If we travelled north we could possibly slip the edge of the net, but that would add distance and time that we did not have to spare.
No. There was only one option here, and that was why Miran and Borna were shivering.
‘Do you trust me?’ I asked them.
They nodded together.
‘Do you remember what you have to do?’
‘We remember, Corvus,’ Miran said.
And then they learned a soldier’s lesson – that the waiting is the worst.
When it was time I nodded to them. I hoped my look conveyed confidence in my plan. The truth was that I knew what we were about to do was a gamble with all our lives, but it was one we had to take. We couldn’t outrun Ziva’s net, and so I would tear a hole in it.
The four horsemen came along the shaded track. For a moment I was hit with the memory of my father, and how he had been visited by such bringers of death.
Not today. Today I would honour my promises. Today I would protect the ones that I loved.
My heart began to beat faster. I could smell the horses. They came at a slow pace, little more than a walk. Their riders were silent. They were looking to the sides of the track. They were looking ahead. One was even turning in his saddle to look behind.
Everything depended on timing. If Miran was a second too late it would change everything. Likely doom us all.
She did not fail us.
I saw her step from her place behind cover, and assume a fighting stance with my dagger. I had taught her quickly but she remembered all that I’d told her, and planted her foot and raised her blade with the confidence of a warrior.
The eyes of the four horsemen fell on her.
‘Put that down.’
They had been looking ahead. They had been looking to the flanks. They had even been looking behind.
None had been looking above.
From my position in the branches above them I drove my crude spear at the base of their leader’s neck. He had no armour there, and I drove it along his spine. The wood splintered and did not penetrate deeply, but the spine is a weakness, and he fell from his horse like a puppet with his strings cut. I let the shaft go, and three surprised faces turned upwards, a crack of splintering teeth echoing through the forest as I threw a rock into the second man’s face.
Miran was charging, then. She wasn’t supposed to do that, and my heart raced as she sent a horse rearing onto its hind legs, its hooves kicking towards her.
She had bought me seconds and I dropped from the tree. I tried to take a soldier with me from the saddle but he pulled his beast aside and my fingers brushed his armour and no more.
And then I was on the dirt. Beneath stamping hooves and stabbing spears. I could hear the wet slap of blade in flesh, but whose flesh I did not know. There was no time to think. My actions were automatic as I evaded the hooves and blows and scrambled to the side of the track, ducking as a blade cut the air above my head. Thumper’s axe was there, buried beneath a thin coat of dirt, and I pulled it free and rolled to my side as a horseman drove his spear into the earth.
For a second I saw the melee clearly. One man was down. A horse had fled. One soldier clutched at his ruined mouth and moaned in pain. Another was trying to chop his blade down at Miran. The fourth was trying to retrieve his spear from the bank beside me.
He should have let it go. I span to my right and brought Thumper’s axe down on his exposed arm. The blade was sharp and cut clean through, howls of pain and blood shooting across the track as the limb fell to the dirt. My second blow was into his thigh. Blood gushed out as I wrenched the axe from the gaping wound. He would be dead in moments.
The soldier with the smashed mouth had realised his peril and was turning his horse towards me. The beast lurched forwards. There was no time for escape. Instead I stepped into the charge, dropped to my knees, and carved the axe into the beast’s chest. I was showered with blood and innards, then sent sideways as a hoof crashed into my shoulder. The animal stumbled forwards and spilled its guts and rider.
My mouth and eyes were filled with hot blood. I looked at my left arm. Tried to move it. It would not obey. The kick had separated my shoulder.
I saw Miran. She was on her feet, but bloodied. She was wounded. I was wounded.
And there was still one soldier left to face.
I pushed myself to my feet. He was mounted but caught between us. He could kill whichever one of us he chose, but knew that his back would fall prey to the other’s blade.
‘Give us the horse and you can go free!’ I shouted at him. ‘Get out of the saddle and go! You have my word!’
He sneered at that. ‘The word of a traitor?’
The soldier had made his decision and lurched his horse to my left-hand side, where my arm hung useless. He would risk death by attacking either one of us, and so he would ride clear instead.
It would have been a wise choice if Borna had not come, unnoticed to all, from the bushes, and raised the crudely cut spear towards the horse. The child could barely hold it, but the surprise caused the rider’s eyes to jump right, and the horse’s hooves to jump left. I swung with everything I had, and buried the axe in the man’s lower back.
I have heard many screams in my life, but I do not know if any were as awful as that one.
‘Get the reins!’ I shouted to Miran. ‘Get the reins!’
I pulled back on the axe. It was stuck fast in the man’s back and he came with it, shrieking in agony. It was enough to make my blood run cold but I had no time for mercy, watching with my heart in my mouth as Miran took the animal’s reins in her hand.
‘Are you injured?’ I asked her.
‘Not badly.’
‘Walk it away,’ I gasped. ‘Get it away from the blood.’
Miran looked at my sorry state and hesitated. Her eyes were wild with shock. Now was not the time to be subtle. ‘Get that fucking horse down the track! Both of you!’ I yelled at Borna, then. ‘Go!’
And so they left me. On the ground beside me was a dead horse. Another was dying, and kicking its legs. I ended its suffering first, and then I looked into the faces of the two men whose eyes begged for that same mercy.
One had a ruined mouth. He was useless to me, and so he was given it.
The second man would live a nightmare.
Chapter 62
Miran and Borna did not look at me the same when I returned to them.
They tried not to look at me at all.
They were not to be blamed. I was painted head to toe in blood and gore. My left arm hung useless by my side. In the other was Thumper’s axe.
I had pulled it from the soldier’s back. My stroke had severed his spine. He had no feeling in his legs. That made no difference. I got my answers by cutting off his fingers instead. After two, he realised that the quickest way to peace was to tell me what I wanted to know:
‘I had to do it,’ I told Miran.
She did not reply.
‘Ziva left the fight with the Mazaei and went straight to Bato,’ I said anyway, telling her what I had learned from the dying man. ‘Word arrived today that the hostages should be killed immediately, and none spared.’
The soldier knew no more than that, and so I’d ended his life, and his torture.
I was not ashamed of my act. I was not proud.
‘What else was I to do?’ I asked Miran. ‘I need you to put my shoulder back in.’ She didn’t move. ‘Miran!’
I sat on the track. ‘Put your foot on my chest and pull upwards.’
She did. It was my turn to moan in agony.
The joint was fire but I could move my arm again, although not fully. I looked across the track and to the horse that Miran had tied to a tree. It was for that beast that four men had died.
‘We have a chance now,’ I told her, though it was a pitiful one. We’d needed two horses, but battle and the gods of war care little for what men want, or need.
‘Get on the horse,’ I told them. This time, they did not hesitate,
but there was a question in Miran’s eyes. ‘I’ll walk,’ I said. ‘It can’t take all three of us.’
I handed her Thumper’s bloody axe. She hesitated to take it. What I saw in her eyes broke my heart.
I was no longer the person who’d played games with her son, or drunk wine with her and Thumper. She could smell war, now. Taste it in the air. She knew who I was. What I did best. I did not build lives.
I ended them.
‘We don’t stop until we reach the king,’ I told them.
I had torn a hole in Ziva’s net.
We had a chance.
* * *
I had suffered a lot in my life.
I had suffered the murder of my love, the loss of my comrades, and the death of my father. I had suffered hunger in winter, and a summer of warfare in the mountains. I had killed many men, and I had been wounded several times.
Never in my life had I expected to experience physical hardship that would not only equal, but surpass, the night that my legion brothers and I had left a battlefield to follow tracks through the mountains, and fall onto the enemy’s rear in the dawn.
I was wrong.
I had been fully fit and healthy when we’d begun battle that day last summer. I had flesh and muscle on my bones. As we had climbed those passes I had comrades by my side, and no weight of leadership to bear.
Not so today.
Today I carried the lives of Miran and Borna in my hands. I carried the fate of my friend, the king, and how many others? Ziva hated the Romans like no other. He wanted the war to go on, even if all hope was lost.
I had known tiredness before. I had not been a stranger to fatigue. But that night I went beyond both. Every step was pain. My thighs were chafed and bleeding. My shoulder howled. My toenails blackened and fell off. I was decrepit. Foul. When we crossed streams I let myself fall into the cold and suck at the water like an animal, but dried blood and dirt clung to me like a curse. I was an apparition. A nightmare.
Miran and Borna held fast to the horse’s reins. At times I felt her eyes on me. I could smell her fear.
She thought she’d known me.
Through forests we passed, and on slopes we climbed. We were guided by the sun, and then the stars. Many times I lost my footing in the dark. My shins and knees were bloody. Stubbornness kept me going. I was an animal, and I refused to die.
And yet I knew that I had less than a day of life within me. I could not keep this up. No man could.
I began to see him then. I saw him everywhere. At first his face was in the rocks. Then he was walking through the trees.
And then he was beside me.
‘Why are you doing this, brother?’ Marcus asked me.
I had no words for him. I could barely walk, let alone speak.
‘You have done all that honour demands,’ he went on. ‘You owe these two nothing, brother. Leave them. Take the horse yourself. Ride on. Get the king’s head, or Bato’s.’
He was smiling as he said it. ‘You can do that, Corvus. Bring Tiberius the head of a leader. You can see that he is not an unreasonable man. I believe you are a hero of Rome. You can have it all again. The legion. The brotherhood. The rebellion is over. Come back, Corvus. Come back and conquer the world with us.’
Instead I wanted to cry. I wanted to beg. ‘Tell me you didn’t do it,’ I wanted to sob. ‘Tell me it wasn’t you!’
I heard a voice that wasn’t his. When I looked back, Marcus was gone.
‘Marcus! Marcus!’
And then I fell.
* * *
I woke up to Miran shaking me. I had hot blood in my mouth. My nose was ablaze.
‘Corvus! Corvus, wake up!’
I woke, but I could not stand.
‘Ride on.’ The words came from me like splinters. ‘Ride on to Bato.’
But she would not. She would not leave me.
‘Ride on.’ I tried to raise my voice. I tried to be menacing. ‘Ride on…’
Instead I felt the darkness coming, even as sunlight crept over the mountains, and blessed the land.
‘Ride on…’
Darkness claimed me.
Chapter 63
When I woke, there was a spearpoint resting against my chest.
I looked up at the face of an armoured horseman.
I had failed.
Ziva’s men had caught us.
I tried to stand. To die with honour. I did not hear screams. I hoped that Miran and Borna died quickly, but the truth was that my body was too abused, my mind too broken, to feel anything other than acceptance of my fate.
‘Make it quick,’ I croaked through dry lips.
Instead I was hauled to my feet, and laid across a saddle.
A hard face looked down at me. ‘If you fall, I’m leaving you behind.’
And then we were riding.
* * *
I knew little of that ride. I slid in and out of consciousness and delirium. I saw snatches of track, horsemen, forest, and palisade. When we came to a stop, I was hauled off the horse, and held on unsteady feet.
‘Here,’ someone said. Water. I gulped it down.
‘Corvus!’
I turned.
Miran. Borna. My heart leapt to see them alive. Then my mind raced as I realised that the armoured men around them were deferential to my companions.
‘These are Lord Bato’s men.’ Miran read my look. Not Ziva’s. ‘This is Bato’s camp.’
The leader of the horsemen came over to me. His face was grim and suspicious. ‘We know who you are.’ And then my hands were pulled behind me, and bound.
Miran stepped closer. ‘Trust me,’ she was saying, ‘trust me, Corvus. My husband will make this right.’
And then we were being led through the camp. It was nothing but a blur. What would I say? How would I say it? I had to convince Bato that Ziva had sown the seeds of doubt and distrust. That Pinnes had to be spared, and that peace had to be made.
I knew that I had little chance. I knew that in coming here I had sealed my own fate.
I looked across to Miran and Borna. They were unbound, and in the care of their people – I would have died for something, at least. I had kept my promise to them.
I had no more time to think as I was pushed into a hall, and hands on my shoulders drove me to my knees. At first the place seemed deserted, but then a shadow fell across me.
Bato.
‘Hello, Roman.’
Chapter 64
I expected torture. I expected death.
I did not expect laughter.
‘Oh, but the gods are kind!’ Bato roared with glee.
‘Lord Bato,’ Miran said firmly. ‘I must speak with you.’
Bato looked to her, then shrugged his thick shoulders. ‘Then speak, lady.’
‘You have been deceived, lord.’
‘So I have,’ Bato agreed. ‘King Pinnes surrendered to the Romans, did he not? Yes, deceived I have been. The condition of his peace was that I and my people will become slaves to Rome. Slaves to save Pannonian skins.’
‘That’s not true!’ I shouted foolishly, and I was rocked by a punch.
Bato looked at me and a snarl formed on his lips. He turned away as Miran spoke.
‘It’s not true, lord.’ She spoke evenly. ‘Lord, it was Ziva who killed the hostages. He would have killed myself and my son, but Corvus helped us escape so that we could bring word to you.’
Bato looked back to me. His words dripped with disgust. ‘The deserter brings you to inform against my friend and ally?’ He kept his eyes on me. ‘Oh, well, in that case, I believe every word!’ He bellowed in angry laughter then, his eyes on fire. ‘Do you think me a fool?’ he snapped quickly at me. ‘Do you think that I would ever trust a man who killed my men?’
He would never forgive me for the defeat that he’d suffered against my legion. That battle was a scar on his soul.
‘Then trust me, lord,’ Miran tried. ‘I am Dalmatian. I am a noblewoman. Ziva’s men tried to kill me, and they killed
the others, noble Dalmatians all! I will swear to it.’
Bato said nothing. For a moment, I saw hesitation in his demeanour…
And then he shook his head. ‘This Roman has corrupted you,’ he growled.
‘Then summon my husband!’ Miran shot back with fire. ‘And maybe he will have the sense to listen to what I say!’
Her words echoed around the hall. For a moment there was silence. The warrior in Bato appreciated the power in her speech, and grunted. ‘I would be glad to do so, lady,’ he said grimly, ‘but I am no expert in summoning the spirits of the dead.’
My eyes flashed to Miran. Her face was frozen in shock. Where there had been anger a moment ago, now there was dread. ‘No…’
‘He fell three days ago,’ Bato told her. He took no satisfaction at the news. There was some pride in his voice. ‘He was a good man.’
‘How did…’ She could barely speak.
‘A skirmish,’ Bato answered, ‘against a Roman raiding party.’
I saw it all, then. The pieces fell into place. ‘Ziva was with him, wasn’t he? Ziva was with him when he died.’
Bato’s head snapped towards me. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to.
For the second time I saw the hesitation behind his eyes. Did he know? Did he suspect?
Had Ziva had Miran’s husband eliminated, knowing that she would ask him to vouch for me?
I felt sick. Sick at myself. How I’d underestimated him. Ziva had been ruthless in his bid for power. No stone had been left unturned.
Miran spoke up before Bato could. ‘Then my son is a nobleman,’ she declared, fixing her courage.
‘He is.’ Bato nodded. ‘And you will both be treated accordingly.’ The man of war walked to Borna, and towered over him. ‘Your father was a good man and a true Dalmatian,’ he said. ‘And you must be the same.’
Borna nodded. He was awed, but Miran was uncowed. ‘Corvus is under my protection,’ she tried.
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