we would do well to avoid a beating.’
Vespasian looked at Magnus who nodded and gave a half-smile.
‘The men must be exhausted,’ Faustus said, looking over Vespasian’s shoulder. Vespasian swivelled round. Half a mile away, on the north bank of the river, the first and second cohorts stood formed up, with the cavalry on either flank. The baggage was corralled a little way behind them.
‘Good man, Gallus, he didn’t panic,’ Corbulo said. ‘The Thracians won’t dare to cross now, they’ll have to withdraw unless they want to sit here and live off roots and berries.’
‘And with our archers keeping them away from the river they’ll run out of water in a day or so,’ Faustus pointed out.
On the slope leading down to the river parties of Thracians moved around collecting their dead, piling them up in a huge mound laced with wood. The Romans were left to rot in the sun.
‘Bastards!’ Faustus spat. ‘Leaving our lads like that. It’s bad enough them not having a coin to pay the ferryman.’
‘I think we would have done the same, centurion,’ Corbulo said.
‘Besides, they have different gods to us,’ Magnus said. ‘I wouldn’t like to end up in the Thracian version of Hades, would you?’
‘Especially not speaking the language,’ Vespasian quipped.
They all turned and looked at him; he sat straight-faced with a twinkle in his eye. Even Corbulo, for all his aristocratic seriousness, could not resist laughing.
As the morning wore on the upper slopes were cleared and the Thracians had to venture closer to the river, where a line of mangled bodies marked the position of yesterday’s final battle by the ropes. The retrieval party came forward waving a branch as a sign of truce. They got to within thirty paces of the bank when a volley from the archers, on the far side, thumped into them. A dozen went down, feathered with shafts; their screams could be heard all the way up the hill. The rest scampered to safety, a couple with arrows protruding from their shoulders.
‘That’s going to piss them off,’ Magnus said.
Corbulo looked pleased. ‘Good. They can’t expect to collect their dead under truce but leave ours: that is not how it works.’
‘Fucking savages!’ Faustus opined.
From another part of the camp, fifty paces to their right, voices were raised; a heated argument had broken out. A tall, grey-haired Thracian with a long, forked beard that came almost down to his round belly was remonstrating with a smaller, weasel-faced man with a shaven head. A young man, in his early twenties, sat between them on a folding stool. He listened with a calm air of authority to the altercation as tempers rose, never once looking at the protagonists, always keeping his eyes on the line of dead by the river. Weasel-face shrieked at the older man, dipped his hand into a bag that hung from his shoulder, pulled out a human head and brandished it in his opponent’s face. This apparently settled the argument one way or another in the young man’s mind; he stood up and issued a series of orders to some waiting warriors, who rushed off to do his bidding.
‘What the fuck are they up to?’ Magnus asked.
‘I think that we’ve just witnessed a conflict of interests between the chief’s adviser and his priest,’ Corbulo said, adding with a wry smile: ‘Much like Sejanus arguing with the chief Vestal, only this time the Vestal seems to have won.’
‘It’s not his priest,’ Faustus said. ‘Their priests wander around the country going from tribe to tribe; they belong to no one but their gods.’
More shouting came from further off in the camp and, a few moments later, the warriors returned leading five young men with ropes around their necks and hands tied behind their backs. The russet colour of their tunics identified them immediately.
‘They’re our lads,’ Vespasian said. ‘What are they going to do with them?’
‘Something that I don’t think will work,’ Corbulo replied.
The terrified legionaries were herded down to the edge of the camp where a line of fifty Thracians with shields had assembled. With the ropes still around their necks they were driven before the shielded line as it advanced down the slope, the burial party following close behind.
‘Come on, Gallus, do what you must and really piss those bastards off,’ Corbulo whispered, almost to himself.
The line reached the Thracian dead, clambered across and stopped. The captives fell to their knees; their shouts and pleas carried up the hill. The burial party started to remove some bodies. The Roman cohorts began to bang their pila against their shields. Gallus could be seen riding in front of them with his arm in the air, he stopped in the centre, turned towards the Thracians and brought his arm down. Fifty arrows sped across the river and the captives were silenced; the Romans fell quiet.
‘Well done, Gallus,’ Corbulo said.
‘He just shot our lads, sir.’ Vespasian was outraged.
‘Of course he did, and if they were sensible they would have been begging him to. It may well be that any one of us would happily trade places with them in a hour or so.’
Another volley clattered into the wall of shields, then another into the burial party dragging bodies up the hill behind it, bringing down a good many. The rest dropped their loads and ran.
With their human shields dead the Thracian shield wall began to retreat, but, lacking the discipline of regular soldiers, did so piecemeal, leaving gaps which the archers brutally exploited; a little over half of them made it back up the hill.
To Vespasian’s right the weasel man howled curses and shook his severed head at the Romans, whilst the chief sat impassive with his fists clenched on his knees. The fork-bearded man said something to the chief, who nodded and dismissed him. The priest wailed as he watched him make his way down the hill to the remnants of the burial party.
This time the Thracians retrieved the Roman dead left on the higher reaches of the hill, and made a separate pyre for them. Cheers rang out from the opposite bank.
Corbulo looked pleased. ‘The chief seems to have an adviser with some manners; he might have a few more men alive to command if he’d listened to him in the first place, rather than to that disgusting-looking priest.’
‘I don’t fancy getting too close to him,’ Magnus said, ‘but I’ve got a nasty feeling we might get to meet him if we don’t find a way out.’
Vespasian glared at Magnus. ‘I think it would be best if you keep those thoughts to yourself.’
‘He’s right though, sir,’ Faustus said, having another attempt at loosening his bonds.
Down the hill only the dead by the river were left untended. The burial party again approached under a branch of truce. They took the Roman dead first, including the recently shot captives, and then untangled the Thracians. No arrows disturbed their work. One body in particular was treated with more reverence than the rest, and placed on a small pyre on its own.
Eventually the field was cleared of bodies and severed limbs; only dark red stains on the grass and the occasional pile of offal marked where men had fallen.
The Thracians lit the Roman pyre with no ceremony whatever, before turning their attentions to their own.
The weasel-faced priest stood before the massed Thracians and began a series of short chants, to which his congregation responded with ever-increasing intensity. Even the guards around the cage joined in. During this the chief made his way down to the foot of the smaller pyre that bore the solitary warrior. The chants reached a crescendo, and then abruptly stopped. The chief opened his arms in a gesture of supplication and let out a cry of profound grief.
‘No wonder they were so keen to reclaim the dead by the river,’ Corbulo concluded. ‘Looks like their chief lost a family member down there.’
‘Or lover?’ Magnus suggested.
‘No, they’re not like the Greeks,’ Faustus said. ‘From my experience they’re strictly women, boys and sheep; though not necessarily in that order, or separate.’
The crowd of Thracians parted, and another struggling man in a russet tunic was hauled out.
‘How many more have they got?’ Vespasian asked.
