Lesser Lake of Triton.’

  ‘Tomorrow, you will lead me after them.’

  Verota’s eyes flicked away, as if hoping help would emerge from some corner of the dusty yard. ‘I do not know the paths through the marsh, sir.’

  Capelianus looked down at him. ‘Phillyrio and Faraxen know the paths, but you, a fellow officer of the speculatores, do not?’

  ‘The marshes are lethal. Very few know the ways through. The tracks are not marked. One false step and you are sucked down.’

  Capelianus mastered his irritation. He was not going to be played for a fool. ‘You think treason is a game?’

  ‘No, sir.’ Just the sound of the word – maiestas – induced fear.

  ‘You think it is nothing to turn your back on the military oath, to break the Sacramentum?’

  ‘The speculatores did not leave the frontier.’

  ‘A detachment under Faraxen went to Carthage with the traitor Phillyrio. Some of them returned here.’ Capelianus turned to Sabinianus who had the list. ‘Each man step forward as your name is read out.’

  ‘Marcus Aurelius Aban.’ If anything, Sabinianus sounded bored.

  One by one a dozen soldiers stood out of the line.

  ‘The one with the bald head.’

  Capelianus pointed, and two of the troopers who followed him seized the man, disarmed him, and forced him to his knees.

  ‘Sir, I must protest. This is wrong.’ Verota looked close to tears.

  ‘Do I hold imperium?’

  Verota looked at his feet, and said no more.

  ‘By the imperium vested in me by the Senate and People of Rome, I declare this soldier a hostis. As an enemy of Rome, he will be summarily executed.’

  The two troopers forced the man forward. A third drew his blade.

  ‘No!’ The condemned man was pleading.

  It was clumsily done, and took four or five blows to sever the neck. The victim continued to scream until at least the third cut.

  Capelianus spoke again to Verota. ‘The one over there, Marcus Aurelius Aban. I believe that he is your son. Tomorrow, I think he should accompany us, as you guide me through the marshes.’

  V

  The Desert West of the Lesser Lake of Triton,

  Four Days before the Ides of April, AD238

  It had taken time to get through the salt lake. When standing water obscured the tracks, even experienced scouts had to be cautious. Despite all their care, one of the packhorses had skittered sideways off the submerged path. It had taken hours to haul the beast out of the morass. At the end, they were tired and filthy: the ropes, their clothes, everything stinking of stale, salty mud.

  After three days they were back in the desert. Faraxen and Phillyrio, each riding one horse and leading another, travelled slowly not to raise dust. The frontier was at least twenty miles to the north, but they wanted their passing to go unremarked. There were experienced eyes along the frontier; legionaries from the 3rd Augusta, and, ironically, scattered detachments of the speculatores.

  After a day’s travel in the desert, as the sun went down, they made camp in a broad depression. While Phillyrio looked to the horses, Faraxen gathered material for a fire. There were some scattered pale shrubs. Their stalks were dry and tough, and had to be cut with a knife.

  A big storm was building to the north-west. Purple-black clouds were piling up over the distant mountains. There was no sound of thunder, but veins of lightning pulsed in the darkness.

  Faraxen took a small wooden box from his belt, slid back the lid, and took a pinch of the dry moss he carried for kindling. He lit it using the fire steel and stone which also hung on his belt. Once it was alight, he placed the shrubs carefully on top. There were no trees or cliffs above the depression, no surfaces which would reflect the light of the fire.

  Phillyrio returned and sat watching the storm.

  Faraxen heated water to mix with their wine. The nights were cold in the desert.

  ‘What will you do?’ Faraxen broke the silence when he passed the drink.

  ‘Go west until the wall ends. Slip through the frontier somewhere between Ad Medias and Badias. Go north, avoiding the towns. Get to the coast, and try and get a boat sailing to Sardinia out of Chullu or Choba, one of those obscure ports in Mauretania. It is easy to get to Rome from Sardinia.’ Phillyrio spoke without emotion – just one thing after another – he had always been practical.

  ‘You have suffered much for your friends.’

  ‘The Gordiani were my friends,’ Phillyrio said. ‘But it was not just for them. Maximinus is a tyrant. It was for Rome.’

  They both sat, drinking and watching the storm in silence for a time. There would be flash floods from the rain in the mountains. Dry watercourses would boil with rocks. It was odd that outsiders thought it never rained in Africa.

  ‘What will you do?’

  Faraxen did not answer at once. Was Phillyrio still his commanding officer, or just another fugitive? Either way, he did not want to lie to the man, did not want to desert him later.

  ‘I will return to the cousins of my people. There are Mazices living in freedom in the mountains of Mauretania between the provinces of Tingitana and Caesariensis.’

  ‘But you are a Roman, a centurion.’ Phillyrio sounded shocked. ‘You cannot go and live with untamed barbarians.’

  ‘My tribe have long submitted to Rome, but I was a warrior of the Mazices, before I became a Roman.’

  ‘You want to live in poverty?’

  ‘Better poverty with no master than wealth with slavery.’

  ‘Freedom comes from the law.’

  Faraxen did not want to argue with Phillyrio, but he wanted him to understand. ‘Roman law is for the rich, for the cities. Since long before the time of Masinissa, my people pastured our herds on the high slopes of Mount Transcellensis in the heat of summer, and brought them down to the meadows along the Chulimath when the weather grew cold. One year, when I had not long become a man, we were told that we could no longer winter along the river, that grazing was now the property of the citizens of Oppidum Novum. We appealed to the governor of Mauretania Caesariensis. The townsmen had hired an orator. He spoke Latin we did not understand. The governor understood, and he said if we trespassed on the property of the people of Oppidum Novum we would be fined. I was one of many young men who left the tribe at that time.’

  Phillyrio took a drink. ‘The law is not perfect, but without the law there is anarchy.’

  ‘No, your Roman law takes freedom. If a man steals from my herds, and I kill that man, I will be prosecuted. If the relatives of that man have money, and hire an orator, I will be executed.’ Faraxen had spoken heatedly. He did not want to fall out with Phillyrio. Faraxen thought of something else to say. ‘I have noticed it is easier for Germans and other northerners to serve in the Roman army. They are used to swearing sword oaths to obey a warleader. Among the Mazices, we fight or withdraw as our ancestors tell us. We do not follow blindly, but each look to our own honour.’

  ‘Will you have enough to live?’ Phillyrio said.

  ‘I have no wife, no children. I seldom drink, and never gamble. Much of my stipendium I have sent back to my people. I will be received with honour.’

  Phillyrio’s thin face smiled. He patted Faraxen on the shoulder. ‘Then our paths lie together, until we are near the coast.’

  Faraxen got up, and went to make a perimeter of loose stones, which would warn them of any approach while they were sleeping.

  A pinprick of light, very bright in the immense darkness to the east.

  ‘Someone has followed us.’ Phillyrio had appeared at Faraxen’s shoulder.

  ‘I did
not think any of the speculatores would guide Capelianus through the lake,’ Faraxen said.

  ‘Would a scout light a fire under a tree, where the branches would show the light?’ Phillyrio asked.

  Faraxen smiled. ‘Only a scout who wanted to tell us that they are coming.’

  Phillyrio smiled too, in the darkness. ‘We will make an early start.’

  VI

  South of the Frontier,

  The Day before the Ides of April, AD238

  They left before dawn, and travelled through the morning. Most of the time they went at a steady canter that would eat up the miles. At intervals they dismounted, relieved themselves, and then walked, leading the horses.

  When the sun was nearing its zenith, Phillyrio led Faraxen a little out of their way, to the crest of a ridge from where they could look back. In the still air, there was no mistaking the dust: a tall, straight column, perhaps five miles or more behind. Both men knew it was raised by cavalry, dozens of them, moving fast, and riding in column. Their pursuers had no need to spread out. Although there were stretches of bare rock and hardscrabble, the going was mainly sand. Unless a storm got up to cover their tracks, there was no way of losing them. A civilian, one born and bred in a town, could not have missed the trail of the four horses.

  ‘We will leave everything that we do not need,’ Phillyrio said.

  They unloaded the two baggage horses. They threw aside tents, towels and spare blankets, surplus food and wine and oil, books and writing materials, strigils and unguents, replacement weapons, neatly written documents and fulsome awards for courage. Soon all the souvenirs of a lifetime with the standards were scattered on the ground. They unbuckled the army issue packsaddles, added them to the detritus. Talking softly to the horses, they threw blankets over their backs, and secured them with a simple bellyband.

  When the packhorses stood in just bridle and blanket, the men turned to themselves and their mounts. Helmets, mail armour, shields, and anything else inessential hanging from the saddles of the riding horses was abandoned. Faraxen suggested the saddles themselves, but Phillyrio said they had much riding before them, and the horns of a saddle would keep a man who fell asleep from falling.

  They distributed what food and drink, fodder and water they must take, and strapped it tight on the four horses.

  When all was done, again they looked back. The column of dust was appreciably closer.

  Still Phillyrio hesitated. As well as the belt from which hung his sword, he still wore a money belt. The coins were heavy. He very much did not want to leave the gold and silver for Capelianus, and he would need money to buy food on his journey and passage on a boat. He did not unbuckle the money belt.

  They rode hard all afternoon. They seldom spoke. There was nothing to say. Both knew there was no point in turning north, for by now fast messengers would have raised the frontier against them. There were isolated oases to the south, but their pursuers were fastened to their trail, and the settlements were too small to conceal fugitives. They no longer led the horses, but only dismounted to step from one mount to the other. They were Speculatores. It was nothing to them to ride without a saddle.

  When it was dusk, they halted. First they tended to the horses, rubbing them down, checking their feet, watering and feeding them. Then they saw to themselves. They lit no fire, but sat in the dark eating hardtack and cold bacon, drinking a little wine.

  After an hour, they remounted, and rode on at a walk through the blue-white desert night. Phillyrio took his bearings from the stars. Orion had sunk, but the Hyades would shine for another five nights. At first the sky above was clear, but soon over the high ground to the north-west the storm returned. It was much closer this night. The dull boom of thunder was loud. Between searing blazes of lightning the night seemed intensely black. A desert fox – big ears and huge eyes – stood suddenly revealed. The next flash the fennec was gone.

  Riding at night with the storm close at hand, combined with fatigue and the extraordinary, quite likely fatal nature of his position, encouraged unaccustomed reflection in Phillyrio. All his life he had served Rome. Law was the foundation of Rome and the empire, of civilisation and humanitas. Faraxen, centurion or not, was still at heart an uneducated tribesman from the mountains. Yet perhaps he was right. The law was not available to the poor. Only those with the money, and the leisure money bought, could afford to travel to the towns where a governor held his assizes. Unless they hired an orator to plead their case, when they appeared before the governor, they would find they had little in common with the man judging them. As they would fail to follow his rhetorical turns of phrase or his literary references, he would think them little better than barbarians. And how could the law guarantee freedom when the will of the Emperor – any Emperor, a brute like Maximinus or a weakling like Alexander – was the law?

  Yet surely it had to be better than any alternative, better than some oriental despotism, or the savage licence of the northern tribes. The things Phillyrio had done in the service of Rome had to have been in a worthwhile cause. For the things in themselves had not been good. The killings did not worry him over much, although perhaps they should have done. The men he had struck down had been unsuspecting, but they had been traitors, and he had had his orders. The long betrayals weighed more on him. Assigned to a unit or household to watch and inform, to scribble down in little notebooks every unguarded comment, every thing that could be interpreted as some slur on the Emperor. Things had been easier once he had been promoted to command the speculatores. After that, all he had to watch, all he was required to report, were the comings and goings of barbarians, not the thoughts of his fellow Romans.

  In the morning all that was left of the storm were wisps of clouds clinging to the peaks of the mountains.

  The country began to change. Bare slabs of rock jagged up through the sand, and closed off the view. The land here was cut by many dry river beds running down from the Aurasius range. Leading the horses down into these wadis, and clambering out the other side took time. Whenever one could see for some distance behind, Phillyrio would get down, and lie on the ground, listening for the vibration of horses hooves, trying to skyline their riders.

  In the afternoon, when they were crossing a flat saltpan, there was no further need for fieldcraft to divine the presence of their hunters. Not more than a mile behind, a thin black frieze of horsemen stretched across the white glare.

  Phillyrio and Faraxen shook their reins, dug in their heels, and drove their horses into a gallop.

  Behind them came cries, as if the Furies had breached the borders of the underworld.

  Off the saltpan, and back into the broken country, they raced. Leaning forward over the neck of their mounts, letting them choose their way. No time to study the ground. One loose rock, the hole of one jerboa, and it would be the end. Man and horse crashing to the unforgiving ground.

  Up ahead, from out of sight – even above the rattle and clatter of the gallop – came a deep rumbling, like an earthquake.

  Phillyrio risked a glance behind. The leading troopers – auxiliaries by the look of them – were gaining. They must be driving their horses into the ground.

  ‘Whoa!’

  Faraxen was grabbing at the reins of Phillyrio’s mount, hauling his own to a halt.

  This wadi was not dry. It was full, fuming with water and rocks scoured down from the mountains. It was too wide to jump, and too fast and choked with debris to swim.

  They stood for a moment at a loss. The flanks of their horses heaving. No way around. The flash flood came from the Aurasius in the north. No telling how far it ran into the desert to the south. They would be hunted down before they found out.

  ‘It has been an honour to serve under you.’ Faraxen smiled. His teeth were very white, or his face had darkened with dirt or the sun.

  ‘And with you.’ Phillyrio reached out and clasped his hand.

  A high, triumphant yell told they had been sighted.

  ‘Given the alternative,�
�� Phillyrio said, ‘we may as well entrust ourselves to the gods.’

  ‘We will do what is ordered, and at every command we will be ready.’

  They turned their mounts away from the river, and trotted back towards the hunters. Then, when they thought they had enough space, they wheeled around again, and kicked straight into a gallop.

  Of course the horses tried to refuse, to run out, but the skill and determination of the riders held them straight.

  For a moment Phillyrio was airborne. Then he was halfway up the horses neck, and the water had them. Desperately he clung to the mane. The horse was swimming, but the water was catching and turning it. Stones were buffeting man and beast. Both went under. Phillyrio lost his grip. He came up, and the sky was spinning. From nearby he heard shouting, his name being called. The weight of his belts pulled him under again. Something moved in the green, churning world of the water. It caught him full in the face. He had time to feel pain, even taste blood, before everything went dark.

  VII

  A Riverbed in the Desert,

  The Day after the Ides of April, AD238

  Capelianus kept his mount to a slow walk and his eyes on the bank. If either man or any of their horses had got out, there would be some mark. Slowly, he moved south.

  It was two days since the fugitives had driven their horses into the flash flood. Capelianus had arrived just in time to see the twisting and thrashing confusion of men and beasts swept away. He thought that he had seen the older – the one they called Phillyrio – go under and not resurface. But he could not be sure.

  For two days the torrent had raged, and Capelianus had fumed on the eastern bank. This morning, as rapidly as it had risen, the level had dropped to no higher than the horses’ hocks. Now – approaching noon – only isolated puddles remained in the shingle bed.

  A movement off to his right, away from the riverbed. Capelianus jerked in the saddle. Heart pounding, he scanned the endless sand and rocks. There could be two desperate, armed men out there. Capelianus only had Sabinianus with him.