tail of the horse in front while he led Khamsin by her harness. The path was so narrow and hemmed in by rocks that they had been forced into single file, but the engineer assured him that when they reached the top of the steep slope the column would be able to disperse. Valerius prayed that was true, because the last thing he needed was a fighting force scattered across ten miles of mountains. For the hundredth time he told himself that this was no place for horses and that Corbulo’s plan was madness.
He was grateful for the moon, because no man liked darkness and a soldier’s superstitions were multiplied by the night. Before the march his cavalrymen had hurriedly made their sacrifices to Mars or Mithras, but the gods, Roman or Syrian, could only placate the dead, not banish them, and their ghosts undoubtedly inhabited these fearsome hills. Valerius had learned not to fear the dead in Britain, where he had once spent the night surrounded by three thousand gutted corpses from the Ninth legion. The memory was with him still, but it was a memory of courage and sacrifice and a fight to the death with no thought of surrender. He tried to focus on Domitia, but her face was distorted as if he was seeing it through shattered green glass and only her eyes were distinct; eyes that did not carry the message he expected or hoped for. A stumble forced him to concentrate on the path. It followed the contours of the hills, which loomed above like broad-shouldered giants, and the men allowed the horses to pick their own way on cloth-wrapped hooves through gullies and across precipitous slopes where the track had been gouged from the earth. Often, Valerius found himself walking in dense blackness with a sense of an immense void a few feet to his right, but he had trusted in Khamsin and she never let him down.
He walked behind the engineer near the head of the snaking, endless line of men and horses and Petronius told him how he came to know this inaccessible wilderness.
‘It was at the end of the second campaign, while Corbulo was negotiating the peace. He had heard of the Cepha gap and immediately recognized its strategic importance — he is like that, no detail is too unimportant to be ignored — and asked me to survey it and the surrounding area. I was here for two months dressed in Armenian rags in the dead of winter. I marked out the site for a fort, if ever one were needed, but I wanted to know if the fort could be outflanked to the east, and if truth be told these mountains have a certain fascination. Men have lived here for thousands of years. There are cave cities close to our route that I would like to have visited again, but I fear we will have other priorities…’
A ragged scream cut the darkness from somewhere behind, followed by the muted thunder of crashing rocks. Horse or man or both? Petronius hesitated, then shrugged his shoulders. There was nothing anyone could do. The gods only knew how many more had been lost among the forces behind. For a few oppressive moments they waited for the sound of violent reaction that would signal the column’s discovery, but Valerius knew he could depend on the scouts who ranged ahead seeking any sign of a Parthian presence. The two men carried on until they reached a broad basin, almost a huge natural amphitheatre, and Valerius ordered the lead elements to halt and allow the tail of the column to catch up.
‘Make the most of the next two or three miles,’ Petronius advised. ‘The worst comes when we leave the road and begin our descent towards the Tigris.’
‘Road?’ Serpentius laughed. ‘Even in Asturia this wouldn’t be called a road.’
‘Well,’ the engineer said, offended. ‘You will see just how good a road this is before dawn.’
It was past midnight now. They had been in the hills for four hours and Petronius reckoned they had only covered half the distance they needed before dawn. The route had taken them in a great flanking arc from the Cepha gap, first to the east and then south, on a perilous, little-used smugglers’ track. ‘There is a dried-up watercourse to the west, below the road,’ the engineer explained. ‘I will know it when I see it, but that is difficult enough in daylight. It leads to a broad gully that will bring us to the river downstream of the Tigris crossing point. If we can gather there undetected and form up on the open plain north of the river we have a chance.’
He didn’t have to say it was only a slim chance and that at the first shout of warning Valerius and his ten thousand would be facing the bulk of the King of Kings’ seventy-thousand-strong army. But that was for the future. What mattered now was that they reach the gully before dawn.
Despite their slow progress, Petronius insisted it could be done, and done in time, but that was before the patrol returned and reported the lights. The scout was a wiry, dark-skinned Numidian and he made his report in the slang-ridden dog Latin that was the common tongue of auxiliary units across the Empire.
‘We saw fires in the ground, lord…’
‘He must mean the caves,’ Petronius interrupted.
‘We obeyed your order not to attack, only look. They were hid in the ground, so I had to go closer to count their numbers, lord.’
‘How many were they?’ Valerius asked.
The man raised his open hands twice in answer, then showed four fingers.
‘And where?’
He gave a long complicated explanation and Petronius groaned aloud.
‘I know this place. A mile ahead. Caves set into the base of a cliff wall in the next valley.’
His face gave Valerius his answer before he asked the question. ‘Can we bypass them?’
Petronius shook his head. ‘We need to go through the valley to reach the riverbed. We could never slip past unnoticed with this many men.’
Valerius could feel the weight of the cavalry units backing up behind. There could only be one decision. He called for Hanno. ‘A hundred of your best. This man will guide you. Make it quick, but be sure none escapes.’
‘I’ll go,’ Serpentius volunteered. Valerius opened his mouth to refuse, but Serpentius was like a ghost in the dark and as good a man with a knife as he’d ever known. The Spaniard had also acquired a pair of Sarmatian throwing axes with which he was now as proficient as their previous owner. Valerius nodded and Serpentius grinned in the darkness and started removing his armour and anything else that might make a noise that would alert the enemy.
Hanno clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Caladus will lead, but he will be happy to have you with him.’
He called his men together and gave them their instructions.
Caladus and Serpentius stared down the valley at the almost imperceptible orange glow the Numidian had pointed out at the base of the cliff. It was so faint that only someone passing close by — or one with eyes that could see like the desert falcon of his Berber homelands — would have noticed it.
‘They have been here all night and seen nothing,’ Caladus guessed. ‘Perhaps they have been here several nights. Their commander has allowed them a fire in an inner room where he believes it is well enough hidden.’
‘Careless,’ Serpentius said.
‘So careless it will cost him his life,’ Caladus agreed.
‘But not so careless that they have not set guards,’ the Numidian whispered. ‘Do you see them?’
The Thracian and the Spaniard peered into the darkness, but they could see nothing but shadows and rocks.
‘To the left of the entrance. A tall man who stinks like a houri and then, across the valley where he thinks he is hidden, a second, fat as a pig, though he moves lightly. And the third, hardly more than a boy, but more alert than the others, stands by the horses in a hollow beyond the next bend. The others are all in the caves, sleeping or talking.’
Caladus pondered his options. ‘The boy with the horses is the greatest danger. One shout and he will be gone. Serpentius? Do you think you can get past the guards to the horses without being seen?’
‘Keep to the centre of the valley,’ the Numidian advised. ‘There is the shadow of an ancient stream bed. Stay low and silent as the hunting leopard, and you will do it easily. I will take the guard on the far side.’
Serpentius nodded.
‘I’ll give you to the count of two hundred. A single arrow will deal with the third sentry. Then we’ll surround the caves and kill the rest.’ Almost before Caladus had finished speaking, Serpentius was gone, disappearing into the darkness with the Numidian at his heels.
The Spaniard slithered down the valley on his belly like the snake he was named for, ignoring the dry stalks and sharp stones that stabbed his flesh and tore his tunic. He kept his face low to the ground and trusted to the Numidian’s instinct that the slight fold in the sweet-smelling earth would cover his movements from the watchers on either side of the valley. Despite the dangers, his breathing was slow and easy. This was nothing new for Serpentius. It reminded him of the night raids of his youth against neighbouring villages. But that was before the Romans came, with their lust for gold, their lists and their order. Before they took him for a slave and turned him into an animal in a cage to be exhibited before the scum and the degenerates in the arena. For a moment his mind
