Sword of Rome(90)

He remembered Vitellius’s final words. ‘It is a pity, he has been a good friend, but for the Empire’s sake he must die. Make it quick and make it clean; he deserves that, at least.’

But Vitellius had not searched for a body on a corpse-scattered field in Gaul all those months ago. Claudius Victor turned to the wolfskin-cloaked troopers of his cavalry detachment. ‘We will wait until they are beyond Moguntiacum before we take them. The servant can die, but I want the man with only one hand alive or whoever kills him will go to the fire in his stead.’

He felt their fear as he kicked his horse into motion, and the thirty men followed in his wake as he contemplated the many horrors he would inflict on the man who had killed his brother.



‘We have Vitellius’s pass and a warrant to change the horses at his way stations,’ Serpentius pointed out. ‘I don’t understand why we’re creeping about in the bushes again when we could be making another six miles a day.’

Valerius didn’t answer immediately. The Spaniard was right. They could have travelled the well-maintained road that followed the Rhenus all the way to Augusta Raurica and into the Alps beyond. Instead, they had taken to the flat, marshy plain to the west, riding through brush and low scrub and avoiding the occasional patches of forest that studded the countryside. It had cost them time, but all he knew was that he could feel an itch on the back of his neck and that itch had never let him down.

‘I may consider Vitellius a friend.’ Valerius frowned as he tried to put his thoughts into words. ‘And perhaps he does likewise, but he’s a great man now. He rules half the Empire, and if Otho doesn’t get reinforcements soon it may not be long before he rules the rest. I’ve been around enough great men to know that they do not see the world as other men do.’ He glanced over his shoulder, remembering Nero, alone with his ghosts in the great palace he had built so the world would remember him for ever. ‘They see threats everywhere. They lash out in self-preservation and call it duty. They order a man’s death and call it necessity. If a friend stands in the way of their ambitions, he is a friend no more. Vitellius is a man who has a soothing way with words, but he wears his ambition like a legionary banner. It is his ambition I fear. A dagger in the back is no less deadly if it’s accompanied by whispered words of friendship.’

Serpentius murmured acknowledgement. ‘Aye.’ He grunted. ‘It wouldn’t be the first time he tried to feed us to the foxes. I was thinking it was strange he didn’t just order a fast galley to take us upriver if he was so keen to get his message back to Otho. We could have reached Moguntiacum in two days in comfort instead of three sleeping in the mud.’

Valerius nodded. He’d had the same thought. Unless Vitellius was having them followed, which was more likely than not, he would expect them to head west and follow the Mosella south-west from Confluentes, where it joined the main river. Instead, Valerius had decided to stay with the Rhenus as far south as Cambete. Yet if Vitellius was playing them false there was no sign of it so far. Perhaps he was starting at shadows. He’d noticed that the older a man got, the more he understood of the perils of his existence and the more nervous he became. Still … ‘I’d rather sleep in the mud for a night or two than in a cold grave for all eternity, and until we’re past Vitellius’s legions and back in Italia I’ll be sleeping with my sword in my hand.’

They camped in a damp, gloomy wood three miles west of Moguntiacum and Serpentius erected a low palisade of brush to shield the glow of the tiny fire Valerius built in the centre of the clearing. When they’d eaten the Spaniard insisted on taking the first watch. Valerius wrapped himself in his blanket and, after a long day in the saddle, instantly slipped into a blessed sleep and dreamed of warm days on his father’s estate, acting as a scarecrow among the vines. The tranquil idyll ended abruptly in an explosion of fear. He woke in darkness with a hand covering his mouth and a sandal-shod foot pinning the blade of his sword.

‘Wolves,’ Serpentius whispered. He removed his foot from the blade. ‘But not the four-legged kind. I can smell them. They’re all around us, maybe twenty or thirty.’

‘Bandits?’

Valerius sensed the Spaniard shake his head and cursed inwardly. Even with two against many, he would have backed them to cause enough casualties to deter a gang of bandits and give themselves a chance to escape. If this was a military unit they’d be well armed and reasonably disciplined; that made a difference. But if it was one of Vitellius’s patrols, why hadn’t they approached the camp instead of skulking about in the darkness like assassins? He grabbed the Spaniard’s arm and drew him close. ‘We have to find a way out,’ he hissed.