There was no such track to be seen here, no matter where I looked, and so great was my disbelief that I began to ride hither and yonder, searching for it as though it was something I might have mislaid through sheer carelessness. I had good reason to be concerned, for the absence of a track meant, beyond dispute, that Lorco’s cavalry had not come this way. They had taken another route, which meant that I was now lost and alone in an unknown and hostile land. I reined in my horse and sat staring up at the cloudless sky while the terror from the day before, reborn at full strength and ravening for release, built up inside me until I found myself incapable of moving. Fortunately, I recognized the peril in that thought even as it occurred to me, and I rebelled against it, hearing a new, angry voice rising inside me and insisting that although I had played the coward by moving too fast the previous day, I would not do the same this day by sitting still.
I jerked my head around hard, breaking my paralysis, and looked to my right, northward, to where the missing troopers now had to be, and forced myself to think about what could possibly have gone wrong with them. Duke Lorco, I was convinced, would not have changed direction before we caught up to him, not with his son and me riding with the hunting party. So if they had not changed direction, then they could not have passed this way yet, which plainly meant that something must have detained them. But what? And then the answer came to me, and relief swelled up in me like an enormous bubble.
They would have waited for us to catch up to them in camp the previous evening, and when we did not arrive, they would have assumed the hunting had been poor and we had remained in the field to try again at dusk. After that they would have continued to wait until long after dark before deciding we had opted for another dawn hunt. But Duke Lorco, I estimated, would not have been comfortable with his son’s prolonged absence, so he might well have sent couriers to ride back early in the morning—I was convinced, in fact, that he would have done precisely that—to find the hapless and incompetent Harga and to chivvy him into making better time. And then, that done, the Duke would have waited where he was, doubtless fuming, but impotent to change anything before his lost hunting party caught up. He would not have traveled farther without first seeing his son safely back in camp.
Feeling as though someone had lifted the weight of my two horses off my shoulders, I swung them around and set out to the north at a canter, following the river again until it entered the tree line, after which I stayed as close to the riverbank as I could. I had to pick my way in places between the densest clumps of undergrowth, so that the progress I made was less swift than I would have wished. However, now that I had a purpose and a direction I could follow with confidence, I made better speed than I might have otherwise.
As I rode, weaving my way between the trees and through the undergrowth, my mind was racing ahead of me, following the logic of my suppositions about Duke Lorco’s behavior. If he had in fact sent out couriers and waited for them to return, then it was likely that by the time I caught up with him he would already have learned of his son’s death and of my disappearance. The prospect of not having to be the one to tell him of his son’s death was an attractive one, but I could not imagine any meeting between the two of us that would not entail my having to tell him, somehow, of what had happened to Lorco, how he had died, and how I had run away, leaving everyone else behind me to be slaughtered. Thus my guilt revived and grew stronger as I rode, and my misery and self-loathing, forgotten for a brief time, returned to drape themselves over my shoulders.
That is how I was feeling when I rounded the bole of an enormous oak tree and found myself face-to-face with a trio of men on foot, no more than twenty paces ahead of me. The sight of them made my breath catch in my throat, but I have no doubt their surprise was as great as mine, because it was evident in the startled way they leaped backward, groping for their weapons. For a moment my heart bounded in joy, my first thought being that they were scouts and I had found Duke Lorco and his men, but it took no more than a glance to show me that these were not Roman soldiers, far less cavalry. They were all dressed differently, but in a predominant color of red. Two of them were armored in what looked like legionary plate armor, while the third wore a tunic of bronze-colored ring mail and had dull silver greaves strapped to his legs. This one, the smallest of the three, had been walking with an arrow nocked to his bow string, and as he sprang backward at the sight of me, he nevertheless sighted hastily and loosed his arrow. It hit me hard and high on the left breast and was deflected by my cuirass, but it caught me off balance, and the force of its impact sent me reeling backward, toppling me over my horse’s rump to land sprawling on my knees and hands.
Fortunately for me, for I was still wearing my heavy helmet, I landed without either breaking my neck or knocking the wind out of myself. My helmet was jarred forward over my eyes in the fall, cutting off my vision, but I managed to push it up and back in time to see, between my horse’s legs, the strangers starting toward me, separating widely to come at me from different directions. The bowman with the silver greaves remained in front, weaving slightly as he tried to find an angle from which to shoot me, but the other two were moving quickly now, circling to each side of me.
I had no time even to think of being afraid, although I knew beyond a doubt that if I tried to run away this time I would be dead within moments. Their encircling move, however, forcing me to fight in two directions, was one with which I was more than familiar—I had had the moves and countermoves of that attack and defense drummed into me since I was old enough to swing a practice sword. I looked down at the ground beneath my feet and saw that it was sloping downward to my right, and then I took two long paces backward, distancing myself from the two horses ahead of me yet keeping their bulk between me and the bowman in the ring-mail shirt.
Both of the men moving to attack me from right and left carried swords, the one a broad, heavy-bladed thing that looked as though it might be a one-edged blade, the other a long, slender, spathalike weapon that look well cared for and well used. The man approaching on my left had the heavier, ugly weapon and he was farther away from me than his companion was. He was also slightly above me, beginning to move down toward me. The fellow on my right was below me and closer, just starting to crouch and raise his sword as he came at me in a sidling shuffle. I took three running steps toward him, which he had not expected. He hesitated, wavering, and I almost beheaded him with my first slash. He barely managed to get his sword up quickly enough to save himself and my blade smashed his aside, by which time I was beside him, pivoting with my whole body and dropping into a crouch as I aimed a hacking slash at the unprotected back of his knees. It was a blow I had been taught by Tiberias Cato himself, years earlier, and when successfully delivered it was crippling. He screamed as my blade severed his hamstrings, and he dropped immediately, first to his knees and then forward onto his face, but I knew he was finished as a fighter and did not wait for him to fall.
I spun on one foot and sprang up and back to face the other attacker from my left, but he had seen how I handled his friend and he was more cautious, crouching defensively and waiting for me to come to him. I knew I could beat him—there was no trace of a doubt in my mind about that—but by that time my flesh was crawling in anticipation, waiting for the impact of the arrow I knew must be coming for me at any moment because I was out in the open now, clear of the horses and vulnerable to the bowman, who had all the time he needed to sight on me. Nothing came, and finally I risked looking over to see what he was doing. It was the quickest of glances, no more than a flick of the head, but it showed me what I least expected to see, and I could not resist looking again, even although I knew the risk I was taking by looking away from the sword-wielder on my left.