Robert Fabbri: False God of Rome

‘Release,’ the decurion yelled with fifty paces to go.

More than thirty javelins hurtled towards the oncoming camelry, quickly followed by a second volley as the troopers endeavoured to cause as much damage as possible with their primary weapons. Scores of iron-tipped shafts slammed into the Marmaridae punching through the chests and heads of men with bursts of blood or burying themselves deep into their mounts, crashing them to the ground in a cacophony of guttural, animal bellowing.

Whipping long, straight swords from their scabbards and screaming death from behind their cloth face masks, the seven survivors of the onslaught, black cloaks billowing out behind them, thundered into the turma as they drew their spathae.

The strong, unfamiliar smell of the camels caused the riderless horse next to Vespasian to shy abruptly to the left; it crunched into his mount’s withers as a shimmer of burnished iron flashed down towards him. Agonised by the pain of the blow, his horse raised its head, whinnying madly, and took the vicious sword cut, aimed at Vespasian’s neck, in the throat. Blood sprayed over Vespasian’s face as he brought his spatha down, severing the sword arm of his adversary who howled as his camel crashed into the now side-on riderless horse. Both beasts and the one-armed tribesman, blood spewing from his freshly hewn stump, plunged to the ground with a cracking of bones and bestial roars of anguish.

With the severed hand still gripping the sword embedded in its throat, Vespasian’s horse galloped on for five paces and then crashed onto the desert floor. Vespasian hurled himself forward so as not to be crushed beneath the dead weight of his erstwhile mount and tumbled across the rough ground. Jarring to a halt he looked back and immediately leapt to his left, narrowly avoiding being trampled under the galloping hoofs of a rolling-eyed horse whose blood-spurting, decapitated rider sat firm in the saddle, the muscles in his thighs still gripping his directionless mount.

‘Are you all right, sir?’ Magnus shouted, pulling his horse up next to Vespasian.

‘I think so,’ he replied watching, with a morbid curiosity, the progress of the headless rider; within a few dozen paces the thigh muscles gave out and the body slithered from the saddle, leaving the horse charging off towards the deep-blue horizon.

Looking around, Vespasian counted another couple of riderless horses as the turma pulled up and rallied. The ground was littered with dead camels and their riders but fifty paces away, back towards the outcrop, one camel remained standing; the Marmarides pulled it around to face them, brandished his sword above his head and then charged.

‘He’s got balls, I’ll give him that,’ Magnus commented, jumping from his horse and grabbing his hunting spear. ‘He’s mine, all right, pull back,’ he shouted at the troopers who did as they were ordered, grinning in anticipation of the interesting contest.

Magnus stood four-square to the charging camel, holding his eight-foot-long oaken-shafted spear across his body; the leaf-shaped iron head glinted in the sun. The troopers shouted encouragement at him as the rider closed, screaming the ululating war cry of his people and slapping the flat of his bloodstained sword against his camel’s side to urge it into more speed.

Magnus remained motionless.

An instant before the camel hit him, Magnus dodged to the left, ducking under the wild swipe of the Marmarides’ fearsome sword, and jammed his spear, point first, sideways between the animal’s forelegs. Its right shinbone snapped as it cracked against the solid shaft; its forward motion twisted the spear around and, as Magnus let go, forced it up into the belly of the beast. With a terrified bellow the camel sank onto the spear as its right leg buckled unnaturally beneath it, catapulting its rider from his saddle; its momentum pushed the weapon up through its juddering body, shredding its innards, until it burst through the beast’s back in a shower of gore just above the pelvis. Screeching and snorting violently, the camel thrashed its back legs in a vain attempt to lift itself off the cause of its torment. Magnus grabbed the unconscious Marmarides’ discarded sword and raised it two-handed into the air; with a monumental growl of exertion he sliced the blade down onto the writhing creature’s neck, cleaving through its vertebrae and almost severing its head.

The body convulsed with a violent series of spasms and then went still.

A mass of cheers and whoops went up from the watching troopers.

Vespasian walked over to his friend, shaking his head in mute admiration.

‘I saw a bestiarius deal with a camel like that in the circus,’ Magnus admitted, ‘so I thought that it’d be fun to have a go myself, seeing as they don’t put up much of a fight.’

‘Paetus would have appreciated that,’ Vespasian replied, thinking of his long dead friend, ‘he loved a good wild-beast hunt.’

‘I think I’ve lost my spear, though. I’ll never pull it out of that.’

A moan from behind distracted them and they turned to see the Marmarides stirring.

Vespasian turned the man over. His headdress had fallen off; he was young, no more than twenty, short and wiry, curly-haired with a thin nose and mouth and three strange curved lines tattooed on each of his brown-skinned cheeks. ‘We’d better get him back for questioning; he might have seen Statilius Capella’s party.’

‘If you’re thinking about torturing him, forget it,’ Magnus said, standing over the prostrate man, ‘see if there’s another one alive.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean you’re not going to hurt my property. He’s now mine, I’m going to keep him; I think I won him fairly.’

‘You’re in luck,’ Vespasian said, kicking the recumbent form of Magnus awake as the sun glowed red on the eastern horizon the following morning. ‘I’ve just been to see Corvinus; Aghilas the guide is going to pull through, the arrow was removed from his shoulder without too much loss of blood and he seems to be fine this morning.’

‘Why does that make me lucky?’ Magnus asked groggily, unwilling to come out from under his blanket.

‘Because it means that we won’t have to force your new little friend to show us where the next well is,’ Vespasian replied, looking at the young Marmarides sitting against a rock with his hands bound behind his back. ‘If you want any breakfast you’d better hurry, the turmae are saddling up. We need to get a move on; it’s five more days to Siwa.’

Refilling the water-skins of one hundred and twenty men at the well had taken most of the rest of the day after the skirmish, so they had camped at the outcrop. One of the tribesmen had been found sufficiently alive to be able to confirm through a translator — with the help of the skilled use of one of the trooper’s curved knives — that Capella and a couple of his men had been captured by the Marmaridae; they had been taken to Siwa to await the departure of the next slave caravan bound for the distant city of Garama, seven hundred miles to the southwest.

Grumbling, Magnus roused himself and rummaged in his bag for a strip of dried pork and some semi-stale bread; his new slave looked greedily at the food.

‘I think he’s hungry,’ Vespasian observed, ‘you’d better feed him otherwise you’ll find yourself owning a dead playmate.’

Magnus grunted. ‘Keep your sword handy while I untie him, then.’ He moved over to the Marmarides and manhandled him round to get at the knot. ‘You’d better behave yourself, savvy?’ he hissed in the man’s ear as the rope came loose. Understanding the tone of voice the captive nodded.

Magnus cut a hunk of bread and a slice of pork and handed them to him; taking them gratefully in one hand he touched the other to his forehead while saying something in his own language.