The Roman Traitor Volume Ii Part 20

Nothing, at the same time, could indicate more clearly, the fury and uncalculating valor which had grown up among them, nurtured by the strange policy of Catiline, during a peace of eighteen years' duration.

Eighteen men, for, Aulus Fulvius included, they numbered no more, set fiercely upon a force of nearly three times their number, with no advantage of arms or accoutrement, or even of discipline, for although all old soldiers, these men had not, for years, been accustomed to act together, nor were any of them personally acquainted with the young leader, who for the first time commanded them.

The one link which held them together, was welded out of crime and desperation. Each man knew that his neighbor, as well as himself, must win or die-there was no compromise, no half-way measure that could by any possibility preserve them.

And therefore as one man they charged, as one man they struck, and death followed every blow.

At their first onset, with horses comparatively fresh, against the blown chargers and disordered ma.s.s of their pursuers, they were entirely successful. Above a dozen of their opponents went down horse and man, and the remainder were driven scattering along the slope, nearly to the foot of the declivity.

Uncertain as he had been at the first who were the men, whom he thus recklessly attacked, Aulus Fulvius had not well turned the angle of the wood, before he recognized the faces of almost all the leading men of the opposite party.

They were the oldest and most trusty of the clients of his house; and half a dozen, at the least, of his own name and kindred led them.

It needed not a moment therefore, to satisfy him that they were in quest of himself, and of himself alone-that they were no organized troop and invested with no state authority, but merely a band suddenly collected from his father's household, to bring him back in person from the fatal road on which he had entered so fatally.

Well did he know the rigor of the old Roman law, as regarded the paternal power, and well did he know, the severity with which his father would execute it.

The terrors inspired by the thought of an avenging country, would have been nothing-the bare idea of being surrendered a fettered captive to his dread father's indignation, maddened him.

Fiercely therefore, as he rushed out leading his ambushed followers, the fury of his first charge was mere boy's play when compared to the virulent and concentrated rage with which he fought, after he had discovered fairly against whom he was pitted.

Had his men shared his feeling, the pursuers must have been utterly defeated and cut to pieces, without the possibility of escape.

But while he recognized his personal enemies in the persons he attacked, the men who followed him as quickly perceived that those, whom they were cutting down, were not regular soldiers, nor led by any Roman magistrate.

They almost doubted, therefore, as they charged, whether they were not in error; and when the hors.e.m.e.n of the other faction were discomfitted and driven down the hill on the instant, they felt no inclination to pursue or hara.s.s them farther.

Not so, however, Aulus. He had observed in the first onset, the features of a cousin, whom he hated; and now, added to other motives, the fierce thirst for his kinsman's blood, stirred his blood almost into frenzy.

Knowing, moreover, that he was himself the object of their pursuit, he knew likewise that the pursuit would not be given up for any casual check, but that to conquer, he must crush them.

Precipitately, madly therefore he drove down the hill, oversetting horseman after horseman, the greater part of them unwounded-for the short Roman sword, however efficient at close quarters and on foot, was a most ineffective weapon for a cavalier-until he reached the bottom of the hill.

There he reined up his charger for a moment, and looked back, waving his hand and shouting loudly to bring on his comrades to a second charge.

To his astonishment, however, he saw them collected in a body at nearly a mile's distance, on the brow of the first hill, beckoning him to come back, and evidently possessed by no thought, less than that of risking their lives or liberty by any fresh act of hostility.

In the mean time, the fugitives, who had now reached the level ground and found themselves unpressed, began to halt; and before Aulus Fulvius had well made up his mind what to do, they had been rallied and reformed, and were advancing slowly, with a firm and unbroken front, well calculated to deter his handful, which had already been diminished in strength, by one man killed, and four or five more or less severely wounded, from rashly making any fresh attack.

Alone and unsupported, nothing remained for him but to retreat if possible, and make his way back to his people, who, he felt well a.s.sured would again charge, if again menaced with pursuit. To do this, however, had now ceased to be an easy, perhaps to be a feasible matter.

Between himself and his own men, there were at least ten of his father's clients; several of them indeed were wounded, and all had been overthrown in the shock either by himself or his troopers; but they had all regained their horses, and-apparently in consequence of some agreement or tacit understanding with his comrades, were coming down the hill at a gentle trot to rejoin their own party.

Now it was that Aulus began to regret having sent forward the smith, and those of the conspirators to whom he was individually known, with Julia in the van. Since of the fellows who had followed him thus far, merely because inferior will always follow superior daring, and who now appeared mightily inclined to desert him, not three were so much as acquainted with his name, and not one had any intimacy with him, or indeed any community of feeling unless it were the community of crime.

These things flashed upon Aulus in an instant; the rather that he saw the hated cousin, whom he had pa.s.sed unnoticed in his headlong charge, quietly bringing the clients into line between himself and his wavering a.s.sociates.

He was in fact hemmed in on every side; he was alone, and his horse, which he had taxed to the uttermost, was wounded and failing fast.

His case was indeed desperate, for he could now see that his own faction were drawing off already with the evident intention of rejoining the bulk of the party, careless of his fate, and glad to escape at so small a sacrifice.

Still, even in this extremity he had no thought of surrender-indeed to him death and surrender were but two names for one thing.

He looked to the right and to the left, if there were any possibility of scaling the wooded slopes and so rejoining the st.u.r.dy swordsmith without coming to blows again with his father's household; but one glance told him that such hopes were vain indeed. On either hand the crags rose inaccessible even to the foot of man, unless he were a practised mountaineer.

Then rose the untamed spirit of his race, the firm Roman hardihood, deeming naught done while anything remains to do, and holding all things feasible to the bold heart and ready hand-the spirit which saved Rome when Hannibal was thundering at her gates, which made her from a petty town the queen and mistress of the universe.

He gathered his reins firmly in his hand, and turning his horse's head down the declivity put the beast to a slow trot, as if he had resolved to force his way toward Rome; but in a moment, when his manuvre had, as he expected caused the men in his rear to put their horses to their speed, and thus to break their line, he again wheeled, and giving his charger the spur with pitiless severity drove up the steep declivity like a thunderbolt, and meeting his enemies straggling along in succession, actually succeeded in cutting down two, before he was envelopped, unhorsed and disarmed, which, as his cousin's men came charging up and down the road at once, it was inevitable that he must be from the beginning.

"Curses upon thee! it is thou!" he said, grinding his teeth and shaking his weaponless hand at his kinsman in impotent malignity-"it is thou!

Caius. Curses upon thee! from my birth thou hast crossed me."

"It were better thou hadst died, Aulus," replied the other solemnly, but in sorrow more than anger, "better that thou hadst died, than been so led back to Rome."

"Why didst _thou_ not kill me then?" asked Aulus with a sneer of sarcastic spite-"Why dost thou not kill me now."

"Thou art _sacro sanctus_!" answered the other, with an expression of horror in his eyes-"doomed, set apart, sanctified unto destruction-words, alas! henceforth avail nothing. Bind him"-he continued, turning toward his men-"Bind him, I say, hard, with his hands behind his back, and his legs under his horse's belly! Go your way," he added, "Go to your b.l.o.o.d.y camp, and accursed leader"-waving his hand as he spoke, to the veterans above, who seemed half inclined to make an effort to rescue the prisoner. "Go your way. We have no quarrel with you now; we came for him, and having got him we return."

"What?" cried the dark-eyed boy who had come up too late to the Latin villa on the preceding night, and who, strange to state, was riding with the clients of the Fulvian house, unwearied-"What, will you not save _her_? will you not do that for which alone I led ye hither? will you be falsifiers of your word and dishonored?"

"Alas!" answered Caius Fulvius, "it is impossible.-We are outnumbered, my poor boy, and may not aid you, as we would; but be of good cheer, this villain taken, they will not dare to harm her."

The youth shook his head mournfully; but made no reply.

Aulus, however, who had heard all that was said, glared savagely upon the boy, and after examining his features minutely for a moment exclaimed-"I know thy face! who art thou! quick thy name?"

"I have no name!" replied the other gloomily.

"That voice! I know thee!" he shouted, an expression of infernal joy animating his features. "Thou miserable fool, and driveller! and is it for this-for this, that thou hast brought the bloodhounds on my track, to restore _her_ to _him_? Mark me, then, mark me, and see if I am not avenged-her dishonor, her agony, her infamy are no less certain than my death. Catiline, Catiline shall avenge me upon her-upon him-upon thee-thou weaker, more variable thing than-woman! Catiline! think'st thou he will fail?"

"He hath failed ere now!" replied the boy proudly.

"Failed! when?" exclaimed Aulus, forgetting his own situation in the excitement of the wordy contest.

"When he crossed me"-then turning once more to the leader of the Fulvian clients, the dark-eyed boy said in a calm determined voice, "You will not, therefore, aid me?"

"We cannot."

"Enough! Look to him, then, that he escape you not."

"Fear us not. But whither goest thou?"

"To rescue Julia. Tell thou to Arvina how these things have fallen out, and whither they have led her; and, above all, that one is on her traces who will die or save her."

"Ha! ha!" laughed Aulus savagely in the glee of his vengeful triumph, "Thou wilt die, but not save her. I am avenged, already-avenged in Julia's ruin!"

"Wretch!" exclaimed his kinsman, indignant and disgusted-"almost it shames me that my name is Fulvius! Fearful, however, is the punishment that overhangs thee! think on that, Aulus! and if shame fetter not thy tongue, at least let terror freeze it."

"Terror? of whom? perhaps of thee, accursed?"