Saviour of Rome [Gaius Valerius Verrens 7] (15 page)

As he climbed, Serpentius was constantly aware of the rising volume of the hounds’ cries. He knew the type of dogs the mine overseers used to hunt down escapers: big rangy beasts, long of leg and deep of chest, bred to bring down deer and boar and see off wolves. They’d been trained to hate men in rags and to follow the scent of fear. If their handlers were slow to reach them they could tear a man apart. He registered the moment they lost the scent downstream, soon confirmed by the shouts of the hunters.

‘Stay,’ he hissed to Placido, the man behind him. He dropped to a crouch and the others followed suit. The moment the hunters recrossed the river would be the most dangerous, when they were looking directly towards the mountain and had time to allow their eyes to drift upwards. Better to stay still and avoid the chance of making a noise that would attract attention. A single rolling pebble would be the death of them all.

They waited, frozen in place while the hunters and their dogs climbed the near bank in the shadow of the big boulder, followed by a half century of what looked like auxiliary infantry. The dogs found the scent again almost instantly and set off on the false trail Serpentius had created, only to lose it just as quickly. He heard the hunters curse and risked a glance as they huddled together to discuss whether to carry on or cross the river again. The officer in charge of the soldiers harangued the men for a decision and soon they were climbing down the bank and recrossing the rushing waters. Serpentius could almost feel the relief in the men around him, but he knew this was only a temporary reprieve. Eventually the hunters would work out what they’d done and they’d soon discover the path. He waited until the sound of the hounds faded before rising and setting off again, shoulders hunched against the slope.

Serpentius allowed them a short rest when they reached the top and shared out the food they’d found on the bodies of the guards. As he chewed on the hard bread he felt a rare moment of uncertainty. He knew where he wanted to go but not what he’d do when he arrived.

The other problem was getting there.

The full moon provided a certain amount of visibility and confirmed his memories of the place. From here the mountain rose in a series of boulder- and scree-strewn slopes and false crests, broken ground carpeted in scrubby trees. Treacherous terrain even in daylight. These were Serpentius’s mountains, but he knew the dangers of travelling by night.

Should he risk waiting for dawn and the certainty of reaching his destination, or forge ahead and risk losing more men?

He let his eyes drift over them. Clitus he could depend on up to a point, and Placido and possibly one or two others. The rest were too weak or too beaten by their captivity to be of help in a fight. He could survive alone in these hills, so it was obvious: wait till they fell asleep then slip away and let them live or die on their wits. Wasn’t that the way it had always been? The strong survived and the weak perished.

The old Serpentius would have abandoned them without a thought and with a sneer at their weakness. But he wasn’t the old Serpentius. When he’d whispered his plans in the eternal darkness of the deep mine they’d placed their faith in him. True, some hadn’t acted when they should have, but in battle it was always that way. Valerius would never have considered leaving them. Responsibility, that was it. Valerius had always taken responsibility for the men under his command, whether they deserved it or not. It had been like that at Bedriacum, where he could have left the First Adiutrix to their fate, and at Cremona the year after when he’d led the suicidal charge that had saved the Seventh Galbiana.

‘We’ll rest here for the night and continue at dawn,’ he whispered to Clitus. He saw the exhausted man’s eyes roll in relief. ‘I’ll take the first watch, you take the second. I’ll wake you when the moon is above the highest tree.’

‘Yes, lord,’ the other man whispered, his eyes already closing.

In the moonlit gloom Serpentius smiled. Slave, freedman and now lord. If he lived it couldn’t be too long before he became Emperor. If he lived.

As he sat with his back to a stunted tree his nostrils detected a scent of pine that took him back to his youth. A girl. What had her name been? His hand went to the depression on the back of his skull. He’d had difficulty remembering things since it happened, but at least the ghost moments when he wasn’t certain whether he was dead or alive had stopped. A girl. With hair the colour of a raven’s wing and eyes that flashed like fire. Hard breasts that pressed into him when he kissed her under the pines and that glistened with droplets when they swam naked in the river. She’d been a year older and she’d taken him as her own, flaunting him like a trophy of her womanhood. It couldn’t last, of course. They’d been too strong-willed. Like iron and flint striking together they’d created sparks. She’d come at him with a knife one day and that had been that. He grinned, but the grin quickly faded at the sound of the dogs returning below.

He shook Clitus by the shoulder. ‘Change of plan. Wake the others.’

One of them wouldn’t wake. Celer, an older man who’d been in the mine longer than most. Serpentius had been surprised he’d lasted this long. Clitus shook the sleeping man, but he didn’t move. ‘I think he’s dead.’

Closer inspection proved Clitus was right. Celer hadn’t been ill or any more exhausted than the rest of them. He’d just given up. The life force that sustained him had faded and died. There was no way to bury him in the rocky ground. And no time.

Because they were coming.

Serpentius struggled to maintain a straight course as they stumbled through the darkness, but it was near impossible among the rocks and the brush and the scrub pine. The best he could do was work his way in the general direction with low branches whipping his face and viciously hooked brambles tearing at his bare legs. His injured feet burned like balls of fire and had started bleeding again. The moonlight created
random patches of dark and light beneath the trees that made it difficult to read the ground. He stepped into one dark area and felt himself pitch forward, nothing but air beneath his foot. A bolt of terror shot through him as he realized what it was. Careless fool. One mistake and it is your last. He was already greeting the gods when a hand grabbed the rear of his tunic and hauled him back to the brink, where he stood for a long moment on shaking legs.

‘Vertical mine,’ Clitus said. ‘Probably worked out before the Romans came, or maybe it was just a test pit.’

‘Either way it was almost my tomb,’ Serpentius said breathlessly. ‘You have my thanks, Clitus, and some day I will repay this debt if I can.’

‘There is no debt,’ the other man said solemnly. ‘But for you we would still have been down the mine. At least if we die here, we do so in the clean air and not lying in our own filth in that choking pit. Wherever you lead I will follow. The others feel the same.’

Serpentius felt a moment of shame that he’d considered abandoning these men. ‘Warn the rest about the pit,’ he said gruffly. ‘And tell them to watch their feet. It may not be the only one.’

Dawn found them on a ridge line and when he studied the shapes of the mountains around them Serpentius discovered to his relief he was less than a mile off course. As he pushed on through the dense scrub a flare of excitement rose in him. They were going to do it.

As he pulled aside a branch to enter a sunlit clearing he became instantly aware of another presence. A bearded soldier leaned on his spear less than four feet away. An auxiliary caught half asleep, but already bringing his spear up to meet the unexpected threat. Serpentius, the former gladiator, drew his sword in a single lightning movement and swung it backhanded across the man’s throat, cutting through beard, flesh and sinew until the edge grated off the bone of his spine. A spray of blood misted the air and the auxiliary’s head flopped forward as he dropped like a stone.

Serpentius spun at the sound of a new threat from behind, the bloody sword raised and ready to strike. The blade froze an inch from Clitus’s
neck. ‘Get back,’ Serpentius hissed. ‘He was a sentry and his friends will find him soon enough.’

How had they managed to work their way in front of him? How many were there? Whatever the answers he cursed himself for allowing his companions to stop and rest. The soldiers must have found another track into the hills. That didn’t matter now. All that mattered was that they were here. He led his ragged comrades in a wide arc away from the auxiliary encampment. When they were well clear he increased his pace to a trot and called Clitus up beside him.

‘We’ll soon reach a narrow gorge with a single bridge. It’s a rickety thing, just planks and rope, but it’ll get us across. Once we’re over we’ll cut the ropes.’

‘What if they’re already across?’

‘Always the cheerful one, Clitus,’ Serpentius grinned. ‘In that case the gods have forsaken us and we’re already dead.’

‘Back there,’ Clitus wheezed. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it. He saw you and he was dead. I wasn’t even certain you’d moved until I saw the blood. How …?’

‘I’ve spent a lifetime killing people, my friend. I know a thousand different ways and if we get out of this alive I might even teach you a few.’

Soon they broke out of the trees into the open and a barren area of flat, dusty ground. Serpentius could see the dark line of the gorge a quarter of a mile ahead. A pair of upright posts marked the position of the bridge. The Spaniard angled his run towards them with the others staggering behind, their weakened frames already blown by the short run.

Something wasn’t right. He could see the posts on the near side of the gorge, but not on the far one. His blood went cold as they reached the ravine and he understood why.

The bridge was gone.

Or, as it turned out, not gone. What remained hung by the anchor ropes from their side of the gorge. Serpentius looked over the edge and his head spun at the sight of the sheer drop to a foaming stream far below where the jagged rocks stood out like fangs. No question of climbing down. They could keep running east, but he could already hear the spine-chilling howl of the dogs. It was only a matter of time before their pursuers hunted them down.

His companions slumped on the ground in despair, but Serpentius continued to study the chasm. The far side and safety were so tantalizingly close. He tried to imagine a horse leaping the void, but each time it ended up smashed to red ruin on the rocks below. Serpentius reckoned the gap at something like seven paces, maybe a little more. Say twenty-one or -two feet as the Romans measured it. He’d seen acrobats in the arena make some prodigious leaps, but this far? Yet the more he considered it, the more it became the only option. And if, given wings by the gods, he made the jump, what then? Clitus might be persuaded to try, but none of the others had a hope. Look at them, already beaten. Dead men, but for the formalities and the pain that would precede it.

He looked down past the shattered remnant of the bridge. Did he even have the courage in the first place? A strand of fluttering rope
caught his attention and new hope flared within his breast. ‘Clitus?’ he barked. ‘Get Felix and Gentilis and haul the bridge up here. I’ll need as much rope as you can salvage from it.’

Clitus just looked at him. Serpentius stamped across to where he lay and hauled him to his feet by the front of his tunic. ‘Do you want to die?’ he snarled into the other man’s face. ‘You and you, help him.’

They did as he ordered and Serpentius untied his sword belt and stripped off his tunic to leave himself naked.

‘You’re mad,’ Placido whispered as he realized what Serpentius intended. ‘No man can jump that.’

‘It can be done,’ Serpentius assured him, studying the chasm again and thinking Placido was probably right. ‘The alternative is to sit here until the dogs find us and then cut each other’s throats.’

‘But even if you get across, what then?’

‘You’ll see.’ The sound of snapping wood signalled that Clitus and his helpers were breaking up the bridge. ‘Get me enough sound rope to cross the gap and back,’ he called. A sudden increase in the dogs’ howling made them all stare at the trees. ‘Quickly!’

Within moments Clitus approached with a coil of rope. It looked old and frayed, but it seemed strong enough. Serpentius tested the strands and nodded. He tied one end round his waist, knotted it firmly and tossed the other end to Clitus. ‘Put three good men on that and for Fortuna’s sake don’t let go. If I end up on those rocks I’ll make a special trip back from Hades to strangle you with your own guts. The rest of you bastards,’ he spat at the men still lying on the ground, ‘get off your arses and pick up a sword. If the dogs get here before the auxiliaries you’ll have a chance of fighting them off.’

Serpentius turned and walked to the edge of the gorge counting his paces and testing the ground with every step. His last pace brought him perhaps a foot short of the edge. With infinite care he retraced his steps and repeated the exercise, trying to still the pounding of his heart and deafen his ears to the increasingly loud barking from not so very far away.

He retreated for the last time and stared at the yawning gap that
seemed to get wider every time he looked at it. His whole being concentrated on the far edge of the narrowest point. It was only seven paces wide. Surely a man could leap that far? He took a deep breath. Only one way to find out.

With a roar of defiance Serpentius threw himself towards the gorge, arms pumping and his pace increasing with every stride. The drag effect of the rope surprised him, but it was too late to worry about that now. He willed every ounce of strength into his legs, bounding towards the precipice at a furious, breakneck speed. Three paces. Two. One. The Spaniard used the last step to catapult himself up and out, soaring across the gap. He kept his eyes fixed on the far edge where a low bush marked his landing point, but already he could feel the drop pulling at him. His heart froze at the knowledge he’d miscalculated. The roar of defiance turned into a scream of frustration. He’d hoped to touch down with a foot to spare. Instead, he was a foot short. His knees, braced for the landing, crashed into the crumbling rock and his chest slammed against the lip of the gorge. At the very last second he’d pushed his arms forward and as his weight began to pull him down he scrabbled for a hold. He clawed with his fingers at the rock-hard ground. A sear of agony as a nail tore away. Then his left hand felt something solid beneath it. A tree root. Slim and narrow, but strong enough to arrest his momentum for a heartbeat. It was all Serpentius needed. He managed to get both hands to it and used the purchase to flip himself sideways, throwing one knee on to solid ground. A moment of agony as he hung there between this world and the next, before, by sheer strength of will, he managed to transfer his weight on to the welcoming earth.