The centurion prodded a broad finger into his chest, urgency fuelling his irritation.
‘Shut up and listen! You’re being turned loose, alone, before dawn, to make your disposal as easy as possible. You think it’s usual for enemies of the state to be sent back to Rome alone, no matter what threats might be made to their families? Most criminals would think of their own necks before those of their loved ones. This is just a set- up to get you out of the way, out into the dark. You were supposed to get killed on the road yesterday, but the locals apparently managed to cock that one up. The men waiting out there for you now won’t make the same mistake. You ride out of here alone, and you’ll be lucky to get five miles before that bastard Perennis’s tame cavalry cut-throats take you and slit your throat, steal your purse and your horse, and leave you in the dirt for the morning patrols to find. Do you fancy that for an epitaph, “Killed by robbers”?’
‘No.’
‘Well, that’s a start. You know how to use a sword and shield on horseback?’
‘Yes. I was trained in…’
‘I know. Listen, half a mile down the road you’ll come on a stunted tree growing over a large rock, on the right. Look behind the tree and you’ll find a cavalry sword and shield. Ride on, as fast as the moonlight lets you, and stop for nobody. At the two-mile marker you’ll be met by…’
A solid knock rattled the room’s wooden door.
‘Centurion! The traitor’s horse is ready.’
The officer nodded at Marcus, grabbing his helmet and replacing it on his head before replying.
‘Good! I’ll bring the little turd out.’
He cocked a solid-looking fist.
‘… you’ll be met by friends. Sorry, but this needs to look like the real thing.’
The swift punch stung Marcus’s right eye; the heavy slap that followed cut his upper lip against his teeth. The officer pulled him to his feet, whispering urgently in his ear.
‘Stop for no one until the two-mile marker!’
‘But who’s meeting me?’
‘You’ll know when you get there! And once we’re outside keep your mouth shut, unless you want me nailed up alongside you.’
He paused to fill his lungs.
‘Right, you bastard traitor, let’s be about it!!’
He slammed the door open, propelling Marcus through it with a hefty shove in the back.
‘Here he is! Take a good look at a traitor!’
The incoming watch’s centurion goggled at Marcus’s face.
‘You’ve had a go at him!’
‘Yeah, but it was no fun. All he did was beg me to stop. Even you wouldn’t have enjoyed it at all.’
The other man put his hands on his hips and laughed uproariously.
‘I see what you mean. I doubt he’ll offer any fight to the first robbers he meets.’
‘Yeah, and since those Asturians are bum boys to a man it might be quite a morning for our friend here.’
He reached out, pushing Marcus’s saddlebag at him.
‘Go on, take your bag. It’ll be a small compensation for the boys that have been out half the night waiting for you. Now get on your horse and bugger off. Open the gate!’
Marcus climbed on to the beast’s back, eyeing the soldiers that surrounded him with a sense of complete powerlessness. A scent of violence filled his nostrils, the energy generated by men eager to deal out pain. The main gates opened with a ponderous swing as half a dozen legionaries strained against their weight. The centurion pointed out into the darkness beyond the gate’s flickering torches.
‘Right, piss off. I only hope they get the time to do a proper job on you! Go!’
He slapped the horse’s rump, and the gate towers were suddenly behind Marcus as the animal bolted out into the pre-dawn gloom, across the bridge, past the houses and shops of the town and away down the dark road, pursued by the shouted insults of the gate guard.
2
Out on the open road, even without the magnifying effect of the tightly packed buildings, the sounds of Marcus’s horse’s hoofs on the road sounded deafening. He steered the animal on to the softer grass verge, diminishing the staccato clatter to a gentle patter. When the stunted tree loomed out of the slowly lightening murk he dismounted, finding the promised sword and shield hidden in a tangle of roots that curled sinuously over the massive boulder around which the oak had flourished. His father, he mused, would have paid a fortune for such a decoration in the house’s courtyard. His father…
The sword’s edge glittered slightly in the moonlight. Marcus touched the blade, his fingers snagging against a razor-sharp line of minutely ragged steel, rough-sharpened for combat, rather than the smooth steel of a peacetime weapon. He’d heard of the practice from old soldiers, but never seen it carried out. Someone expected him to need every small advantage that could be put his way. He remounted, riding cautiously on with an ear cocked for trouble, holding the reins with the hand that gripped the sword’s hilt. Shadows moved and swirled in his vision, purple and black, each eddy in the night’s mist taunting his senses.
At the one-mile marker he thought he could just make out the distant sound of horses’ hoofs in front of him. He halted his own mount to listen in silence, but could hear nothing other than the wind’s moan. Another five minutes of uninterrupted progress relaxed him a little, and he started to worry more about exactly who he would find waiting for him at the two-mile marker than what might happen in the intervening stretch of road. He reached down to pat the horse with the back of his sword hand, as much seeking as offering reassurance.
Looking up, he saw them materialise out of the mist to either side of the road, a pair of horsemen with swords held upright like cavalry troopers on parade. Wanting him to see the weapons, he guessed. He started as a voice spoke in the murk behind him, the Latin made crude by the edges of the man’s German accent.
‘Give up now and we’ll make it easy for you. Run, and these two will have their fun with you before you die.’
Three, or more? Marcus let the sword and shield, already held low from stroking the horse’s mane, slip down against the animal’s flanks, hopefully invisible in the dim grey light of approaching dawn. Curiously unafraid, although his heart was pounding at his ribs with the force of a blacksmith’s hammer, he gently spurred his horse with his boot-heels. Riding steadily towards the horsemen he allowed his body to slump in the saddle, reassuring them that he was already in their grip. Behind him, hoofs clattered on the road’s surface, a fast trot designed to close the distance and put the third man within striking distance. Marcus kicked the horse hard, shouting encouragement into its ear as it surged forward into a gallop. He lifted the sword and shield from their resting places on the beast’s flanks, and into the positions his father’s bodyguard had made him practise thousands of times.
‘He’s armed!’
Bracing himself against the saddle’s projecting horns, and clamping his feet to the horse’s flanks, he pulled the beast towards the man on the right, flinching as something flicked past his head with a vicious whirr. The arrow’s passage was close enough for him to feel the wind of its passing. The men to his front spurred their own horses forward, but his burst of speed caught them by surprise, closing the gap before they could manoeuvre to meet him as they might have wished. Punching out with the shield at the man to his left, he felt the jar of a heavy sword blow-hammer his left arm into numbness. His own weapon, the point thrust forward towards the centre of the other horseman’s indistinct mass as they came together, rang with contact on metal. The sword’s hilt moved in his hand as the blade struck something softer. The pain of the wound was enough to make the horseman wheel his mount away with a shout of anger, leaving a gap through which Marcus’s steed burst with its gathered momentum, too swift for the other man to get in a second attack.
He rode for his life now, crouching low to avoid any more arrows, looking back for any sign of his pursuers in the greyness behind him. A frantic clatter of hoofs behind convinced him to keep the horse at the gallop, angry shouts lending urgency to his efforts. The shield fell from his numb left hand, its layered wood and leather deeply scarred by the sword-blow. Without its protection the blade would almost certainly have taken his arm off.
