by Manda Scott
The mount at full gallop is the most difficult manoeuvre a cavalryman can be asked to make. To be successful, he must land in the saddle exactly between the horns and slip his legs into place beneath them. In full armour, it is almost impossible. For a lean, lithe boy who had practised half his childhood, albeit with a less difficult saddle, it was an act aided by the gods. Even with a shield, he could have done it.
The colt did not stop. The boy was lighter than the man had been and he did not grab at the reins or attempt to stop the onward rush to freedom. On the contrary, Bán leaned forward with the knife in his hand and cut the bridle at the poll, sweeping the ear loops free. The horse spat the bit to the arena floor. The halter had a single rope, coiled up and knotted under the chin. It gave a handhold, nothing more. Bán left it in place and held on to the mane, leaning forward and shouting encouragement. They reached the gates and they were flying.
Men of the three- and four-year-old phalanxes were waiting for them. Milo, of all men, had known both colt and boy and had seen what might happen. Eighty mounted men stood strung out in an arc on the rain-damp turf of the collecting area. The horse saw only gaps between others of its kind. Bán saw the trap—a rope held taut at neck height, too high to jump and too low to duck under. He had no reins and no way to pull the horse round. With perfect prescience, he saw the colt’s death of a broken neck and his own, infinitely slower, nailed to wood. He looked to both sides. There was a gap of sorts on the right between the endmost rider and the arena wall. He reached forward along the colt’s neck.
“Hai!”
He slapped a cupped palm on the colt’s left eye. The horse jerked violently to the right, saw the gap and forced it open. They broke free. Open grassland stretched out before them. The legionary camp lay ahead and to the right. A fringe of oak darkened the northern half of the horizon. Beyond that, there was nothing but space. The colt lengthened his stride.
“Stop them!” Milo whipped his own horse into a gallop. It was slow and kind and stood no chance. He wheeled round and raised his whip hand, pointing. “Freedom or his worth in gold to the man who takes them alive!”
He could have made no better offer. One hundred and nineteen mounted men, over half of them already free, kicked their horses forward. One hundred and nineteen war-trained horses threw their hearts into running. The spectators fighting to reach the gates of the arena felt the reverberating thunder as the race began. The betting began afresh, on the pied colt or the hunters.
Bán knew himself blessed. He hung in that gap between life and death, awaiting the call to cross the river. He regretted his failure to kill Amminios, or even Milo, but nothing else. In his fist, he gripped the stolen blade, the point turned in to his heart, and he knew without question that he could use it when the time came. Given time, if the gods so willed, he would kill the god-horse first, slicing open the great veins in the neck as the ancestors had done in their sacrifice, and they would ride together across the river to the world of the dead. He did not feel it to be sacrilege.
The colt ran with a long, fluid stride. Iron clouds hung low in the sky, except in the south where a blade of sunlight lit them yellow, showing the path to the gods. Bán pushed with his legs and the colt answered, swerving slightly right to follow the line of the light. Their speed was more than Bán had known, except in dreams. Small bushes and single trees whipped past in the wind. Behind them, a horn blared a legionary command. Six different notes split the air in the language Bán did not know. It was repeated again and answered, harshly, from the camp to his right. He pushed the colt left, away from the noise.
A small wall with a ditch beyond it reared up in front of them. They jumped it and landed neatly and found that the flat land seen from the arena had been an illusion. Ahead, the ground sloped gently down to a thin, trickling stream shrouded on both sides by a wispy, green-grey woodland. They dipped down, running on turf that smelled of sage and wild mint. Bán heard the sharper shouts and another horn and knew he had dropped from their view. He grimaced and yelled to the colt, cheering it on. Two ears flicked back, one black, one streaked with white, and he told himself the beast knew his voice.
They jumped the stream. Bán prayed aloud to Nemain of the waters and to Airmid, who had been named for her and was dead. The land beyond was flat and sandy and the colt kicked up dust. To their right, willow and hazel trailed leaves in the water. Both were trees of the gods. The colt slowed, unsure of its direction. Bán leaned forward and tugged on the halter rope. He clucked his tongue the way he had always done when leading foals in from the paddocks. The colt dipped its head and turned to the pull of the rope. On the slope, the first of the following hunt crested the rise and saw them. Bán freed his thighs from the grip of the saddle and slid to the ground, pulling the lead rope until he and his mount stood with their backs to a stand of hazel. The colt shoved against the boy’s shoulder, using him as a scratching post to clear the itch of the bridle, then dropped its head to graze. Bán looped an arm across its neck. His free hand held the stolen blade, sharp as a skinning knife, against the patterned black and white of its hide. He pressed his palm into the neck groove until he felt the bounding rhythm of a pulse and knew where to start his cut. In the willows by the stream, a blackbird chucked a warning as it would have done at home. He heard it and his heart filled and he did not weep.
The hunt was close. Their thunder swamped all other noise. The blackbird fled, soundless in the chaos. The first of the riders was the Roman cavalry officer from the arena. He had ridden well to get ahead of the hunt. His mount was built for speed in battle. He shouted as it jumped the stream. The colt raised its head and called. Bán reached under the great arced neck and changed his grip on the knife. He held his breath, awaiting the word of the god. The Roman pushed himself high in the saddle and raised his arm and shouted in Latin, “Now!”
Bán was stronger than he had been when Amminios took him. The men who stepped out of the woods at his back had to hit him twice before he fell.
He woke to the sound of a legionary trumpet, calling the watch. The pain in his head consumed him. He opened his eyes and found dim shapes in dusky light and even that was too much. He pressed his palms to his face and sought oblivion. Iccius came to him in the blackness, and then Macha. Neither of them spoke. Memories crowded in: of Iccius and Braxus, of the sounding-box beneath the stands, of the colt and their flight to freedom, of his capture and what must come after, which was worse than any headache. He would die, now, without honour. He took his hands from his eyes and made himself look around. They had neither bound nor stripped him. He was not incapable; if there were the means to bring an early death, he would find it. What the gods thought, he would find out after.
He had looped his belt around his neck and was standing on a box, reaching for the ridgepole of the tent, when they found him. There were three of them against his one—two Gauls and a Batavian. He threw himself at them, gouging at the pale eyes, biting whatever flesh passed his face, kicking for an exposed groin. The first grunts of pain brought the prefect running. He stood beyond the door-flap. His shadow spread before him, wavering in the light of a fire. His voice was dry and cutting.
“Civilis, he’s a boy, not an armed man. Hold him steady. If you kill him, I’ll have your hide for a tent-covering. Rufus, stop playing the fool and make him safe.”
Their pride would not allow them to keep fighting after that. Civilis—the Batavian—trapped Bán’s wrists and held them behind his back. The other two wrapped him over and over like a chrysalis in the cloak on which he had woken. One of them whipped off his belt and buckled it round, holding the wrapping fast. Another swept his legs from under him and laid him flat on his back on the floor.
“Gods, must you—Never mind.” The tribune snapped his fingers. “Rufus, get me a lamp.”
The lamp came quickly—a steady oil-lit flame that burned cleanly, with little smoke. The taller of the two Gauls swept back the door-flap and held the lamp aloft, shedding light all around. Bán
screwed his eyes shut. The brightness of it seared through to the soft parts of his brain. He ground his teeth at the pain but made no sound. The officer stepped in between them, shielding the flame with his body, and set the lamp on a bedding box at the end of the tent. In Latin he said, “Leave us. Don’t go far. Civilis, find out what happened to the guards. I gave orders he was to be watched. Find who was on duty and deal with it.”
Bán lay on his side, trussed like a hunted boar. The pain in his head defied comprehension. Despair settled in his chest like a dead weight, crushing his heart and his breathing, draining the will to fight. He heard the prefect lift the lamp and set it again on the turf. Warm light flickered against his closed eyelids. A cool hand touched his brow and swept back through his hair. A dry, firm voice said, “Bán mac Eburovic, will you open your eyes for me?” In Eceni.
Visions slammed into his mind: a deer grazing in the forest near the great-house; Eburovic standing on a headland beside a fire that was in itself a miracle; a naked man kneeling on sand with Breaca’s serpent-blade at his throat; that same man, waving from the stern of a ship that bore a flaming sun horse on the sail.
“Corvus?” He tried to raise his head and failed. He said it in Gaulish and then in Latin. “Corvus? Is it you?”
“It is. Quintus Valerius Corvus, prefect of the Ala Quinta Gallorum—or I will be when it is fully formed.”
Bán would have known the voice before if the humour had not been absent. No-one else spoke Gaulish with that lift to the final vowels. In a confusing cascade of long-forgotten feelings, he remembered a promise, made under moonlight.
“Did you go back for my long-nights?”
“No. I’m sorry.” The voice softened and lost the humour. “There was no chance. I was posted south as soon as I reported back. If I’d been able to, I’d have found out sooner what had happened and come to find you and maybe Iccius would still be…Shh, now. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Let’s get you out of this nonsense and see what’s to be done.”
Bán was not weeping—he would not weep—but he could not speak, either. Strong hands loosened the belt that bound him, unwound the cloak and raised him to sitting. A beaker of well-watered wine was pressed into his palms and he was held until he could swallow without choking, then simply held, his cheek pressed close to leather worn smooth with years of exposure to weather, his hair stroked down and down as he had stroked Iccius’s, soothing, in a morning that seemed a lifetime away and was not. He smelled leather and lamp oil, sheep’s wool and horse-sweat and the warm breath of a man, sweetened a little with wine. He felt safe as he had not done since he was a child in his father’s arms. The arid ache inside him swelled with grief and compounded loss. He looked up and found brown eyes, made amber in the lamplight.
“Why are you here?” he asked.
“Fulfilling the will of the gods?” Corvus smiled as he had done a hundred times in the roundhouse. “According to my orders, I am here to buy horses and to recruit men. The emperor is building a fresh army and he needs both. I have been forgiven the dishonour of losing a ship and they have given me charge of a wing of Gaulish cavalry, for which I am very grateful. You only have to march once with the infantry to realize why every other civilized nation makes war on horseback.” He smiled inwardly at a joke Bán did not understand and shook his head.
“Never mind that. Just believe me when I say that I have the necessary authority and it matters to me that I use it wisely. I have concluded an agreement of sale with a particularly unpleasant Gaul named Godomo; I will buy from him two hundred and fifty horses of mixed age, both colts and fillies, at the full asking price—that number to include an irregularly marked black and white three-year-old colt and the youth who so effectively demonstrated the cavalry mount in the arena.”
Bán felt his heart stop. He remembered Braxus and all that went with him. “He can’t sell me. He really can’t. Even if Amminios would let him, he can’t. I killed—”
“No.” The hands soothing his head fell still, grasping his temples. “Don’t say it. Even in private, say nothing.”
“But—”
“Bán, listen to me.” He was pushed upright and made to look into eyes that were nothing at all like his father’s. “At the villa of Amminios, a Belgic boy-slave named Iccius was sent into the hypocaust to find why the fires would not draw. In the process of looking, he dislodged a badly made pillar and caused a floor to collapse. He was fatally injured by falling masonry. A Thracian overseer named Braxus, who had a carnal fondness for the boy—”
“Corvus, you knew Iccius. How can you say that?”
“Because he’s dead and you’re not and whereas I can do nothing to bring him back, I can stop you from following. Hear me out. I am telling you what has been recorded. The Thracian slave jumped into the cavity and tried to save his catamite. He was struck on the head by a block of marble in a secondary fall and he, too, died of his injuries. That’s how it was. Godomo has sworn it in front of the magistrate. He has agreed to undertake the repair of the baths at his own expense.”
“But—”
“Bán, will you listen? A slave cannot give evidence against his master except under torture. Do you really want to suggest that Godomo has perjured himself?”
“How can he testify to anything? He wasn’t there.”
“He may not have been, but in the absence of his master he has ultimate responsibility and, according to all the witnesses, the only two people who were present are dead. It is understood that the Thracian had sent all others from the building on a pretext before he tried to save the boy, so the truth will never be exactly known. In the meantime, if Godomo wishes to conclude the sale of Amminios’s horses—and I understand that he wishes very badly to do so—then he must agree to sell me the pied colt and give me the papers concerning his rider. I have made it very clear to him that this deal is all or nothing. I get you, or he makes no sale to me or any other Roman officer. He has no choice. Therefore, it must be that no-one else was involved in the deaths or his sale will founder.”
“He can’t sell me. I’m not his to sell. Amminios will hang him if he comes back and finds me gone.”
“He may do, although I doubt it. Amminios is interested primarily in money and power and I am his route to both. I think it is a risk Godomo is prepared to take. In any case, he hasn’t sold you. He has passed your papers to me, which is different.”
The Roman rose and crossed back to the blanket box. He drew another beaker and a flask of wine from inside and dragged the box across to act as a seat. A rolled scroll lay on his knee, ignored by them both. “Did you know Amminios was going to host a dinner in my honour tonight?”
“Yes, Braxus told me. They were going to offer you Iccius after it.”
“Gods. Were they?” A muscle jumped in Corvus’s cheek. “I would not say I am glad the lad is dead, but I am glad I avoided that.” He poured for them both and Bán drank unaided. Wine was a habit he had come to late and only in small quantities, but it warmed him now and he would not have done Corvus the dishonour of turning him down.
The Roman said gently, “Godomo told me that Amminios’s war eagles slaughtered your family. Is it true?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry.” He sat down on the blanket box, keeping the wine at his side. “And Caradoc, is he dead also?”
“No.” The spit grew sour in Bán’s mouth. “He left us a day before the attack. He helped Amminios plan it.”
“What?” The Roman stared at him. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. Amminios told me on the boat when they first brought me over. I didn’t believe him then but I heard him talking about it later in the bathhouse with Braxus; they forgot I was outside stoking the fire and could hear it all. He was laughing at the old-fashioned superstitions of the Eceni, about how Breaca had been taken in by something as meaningless as an oath made on a blade and the rest of us had followed her blindly, like children. He said—” He choked and had to gather himself. “He said it was what m
ade us so easy to kill.”
The memory burned at the scar on his arm. It was what had sparked the very earliest attempt to escape and had earned him the brand. In the white-hot fury of the moment, he had dropped his wood and run for the stables to steal a horse, with no better idea in his mind than to get back to the land of the Ordovices and kill Caradoc or die trying. His choice of horse, made in haste, had been poor and Braxus’s men had run him down before he reached the gates but, for the brief span of his freedom, it had mattered more to Bán that Caradoc die than Amminios. Searching inside now for that same flame of anger, he failed to find it; Iccius’s death had extinguished everything.
Still, he wept—for the memory of Iccius and his family more than for himself. Corvus came to sit beside him, sharing the dignity of silence. In time, when the worst of it had passed, he said, “I am truly sorry. I had thought better of Caradoc. But whatever might have been between him and his brother, it will be different now. Cunobelin is dead and Amminios has sailed home to attend his father’s funeral. If you are right and he has made a pact with Caradoc, then the two of them will kill Togodubnos. If they survive, I would bet everything I own that Caradoc will go on to kill Amminios. He may have made a passing alliance, but he has nursed a hatred since his childhood and I can’t see him letting go of it easily. I would say that if your former master makes his way home alive he will be concerned about greater things than a freed Eceni hostage.”
Corvus refilled the beakers and laid them on the blanket box within easy reach. Bán stared at him.
“Hostage?”