‘I’m sorry to put you to this trouble, friend,’ said Publius Sextius to the guide, ‘but I’m in a hurry and I can’t afford to waste any time. Do your duty well and you’ll be amply rewarded. Just take me to the next rest station and after that you can turn back.’
The man nodded his head and then, without saying a word, got on his horse. Publius Sextius mounted as well, touched his heels to the horse’s flanks and rode him out the gate. The two legionaries saluted him and the other rider gave them a quick salute back. They let the two horsemen pass before closing the gate behind them.
As soon as they were outside, they were struck by a blast of cold wind and blowing snow, which was beginning to fall faster and faster.
Publius Sextius drew closer to his companion, who still hadn’t opened his mouth. ‘What’s your name, friend?’ he asked.
‘Sura.’
‘I’m Publius. We can go.’
Sura started down the road, setting a slow, steady pace and lighting the way with his torch. Publius Sextius rode behind him, staying to the centre of the path. He couldn’t shake the impression that they were being followed, and kept turning to scan the forest around them. The road was winding and sloped steeply upwards through the oak and chestnut trees green with moss and white with snow. There were no signs of human presence, but the light cast by Sura’s smoky torch was weak, so he couldn’t be sure.
Publius Sextius had realized immediately that his guide was not a man of many words and he didn’t try to make conversation. He asked questions only when necessary, obtaining grunts of assent or refusal in response. He tried to keep his mind occupied with thoughts, reflections, plans. His intention was to reach Caesar in time to depart with him on his expedition to the east, about which he’d heard great things. Caesar’s objectives were, as always, formidable.
He had been with Caesar in Gaul and in Spain, and would gladly follow him to Mesopotamia, to Hyrcania, to Sarmatia if necessary. He would follow him to the ends of the earth.
Publius Sextius believed that Caesar was the only man who could save the world.
Caesar had ended the civil wars and had achieved reconciliation with all his adversaries. He was firmly convinced that the only civilization capable of governing humankind was the one that had its fulcrum and force in Rome. He believed that Rome was the world and the world was Rome. He understood his enemies, the peoples who had fought against him to save their independence, he even admired their bravery, but he knew that his victory over them was already destined, written in stone.
Whenever Publius Sextius had had the opportunity to speak with him, he’d been impressed by the expression in Caesar’s eyes and by the sense of determination and command that emanated from him. A predator, yes, but not bloodthirsty. He was quite sure that Caesar felt repugnance at the sight of blood.
How often he had marched at his side, watching as the commander rode by, as he spoke with his officers and with his soldiers. When Caesar recognized someone who had distinguished himself on a day of pitched battle, he would always get off his horse to talk with him, make a joke or two. But his most vivid memory of Caesar went back to the night after the battle against the Nervii, after he, Publius Sextius, commander of the Twelfth, had returned to camp on a stretcher, a bloody mess, more dead than alive, but victorious. He had seized the standard that day and carried it forward towards the enemy himself. He had regrouped the fighting units, instilling courage into his men, and had been the first to set an example.
Caesar had come to visit him, alone, in the tent where the surgeons were trying to stitch him up by the dim light of a few tallow lamps. Leaning close, Caesar had said:
‘Publius Sextius.’
The centurion could barely form a word but he recognized his commander.
‘You saved your comrades today. Thousands of them would have been massacred and years of work would have been lost in a single moment. You saved me, too, along with the honour of the republic, the people and the Senate. There’s no reward that equals such an act, but if it means anything to you, you should know that you will always be the man I rely on, even if everyone else abandons me.’
Then he’d lowered his gaze to look at the centurion’s body, covered with cuts and gashes.
‘So many wounds,’ he whispered with dismay in his voice, ‘so many wounds. .’
Publius Sextius wondered why, in this moment of total solitude, in the middle of a night-long journey through the deserted forests of the Apennines, with a snowstorm raging all around, he should remember those words.
In front of him, the inscrutable Sura plodded on at a steady pace, holding the torch high, staining the immaculate snow with its ruddy reflection, leaving behind him the prints of a good, strong, patient horse who continued, one step after another, further and further up the twisting path, under the skeletal branches of the beeches and oaks.
It occurred to Publius Sextius that someone might have gone ahead and be setting a trap. Maybe Sura was leading him into an ambush from which he wouldn’t escape. Maybe the message would never arrive at its destination in time. But then he remembered how the innkeeper had insisted that he spend the night in the mansio, safe inside under the watchful eye of four legionaries, including Baebius Carbo of the Thirteenth. No one knew where dawn would find him tomorrow.
Sura lit the second torch and threw the first stub into the snow. It glowed for an instant, then died in the darkness of the night. A bird surprised by the sudden light of the torch took to the sky with a shriek that sounded like despair before disappearing far away in the valley.
The wind died down. There wasn’t a sound now, or traces of life of any sort. Even the rare milestones along the road were buried in the snowdrifts. All Publius Sextius could hear were Caesar’s words, repeated endlessly in his lonely, empty mind: ‘So many wounds. . so many wounds.’
9
In Monte Appennino, per flumen secretum, a.d. VI Id. Mart., secunda vigilia
The Apennine Mountains, the secret river, 10 March, second guard shift, ten p.m.
Mustela floundered helplessly in the swirling waters of the underground torrent, dragged along by the current. The whirlpools would suck him under the surface, where he tried to hold his breath for as long as he could in a struggle to survive until he was tossed up further along, where he would spit out the water he’d swallowed, gulp at the air and then disappear under the waves again.
He stifled his cries when the current smashed him against the rocks and he could feel blood oozing from his cuts. More than once he thought he would lose his senses as he hit his head hard or took such a pounding from the waves that he didn t think he would survive.
Suddenly he felt something grazing his belly. Gravel and sand. He grabbed at an outcrop of rock and managed to stop and to catch his breath as he lay in a small bend of the river where the water was shallow.
Panting uncontrollably, he tried to work out whether he had any broken bones and to ascertain what was pouring from his side. He touched his hand to his mouth and could tell from the sweetish metallic taste that it was blood. He stuck his fingertips into the wound and discovered that the skin was torn from his hip to his ribcage on the left side. However, the gash had not penetrated too deep and so he hoped that no serious damage had been done.
He could hear the sounds of the waterfall he’d already gone through coming from upstream. Further downstream there was a different noise, deeper and gurgling, but the utter darkness filled him with an anxious uncertainty verging on panic. He had no idea where he was, how far he had come and how much further he had to go. He’d lost all sense of time since the moment when he’d lowered himself into the icy river and let go of the last handhold along the water’s edge.