Simon Scarrow - The Gladiator

As the tail of the column began to emerge from the city gate, Cato saw Sempronius pass through the small side arch and stride towards him.

Cato saluted.' Good morning, sir. Come to see us off?'

Sempronius reached up and took Cato's hand.' The gods protect you, Cato, and Julia and Macro.'

Cato nodded. 'I'll do whatever I can to bring them back.'

'I know you will.' Sempronius released his hand and stepped back a few paces as Cato tugged gently on the reins and dug his heels in, trotting the horse along the line of the auxiliary troops, burdened down by their marching yokes as they headed into the dust stirred up by those ahead of them in the column.

It took two days of hard marching to reach the hill town of Lyttus.

The walls had been shaken to pieces by the earthquake and the rebels had pillaged the town and put most of the survivors to the sword. A handful of old men, women and children wandered through the ruins with numbed expressions. Cato gave orders for them to be fed and detailed a century to escort them back to Gortyna. Then, as the men made a makeshift marching camp out of the rubble from the walls, and settled for the night, Cato joined Fulvius and his staff in the small temple to Athe na that had survived intact in one corner of the forum. One of the clerks was already lighting the oil lamps and distributing them to his colleagues as they sat cross-legged on the floor ready to carry out the usual compilation of strength returns and ration consumption. While Fulvius signed off each of the completed records, Cato began to read through the daily reports from the scouts that Sempronius had sent to follow the rebel army. They confirmed that Ajax was still heading east, towards Olous. Cato nodded with satisfaction. By now the rebel army would have reached the sea, and walked into a trap of its own making. It was hard to believe that Ajax could make such mistake, and for a moment Cato felt a sudden anxious doubt. There had to be something he had missed. Some reason to explain the gladiator's apparent foolishness.

Once he had finished, Cato was about to bid good night to Fulvius when there was a clatter of hooves in the forum outside the temple. One of the headquarters guards shouted a challenge as Cato looked round. A moment later a scout came running in through the entrance. He glanced round until he saw Cato in his red cloak, then hurried over and saluted.

'Beg to report, sir, I have an urgent message from my decurion.'

'He's already reported today'

'Yes, sir. That was before we moved on a little further to camp where we could overlook the rebel army at Olous.'

'Well?'

'Sir, the bay's full of cargo ships. Big ships, sir. Most of ' em are damaged. Broken masts and suchlike. Some of them were beached, being repaired it looked like.'

Cato frowned. Where on earth could the rebels have secured so many ships? A fleet of cargo ships from the sound of things. It suddenly struck him that there was only one such fleet on the seas of the eastern Mediterranean at the moment, and he chewed his lip briefly before he asked,'Did you see any kind of identification on the ships?'

'Yes, sir. We did. There was a purple pennant flying from the top of each mast.'

Cato took a sharp breath and glanced at Fulvius. 'You heard?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Then you know what it means.' Cato felt a sudden chill of apprehension. 'Ajax has captured the grain fleet.'

'If it's true, then what in Hades is it doing in that bay?' asked Fulvius. 'They should be well on the way to Ostia by now '

'It was that storm,' Cato explained. 'It struck a few days after the grain fleet left. Must have blown them far off their normal route, probably wrecking some and damaging the rest. They must have put into the bay for repairs.'

Fulvius clicked his fingers. 'That's why they abandoned the siege!

Ajax must have got news that the grain fleet had been forced to make for the bay'

Cato nodded. 'And now he's got his hands on the food supply of Rome. You can be sure that if we don't do what he says, he'll destroy the fleet and all the grain. If that happens, a month from now the mob are going to be tearing Rome to pieces.'

THE BAY AT OLOUS

ROMAN

CAMP

Macro stared out through the bars, down the slope of the hill into the bay. It was late in the morning and sunlight streamed through the bars of the cage, casting stark shadows across the grim interior. Around them the slaves settled into their new camp, which sprawled across the slopes of the hills. Ajax had chosen to have his tents erected on the narrow rocky peninsula that shielded the bay from the open sea. The men of his war band, together with their women and children, were camped around him in a rough circle, and Macro could see no way to escape from the camp, even if he and Julia could get out of the cage. Thanks to their filthy state they would instantly attract attention and would be quickly hunted down and recaptured the moment the alarm was raised.

Down in the bay, he could see the rebels hastily setting up defences around those ships that had been beached. A crude palisade was under construction a short distance inland, with towers at regular intervals. The crews of the grain ships, and the small marine contingents that had been put aboard to protect them from pirates, were being held in a stockade in the heart of the main camp. The ships themselves were now under close guard by the rebels. The most heavily damaged by the storm were beached, while the rest were rafted together and lay at anchor out in the bay. Ajax was taking no chances with his precious prizes, with good reason.

Turning his head, Macro could glimpse the sea between two of the tents that comprised the rebel leader's headquarters. The unmistakable lines of three Roman warships lay hove to a mile from shore. That was something at least, he mused. Ajax might have captured the grain fleet, but he would not be able to use the ships to escape the island.

Macro's gaze flickered to Julia as she leaned into the opposite corner of the cage. Her head hung forward and was shrouded by the matted hair that hung down across her shoulders.

'You awake?' Macro asked softly. 'Julia?'

She looked up slowly, and he could see from the glistening streaks over the grime on her face that she had been crying again. She swallowed and licked her lips.

'I'm thirsty,' she croaked.

'Me too.'

They were given water at dawn, noon and dusk, along with a greasy thin gruel. It had been that way since they had been put into the cage, and each day of the march since the rebel army had suddenly quit the siege of Gortyna. Ajax had ordered that his prisoners be fed on the same diet that had been provided to slaves on the farming estates. At the appointed time the same old crone and a burly member of the rebel leader's bodyguard came to the cage to feed them. The routine was always the same. The man would order them to shuffle to the back of the cage before unlocking the door to admit the old woman. She quickly set down two battered copper pots with ladles, gruel in one, water in the other, and then retreated from the cage. On the first day even Macro's iron stomach revolted at the terrible smell of the stew of rancid gristle, fat and barley. But hunger had a way of making things palatable, and he soon grew to savour the small quantity of food that he was allowed. The water be came increasingly precious as well, and the heat during the day was a torment of dry throat, leathery tongue and cracked lips.

The conditions of their imprisonment were made immeasurably worse by the lack of any arrangements for their sanitation and they had to live with the stench of their own filth. It had been bad enough for Macro to be stripped of all his clothes in front of Julia, and to have to live under such conditions, but Julia had never suffered any indignity like this, nor even imagined such an intolerable existence.