The Roman Traitor, Vol. 2

by Henry William Herbert

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 mass 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.