The retching sound outside his window made him even angrier, realising it had been that noise which had woken him. The old centurion pulled himself off his cot and staggered to the window, yelling abuse at the culprit. As his head came out into the cool morning air, Phoebe spun round to look at him, her hand automatically going to her lips to wipe off the last of her vomit. To Flaccus, her face was like a red rag to a bull.
‘You,’ he growled.
‘I’m sorry, master,’ replied Phoebe quickly. The girl had done everything in her power to stay out of the way since Flaccus had returned alone. She was unsure what had happened, but since he had sent all his mercenaries out, yelling orders at them to find and kill her man, there was little doubt that Aquila would not be coming back. She tried to walk away, but a sharp word from Flaccus halted her.
‘Get in here, girl. I want a word with you.’
He was talking to himself when she entered his room, growling under his breath about betrayal, his hand rubbing furiously at his groin. Phoebe stood before him, meekly, hoping by her attitude to dent his temper. That failed; Flaccus suddenly shot out a hand and grabbed her hair and she squealed painfully as he pulled on it, forcing her to her knees, then bending her head back so that she was forced to look up at him.
‘Do you know what that boy has done, girl, do you?’ His breath stank of sour wine and his spit was cold by the time it landed on her face. ‘He’s betrayed me, that’s what. Betrayed the man who saved him.’
‘Please?’
The weak, plaintive word did nothing to calm Flaccus. If anything it inflamed him. ‘Please, girl. That’s what you did. You pleasured the ungrateful brat at my expense and he was soft on you, too.’
Flaccus pulled her head into his groin, forcing her face against his sweaty leather small clothes. ‘There’s a price to pay girl and since your hero ain’t here to cough up, maybe you’ll have to do so in his place. Happen I should get my lads to take it out on you, mount you till you bleed. Then maybe young Aquila will ride in to the rescue.’
Having pulled down his breeches, the overseer was pulling her head back and forth across his groin, but he had been drinking for days, and no amount of concentration, or vivid imaginings, could help him. Even if she had been willing, the effect of the wine robbed him of the ability to do what he wanted and take out his anger on this young girl’s body. Suddenly he stopped, as he remembered that she had woken him by being sick outside his window and he pulled her head back again, so he could see her tear-stained face.
‘You’re expectin’, ain’t you?’ Flaccus still had a tight grip on her hair, so she nodded with some difficulty. ‘Must be Aquila’s. You ain’t been near anyone else for months now.’
The terror in the girl’s eyes made him laugh, a horrible sound that made her start to shake with fear, but he stopped laughing. In Flaccus’s drunken imagination, he was back in that mountain ravine with an arrow aimed right at his heart. Aquila could have, and should have, killed him. The old centurion was well aware how good he was, had seen him take Toger with a spear. He knew that had the boy fired right away he could not have missed, but Aquila had hesitated, then aimed for someone else, deliberately sparing Flaccus’s life.
‘It’s hard to kill someone like that,’ he muttered, gazing out of the window at the sky, releasing the girl’s hair as he spoke, so she fell in a heap at his feet. Phoebe said nothing, not knowing what he was talking about. ‘The Gods could blight a man for such an act.’
Flaccus looked down at her again. ‘I must kill him, girl. He made me look a fool, but I can spare his brat, trade one life for another, which will appease the Gods.’
Phoebe did not give Flaccus a chance to change his mind; she left as soon as she had gathered her few possessions together, clutching the old centurion’s instructions to the slave vendor in Messana to take her as a trade-in for a pair of field hands. Flaccus watched her go, then emptied the contents of his goblet, which had stood by his side throughout the night, onto the black earth.
‘No more time for drinking,’ he said to himself. ‘There’s money to be earned.’
Aquila and Gadoric spent the next two weeks in the saddle, as they searched the mountains for runaway slaves. They met many who heeded their warning to flee, but found very few willing to stand and fight, lacking the persuasive quality that allowed Hypolitas to excite such people’s imagination. It was he, still quite a sick man, who proposed the solution. Instead of asking them to stand and fight, he requested that they make their way to a high valley near the northern slopes of the smoking volcano of Mount Etna, there to sit and listen. If he could persuade them they would stay; if not then they would have ample time to move out of the way of the advancing Roman reprisals.
Then, despite Gadoric’s pleas to the contrary, he announced that he must leave the camp. Hypolitas insisted on mounting the horse himself with the same determination he had displayed when he told them he needed to go into the hills on his own, putting aside all suggestions that anyone should accompany him, promising to be away for no more than two days, and requesting from Tyrtaeus that he strike the camp and be ready to move as soon as he returned.
‘I must be alone. Only then can I call upon the spirits of the dead to show me the way.’ These words were accompanied by a glare that made even the most stalwart man present tremble with fear. ‘There is too much doubt here to see clearly, but alone, under the stars, I know that I will hear from the Gods. They will say what must be done.’
All watched anxiously as his retreating frame swayed in the saddle and at least one pair of eyes stayed fixed on that spot for the next two days, until, with the sun going down, Hypolitas, even more emaciated but with a firmer gait than that with which he had left, rode back into the camp.
‘The omens are good,’ he said, as they all gathered round him. ‘The Gods have given me a clear message. It will be hard and not without loss, but if we have faith, then we can prosper.’
Those who had accepted the invitation and congregated around Mount Etna must have wondered if the smell of sulphur, which filled the air, presaged a horrible death. Not everyone had come, indeed the number totalled less than a third of those Gadoric and Aquila had asked, yet the Greek, brought to the spot on a litter, was quite changed by the sight of this ragbag assembly. He rose to speak, pushing aside any attempts to support him, seeming to gather strength from the mere act of addressing a crowd. As he walked behind the fire, lit as a beacon, but now no more than smouldering embers, he raised his arms and all present immediately fell silent.
‘Fellow-slaves,’ he shouted. His voice, with an odd hollow quality, echoed off the surrounding hills. ‘Look at us, dressed in rags and half starved. I wonder how much you would laugh at me, if I named you heroes to rival Heracles.’
They did laugh at this, an association with the most potent warrior name amongst the Greek gods, nervously at first, then louder, with much digging of ribs to stimulate their mirth, until the sound filled this makeshift arena. Hypolitas let them indulge their humour, which worked just as well to calm their nerves, before raising his arms again to command silence.
‘Yet you have laboured, just as Heracles laboured. You have fought a monster greater than ever he faced. You have triumphed where great kings have failed.’ The voice dropped, till in its deep timbre it seemed to rival the grumbling volcano. ‘You have defied the might of Rome.’
This statement was followed by a bemused murmur. ‘You doubt that, do you not friends? Yet you are sitting here, in these hills, nearly free from the yoke that Rome has placed about your neck.’ He paused to let those words sink in, before raising one cautionary hand. ‘You will observe that I say “nearly”.’
His voice was husky, a compelling quality that made them attend his words as he talked of the lands they had left, of the battles many had fought, the defeats suffered and the low estate to which such conflicts had reduced them. The hands moved slowly, combining with the cracked and deep voice, to lure them into the web of hope he was weaving. Aquila had heard him speak before and had been impressed despite himself, but never had Hypolitas spoken like this. He turned to look at Gadoric; the Celt’s chin was up, his head held proudly and the single eye gleaming with anticipation. The other men and women in the crowd were the same. Hypolitas moved them to tears as he outlined his own fate, the loss of his own family, a tale with which they could identify, it being so very like their own. Then the voice changed abruptly. It was full of anger as the slave from Palmyra catalogued the crimes of the Roman state, which had left them in the hands of men who cared nothing for their well-being, even less for their happiness.
‘They have their profits, these senators in Rome, and that allows them to remain blind. They have eyes to see, but few come to look. Let every man and woman on this island die, rather than dent their increasing wealth, yet these are men who have conquered half the known world and carried off its treasure. A state that wants for nothing will kill us all in back-breaking toil to have even more.’
The voice changed again, rising even higher now, and as if to give credence to his words the volcano started
