The Spanish Slave by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub

Chapter 14

Flight

T he reign of terror in the village continued, as autumn passed and the villagers tried to restore a sense of normalcy by devoting their energy to the harvest. But before too long a Roman soldier, lured into a house by a pretty young woman, was disembowelled. His guts were hung from a cross in the village square, and his head impaled on a pike—a savage mockery of the crucifixion that had so terrified the villagers earlier. Servilius was furious, and the villagers were rounded up in the middle of the night and forced to congregate in neat rows in front of his headquarters.

‘In the army’, he began, as lamps flickered, illuminating the line of soldiers who watched, impassively, ‘we have a procedure we use when the troops get out of hand. It is a useful method of discipline, although a little barbaric, I grant you.’

He nodded, and the soldiers moved down the lines and pushed each tenth person forwards.

‘We call it decimation. One of you each will die for the crimes of the other nine.’ He smiled at them. ‘Of course, none of you have to die, if you give up those who so callously killed my soldier.’

The villagers looked back at Servilius in stony silence. He walked forwards, tapping the vine cane against his calves, until he reached Indibilis, who was one of those selected.

‘No words, my gallant friend?’ he asked. ‘You are a man of some means around here, are you not? I doubt that anything could have happened without your say-so.’ Servilius walked further down the line until he reached Mandonius.

‘You are the chief of this pathetic community. What have you to say?’

‘I have nothing to say to you’, Mandonius spat.

‘The only reason that you are still alive’, Servilius said, his vine cane under Mandonius’s chin, forcing Mandonius to look him in the eye, ‘is because you have an arrangement with the proconsul.’

‘So does he’, Mandonius said, jerking his head towards Indibilis.

‘Ah yes, he does. How careless of me.’ Servilius looked at one of his men. ‘Take his son instead.’

‘No!’ Mandonius and Indibilis screamed at the same time, but Servilius ignored them. A Roman soldier stepped forward and levelled a javelin at Indibilis’s throat, and he stood there, fuming at his helplessness.

‘Usually with decimation we make a clean kill, the better to purge the legion of its impurities. Here, however, I fear that sterner action is needed.’

He looked at the terrified and hysterical group of villagers who had been selected, and shook his head sadly.

‘Burn them’, he said, and strode away.

In the morning, Ilde was both nervous and angry. To protect his daughter, Mandonius had confined her to their small house, but this only worsened her mood.

‘I’m leaving, father’, Ilde said. She tied her hair into a bun and smoothed the woolen folds of her skirt. She had recovered her strength and, as Mandonius saw, her determination.

‘Please, Ilde’, he said, knowing that his entreaties would fall on deaf ears. ‘I am sure that the Roman presence here is temporary’, he added, without conviction.

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