Douglas Jackson - Scourge of Rome

A discarded cloak lay nearby. He handed it to her and hauled the near-decapitated giant aside, the dead man’s head flopping like a strangled chicken’s. The girl accepted the garment without a word of thanks, and struggled clear as the weight shifted. She wrapped the cloak around the tattered remnants of her clothing, spat on the man she’d killed and pushed him into the fire with her foot for good measure. His blood sizzled noisily in the glowing embers.

It was only when she tried to stand that it finally hit her. Valerius rushed to stop her toppling to join the man gently roasting on the fire. She was shorter than he’d realized, but the body beneath the cloak was full and well fleshed. Taking her by the shoulders he cursed himself as she flinched away from any contact on a right hand covered in blisters the size of ripening grapes.

‘Thank you,’ she said with enormous dignity before her eyes turned up in their sockets and she slumped into his arms.

At that moment, Valerius’s deliverer emerged from the darkness, leading a saddled mare. Lean as a stockman’s oxhide whip, his brutish features were a patchwork of shadowy planes that made an already frightening face all the more fearsome. Valerius felt a rush of pleasure at the appearance of this savage creature.

‘Seldom has a Spanish horse thief been a more welcome sight,’ he said with mock formality. ‘Serpentius of Avala, I thought you’d be halfway back to that nest of barbarians you call home by now.’

Serpentius spat towards the fire. ‘Do not think you can escape me so easily, Gaius Valerius Verrens. You’re not a hard man to track. I followed a trail of bodies from Achaia to Antioch before I lost you in the hills. I must have been up and down the Orontes road three times before I discovered where you’d crossed. A prudent man does not invade another’s camp by night, but when I heard the scream I knew you’d be around here somewhere.’ He nodded to the woman in Valerius’s arms. ‘You’ve been getting acquainted.’

‘She’s in shock,’ Valerius laid the woman gently on the ground, ‘and her fingers are badly burned. They were torturing her.’

Serpentius studied the woman’s injuries. ‘We should immerse the hand in cold water. Then a loose bandage soaked in olive oil.’ It was more an order than a suggestion, but Valerius remembered how Serpentius had treated his burns after an Egyptian shipwreck and knew better than to argue.

‘I-’

Without warning Serpentius spun round and one of the little Scythian throwing axes he favoured appeared magically in his hand.

‘No!’ Valerius’s shout made the Spaniard freeze a moment before he released the weapon. Ariston stood at the edge of the trees paralysed by fear, staring at the silver glint of death aimed at his heart.

‘I think our journey might take a little longer if you killed our guide,’ Valerius said with heavy irony. ‘Ariston, this is Serpentius, a friend who will be travelling with us.’

Ariston glared at the Spaniard, but his attention was quickly drawn to the near-headless body by the fire. He stalked over to kneel beside the corpse, hesitating before he peeled back the scarf and let out a low whistle. Taking it delicately by the hair he tilted the head so Valerius and the Spaniard could see the unwholesome grey flesh and twisted features, so contorted and swollen by disease as to be rendered almost inhuman.

‘No wonder he hid his face,’ Valerius said.

‘He didn’t hide it because he was ashamed of it,’ Ariston corrected him. ‘He hid it because he didn’t want to be recognized.’ He dropped the head and picked up one of the distinctive knives the men had carried. ‘His name is Shimon Ben Judah, and he is … was … high in the ranks of the Sicarii.’ He saw Valerius’s puzzlement and showed him the knife. ‘A society of assassins,’ he explained. ‘This is their mark. I don’t understand it.’

‘What’s to understand?’ Valerius grunted as he picked up the unconscious girl. ‘A murderer and rapist gets the justice he deserves.’

The Syrian shook his head. ‘The Sicarii seldom venture far from Jerusalem and I have never known them to appear this far north.’ He stared significantly at the bundle in Valerius’s arms. ‘They rarely kill for gain or satisfaction.’

As Valerius carried the girl back towards the camp he noticed that Serpentius hadn’t moved. The Spaniard stood among the bodies as if unsure what to do next. The inertia was so unusual that Valerius stopped and called to him.

‘Serpentius?’

The former gladiator shook his head with a look of bewilderment. ‘Was I … gone?’

‘You seemed a little strange, that’s all.’

‘It has happened to me a few times since this.’ Serpentius turned so Valerius could see the back of his shaven head. Among the old scars was a clearly visible depression the circumference of a wine cup. Valerius tried not to show his shock at the sight of the terrible injury. Domitia had hinted that the Spaniard had been badly hurt defending Vitellius’s son, but this blow must have come close to killing him. The bone of the skull had been smashed in by a sword or a club. If such a wound happened on the battlefield, the more experienced medici would use some kind of cutting tool to remove the shattered bone, then pick fragments of it from inside the head. Only one man out of a hundred lived to fight again. ‘They said the dent was too big.’ Serpentius read his eyes. ‘If they opened it up more than likely they’d kill me. The lady Domitia stayed with me until I recovered, but sometimes,’ he frowned as if the thought had just occurred to him, ‘it’s as if I’m just a memory. A ghost trapped between worlds.’

‘How often does it happen?’

‘I don’t know.’ Valerius saw a tear roll through the dirty grey stubble of his friend’s cheek and it disturbed him more than anything that had gone before. He’d never seen Serpentius show self-pity, never mind weep, not even when he talked of the wife and son murdered by Rome. The Spaniard was the hardest man he’d ever known, and the quickest with a sword; indomitable and without fear. ‘I let them down, Valerius.’ Serpentius shook his head. ‘I couldn’t save the boy. There were so many of them and then everything went dark.’

‘Nothing could have saved the boy.’ Valerius’s reply was harsher than he intended, but he knew Serpentius needed support, not sympathy. ‘He was dead from the day Vitellius announced him as his heir and I would rather he died than you. Now come. We have the girl to treat and a war to fight.’

Her name was Tabitha.

When she woke the next day she possessed only a vague recollection of the previous night. Valerius offered to delay the journey until she’d fully recovered, but she insisted they keep to their normal schedule. Still, he watched her carefully for some reaction to her ordeal and saw her face grow pale as the memories returned. It surprised and pleased her that her injured hand had been bandaged so efficiently, and the oil Valerius applied reduced the pain to a dull throb. One thing puzzled her. A vague recollection of lying beneath a giant pig of a man who had bled copiously … Someone had roughly stitched together the remains of her dress. Her mouth dropped open and she stared at Valerius, her expression changing swiftly from dismay, to outrage, to devastation. When she finally realized what must have happened she burst into tears. Ariston and Serpentius exchanged a look and found something essential to do with the horses, leaving Valerius to explain the unexplainable.

‘We couldn’t leave you as you were.’ He chose his words with exaggerated care. ‘We didn’t know if the blood came only from him or if you had been injured also. I …’ She stopped weeping long enough to spear him with a look of open-mouthed incredulity and he hurried on. ‘I treated you as I would the body of a dead comrade fresh from the battlefield,’ he assured her. ‘With reverence and respect. To me you were just an empty vessel, as if I were washing a bowl or a cup.’ He stumbled, aware of his voice taking on a pompous solemnity as he fought the memory of skin with the texture of silk and intriguing curves and hollows and shadows. ‘I did not look upon you as a person.’