The small group of men steadily made their way back to the edge of the village. On either side fires blazed, hungrily consuming the dry palm roofs and then the wooden supports and meagre furnishings within. The heat was intense in places and Cato could feel it stinging his arms and neck as he and his men tramped past, the arrows lodged in their shields making the formation look like a giant burr. Gradually the enemy archers stopped shooting to conserve their ammunition and Cato's men finally reached the safety of Rufus's position at the entrance to the village. The wounded were helped to the rear, where their comrades dressed their wounds as best they could with linen salvaged from the houses that had escaped the fire. Cato's wound was shallow and he hurriedly tied a band of material around his chest. Dusk gave way to night as Cato and Rufus squatted down in the shadows to consider their options.
'We can't attack frontally, right down the street,' Cato decided. 'We'd make perfect targets for their archers, and they can come up at us from the flanks as we charge.'
Rufus nodded, then suggested, 'I could try to cut round the village and take them in the flank and rear while you distracted them here, sir.'
Cato thought a moment and then nodded. 'That's all we can do. The trouble is that Ajax is sure to be expecting us.'
'Only if he stays where he is, sir. In his place, I'd beat a retreat. He's won as much advantage as he can from the ambush. He knows we'll be forced to try a more indirect approach. Why sit there and wait? The sensible thing to do would be to leave a small rearguard to fool us into thinking he is still there, and then continue to make good his escape, steal as much of a march on us as possible before dawn comes. With good fortune, he might get far enough ahead for us to lose the scent when we continue the pursuit at dawn.'
'You're right,' said Cato. They could not allow Ajax the chance to slip away now that they were closer to him than they had been at any time since he had escaped from Crete. He nodded at Rufus. 'There's too much thick scrub and undergrowth to the right – they'd hear you coming. Take half the men and work round the left of the village through the grass. I saw a dyke on the side of the village before we entered, perhaps a hundred paces from the buildings, so you won't be able to swing out too far that side. Best wait until the flames have died down a bit before the attack, so you aren't spotted.'
'Yes, sir. What will you do when the time comes?'
'Try another charge up the street.' Cato smiled wearily. 'What I lack in imagination I'll make up for in making as much of a racket as possible. Right, then, pass the word on to the men. And let them know they can drink their fill. We'll refill the canteens from the village's water supply when it's all over.'
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
'How many men did we lose?' Ajax asked as he stared at the distant Roman figures at the far end of the village.
Karim, his closest follower, looked up from the wound he was dressing on Hepithus's arm. 'Two dead. One as good as and four wounded. Though all of the wounded can still fight.'
Ajax considered the outcome of the ambush. He had lost two men and had killed or wounded as many as ten of the Romans. A profitable exchange then, though he had hoped to annihilate them completely, or at least scatter them so that they could not continue the pursuit. Some of his men had been in a bad way when they reached the village late in the afternoon. It had taken all his personal authority to get some of them to prepare the ambush. The rest, his fellow gladiators, had been content to make a stand against their pursuers rather than continue to struggle on through the mangrove. The small victory had gone some way towards restoring their belief in him. As he knew it would.
Ajax had a clear understanding of the mentality of the gladiators who followed him, thanks to the years he had lived, and fought, in their ranks. They lived to fight. Having once been forced to risk their lives at the behest of their masters, they knew the value of freedom and would endure any hardship and any danger rather than submit to being slaves again, or facing execution. It was as well that gladiators respected a hierarchy based on proficiency, Ajax mused, otherwise his leadership would surely have been challenged at some stage since their flight from Crete. But as long as he was unquestionably the best fighter amongst them, they would continue to respect and follow him, and obey his orders. Despite his lapse in judgement. Once again Ajax cursed himself for his complacency. The supply base had been a most useful lair from which to continue their harassment of the Romans. For nearly two months they had eaten well and rested, all the time knowing that they would have to abandon the bay at some point.
They should have quit the place long ago, Ajax realised bitterly. They had made themselves too comfortable. They had done what only the greenest of gladiators ever did – they had lowered their guard. The lookouts had failed to do their duty. He felt a moment's rage course through his veins. The fools had cost their comrades dearly. In the months that the renegades had been at the supply base he had been able to swell their ranks from amongst the slaves on the ships they had preyed on. At the time of the Roman raid, Ajax's original company of thirty of his closest lieutenants and the survivors of his bodyguard had swelled to over three hundred men, enough to crew both ships in the bay, and even the damaged Roman warship that had unwittingly fallen into his hands shortly before the raid.
Ajax frowned as he reproached himself again. It was inevitable that the warship would be missed, but not nearly so swiftly. As soon as he became aware that the Romans had found his hideout, Ajax marvelled at the speed with which his enemy had guessed the fate of the warship and moved to attack him. The base, all of his ships and all but fifty of his men had been lost in the attack.
Clearly the Romans were being led by an outstanding officer. Now he knew. Ajax had recognised the voice challenging him from the street. The prefect, Cato, who had brought his rebellion on Crete crashing to defeat at the point where Ajax had been certain that he held every advantage. That rebellion had failed. But there would be another, Ajax had resolved. One day, he and his men would be the cadre around which another army of slaves would rise up to challenge their Roman masters. The Egyptian peasants had suffered under the heel of Roman rule, and Ajax's recent masquerade had exacerbated their discontent. Many would be willing enough to support a revolt. Many, but not all, Ajax thought, as he gazed at the burning village.
When Ajax had led his exhausted men out of the swamp and into the village, the headman had greeted them nervously. He had wisely offered water and food to the column of armed men. As Ajax's men had thirstily gulped down the water the villagers brought to them, he had seen the place's potential as an ambush site. Hemmed in by the dyke and reeds on one side, and the tangled mangrove on the other, the village was a natural chokepoint. Ajax knew that he was being closely followed by a handful of lightly armed Romans and saw the opportunity to be rid of them. Twenty men were left behind in hiding as the rest pretended to move on. The Romans had followed their trail, past the place of concealment, and then the trap was sprung. Caught between the men who had been hiding and Ajax and the main body who turned about and charged back into the village, the legionaries had been quickly cut down.
The success of the ambush had prompted Ajax to consider repeating it on a larger scale, against the main column of Romans who would be sure to be following up on their scouts. This time the headman ordered them to leave the village, fearful of the reprisals that the Romans would carry out against his village if they found the bodies of their comrades. Ajax had ordered the villagers to be rounded up and held in the goat pen to prevent any of them escaping to warn the Romans. However, the villagers had begun to wail fearfully and were heedless of his demand for them to be silent, even when he had threatened them with violence.