‘We need to sleep,’ I said to Rado. ‘Do you suppose we’ll be safe here until it’s dark again?’ He nodded slowly. ‘Good,’ I said. ‘Then I’ll take the first watch.’
‘You sleep first,’ Eboric said behind me. ‘Leave everything to us.’ I frowned. ‘Sleep, Alaric,’ he said, now very firm. ‘We’ll wake you if anything happens. We need you rested for when there’s more talking to be done.’
I sat up in the light of a rising moon. ‘I said we’d take turns with the watch,’ I croaked.
Eboric pushed a water canteen into my hand. ‘There was no reason to wake you,’ Rado said. He patted one of the horses and whispered something in its ear.
I got up stiffly and looked about. ‘Where is Theodore?’ I asked.
‘He ran away just before the sun set,’ Eboric answered.
I pursed my lips. ‘If you’ve killed him, I’d like to be told the truth,’ I said.
‘Eboric’s telling the truth,’ Rado broke in. ‘Theodore said he was hurting all over, so we untied him. While I was getting him some water, he pushed Eboric over and ran towards the grove of trees down there. He was singing a very queer song. He turned round once and shouted back that his master was calling him and that we’d all be punished for our crimes against him.’
I walked carefully to the beginning of the steep incline. The moon was past its brightest but I already knew which patch of deeper blackness was the grove. ‘You could have gone after him,’ I said to Rado. ‘It’s not a very big grove.’ He and Eboric looked at each other. I sighed. No point in talking about duty. It was only words they couldn’t read, in a language they barely understood, that made him their brother and me his father. As for me, I’d never felt comfortable with Theodore. We’d never shared real confidences or relied on each other. I’d never thought to fall asleep with him close by. I felt a small stab of pity for the boy. But he’d gone off of his own will. Let that be an end of the matter.
‘Well, he won’t be able to slow us down,’ I admitted when I finally spoke. It was better than that. If the Persians caught him, they might take him back to Chosroes. That would mean some diminution in the search party for us.
I sat down beside Rado. I watched Eboric pull out some food they must have stolen in the pass. I looked up at the sky. Some time while I was asleep, the cloud cover had broken into harmless patches. Bright and unwinking, the stars looked down from the clear darkness between the patches. It would be a while before the wolves came out. Until then, the wind was setting up its familiar moan.
I took a sip of very sweet wine — the sort that’s made for eunuchs. ‘Do you remember how, when you first came to me,’ I began, ‘I said something about instruction in Greek?’ They both nodded. ‘What I then had in mind was enough Greek for boy slaves to make themselves useful. Now that your status is entirely changed, you must learn Greek properly. You must also learn to read and write.’ I reached forward and stroked Eboric’s cheek. ‘None of these things is very hard once you put your mind to it. These modern Greeks are decayed far beyond the level of our own peoples and they can manage a basic literacy when money is there for schooling. You are both young gentlemen now of an exalted status. You mustn’t do anything to let me down in Constantinople.’
Far behind us, on the wide plain, someone blew a trumpet. He was answered by a chorus of other trumpet sounds. ‘Do you think they’re being called back?’ I asked.
‘More like calling everyone together for a conference,’ Rado answered. ‘I’ve heard the Greek armies do this when they’re hunting for slaves. I think they’ll be up here before midnight.’
‘Then we’d better move out,’ I said. It would be no good if we were followed all the way to our interception of Shahin.
It was another sore-backside night. You don’t get speed in the mountains by pushing horses into a gallop. Instead, you keep moving. Rado was taking us round the lower slopes of the mountain I’d seen on my map. I did suggest that going higher would shorten the journey. But that would take us through more of the scrubby wooded areas that both he and Eboric insisted were best avoided by night. Long before morning, they were agreed, we’d come to another of the upland plains. This should let us move quickly forward to a chain of hills and then to the middle point of the Larydia Pass. If they caught sight of us, there was no doubt the Persians would follow us all the way. The point was to keep out of sight while we kept moving. These Persians were the highlanders we’d seen three nights before. They were at least as good as Rado in the mountains. But he was sure we were ahead of them. So long as we weren’t seen, there was a limit to how far they’d move from base. Eventually, they’d have to go back for further orders. I suspected they’d ask these of Shahrbaraz. I also suspected they were too valuable as scouts for even Chosroes to have them boiled in lead.
We reached the plain around the midnight hour. We’d spent what seemed an age pressing forward and mostly upwards, dark and jagged rocks all about us. Then as abruptly as if we were passing from one room to another, it was quickly downhill to another and more immense flatness. It went on seemingly forever. In daylight, it might be only twenty miles across. In the light of an uncertain moon, it could have been the whole world laid out before us.
We quickened our pace along a path that ran reasonably straight to the north-east. We were passing by more little villages and larger settlements. All were in darkness. None seemed, though, to have been drawn into the tide of blood that Chosroes had decreed for the Greek inhabitants along his line of march. Either this side of the mountain was too far away for the tide of blood to have reached, or we’d finally come to a district where the new law was in force. It was probably both. Unlike those we’d passed by earlier, these settlements were all surrounded by earth walls.
Riding behind me, the boys were having another whispered conversation of jokes about nothing I could understand. Suddenly, they stopped moving. It took me a moment to bring my own horse under control. When I turned, they were a dozen yards behind me and listening hard.
Rado slid off his horse and put his ear to the ground. He looked up at me. ‘They’re after us!’ he said. I got off my horse and led it back to where he was still crouching. I looked along the way we’d come. The path shone pale in the moonlight. I could see all the way to the looming blackness of the mountain we’d left far behind. I held my breath and listened. Nothing but the distant howling of wolves carried on the breeze.
Rado shook his head. ‘I can hear them,’ he said.
Eboric nodded. He pointed diagonally from where we’d come. ‘They took the longer path round the mountain,’ he said.
I held my breath again and looked and looked. I looked till spots danced in front of my eyes. Then, just as I was about to turn round and suggest their nerves were overexcited, I saw a very distant glitter. It was the briefest flash of something. I might have put it down to my own nerves or to some trick of the moonlight. But the boys were already taking the horses away from the bright glow of the path.
My heart was beating fast. ‘Do you think they’ve seen us?’ I asked.
‘Hard to say,’ Rado whispered. He looked up at the moon. ‘To be sure, though, we’ll be seen once the dawn is up.’ He jumped back on his horse. ‘We’ll have to risk a canter along the side of the path. If they haven’t seen us yet, they might give up. They are a very long way out from base.’
Chapter 63
Once more the leadership passed openly to Rado. Without him in front, it was plain I’d have trouble controlling my speed. Away from the path much of the ground was low-grade turf. What wasn’t spongy puddles was mostly flat stones or low clumps of bramble, invisible in the moonlight. Even at this speed, in the dark, there was a risk that one of the horses would stumble. I gave up on any appearance of controlling my horse and let it tag along behind Rado and Eboric. To our right, the path snaked forward into a distance without obvious end. Looking left, there was the darkness of woods. But they must have been miles away — miles across unknown ground.