‘Maximus, Tarchon, come with me.’
At the wagon, Ballista handed his reins to Tarchon and told Maximus to do the same. Tarchon, uneasily sitting his pony and controlling their horses, watched them climb into the back. He was puzzled. This seemed most unlike either of the northerners. Material things never seemed to trouble them.
After a few moments, they reappeared, lugging towards the tailboard the heavy wooden box which contained half the gold for the ransoms and the diplomatic presents. Ballista broke the seals and wrenched the lid open with his dagger. Tarchon watched in something approaching dismay as the two scooped up handfuls of golden coins and, to save time bothering to open their wallets, tipped the specie into their boots. Then, at a word from Ballista, they hefted the box high, swung it, and — one, two, three — threw the whole thing over on to the ground. The wood split. Shining coins tipped out and lay glinting in the trampled grass.
‘Tarchon, are there any of your possessions you particularly want?’ Ballista called.
‘Tarchon is warrior. Possessions mean nothing to him,’ the Suanian replied stiffly.
Annoyingly, the Hibernian laughed as they ducked back under the covering.
Both re-emerged a moment or two later. Each carried his own saddlebag. Ballista had Tarchon’s as well. He threw it across. The Alani pony chose that moment to sidle and try and bite one of the horses. Tarchon nearly slipped off. Somehow he managed to hang on to the saddlebag, and let go neither the others’ reins nor his own dignity.
Ballista and Maximus swung easily into the saddle. As they secured their baggage, they looked at the approaching menace. The heads of the Alani were visible, distinct round balls. It meant they were no more than seven hundred paces distant.
Ballista looked at the gold. ‘The oldest trick in the book. It worked for me once in a riot in the Hippodrome in Antioch. You scatter rich things and hope your attackers are greedy enough to be distracted.’
They wheeled their mounts, and kicked straight on to an in-hand gallop. Getting on for half a mile start over the Alani. They should reach the watercourse just after the wagons, comfortably ahead of the nomads.
Soon they were overhauling the swaying, jouncing wagons. The handful of Alani out to the south had not attempted to intervene, and the main body, if anything, seemed to have fallen back a little.
A deafening, splintering crash, followed hard by high screaming; human as well as bestial. An enormous cloud of dust and debris mushroomed ahead. One of the wagons of the northern four had crashed. The last wagon in the line manoeuvred desperately around it, and did not stop.
From behind came the distant whooping of the Alani. Nothing could encourage them more. The gold might seem less tempting. Now they would drive their mounts all the harder.
‘Come on.’ Ballista booted his animal towards the wreck.
The north wind was blowing away the murk. A tangle of wood and felt and leather traces, of scattered possessions, of fallen oxen and twisted men was revealed. It had been the conveyance of the Roman staff: Porsenna the haruspex, the herald, the two scribes and the two messengers. One of the lead oxen appeared to have caught its leg in the hole of one of the big mouse-like things. It must have brought the rest of the team down and the wagon had ploughed into them. An upturned wheel still rotated.
‘Maximus, take the driver on your horse, unless he is badly hurt,’ Ballista said. ‘Tarchon, take any one of the staff; not an injured man though.’
Tarchon dismounted carefully. He was not going to let the pony loose and be stranded here himself. The Alani were coming. He had seen what they did to the centurion.
Several crumpled bodies were scattered in or near the wreckage.
‘Ballista, the Sarmatian is dead — broken neck,’ Maximus called.
‘Take someone else.’
A survivor tottered up to Tarchon. ‘Help, I am hurt; my leg.’ It was one of the scribes. There was a terrible gash in his right thigh.
Tarchon roughly pushed him aside. The wounded man fell. He whimpered with pain.
‘You.’ Tarchon led the pony to a man standing overwhelmed by the calamity. ‘Are you injured?’
‘No, I do not think so.’ It was Porsenna, his voice flat and dull. With difficulty, Tarchon helped the diviner up behind the saddle. The wretched pony tried to bite him. He hit it hard on the nose. It laid its ears flat back and began to circle.
‘Come on,’ Ballista called. The big northerner and Maximus were already back in the saddle, a passenger behind each.
With the encumbrance of the haruspex, and the pony turning, Tarchon could not remount.
The light-coloured dots of the faces of the Alani, the draco and some other banners snapping above their heads, the colours of their tunics, all could be seen clearly. Not more than five hundred paces at most.
Tarchon made another jump. The pony side-stepped away. He slid down its side.
The Alani were whooping. The rattle of their horses was loud.
Tarchon went to make another attempt. The pony skittered sideways.
Ballista rode up. Without ado, he grabbed the haruspex by the scruff of his tunic and hauled him off the pony. There was a yell of pained outrage as he hit the ground.
Ballista took the pony by the bridle, wedged his own horse against it so it could not sidle away. ‘Get up, quick.’
The horrible whisp-whisp-whisp of the first incoming arrows. By Prometheus, they were less than two hundred paces away.
Tarchon struggled, ungainly and urgent, into the saddle.
‘You cannot leave me.’ The hands of the haruspex clasped Ballista’s boot.
A shaft sliced through the air past Tarchon’s ear. Hurriedly, he gathered the reins.
‘I am sorry,’ Ballista said.
‘You faithless barbarian,’ Porsenna spat. He was clinging to Ballista’s leg, as if trying to unhorse him.
Ballista leant down and took him by the throat, breaking Porsenna’s grip. Ballista pushed him back, then kicked him in the face. The haruspex fell.
‘He is a fighting man, you are not,’ Ballista said. ‘I am sorry.’
‘Sacrilegious barbarian filth!’ The voice was high-pitched with pain and hatred and fear. ‘Curse you! May all the gods of the underworld…’
The venomous Latin was drowned by the sound of their horses, by the sound of the Alani.
They pushed their mounts as fast as they could. With two up on Ballista and Maximus’s mounts and Tarchon no great horseman, and with three or four hundred paces to the riverbank, things did not look good.
Unwittingly, the haruspex and the remaining staff bought them the necessary time. The Alani seemingly had not stopped for the gold and the first abandoned wagon. But the second was too tempting. It had people to be taken prisoner or killed. The pause was brief, but enough.
Tarchon held tight to the horns on the saddle. He let his pony have its head. Obeying the instinct of its kind, it raced after and alongside the other horses. As they neared the riverbank, they had to swerve aside to avoid the herd of oxen released from their traces and driven out of the forming wagon-laager. It was good thinking on someone’s part. The stampede was impressive, frightening even, out on the wide Steppe. In the confines of a small, enclosed camp, it would have been devastating.
They clattered into the semicircle, and the last two wagons were drawn together behind them.
Tarchon was grateful to slide from the back of the ill-natured, wilful pony. He stood by its head, blowing nearly as hard as the animal. He smiled happily. In Tarchon’s Suanian terms of understanding, Ballista had proved himself a Sceptre-bearer worth following. The trick with the gold had not worked, but it was cunning; worthy of the great ancestor Prometheus himself. And the northerner’s good sense when it came to warriors and those who dare not lift a weapon was exemplary. He had shown a fine lack of care for the latter. Ballista was a fine sceptouchos to follow, Tarchon thought. The pony swung its neck and sank its big, yellow teeth into his arm.