The three came together in a moment; many things happening at once. A strange clarity descended on Maximus, the battle calm that gave him time and made him such a killer. He blocked a downward cut from the left with his buckler. A splinter of wood cut his cheek, nearly took his eye. His left knee struck something hard. A surge of pain. The other man grunting in pain too. A sword cut from the right. Maximus caught it on his blade, rolled his wrist left to right — forced the other’s steel forward — rolled his wrist back, thrust overhand with much of his weight behind it. The point punctured the tunic, and deep enough into the flesh under it. The Alan howled, dropping his own weapon. Blood darkened the nomad embroidery on his flank. He was of no more account.
Left hand gripping a saddle horn, Maximus pulled himself back. Using his momentum, he swung overhead at the back of the man to his left. The Alan twisted, got his own blade in the way. They were still knee to knee, no room for manoeuvre. Their swords were locked together; their horses circling. The nomad had a long Sassanid blade with no hilt. Maximus beat aside a hand clawing at his throat. He forced his sword to scrape down. Edge to edge, the steel rang. His fingers moments from being cut, the Alan jerked away. Maximus dived inside his guard. The sword sliced across the front of his tunic. It was not a clean blow, but enough to double him up in pain. Maximus finished him with a downward chop to the back of the neck.
A respite — no Alani very near. Maximus searched for Ballista. The Angle was but a few horse lengths away. He was trading blows with a nomad. Maximus went to help. Before he arrived, the Alan crashed from his mount. Castricius drew up with two of the auxiliaries. Tarchon was scrambling on to a nomad pony. Hippothous was further off. He was on foot, despatching a wounded man. He was laughing. A third soldier appeared. The final one had vanished. There were only a couple of loose ponies and some dead Alani near by. The living nomads, no more than ten of them left, had ridden through the Roman line and continued on.
‘They are running,’ a soldier said.
‘They are making for the wagons,’ Ballista said. ‘Close on me. We must stop them.’
In a loose line, the seven riders set off after them. Ballista took his party straight to a flat-out gallop. Yet it was obvious they would not catch the Alani before they reached the caravan.
The wagons were still careering towards the watercourse, and thus towards the ten Alani. The five Heruli were now fanning out in front of the double line of wagons.
Ballista’s men thundered on in their futile pursuit.
Arrows ripped through the air between the Heruli and the ten Alan. The strong sunshine glinted on the vicious heads, flared the bright colours of the feathers. An Alani pony shied off to one side. Its rider slowly slid from the saddle. A Herul fell sideways. His horse trotting around in a circle to nuzzle him. He was trying to rise. Another Alan clutched his thigh, and yanked his mount off to the south.
All the remaining Alani were racing off to the south. But as they sped across the face of the caravan, they loosed repeatedly at the leading caravan of the southern column. The oxen were hit. They were pulling up.
‘Calgacus and Wulfstan are in there,’ Maximus shouted.
The following wagons drove past it on either side. The stricken wagon was lost to sight.
‘We must get to them,’ Ballista called.
XVII
Tarchon was riding holding on to the front horns of the saddle. He was holding on for grim death. Raised in the high mountains of the Croucasis, a Suanian warrior but not a nobleman, he made no claims to horsemanship. It was a pity the big Sarmatian horse he had got used to had been shot out from under him. The stray Alani pony he had caught was skittish and snappy.
Ballista and the other five were drawing some lengths ahead. Tarchon wanted to drive his mount on with shoulders and arms like them. Yet he knew if he let go of the saddle horns, at this pace, most likely he would take a fall.
It had been a good little fight back there. Tarchon laughed out loud. The Alani had been lining up Ballista’s back, composite bow at full draw. Tarchon had cleaved the nomad from the shoulder to the saddle. A mighty blow. The blow of a hero. Tarchon had saved Ballista’s life. He had repaid the Angle. But did it count, as no one seemed to have witnessed it? As he posed the question, Tarchon was furious with himself. What was he thinking? This was the sort of chiselling reckoning of some fat Greek merchant. This was unworthy of a Suanian warrior. Honour was not to be measured out like olive oil or salt fish.
Old Calgacus was injured in the abandoned wagon. It was Tarchon’s duty to save him, or die in the attempt. It was very simple. Tarchon let go of the horns, began shaking the reins, pumping his elbows, making strange noises intended to speed the pony. The effects were other than what he had hoped. His ungainly bouncing seemed to be upsetting the animal’s balance. It started to crab. Tarchon felt his seat shifting. Long-suffering Prometheus, he was going to fall off. He abandoned his ill-conceived urgings, and grabbed hold of the saddle again. Better he got there a little slowly than broke his neck without aiding the other man who had saved him from the Alontas river.
They were passing the seven wagons coming the other way. Ballista veered a little, so they skirted the southern line of three wagons. The oxen were bellowing their pain and fury at being harried with the whip into such unaccustomed alacrity. The wagons themselves were screaming; innumerable joints of wood under stress. Sometimes, one of the great heavy things would lurch into the air, one or more of the four wheels off the ground. It was a wonder on landing they did not break apart.
Andonnoballus the Herul was riding alongside the wagons. He called to Ballista. It was lost in the kicked-up dirt and pandemonium. Tarchon could not even tell what language it had been. Ballista shrugged and drove on.
They burst through the dust cloud as if into another world, one marked by the passing of the convoy, but not yet vitiated. The lone wagon stood in the warm sun not far off. The oxen, injured and unharmed alike, were head down and placid.
Tarchon’s heart lurched. There were nomad horsemen already around the wagon. How could they be too late? By all the gods and men, it was not possible. They would all have to die to avenge Calgacus. They and all their families. And poor young Wulfstan; they would suffer for his death.
The nomads turned and started to trot after the other wagons. As they came towards him, Tarchon saw the bright-red hair, the very long heads of the first two riders. It was Ochus and Pharas. The ex-slave Aordus was with them. Each rider had a man up behind him. There was Calgacus. And young Wulfstan. And the Sarmatian driver. Prometheus and Hecate be praised, the Heruli had ridden back and rescued them all.
Ballista slackened the speed to a walk as the two little cavalcades came together.
‘You had better not delay, if you want to save any of your possessions,’ Pharas said as they passed. ‘Be quick. We will see you at the riverbank. We will need every man.’
The Heruli and their passengers trotted on. The arm of one, Ochus, was soaked in blood.
Ballista sat looking about. The caravan was vanishing in the obscurity of its own making in one direction. The main horde of Alani were approaching from the other. Tarchon could begin to make out individual riders among the latter. It meant they could only be a thousand paces away.
‘Castricius,’ Ballista said, ‘take the three troopers, and go after the wagons. Screen their right flank, in case those other few Alani to the south try to interfere or shoot any more oxen.’
The Romans hastened away.