expect him and his brother to accomplish it. Then he remembered his grandmother’s words of warning: do not get involved with the schemes of the powerful because they use people of his class to do their dirty work and then tend to dispose of them once they knew too much and were of no further use.
‘Having second thoughts about this, sir?’ Magnus asked, as if reading his mind as they crested the bank and paused; ahead of them the forms of countless horses at rest fell away into the darkness.
‘What makes you ask that?’
‘Well, stands to reason, don’t it? Here we are about to take on thousands of savages who anyone in their right mind would steer well clear of, in order to get a disgusting little man whom, having made his acquaintance once, no one with any sense would ever want to meet again; and all for what, I ask you?’
Vespasian smiled in the darkness. ‘Well, I suppose we’re doing it for Rome.’
‘Rome, my arse! You may be doing it for Rome but I’m doing it because you’re doing it and I’m obliged to go with you because of the debt that I owe your uncle; that’s why I was wondering whether, by any luck, you’d come to your senses and were having second thoughts.’
‘Are you two going to sit and chat all night?’ Sabinus hissed from the gloom.
‘That sounds like a much better option to me,’ Magnus muttered, only half to himself.
Buoyed by the fact that his friend was evidently as scared as he was, and surprisingly reassured by the presence of his brother, Vespasian pulled himself together. Remembering Sitalces’ Thracian adage with a half-smile, he led the group, zigzagging carefully, through the hundreds of resting Getic horses that, recognising the smell of their Getic clothes, parted slightly for them and, with the occasional whicker or snort, let them pass.
It took a while to cover the hundred paces over the rough ground through this living obstacle to the steep slope below the fortress. As they reached the foot of the slope, they could hear, from above them, shouts and the sound of hundreds of feet running.
‘Sounds like they’re all awake now,’ Magnus complained.
‘But they’re up on the walls,’ Vespasian said, feeling that they might have a chance after all. ‘Let’s find this sewer outlet.’
They made their way up the slope to the base of the wall and began to follow it towards the keep.
They smelt the sewer long before they saw it. Nearly four hundred years’ worth of sewage had poured out of it, creating a reeking, septic marsh below its discharge point.
Eventually they heard the trickle of flowing liquid and they stopped by a circular grill, three feet in diameter, emitting an even worse stink than the marsh.
‘Pluto’s unwashed arse, that smells even worse than these clothes,’ Magnus gasped; he had just about got used to the stench of his disguise.
‘A good choice of expletive, my friend,’ Vespasian observed. ‘I think it is Pluto’s unwashed arse and we’re just about to climb up it.’
‘Imagine how we’ll smell when we get out the other end,’ Sabinus said, trying not to retch.
‘Sitalces, Ziles, bring the crowbars over here and get this thing off,’ Vespasian ordered, realising that there was no point in delaying the inevitable.
Seemingly impervious to the reek, Sitalces and Ziles placed their crowbars under the lip of the grill. With a couple of powerful wrenches it came loose from the wall and Drenis and Bryzos pulled it free.
‘Let’s get this over with,’ Vespasian muttered, drawing a deep breath and forcing himself inside the pitch- black tunnel.
There was only enough space to crawl and for the first time since he had put on the oddly unfamiliar and constricting trousers he felt thankful for them; they protected his knees from the centuries of shit that coated the tunnel floor. But his hands had no such protection and squelched through the slimy effluence clinging to the rim as he eased his way up the dark, narrow passage.
After what seemed like an age of breathing in the noxious gas produced by decomposing faeces, but was in fact only the time it took to cover fifteen gruelling feet, Vespasian heard harsh voices ahead and could make out a faint flicker of orange light at the end of the tunnel. Torn between his desire to get out into the open air quickly and his fear that the exit was guarded, he kept going at the same pace: as fast as was possible. Upon drawing closer to the end, he realised that the light was not coming directly into the tunnel but was in fact reflecting off a wall a few feet from its opening. He forced himself to slow down and came to a halt three feet from the exit; he felt Sabinus bump into his hindquarters, then the added pressure of the man behind pushing him forward and so on down the line, as they all came to an unexpected, concertinaed halt in the bowels of the sewer.
Vespasian craned his neck forward in an attempt to see out of the tunnel and over the wall beyond; he was rewarded by the sight of two very hairy Getic arses in action, their owners talking vigorously as they perched on top of the wall, which was one of three that surrounded the sewer’s exit, forming an open and well-used latrine. Another arse appeared over one of the side walls as the first two came to their noisy finale and were withdrawn, to be replaced, almost instantaneously, by two more.
‘What the fuck’s going on? Why have we stopped?’ Sabinus hissed from behind.
‘Not surprisingly we’ve come out in their latrine and a few of them are taking the opportunity to have a last shit.’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, how long are they going to be?’
‘How should I know?’ Vespasian whispered, craning his neck again. ‘There’re now five of them up there at the moment; two of them seem to be quite scared,’ he added with a grin.
A few moments later the unmistakable sound of a bollocking being administered along with a couple of cuffs around the ears caused the arses, two of which were still in full flow, to hasten away. Vespasian counted to one hundred and, when no more appeared, deemed it safe to move forward and out of the sewer. Despite squatting calf-deep in fresh turds he felt like a new man as he sucked in the comparatively fresh air above the open latrine and wiped the shit from his hands on to his trousers. It had fallen unnaturally quiet. He edged closer to the front wall, peeked over and found, to his surprise, that he was surrounded by horses; they had been corralled in the northeast corner of the courtyard to keep them as far away as possible from the gate and out of the way of the main fighting. They were all displaying an understandable reluctance to get too close to the latrine. Looking beyond the horses, as the others started to emerge from the sewer, he could see that the south and west walls were crammed with Getae, two or three deep, almost shoulder to shoulder, bows at the ready, staring out towards the Roman lines with the still silence of men watching their fate coming inexorably towards them.
Sabinus joined him. ‘That’s a bit of luck,’ he whispered as he took in the situation.
‘I’ve never heard someone standing knee-deep in shit consider themselves lucky,’ Vespasian observed, ‘but yes, it is. Let’s go.’ He looked around at the others to make sure that they were all present and then started to creep over the wall.
A deep cornu signal rumbled through the air.
‘Shit,’ Sabinus hissed pulling him back, ‘that’s “artillery open fire”. Get down.’
All eight of them squatted behind the wall. The distant hiss of many approaching fast-moving projectiles suddenly filled the air; it quickly intensified before exploding into a series of shattering impacts as rock and iron missiles crashed into the fortress; some punching men, sometimes whole but more often in pieces, back off the walls, others striking stone, in a shower of sparks, and sending a deluge of sharp chippings cascading down to hit the ground, kicking up puffs of dust. Above the screaming, the Getic chieftains roared a series of orders. The defenders raised their bows and began to release volley after volley into the night sky at a speed that astounded Vespasian.
‘Shit, if they’re firing back it must mean that the towers are getting close,’ Sabinus exclaimed, pulling his axe from his belt. ‘Stop gazing around, little brother, we don’t have much time.’ He leapt out of the latrine and ran towards the keep, twenty paces away to the left, hugging the wall, not because he was worried about stealth any longer, as the defenders were by now far too busy to notice, but in an attempt to keep clear of the now panicking horses. Vespasian and the others followed him as a huge storm of arrows flooded in from the advancing Romans and rained down on to the walls and into the courtyard, felling dozens of men and a score of their already terrified mounts. This was too much for the beasts and they surged towards the crude fencing that corralled them in and broke through with ease to go bucking and rearing around the corpse-strewn courtyard.
Vespasian, axe in hand, caught up with his brother at the door to the keep. He was burning with shame at Sabinus’ rebuke because it had been the truth, he had hesitated and now Sabinus had taken charge.
‘On the count of three, little brother,’ Sabinus said, putting his shoulder to the locked door. ‘Three!’
