The legatus Aulus Terentius Varro Murena did not particularly like those lands. That snow which at certain times of the year looked like whipped egg whites; the immense expanses as green as emeralds which spread out uninterrupted to the horizon, the silence, disturbed only occasionally by the cries of the imperial eagles which swooped around the pinnacles of the mountains. All this gave the Alpine provinces an unnatural semblance of calmness. But the Roman general knew what treacherous crevasses lurked in that tableau which mother nature had created with such incomparable skill; natural ambuscades which could suddenly turn into murderous avalanches and impregnable ravines whose darkness was the helpmeet of enemies. But Varro Murena feared above all the undisputed lord of those places for several months of the year – the cold, which corroded the steel of the swords, transformed the wood of the shields into cork, froze the lungs and slowed the feet.
The Salassi had exploited all this to their advantage. Driven towards the Alpine headland by the Roman legions, they had taken refuge behind complex entrenchments arranged on several levels which crept even into the narrow gorges of the mountain passes. Built in the likeness of the Roman ones, the fortified embankments of Salassi had been enhanced with innovations derived from the experience of the Celtic tribes in the art of war on the mountains. For this reason, all the Roman attempts to break through the defensive lines of the last months and even the siege they had mounted, a prolonged torture which the legionaries were trained to manage with unparalleled mastery, seemed so far to have produced no results. The Salassi’s final outpost was like some ivory tower – unreachable, impregnable, and even practically intangible.
The Roman general rode his horse to the edge of a hill from which he could review the troops. Accompanied by his translator, Victor Felix followed him in silence.
“Never let it be said that Octavian underestimated the gravity of this conflict or assigned me his worst men,” said Varro Murena. The bright sunlight glinted on the armour of the legionaries lined up on the immense battlefield, a gigantic valley surrounded by mountains.
The prefect nodded. He could feel upon him the eyes of his company. Extremely experienced and reliable despite their age, they were a select group which included a blind Lusitanian who spoke with the gods, a young Roman woman who had visions of the future and an African giant capable of controlling metals.
From the hill that overlooked the plain below, Jago sniffed at the air and stuck the end of his staff into the ground.
“How many soldiers?”
Sibiam came over and took his arm – a single step forward would have been enough to send him hurtling down the escarpment.
“Do you want me to count them all?”
“There’s no need,” resumed Varro Murena, “I know the number, and perhaps even the names, of my soldiers by heart.” He threw back his cloak and extended his arm. “At the centre of the rear I have arranged the first and fourth cohorts of the XIV Legio Gemina. They come from the Rhine border and are used to waiting for long periods without losing concentration. To strengthen the second lines I have also used the second cohort of the XIX Legio. They are all veterans and still have the dust of Actium on their shoes.”
The two detachments of vexillationes at the rear were arranged in perfect rows and from up there they looked like gigantic parallelepipeds teeming with life. Numerous cavalry protected their right flanks. Varro noticed Felix looking at them. “That is the Flavia Miliaria Wing,” he said, “they have the exclusive job of protecting the bulk of the army from any unpleasant surprises if someone decides to try and outflank them. So far, nothing alarming has happened, but we know that these Alpine barbarians are perfectly capable of suicide missions. As do our merchants who periodically go through the Alpis Graia pass.” The general gestured towards the centre of the formations. “Further forward there is one of the units I personally requested, the first Ligurum Equitata Quingenaria cohort. It is made up of locals who know every inch of this land and who can ride a horse over the rocks as easily if it were a beach.”
“How long have they been deployed?” asked Felix with a few gestures.
“Since the end of the last vigil.”
“Have you decided that today will be a day of battle?”
“I decided that I wanted to show you something.”
Felix gave him a questioning look.
“Have you managed to work out how many defenders there are?”
“The Salassi? About three thousand men, according to the scouts.”
“And us?”
“At least three times as many.”
Felix frowned.
“Forgive me, legatus, but from here I count not more than two thousand soldiers, including auxiliaries on horseback.”
“There are other legions which we cannot see from here who are in direct contact with the enemy,” explained Varro Murena. “But there is that damn mist…”
The prefect leaned forward in his saddle as though wanting to lean out over the precipice itself.
“I don’t understand, legatus.”
“He’s right,” said Jago, “I can sense them.”
“It is embarrassing to admit it,” said Varro Murena, “but you have come all the way here so you must be told.”
“Please explain, general,” said Dryantilla, approaching the group which was looking down at the valley. The clairvoyant had abandoned the headgear she usually wore, and her long black hair hung down on the silver fur that covered her shoulders.
“Every time we decide to move forward, every time we decide to attack, that damn fog rises.” The Roman general squeezed the pommel of his sword. “And when it thins out we count the corpses of our soldiers. Dozens of them.”
“Might it not be a some perfectly normal climatic phenomenon? Early morning fog is a regular occurrence in these parts.”
“You must see it for yourself.”
“Do the Salassi emerge from the entrenchments?” asked the prefect, his interest growing.
“I do not know. No one knows. The soldiers enveloped in the fog tell me that they hear only silence around them. No sound of hooves, or armour, or swords. They can see their closest comrades but not the others. And when they retreat, their ranks are decimated even though there have been no cries and no fighting.”
“Are the units on the front line well-trained?”
“Well-trained? By the gods, I couldn’t wish for more well-trained and experienced troops. Three cohorts of the XXI Legio Rapax and a cohort of the V Legio Alaudae.”
The prefect nodded and his servant frowned: Varro Murena had named two of the most legendary legions in the history of Rome. Felix looked at his company and then back to the battlefield where a steel colossus armed with swords and shields waited impatiently for a gesture to send it hurtling into the fray.
“What would you like us to do?”
Varro Murena dismounted. He took off his helmet and ran a hand over his forehead. “I want you to accompany my men into that fog and then come back to tell me what you saw.”
Dryantilla felt a wave of anger run through her, and she exchanged a look with Sibiam who shook his head. Felix immediately understood what they were thinking.
“I don’t want your men to put themselves at risk for nothing,” he told the general, thinking mainly of his own people. “First let us carry out some reconnaissance. Then I will decide what to do.”
“Octavian told me I could count on you.”
“Octavian told the truth.” The prefect’s hands sliced through the air with precise movements. “But we are specialists, not sacrificial beasts. Rather, what do your haruspexes say?”
“Nothing. After the first few days of that fog they refused to perform any more rituals. They claim that the conditions are hostile to us and that we should withdraw.”
“What do they think causes the fog?”
“They don’t know or they won’t say.”
“An excellent way of raising the troop’s morale,” smirked Sibiam.
“Less of the sarcasm, friend of metals – let us get to work,” replied the translator’s voice.
The dark-skinned young man snorted.
“I knew it. But don’t call me that, you know I don’t like it.”
“It’s a name that you earned yourself on the battlefield, big man,” said Dryantilla, caressing his cheek theatrically. “Don’t try to deny it.”
“Stay away from me, little girl,” said Sibiam, gently pushing her off and scanning the heavens. The light blue sky was dotted with white clouds. Suddenly, from the edge of a nearby peak a shining beak appeared, supported by majestic wings. Gliding, the golden eagle swooped over the group of observers, saving its muscles for the moment when it identified some possible prey. Sibiam pointed it out to everyone and then fell silent.
The eagle sketched a series of semicircles in the sky and then a perfect spiral, swooping down and gliding on the friction between the air and its gigantic wings with their flecks of white. Sibiam memorised each of the creature’s movements, every rotation of its muscular neck, every flap of its powerful wings. The position, the direction, the angle of that body, which defied gravity with confidence and carelessness, communicated an invisible scenario that only an augur could have decoded.
Suddenly the creature dropped, hovering in front of them as though resting on the distant peaks of the mountains thanks to some trick of perspective. It held that position for several long moments. It had noticed that the man was watching it and stared back at with its black predator’s eyes. Eventually it slowly shifted position and by force of momentum flew upwards, taking leave of the humans with one last movement of its head before disappearing among the clouds.
“So?” asked Victor Felix’s fingers.
Sibiam did not answer immediately. In his head, the images of the eagle’s flight were transforming into an alphabet of portents. He turned to his commander.
“Omen,” he whispered.
*
Three galloping horses cut diagonally across the rear of the deployed cohorts. At the head of the group was Sibiam, while behind him Dryantilla looked over her shoulder at Jago, forced into a saddle that made him look like a sloth which had just emerged from hibernation. And yet the young black filly managed to make him look almost elegant as his long woollen cloak flowed behind him like the frill of an octopus.
Suddenly they saw a bronze elephant poking out above a sea of iron helmets. The standard bearer of the V Legio Alaudae was looking for his centurion while the front lines were preparing for the imminent advance. The blood that flowed in the veins of the so-called larks, assembled thirty years earlier by Julius Caesar into one of the most formidable units of the Roman army, was almost exclusively Celtic, and they proudly wore helmets with high Gallic crests, perfectly aware of the legendary aura their deeds had assumed in the stories of the cadets of Rome. The older larks, now close to retirement and bearing on their faces and on their bodies the visible signs of the battles they had fought, were watched with admiration by the young recruits.
Soon the three found themselves face to face with the mountainous wall that hurled itself up into the sky. Like gigantic wounds in an unmoving body, the crevasses in the rock kept the scouts in constant tension.
A centurion clad in a scaled breastplate and a goat’s-wool cloak came to meet them.
“We’ve been waiting for you.”
Instead of a helmet he wore on his head a bandage upon which brown marks were visible.
“Since you are not soldiers, let us avoid small talk,” said the centurion, shaking the boy’s brown-skinned hand, “do you agree?”
Sibiam nodded.
“They are hiding in there,” the centurion explained, pointing to the black crevasse, “but most of them have positioned themselves beyond that pass.” He pointed a finger at a point where the mountain seemed to collapse into a sort of hollow that snaked through the valley until it disappeared over a white wall of ice. “Now that you’ve arrived,” he concluded, “we can advance.”
“No.” Jago remained in the saddle, staring into space. “Don’t move. At least not until we tell you.”
The peremptory tone of the blind boy’s words seemed to annoy the soldier.
“Are you Hispanic?”
“Lusitanian.”
“I thought so,” said the centurion, stamping flat the grass beneath his feet as though to underline the strength of his statement, “I can’t stand Hispanics.” After thinking for a few moments, he looked at the newcomers. “Let me know what you are planning.”
“It’s obvious, surely,” interjected Dryantilla. “To go in there, of course.” She pointed to one of the crevasses. The girl turned her horse around until it faced the soldiers massed behind her. In the front line were the goats which were the mascots of the select units of the XXI Legio Rapax. “Poor creatures,” she whispered.
“Be at the ready,” said Sibiam, leaping back into the saddle. “But do not take any action before we return. No heroics. If we haven’t returned within an hour, contact prefect Victor Felix. He’ll know what to do.”
Followed by the centurion’s incredulous gaze, the three youths advanced towards the mountain.
*
The only sound was the silence, a deafening nothingness, and no movement among the rocks accompanied that silent concert. Even the bushes clinging to the inlets of the vertical crevasses were as immobile as carvings.
Side by side, three horses and their riders stood motionless in front of the entrance to the green and white tableau whose colours, intertwined in a thousand shades, were all muted by the fog.
“Don’t tell me you want to go in there,” said Dryantilla.
“What do you think?” asked Sibiam.
“I hate this accursed power to see things before they happen.”
“So you knew before you asked?”
The girl nodded.
“What will become of them?”
“The soldiers we left behind?”
Sibiam turned to look at her. “Nothing good, is it?”
“Many will die.”
“And then?”
“You know that I can’t see any further than that.”
“Stop bickering,” said Jago, “and follow me.”
The blind youth moved to the head of the group and, giving his mount a firm slap on the haunches, set off into the viscous ocean of dense fog which enveloped the clearing.
The noise of the hooves broke the spell and the world around the three seemed to come back to life. A stubborn wind began to whistle between the horses’ legs, growing more and more powerful until it almost lifted them off the ground.
“They were waiting for us, it seems,” said Jago, continuing to advance at a trot.
“But I don’t see anyone,” said the dark-skinned giant.
“He wasn’t talking about the Salassi,” explained Dryantilla. “Stop!”
At the woman’s order the three mounts froze like statues of ice.
“What is it?” asked Sibiam.
“They’re coming.”
Jago dismounted very slowly. He grabbed his staff and put the end on the ground then spread his nostrils and took a deep breath. The fog that had been growing thicker and thicker since the three scouts had set off into the pass seemed to throb with a life of its own. It was damp and when it entered the lungs and passed through the throat it left a sweetish aftertaste on the palate. The taste of rotting bodies. The shadowy silhouettes only became visible when they were a few steps away. They moved slowly, dragging themselves as if their feet were attached to the ground.
“Who… what are they?” asked Sibiam, holding up his shield. “Ghosts? Demons?”
Dryantilla squinted instinctively as she backed up her mount. “I can’t see but I know that they will do us no harm.”
“They are soldiers,” said Jago. “Our soldiers.”
The Roman legionaries advanced in no particular order. There might have been ten of them, maybe more. The fog spat them out and then swallowed them up again, the translucent tongues of mist playing games with the incredulous eyes of the three youths while the soldiers’ armour glinted in the dim light.
One of the them touched the blind youth’s shoulder, sending a shiver down his spine, then walked past him and disappeared into the fog as he headed towards the Roman outposts. His companions did the same, ignoring Sibiam and Dryantilla.
“What’s happening?” the metal tamer wondered aloud. “Who on earth are they?”
“The dead of the legions of Varro Murena,” said Jago, moving his head as if trying to gather some sensations from those moving bodies.
The faces of the soldiers, still protected by their helmets, were white, hollowed out and devoid of life. Their eye sockets were dark, empty chasms that stared fixedly at a path dictated not by the will of the individual but by some invisible guide.
“They are returning them to us,” continued Jago, “they want to give us our dead back.”
“Why?”
Sibiam was becoming more and more nervous, and the hand that grasped the shield had begun to glow like an incandescent hammer.
“As a sign of good will. They want us to withdraw.” The blind boy turned around. “But we won’t, unfortunately. Will we, Dryantilla?”
“That’s right,” said the girl, swallowing hard. The mist was irritating her throat.
“But have you at least understood who we’re dealing with?” Sibiam hadn’t wanted to dismount, in case a hasty retreat was called for.
“Perhaps,” replied Jago, “but I need to go a little further.” With an uncertain gait, he took a couple of steps forward. He was beginning to sense presences and he felt eyes watching him. “I am here for you. Speak to me, “he said suddenly.
“Jago.” said Sibiam, sitting bolt upright in the saddle.
“Don’t waste your breath,” Dryantilla told him. “You can’t stop it. Nothing can stop it.”
The Lusitanian felt a tremor. It started from the ground and climbed up his legs before discharging into the rest of the body.
“There we are,” he whispered.
He felt all the signs of a presence, but the entity didn’t want to reveal itself.
“Come on.”
Fog.
“Come on.”
Fog.
“I know you want to talk to me.”
Light pulsed out of the fog and Jago screamed in pain. He dropped the stick and held his head in his hands. The fog settled back silently.
“It is helping them because of a bargain which was made,” stammered Jago. He turned around. “We need to tell Felix that I need time. More time.”
Dryantilla dismounted and took a few steps toward Jago, but Sibiam’s sharp look stopped her in her tracks.
“No. You go back.”
“What?”
Sibiam swung his leg over his horse’s head and jumped down to the ground, then gave his shield a shake to test the solidity of the boss and then set off after his friends. “We need someone to be a point of contact here. We’ll take care of working out what is on the other side.”
“Why don’t you go back? It’s time you stopped trying to protect me as if I were your woman. I’ve already made my decision. “
Sibiam didn’t answer. A guilty expression on his face, he peered into the mist, seeking the silhouette of the Lusitanian. He had fallen in love with Dryantilla the first moment he had seen her – though she’d been barely more than a child, her intense, luminous blue eyes had immediately breached his heart. But she had preferred another. His best friend.
“That has nothing to do with it. That’s water under the bridge. But for now, do as I tell you.”
“Listen to him,” said Jago, before he once again separated himself from reality.
*
The centurion narrowed his eyes. “Are those our soldiers that I see?” he asked, addressing one of his lieutenants. He took a step forward and peered in the direction of the Salassi’s fortifications. A dozen legionaries lay on the ground in untidy poses. That they were dead was as clear as day: you could tell from their wide-open eyes, severed limbs and the blood that stained the steel of their armour. Moreover, they were all motionless and splayed out in positions no living man could have held. The truly inexplicable thing was that they were there at all, as if they appeared from nowhere. The scouts had spent whole days and nights searching for the missing soldiers without finding any trace of them. Until the moment the fog had swallowed up the three strange individuals who had come from the rear and returned to them the bodies of the men who had disappeared the previous days during the fruitless sorties ordered by their commander.
“Go and get them,” the centurion ordered, then looked around him for a horseman. He had to warn Varro Murena, and something told him that he had better prepare his men to advance. Especially since there had been no trace of the three youths for over two hours.
*
When General Murena read the message that had been delivered from the front line he grimaced, then folded up the parchment and threw it to the ground.
“What’s going on?” Victor Felix’s servant asked him, speaking without waiting for his master’s orders.
“They’ve found some of the bodies of our missing soldiers. The fog withdrew and they were all there on the ground, not far from our first field fortifications.”
Victor Felix was about to say something but the servant stopped him, pointing to something in the valley.
Two frightened-looking horses emerged from the fog. Ahead of them, astride her own mount, was Dryantilla.
*
The men of the Legio Rapax recognised the anatomical cuirass of their supreme commander and realised that something was going on. The rumour that the corpses of their comrades had been found had spread from mouth to mouth, but apart from the vanguard, no one had seen the bodies with their own two eyes.
The tribunes met their general to report and receive orders. When they were all around him, Varro Murena spoke. “The scouts haven’t returned. Let’s prepare for the worst. I want all the cohorts in position. Standard bearers and cornicines no more than ten feet away from their respective centurions.”
Above the heads of Roman soldiers rose the harsh sound of the horns, which spread to the rear. A rhythmic wall of sound that seemed to push aside with the placid silence of the valley. Its pauses dictated the movements of the maniples of soldiers and the sounds the orders of their officers until the Roman war machine was perfectly deployed on the battlefield. Thousands of faces glowering at an opponent who hadn’t been seen for weeks even though it had continued to claim victims.
Varro Murena counted the signums in the front line. The birds of prey and the larks were only waiting for his order to lash out at the wall of mist once more. The dead soldiers had not affected their morale – if anything, they had actually increased their desire for revenge.
The one hundred Ligurian horsemen of the local auxiliary cohort descended to mark the central point of the deployment. They stopped between the first and second row of cohorts, proudly displaying their symbols. In response, the Ala Flavia Miliaria took up position on the opposite side, as though entering into symbolic competition with the mounted soldiers whose steeds pawed the ground far away on the other side of the grid.
When the cavalry was deployed to protect the flanks of the infantry, the horns stopped blowing and silence returned to dominate the valley, which was now painted in a palette of silver and crimson hues.
“For weeks they have made fools of us,” shouted Varro Murena at the front lines, “and now they send us our dead, thinking that this will convince us to withdraw.” The feverish eyes of the legionaries stared at him intently. “These milksops think we should abandon the battlefield a few miles from a city upon which the banners of the principality fly and which bears the name of our supreme leader.” Their tips pointing towards the sky, hundreds of swords were waved in the air and the sky was filled with a thunderous explosion of cries. “We will wait until the seventh hour and if our scouts have not returned…” He paused to emphasise his words. “We will go and collect them, and along with them the corpses of all our enemies.”
The officer’s cloak snapped like a whip and then settled on his horse’s back. He was about to continue when he saw Victor Felix coming towards him at a gallop, followed by his servant and the girl who had emerged from the fog.
“My lord asks you not to make any rash gestures,” the prefect’s man told him.
“Rash gestures? How many more men are we supposed to lose before we put an end to this story?”
“My companions are not dead,” explained Dryantilla. “They only ask me to tell you that they need more time.”
“Girl, your friends have been there since this morning. You brought their horses back to us and soon we will have their bodies back as well. “
“Many will die,” the woman said.
“Many have already died.”
Varro Murena took his leave with a nod and returned to the front rows of his soldiers.
“They think they can frighten us with their tricks,” he said, raising his voice so that they could hear him from behind the lines, “but if they think an autumn mist will hinder us, then we will fight blindfolded. Rome’s eyes fly as high as eagles, and are guided by the wolf’s sense of smell!”
The legionaries beat their swords rhythmically against shields. The sound was like a storm.
*
The fog enveloped the necromancer and the manipulator of metals like a charcoal-coloured shroud. No hint of light could penetrate it, not a sound indicated the direction to take. They had stopped when the rocky walls between which they had been creeping had begun to give way to a layer of solid moisture: billions of frozen water particles that stood firm as the walls of a fortress, protecting the ravines where the Salassi had built their defences. The presence that was guiding them invited them to stop.
His staff pointed to the sky, his head bent over the earth, his eyes closed, and the muscles of his body stretched like bow strings, Jago got to his knees.
“Show yourself.”
The fog opened like butter cut by a glowing blade and a peal of thunder rumbled in the valley.
“Taranis.”
Jago smiled faintly. A voice began to speak in his head.
Now you will listen. And then I will grant you the enormous privilege of leaving. Perhaps unharmed.
Jago abandoned all resistance. He knew it was useless. And suddenly, as fragments emerged from forgotten memories, the images began to flow like the current of a river behind his extinguished orbits.
The soil you are tread has belonged to my people for over a thousand years.
“I know, but no dominion is ever eternal.”
Silence! When it has lasted a thousand years it is no longer a dominion. The blood of these people flows in the very sap of the trees growing on the peaks that surround you. The earth has fed upon the vital energies of their dead. Everything you see bears the mark of their presence and that of their most ancient generations.
“But now the time has come…”
The time has come? What do you know, mortal, about time? Do you want to know what time is? Here…
Jago saw large villages with circular perimeter fences and tall straw and tuff huts. He witnessed ancient rites. He sensed hopes, conspiracies, smelled the acrid odour of human and animal sacrifices and watched the slow but inexorable passing of generations with their children and their dead. He witnessed the destruction of bodies, saw high flames that fed upon human lives and treasures and, above all, Roman armour. Shields, swords, helmets and flaming eyes that conquered and plundered. Women raped, children burned alive, men beheaded and the old fed to the beasts or enslaved. Entire families in chains. But also centurions impaled like pigs, headless soldiers, bronze eagles melted down in vast cauldrons. The Salassi had progressively lost ground as they had been forced to abandon the cities they had built to punctuate those vast green valleys, and the legendary Cordelia had given way to the imposing Augusta Praetoria just as Celtic civilization had made way for Latin civilization. But the last survivors of ancient ways had refused to give up. Their invocation to the gods had been heard by the lord of thunder.
Why did you decide to join them?
“We are not here to discuss me.”
That is true. We are here to see if you will leave immediately or whether you want to continue to sacrifice other mortal lives.
“Today these lands are a Roman province. Not even you can do anything about that. The higher gods have decided to take their side. You too have your hierarchies.”
Had it not been so incredible, Jago would have sworn that the god was laughing.
And so?
“What are a thousand years for you, Taranis? You will have other peoples to dominate. You will find other priests who will dedicate human sacrifices to you. That’s what you’re interested in, isn’t it? Don’t tell me you’re fond of these mountain shepherds?”
This time the god did not laugh.
How could I be?
“So you do all this simply out of pride?”
The earth trembled and the fog closed around the Lusitanian youth’s head, plunging the whole area into a kind of twilight.
No. I do it for amusement. Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps I should leave these people to their fate, but if you only knew how many newborns they sacrificed to have me here with them now. How many would the Romans guarantee me?
“That is something we can discuss. But first…”
Yes, and it would be a very interesting discussion. Do you think I could even have my own temple? Perhaps in that great city full of amusing places that they have? I do love amusement.
“Rome? Perhaps. It’s not up to me, but I will certainly put in a good word.”
I want a feast and a temple all for myself.
“That seems to me a reasonable request… but now…”
Now I wish to play a little more. Then I will let you pass. And then…
*
There was another tremor. Jago heard a series of sinister crunching sounds and a stone as large as a catapult projectile rolled slowly towards him, stopping at his feet. He touched it and then stood up abruptly and backed away. The metal tamer saw him emerge from the fog in which he had disappeared.
“Well?” he asked.
“Let’s get out of here. Get me out of this fog.”
Sibiam took his arm. “Did you talk to him?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“Perhaps there is a way… but not now.”
“Not now?”
“Let’s get out of here and then I’ll tell you. The mountain is collapsing.”
*
The Roman soldiers were preparing to advance when they saw an extraordinary phenomenon. First, they felt the earth tremble beneath their feet and then they saw the fog rise like some huge curtain being raised. The light of day, at first timid and clumsy, then growing bolder and more confident, crept through the folds of the mist like a shower of glowing spears. At the same time the two mountains that closed the valley in collapsed, and huge blocks of rock crashed to the ground from the most disparate heights. The horsemen of the Ala Flavia were cut off from the rest of the infantry by a sudden wall of stone. And they soon realised that they were the lucky ones. A fresh shower of natural projectiles rained down onto the front lines of the Legio Rapax, wiping out a hundred men in a matter of moments, while the others attempted to retreat, trampling the surprised men behind them.
The Legio Alaudae remained cool, not moving its position by a hand’s breadth. The tribunes ordered them into tortoise formation and many pieces of rock smashed against the wall of shields.
When the first salvo of falling rocks had subsided, the closing curtain of fog revealed two silhouettes walking between the various Roman units.
Varro Murena recognised prefect Felix’s men as they attempted to dodge the stones, rubble and corpses in their way. He turned his horse around and called to the nearest centurion. “Bring me those two. Alive.”
The centurion did not wait for him say it twice. Accompanied by a handful of veterans he raced over to meet the two fugitives who were trapped in a cordon of shields and accompanied them to the general’s command post.
“What news do you bring me?” asked Murena impatiently.
Jago was barely breathing. The blood spurting out from a deep wound in his temple covered half of his face in a reddish mask. He raised a hand to indicate the falling rocks.
“When they stop.”
“When they stop?”
“The tremors. Wait for the earth to stop shaking and then go and take your glory,” said Sibiam, not moving from the side of his wounded friend.
“And when do you think that…?”
“Now.”
Dryantilla had arrived, accompanied by Victor Felix. She got off her horse and ran over to Jago. At that moment the hail of stones stopped and the mountains fell silent. The fog had completely disappeared and in the distance the fortifications of the Salassi were visible.
Varro Murena gripped the reins of his horse.
“For our dead.”
The Roman legions moved like one huge, undulating body. The sound of the horns again filled the valley, and this time the piercing sound reached even the terrified ears of the men hidden in the crevasses of the mountains, as they realised that their god had abandoned them.
While legion upon legion hurled themselves against their enemies, Victor Felix’s group closed ranks around Jago.
“Why didn’t you let the others help?” asked Dryantilla, her eyes blazing furiously. If they had been swords they would have pierced the prefect from front to back.
“Because they are not yet ready,” replied Felix in the calm voice of his interpreter.
“They aren’t ready? So why did you bring them? Why were they with us?”
“To see. To learn.” The prefect turned to the top of the mountain. Several carts and a large group of people who looked like spectators at a theatre were visible.
“While we risked dying?”
“Yes, if destiny had wished it so.”
“Destiny?” the girl replied, holding Jago tightly. “You are our destiny Victor, don’t you remember?”
The prefect turned his eyes to the battlefield. In the distance they could already hear the sound of the Salassi begging for mercy.