And then the snow parted and he saw it. About twenty feet ahead a man was lying on his front behind a rock, facing up the slope, a bow of Scythian shape held in front of him with an arrow strung, ready to pull back. He was wearing a sheepskin coat, but the hood was down and his long black hair lay in braids on his back. Fabius recognized him from the foresters’ camp three days before, a burly mountain man who claimed to be from Pamphylia in Asia Minor, whom Fabius had taken to be a simpleton. The man had offered to guide them towards the best boar-hunting grounds but one of the foresters had taken Fabius aside and warned him to stay well clear; the man had only arrived a few days before and had no knowledge of the forest, but had known plenty about Scipio and had been asking about his hunting success even before he and Fabius had arrived in the camp. Fabius had put it from his mind, but now he remembered how discomfited the foresters had been, as if they were afraid of him. The man had even played with Rufius and thrown him a stick, feeding him choice morsels of meat until Fabius had stopped him. Now he knew how the man had coaxed Rufius to within killing range. He had been planning this for days. Fabius felt his body surge with rage, a barely controllable desire to kill.
He crept closer. A crow behind him squawked, and the man shifted. Fabius froze, holding his breath. Then the man pulled up his hood and resumed his position. Fabius leaned forward, head down, just as Rufius would have done, his whole being focused on his prey. Then he sprinted forward, leaping with his dagger poised just as the man realized something was wrong, landing heavily on the man’s back and smashing his face into the rock. The man howled in pain, blood gushing from his mouth. Fabius ripped back the hood and grabbed his braids, pulling his head back as far as it would go and holding the dagger against the man’s throat. He brought his face near the man’s ear, close enough to smell the sweat and the oil in his hair. ‘We meet again, Pamphylian,’ he snarled in Greek, yanking the man’s hair back and seeing the shock in his eyes. ‘If you want this to be quick, you will tell me who sent you.’
The man coughed and spat out teeth, his nose streaming blood, then curled his lips and wrenched his head against Fabius’ hold, drawing blood as the dagger sliced into the skin of his neck. He struggled again and then went still as Fabius pulled his head back close to the breaking point. ‘Go to Hades,’ he muttered, his mouth clenched in pain.
Fabius whipped the dagger out from beneath the man’s neck and slammed his face into the mud below the rock. He brought the dagger down into the man’s outstretched hand, driving it hard and twisting it round so that the bones and sinews cracked and snapped. He felt the man convulse with pain and heave upwards as he tried to breathe in the mud. He pulled out the dagger and thrust it back under the man’s neck, pulling his face out of the mud and holding it back again. The man coughed and retched, spewing out blood and mud and saliva, his eyes caked over and his nose broken and contorted.
Fabius came close to his ear again. ‘Tell me what I want to hear, and I may decide to spare you long enough for Scipio to question you. Then he can decide your fate. He may be generous.’
The man spat, and said something. Scipio leaned down, listening. ‘Say it again,’ he snarled. The man did so, and Scipio heard the name. So that was it. He kept the knife at the man’s neck, and then looked at the mangled hand, noticing the distinctive red graze on the inside of the man’s wrist, the mark of an archer using a bow without a leather wrist guard. He remembered how he had got that mark: the tufts of black and white fur on the trail behind, the crows. He let go of the man’s head, lifted him up under his midriff until he was half-kneeling and brought the point of the dagger to just below his sternum. The man stiffened, terrified. ‘What are you doing?’ he mumbled, his face dripping blood. ‘You said that you would spare me.’
‘I only said maybe. And then I remembered my dog.’
In one swift move he thrust the dagger in up to the hilt, ripping through the man’s heart and lungs, twisting for maximum effect. He pulled it out and then grasped his head and twisted it sideways, breaking his neck. He saw the man’s eyes glaze over, and his last breath crystallize in the cold air. He got up, wiped the dagger on a grassy knoll and sheathed it, and then took out his horn and blew three short blasts. The snow was coming down harder now, already lying like a ghostly sheen on the man’s body and beginning to obscure the hoofprints on the trail ahead. He started to run towards the edge of the forest where he had last seen Scipio and Polybius. They would need to get down off the mountainside before the trails became impassable. They had little time to lose.
* * *
Fifteen minutes later, Fabius reached Scipio and Polybius, who had left the rocks when they had heard his horn and brought the horses back to the edge of the forest. He had found a trickle of water from a spring on the way up to wash the mud off his face and hands, but he realized that he had been sweating profusely, and the halt at the spring and then the bitter wind from the mountain had chilled him, making him shiver. He picked up his cloak and wrapped it round himself, and then took the skin proffered by Polybius, gulping the wine down gratefully. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, passed back the skin and then took the reins of his horse. ‘It was the Pamphylian from the foresters’ camp,’ he said to Scipio, and then he turned to Polybius. ‘He had offered to guide us, but we were wary of him. He’d arrived only a few days before, asking questions about Scipio.’
Polybius grunted. ‘Did you give him a chance to say who sent him?
‘He killed my dog. But he had his chance. It was Andriscus.’
Polybius looked at Scipio grimly. ‘Andriscus may have been the one who gave this man his instructions, but Metellus would have been behind it.’
Scipio looked pensively up the mountain slope, narrowing his eyes against the snow and the wind. ‘It seems that even here in the abode of the gods I cannot escape the vindictiveness of Rome.’
‘The only way to better Metellus will be to rise through the cursus honorum as he has done, to become a senator and qualify as a legate. You will be safer from him in Rome, where you will show the strength of your personality and the power of your gens, and make it less easy for him to undermine you. In places like this, on the edge of the unknown, you are no longer safe. Your death out hunting would arouse no suspicions, only regret among those of your gens and supporters who have watched you seemingly throw away your destiny and escape as far as you could towards the very edge of the world.’
Scipio looked down at the imprint of the tracks they had seen earlier, now only shapes in the snow. ‘Without Rufius, we have no hope of chasing a royal boar. Perhaps we have strayed too far into the hunting preserve of the gods, and that is one beast beyond the hope of men to see.’
Fabius began to speak, but then stopped, feigning a cough. Scipio’s mind was still not made up, and Fabius did not want to be the one to persuade him to stay here any longer. He would tell him about his encounter with the boar at an opportune time later, perhaps when Scipio was at last wearing a legate’s helmet and had turned his mind from hunting to war.
‘A wise decision, Scipio.’ Polybius mounted his horse and drew it round so that it faced down the slope, and he peered over the treetops towards the west. ‘Do we have to return by the same route, or is there a way out that avoids going past the foresters’ camp? Where there’s one in the pay of Andriscus, there may be others. Best for them to believe that we have disappeared and the task is done, or else we will be hunted throughout Macedonia until we escape.’
Scipio nodded. ‘About five stades back down the trail a narrow track leads off to the west, skirting the edge of the mountains until it reaches the kingdom of Epirus. It is arduous going, but we have our bedding rolls and we can hunt for food. Once we reach the shore of the Adriatic, we can find a ship to take us to Brundisium and safety.’