‘They talk in riddles, Aquila, but men like Hypolitas can see the true meaning.’
‘Always?’
Gadoric smiled. ‘Not always, otherwise he would have known we were to be betrayed.’
‘And if he’s wrong again?’
‘He will tell you what I would. That for us, it is better to die than be a slave.’
‘If you fight Rome you will most certainly die.’
Gadoric laughed, just as he used to when they had hunted in the woods together at home. ‘We might win.’
Aquila threw back his head and laughed too, but his was not the laughter of mirth, more a hoot of derision. ‘I was right, your ordeal has turned your wits.’
There was something about Hypolitas that made disagreement near-impossible. It was easy, out of his presence, to say he was a dreamer and quite possibly, with his spells and potions, a charlatan, but once he started talking he reduced everything to such simple ideas that the difficulties inherent in the solution seemed diminished as well.
‘There are ten times as many slaves on the island as Romans.’
‘The locals,’ said Tyrtaeus.
‘Hate them as much as we do!’
Aquila cut in. ‘They won’t fight Rome. They can’t!’
‘We don’t want them to fight. We want them to stand aside.’
The voice was low and compelling, the eyes large and unblinking. His head was bald through nature, not because, as Aquila first supposed, he had been shaved. The large nose and prominent chin dominated the elongated face and his hands, with long bony fingers, never still, seemed to weave a spell as he talked. Aquila had discovered that he hailed from Palmyra in Syria, without having the faintest notion of where the place was.
‘These hills are full of men, all runaways and all in small groups, easily destroyed. I have looked into the future. I see them combined.’
‘With or without arms?’
Hypolitas ignored Aquila’s sceptical tone. ‘They can be made, or even better, stolen and these men trained to use them. Likewise food to sustain them. The farms are full of it and instead of sitting still waiting to be attacked piecemeal, what if we take the offensive?’ The fingers darted about as though the entire island was set out on the hard-packed earth of the hut. ‘First here, then there, striking by day and night, never still, always on the move from one side of the mountains to the other, with every slave we free another soldier in the fight.’
‘Rome won’t sit still,’ said Aquila, leaning forward to make his point. ‘You’ll face an army one day.’
The eyes gleamed, the fingers joined together in front of them. ‘We will be an army one day.’
His hand shot out, catching hold of the golden eagle that swung loose. ‘There is power here, I can feel it. Perhaps one day, Aquila, I will ask the spirits to tell me where this came from, for I can see the past as well as the future.’
‘You believe he’s mad?’ Aquila nodded, as Gadoric put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. ‘Yet you will go along with him.’
‘You say you have no future, Gadoric, only that of a slave. Neither have I. I’m not a free-born Roman any more. I was outside the law from the day I freed you.’
‘So you will join Hypolitas and me?’
Aquila turned and faced his friend, his heart heavy. ‘There is one thing I must say to you, something you must pass on to Hypolitas. You cannot win, but I will join you, even if I am a Roman.’
‘The reason?’
He had thought long and hard, feeling for the first time like a fully grown man who had to make his own decisions. The process and the conclusion were equally uncomfortable and he knew the words he wanted to say, just as he knew he would never say them. How could he tell Gadoric he loved him; that he was the only family he had. For all he had discovered and witnessed he could not condemn Flaccus and his mercenaries, nor Rome. He looked at Gadoric closely. The Celt probably thought his sole interest was a hope that Hypolitas spoke the truth; that he could, with his spells and incantations, see into the past as well as the future; that one day, he would put Aquila on the path to finding his true parents.
Then there was Phoebe, still a slave and in the hands of a man who had become his enemy. He could not admit that he missed her company, feeling that his friend would laugh at him. Deep down, he knew it had something to do with his own destiny, without being absolutely sure what that destiny was. Those words he could not say, even if Gadoric, with his faith in the Gods, would swallow it whole, so he gave an answer that would satisfy the Celt without enlightening him.
‘Ever since you first taught me to cast a spear, it seems everything I’ve done has been designed to train me for war.’ He looked straight into the single, blue, unblinking eye. ‘Would you believe me when I say that I cannot resist a fight?’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Flaccus, when he woke, was still very drunk; he had been since his return from Messana, able to recall every word of the bawling out he had received, a tongue-lashing his employer had chosen to deliver before the entire group of overseers, so adding humiliation to the brew. No one had addressed him like that since he was a common ranker and because Barbinus had it in his power to dismiss him from this farm, to throw him back to a life of relative privation, he had had to stand still and swallow it whole. His grovelling apology, plus his vow to kill Aquila, had stemmed the tide of abuse as well as removing the threat to his prosperity.
The retching sound outside his window made him even angrier, realising it had been that noise which had woken him. The old centurion pulled himself off his cot and staggered to the window, yelling abuse at the culprit. As his head came out into the cool morning air, Phoebe spun round to look at him, her hand automatically going to her lips to wipe off the last of her vomit. To Flaccus, her face was like a red rag to a bull.
‘You,’ he growled.
‘I’m sorry, master,’ replied Phoebe quickly. The girl had done everything in her power to stay out of the way since Flaccus had returned alone. She was unsure what had happened, but since he had sent all his mercenaries out, yelling orders at them to find and kill her man, there was little doubt that Aquila would not be coming back. She tried to walk away, but a sharp word from Flaccus halted her.
‘Get in here, girl. I want a word with you.’
He was talking to himself when she entered his room, growling under his breath about betrayal, his hand rubbing furiously at his groin. Phoebe stood before him, meekly, hoping by her attitude to dent his temper. That failed; Flaccus suddenly shot out a hand and grabbed her hair and she squealed painfully as he pulled on it, forcing her to her knees, then bending her head back so that she was forced to look up at him.
‘Do you know what that boy has done, girl, do you?’ His breath stank of sour wine and his spit was cold by the time it landed on her face. ‘He’s betrayed me, that’s what. Betrayed the man who saved him.’
‘Please?’
The weak, plaintive word did nothing to calm Flaccus. If anything it inflamed him. ‘Please, girl. That’s what you did. You pleasured the ungrateful brat at my expense and he was soft on you, too.’
Flaccus pulled her head into his groin, forcing her face against his sweaty leather small clothes. ‘There’s a price to pay girl and since your hero ain’t here to cough up, maybe you’ll have to do so in his place. Happen I should get my lads to take it out on you, mount you till you bleed. Then maybe young Aquila will ride in to the rescue.’
Having pulled down his breeches, the overseer was pulling her head back and forth across his groin, but he had been drinking for days, and no amount of concentration, or vivid imaginings, could help him. Even if she had been willing, the effect of the wine robbed him of the ability to do what he wanted and take out his anger on this young girl’s body. Suddenly he stopped, as he remembered that she had woken him by being sick outside his window and he pulled her head back again, so he could see her tear-stained face.