Within a quarter of an hour Lindos was finished and Magnus, with his arm set straight and protected by two splints, was covered in sweat, his eyes screwed shut. ‘Jupiter’s cock, that hurt,’ he blurted as the slave removed the wooden bit from his mouth. He opened his eyes to see Vespasian staring at him aghast and dawning suspicion on Lindos’ face.
He had spoken in Latin and had invoked Rome’s best and greatest god.
Hormus was the first to react, grabbing the slave, and with both hands clamped to his head, twisted it, violent and sudden, breaking the neck with a snap.
Vespasian’s shock at his previously timid slave’s new murderous abilities was the instant that Lindos needed to flee and scream for help and quickly and loudly he did so, retreating back into the depths of the tent.
‘This way,’ Vespasian said, gathering his mind and drawing his sword. He ran to the side of the tent and slashed a long rend in it as burly bodies bundled through the entrance. He pushed the loose material aside and ran out into the night with Magnus and Hormus following. At speed they sprinted away, dodging a couple of guards whose agility was not helped by their bulk. Behind them cries of warning rang out. After they had covered fifty paces or so Vespasian slowed down so as not to draw attention to themselves; as he did so he caught the sweet animal scent of the horse-lines and, following his nose, walked swiftly towards them.
The horses were tethered in long lines and tended by slaves who groomed, fed and exercised them; hundreds of horses meant scores of slaves and Vespasian knew that any pursuit would soon think to look at the horse-lines. ‘There’s no time for niceties,’ he said, striding forward with purpose towards the horses nearest them, his sword still naked in his hand. With a swift, military jab he rammed the point into the throat of an enquiring slave and within a few moments had unhitched the first three horses in the line. ‘It’ll have to be bareback,’ he said, hauling himself up onto the unsaddled beast.
Hormus gave Magnus a leg up before mounting his horse as slaves came running towards them, their shouts alerting the guards, coming from the opposite direction in pursuit, as to the whereabouts of their quarry.
Pulling his mount round, Vespasian kicked it into action, followed by Magnus gamely hanging on with one hand, as Hormus slashed down at a slave attempting to grab his leg, opening up his face with a spurt of blood; the iron tang caused his horse’s nostrils to flare and with flattened ears it sped away after his master.
Vespasian did not slow his mount as it clattered through the arriving guards, sending them diving to either side and leaving the escape into the empty south clear. They thundered their horses out into the night, leaving uproar behind them, and headed, with as much haste as possible in the black night, for the tributary of the Tigris that would take them down to the great river itself. Then they would follow it south, drawn by its current, into the beating heart of the Parthian Empire.
CHAPTER XIIII
The Tigris was being kind to them, flowing at a steady pace, its surface smooth, gliding them south at the speed of a trotting horse. Vespasian lay in their boat’s bow, looking up past the triangular sail at the cloudless sky and wondering how he could have lived for two years without seeing such beauteous colour; the intensity of the blue transfixed his eyes and it was as much as he could do to check the tears that he could feel welling up within him. Now that he had time to think, relief coursed through his whole being; relief that the dark ordeal was now over; relief at once again feeling the companionship of a fellow human being.
For the two days since they had come across the boat pulled up on the riverbank and covered with vegetation, Vespasian had lain prone in the bow as they sailed down the tributary river to its confluence with the Tigris. He had joined in some conversation with Magnus and Hormus but it had been an effort and he found that he preferred just to let his thoughts wander free and enjoy the exhilaration of having nothing over his head preventing him from seeing the sky.
He had listened to his companions’ account of how Magnus, having befriended the gaoler, had sold Hormus to him at a reasonable discount after they had murdered his original slave and the sexual ordeals that Hormus went through at the hands of that man for the six days that he had served him before their escape. Vespasian’s gratitude to his slave for sacrificing himself so that he could rescue his master was profound and he understood that Hormus was completely devoted to him, serving him in such a way that he could be trusted with anything. Hormus sat in the stern of the boat, holding the steering-oar as the current and the small sail, full bellied with wind, pushed them on towards Ctesiphon; his eyes fixed on the river ahead and his mouth set firm in concentration beneath the beard that masked his undershot chin. Vespasian studied the man and wondered what he had done to deserve such unquestioning, animal loyalty; he swore to himself that he would repay that loyalty by freeing Hormus at the earliest legal time: when he reached the age of thirty in a few years.
Magnus sat beneath the mast, his head on his chest, snoring; his splinted arm lay across his lap. Vespasian smiled at the sight. He had never dared give rein to the hope that his friend would find and rescue him in all those dark days; but there had always been a little flicker in the deeper recesses of his mind that it was a possibility. Now he was free he could afford to admit to himself that the reason he had survived relatively unscathed was because he had clung on to that tiny morsel of hope, nurturing it but not relying on it. He knew that he was extremely fortunate with his companions and, as they sailed on south, he said a prayer of thanks to Mars for holding his hands over him and promised the finest bull as soon as he was back within the Empire.
They kept to the middle of the river, a hundred and fifty paces from either bank, both of which were dotted with farms, small settlements and larger towns. The land was lush, most of it under cultivation and the communities that they passed seemed prosperous. Occasionally they would land just downstream from one and Hormus would walk back to buy food; they aroused no suspicion and other craft that they passed on the water would hail them cheerfully and sail on without incident.
Days melted into one another, the river widened and the temperature grew hotter. Gradually Vespasian began to feel the weight of his incarceration lift; he could sleep without fear of waking up to find himself back in his cell so that for the first time in two years he began to feel rested and strong and capable of an arduous caravan journey across the desert to either Judaea or Syria. As his strength returned so did his ambition: somehow he had survived an ordeal that would have left most people gibbering wrecks; he had done it with his will and, he was well aware, with the help of the gods. He was now sure that there was substance behind all the omens of his birth and the subsequent prophesies and signs. Mars was preserving him: how else had his mind been kept from cracking?
‘We should be getting there soon,’ Magnus observed, shading his eyes and peering forward. ‘When I looked at a map back in Syria, from what I could make out, it seemed to be about two to three hundred miles from Arbela to Ctesiphon. This is our fifth day on the river.’
‘How will we know that we’re at Ctesiphon?’ Hormus asked.
Vespasian sat up and looked south. ‘Because it will be the biggest city that you’ve ever seen outside Rome or Alexandria. It’s even bigger if you count the Greek city of Seleucia on the western bank of the Tigris.’