“I will get my bags and we will depart this evening,” Caroline said with a lowered head.
“It sickens me that I brought you into my house, assuming you to be but another innocent victim of this horrid war. Instead, I invited the horror to act out within my own walls.”
Caroline had no reply to this but to stand aside to allow Mme. Villeneuve to pass and make her way to the dining room and the male conversation booming from there. “Immediately, Mademoiselle,” she said without turning.
Eyes stinging, Caroline hurried up the steps to her borrowed room and flung all her belongings into the carpetbag. The revolver she left behind. She didn’t remember how to reload the awful thing and was frankly relieved to be shed of it. She bundled Stephen into layers of blankets and herself into her brocaded coat and broad-brimmed hat to return to the ground floor and slip quietly from the house. Uncaring laughter pursued Caroline as, unseen by her, the young boors around the dining table made idle jests and consumed the last of their hosts’ hoarded victuals. She stood in the biting cold and pushed the door closed behind her. The mallet-scarred surface was rough under her gloved fingers.
She stood upon the walkway before the house deciding which way to turn, a decision that seemed entirely inconsequential as she had no idea where she might find shelter in this city in spiritual as well as physical ruin. Tears started in her eyes and ran in chilled streams down her cheeks. She was afraid for her baby and for herself. The illusion of security provided by Mme. Villeneuve’s household was shattered—an illusion. Caroline and her child were hunted. Her enemies knew where to find them and had, literally, all the time in existence to locate them.
“Caroline.”
Caroline looked away, dropping the carpetbag and clutching Stephen tighter. She was moving to bolt away when the voice spoke again.
“It’s me.”
She turned to see a man in the tattered livery of a coachman stepping from the street toward her, a hand held out before him and a smile creasing his face.
It was Dwayne.
44
The Arbor Path
The children’s game that first optio Gaius referred to was being played in earnest.
Two centuries of the Thirtieth and an additional two centuries made up of survivors of the Twenty-third began their march before dawn. They moved into the woods following strips of red cloth left at intervals along a narrow game trail through the trees.
They were forced by the confines of the pathway into marching in a rank two men in width. The line of men snaked through the woods in a column over a mile long. Men in lighter armor and without shields trotted through the dark forest on either flank. More men ran ahead as scouts to find the sign left by Critus and his advance party.
Centurion Pulcher secured horses for himself and his optios and aquilifer from the local village. They paid a dear price for them, made dearer when Pulcher was informed that these were the same mounts captured earlier from the rebels they were pursuing.
Pulcher rode at the head of the column, ramrod straight in the saddle, to give the men an example to follow. The legionnaires of Caesar and the Senate were courageous to a fault, but their faults were many. They did not like surprises, and they did not like marching through close terrain like this damned wooded country. Pulcher had seen men under his command sleep through the night even knowing they faced a pitched battle the following day. Their bravery was not in question, and, in combat, they would die before yielding an inch of ground.
He also knew from bitter experience that they could be routed like sheep by a sudden change in fortune. Each man was valiant with a code of personal conduct that was inviolate. But often, as a unit, they would succumb to a kind of contagious terror—a hysteria. And so the centurion rode high in the saddle, head erect and looking neither left nor right. His aquilifer rode behind to his right with the banner of the Thirtieth held uncovered and aloft for all to see. The men following would take strength from that.
A scout returned down the path ahead with another man in his company. The man was soiled and bathed in sweat. His hair was matted black with dried blood.
Pulcher motioned for the column to halt and dismounted to meet the scout and his bloodied companion on foot and out of sight of the men. He did not need omens and portents to weaken the will of the soldiers.
“Is this one of the men who accompanied Critus?” he asked.
“He is, sir,” the scout replied. “We found him on the trail ahead. He says he was coming to meet us.”
“Is that true?” Pulcher asked directly. The man was missing an ear that had quite recently been sliced or torn away. His eyes were wide and shifting. His hands shook as though palsied. There was the stink of piss about him.
“I was sent back, sir. To warn you, sir,” the man stammered.
“Warn me?” Pulcher sniffed. “Of what?”
“We encountered the rebels last night. There was a battle, and many were slain. The enemy fled to the west.”
“And you did not pursue?”
“They were many in number, sir. Hundreds or maybe more, sir. Critus continues on after them even now, sir. He leaves the strips of cloth for you to follow as you ordered, sir.”
“And this is true?”
“Every word, sir.” The man bit his lip. By the gods, he was close to weeping. The display repulsed Marcus Pulcher.
“Where is your sword?” the centurion asked.
The man looked to his empty scabbard but offered no answer.
“You may have the temporary loan of mine,” Pulcher said and withdrew his own gladius from the sheath on his girdle.
He grabbed the coward’s proffered hand by the wrist and jerked the man toward him, at the same time driving the flat tip of the
