Decius found himself riding in the middle of the press. His face was as imperturbable as ever, though he glanced over his shoulder from time to time as if to note how much nearer death had come. Sergius galloped close behind him, careless and abstracted, his rein lying loose on his charger"s steaming neck. Then, of a sudden, a resolve seemed to come to him. Straightening himself, he urged the weary horse forward through the fugitives till he drew up even with Hostilius, who, still frantic with panic, was now swaying in his saddle from the pain and loss of blood.
Sergius leaned over and laid his hand upon the other"s arm, and Hostilius started as if he had touched a serpent. Then he became calmer, and a troubled look was in the eyes that sought the tribune"s face.
"Yes, I know," he said at last, speaking hurriedly and in odd, strained accents. "I led you into it, and now I am flying."
"Let us turn back," said Sergius, mildly. "I do not reproach you, but let us turn back. Surely it is better than the rods and axe."
Hostilius shuddered, and, at that moment, Decius, who had overtaken them, broke in with:--
"By Hercules! there is no fear of those. They cut us down in flight.
The choice is, shall we have it in the face or between the shoulders."
"By the G.o.ds of Rome, then!" shouted the praefect, suddenly reining up, while Sergius and Decius swung their horses in short circles.
There was no trumpet to give the signal, and the little cavalry banner had gone down long ago; but such was the force of Roman training that nearly all of Sergius" men and half of the allies turned in mid-panic with their leaders. To make head, much less to form was impossible, for the foremost of the enemy were well mingled with the rearmost fugitives. As Decius had said, it was only a choice of deaths: the one swift and honourable, the other more lingering, but none the less inevitable.
Almost in a moment it was over. Between two and three hundred of the united detachments had fallen already, and the hundred or so that now sought to face about, went down in a crushed and bleeding ma.s.s under the thousands of hoofs that overwhelmed them. Such was the weight and impetus of the pursuing force that there was no time even to strike, and most of the victims fell unwounded by spear or javelin. Sergius was vaguely conscious that he had seen the praefect cloven through the head by the short, swordlike Numidian knife, his own horse seemed to collapse under him, and that was the end.
Then he knew that it was dark and cold and that there was a howling in the air, as of beasts of prey, and the shadow of a man fell across him, for the moon was in the heavens, and the man was cursing by all the G.o.ds of the Capitol.
Gradually consciousness returned, and he recalled, incident by incident, the happenings of the past day. He had been lying still, thus far, without further wish than to look up at the stars and think and listen to what he now knew was the distant howling of wolves and the nearer curses of Marcus Decius. At last he stirred slightly, and the decurion turned and looked down.
"Do you live, master?"
"Yes, truly," replied Sergius; "unless you chance to be a shade."
Then he struggled to his feet, and the two gazed silently at each other and around them. All about, in the moonlight, lay the bodies of horses and men, the latter glittering in their white tunics, save here and there an officer whose helmet and breastplate had seemed to mark out his corpse for stripping and nameless desecrations. Sergius"
head-piece was gone, but he glanced at his own corselet and then at Decius.
"We were buried together under a heap of dead," said the latter, in answer to the unasked query. "They made haste in their spoiling; and, when they had gone, I drew myself free and found you: the wolves are feasting well to-night; can you walk?"
Sergius moved stiffly a few steps. He felt bruised from head to foot, and one arm hung useless from a dislocated shoulder, but he found no wound. Decius had not escaped so lightly. Besides the gash he had received earlier in the day, he had been cut again across the forehead, but his prodigious strength seemed to have inexhaustible resources to draw upon.
"Come," he said. "We must go southward as quickly as possible.
Sergius still walked slowly about, glancing at one corpse after another, until the decurion, at last divining his thought, broke in roughly:--
"Come! The wolves must provide him sepulchre as they will do for better men. What would he have? The she-wolf suckled the twins. Let Hostilius pay the debt by feeding the she-wolf"s cubs. By Hercules!
other sepulchre for him means need of one for ourselves."
So speaking, he at last drew Sergius away, and they began their weary tramp across the field.
"If I could have seen but one pulse-eater among the slain," said the tribune, after they had gone some distance in silence.
"I know of one that should be dead," remarked Decius, grimly, "if a spear through his midriff be enough for him. Truly the ancient shafts are useless in close fight, save for a single thrust. I, for one, welcome the Greek equipment--and the sooner the better."
Suddenly Sergius stopped and laid his hand upon his comrade"s arm.
"Look!" he said.
A long, low rampart seemed to rise up from the plain two hundred yards ahead.
"Their camp," said the decurion, after a short pause, "and deserted.
Let us go forward cautiously; perhaps we shall find food."
Step by step they crept up, walking faster and more erect as they drew nearer and as the evidence that life was not there became more apparent.
"They have left it only to-night," said Decius, clambering up the mound of earth and sniffing the air. "Had it been a day old, we should have smelt it long ago, though the wind blows from us."
Then, as they descended and traversed the silent lanes, a puzzled expression came to his face, and he halted from time to time.
Sergius eyed him inquiringly.
"Do you not smell fresh blood?" said the veteran, at last. "I remember when we marched with Lucius Aemilius, after the Gauls had beaten the praetor"s army at Clusium. There were ten thousand men just slain, and the air was salt like the sea--by Jupiter! What is this?"
Resuming their advance, they had come upon a s.p.a.ce of open ground near the centre of the camp, doubtless the spot reserved for a market; but what meat was it that c.u.mbered the shambles, without buyer or seller?
Piled in ghastly heaps, or covering the ground two and three deep, lay a fresh-reaped harvest of corpses, stripped, distorted, gleaming in the moonlight. Could it be that the camp had been taken? But these were no African dead, nor yet was this a Roman camp. There was a set deliberation, too, about the slaughter, that told no tale of battle.
Suddenly Decius cried out and, stooping down, raised the hands of one of the victims--hands upon which the shackles still hung.
"Slaves," murmured Sergius; "but why--"
"Say, rather, prisoners," said the centurion, grimly.
Sergius struck his thigh. It was all clear to him now.
"May the plague fall upon him! may he go to a thousand crosses! Do you not see? He is _escaping_. He has made for the pa.s.ses and slain his prisoners, that they may not hamper his march. Who knows but that by now he is on the road to Rome? G.o.ds! This was Hostilius" duty and mine, and we wasted our time and our men on a few score of miserable Numidians. Come, my Marcus, come: there are no such things as wounds or weariness or caution. We must reach the dictator at once, and may the G.o.ds grant that it be not too late!"
Marcus Decius had been gazing gloomily at the young man, as the words burst from his lips.
"Where shall we go, and how?" he said, with a despairing gesture.
"On our feet," cried Sergius. "Did I not say that weariness and wounds were not? It is for the life of the Republic: I to the camp near Casilinum; you to Tarracina. They will march by the Appian or by the Latin Way, if they strike for Rome. If not, the plan may not be fatal."
Decius yielded to the decision of his companion, and, with hasty fingers, they unlaced each other"s corselets and hurried out of the camp, each to run his race with what strength remained. The last clasp of hands had been given and received, when, far away on the hills east and northeast, the quick eye of Sergius caught the gleam of a rapidly moving torch: then another and another and another seemed to flame out in the night, like stars when the moon has failed, until the whole range of heights blazed with fires that flashed and danced and crossed and recrossed each other in mad confusion, as if all the thronging baccha.n.a.ls of Greece had a.s.sembled for one frenzied orgy.
Dazed and confounded by the spectacle, as grand as it was weird and unexplainable, they stood spell-bound, powerless each to take the first stride. Decius, the older man, the veteran, turned to his companion, yielding that unconscious homage to birth and rank and education, that comes in the presence of unknown perils. No experience of war could help him here, and his mind leaped at once to the supernatural for an explanation. As for the tribune, such thoughts, at least, had not occurred to him. Greek scepticism had already gained too strong a hold upon young Romans of rank, to let them regard the theology of the State other than as a machinery devised by wise men to control an ignorant rabble. Besides, his mind had taken another direction from the discovery of the slaughter of the prisoners, and, humanlike, it ran on in its channel, right or wrong.
Decius was trembling violently.
"Truly, master, the G.o.ds of Carthage are loose to-night," said he.
There was even a little of contempt in the glance with which Sergius noted the abject terror of the st.u.r.dy veteran. Utterly at a loss to explain the apparitions, he never doubted for a moment but that they were the product of some human wile.
"Come," he said shortly. "The G.o.ds of Carthage have favoured us in lighting the way. First of all, we shall go together and learn the truth." Without waiting for a reply, he set off, at an easy, loping gait, in the direction of the strange fires. Decius followed, as he would have followed through the portals of Avernus.
The distance to the heights was not great,--four or five miles at the utmost,--but half an hour had pa.s.sed, and still the spectacle, wilder and more brilliant than ever, remained unexplained. For a stretch of miles, the hills above, beyond, and below were all ablaze with rushing flames that seemed guided by no sentient agency; then, suddenly, a single torch glanced out from a small grove of trees a short distance ahead and darted diagonally across their path. Decius stopped for an instant, with trembling knees; but Sergius bounded forward to intercept the torch-bearer, and the veteran followed from sheer shame.
Up, down to the ground, up again, and then around in frantic waving circles swept the flame: a mad bellowing rolled through the night, until the tribune himself almost checked his stride in awe-struck wonder. The next instant the torch, if torch it was, seemed to flounder to the earth, from which it rose again and came driving directly toward him, explained at last,--an ox with a great bundle of blazing f.a.gots fastened between its horns, blinded, frantic with pain and terror.