vengeance. Capella had better pay his dues and Flavia had better be worth the risk and effort.
As time dragged on the tension of the wait started to play on the men’s nerves and Vespasian began to hear the odd rustle of clothing or the clink of a dagger as men changed their positions and fidgeted in the dark.
‘Come on, Corvinus, what’s keeping you?’ he murmured.
‘Perhaps he’s just fucked off along with his men and left us to it,’ Magnus whispered back.
Vespasian was just beginning to fear the worst when a muffled cry floated through the air from the direction of the corral.
‘Shit!’ he hissed, looking around at the sentries. A couple of them stirred and looked about but then, after a few snorts from a camel, wrote the cry off as an animal sound and settled back down to their snoozing.
Vespasian relaxed a fraction, knowing that Corvinus and his men were playing their part.
After a few more tense heartbeats a torch near the corral was raised from its holder and waved in the air.
‘Let’s go,’ Vespasian said quietly, getting to his feet at a crouch.
The townsmen on either side followed his lead, sparking off a ripple effect around the perimeter of the camp as each man felt his neighbour rise in the darkness; soon, more than two hundred crouching men were converging from all angles in grim silence upon the unsuspecting Marmaridae.
Vespasian approached the outer ring of tents on the northern side of the pool; behind them was the first of the sentries’ fires. Indicating to Ziri to retrieve a nearby torch and then for Magnus and the townsmen to stay covering the tents’ entrances, Vespasian edged forward. The sentry was sitting, facing him, cross-legged on the ground with his head on his chest and drawn sword in his lap. Holding his breath, Vespasian gently approached the sleeping man, his spatha at the ready. An instant before he could strike, the sentry, sensing a presence close by, opened his eyes to see a pair of sandalled feet before him in the dim firelight. He jerked his head up, wide-eyed in alarm, to witness Vespasian’s sword slamming towards him; it was the last thing that he ever saw. The tip of the spatha punched through his neck just beneath his bearded chin and crunched on up into the base of his skull; any cry that he attempted was drowned by the explosion of blood in his gorge, swamping the vocal cords and clogging his windpipe. He fell into the fire, face down, dead. Almost instantaneously his oily woollen robe and cloak caught alight, illuminating Vespasian.
‘Now,’ he hissed at Magnus.
Grabbing the torch from Ziri, Magnus thrust it at the bottom of the tent flaps. The flames caught immediately, eating their way up the dry, coarse linen until the opening of the tent was a rage of fire. Ziri stood at the entrance, spear in hand; the first Marmarides, dressed only in a loincloth, hurled himself through the blaze, straight onto its razor point. With a thrust and a twist Ziri gutted him, then kicked him back into the fire, his spilled, moist intestines hissing and steaming in the heat.
Screams rang out as Magnus and those townsmen who had managed to retrieve a torch moved around the ring, fire-raising as they went. The bolder townsmen, shouting encouragement to each other, as the attack was no longer a secret, surged forward to deal with the other sentries, battering them down under a hail of blows and jabs.
All around the outer ring tents were ablaze as the townsmen used the Marmaridae’s torches against them. Urging his men forward, Vespasian moved into the inner ring; but here fewer tents were burning and the tribesmen, now fully alerted to the danger, had roused from their sleep and were now dashing to defend themselves. The terrified bellows of the hobbled camels unable to move away from the fires merged with the shrieks and howls of the wounded and the dying into a raucous dissonance.
Standing to the side of a burning tent’s entrance, Vespasian brought his spatha slicing down as the flaps burst open, but he mistimed the blow and severed the escaping man’s outstretched hands. Leaving him to roll away in blood-spurting agony, Vespasian swiped his sword back at the tent’s opening, slashing it across the chest of the next man out as a Marmarides, burning like a beacon, hurtled past him to plunge with a scream and a hiss of steam into the pool at the camp’s centre.
Vespasian despatched the last man to emerge from the tent and then swiftly looked about; Magnus and Ziri were meting out the same treatment to the occupants of a tent nearby. All around the camp similar scenes were being played out as the enraged townsmen, brandishing clubs, farming implements and daggers, fell on the unprepared slavers who had been so long a cause of fear to them and a threat to their peaceful way of life; now with thirty-two of their compatriots to save from a living death they took to their task with ferocity. Smoke billowed all around as the torched tents turned into fierce infernos; blazing men flung themselves from them to be impaled on pitchforks or mown down by scythes. The tang of their crisping skin blended with the acrid smell of burning natural fibre.
Through the chaos of the thickening fumes and flames Vespasian could see that a few knots of Marmaridae had managed to group together and were now mounting a vigorous defence; the ill-armed and inexperienced townsmen facing them were beginning to fall beneath the vicious slashes of their long swords and their taste for the fight against more organised defenders was leaving them.
‘Magnus, with me,’ he bellowed, leaping over the pile of corpses at his feet. Pulling his pugio from its sheath with his left hand, he sprinted towards a group of three Marmaridae advancing steadily, with swords flashing, upon a thin line of wavering townsmen. Crashing through a gap in the unsteady line, Vespasian ducked under a wild sword swipe, headbutting its perpetrator in the belly while plunging his spatha deep into the groin of the tribesman next to him. The three of them went down in a flurry of sand as the townsmen took advantage of the remaining slaver’s momentary surprise at Vespasian’s sudden arrival and set upon him with a renewed confidence. Rolling off his opponent as they landed, Vespasian thrust his dagger down into the man’s ribcage, puncturing his lung.
‘I thought you were calling for assistance,’ Magnus said, hauling Vespasian to his feet by his sword arm as Ziri thrust his spear into the throats of the two stricken men.
‘I was,’ Vespasian panted; his heart was racing. ‘Some of them are starting to form up; let’s keep working our way round until we link up with Corvinus’ lads.’
Passing two collapsed, flaming tents, whose trapped and screaming occupants were being mercilessly battered to death, they were faced with a mob of fleeing townsmen who brushed them aside, almost toppling them into a burning tent in their anxiety to escape the terror behind them: Grey-beard.
‘Fuck!’ Magnus swore as all three of them came to an abrupt halt; the heat of the burning tent singed the hair on their arms and legs.
Swinging an enormous two-handed sword, the Marmaridae chief, flanked by four of his followers, strode towards them, vengeance in his eyes. At the sight of the Romans Grey-beard snarled and ran forward with his sword raised above his head, bearing down upon Vespasian; his men followed, the two to his left spotted Ziri and hurled themselves screaming at him.
With a deft flick of his spear, Ziri heaved the burning tent into the air to land over the two men as Vespasian parried Grey-beard’s crushing downward blow, which slid along his blade in a grating spray of sparks to come to a jarring halt on the oval guard. He was just aware of Magnus, next to him, throwing himself to the ground at the feet of the men to Grey-beard’s right, tumbling them over, as the Marmaridae chief put ever more downward pressure on his spatha, forcing him to one knee; screams from the men struggling beneath the burning tent rang in his ears. In a swift double movement Grey-beard slammed his foot into Vespasian’s chest, sending him crashing onto his back, and raised his sword, growling, his teeth bared, with the effort; as it reached its zenith the motion suddenly stopped and blood spewed from his mouth. Grey-beard stood immobile for a few moments, as if frozen in time, then his sword fell behind him and he turned his head to look at Ziri whose spear was embedded in the side of his chest. With a slow nod to his killer, which seemed to Vespasian to be a look of understanding, the Marmaridae chief collapsed to the ground.
The sound of fighting next to him forced Vespasian to take his eyes off the dying Grey-beard and look round. Magnus was astride a tribesman, each had their hands around the other’s throat. Just beyond them a second tribesman, with blood gushing from an empty eye socket, raised his knife and aimed at Magnus’ exposed back. Vespasian whipped his sword arm round, letting go of the spatha’s hilt and sending the weapon spinning through the air to crack side-on into the man’s midriff, winding him. He leapt to his feet and, hurdling Magnus, jumped on the one-eyed Marmarides, pummelling his face with his fists as the two of them fell to the blood-stained sand. Blow after blow he dealt in a frenzied attack that carried on after the man’s nose was flattened and his jaw shattered, until a hand grabbed his hair and he felt a blade at his throat.
‘Relax, quaestor,’ Corvinus’ voice shouted in his ear; Vespasian froze. ‘Someone should warn you about losing
