I did not lose consciousness, but every bit of wind was driven from my body as I hit the ground. I was incapable of moving for some time, my chest and throat a mass of agony. There was noise everywhere, all around me, and then I felt hands pulling at me, raising me up, and I gasped for breath. Donuil hauled me to my feet, his fingers hooked inside the armholes of my cuirass, and I saw his eyes peering, wide and anxious, into my own. He shouted at me, asking if I could move, and I nodded and pushed him weakly away, but he hung on to me and half dragged me to where my horse stood, snorting and rolling his eyes, held firmly by one of our young troopers. Donuil cupped his hands and hoisted me back up into my saddle. As I hung there, still fighting for breath, I saw Tressa and Shelagh, both mounted, sitting their horses tensely, staring at me and obviously waiting to move again. I looked down at Donuil, who was pulling himself back into his own saddle.
"Where's Ded?" I thought this was a shout, but it emerged as no more than a pain filled, choking wheeze.
"He's dead, Cay, " Donuil shouted back. "They're all dead, all of them who rode into the rope. Now move, or we'll be joining them!"
He pulled his horse in, close to my right side, while Benedict flanked me equally closely on the left, and we began to move again, gathering speed quickly until we were riding at full gallop. As we went, my breathing became easier, and soon I nodded and shouted to my two escorts, letting them know that I could now control myself and my big horse. They nodded and edged away from me, and after a short ; time I was able to look around me again. Our party had shrunk by half, perhaps more.
Donuil knew what I was thinking. He leaned closer to me and shouted again, his voice interrupted by the wind roaring through the ear flaps of my helmet:"... don't know who those people... too many of them to light... lucky to break through them... lucky to stay ahead of them. Most of them were afoot, but... horses ... don't know how many... won't be far behind us, though, if they're coming at all... best keep moving... outrun them."
Some time after that, the ground began to rise more and more steeply beneath us and our horses started to flag. Germanicus was foaming at the mouth, and I knew he was close to foundering. Then we came to a spot where the steep pathway levelled out for a stretch, and on an impulse I drew rein, calling to the others to halt, and turned to look back the way we had come. This spot would be defensible, I thought, for the crest of the rise was almost a straight edge and beneath it was a fringe of low, thick bushes. Anyone coming up towards us would be totally exposed, while we might remain concealed.
I jumped down immediately and untied the bindings that held Publius Varrus's great bow in place beneath the flaps of my saddle, calling to one of the troopers to unlash the quiver from the other side and bring it to me. As he did so, I fumbled in my scrip for a bowstring and made the weapon ready, shouting to Donuil to organize the others and change the saddles from the horses we had been riding to the spare animals. Somehow, we had come through that running fight with almost all our spare mounts. They had been roped together in four groups, and we still had three of those with us. As that work progressed, I stood on guard, an arrow nocked and ready to draw at the first sign of movement on the slope beneath. Behind me, Tress finished transferring her saddle to her spare mount, then set about tending to Germanicus, but Donuil relieved her of that task and finished it.
For half an hour I stood there on guard, while my people and their horses caught their breath and regained their strength. Towards the end of it I started looking at the skies again, where the heavy, sullen, strangely coloured clouds were still boiling. Someone behind me cursed, briefly and viciously, but when I spun to ask what was wrong he merely held out his hand, palm upwards. It was starting to rain again.
Below me, on the flank of the hill, I heard a dull, scrabbling sound and a muffled curse. I jerked my arm up, warning the others, and then scanned the trees below. As I did so, four running men emerged, one of them limping, running like a crab and scrubbing at the fresh mud that caked his right knee. They were all peering upwards towards where I stood, but there was no focus to their attention, and I realized they had not seen me. I was still concealed from them by the brow of the slope and the low screen of bushes just below it, and from the way they ran, dogged and silent but showing no sign of caution, it was evident that they did not expect to find us there so close. Five more men followed them, and now I could hear the sounds of others farther back among the trees.
I had twenty three arrows in my quiver and one nocked to my bowstring. I pulled and loosed almost without aiming, bringing the leading man down in midstride, the force of the arrow knocking him over backwards. I immediately loosed another missile, then a third, and two more men went down. A chorus of howls and shouts broke out momentarily, and then all sound and movement ceased, except for the writhings of the third man I had shot. I ignored him, putting aside the temptation to waste another arrow, and scanned the greenery below. The fourth man had thrown himself down behind a hummock of grass, and I could see one of his legs projecting into the open. '
It was raining heavily again, and the noise of the rain! hammering on leaves drowned all other sounds from below. Behind me, however, I could hear the sounds of my people ! mounting and preparing to leave. I was taking careful aim; at the exposed leg when Donuil appeared at the edge of my vision. I turned my head slightly to look at him and as I did! so, all the world exploded in a blinding flash of blue-white light and sizzling heat that sent both of us reeling backwards, away from the lip of the crest. As quickly as it had! come, the light vanished, and I was blind, blinking my eyes uselessly in panic with the stink of something alien in my nostrils. I heard people and horses screaming in the blackness all around me, and then my vision started to come back to me, imperfectly, marred by glaring spots of brightness that shut much from my sight. Staggering with nausea, I ran back to the edge of the path and looked down again, still blinking wildly, and saw movement beneath me on the slope. Nothing at which I looked directly was visible to me, but I could see men rushing on both sides, as though around a hole in my sight. My mind told me that a lightning bolt had struck beside us, and it told me in the same flash that the men below, further away from it, had not been affected! as I had, and that they were now swarming up the hillside.
I nocked another arrow, made out a target on my left, then swung towards the running shape and fired, but as soon as I did so, I lost sight of both target and arrow and had no idea
of whether I had hit or not. Undeterred, and feeling a snake of fear biting at my entrails, I repeated the manoeuvre, this time spinning to my right and loosing at a half seen shape; this one went down, spinning to fall among long grass. More than half blind I might be, but the attackers had no way of knowing that, and once again they dropped to the ground. Still, I saw movement among the growth, far on my right, too far away and too indistinct to offer a target. I knew what the movement represented, though: people moving uphill to outflank us. I shot two more arrows into the area directly ahead of me, pulling the bowstring back to my ear each time. The blind spot before my eyes was diminishing.
It was then I saw a most amazing, overwhelming thing. The very surface of the trees below me seemed to bend and flex, as though pressed flat by some enormous, unseen hand. Everything in my sight faded almost instantly to an impenetrable greyness and was lost in a swelling roar of deafening sound. I barely had time to marvel, for almost instantly that alien force came beating down on me. It was a hailstorm, massive and elemental, and the sheer fury of the onslaught hammered me to my hands and knees. The noise against my metal helmet was appalling and the weight of hailstones beating at me was insupportable. I allowed myself to fall face down, abandoning my weapons and rolling my body up into a ball. Every exposed portion of my skin was a mass of sharp, stinging pains and I wondered if I might die there, battered to death by ancient forest gods. But then the force of the storm abated slightly, and I opened my eyes.