“Magus!” shouted his master anxiously. “What are you going to do?” And then turning to Herodianus he added: “Well, make haste.—My horse can carry two.”
“Pooh! Do you take your old friend for a shirker? Sooner will I fall into the hands of that gang, than bring you to destruction too.”
“Here! Jump up here!” shouted the Goth. He held the soldier’s horse by the bridle. The rider was lying in the dust about a hundred paces off.
“Hail to the victor!” cried Herodianus. “That is what I call prompt reprisal.”
“He is a German like myself,” shouted Magus, “and is not ashamed to run down one of his own kith and kin! But I was down upon him, by Odin’s raven!”
Herodianus, with a gasping effort, threw himself into the saddle.
“On we go!” he exclaimed, as he settled himself and seized the bridle, and they started afresh along the echoing road. Only just in time, for they heard the little group check their horses as they came up with their comrade, who had become unconscious from his heavy fall and from loss of blood.
“Pick him up, Aeolus,” cried the leader of the little band. “The dark mass down there behind the trees is Ardea. We can leave him at the tavern.”
While one of the men stopped to rescue his senseless comrade, the others mended their pace and rode on after the fugitives. But their steeds were not equal to it. Before they had reached Ardea one fell, the blood flowing from his nostrils, and the others panted so terribly, that the captain saw that the chase was hopeless and gave the order to slacken. In about twenty minutes they reached the northern gate of the town and knocked up the innkeeper.
Aurelius and his companions had meanwhile ridden at their original pace to a spot about a thousand paces beyond the little town. There they stopped; and finding that there was nothing to be seen or heard between them and Ardea, they allowed themselves a minute to breathe and to swallow a draught of Setian wine,[63] after which they went forward at an easier gallop. Thus, in about an hour, they reached Antium, still in the silence of the night. The town seemed dead, there was not a human being to be seen in the deserted streets. At the north-west end of the harbor the trireme lay at anchor and, to his great satisfaction, Aurelius found the boat ready on the shore to carry him and his friends on board. He, then, was not the first to arrive.