‘Give us some room,’ I shouted. ‘Fetch some water.’
Diana gave me her waterskin and knelt beside Rhesus, then gently lifted his head so he could take a sip. A spasm of pain shot through his body and I saw that his right was soaked with blood. Diana cradled his head as the pain swept though him.
‘A Gaul spear, highness,’ he said to me weakly.
‘Don’t talk. We’ll soon have you patched up.’
Diana looked at him with brown eyes filled with kindness and understanding, smiling and giving him another mouthful of water.
‘Thank you, lady.’ He looked at her. ‘Do you believe in heaven?’
‘Of course,’ she replied.
‘I lost my wife and child to the plague a few years ago. I have always hoped that they would be waiting for me.’
She smiled at him. ‘They are waiting for you, Rhesus, they are waiting for you in a place where there is no sickness and pain, only happiness and love. Go to them.’
Diana held his hand as Rhesus, a brave soldier from Thrace, slipped away from this life and joined his family in heaven. Diana closed his eyes and then kissed his forehead as those around knelt and bowed their heads. I nodded to Diana in thanks as tears began to run down my cheeks.
Thus ended the Battle of Mutina. We were now free to march north and out of Italy. Spartacus had kept his promise.
Chapter 14
After spending a night fitfully sleeping on the ground, we awoke on a mist-filled dawn with aching limbs, dry mouths and unshaven faces. I stood, bleary eyed, amid a group of similarly dishevelled and unwashed horsemen and their mounts. The air stank of sweat, leather and horse dung. An hour after dawn I held an impromptu meeting with Burebista and his senior officers. We chewed on hard biscuits and drank lukewarm water from our waterskins, those who had any. Gallia also attended, her eyes puffy from lack of sleep and her hair tied in a plait. My hands were filthy and my tunic was smeared with blood, though none of it my own. The edge of my sword had been blunted somewhat in the previous day’s fighting. I had four arrows left in my quiver, most had less or none at all. Burebista was downcast, as ten of his men had died of their wounds during the night.
‘We will take them back and their bodies will be consigned to the balefire with all the others, including Rhesus,’ I told him.
I glanced at Gallia, for Gafarn had informed me that eight of her women had also been killed in the battle and a further thirty wounded, but she said nothing, looking ahead with a face as hard as stone. The battle must have been a sobering experience for her and her comrades, but she and them had fought well. She could take comfort from that at least.
‘We will walk the horses back to camp, but two companies will serve as flank guards at all times. I don’t want to be surprised by a war party of Gauls.’
‘The Gauls in this region will never again carry their weapons to war,’ said Gallia, curtly. She looked at me. ‘The best of them lie dead upon this ground. The rest are now broken in spirit. They will trouble us no more.’
On the way back to camp we skirted the battlefield to avoid the piles of carrion that were even now providing a feast for the mass of crows who had come to add to the horror that stretched for miles around. Their squeals and squawks got on our nerves and made our horses jittery, and made us even glummer. We had won a great victory, though all I wanted to do was eat a good meal, wash my filthy clothes and body and rest, above all, rest. I walked beside Gallia as she led Epona, her stare fixedly ahead. The mist had been burned away by the sun now; it was going to be another warm day. I broke the silence first.
‘I am sorry.’
‘For what?’
‘For the deaths of so many of your warriors, the Gauls I mean.’
She smiled wryly. ‘The Romans used them and now they have paid the price. You think I would weep for such wretches?’
‘But they are your people.’
‘My people? What does that mean?’
‘Well,’ I replied rather meekly. ‘Gauls.’
’How big is Parthia?’ she asked me.
‘Thousands of square miles,’ I replied, proudly.
She continued to look ahead. ‘And in that territory you class all the people that live there as your brothers and sisters? Do you feel an affinity with them above all others.’
‘No.’
‘Then why should I have any bonds to a people who yesterday were trying to kill me, much less to a king, my father, who sold me into slavery and then enslaved me himself and again tried to profit from me? I feel nothing for these people except contempt.’
I persisted. ‘But…’
‘Enough, Pacorus,’ she snapped. ‘Your talk is giving me a headache.’
Her mood improved when Spartacus and Claudia arrived escorted by Nergal and two companies of his horse archers. The reunion between Claudia, Diana and Gallia was an emotional one, and all three wept as they embraced. The battle had obviously been harder on Gallia than I had imagined, and Diana must have been terrified and horrified in equal measure. It was good to see Spartacus again, and he looked as though there was not a scratch on him. He embraced me and slapped me on the shoulder.
‘Still alive, then,’ he beamed.
‘Still alive, lord.’
‘Let us walk together back to camp.’
After I had greeted and embraced Claudia, I walked beside him as we headed south towards the camp of wagons.
‘It was a hard fight, Pacorus, but you did well. Once you had broken their wing it was just a matter of rolling them up.’
I smiled. ‘Like a carpet.’
‘Carpet?’
‘It matters not, lord.’
He shrugged. ‘Anyway, we are making a rough count of the enemy dead and it looks as though thousands of them have perished. And I’ve also got a couple of thousand Roman prisoners that I don’t know what to do with.’ He looked at me mischievously. ‘Perhaps I should kill them, what do you think?’
I had to admit I was appalled at the idea, but said nothing. ‘It is your decision, lord.’
He laughed aloud. ‘Do not worry, my young friend, I promise I won’t kill them. In any case they are proving useful at the moment. Godarz has them prising arrows out of their dead comrades and Gauls. He was complaining earlier that your men shot too many arrows during the battle. He’s a typical quartermaster. When I served in the Roman Army they were often worse than the enemy, as they were most unwilling to surrender their carefully hoarded stores.’
‘You have done it, lord,’ I said. ‘We are free to leave Italy and leave the Romans behind us.’
‘Yes, we are finally free, though not quite yet. The army will need a few days to recover, and afterwards I have a small task to perform.’
‘Small task?’
A thin smile spread across his lips. ‘All will be revealed, my friend. But first we bind our wounds, bury our dead, rest and take stock of our losses.’
The next few days were occupied with the task of recovering from the effects of battle. Men and horses were tired, many were wounded and some were dead. The fact that we had Roman prisoners was fortuitous, as they dug great pits into which the dead were thrown. Normally we would have left the enemy dead to rot. But because we were staying in the area rather than immediately marching north, the dead had to be dealt with lest disease broke out. At the very least we would be rid of the crows and their incessant cackling. Under the watchful eyes of our guards the prisoners stripped the Roman dead of their mail shirts, sandals and anything else that our army could use. It was a grisly business, though Spartacus had no qualms about using what fell into our laps. The haul meant that all of his foot now had shields, mail shirts, helmets and swords. Many were still armed with spears, but each legion now had enough javelins to equip their first line cohorts, though Godarz still grumbled that the men had been wasteful during the battle when I found him directing a group of prisoners to search among the bodies of the dead Gauls and extract any arrows that were still usable. The blood-encrusted shafts were thrown into the back of a cart, one of many that dotted the carrion-filled ground. The stench of dead flesh was nauseating, and the area was alive with large black flies and the accursed crows.