CHAPTER 7
'Antinous braced his pony Tiny cautiously,' Lysias recollected. 'He pressed his calf and thigh muscles, gripped the horse's bony flank with both knees through the backcloth, and gently tapped its neck with the loose end of the reins. The pony moved forward slowly. Antinous then carefully lifted his hips and butt from Tiny's spine to take a peep over the edge of the ridge ahead of him.
His eyes revealed what both of our ears had sensed. There they were, fourteen of them, all quietly grazing. The Imperial Post courier had reported accurately of the number and type of horses, though the pack had moved a mile or so since the courier's sighting. It had taken two full days for us to find them.
Antinous beckoned back towards me following close behind. He held a finger across his lips to hush an urge to make voice, and then point-marked towards the gentle slope falling away beneath the ridge.
I approached carefully on my pony, Blaze, drawing to Antinous's side. I looked over the ridge at the grassy slope below. We soothed Tiny's and Blaze's tension with calming strokes and whispers.
'Great Zeus!' I heard myself hiss. 'It's a whole herd!'
'Fourteen of them,' Antinous whispered. 'Running feral. Mostly Turkomans. Small grays. The two foals and their mares look healthy still, but they haven't faced a winter yet. They'll be a good catch if we can corral them before the snows arrive.'
'Where are they from? Their crests are cropped, so they're domesticated.'
'Their tails are docked too in the barbarian style, see,' Antinous pointed. 'Maybe they've escaped from a brigand's hideaway, possibly after a run-in with a Militia? Or perhaps they've wandered off from a roaming tribe of Alans nomads and crossed the border into our territory? The Alans were too afraid to come after them or the Legions would crucify them. I can't see any of our usual branding or ear nips, and I certainly don't recognize the stock from trading meets, do you? So they're not local.'
I agreed. 'But where are we, what's their position? We'll have to note where we are, to come back for them. There's too many for us to capture.'
Antinous considered the options.
'It'll take six riders with hounds to round them up and rope them one by one. We're about a mile due west of the trapper's hut in the valley under the south side of Vulcan's Peak. The grazing is good, so they'll move on very slowly. They can't go higher into the range, the grazing runs out and there's no water.
We'll have to come back within a few days with our best riders to round them up, or they'll melt away. The two foals and the colts would make good breeding stock. Father says we need fresh blood badly, we inter-breed too often. If the colts can be ridden they'll give good service. The mule looks like it has farm work to spare. If not, it's meat and leather time for them all. They're a good find, Lys. We're very lucky.'
We slowly backed our steeds away from the grazing herd's sight. With our broad-brimmed sunhats strapped to our backs over woolen mantles and tunics torn short for riding, we were full of youthful health and spunk. We willingly displayed our muscled forearms, thighs, and trim torsos in our recent status as meirakia grown youths. We were proud athletes moving rapidly into full manhood. We were both very aware of our developing powers and our bodies. I especially was sensitive to these things.
Our fiercer weapons were stoked across our horse's backcloth while quivers of arrows and carry-bags were looped around each pony's neck within reach. Only hip daggers offered emergency defense against the possibility of a roaming bandit or an unseasonable wolf in the lower ranges of the Pontine Mountains. But we were trained to handle such risks.
Carefully drawing our ponies back, we returned to the woodland track behind us.
'It's getting late,' Antinous said. 'Sunset is in an hour. It's time to hunt us some hare or fowl and find a protected camp site. There was a creek back-a-bit with a clearing nearby. That'll do for the night. We don't want to alarm the herd with fire light, or they'll haul off.'
'Well, what'd you think of the news, Lys?!' Antinous called to me as he swung off Tiny's back.
I once again perceived how my friend made the leap off his pony's spine with light-speed energy and grace. I could discern the animal power and tight body coordination of his rapidly evolving physicality. It was an athleticism which already drew nodding respect from our peers and elders at the palaestra. It drew similar regard from me too.
I had watched my blond-haired, pale skinned friend grow from childhood pal into a sleek, sinewy youth in the space of a few years. It was accompanied by a growth in personal confidence and a broadening of a very appealing, impertinent toothy grin. We had shared the same deity, the same clan and caste, the same tutors, the same peer group, and the same life adventures as each other since before we could even remember. Antinous was an extension of myself. I was perhaps more conscious of his body than I was of my own.
'What news?' I asked, pretending not to know where the conversation was heading. Antinous was buzzing with boyish enthusiasm again after the serious business of identifying the valuable cache of ownerless horseflesh open to a profitable grab. My less outgoing nature secretly admired my friend's liveliness.
I was already tethering my pony to a tree while holding a fat range eagle chick impaled on an arrow tucked under one arm. Of hares there were none to be seen; so a new season's eagle chick pierced at its cliff-face crag was to be the day's fireside meal. It was a chicken large enough to feed four.
'Lord Arrian's trading steward has told Father how Caesar and the Imperial party will be arriving next week! At last! They've told the councilors at Polis to organize the celebration events, and to do it well!'
'What sort of events, Ant?' I responded using the abbreviated familiar name common among our generation. I raised my chiton tunic to relieve an urgently pressed bladder in a steaming stream against the tree trunk. The day's scouting for the wild ponies had delayed a well-needed piss. But now the herd had been sighted grazing within two-day's reach of our hometown, Claudiopolis. With their position noted, it was time to relax and enjoy our hunting trek's return home journey.
Antinous and I regularly mounted hunts into the ranges around Claudiopolis — 'Polis' being the local nickname for our town protected on its hilltop in the secure walled Roman manner. We brought back rabbits, hares, other wild rodents, young boars, assorted fowl, river fish, any fruit or berry visibly edible, plus the occasional orphaned bear to nurture, to the fireside hearths of our family compounds.
'You know what I mean, Lys — a welcome celebration for the Emperor, grand speeches, the sacrifice of a steer to the Gods,' Antinous spelled out, 'with a public feast, dances for Apollo, music competitions, youth athletics at the palaestra, all that sort of thing. Everything we do well in the provinces, they say. Even freeborn girls will be allowed to attend events, with suitable guardians.'
Antinous was now also relieving himself against the tree trunk.
'But Polis has been preparing for all that for months now,' I reminded us. 'We had the tour's probable dates a year ago.'
Hadrian has been travelling with his Household for two years, so the Province Legate had sent scouts ahead to inform us long ago. The Household had departed Antioch four months earlier, all four hundred of them plus most of a Legion. We were one of the last provinces in his tour of the Empire, with only the Troas and mainland Greece to follow.
'So who told you that?' Antinous queried as we prepared a campfire of rocks and dry branches for the night's warmth.
I glanced over my younger friend covered in brush dust, pine needles, and the slick of the day's sweaty exertions. It was difficult not to notice, however, how my school chum's slender musculature had advanced yet another step in shapely power since such issues last crossed my mind, which was often. Antinous didn't have my beefiness, but he had a fine rangy physical line which grew more sculpted with each passing month.
'Arrian himself told us. He stayed overnight with us at the compound a few weeks ago on his way back to Nicomedia from his border inspection,' I confirmed.
But Antinous couldn't let that piece of one-upmanship pass by unchallenged.
'Yes, I know, he stayed with Father at our compound on his way out,' Antinous replied. 'He checks the border barbarians every few months. He's worried about the increasing incursion of the Alans tribes. They're searching for places to settle, and there are a lot of them.
I like Arrian. He's very direct and no-nonsense about things. That's probably his military training. He likes me too, I guess. He was keen to congratulate Father and my Elder Brother on our public duty in repairing the old Baths
