Etruscan Blood

by AM Kirkby

  ***

  "Retreat?" Strephon spat on the ground. A tiny fleck of spit which he had failed to eject hung at one corner of his mouth.

  "Yes. And before the footsoldiers, too."

  That was dishonour indeed, to scuttle away before the unmounted motley. But Tarquin, touchy, prickly Tarquin, was smiling. What the hell was that about?

  "You'll see," said Tarquin, and eased his horse into a gentle walk, and began to whistle. "The maidens' legs are open," that was the tune – sometimes, really, it was possible to lose patience with the way Tarquin made light of everything.

  Mamarke followed Tarquin, his horse dancing a little as if speculating about its chances of bucking him off; it must have been as unnerved by the strange quiet and the long wait as most of the men had been. Strephon shrugged, and made a third; gradually, the rest of them followed.

  It took him a while to realise that Tarquin wasn't going back the way they had come, but instead had veered left, towards the forest fringe where the sides of the hills fell away into the plain, so that their path was gradually diverging from that they'd followed on the way out, distancing them from the main body of the army. They came to a stream. The horses picked their way across, the formation spreading out a little as some horses skittered on rocks in the uneven stream bed, and others slipped on the churned up mud of the banks.

  He'd thought Tarquin might have planned to stop here and water the horses, but instead they kept going towards the woods, through greener country now, till they were sheltered by overhanging branches, and the air was cooled by the dark shade of trees. Then Tarquin turned sharply, and led them into the forest; it wasn't till every man was within the trees that he stopped, and gave the signal to dismount.

  "We're hiding?"

  "We are," Tarquin said, smiling a smile that was very like his mother's, the kind of smile that gamblers smile when they've made a throw that takes their pieces off the board and wins the game, or when they realise that a three and two sixes lets them take all their opponent's pieces.

  Tarquin had many faults, Strephon knew, but he'd never thought cowardice was one of them.

  "We leave the rest of the army to its fate?"

  "Don't worry about them; they're low class. And anyway..."

  "Turan's tits! You've left them completely naked if the Veientes come out..."

  "You're getting the idea," Tarquin said, and smiled that smile again.