control in combat.’
‘I already have,’ Magnus said, getting up off his freshly dead, bulging-eyed opponent. ‘It seems that he’s forgotten that that’s how you end up dead.’
‘Let go of me, prefect,’ Vespasian ordered, coming back to his senses and shaking Corvinus off.
‘I could have slit your throat, which I was very tempted to do,’ Corvinus snarled as he dropped his sword, ‘had it not been for him.’
Vespasian turned round to see Ziri holding his blood-drenched spear to Corvinus’ neck. ‘It’s all right, Ziri,’ he said, gesturing slowly for him to lower his weapon.
Ziri nodded and pulled away.
Vespasian got to his feet and looked around; tents still blazed, up-lighting the surrounding palms that stood motionless in the windless night with a soft amber hue, but the sound of fighting had died down. Groups of townsmen and auxiliaries walked through the carnage; every now and then one would raise a weapon and bring it down to despatch a wounded tribesman.
‘Did any escape?’ he asked no one in particular as he picked up his spatha.
‘I don’t know but I doubt it,’ Corvinus replied. ‘The slave corral is secured; some of my men are guarding it.’
‘Good, let’s go and have a look at them.’
‘Time to see if Capella will give you his woman in grateful thanks for all your effort,’ Magnus commented. He did not see Corvinus frown at his remark.
As Vespasian and Magnus turned to go they noticed Ziri looking down at the still burning bodies; he speared them both in the heart.
‘Come on, Ziri,’ Magnus said, tugging at his sleeve.
Ziri shook his head. ‘They Ziri brothers,’ he said matter-of-factly.
Vespasian looked aghast at the young Marmarides and, with a sense of foreboding, pointed down at Grey- beard. ‘And him, the man you killed to save my life,’ he asked, recalling Aghilas’ words:
Ziri looked at him with no emotion in his eyes. ‘He Ziri father.’
CHAPTER V
‘Statilius Capella! Statilius Capella!’ Magnus shouted over the wailing of the terrified female captives and the crying of their children as he, Vespasian and Corvinus wove their way through the tightly packed slave corral, carrying torches.
‘Over here,’ a voice eventually called out as they approached the centre.
‘Corvinus, release the freeborn and freed,’ Vespasian ordered, ‘but keep bound all those who were slaves before the Marmaridae caught them. And get some of your men to round up the camels; I’m going to have a little chat with the idiot who dragged us all the way out here.’
‘Does that mean you’re going to talk to yourself for a while, then?’ Magnus asked with a grin as Corvinus walked off.
‘Very funny. If you want to do something useful, make sure the townspeople are burying the dead and getting the corpses out of the lake; we should leave no trace of this camp. And then go and search what’s left of the chief’s tent; I imagine that there will be quite a bit of money stashed away there, Capella’s purse for a start.’
Magnus nodded to his slave standing a little way off in quiet thought; his face registered no emotion. ‘I won’t ask Ziri to help, considering the circumstances.’
‘How is he?’
‘He seems to be fine; as I’m sure we all would be having committed a double fratricide followed by a patricide.’
‘Well, there’s no doubting his loyalty to you and me after that.’
‘Yes, that’s true, but what a way to prove it. I don’t know what gods the Marmaridae have but it’s going to take a lot to appease them if he doesn’t want to live the rest of his life under a curse.’
Vespasian glanced at Ziri, taking in his youth. ‘Do you think that he’ll know how to do that?’
‘I don’t know; but he’ll have to find a way. What he did ain’t natural and nothing good can come out of something that ain’t natural.’
‘Apart from saving our lives, you mean?’
Magnus grunted and stalked off.
Vespasian made his way towards Capella, wondering just what sort of death Ziri would have suffered at the hands of his father and brothers, had they captured him, for him to have been able to kill them so easily and apparently without feeling.
‘I am Titus Flavius Vespasianus, quaestor of this province, and you, Statilius Capella, are an imbecile,’ Vespasian informed Capella upon finding him.
‘That’s a very quick judgement to come to about someone whom you’ve only just met, young man,’ Capella replied; he had his hands and neck bound to the post that he was sitting against. He was much older than Vespasian had expected, early- to mid-forties, but still with a good head of curly, black hair, a lined but handsome face and a trim physique. He was surrounded by a strong smell of faeces; he had been obliged to defecate where he sat.
‘Who else but an imbecile would go off into the desert with a small escort in search of a tribe of slavers in order to buy camels off them?’
Capella smiled. ‘Ah, you’ve been talking to Flavia. Well, release me then, seeing as she must have sent you all this way to rescue me; she’s very persuasive, I know.’
‘All in good time; first of all we have to discuss the terms of your release.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning that over a hundred men, expensively trained Roman auxiliaries, have lost their lives in finding you; not to mention the loss of over a hundred and twenty horses and another thirty mules and all the equipment that they were carrying. That amounts to a good few thousand denarii, which, seeing as you are the cause of all that financial loss, it would seem only right that you should reimburse.’
‘And you no doubt think that I’m also obliged to you personally?’
‘Naturally.’
‘And if I refuse?’
‘Then the whole enterprise would be a tragic and colossal waste of time and money. We came all this way and couldn’t find you.’
Capella burst into laughter despite the rope constricting his throat. ‘You’d leave me here?’
‘I wouldn’t leave you tied to that post, no; but yes, I would leave you in Siwa to make your own way back and more than likely fall into the hands of the Marmaridae again. What would give you the right to enjoy my protection on the journey back to Cyrene if you refuse to pay Rome for the damage that your reckless actions have caused?’
‘I see your point, quaestor, if you look at it that way and assume that my actions were reckless; which indeed they would have been had I really been trying to buy camels from slavers.’
‘You weren’t, then?’
‘Young man, if I’d wanted to do that, do you really think that I would have come all the way out here when I could have sailed a hundred miles along the coast from Apollonia to the Marmaridae’s grazing grounds and bought camels from them there, negotiating from the safety of a ship as I have done many times before? Of course not, that would be imbecilic.’
‘Then why did you tell Flavia that?’
‘Cut me loose and you may get an answer.’
Vespasian had little choice; feeling slightly stupid, he took his sword to the ropes. All around, the wails of the captives were turning to shouts of joy as Corvinus’ auxiliaries moved through the corral cutting the bonds of the free and freed; only the slaves were left sitting glumly against their posts to await their fate.
