Qadir looked out at the mountains to either side for a moment before speaking again, his face creased in a gentle smile.
‘At least this far from Britannia there’s little danger of anyone having even heard the name Marcus Valerius Aquila. We may not be happy at having been sent east, but at least you’ll be able to stop worrying about any further attempt to apprehend you, eh Centurion Corvus?’
Marcus nodded, his face softening at the thought.
‘It had crossed my mind. Although I’m also forced to conclude that I’m exchanging the chance to be free from pursuit for the likelihood that I’m taking my wife and child into a war. I don’t think we’ve been sent all this way east just to make the numbers up.’ Hearing the heavy thud of hoofs on the road’s grass verge he turned to see a handful of horsemen cantering up the long column of soldiers. ‘And as if to prove me right, it seems that our mounted squadron is about to be allowed off their rope.’
The leading rider reined his horse in alongside the pair, grinning down at them with undisguised glee from beneath his crested decurion’s helmet, whose polished face mask was raised to allow him a full field of view.
‘Greetings brothers! The time has come for the “First Tungrian Horse” to prove its value once more. After weeks of nothing better than plodding along coughing up the dust raised by your flat feet, we are ordered to scout forward up the road as far as the turn for the mine. The tribune suspects that this country may harbour any number of barbarian scouts, and so bids me ride out to give them the opportunity for some practice with their bows. Since I have permission to seek your participation in this perilous mission, purely in order to improve the odds of my survival by providing the enemy with a wider variety of suitable targets, I’ve taken the liberty of saddling your usual mounts for the trip. Will you give both your feet and noses a rest by accompanying us on our ride?’
Marcus looked at Qadir, the Hamian’s response a shrug of feigned disinterest. Looking up at the grinning decurion, the Roman raised an eyebrow.
‘It’s tempting, Silus, although it appears that you’ve saddled that monster Bonehead for me once again, despite your repeated accusations that the poor animal lacks the appropriate discipline for a cavalry horse. And is that the tribune’s man Arminius I can see towards the back of your scouting party, clinging to his horse’s mane as if it were a handle made of iron?’
The big German, mounted on a heavily built animal judged to be the only beast in the cohort’s cavalry detachment capable of carrying his weight without breaking down, scowled at Marcus from the party’s rear.
‘I can hear you, Centurion, and whilst nothing would make me happier than getting down from this animal now and never remounting a horse in all my remaining years, you know the blood debt I owe you. When my master gives these men leave to take you into harm’s way, I have no choice but to accompany them alongside you.’
Silus grimaced, leaning down from his saddle to speak in Marcus’s ear.
‘Between you and I, even that big bugger Colossus is starting to look a bit resentful at having to carry all that weight around. It’s a good thing your man Lugos doesn’t have a hankering to follow you into the shit quite so eagerly, or we’d no horses left standing inside a week. So, will you join us, or are you minded to give your German an excuse to dismount?’
Marcus shrugged up at Silus, holding out a hand.
‘Very well, Decurion, since I have no option but to respect Arminius’s example, I presume you stopped at the medical wagon to pester my wife for my helmet?’
The horseman grinned even wider, raising his left hand from behind his mount’s side to display the masked cavalry helmet Marcus had purchased in Tungrorum for the purposes of deceiving the followers of the bandit leader Obduro, much to Felicia’s disgust when she had discovered the price he’d paid for its fine workmanship. The Roman took off his centurion’s helmet and passed it to Qadir with a wink.
‘Can you think of a soldier who might be sufficiently careful to be entrusted with this? I’ll take his shield and one of his spears in return.’
The Hamian nodded, dropping back a few ranks and handing the crested helmet to the soldier Scarface, taking one of his spears and helping him to pull the shield from its place strapped to his back.
‘There you go, soldier, you’re trusted with the centurion’s helmet until he comes back from scouting with the cavalry.’
Scarface took the additional burden with a solemn nod, ignoring the guffaws of the men around him, and watched as Marcus and Qadir mounted the horses Silus had saddled for them and rode away up the road’s gentle slope.
‘Perhaps carrying that lump of iron for the next few hours will teach you to wind your bloody neck in. .’ Sanga fell silent when he realised that his comrade wasn’t listening to a word he was saying, but staring down at the helmet with an expression of pride. ‘And then again perhaps not. .’
The horsemen rode forward for a mile or so on the road’s hard surface, their horses’ hoofs clattering loudly in the silence that hung over the wooded hills to either side. Silus looked back down the road to be sure they were sufficiently well ahead of the marching column of infantrymen, and then waved a hand at the wooded slopes.
‘Time to get off the road and make a bit less noise, gentlemen, we’re sticking out like tits on a bull as it is. Keep your eyes and ears open for anything out of the ordinary.’
The horsemen separated into two parties, each half a dozen strong, and rode their horses onto the strips of cleared ground on either side of the road before reining them in to a walk so that their hoofs would be almost silent in the long grass. Qadir steered his beast alongside Marcus’s big grey, the graceful chestnut mare’s finely drawn lines a stark contrast to the warhorse, while Arminius’s mount fell in behind them at the German’s urging. The three men talked quietly as the patrol ghosted forward up the road’s margins, until Arminius suddenly frowned and wrinkled his nose.
‘Do you smell that?’
Marcus inhaled deeply, discerning the very slightest edge of a familiar aroma on the air.
‘Woodsmoke. And burning fat.’
Qadir nodded, waving a hand to Silus and putting a finger to his nose as Marcus bent to pull his shield from the grey’s flank. As the decurion nodded his understanding an arrow flicked out of the trees fifty paces to their front, snapping past the Roman’s head with a whistle of flight feathers. Flicking down the helmet’s polished face mask he spurred the grey into action, dropping his spear from the vertical carrying position to point forward, knowing that the sight of its long blade would be enough to spark the big horse’s customary berserk charge. A second arrow flew from the trees, its flight a blur of motion that ended with a clang as the missile’s iron head glanced from his facemask’s many-layered protection. The impact’s force knocked his head to one side, momentarily blurring his vision. Raising the shield across his body the Roman rose in the saddle by tensing his thigh muscles against the grey’s flanks, hefting the spear in readiness to throw. The hidden bowman loosed another shot, aiming for horse rather than rider this time, and Marcus felt the beast shudder with the blow, but the animal’s pace was unaffected as it thundered towards the archer’s hiding place. Rising to run rather than stand his ground for a final shot, the enemy scout presented Marcus with a fleeting target as the grey hammered past the spot from which the tribesman had watched the horsemen approach, but his hurled spear flew past the fleeing archer with a venomous power born of his anger at his horse’s wound and missed by an arm’s length.
Pulling the grey up he raised a leg over the saddle’s horns to slide from the horse’s back, landing on his feet and drawing hislong sword as he strode furiously into the trees behind his raised shield, acutely aware that the layered board’s protection was largely illusory against a bow at such short range. In front of him the scout was still dodging through the trees, but seeming to stagger slightly as he ran, one side of his body sagging as if he were a puppet with a string missing. He abruptly stopped running, staggering to a halt and standing still for a moment, swaying on his feet, one hand clenching and unclenching around the shaft of an arrow that dangled unnoticed at his side. Marcus stepped in close, his eyes narrowed in anticipation of a further ambush, raising the long bladed spatha to make the easy kill even as he wondered at such suicidal behaviour. The enemy scout turned, his feet dragging through the fallen pine needles like a sleepwalker’s, and the look on his face stayed the Roman’s hand as he stared with horrified fascination. Momentarily considering the masked centurion before him with empty, glassy eyes, his mouth hanging open to release a thin stream of bloody spittle, the barbarian slowly raised the arrow he was holding until it was in front of his face and emitted a high pitched moan of distress. Marcus watched in wonder as he realised that his intended victim’s legs were shaking hard enough to make his whole body shudder uncontrollably. With a long groaning exhalation of his fear and despair, the archer toppled backward onto the forest’s needle-strewn floor and lay twitching, soiling his breeches as he shook spasmodically.