At that moment Castus’s horse jinked and pulled at the reins, distracting him. As he glanced back up he saw movement away to his left, figures edging between the trees around the upper slope of the clearing. They were huntsmen, stubble-bearded and dressed in sheepskin mantles, but one of them had a crossbow raised and aimed directly at Constantine. Nobody else was looking; all eyes were on the emperor and the boar. Castus blinked, a cry caught in his throat, and then the man loosed his bolt.
It darted straight and true across the clearing, but at that instant Constantine lunged forward and planted the heavy point of his spear deep into the shoulder of the charging boar, the beast driving up onto the blade until its flesh met the twin lugs at the top of the spearshaft. The crossbow bolt flicked past, just behind the emperor’s head, and buried itself in the flank of Priscus’s horse.
Castus hauled the reins and kicked at his own horse, and the animal’s bound almost threw him out of the saddle. Up in the trees he could see the bowman struggling to reload. He swept the sword from his scabbard, crying out a warning to those behind him. Only a few onlookers had seen what had happened; the rest were still intent on the emperor as he forced the dying boar down at his feet.
Ice sprayed up as Castus urged his horse on through the bushes at the gallop. Frozen branches crackled and whipped, and plumes of snow cascaded from the trees. The second huntsman glanced back at him, then canted his arm with a javelin in his hand.
Stooping low, his thighs tight to the saddle leather, Castus saw the arc of the weapon as the man threw. He waited a heartbeat, then tugged the reins. The big horse jolted to one side, and the flung javelin darted past. Castus looked up and saw the huntsman reaching for his second javelin. Too late; the man’s face emptied in fear, but in two long strides the horse had closed with him. Castus levelled his spatha downwards like a lance, and the tip of the blade drove into the man’s chest. He dropped his arm with the weight of the body, then dragged the sword free and galloped on.
Trees all around him now. The man with the crossbow had his weapon loaded and raised. He loosed, and Castus had only a moment to crouch over the horse’s neck before he felt the bolt cutting the air above his head.
The bowman threw his weapon aside and turned to run, making for a long snow-covered bank rising from the clearing.
‘Grab him!’ somebody shouted. ‘Get him alive!’ The men in the clearing had seen what was happening now. Another horse came crashing between the bushes on the far side of the slope: Brinno, sword in hand, galloping to cut off the huntsman’s escape.
Castus shook his head as shards of ice flickered against his face. The fleeing man was just ahead of him, his sheepskin cape swinging behind him as he ran. More shouts from either side, other figures closing in, but Castus was closest and gaining fast on the fugitive.
The running man reached the snow and hurled himself up the slope, but the heavy horse came ploughing through the frozen undergrowth behind him. Castus dropped his sword and dragged back hard on the reins; leaning from the saddle, he seized the fugitive’s trailing cape with one outstretched arm. The man screamed as Castus dragged him off his feet. Then blood sprayed up against the horse’s flank.
A black bolt jutted from the side of the man’s neck. His body fell limp, almost dragging Castus from the saddle. Castus released his grip on the cape and the man dropped. When he looked up, he saw one of the hunting party, a fleshy bald-headed man in a blue tunic and brown mantle, quickly handing the crossbow back to the huntsman beside him.
‘I had him!’ Castus yelled, breathing hard. ‘I had him – alive!’
‘He threatened our emperor, and I… acted on instinct,’ the man in blue said. His voice was unbroken – a eunuch.
Castus twisted the reins and backed the horse away. Behind him in the clearing the last saga of the hunt was being played out, the boar blowing bloody spume as it died, the victorious emperor raising his killing spear to the applause of his retinue.
Observed by only a few, the corpse of the fallen man lay twisted beneath the sheepskin cape. The snow around the body was spattered pink, then reddened and soaked into black as the blood welled from the body.
9
Night had fallen by the time the hunting party returned to Treveris. Nothing had been said about the attempt to murder the emperor – the matter was best forgotten, it seemed. An unfortunate accident, and at worst the act of a madman. But Castus could not forget the look on the man’s face as he threw aside the crossbow and turned to run; neither could he forget the speed with which the eunuch in the blue tunic had shot the fugitive down. If the man’s bolt had not struck the horse, nobody but Castus himself would have seen it. If it had struck the emperor, or even passed close enough to distract him, the boar would have knocked him down with ease. And if the emperor fell, who would step into his place? Even to think like that ran ice through Castus’s veins.
Tired after their labours, the emperor and his guests soon departed to their beds, but Castus and Brinno were on sentry duty that night and it was nearly midnight by the time they returned to their quarters in the precinct of the Protectores. Castus was climbing the steps to his room when he heard the slave in the atrium below asking for him.
‘You want me in particular?’ he called over the balcony.
‘Aurelius Castus and Flavius Brinno,’ the slave replied.
‘What’s it about?’
‘I cannot say, dominus. I was just ordered to find you and bring you…’
The night was achingly cold, and both men wrapped themselves in their cloaks again before following the slave. Outside, across courtyards empty in stark moonlight, they were led down darkened passages, deeper into the labyrinths of the palace.
In a side chamber of the hall of notaries, gloomy and thick with the smoke of oil lamps, the slave left them. There were two men waiting there. The first, lounging on the corner couch with a smirk on his face, Castus did not recognise. The second, perched stiffly on a folding stool, was a thin man with reddened eyes and a clump of ugly bowl-cut hair, dressed all in grey. Castus did not try to hide his disdain.
‘Forgive us for summoning you at this unusual hour,’ the thin man said. His voice was sharp and bitter as a knife blade. ‘Some business is best conducted while others sleep. I am Julius Nigrinus, Tribune of Notaries, and my associate Flaccianus here is an officer of the agentes in rebus. I believe I know one of you already.’
‘We’ve met,’ Castus said. His jaw cracked as he yawned.
‘I shan’t keep you long. Earlier today, as you know, an attempt was made on the life of our beloved Augustus Constantine.’ Nigrinus paused, and Castus noticed him wetting his lips with his tongue. ‘I have been ordered to conduct an inquiry into the matter, and discover who was responsible for this treasonous act.’
‘The men who tried it are already dead,’ Brinno said, his Germanic accent giving the words a harsh clip.
‘Indeed. Your comrade here saw to one of them, and as for the other… Very convenient, would you not say, that both died before they could be questioned? Convenient for those who paid them, and planned this outrage…’
‘I killed the first man because he was trying to kill me,’ Castus said. ‘I had the second one – if that eunuch hadn’t shot him he’d be alive now.’ He was trying to guard his anger, but the memory of all that this notary had done in Britain four years before felt fresh in his mind. The men who had died for his schemes.