False God of Rome by Robert Fabbri Read Free Book Online Page B

iron-tipped shafts slammed into the Marmaridae punching through the chests and heads of men with bursts of blood or burying themselves deep into their mounts, crashing them to the ground
in a cacophony of guttural, animal bellowing.
    Whipping long, straight swords from their scabbards and screaming death from behind their cloth face masks, the seven survivors of the onslaught, black cloaks billowing out behind them,
thundered into the turma as they drew their spathae.
    The strong, unfamiliar smell of the camels caused the riderless horse next to Vespasian to shy abruptly to the left; it crunched into his mount’s withers as a shimmer of burnished iron
flashed down towards him. Agonised by the pain of the blow, his horse raised its head, whinnying madly, and took the vicious sword cut, aimed at Vespasian’s neck, in the throat. Blood sprayed
over Vespasian’s face as he brought his spatha down, severing the sword arm of his adversary who howled as his camel crashed into the now side-on riderless horse. Both beasts and the
one-armed tribesman, blood spewing from his freshly hewn stump, plunged to the ground with a cracking of bones and bestial roars of anguish.
    With the severed hand still gripping the sword embedded in its throat, Vespasian’s horse galloped on for five paces and then crashed onto the desert floor. Vespasian hurled himself forward
so as not to be crushed beneath the dead weight of his erstwhile mount and tumbled across the rough ground. Jarring to a halt he looked back and immediately leapt to his left, narrowly avoiding
being trampled under the galloping hoofs of a rolling-eyed horse whose blood-spurting, decapitated rider sat firm in the saddle, the muscles in his thighs still gripping his directionless
mount.
    ‘Are you all right, sir?’ Magnus shouted, pulling his horse up next to Vespasian.
    ‘I think so,’ he replied watching, with a morbid curiosity, the progress of the headless rider; within a few dozen paces the thigh muscles gave out and the body slithered from the
saddle, leaving the horse charging off towards the deep-blue horizon.
    Looking around, Vespasian counted another couple of riderless horses as the turma pulled up and rallied. The ground was littered with dead camels and their riders but fifty paces away, back
towards the outcrop, one camel remained standing; the Marmarides pulled it around to face them, brandished his sword above his head and then charged.
    ‘He’s got balls, I’ll give him that,’ Magnus commented, jumping from his horse and grabbing his hunting spear. ‘He’s mine, all right, pull back,’ he
shouted at the troopers who did as they were ordered, grinning in anticipation of the interesting contest.
    Magnus stood four-square to the charging camel, holding his eight-foot-long oaken-shafted spear across his body; the leaf-shaped iron head glinted in the sun. The troopers shouted encouragement
at him as the rider closed, screaming the ululating war cry of his people and slapping the flat of his bloodstained sword against his camel’s side to urge it into more speed.
    Magnus remained motionless.
    An instant before the camel hit him, Magnus dodged to the left, ducking under the wild swipe of the Marmarides’ fearsome sword, and jammed his spear, point first, sideways between the
animal’s forelegs. Its right shinbone snapped as it cracked against the solid shaft; its forward motion twisted the spear around and, as Magnus let go, forced it up into the belly of the
beast. With a terrified bellow the camel sank onto the spear as its right leg buckled unnaturally beneath it, catapulting its rider from his saddle; its momentum pushed the weapon up through its
juddering body, shredding its innards, until it burst through the beast’s back in a shower of gore just above the pelvis. Screeching and snorting violently, the camel thrashed its back legs
in a vain attempt to lift itself off the cause of its torment. Magnus grabbed the unconscious