Vespasian and his comrades were too tired to do anything but sit and stare at nothing.
The memory of Faustus, Bryzos and Ziles hung over them all.
Rhoteces, now gagged as well as bound, lay in a heap in the bilge. He had come round earlier but Magnus had knocked him unconscious again when his struggling and grunting had become too tiresome to tolerate. Water slopped around him.
After a while a small, yellowish point of light on the shoreline in the distance caught their attention.
‘That should be Faustus’ men with our horses,’ Vespasian said, rousing himself from semi-slumber. ‘Make directly for them, Varinus.’
‘Aye, aye, trierarchus!’
Vespasian rolled his eyes and, again, let the insubordination pass; Varinus had done more for their cause that night by his selfinitiated modification of his orders than he would, as a mere legionary mule, ever realise.
Faustus’ men had had the sense to wait by a length of riverbank that was low and clear of reeds. The boat glided towards them and gently came to rest tucked up against the bank. The first birds of the morning had started to sing in anticipation of a new day as the early rays from the sun, still buried beyond the horizon, struck the highermost clouds with dashes of soft crimson and indigo.
‘Optio Melitus reporting, sir, with your horses, on Primus Pilus Faustus’ orders.’ The smart young optio snapped a salute, blanching somewhat at the smell of the Getic clothes, as Vespasian disembarked first, followed by Sabinus and the others.
‘Thank you, optio,’ Vespasian said, returning the salute wearily. ‘You and your men have done well,’ he added, nodding to the two legionaries standing to attention behind Melitus. ‘I’m sorry to say that Faustus is dead, so be careful when you go back to the camp; there may be some, er… repercussions.’
‘Faustus is dead?’ Melitus exclaimed. ‘That is shit news; Centurion Viridio will be primus now and he’s a savage bastard, not just a bastard like Faustus was.’
Varinus and his mates offloaded the gear and the recumbent priest as the exhausted party stripped off their filthy disguises and took an icy bath in the river, rubbing each other down vigorously in an attempt to eradicate all vestiges of the Getic stench. They were only partially successful.
Eventually, dressed in their own clothes and feeling refreshed by the cold water and the bread, sausage and cheese that Melitus had brought for them, along with two skins of fairly decent wine, they strapped Rhoteces over a horse and their provisions on to the two that had been brought for Bryzos and Ziles and prepared to leave.
‘Cheers, lads,’ Magnus called to Varinus and his mates as they got back in the boat, ‘and I’ll see you in Rome, Lucius, and we’ll visit the Greens’ stables.’
Lucius grinned. ‘We’ve both got to get back there first,’ he called back whilst steadying the boat for Melitus and his two men to get in. ‘But if Fortuna smiles on us and we do, then she will surely smile on us and the Greens at the circus.’
They cast off and, spinning the boat around, began to pull upstream. The westerly breeze had stiffened but they were soon lost in the shadowy half-light.
Vespasian kicked his horse forward and they set off at a trot, east, along the river. Magnus rode next to him, leading the priest’s horse.
‘A decent bunch of lads, as I said, sir,’ he observed, after a time of companionable silence.
‘It depends on how you define decent,’ Vespasian replied, ‘but yes, they suited our purpose very well and if it were down to me I would make Varinus an optio for the initiative that he showed last night.’
‘Be a waste of time that, sir; he’s tried it twice and it didn’t suit him, if you take my meaning?’
‘You mean he didn’t suit it?’
‘Well, yeah, I suppose you could look at it that way; the army did, that’s for sure.’
‘I’m sure they did,’ Vespasian replied, laughing for the first time in what felt like ages as the sun crested the horizon, splashing fresh, warm light over his face. ‘Anyway, let’s hope your mate Lucius makes it home, then you can have a lovely day together talking fluent chariot or whatever the official language of the track is.’
Magnus frowned. ‘Now you’re taking the piss, sir. Your trouble is you’ll never understand how an insider like Lucius is worth cultivating over a period of time, worth doing favours for; keep him happy and he’ll keep the tips flowing.’ He looked back over his shoulder towards the boat conveying his potential goldmine of information away and turned back abruptly. ‘Shit! Sir, look behind us!’
Vespasian turned in his saddle; his face dropped. Less than a mile behind them eight biremes and two triremes of the river fleet were, under full oars and sail, heading towards them, benefiting greatly from the freshening breeze. With the golden rays of the morning sun adding lustre to their sleek wooden hulls and an amber sheen to their white sails they would have been a beautiful sight had they not been so threatening. The shrill whistles of the stroke-masters’ flutes keeping time could just be heard floating across the water.
‘Sabinus, look,’ Vespasian shouted.
His brother turned. ‘Shit! Poppaeus has sent a squadron after us; that bastard never gives up. All right, we won’t wait for the bend; we’ll head away from the river now.’
‘I don’t think that that’s an option,’ Sitalces piped up, pointing at a dust cloud three or four miles to the south.
‘Roman?’ Vespasian asked.
‘No, a legionary cavalry detachment would never make that amount of dust, there’s never more than a hundred and twenty of them,’ Sitalces replied. ‘There’s got to be at least five or six times that number under that cloud. They’re the ones that got away last night; they’re Getae.’
‘They can’t be after us, they’ve no idea that we’re here,’ Magnus pointed out.
‘Whether they have or haven’t, they’re heading this way, my friend,’ Sitalces replied, ‘and I don’t fancy our chances if they come across us.’
‘We’ll have to outrun them along the river,’ Vespasian shouted and urged his horse into a gallop.
The jolting and bumping of the rough ride brought Rhoteces back to consciousness and his struggling and muffled protestations could be heard over the hoofbeats.
In less than a third of a mile the country started to become rougher and the horses were forced to slow to a canter; even at that speed they were pulling away from the Roman squadron, but the Getic dust cloud was gaining on them. They crested a hill and the great Lysimachid fortress of Axiopolis came into view two miles away.
‘That’s where the river bends to the north,’ Vespasian called across to Sabinus as they sped down the slope. ‘I don’t fancy taking the priest in there; Poppaeus doesn’t know for certain that we’ve got him, but he’s bound to have agents within the garrison who’ll put him right. What do you think we should do?’
‘Skirt around it and carry on in a straight line,’ Sabinus called back, ‘that way we’ll lose the fleet and only have the Getae to worry about.’
‘Oh, that’s all right then,’ Magnus said.
A dull thump and then whinny from Rhoteces’ horse as it reared up brought them all to a skidding halt. The priest had managed to undo the rope that bound his wrists to his ankles under the horse and was now hopping, feet still tied together, in the opposite direction.
‘The little sod,’ Magnus exclaimed, leaping off his horse. He raced back and jumped on Rhoteces, slamming him to the ground and dealing him a crashing right hook. The priest went limp, blood oozed out from under the gag and another bruised swelling appeared on his left cheek.
Sitalces ran back to help Magnus lift the unconscious prisoner back on to his horse, which refused to stand still and danced this way and that, snorting and shaking its head. They struggled to secure the rope under the beast’s belly.
‘Hurry up!’ Sabinus urged. ‘The squadron’s gaining on us.’
From across the water the flute whistles had quickened. In an effort to catch their quarry before the river took them away all ten ships had accelerated to ramming speed, which they could maintain for only a few hundred strokes before the rowers were blown. They were now under a half-mile away. Vespasian could see their ballistae crews loading their weapons, which would very soon be in range.
To the south the Getic horde was now visible under its dust cloud as a dark stain on the ground.
‘Done,’ Magnus shouted eventually as he and Sitalces finally pulled the knot tight and headed back towards their horses.
Two plumes of water burst from the river, just five paces short of the bank, covering them all in a fine spray.
