level. His adversary slashed wildly with his sword at Vespasian’s head. He ducked it and, at the same moment, launched himself at the now off-balanced rider. They came crashing to the ground, rolling over and over each other, trying to find a firm grip on any part of their opponent’s body, an arm, throat, hair, anything. Coming to a stop, Vespasian found himself underneath the runaway, winded and disorientated. As he struggled for air, a fist smashed into his face and he felt a searing pain and heard a sharp crack as his nose was flattened; blood sprayed into his eyes. Two rough hands closed around his throat and he realised that he was fighting for his life; the desire to kill was replaced by the instinct to survive. Terrified he twisted violently left then right in an unsuccessful effort to prevent his assailant tightening his grip. His eyes began to bulge. He peered through streaming blood at the man’s face; his cracked lips tightened into a broken-toothed leer and his rancid breath flooded Vespasian’s senses. Vespasian’s flailing arms slammed wild punches into the side of his head, but still the downward pressure on his windpipe increased. On the point of blacking out he heard a dull thud and felt his attacker shudder. Vespasian looked up. The man’s eyes were wide open with shock and his mouth had gone slack; a bloody javelin point poked from out of his right nostril.
‘What did I say about heroics, you stupid little shit?’
Vespasian focused through the blood and made out Sabinus, on foot, holding a javelin in two hands, supporting the weight of the now limp runaway. Sabinus tossed the body contemptuously aside and held out his hand to help his brother up.
‘Well, now.’ He grinned maliciously. ‘Whatever good looks you may have thought you possessed have been ruined by that little escapade. Perhaps that’ll teach you to listen to your elders and betters in future.’
‘Did I kill the other one?’ Vespasian managed to ask through a mouthful of blood.
‘No, you killed his horse and then his horse killed him. Come on, there’s one left alive to nail up.’
Vespasian held a strip of cloth, torn from the dead runaway’s tunic, over his bleeding nose as he walked back up the hill; it stank, but that helped him to remain conscious. His head pounded with pain now that the adrenalin had subsided. He breathed in laboured gasps and had to lean on Sabinus. Hieron followed behind with the horses.
They reached the mules, which were calming down after their ordeal. Baseos and Ataphanes had rounded up those that had run off and had captured eight of the runaways’ horses. Pallo and Simeon were busy tying the animals together into a column. Only two had been killed; four others had flesh wounds that would heal with time.
‘Not a bad day’s work, eh boys? Two mules down, eight horses up, Father won’t have to take you to court for careless shooting,’ Sabinus chuckled at Baseos and Ataphanes.
Baseos laughed. ‘We’d have had three horses more to take back if you stick throwers had bothered to aim at the riders and not their mounts.’
Ataphanes clapped him on the back. ‘Well said, my squat little friend, the bow is a far more effective tool than the javelin, as my grandfather’s generation proved over seventy years ago at Carrhae.’
Sabinus did not like to be reminded of Rome’s greatest defeat in the East, when Marcus Crassus and seven legions had been almost annihilated in a day under the continuous rain of Parthian arrows. Seven legions’ eagle standards had been lost on that day.
‘That’ll do, you lanky, hook-nosed horse-botherer; anyway you’re here now, having been captured by proper soldiers who stand and fight, not shoot and run away. What happened, ran out of arrows?’
‘I may be here but I’m free now, whereas the bones of your lost legions are still lying in the sand of my homeland and they’ll never be free.’
Sabinus could not bring himself to rise to the argument; the lads had fought well and deserved to let off a bit of steam. He looked around for their prisoner, who was trussed up on his stomach still unconscious.
‘Right, let’s get him up on a cross and get home. Lykos, dig a hole to plant it in right here.’
Ludovicus and Hieron appeared out of the wood a short time later carrying two sturdy, freshly cut branches. With the tools that they had brought along especially for the purpose they cut two joints in the timber, then laid the cross out and started to nail it together. The noise brought the prostrate prisoner to; he raised his head to look around and started to scream as he saw the cross. Vespasian saw that he was a little younger than he.
‘Sabinus, don’t do this to him, he can’t be more than fourteen.’
‘What do you recommend then, little brother? Smack his wrists, tell him he’s a naughty boy and not to steal our mules again and then send him back to his owner – who will crucify him anyway, if he has any sense.’
The terror that he’d just felt at the prospect of losing his life at so young an age made Vespasian sympathise with the young thief’s plight. ‘Well, we could take him back and keep him as a field slave. He looks strong enough and decent field workers are hard to come by, and very expensive.’
‘Bollocks. The little bastard has run away before; who’s to say he won’t do it again? Anyway we need to nail one up and he had the misfortune to get caught. Would you feel better if he was lying over there, full of arrows, and we had an old, grizzly one to crucify? What difference would it make? They’ve all got to die. Come on, let’s get him up.’
Vespasian looked over at the hysterical boy, who had fixed him with a pleading stare, and, realising that Sabinus was right, turned away.
Pallo and Hieron lifted the screaming captive, fighting for all he was worth – which was not much – on to the cross.
‘Please, mercy, please, I beg you, masters. I’ll give you anything. I’ll do anything, anything. I beg you.’
Pallo slapped him around the face. ‘Quit your snivelling, you little shit. What have you got to give anyway, a nice tight arsehole? It’s vermin like you that murdered my father, so I wouldn’t even give you the pleasure of one last hard fucking.’
Spitting at him he cut his bonds and he and Lykos pulled his arms out and stretched the struggling youth over the cross. Hieron and Baseos held his legs as Ludovicus approached with a mallet and nails. He knelt by his right arm and placed a nail on his wrist, just under the base of the thumb. With a series of crashing blows he drove the half-inch-wide nail through the wrist, home into the wood, splintering bones and tearing sinews. Vespasian had not thought it possible for any creature, let alone a human, to make the noise that the boy emitted in his torment. It was a cry that pierced his very being as it rose from a guttural roar to a shrill scream.
Ludovicus moved on to the other arm and quickly skewered it to the cross. Not even Pallo was enjoying it any more as nails were forced through each of the writhing boy’s feet. The cry stopped abruptly; the boy had gone into shock and just stared at the sky, hyperventilating, his mouth frozen in a tortured grimace.
‘Thank the gods for that,’ Sabinus said. ‘Get him up, then haul the two dead mules over here and leave them under the cross; that should leave a clear enough message.’
They lifted the cross into the hole and supported it whilst wedges were hammered in around the base. Soon after they’d finished the cries started again, but this time intermittently as the lad ran out of breath. The only way he could breathe was by pulling himself up by his wrists whilst pushing down on the nails through his feet; however, that soon became too painful to endure and he would let himself slump down again, only to find himself suffocating. This ghastly cycle would carry on until finally he died in one or two days’ time.
They rode away up over the hill with the cries echoing around the valley. Vespasian knew that he would never forget the boy’s face and the horror that had been written all over it.
‘What if his friends come and cut him down, Sabinus?’
‘They may well come, but they won’t cut him down. Even in the unlikely event that he did survive he would never be able to use his hands again, or walk without a severe limp. No, if they come they’ll stick a spear through his heart and go home. But they’ll have learnt a lesson.’
The screams followed them for what seemed like an age, and then were suddenly cut short. The boy’s friends had come.
CHAPTER III
It was still dark when Sabinus’ right foot connected with Vespasian’s left buttock, sending him rolling out of bed and on to the floor.
‘Get up, legionary,’ Sabinus shouted in his most centurion-like voice. ‘You need to make a fire now if you want
