The Sword of Revenge (30 page)

‘There are women and children here. If we’re shepherding them they don’t have to move too quickly to catch us.’

Gadoric hauled the horse’s head round to face the boy. ‘What if I say we should stay and fight?’

Aquila looked meaningfully back towards the settlement, even though it was well out of sight. ‘I’d reply that your ordeal has turned your wits.’

‘It’s not just us, Aquila. There are other runaways in these mountains. If we could gather them all together…’

‘Is this Hypolitas’s idea too?’

Gadoric smiled as he nodded slowly. ‘You always did have a brain, but think on this. If we run away, what do we gain? Tyrtaeus and his dependants swap one barren valley for another. They’re not hunters or fighters and this soil won’t support them. In time they’ll either die or be forced to give themselves up. Us, do we settle down and try to
farm this landscape? I’m no farmer, nor is Hypolitas and what about you?’

‘If we could get back to the mainland…’

It was a thought Aquila had been nursing ever since they had arrived, one that he had kept to himself until now. Regardless of what little remained there, it represented home.

‘Perhaps you could do that. I have no desire to set foot in Italy ever again.’

‘There are other places, Gadoric.’

‘What do I do? Present myself, a branded slave, to some ship’s captain and request passage?’ They both knew that for a runaway slave, that was no option. He would be lucky to be put back to work in the fields, a death at the oar of a galley being the more likely fate. The ex-shepherd continued earnestly. ‘Aquila, you are a free-born Roman. I was free-born once and so was Hypolitas. We want to be free again.’

Aquila opened his mouth to speak, but there were no words to say, so he dropped his chin onto his chest in an embarrassed silence. Gadoric could never be free in Roman territory, unless Barbinus gave it to him, plainly an impossible prospect. He knew the older man was looking at him with that one bright blue eye, as if waiting for him to draw an obvious conclusion.

‘There is a way, boy,’ he said encouragingly.

‘Against Rome?’

‘Talk to Hypolitas. He has the power to see into the future. Last night, as we talked, he told me of his vision. Of a slave army to make Rome tremble…’

Aquila did not know what made him grab his charm as he answered, but he did, and somehow it gave him the confidence he needed to contest such a wild claim. ‘You trust visions?’

‘With my life,’ replied Gadoric, unaware that the boy was also addressing the question to himself. His face registered a slight degree of shock that anyone should even suggest the opposite. ‘How else would the Gods talk to us?’

‘Do they talk to us?’

‘The day you came upon us, Aquila, tied to those stakes, Hypolitas said that you would come.’

The grip on the charm tightened. ‘Me?’

‘Not you, but he spoke of rescue. I thought it to be the words of a man in despair, yet before the sun went down, I looked up to see you. After such a thing, how can I doubt him?’

‘You may be right, Gadoric. Perhaps the Gods do speak to us, only I wonder if they always tell the truth.’

‘They talk in riddles, Aquila, but men like Hypolitas can see the true meaning.’

‘Always?’

Gadoric smiled. ‘Not always, otherwise he would have known we were to be betrayed.’

‘And if he’s wrong again?’

‘He will tell you what I would. That for us, it is better to die than be a slave.’

‘If you fight Rome you will most certainly die.’

Gadoric laughed, just as he used to when they had hunted in the woods together at home. ‘We might win.’

Aquila threw back his head and laughed too, but his was not the laughter of mirth, more a hoot of derision. ‘I was right, your ordeal has turned your wits.’

There was something about Hypolitas that made disagreement near-impossible. It was easy, out of his presence, to say he was a dreamer and quite possibly, with his spells and potions, a charlatan, but once he started talking he reduced everything to such simple ideas that the difficulties inherent in the solution seemed diminished as well.

‘There are ten times as many slaves on the island as Romans.’

‘The locals,’ said Tyrtaeus.

‘Hate them as much as we do!’

Aquila cut in. ‘They won’t fight Rome. They can’t!’

‘We don’t want them to fight. We want them to stand aside.’

The voice was low and compelling, the eyes large and unblinking. His head was bald through nature,
not because, as Aquila first supposed, he had been shaved. The large nose and prominent chin dominated the elongated face and his hands, with long bony fingers, never still, seemed to weave a spell as he talked. Aquila had discovered that he hailed from Palmyra in Syria, without having the faintest notion of where the place was.

‘These hills are full of men, all runaways and all in small groups, easily destroyed. I have looked into the future. I see them combined.’

‘With or without arms?’

Hypolitas ignored Aquila’s sceptical tone. ‘They can be made, or even better, stolen and these men trained to use them. Likewise food to sustain them. The farms are full of it and instead of sitting still waiting to be attacked piecemeal, what if we take the offensive?’ The fingers darted about as though the entire island was set out on the hard-packed earth of the hut. ‘First here, then there, striking by day and night, never still, always on the move from one side of the mountains to the other, with every slave we free another soldier in the fight.’

‘Rome won’t sit still,’ said Aquila, leaning forward to make his point. ‘You’ll face an army one day.’

The eyes gleamed, the fingers joined together in front of them. ‘We will be an army one day.’

His hand shot out, catching hold of the golden eagle that swung loose. ‘There is power here, I can
feel it. Perhaps one day, Aquila, I will ask the spirits to tell me where this came from, for I can see the past as well as the future.’ 

‘You believe he’s mad?’ Aquila nodded, as Gadoric put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. ‘Yet you will go along with him.’

‘You say you have no future, Gadoric, only that of a slave. Neither have I. I’m not a free-born Roman any more. I was outside the law from the day I freed you.’

‘So you will join Hypolitas and me?’

Aquila turned and faced his friend, his heart heavy. ‘There is one thing I must say to you, something you must pass on to Hypolitas. You cannot win, but I will join you, even if I am a Roman.’

‘The reason?’

He had thought long and hard, feeling for the first time like a fully grown man who had to make his own decisions. The process and the conclusion were equally uncomfortable and he knew the words he wanted to say, just as he knew he would never say them. How could he tell Gadoric he loved him; that he was the only family he had. For all he had discovered and witnessed he could not condemn Flaccus and his mercenaries, nor Rome. He looked at Gadoric closely. The Celt probably thought his sole interest was a hope that Hypolitas spoke the
truth; that he could, with his spells and incantations, see into the past as well as the future; that one day, he would put Aquila on the path to finding his true parents.

Then there was Phoebe, still a slave and in the hands of a man who had become his enemy. He could not admit that he missed her company, feeling that his friend would laugh at him. Deep down, he knew it had something to do with his own destiny, without being absolutely sure what that destiny was. Those words he could not say, even if Gadoric, with his faith in the Gods, would swallow it whole, so he gave an answer that would satisfy the Celt without enlightening him.

‘Ever since you first taught me to cast a spear, it seems everything I’ve done has been designed to train me for war.’ He looked straight into the single, blue, unblinking eye. ‘Would you believe me when I say that I cannot resist a fight?’

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Flaccus, when he woke, was still very drunk; he had been since his return from Messana, able to recall every word of the bawling out he had received, a tongue-lashing his employer had chosen to deliver before the entire group of overseers, so adding humiliation to the brew. No one had addressed him like that since he was a common ranker and because Barbinus had it in his power to dismiss him from this farm, to throw him back to a life of relative privation, he had had to stand still and swallow it whole. His grovelling apology, plus his vow to kill Aquila, had stemmed the tide of abuse as well as removing the threat to his prosperity.

The retching sound outside his window made him even angrier, realising it had been that noise which had woken him. The old centurion pulled himself off his cot and staggered to the window, yelling abuse at the culprit. As his head came out
into the cool morning air, Phoebe spun round to look at him, her hand automatically going to her lips to wipe off the last of her vomit. To Flaccus, her face was like a red rag to a bull.

‘You,’ he growled.

‘I’m sorry, master,’ replied Phoebe quickly. The girl had done everything in her power to stay out of the way since Flaccus had returned alone. She was unsure what had happened, but since he had sent all his mercenaries out, yelling orders at them to find and kill her man, there was little doubt that Aquila would not be coming back. She tried to walk away, but a sharp word from Flaccus halted her.

‘Get in here, girl. I want a word with you.’

He was talking to himself when she entered his room, growling under his breath about betrayal, his hand rubbing furiously at his groin. Phoebe stood before him, meekly, hoping by her attitude to dent his temper. That failed; Flaccus suddenly shot out a hand and grabbed her hair and she squealed painfully as he pulled on it, forcing her to her knees, then bending her head back so that she was forced to look up at him.

‘Do you know what that boy has done, girl, do you?’ His breath stank of sour wine and his spit was cold by the time it landed on her face. ‘He’s betrayed me, that’s what. Betrayed the man who saved him.’

‘Please?’

The weak, plaintive word did nothing to calm Flaccus. If anything it inflamed him. ‘Please, girl. That’s what you did. You pleasured the ungrateful brat at my expense and he was soft on you, too.’

Flaccus pulled her head into his groin, forcing her face against his sweaty leather small clothes. ‘There’s a price to pay girl and since your hero ain’t here to cough up, maybe you’ll have to do so in his place. Happen I should get my lads to take it out on you, mount you till you bleed. Then maybe young Aquila will ride in to the rescue.’

Having pulled down his breeches, the overseer was pulling her head back and forth across his groin, but he had been drinking for days, and no amount of concentration, or vivid imaginings, could help him. Even if she had been willing, the effect of the wine robbed him of the ability to do what he wanted and take out his anger on this young girl’s body. Suddenly he stopped, as he remembered that she had woken him by being sick outside his window and he pulled her head back again, so he could see her tear-stained face.

‘You’re expectin’, ain’t you?’ Flaccus still had a tight grip on her hair, so she nodded with some difficulty. ‘Must be Aquila’s. You ain’t been near anyone else for months now.’

The terror in the girl’s eyes made him laugh, a horrible sound that made her start to shake with fear, but he stopped laughing. In Flaccus’s drunken
imagination, he was back in that mountain ravine with an arrow aimed right at his heart. Aquila could have, and should have, killed him. The old centurion was well aware how good he was, had seen him take Toger with a spear. He knew that had the boy fired right away he could not have missed, but Aquila had hesitated, then aimed for someone else, deliberately sparing Flaccus’s life.

‘It’s hard to kill someone like that,’ he muttered, gazing out of the window at the sky, releasing the girl’s hair as he spoke, so she fell in a heap at his feet. Phoebe said nothing, not knowing what he was talking about. ‘The Gods could blight a man for such an act.’

Flaccus looked down at her again. ‘I must kill him, girl. He made me look a fool, but I can spare his brat, trade one life for another, which will appease the Gods.’

Phoebe did not give Flaccus a chance to change his mind; she left as soon as she had gathered her few possessions together, clutching the old centurion’s instructions to the slave vendor in Messana to take her as a trade-in for a pair of field hands. Flaccus watched her go, then emptied the contents of his goblet, which had stood by his side throughout the night, onto the black earth.

‘No more time for drinking,’ he said to himself. ‘There’s money to be earned.’