"Did I hear the name of Lysias of Bithynia being bandied about?" the silhouette called back.
"By Jupiter! It's the Quaestor, Salvius Julianus. Welcome to our company, senator!" Clarus called aloud gleefully. "We are due to visit your person shortly."
"In fact, Septicius Clarus," Julianus said, "Secretary Vestinus told me I was due to visit you an hour ago at your chambers. I did so and waited, eventually to be told your team had ventured elsewhere. One of the staff reported you were interviewing the Prefect Governor at The Alexandros. So I've wandered here to locate you."
Julianus spoke in the clipped Latin of the legal world. Both his roles as Hadrian's leader of the hunt and as the educated investigator of the arcane complexities of Roman Law demanded skill in prosecuting a chase. Yet unlike those of Hadrian's retinue who travelled everywhere in the company a flock of clients, stewards, and assorted hangers-on, Julianus was accompanied only by his solitary equerry.
Both were armed as a precaution, however, except when in the presence of Caesar. The imperial encampment was relatively secure against undesirables, nevertheless only slaves moved around without protection. At a time when unknown intruders had been circulating within the camp and causing affray, Julianus walked unafraid.
"The afternoon heat is debilitating. You must be thirsty and hungry?" he commiserated. "I suggest we retire to my apartments at the Companion's stables. They're just at the top of the rise nearby. It will be cooler and private, if you don't mind the smell of horseflesh. Besides I have something very special to show you," the affable Roman suggested. "In fact, two somethings."
"Two somethings? What would they be, Senator?" Suetonius asked.
"You'll see soon. They will be useful to you."
CHAPTER 24
At first it sounded like a flight of birds fluttering high in the incandescent sky of a blazing African afternoon. But it was not birds fluttering. It was the first indication of an impending assault.
Julianus and Clarus were sufficiently experienced in war to immediately recognize the fluttering for what it was. It was neither birds in flight nor benign. They immediately peered skywards. A shimmering shower of arrows was flowingly rising, curving, and turning to descend. It was arcing earthwards towards the group.
"We're under attack!" Julianus cried. "Get to cover immediately!"
Suetonius, Clarus, Strabon, and Surisca found themselves in an entirely unexpected theater of danger. An attack? On them?! By who? Why?
With a series of whispering zippps, a shower of thin-shafted arrows feathered the baked earth around the group. One shaft transfixed Strabon's basket of wax tablets and papyrus rolls. Strabon groaned a scholar's grimace as he tugged the offending dart from his precious kit and cast it aside.
Suddenly Julianus's equerry emitted a sharp cry as another arrow struck his open-laced boot.
A second wave of arrows rose similarly leisurely into the sky from behind a nearby marquee as the group of six scrambled clumsily up an earthen grade to the safety of the Companions' compound. The first shower may have been the archer's range markers, the second a more accurate positioning of the deadly shafts.
"Get to the horse yard!" Julianus shouted as he leaped to his equerry's assistance. The missile had pierced the side of the young man's foot but not pinioned it to the earth. The pain was not yet sufficient to disable him, but Julianus grasped him around the torso and heaved the two of them up the slope. They toppled into and under the cover of the horse compound's palm-strewn trellis vaulting.
Suetonius had the presence of mind to scurry to Surisca's defense, though the nimble eighteen year-old made a speedier advance to refuge than her chivalrous sixty year-old defender.
The group tumbled under the cover of the palm fronds in a flurry of toga wools, linens, and Damascene silk. A dozen stable-hands ran to their attention. The compound's trellis cover offered dappled shade to forty horses with their attendant grooms.
"Get Marcus to safety," Julianus commanded, "and call Damon the Horse Doctor!"
Two of the younger grooms supported Marcus into the interior of the compound as a large Cretan in his island's distinctive garb ambled to the group. Julianus shouted orders to the others and then the Cretan.
"We're being attacked! Arm yourselves, and protect the horses! Follow procedures and stand your stations! Send someone to make contact with the nearest Watch to report the attack and call for urgent aid. Tell him to watch his movements; the assailants are unknown. But no stranger is permitted in this shelter or near the horses! And protect our visitors, too!"
Julianus turned to the Cretan. "Marcus has taken an arrow in his foot. Attend to the wound and assess its risks, Damon. The arrow might have been dipped in soil or shit to encourage infection."
Damon, a burly horse surgeon-cum-slaughterman, looked to the young man's foot. Pain was rapidly settling into the wound and was evident in Marcus's whitening lips.
"Bring boiled drinking water, clear vinegar, and fresh oil from the kitchen," the vet instructed a nearby groom. "Clean cloths, too!" He looked to Marcus. "Be calm, lad. We'll snip off the barb and withdraw the shaft, clean. It's through flesh, not vein or bone. The Fates have been kind to you. We'll give it a good cleanse then bind it tight. Later I'll apply a healing salve. You'll be limping for weeks though."
Suetonius, Julianus, and the others peered from beneath the trellis towards the source of the attack. From its higher ground the compound provided a clear view of the surrounding lanes, tents, and booths towards the river. But no sign of activity was evident in the soporific sun-drenched stillness of the afternoon's siesta time.
The attackers, who had loosed their arrows from behind the cover of a marquee's wall, had withdrawn back into the camp out of view. Whoever they were, they were nowhere evident.
"Are you alright, my dear?" the biographer asked his young Syri ward. She nodded her affirmation, if somewhat shaken by the experience.
"What was that all about?" Clarus demanded rhetorically. "Who was targeting us? And why?"
"Somebody doesn't like us, I think," Suetonius offered weakly.
He saw the nipped head of the arrow from Marcus's foot drop to the beaten earth under Damon's crisp shear with a flensing knife. Suetonius picked it up and surveyed it.
"It's not Roman, it's not a Legion arrow-head. The shape and style are wrong. Is it Scythian, Alexandrian, Egyptian, or Nubian?" the Special Inspector asked of all around him.
Only Damon responded.
"That's Europa barbarian, I'd say," the horse doctor offered. "It's German or maybe Gaulish. Yet it could be a re-used sharp from almost anywhere in the Empire. They're too precious to use only once."
"Who has archers in the camp other than the Legion? The Scythians? The Praetorians? The Alexandrian mercenaries?" Suetonius enquired of the group. "Are any among them German?"
"The Horse Guards are mainly from Germania," Clarus reminded the group. "Caesar holds the Germans high in his estimation for their warrior skills and reliability. As his personal bodyguard they are steadfastly loyal and fierce fighters to boot. But they're also very German." Clarus, being a former Prefect of the Praetorian Guard a decade earlier, knew these things.
"Very German? Meaning?" enquired Julianus.
"They have a fixed mindset. They're stolid, they're not imaginative. One could say they're obsessive. Once they get their teeth into a matter they cling on like hyenas bringing down victims in the arena," Clarus opined.