"We shall be with them soon, my Marcus," cried Sergius, gayly, and then, noting the furrowed face of his first decurion: "Surely, Trasimenus has not cooled your heart. Take courage. There is no water here to chill you."
Decius flushed through the deep bronze of his skin.
"It is true that there is no water here, and blows might warm my blood. It was the command of the dictator that I thought of."
They had reached the level plain now. A cluster of burning buildings hardly a mile ahead marked their goal.
"And it is you, Marcus, who have been railing at those same commands?"
"I am an old soldier, my master. I growl, but I obey."
For answer, Sergius urged on his horse with knee and thong. Now they could distinguish dark shapes gliding hither and thither around the fires, and now they burst in upon a scene as of the orgies of demons.
Utterly unsuspicious of danger, the marauders had taken no precautions. Their wiry, little horses had been turned loose about the gardens, while the riders murdered and pillaged and ravished and destroyed. The worst was over now. Little remained of the buildings, save clay walls covered with plaster; dead bodies were scattered here and there; the women and such of the slaves as had not been slaughtered, together with the farm stock and other things of value, were gathered beyond the reach of the fires; while, bound high upon a rude cross before his own threshold, the master of the farm writhed amid flames that shot upward to lick his hands and face.
Then, in an instant, the scene was changed: the Roman horsemen burst in, and, frenzied by the spectacle before them, slew madly and fast. Hither and thither they swept, wherever the dusky figures sought to fly, and the thin, reed-like lances rose and plunged and rose again, shivering and dripping, from the bodies of their victims. But for their well-trained steeds, who came and knelt at their masters' calls, not one of the desert horsemen could have escaped, and, as it was, a mere dozen broke out from the carnage and scurried away, with the avengers in close and relentless pursuit. Marcus Decius paused a moment before the cross and studied the torn frame and blackened skin of the man who hung there. Then, with a swift movement of his lance, he transfixed the quivering body, and, hardly catching the "Jove bless thee, comrade," and the sigh with which life escaped, he dashed on after the pursuing squadrons.