The Praetorians are standing with
interlocked elbows; they look unpleasantly like samples of a complete
cordon round the camp. The mounted Praetorians are behind them not two
horse-lengths and less than that apart. I divined some sort of troops
massed behind the cavalrymen. I feel frightened."
Out we raced towards the broad Tiber, towards it we crept through fog
across the meadow. Again we were challenged. The cordon was, apparently,
complete.
As we regained the camp Agathemer said:
"If we are to escape alive we need all our craft, and we must be quick."
We sprinted, not to our quarters, but to those of the British veterans.
Into each tent we peered.
Every tent was empty!
Agathemer, plainly, felt in a desperate hurry, yet he took time to glance
into the most of the hundred and fifty tents, tearing along past the lines
of them. He also took time, after our brief inspection was finished, to
pause, get his breath and say:
"This looks worse than bad. I miss my guess if many of these slumberers
wake alive. Strip!"
We stripped of everything except our amulet bags.
Then, at full run, stark naked, our unsheathed sheath-knives in our hands,
we raced through the fog, now glimmering with the first forehint of coming
dawn, along the inner edge of the veterans' tents, till we were opposite
the quarters of the tumultuary century formed from the outpourings of the
_ergastulum_, at Nuceria.
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