The man reached out and detached the purse Flavius still wore on his belt, smiling as he tossed it and weighed it in his hand. ‘We even have a ready reward here, not much of one, I’ll grant, but it will pay our way in wine and food when we head back north.’
There was a moment when Flavius considered appealing to their Christian principles, only to put that aside. These would be men of a stripe that Ohannes had spoken of, ex-soldiers who had taken service with Senuthius because that was where they could employ their skills in a time of peace; they had set off to join General Vitalian with nothing but plunder in mind, so what came out was an expression of his desperation.
‘My friends will search for me.’
‘Only to find your body if they get too close, boy, for Senuthius would like you alive but he will take a corpse if that’s all we can provide. Now shut up and walk.’
Which they did for some time, and in silence, until they reached and began to cross a small clearing, providing light enough for Flavius to see that he had five men – they were no longer mere shadows – to contend with, not that he had any notion of how he was going to do that. They were armed, he was not, his sword and spear now lying where he had left them, beside the rough wood frame he had made so he could sleep off the still-damp ground.
He was not yet fully a man and they were armed, were bound to have experience and certainly had the muscle to defeat any attempt he made to overcome them. How could they have crept up on him so easily when he should have been safe? If he was apart from Dardanies and Ohannes the whole edge of the forest was dotted with like-minded souls sleeping off the toils of the previous day. That lifted his spirits just a little, for though he had been taken captive he was a long way from Dorostorum and the way back was on a road full of folk to whom he might be able to appeal.
It was as if the leader, always supposing he was that, read his mind, for he spun Flavius to look him in the face, revealing himself as the fellow to whom bread and wine had been gifted the day before.
‘We need to stay here until the road clears, a day or two happen, so I will tell you now that we are going to remain in this forest. Your mind will be set on notions of escape, so I say put them away, for any one of us will kill you if you try.’
‘Hard to carry a body all the way back to Dorostorum.’
That got a cackled laugh. ‘Your head will do.’
‘Best tie him up, Nepo, and lash him to a tree for he is strong for his years. If he runs he’ll be a bugger to catch.’
‘Had that in mind, didn’t I,’ came the abrasive reply; it was a voice that hinted at annoyance. ‘You think me as dense as you?’
‘Just suggesting,’ came the quick rejoinder, in a tone designed to deflect any offence that had obviously been taken.
With a mind acute to any possibilities, Flavius registered that: the fear the man had of the one he called Nepo, added to the response from a fellow who did not worry if he offended in turn. There was something, too, in the way the others did not look at Nepo as if fearing to catch his eye and perhaps the edge of his temper. If there was any respect there was unlikely to be any love and perhaps that was something he could exploit.
Not that such a feeling lasted; they had made a makeshift camp on the far side of the clearing, rough-framed cots similar to the one on which he had slept, and the pile of wood they had gathered and laid off the ground to keep it dry hinted at their intention to stay put for some time. There were dead birds and a couple of rabbits hanging from a branch, so they had food too, as well as the ability to set snares for more; these men, experienced at living off the land and in a forest full of game – he assumed there had to be water somewhere nearby – could stay here for an age if they felt they had to.
Pushed against a gnarled tree, one with several growths rising from a very wide stump, his hands were hauled round to the back and lashed together on one of the thinner trunks. There was no need for such a constraint to be tight – it only had to be secure enough to make it impossible for him to untie – so at least he could still feel his fingers, for which he was grateful.
Slowly Flavius eased himself down to the base of that sapling till he was sitting, his eyes alert as his captors went about their tasks, looking for anything that might gift him an opportunity, while fighting the waves of despair with which he was assailed, countering these with silent prayer. He had got clear of the clutches of Senuthius once; surely there would be a chance to do so again.
Nepo was clearly the leader, established by the way he set errands for the rest, sending them to check the snares they had reset before nightfall, or to gather more wood, not hard in an age-old woodland with much decaying timber on the ground, this while he barely moved, instead helping himself to wine from a skin that went regularly to his mouth. There was no need to light a fire, it being summer; that would only be set during daylight hours in order to cook, and like he had seen done by Ohannes, it would be smothered and extinguished as soon as that task had been completed. At night it would be used to keep at bay any animal or human threats.
Would they untie him to allow him to feed himself? And if they did could he make a run for it and hope to outdistance a spear cast at his back? What were his chances of getting hold of one of the weapons they carried, which had to be set aside to allow them to carry out the tasks set by Nepo? All of these thoughts rushed through his mind, one tumbling notion after another, the only one he was quick to discard being any appeal to clemency.
Listening to their talk did not bring comfort, concentrating as it did, even if it was disjointed, on the rewards that Senuthius would grant them for the youngster and how they would spend it. This seemed to encompass drink and women, they being very partial to the former – Nepo was not alone in employing the wineskin, for none seemed able to pass it without helping themselves to a wet.
When not talking of drink and carnal pleasures they indulged in much speculation, increasingly ghoulish and seemingly a source of much raucous humour, of the various tortures the senator might visit upon him, all of them severe, and how he would squeal when they were applied, the increasingly outrageous opinions causing much laughter, this listened to by Flavius in silence, though his thoughts were far from sanguine. Could he create some kind of diversion that might get him free?
‘How long have you been employed by the senator?’ he asked Nepo.
‘What’s it to you?’
‘I wonder if you trust him.’
That got another of Nepo’s barking laughs, enough to tell Flavius he was doing the same up a useless tree.
‘No need – when he does not pay us in hard coin he lets us loose to plunder and is handsome with his rewards when we cross the river to take Sklaveni slaves.’
‘Hard copper coin, I suppose?’ Flavius asked. ‘Should be gold, given his prosperity.’
‘Matters not the colour, as long as there is enough,’ Nepo responded, lifting the wineskin to his lips.
‘He robbed you during that Hun raid, did he not, if you think of the captives you might have taken? He held back the militia and you, his own fighters, just so he could see my father and my brothers dead.’
‘Worked, then,’ came the reply, through a sleeve wiping at wet lips. ‘As you that set them alight know.’
‘Does it not occur to you to ask why he would do that, sacrifice the whole imperial cohort?’
‘Why would it? Senator’s business is his and as long as he treats us right …’
‘I can tell you why. There’s an imperial commission on the way from the capital to look into his crimes – it may well be there at this very moment.’
That got him an amused look. ‘So?’
‘So maybe by the time you get me back to Dorostorum, Senuthius will be in no position to reward you for handing me in. It might be his body hanging and rotting above the city gates and not mine.’