Tenebrae

by Paul Doherty

Genres: Historical Fiction; Historical Mysteries; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

Roman soldier Manoletus must face some of the most formidable creatures of the underworld, yet his time is running out... Paul Doherty writes a gripping historical adventure in Tenebrae, a mystery of the Roman underworld. Perfect for fans of Lindsey Davis and Steven Saylor. 'Teems with colour, energy and spills' - Time Out Germany, A.D. 9. Highly-esteemed Roman soldier, Manoletus, finds himself trapped and immersed in Varus' camp surrounded by dead comrades, but manages to flee. Thinking himself safe, he encounters a more fearsome enemy than the German army: the Tenebrae and its Ataru. This deadly, cloaked, blood-sucking killer and keeper of the Underworld, capable of slaying villages of people, trains its gaze upon Manoletus. The Tenebrae are born from Cleopatra's death, and Manoletus' path becomes tied with the legend and is drawn to Egypt to delve deeper into the mystery of these immortal creatures. Still on the run, Manoletus meets a late comrade's daughter and vows to protect her. When the Tenebrae send her back to Rome, Manoletus is determined to make his way home to her. But will Manoletus find her before the Tenebrae find him? What readers are saying about Paul Doherty: 'Paul Doherty is a synonym for quality and entertainment ' 'A compelling tale of historical fiction that exudes accuracy and detail ' ' The sounds and smells of the period seem to waft from the pages of [Paul Doherty's] books'

Release date: May 5, 2016

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 236

Sample

Egypt, 31 BC

gerh en khed ta: night of the ceremony of ploughing up the earth after it has been soaked in blood

Egypt was dying. Cleopatra, ‘the Father-Loving Goddess’, had barred herself in the majestic two-storey mausoleum close to the Temple of Isis in Alexandria. She had chosen her day, her time, her place and her method. She would go into the never-ending West. She would walk free and immortal in the ever-green fields of Yalou. Rome, like a pack of wild dogs, snapped at the threshold. Murder lurked by the doorway to her chamber, a hideous beast hungry for fresh prey. Antony was dead! Once the colossus of her world, he had taken the soldier’s way, and now she was ready to join him. The Roman Octavian and his baying pack roamed the streets of Alexandria. They had visited the Canopic Way and the Soma, gawped at the embalmed corpses of Alexander the Great and her own god-like ancestor Ptolemy Soter. Cleopatra, however, had sheltered in her towering windowless stronghold. She did not trust the Roman wolf and his sweet promises. Octavian wanted her for his triumph! She would be betrayed, seized, draped with gold and silver chains and forced to walk behind the conqueror’s chariot through the streets of Rome. A puppet show to please the masses. Afterwards, along with the other prisoners, she’d be strangled in the dark, dank dungeons of the Janiculum.

No, Cleopatra would die the Pharaoh-Queen in her own chamber. She wanted to be laid out in her Mansion of a Million Years, sealed behind the double doors of the House of Egypt. Her funeral chamber would be like those in the ancient pyramids at Sakkara or the rock-hewn caverns of the royal necropolis on the west bank of the Nile facing Thebes. Yes, she’d be buried in the Valley of the Kings, laid to rest with her ancestors. Her departure must be imminent. She had bathed and perfumed herself with kiphye, the exquisite perfume of the blue lotus. She had dressed in a sheath of the finest gauffered linen; amethyst, gold, silver and turquoise dazzled on her wrists and fingers, glistening jewelled serpents circled her arms, a pectoral of the finest cornelian blazed around her neck, and on her dark oiled hair sat a tiara of pure silver. Charmian had painted her face: blue kohl ringed her sloe eyes, her lips were carmined, her nails painted an imperial purple. Cleopatra rose from the acacia stool and sat on the edge of the splendid couch, with its cushions of Tyrian purple tasselled with ivory.

‘It is time, Divine One,’ Charmian urged. ‘Ahmose the courier has taken your sealed message to Octavian. He has now gone to light the beacon fire.’

‘He is coming,’ added Cleopatra’s second maid, the sharp-eared Eiras. ‘Divine One, the Roman is coming! Octavian will sit here, that narrow face with its jug-shaped ears staring at you like some great cat. He has a sinister heart; mercy is unknown to him, compassion a stranger. He is no Caesar, no Antony. Octavian called you a piece of gristle left on the side of other men’s platters.’

Cleopatra smiled and caressed her maidservant’s face. ‘Tongue like a viper,’ she murmured. ‘Sharp as a thorn.’

She picked up the yellow jasper goblet carved in the shape of the ram’s head of Amun. She drank deep of the opiate, letting it seep through her as she stared at the green-skinned gods painted on the far wall. Yes, this was a place to die: its rafters sheathed in gold, its floor of onyx, the doors inlaid with tortoiseshell, their panels glittering with ebony and ivory.

‘Is it night?’ She asked. ‘Tenebrae facta?’ she added in a whisper. Has darkness fallen?

‘The sun has set,’ Charmian replied. ‘Darkness covers the whole earth.’

Cleopatra closed her eyes.

‘The servants of Seth will be gathering. Ahmose has given the signal. Yes,’ she stroked the imperial flail and rod lying next to the silver bowl of figs on the table beside her, ‘yes, they’ll be there now. I failed them once. I shall not fail them again. They will have opened Rekmire’s tomb, taken and read the Book of the Dead.’

Charmian picked up the Nenes, the golden cloth of glory, and draped it around her mistress’s shoulders. Cleopatra jerked and trembled as she slipped into a drugged trance, ready to meet those waiting for her: Mark Antony, eyes hot, his cheeks all wine-flushed; Caesar with that cynical gaze and ever-smiling mouth: Ptolemy, her half-brother, the garrotte cord still fastened tight around his plump neck . . . She startled as Charmian shook her.

‘Mistress, I am sure . . .’

Cleopatra waved her hand, her heart hungry for more visions and dreams. She was in her palanquin, being taken down the Sacred Way. On either side the crowd thronged in a blaze of colour. Cymbals clashed. Trumpets brayed. The hesets, the beautiful, sinuous temple maidens, shook their sistras, the clattering rattles. A golden haze swirled in. The fan-bearers moved closer, their perfumed flabellas of ostrich plumes sweetening the dry breeze full of dirt and the pungent sweat of the crowd. Cleopatra glanced to the left and right. A sea of ghost faces stared back, eyes all black, mouths open in a silent scream, except one, a small boy whittling a piece of wood. He was long-faced, olive-skinned, his dark brown eyes challenging, his little body slightly misshapen, one shoulder higher than the other. He stood before the palanquin, looking warningly at her, then he was gone. The crowd too disappeared in a swirl of boiling bloody dirt. The dream-stalkers, night prowlers and dark wanderers closed in, faces all hideous. A churning mist gathered thick about them, then thinned and separated. Cleopatra was no longer in the city but out on the red lands, where the pounding, burning heat of the great eastern desert pressed heavy. Before her opened the secret path, illuminated by fire-belching serpents, stretching down to the Cavern of Lost Souls. Around her rose the chilling cries of those who made terrifying supplications to the Ataru, the Blood Drinkers, the Breakers of Bones, the Gobblers of Hearts, the Guardians of the Gates, all gathered in that terrifying blackness at the end of the path.

‘Divine One! Divine One!’

Cleopatra broke from her reverie. Eiras lay sprawled beside the couch, the cup of poison slipping from her hand. Charmian pressed her fingers against her mistress’s lips. Cleopatra pushed them away. She wanted to return, to descend into the halls of the Underworld, travel the vast landscape of Hades to the forbidden region of Seker, guarded by the hawk-headed men.

‘Dreams, dreams and dreams again.’ Charmian hissed. ‘Listen! The wolf snuffles at the door!’

Cleopatra forced herself to concentrate. The pounding of the drums of the Underworld was really a ram smashing against the great cedar door leading down to her chamber. Octavian! Rome had read her message and understood. She would not be walking in his triumph. Octavian had hastened here to seize her, so it was best if she was gone. She steadied herself, picked up the pot of juicy figs, removed the fruit and plucked out the asp buried there. The snake curled long, thin and vicious, still sluggish from its sleep.

‘The needle,’ Cleopatra murmured.

Charmian passed the sharpened sliver of gold. Cleopatra drove it into the snake curling around her wrist. The asp struck once, twice and then again. Cleopatra fell back on the couch even as Charmian made her own preparations. Voices echoed sharp and incisive. Romans in their white tunics, some armed, clustered around the dying queen. A man was bending over her. Cleopatra smelt the perfume of his robes, his wine-scented breath. Octavian stared down, but she was falling deeper and deeper into an endless warm sleep. She smiled up at the man who wanted to be her conqueror and mouthed her threat. Octavian leaned closer.

‘Revenge,’ Cleopatra whispered. ‘Revenge gathers like a storm, so bend before its fury . . .’

The secret path to the Cavern of Lost Souls ran deep in the eastern desert. No one ever travelled along it. Even seasoned sand-dwellers and desert-wanderers never strayed on to that lonely strip of rocky shale that cut through the scorching wasteland. Some said the path was all that remained of a broad highway that once ran through a fabled city guarded by sphinxes and giant hyenas. Others claimed it led to the burial ground of Rekmire, Egypt’s greatest magician, a warlock who had visited the twelve halls of the Underworld and spoken the words of power to the janitors of the darkness. The path itself, whatever its origins, baked burning hot during the day. At night, the freezing cold made the shale crack and split so it seemed that a legion of lost souls wandered aimlessly, crying in terror against the horrors thronging in. Bereft of any oasis, stunted palm tree or rocky outcrop, it was truly a haunted place. No vultures winged over it during the day; no night prowler, be it lion, hyena or fox, ever hunted there. No life, no light, except on the night Cleopatra died: the Night of the Drop, of Ploughing the Earth, of Weighing the Words for the Company of the Dead.

On that night, torches gleamed in the rocky mouth of the Cavern of Lost Souls. More cressets fixed to the sides of the cavern’s walls illuminated the steps going down into the abode of the Rekhet, the slayers from the slaughterhouse. They’d gathered, thirteen in all, their blood fever now sated. Knives as cold as the dawn had slit the throats of their victims: poor unfortunates snatched from the villages to the west, or hapless travellers ambushed as they journeyed along the Horus road to the north. Innocent virgins, they had watched in horror as their families were ruthlessly butchered. Afterwards, drugged and bound, they’d been brought here. No mercy was shown, no attempt made to ease their terror-glazed eyes as they looked on those who wanted to drink their hearts’ blood.

Some of the victims had heard the frightening stories about the red lands and the hideous horrors that haunted them. They had dismissed these as legends, campfire stories, ghostly tales to tingle the blood and sharpen the nerves. Before their gruesome deaths, they had confronted the terrifying truth: ghost figures, male and female, garbed in funeral robes, faces hidden by grotesque masks – dog-faced Anubis, sharp-featured Nekhbet the vulture, Sobeck the crocodile, Montu the bull, Sekhmet the lioness. Each of the captives had been chosen by one of these nightmares and sacrificed on the altar stone, her throat gashed, her heart plucked out and ground as if it was a grape until every drop of fluid had oozed into the waiting bowl. The blood had been drunk; now the twelve guardians stood beside Horus, their leader, beneath a cleft that cut up through the cavern to reveal a strip of night sky. Horus watched intently through the eyelets of his hawk mask, straining to catch the very essence of that dreadful night.

‘The Queen is dying,’ he intoned, his gaze never leaving the strip of sky. ‘We have made the sacrifice, drunk the blood and sworn the oath against Rome.’ His powerful voice rang through the maze of tunnels and blood-splattered caves. ‘We have opened Rekmire’s tomb and read the Book of the Dead. We have unlocked the gates of the Underworld. We have summoned the janitors with the great words of power.’

None of his companions answered. They stood cold and impassive, the drugged wine soothing their wills, opening the doors of their own damned souls to whatever evil seeped in. They knew it would come, must come, that malignancy, lurking on the edge of the desert. The sun had set, so now it would be hurrying towards them. A distant crack of thunder heralded its arrival. They followed Horus up the passageway to the entrance of the cavern, and stood garbed in bloodstained robes, their faces sweat-soaked beneath those terrifying masks. They stared out into the visions of the night. The desert storm was fast approaching: black clouds racing towards them, before a pelting rain churned the ground to a soggy mess. Lightning flashed. Jagged cuts of fire illuminated the night.

‘They are here,’ Horus whispered. ‘They are here.’ He raised his hands in welcome to the shadows, darker than the rest, sheltering in the storm hurtling towards the Cavern of Lost Souls.

Germany, AD 9

aatiu: slaughterhouse

‘Sir! Sir!’ Petilius Cenealis, aquilifer of the XVIIth Legion, grasped Gaius Manoletus’s arm, fingers sticky with blood. Manoletus knocked the hand away and stared around at what was once Quinctilius Varus’s great camp.

‘It’s over!’ he breathed. ‘We are trapped! We are going to die here in these stinking black forests.’ He dipped his hands into a leather bucket of filthy water and splashed his face, then stared down at his battered armour. All around rose the cries of wounded, frightened men.

‘Sir,’ Cenealis insisted. ‘You must see this! The Ataru!’

Manoletus followed him through the blood-soaked mud. The sky hung low and threatening. Storm clouds were gathering once again. He passed a mound of corpses, the remains of legionaries ambushed by Arminius’s Germans, the Chatti and the Cherusci. The men had been cruelly tortured: ears and noses cut off, eyes gouged out, blood-red eagles carved into their torsos before they were hurled back across the ramparts. Manoletus whispered a curse as he and the standard-bearer pushed their way through the jostling legionaries, a mass of exhausted, filthy, rain-soaked men preparing to die. The grey morning light glowed eerily. Smoke shifted and curled. Torchlight flared. The chill September breeze carried the filthy smells of the latrine pit, hospital tents and funeral pyres.

Halfway up the ramp, Manoletus turned and stared around. They were finished! Varus had trapped himself in this godforsaken forest bristling with thickets, hidden ravines, narrow valleys, marshes, morasses and treacherous quagmires. Three legions, almost thirty thousand men, their carts piled high with baggage, their march slowed by women, children and household slaves, were for the slaughter. Arminius, Rome’s former ally and commander of the German auxiliaries, had played them false, leading Varus into a vicious, neatly laid trap. The legions could not be deployed; they could do nothing except wait to be filleted like a slab of meat.

‘Sir! Sir!’

Manoletus followed Cenealis, still draped in the head and pelt of a wolf, on to the platform and peered over the makeshift palisade. The murky light was thinning to reveal long lines of German warriors massing along the forest edge across the narrow valley. Manoletus’s mouth turned dry; fear narrowed his throat. He found it difficult to breathe, even to swallow. The German horde, thousands upon thousands of warriors daubed in fearsome war paint, were pouring out from the trees, the light glimmering on their weapons: axe, club, spear and sword. The sound of their shuffling approach was like that of some malevolent monster dragging itself up from its Stygian pit.

‘Today it will end!’ Cenealis murmured. ‘We will plant our standards and die around them.’

Manoletus could not reply. To his left and right he glimpsed the same sense of resignation in those soldiers still brave enough to man the palisade.

‘Sir, what shall we do? Varus?’ Cenealis turned and spat. ‘Is it true he’s fallen on his sword? They say he asked his slaves to cremate his remains. He doesn’t want Arminius to use his skull as a drinking cup. You’re an officer. They say the tribunes have also fallen on their swords. They’ve issued their last orders not to be taken alive. You’ve heard—’

‘I’ve heard!’ Manoletus snapped to hide his own panic. Of course he’d heard! The Germans were torturing prisoners, skinning them on racks, hanging them from the branches of their sacred oaks. The severed heads of legionaries had been nailed to trees or left nestling in bushes and thickets as some macabre joke. Legs, arms, torsos, hands and severed genitalia decorated the poles and standards of the enemy. Corpses sawn in half and drenched in blood had been catapulted into the camp. Women had been impaled, left to die shrieking and writhing on stakes. The unremitting carnage had continued under iron-grey skies. The German forests had become meadows of murder, ravaged by sudden violent rainstorms. Quagmires and marshes had opened up to trap and hinder. Every ravine was the haunt of warriors, every copse the hunting ground of wild-eyed tribesmen. Escape would be futile.

‘He is here!’ Cenealis barked.

‘Archers!’ Manoletus bellowed.

A group of Syrian mercenaries, horn bows at the ready, clambered up the ramp to deploy along the parapet walk.

‘Where?’ Manoletus demanded hoarsely, eyes skimming the thickening line of advancing tribesmen.

‘There, to the right!’

Manoletus peered above the stockade and saw a flash of colour. A rider on a pale horse was threading his way through the line of warriors. Distant though he was, Manoletus caught the sheer terror of that baleful figure. The horse he rode was a magnificent mount taken from Varus’s own stables, still harnessed in the gleaming leather and glittering medallions of the governor’s livery. The rider sat high in the saddle, one hand grasping a standard in a shape of a T; along the bars on either side of the pole dangled a line of severed heads. The rider himself was a blur of animal skins draped over his shoulders, the shaggy pelt of wolf, bear and cat, his head and face hidden under a grotesque set of stag antlers.

‘It’s him!’ Cenealis moaned. ‘The Ataru, the Blood Drinker!’

Manoletus peered through the haze at this ghastly figure. The German chieftain Arminius had led the revolt, but the Ataru was its soul, a fearsome figure who had appeared in the thick of the running battle between the tribesmen and Varus’s legions. Those who’d escaped from the gruesome swirl of battle that started this nightmare had talked of a dark-skinned warrior, his face concealed by a jackal mask: a warrior possessed of manic strength who chanted and sang as he swung a great battleaxe. No spear, sword, arrow or dagger appeared to hurt him. Now he was advancing towards them, slowly, deliberately, as if relishing this macabre dance of terror before the tribesmen stormed the ramparts of the Roman camp.

‘Notch! Loose!’ Manoletus shouted, in an attempt to break free from his own panic.

The Syrians sighted their foe and took careful aim. A hail of barbed poisoned shafts whistled through the air, a swift dark shower of fury against the sullen sky that fell in an ominous rattle against helmet and shield. Tribesmen collapsed under the deadly volley, yet the rider on the pale horse never even paused; he just kept coming on, swaying insolently in the saddle. Manoletus drew his sword, turning to scream at the legionaries as he realised what was happening. The Ataru, that creature from hell, was weaving his malignant magic, making the men freeze at his approach. Fascinated by the horror, they were heedless of the lines of tribesmen that had debouched from the trees and were edging their way towards the narrow ditch. Already Manoletus could glimpse warriors carrying makeshift bridges and ladder poles to storm the palisade. Once again he screamed orders. It was futile! Some legionaries climbed the ramp; others stayed with their officers. Wedges and phalanxes were forming close to the gates. Individual units had decided they would break out. Most were pessimistic.

Clouds of smoke engulfed Manoletus, heavy with the stench of charred flesh. Cenealis was correct. Some officers had decided on suicide and begged their friends, as a final favour, to douse their corpses in oil and burn them. Manoletus sheathed his sword, his despair deepening. Women and children wailed. Horses, free of their tethers, cantered wildly about, tripping over ropes, crashing down with hideous squeals. A few officers tried to impose order, but the chaos was spreading. Cenealis screamed at the archers to loose again, but fireballs – burning oil-soaked rags – crashed against the stockade, engulfing three of the archers and turning them into blazing sheets of fire. The victims staggered about, falling from the platform, screaming in agony. Others loosed arrows at their former companions, an act of mercy to put them out of their pain. The German assault was beginning. The grey sky became scorched with tongues of shooting flame as the tribesmen wheeled their catapults, captured from Varus’s baggage train, ever closer.

‘Sir, I beg you.’ A young orderly, his helmet on backwards, shield raised against the flying sparks, tugged at Manoletus’s arm. ‘Physician Achaias, sir, he is begging you . . .’

Manoletus left the ramparts. He followed the young orderly back along the Via Principalis to the hospital tents, a collection of dirt-encrusted hides housing the maimed and wounded. Achaias was not there but in his own meagre bothy. The grey-haired, narrow-faced physician was lying on a bundle of pelts that served as a bed, his back against two bulging skins of oil, another at his feet. He was swathed in a heavy cloak and sipping at a goblet brimming with wine.

‘Achaias?’

‘No, Manoletus, don’t sheathe your sword. Kill me!’

‘Kill you?’

‘Kill me!’ the physician pleaded. He raised his goblet. ‘The best Falernian,’ he grinned. ‘Stole it myself from that fool Varus. No posca for me, but instead the warmth of green fields, ripe vineyards, sitting on a bench basking in the sun. I kept some opiate, but there was a child . . .’ He shook his head. ‘I could do nothing for him, so he drank it.’ He paused at a roar from outside. ‘Heart-chilling,’ he murmured.

‘Achaias, you wanted to see me?’

‘Kill me, please.’ The physician leaned forward. ‘Manoletus, I’m weak. I’m old. I cannot run. My blood is thin. My lungs are ragged. My heart is weak.’ A soul-chilling scream cut through, followed by a roar from the Germans massing before the ramparts. ‘They are surrounding us, aren’t they? That is what they are waiting for: the spear point. They will lunge when the circle is complete. They’ll chant their war cries, battle horns will bray, and they’ll sweep over us like fleas across a rat’s corpse.’

He gazed fiercely at the centurion. ‘Not captured, Manoletus! I do not want to be skewered like a haunch of beef and roasted over a fire.’

Manoletus reluctantly drew his sword. The physician sighed in relief and pulled himself up.

‘What do you know of me, Roman?’

‘Very little! A freedman whom I defended in Rome. A physician one step ahead of the Vigiles and his debtors. I secured you this posting.’ Manoletus forced a smile. ‘A good comrade, a skilled healer, a native of Greece—’

‘Lies!’ Achaias interrupted. ‘Well, at least some of it. I’m a liar, an impostor; I was born a Jew, and now? Well, I have prayed the Shema. I wish to die as a Jew. Listen, Manoletus. I know you: you are a tough soldier, yet you have goodness in you, a heart in hiding somewhere. You will survive this dreadful dream, I know that. Now kill me.’ He patted the oil skins. ‘Then fire the tent. When you return to Rome, promise to visit my daughter Vispania on the Street of Moles, close to the Baths of Nicephorus.’ He stretched out a hand and pushed a ring toward Manoletus. ‘Give this to her. Promise me you will look after her.’

The physician coughed, using his wrist to cover his mouth. Manoletus glimpsed blood-smeared sputum.

‘Oh yes, Centurion, one way or the other, I would not have survived this campaign. Remember Vispania! She will need guarding. She is ugly, with a tart tongue.’ Achaias coughed again. ‘Takes after her mother.’ He lifted his head, exposing his throat. A ferocious roar welled up, drowning the cries of the camp. Achaias stretched out a hand. ‘Promise me?’

‘I promise!’ Manoletus grasped the physician’s hand, pulled him closer and thrust the gladius deep into his throat.

The life light in his old friend’s eyes faded. Blood gushed through the wound, then from the nose and mouth. Manoletus withdrew his sword, gently tipping Achaias to one side, then plucked up a lantern and slashed an oil skin. He backed out of the tent and threw the lantern, turning away as the flames flashed across the spreading pool of oil and blood. The billowing heat caught his back as he walked through the clammy coldness. He looked over his shoulder. Achaias’s tent was blazing fierce as a furnace. He almost envied the old physician.

Trumpets shrieked. Soldiers, some armed, others only in their tunics, hurried by. Horsemen wheeled and turned. Carts and barrows stuck in the mud provided shelter for those too fear-stricken to move. Nearby, a legionnaire embraced his family, wife on his right, son and daughter on his left, then lifted his head as a sign to his comrades nearby, who moved in swiftly, swords sinking into the exposed napes of the bowed necks. Manoletus, breathless with fear, turned away. On a nearby cart another soldier quietly suffocated his wife and baby before snatching up a pugio, the small legionary dagger, and driving it deep into his own throat. Here and there a phalanx, wedge or square was being formed, helmets on, shields locked, lances bristling out, the blades of sharpened iron forming a spear hedge. Futile, thought Manoletus; the Chatti would sweep them away.

He stumbled along the Via Principalis. On either side the officers’ tents hung limp, drenched with rain. Figures moved. Black shapes. They all froze, Manoletus included. He stood listening to the calls from hell, the vibrant war cries of the Germans. A moment’s silence, followed by a rolling thunder of noise. The Germans had ringed the camp. The storm was about to break. Manoletus scurried to a cart away from the volleys of arrows and spears that rained down, a ferocious hail of stone, iron and sharpened bone. He peered under the cart and glimpsed Varus’s freedmen. They had the governor’s half-burnt body over a makeshift pyre, but the rain had doused the flames and soaked the wood. The legs of the dead governor were charred black; the rest of him was untainted. Manoletus turned away in disgust.

A second hail of missiles rained down. Manoletus waited, then hurried towards the east gate. The end was near, heralded by howling war cries and the scraping clash of steel. The Germans had stormed the ramparts; already legionaries were streaming back, seeking shelter in the formations, uncertain whether to stand or try and break out through one of the gates. Manoletus squatted beside another cart and hastily removed any insignia: his leather corselet and baldric, his battle greaves, the silver cord around his neck, the copper armlets, and the bejewelled centurion’s ring on the little finger of his left hand, which he replaced with Achaias’s ring. He threw away his embroidered scabbard, and snatched up a piece of rope, wrapping this around his waist and thrusting his sword and dagger through. He tightened the cords of his thick-soled studded legionary boots, then plucked a cloak from a corpse.

Wrapping this around him, he made his way forward, slipping through the fleeing figures. He almost bumped into the orderly Achaias had sent. The young man backed away in fright, then smiled just before the throwing axe smashed his face, shattering bone and flesh. Manoletus whirled round, gladius snaking out, knocking away the great scything sword of the Chatti warrior. Manoletus stumbled back. His opponent, a giant of a man, red hair tumbling around a scarred painted face, gaudy cloak billowing, mouth open, blue eyes flaming with battle lust, lurched forward. Manoletus darted in, sinking his blade deep into the naked belly. He dug hard and cut, slicing the abdomen before stepping back. The tribesman, face shocked, collapsed to his knees, then tumbled sideways, choking on his own blood.

Manoletus stared around, panting with fear. He had retreated between a cart and a tent, one of those strange, deserted places around which the battle storm swirled before sweeping on. He dropped his sword and stripped the dead German of his leather breeches, embroidered belt and cloak. Then he took off his own tunic and hastily dressed again. The breeches were ill-fitting but the belt was good, whilst the cloak, fastened with a copper clasp, had a hood that he could pull over his head. He knelt down, daubing his chest, arms and face with bloodied mud, then picked up his weapons and waited.

A second rush of warriors engulfed the tents, a mass of screaming men who never gave him a second glance but poured on, hunting down fleeing legionaries, eager to plunder the pavilions, tents and carts. Manoletus followed the furious surge as it swept through the camp. Legionary units who tried to stand were simply engulfed, broken up, smashed and shattered. Individual Romans were battered to the ground, either killed or bound, cords wrapped around their necks, and dragged off like dogs as the warriors charged on. Manoletus followed, shouting the little German he knew, echoing the war cries. The camp was overrun. The enemy were now being summoned by horns and trumpets back to the gates, where a few Roman cohorts had succeeded in forcing their way through, pouring out on to the soggy fields stretching to the dense black forest on the far lip of the shallow valley.

Manoletus followed one war band of Chatti, limping as if he favoured some wound. The cohorts did not get far before they were surrounded and pressed in. The Germans, delighting in this savage, bloody hunt, pursued escaping individuals and groups. One tribesman loped beside a fleeing legionary, grinning and laughing. He closed in, chopping