False God of Rome (7 page)

‘Master,’ Magnus said, pointing to himself, ‘master.’ He then pointed to Vespasian. ‘Sir. Sir.’

Ziri nodded vigorously, looking pleased. ‘Master. Sir,’ he repeated.

‘Well, that’s got that sorted out,’ Magnus said, biting into a lump of bread.

Aghilas, much weakened by his wound, guided them without mishap to the second well, just two days from Siwa. Here the landscape changed; the hard-baked ground gave way to sand.
At first it was just a thin coating on the desert floor but as they journeyed further from the well it became thicker until by late afternoon they were travelling over sand dunes as tall as a man.
Their horses started to struggle in the soft footing and eventually they were forced to dismount and walk. The scalding hot sand on their sandalled feet was a torment to them all.

‘I’m beginning to think that this is much too much effort to go to just so that you can get yourself a good breeding wench,’ Magnus grumbled as they crested yet another mound
of loose and treacherous sand with Corvinus and Aghilas; behind them the four turmae trailed into the shimmering distance.

‘We’re also rescuing a Roman citizen from a life of misery as an agricultural slave in the middle of nowhere,’ Vespasian reminded his friend.

Magnus grunted and battled with his unwilling horse, trying to encourage it to make the descent down the other side of the dune.

‘Horse, go!’ Ziri shouted, whacking the recalcitrant beast on the rump; it jumped forward and skidded down the dune, sitting on its back legs, taking Magnus with it in a flurry of
sand, much to Vespasian’s and Ziri’s amusement.

‘I’m going to stop teaching you Latin, you fuzzy-haired little camel-botherer, if that’s the use you put it to,’ Magnus spluttered, trying to pull himself out from under
his struggling horse.

Vespasian laughed as he led his horse down the dune. ‘I thought that was a perfect use of the language; he chose exactly the right two words from his vocabulary of at least twenty to make
the horse go.’

Ziri grinned broadly, displaying his ivory teeth as he came down to Magnus. ‘Ziri master help?’

‘I don’t need your fucking help, desert-dweller,’ Magnus replied as he managed to extract himself. He brushed the sand from his tunic and began to lead his horse towards the
next dune; with another grin Ziri followed.

‘Why’s Ziri so cheerful?’ Vespasian asked Aghilas as they struggled up the loose sand. ‘If I’d just been enslaved I think I’d be pretty upset.’

‘It’s the way of the Marmaridae. Because they’re slavers they would rather die than become a slave, that’s why they were so suicidal at the well. Their honour required
them to exact a blood price for our taking their water but then, when it was obvious that we would catch them, they chose to fight and die. As far as Ziri’s concerned he died as a Marmarides
in that battle; the fact that Magnus beat him in single combat, yet let him live and made him his slave, means that he can never go back to his people. He now has a completely new life and accepts
his fate.’

‘So he’s happy to be a slave and never see his family again?’

‘Yes, it’s the only thing he can do. If he was married and had children he is dead to them; to go back to them would mean a slow and painful death at the hands of his own family. All
he has left is a new life serving Magnus.’

‘So Magnus can trust him?’

‘With his life, yes.’

‘Even against the Marmaridae?’

‘Especially against the Marmaridae.’

Vespasian looked at the young Marmarides following Magnus up the dune like a faithful hound and wondered what he was going to make of Rome. His musing was brought to an abrupt end by a cry of
alarm from Ziri who stopped suddenly and pointed to the south. Vespasian squinted into the sun, shading his eyes with his hand. The horizon, normally a straight, sharp divide between light brown
and blue, appeared smudged and indistinct.

‘Gods help us,’ Aghilas muttered.

‘What is it?’ Corvinus demanded.

‘Sandstorm, and it looks like it’s coming this way; if it is, it’ll be here before dark.’

‘What can we do?’ Vespasian asked.

‘I’ve never been caught in one so I don’t know, but nothing, I think; it’ll catch us out in the open, there’re no rocks to shelter behind for miles. We must just
keep going as fast as possible and pray that it misses us, because if it doesn’t and if it’s a big one it’ll bury us alive.’

For the next couple of hours they pressed on over the unforgiving terrain with all possible haste; the sun had sunk onto the western horizon. News of the impending maelstrom
had filtered down the column and the men glanced nervously south at the ever enlarging threat, now no more than ten miles away in the half-light. It had turned from a smudge on the horizon into a
massive dark brown, land-based cloud and was increasing in size at an alarming speed.

‘Make your peace with your gods,’ Aghilas said, ‘there’s no avoiding it now; we’re dead men.’

Ziri ran up to Aghilas and said something in his own language; a brief conversation ensued.

‘He says the only way to have a chance of survival in a sandstorm,’ Aghilas announced, ‘is to make your camel lie down on the top of a dune and shelter behind it; he
doesn’t know if horses are big or heavy enough but it may work.’

‘Pass the word down the column,’ Corvinus shouted, ‘shelter behind the horses or mules on top of the dunes.’

Vespasian pulled his horse down next to Magnus and Ziri. Sensing an imminent change for the worse in the weather conditions all the animals were skittish and needed to be firmly held in place.
He peered over his horse’s back and felt the wind start to stir on his face.

‘Vulcan’s boiling piss, look at the size of it,’ Magnus exclaimed, ‘that’s got to be three or four hundred feet high.’

Vespasian stared at the rolling brown cloud in amazement; it was as least as tall as Magnus’ estimate but that was not as awe-inspiring as its speed. Now only a couple of miles away it
rolled across the desert at a pace that not even the fastest chariot horse in the circus could outrun. As he watched wide-eyed it raced towards them, like a massive moving mountain eating up the
ground before it.

Suddenly it went dark.

Then it hit them.

Within an instant the wind had accelerated from a moderate breeze into a howling gale that strained the ears. The temperature rose and visibility plummeted, so that he could only just make out
Magnus sheltering behind his horse two paces away, as the air filled with tiny, sharp particles of sand moving at colossal speeds; they cannoned into the horses’ sides, stinging them sorely
even through their coats. Vespasian jerked down his mount’s bridle as it attempted to stand and flee from the all-encompassing rage that surrounded them; despite the horse’s struggling
he held it down with every fibre of strength until it acquiesced and lay still. Breathing became increasingly difficult. He pulled his tunic up over his nose, curled into the foetus position and
squeezed his eyes tight shut, offering up prayers to every god he could think of, as the wind ripped around him, tearing the hat from his head and dragging relentlessly at his cloak, which cracked
like a whip with the unremitting pressure.

The sun went down and darkness became complete.

Vespasian lost all sense of time.

‘Pull, you curly-haired little bugger!’ Magnus shouted, startling Vespasian back to consciousness.

He felt strong hands grasping his ankles, stretching his legs and then he started to slide downhill. Suddenly he could see stars, thousands of them.

Magnus loomed over him. ‘Are you all right, sir?’

Spitting out a mouthful of sand, Vespasian raised his head. ‘I seem to be,’ he replied with difficulty; his mouth was desert-dry.

Ziri held a water-skin to his lips. ‘Sir, trink.’

Vespasian drank and felt the lukewarm liquid course into his body.

Ziri pulled the skin away from him. ‘Sir, stop.’

‘He’s right, I’m afraid,’ Magnus said, holding out his hand to help Vespasian up. ‘It’s the only water we’ve got unless we can dig some more
out.’

Vespasian got unsteadily to his feet and looked around. It was peaceful, there was no wind. The three-quarter moon splashed the rippling sand dunes with silver; to the north the monstrous shape
of the sandstorm could just be discerned, ravaging its way towards the coast. Here and there Vespasian could see a few figures, no more than twenty, singly or in pairs, digging in the sand.
‘Where’s Corvinus?’ he asked, looking back to where he last saw the cavalry prefect and his mount.

‘He’s fine,’ Magnus replied, ‘he’s organising the search parties, although I don’t know how fruitful they’ll prove to be. Most of the horses bolted,
only the lads that kept theirs down have survived. I’m afraid that Aghilas didn’t have the strength to hold onto his.’

‘Shit, we’re lost then.’

‘Not quite,’ Magnus said with a grin, patting Ziri’s frizzy hair like a favoured pet, ‘Ziri knows how to get to Siwa.’

The Marmarides nodded. ‘Master, sir, Ziri, Siwa, yes.’

‘He’s becoming quite talkative,’ Vespasian observed.

‘He is,’ Magnus agreed, ‘and so are we when we should be digging to see what we can salvage.’

The first rays of direct sunlight hit Vespasian’s face and it felt so good to be alive as he scrabbled in the sand searching for his precious water-skin. He had despaired
during that timeless oblivion that he had spent curled up in the lee of his now dead horse.

At first he had been able to push away the sand as it piled up near his face but as the storm had intensified great swathes of it had been deposited all around and over him; keeping above it had
meant that he was slowly rising and would eventually be higher than his protective mount. Giving up the unequal struggle he had managed to pull his cloak over his head and concentrated instead on
keeping a small air pocket in front of his face, which, with the help of his long cavalry spatha acting as a tent-pole, he had maintained until he had lost consciousness in the stifling
conditions.

How he had survived he did not know. He could only surmise that the goddess Fortuna had held her hands over him and that she really was safeguarding him for whatever destiny the gods had decreed
for him, as he had, at the age of fifteen, overheard his mother profess. That day he had heard his parents speak of the omens surrounding his birth and what they prophesied. Since then no one had
been willing to tell him of their content, bound as they were by an oath administered by his mother to all those present on the day of his naming ceremony, nine days after his birth.

At first this had irked him but gradually his curiosity had waned out of necessity and he had put it to the back of his mind. His curiosity had been briefly reawakened, four years previously,
after he and his brother, Sabinus, had been read a deliberately obscure prophecy at the Oracle of Amphiaraos in Greece. This had alluded to a brother telling the truth to the King of the East.
Whether it had meant anything to Sabinus he did not know as his brother had been unforthcoming, claiming to be still bound by their mother’s original oath.

In the two years between completing his time as one of the
triumviri capitales
and being elected quaestor, time mainly spent running the estate at Cosa left to him by his grandmother, he
had thought little about it; until now. Now he was convinced that he had been preserved by some unseen hand; how the others had survived he did not know but he knew that he should have suffocated
last night, buried in the sand on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his birth.

‘It’s not looking too good,’ Corvinus said, tight-lipped, walking up behind Vespasian with Magnus as he finally managed to find his water-skin, ‘there are twenty-six
survivors, plus us four, and only eight water-skins, all of which are half-empty.’

‘Nine now, prefect,’ Vespasian replied, pulling the skin from the deep hole in the sand. ‘Surely we can work out where the horses were and dig down to them?’

‘We’ve been trying to but most of the horses and all but one of the mules bolted taking the provisions with them. They’re all lost out there somewhere,’ Corvinus snapped,
waving his arm around, ‘we’ll never find them. All we’ve been digging up is dead auxiliaries; I’ve lost three of my four decurions. They didn’t deserve to die like
that, it’s a fucking shambles.’

‘Well, if there’s no hope of any more survivors then we should get going quickly before the sun gets too hot.’

‘Go where?’ Corvinus shouted.

‘To Siwa as planned, prefect; it shouldn’t be more than a day away.’

‘And what are we going to do when we get there? We’ve got hardly any men left; you’ve managed to lose most of them on this mad scheme of yours.’

‘Let me remind you who you’re talking to, prefect,’ Vespasian retorted, pointing a finger at the young cavalry prefect’s face.

‘I don’t need to be reminded that I’m talking to an upstart of a New Man with no breeding and a Sabine accent.’

‘Whatever your patrician prejudices might make of me, Corvinus, I am the Governor’s, and therefore the Senate’s, representative in Cyrenaica and you will do as I order without
question. And if you think that saving citizens from slavery is a mad scheme then I pray that should that fate befall you there is someone like me around willing to come after you. Now get the men
ready to—’

A distant, mournful, wailing cry from high overhead cut him off.

Vespasian looked east towards its source. ‘What the fuck was that?’

‘Another poor sod who’s had the misfortune to follow you into the desert,’ Corvinus spat. He turned on his heel and stormed away, barking orders at the surviving auxiliaries
who were looking nervously at the sky.

‘I think that you should have made it clear,’ Magnus said, watching Corvinus go, ‘that you’d only come after him if he has an attractive woman in tow, if you take my
meaning?’

Vespasian shot his friend a venomous look. ‘Very funny!’

‘I thought so; and not so far from the truth either.’

Vespasian grunted; he could not deny it to Magnus: if it had not been for his desire for Flavia, they would not be here and a hundred or so men would still be alive. But then, if a man’s
destiny was pre-ordained, those men must have been destined to die here; Fortuna had only held her hands over a few of them to be spared for other tasks and deaths. What, he wondered, was the task
for which he had been spared?