He rode down a narrow track and round the corner of a grove of stone pines, and there immediately before him stood three men. Momentarily they were as surprised as he was. Then they smiled lazily at each other, and moved out across the path.
‘Nice horse,’ drawled one of them, squinting up at him and grinning.
‘She is,’ said Lucius. ‘And where I go, she goes.’
‘By the giant golden balls of Jupiter, is that a fact?’
‘It is.’
‘Well well.’
‘We don’t have no horses,’ said another, coming in close on Lucius’ far side.
Tugha Ban tossed her long grey mane.
‘So I see,’ said Lucius.
All three men were sunburnt and had terrible teeth. The third one drew a dagger slowly from his belt, and ran it through his long, lank hair, grinning at Lucius all the while.
Lucius looked each one of them in the eye in turn. Then he said, ‘I’m in no mood for it. Now out of my way.’
The second bandit stepped back and also drew a dagger from his tunic.
The nearest one gave an obsequious bob of his head where he stood, not moving. ‘Most certainly we will, your eminence. Just as soon as we’ve relieved you of that nice bronze cuirass you’re wearing. And your helmet, and your sword, and your shield, and your dagger. Oh, and your horse, of course, and all the trappings and accoutrements pertaining thereto.’ He grinned toothlessly, drawing a long sword from the scabbard that hung from his back. ‘Then we’ll be out of your way in a-’
He never finished the sentence. Lucius whipped his cavalry spatha from his scabbard in the blink of an eye, jabbed Tugha Ban forward a couple of paces and slashed the blade through the air, saying with weary irritability, ‘Oh, leave me alone. ’
The bright swordblade slashed across the bandit’s throat and he tottered forwards and fell, collapsing across the rump of Lucius’ horse as he rode by. The head lolled almost free from the neck, attached only by a flap of skin, such was the skill of the blow, and blood gouted across Tugha Ban’s grey flanks. Then the corpse slithered off her rump and fell into the dust.
Lucius did not even spur Tugha Ban into a trot. He walked on, leaving the two men staring after him, knowing they would not come.
All that hot afternoon he rode on. He felt nothing, except for the bandit’s blood crusting over and drying in the hairs on his bare right arm. He didn’t even stop to wash, or to clean his sword before resheathing it, or to sponge Tugha Ban’s flanks clean. He cared about nothing any more.
The sky was filled with blood, and none of it was innocent. The grey dusk fell, and still he rode on west. Tugha Ban slowed her pace in puzzlement as they rode on into the night. But, as her rider showed no sign of stopping, she ambled on. The moon rose behind them, and the air grew chill, even in late summer, for they were still in the Appenine mountains. Once, once only, they heard the call of wolves in the high mountain passes to the north. A tremor ran over his mare’s withers, a tremor of primeval and instinctual fear. They rode on.
They emerged from a deep-sunken track onto higher ground, and there in the moonlight stood a man upon a rock. He stood quite silent, haloed only by the pale moonlight, like some figure out of myth. The broken-hearted lieutenant reined in his horse and stopped. Ready for any new horror or revelation that might come out of the darkness of this world or the world beyond.
The horseman and the man upon the rock stared at each other in the moonlight upon that lonely mountain road, and the only sound was the slow, deep breathing of the horse. The man upon the rock was dressed in a long robe of coarse wool, perhaps grey, perhaps brown, for all colours were indistinguishable in the moon’s grey light. The robe was belted at the waist with a rope sash, and a large hood was drawn up round his neck, but his head was bare. His hair was long and unkempt, and his beard straggled down over his chest almost to his waist. He held a long staff topped with a bare wooden cross of the simplest, most spartan design. His eyes glittered in the moonlit night and they never left the eyes of the broken-hearted lieutenant, who returned his gaze with eyes similarly unwavering. The man or hermit or lunatic never stirred an inch. In the gentle night air only the heavy hem of his tattered robe stirred a little and then stilled again. The moon-shadow of this silent messenger with his staff and his cross fell across the mountain road, jagged and broken up by the rough stony ground, but still clearly visible for what it was: a man holding a cross. His feet were as firmly planted as his staff.
It seemed that many minutes passed in the silent night as the two men, two refugees from the world of men, looked deep into each other’s souls and said nothing. Finally the stillness was broken, though not the silence. The ancient man on the rock raised his skinny arm and touched his fingertips first to his heart, then to his lips, and then to his forehead. Then he held his arm outstretched, so that he reached out into the empty space over the soldier’s head, and he carved another invisible cross in the empty air. He let his hand drop, and the soldier and the man or hermit on the rock looked at each other a while longer, with no words spoken. At last the lieutenant turned and looked ahead down the moonwashed road, and dug his heels gently into the flanks of Tugha Ban, and rode on.
That night he felt unspeakably weary, as if another ten or twenty years had been added in one hour to his bones. For the second night running he fell asleep in his bloody clothes, rolled up in his horse-blanket under a creaking holm oak, the stars glimmering through the spearhead leaves, his mouth tasting of dust and betrayal and blood.
He awoke close to dawn with those last stars fading from the sky, and he went down into the valley to the river’s edge to wash. He stripped naked and went into the icy water from the mountains and stood up to his waist, then plunged in over his head, resurfacing gasping and shaking his streaming black locks, scraping his eyes clear of the water and opening his mouth to its purity. He closed his eyes and raised his arms to the clear early-morning sun still orange on the horizon, and in his mind he climbed to the portals of heaven and begged Isis and Mithras and Christos and the imperturbable gods to cleanse the blood away. He kept his eyes tightly closed, as if afraid that when he opened them and gazed back upon the mortal world, he would find only that he stood in a river that was a sluggish rusty brown, for ever polluted with dust and betrayal and blood.
He submerged himself again and again in the icy water, rubbing his hands and face, his arms and his chest until they were red and glowing with the cold.
Then he stepped back to the bank, took hold of Tugha Ban’s reins and led her gently into the icy water. She whinnied as it streamed around her belly, throwing her head up crossly and baring her teeth. But he held her tight and pulled her in deeper, until the pure mountain water coursed right over her back and washed her clean and dapple-grey again. They returned to the bank, and both shook themselves dry as best they could. Lucius dressed again, and saddled Tugha Ban, and mounted. He buckled on his scabbard-belt and shoved his sword round to his right side. Then he sat for a while and considered.
After some time, slow and dreamlike, as if unable to believe his own actions, he slipped down off the horse again. He unbuckled his scabbard-belt and walked back to the river’s edge. He held the belt by one end, whirled it round his head, and threw the whole thing, sword and all, into the deepest water. It sank immediately. He picked up his shield by its rawhide rim and hurled it in after. He did the same with his bronze cuirass and his expensive, crested helmet. Then he turned back and pulled his spear from the ground, and sent it hurtling high into the air. It crested and curved and fell, entering the deep, dark water in virtual silence, and was gone. Left in only his hobnailed sandals, white linen tunic and leather jerkin, the lieutenant mounted Tugha Ban again, wheeled her and rode on down the mountainside.