It was exhilarating, galloping across the spine of the world with the cold wind singing and the distant peaks rising from the cloud bank that obscured their foot.
Far below, Correus could just see a single shining loop of the Rhenus where it wound through the wide flat valley above Argentoratum. The river mist had burned off and the patrol galleys of the Rhenus Fleet showed as scarlet dots on the silvered water; two of them, like a pair of hunting dogs, coursed warily upriver under oar and sail. Beyond the river were terraced vineyard slopes pruned back for the winter and showing black against the snow.
Just ahead, Dog bounded through the frost-killed grass; Correus pulled his horse up sharply as the ground fell away into a rocky slope at the edge of the moor. There was a trodden game trail going down the slope, and they followed Dog along it until the moor ran again into the edge of the upland forest. By the growing excitement of Dog they knew the trail was getting hotter now, and they gripped the heavy boar spears while Dog took care not to lope too far ahead of the horsemen. The fanged and tusked wild boar of the Black Forest was a different animal entirely from the tame pigs of the farmyard.
“This time we’ve got him!” Paulinus shouted. For all his slightness, Paulinus rode like a centaur, and he guided his mount easily over the fallen leaves of the forest track, his spear balanced in his right hand. Tullius was a few paces behind him, close enough for his nervous mount to fleck the rump of Paulinus’s horse with foam. Correus and Flavius rode two abreast behind Tullius, with Bericus in the rear, his young face alight with excitement. Bericus had been sold out of a City household to pay the estate taxes, and he was beginning to think that he had gotten the best of the bargain. Flavius was a pleasant master, if strict, and certainly the frontier was proving a far more interesting environment than the orderly household he had been born to.
The trail took a sharp bend, dived beneath an overhanging pine bough, and came up against a steep rise of rock with moss and small plants clinging precariously to its face. A thatch of brown grass and a few scrawny pines crowned the top. At the base of the outcrop a thick tangle of wild blackberry screened a fissure opening into the rock itself. There was a strong, rank smell of pig in the air.
Dog sat panting in front of the blackberry, showing his teeth in a crocodile grin while he waited for them to catch up. “All right,” he seemed to say. “I found him, you get him out.” Dog was wise in the ways of the hunting trail and not the fool to worm his way into that fissure alone.
“Damn!” Flavius said. “He could lie up there all day. We’ve got to pry him loose. Bericus, see if you can get up on the top of that outcrop from the far side and gallop around a bit. It’ll echo like Hades in that cave, and it may stir him up.”
“He’ll be in a fiend’s temper,” Paulinus said.
“I suppose you think you’ve put him in a pleasant mood by chasing him all this way,” Correus pointed out. “He’ll get more irritated yet when you stick a spear in him.”
“Or he may just go roaring on past without stopping to fight,” Paulinus said. “We’ve got to be ready for him. Correus, you and Flavius spread out on the right there, and Tullius and I will take the left. Dog can put a tooth in whatever’s showing.”
They spread into a semicircle outside the rock cave, waiting for any sound from within. There was a shout from above and they looked up to see Bericus on the summit, waving his arms. He dug his heels into his pony’s flank and raced him to the far end and back, the iron shoes ringing on the flat rock table that covered most of the summit.
Something stirred inside the rock, and Flavius waved his arm at Bericus to do it again. Dog crouched low in the snow, scrabbling a little with his claws for traction. The snow on the clearing before the rock face was not deep, but the winter sun had melted the top layer so that it was slick and precarious.
The iron shoes rang out on the rock again, and suddenly there was a loud snorting growl and a thrashing in the blackberry canes and the boar erupted into the clearing. He was a huge beast, thick and humpbacked with vicious curving tusks. He halted for only a moment in the circle of horsemen, eyes glowing red and dangerous. Flavius licked his lips and shifted his grip on his spear, and then the boar charged straight at him.
Flavius hesitated only an instant, but it was too long. Nestor caught his nervousness and shied, and as he did so, his right rear hoof came down on a jagged rock half buried in the snow. The horse tried to balance himself, but the ground was icy and unstable and he went down on his flank with a terrified neighing, Flavius half in and half out of the saddle.
There was a horrified cry from Bericus. He pulled his horse’s head around and sent him crashing down the steep slope on the far side of the rock face.
Nestor’s forelegs were entangled in the reins and Flavius lay with one leg trapped beneath the horse, desperately trying to shorten his grip on the spear shaft as the boar came in. His face was ashen with fright.
Dog sprang, sinking his teeth in the thick muscles of the boar’s shoulder, but the boar shook him off like a rat. Paulinus and Tullius kicked their horses forward and Correus came around the other side to drive the boar off, but their quarry, furious and in pain, saw only that one of its tormentors was down. Flavius’s spear slid along the boar’s flank, opening up a deep gash, and then he was pinned beneath its weight, the razor-sharp teeth an inch from his face.
Correus flung himself from his horse and stumbled in the snow and rocks to dig his spear into the boar’s haunch. There was a howl of rage and the boar turned to face him. Correus yanked the weapon free, backed carefully a few paces, and braced himself, the spear shaft suddenly slippery where the blood had run down it. The boar stood panting and looked from Correus to Flavius, its red eyes stupid with rage. Flavius was bleeding, leaving a bright red pool in the snow. Correus shook his spear at the boar to distract him while Tullius moved around from the other side, and Paulinus, also dismounted now, tried frantically to untangle the reins from the bay’s legs before he rolled on his rider in his terror.
Tullius circled around carefully, almost afraid to move for fear of driving the boar on Flavius and Paulinus, or prodding him into a charge at Correus.
To Correus, standing in the snow with nothing but a spear between him and the deadly tusks, it seemed as if everything froze and came sharply into focus. And then the scene exploded. The boar, making up its mind, came at him. He shortened his spear and thrust hard, staggering back as it went in and caught somewhere on a bone and the boar’s great weight crashed against him. He could see its red, dripping tusks and caught a choking lungful of its foul breath as he rolled desperately out from under it. The boar stumbled and righted itself. Correus grabbed at his spear, still buried in the boar’s forequarters, and drew it back while Dog came limping in again to sink his own dripping fangs in the boar’s throat and Tullius drove a spear downward into the humped back. The boar came at Correus, who thrust again, and this time the angle was right and the spear sank almost to his hand into the heart. The boar squealed, and dropped. It thrashed in the snow, then was still.
Correus fell heavily to his knees. His heart was pounding, his mouth dry. He felt light-headed. He rubbed a handful of snow across his face, and the world came into focus again. He saw that the horse was on its feet, but the still form near it in the snow had not moved. Correus pulled himself up.
Bericus was kneeling beside Flavius, sobbing in fear and grief while Paulinus methodically tore strips from the edge of his cloak.
“I should never have gone away from him,” Bericus said, choking.
“Nonsense,” Paulinus said. “He ordered you up there himself. Now help me to lift him while I see how deep that gash is.”
Flavius had a bleeding, cut on his cheek and a great, deep tear in his chest where the boar’s tusk had gone in. He lay perfectly still, as pale as the snow, but Correus saw almost with relief that he was still bleeding freely. That meant he was alive.
“I think he hit his head,” Paulinus said, his voice shaking. “An
d we’ve got to stop that bleeding.” He cut the tunic away with his knife, then Bericus and Correus lifted Flavius by the shoulders while Paulinus pressed a pad of cloth over the wound and wrapped a long strip tightly around it. Behind them, Dog sat licking a gash in his own hide while Tullius ran his hands up and down the bay’s legs.
“He’ll do,” he said to Paulinus. “The leg’s not even strained, more’s the mystery. But can we get the centurion on him?”
“I don’t know,” Paulinus said.
Flavius stirred and his eyes opened. “I can ride,” he said thickly.
“No,” Correus said. “Put him up on Antaeus and I’ll ride behind him.”
Flavius shook his head and set his mouth in a stubborn line. He started to sit up and then slumped backward against Correus, his eyes closed again.
“Well, he can’t argue with us,” Paulinus said practically. “Get him up on the other horse,” he told Tullius, “and hold him until Correus can get a grip on him.”
“Will he live?” Bericus whispered.
Paulinus scrubbed his hands in the snow and stood up.
“That is for the gods to decide, lad. But I think yes, if we can get him to a surgeon fast enough.”
Tullius lifted Flavius into the saddle and held him while Paulinus quieted the sidling horse to let Correus swing on behind. Correus knotted the reins around the saddle horns and put both arms around his brother. “All right, let him go. I can guide him with my knees.”
“What about that?” Tullius looked at the gray bulk of the boar, its blood sinking into a pool in the snow.
“Leave it for the wolves,” Paulinus said. His face was chalky beneath the freckles. “I don’t think I want it much.”
Tullius looked up at the sun, now low among the trees. “There was another track we passed, just at the top of that slope of scrub,” he said. “It may go down to the road. We’ve taken it before, I think, and it would be a sight faster. Do we chance it?”
They looked at Correus. He hesitated. If they took the wrong track… But it was a long way back if they went the way they had come. He slipped his hand under Flavius’s cloak. The bandage felt sticky; he was still losing blood. “We chance it,” he said grimly.
They set off, Tullius and Dog in the lead with Paulinus behind them. Bericus was leading Flavius’s bay, but showed such a tendency to hover beside Correus, his stricken eyes on Flavius’s blood-smeared face, that Paulinus finally took the reins from him in exasperation when they came to where the track led upward to the moor. A second track ran away down from it, sloping at right angles into the trees.
“If you want to be useful, head down there and see if you can find out where in the name of the Mother we’re going,” Paulinus ordered.
Bericus nodded and put his heels to his horse, and Paulinus sighed with relief. Correus had enough to contend with, he thought, looking back at his friend’s grim, set face.
Except for the crunch of the horses’ hooves in the snow, the black woods were as silent as a passage to the Underworld. There was precious little any of them could say, and Correus found himself uncomfortably alone with his thoughts. His head still felt vague and cloudy and he was guiding Antaeus more by instinct than anything else; all he knew with any certainty was that he did not want Flavius to die. He was his brother, and in his fashion he loved him. Telling Appius that Flavius had died for no better reason than a day’s hunting was something he could not face.
After a while Bericus’s pony came slithering back up the trail. “It… it peters out down there. I’m not sure. I think we’re on the right track, but I’m no woodsman.”
Tullius whistled up Dog and they trotted off ahead, while the others plodded on silently. The trail dipped sharply, and at the base, where Bericus had turned back, Dog sniffed about, then set off through a gap in the trees. The snow was unmarked, but he seemed to know where he was going. The gap opened up into a clearing where a rabbit track ran across the ground. Dog paused and whined uncertainly.
Tullius looked worried. “I wish I knew how to say ‘Go home’ in German.” Dog had been well trained for the hunting trail, but he was unused to Latin commands.
Correus brought Antaeus up beside Tullius and snapped his fingers at the hound. Dog looked dubious.
“Go on, you damned fool,” Tullius said.
Apparently reading permission in his voice, Dog approached Correus, and Correus let him sniff his hands and the saddle leather and the warm horse – the scents of camp. “Home,” he said firmly in German. “Take us home, fellow.” He hoped he had used the right command. It could have been “hearth” or “hut” or the name of a village that the dog would understand. The forest darkened suddenly as a scudding bank of clouds ran across the sun. Flavius stirred and Correus felt him shiver under the cloak. “Home,” he said again, then added, “Romans!” That might be a word the hound knew.
Dog turned away and began to cast about the clearing, this time ignoring the rabbit tracks. There was something eerie about this grove of trees – a ring of great oaks with an open space at the center and a flat table of rock jutting up from it. It had a feel to it, Correus thought, like a little cold wind running down the back, and he saw that there was a sheaf of wild grasses and a handful of withered berries laid on the rock, half covered with the snow.
Suddenly he wanted to be gone out of there. This was a sacred grove of the Mother, and he had a feeling that they profaned it merely by their presence. Gripping Flavius tightly with one arm, he reached under him into the pouches slung behind the saddle and drew out a crust of bread. He dropped it on the rock altar with a swift prayer asking forgiveness for trespassing.
Bericus gave him a startled look. The mysteries of the Mother were women’s business, and in this present guise she was not even of their world.
“It never hurts, lad,” Paulinus said quietly. “This is her wood, and we have brought blood and iron into it, which I think is forbidden.” He pulled a dried apple from his own saddlebags and dismounted to place it beside the bread.
Dog barked sharply from across the clearing and they circled wide around the altar to follow him. He padded on through the snow, following whatever trail lay beneath it. He seemed more sure of himself now as he ran downhill, the sun low on the right.
With a yelp, Dog dived through an opening in the trees and there was a slithering sound of fallen branches and loose snow. A moment later he reappeared, shaking the snow from his hide. He yelped again and sat down, panting and pleased with himself, while the riders pushed forward to the edge of the trees.
Below them the bank dropped sharply, with a wide, churned-up path where the hound had slid down it on his haunches. And beyond that was the cleared land, with jagged stumps of trees jutting from the snow and the log road running through it, tracked by the passage of a supply train from Argentoratum.
Tullius put his horse down the slope with a shout of relief, beckoning to Bericus to follow him, while Paulinus with the led horse and Correus with his brother inched their way down behind them.
The horses sank to their hocks as they slid through the steep drifts, but the log road had been well cleared by the supply train. A wooden post pounded into the ground beside it showed it was no more than four miles from the camp.
“All right, lad,” Tullius said to Bericus. “Here’s where you can help. Ride like the Furies and tell the surgeon to be ready for us.”
Bericus nodded and kicked his horse into a gallop, the trampled snow flying up behind him.
Flavius groaned as Antaeus took the jump over the narrow drainage ditch awkwardly because of his double burden. “Soon,” Correus whispered. “We’ll make camp soon. Hang on, brother!”
Flavius nodded and said something unintelligible. He leaned back again into Correus’s shoulder. They made better time on the log road but still dared not push beyond a fast walk for fear of worsening the injury. Blood had already soaked through the makeshift bandage. By the time they turned through the camp gate, it was almost full dark and
Correus could feel the warm blood through the folds of Flavius’s cloak.
Bericus was waiting at the gate with an orderly who took a look at the blood-soaked cloak and told Correus to take Flavius straight to the hospital. Correus nodded. He swayed slightly and tightened his arms around Flavius, afraid of losing his grip.
Paulinus looked at him in concern. “Here, are you all right?”
“I feel a bit light and stupid,” Correus said. “Fuzzy…” His voice trailed off.
Paulinus handed the bay’s reins to Bericus and took Antaeus by the bridle. “You just hang on. I’ll lead him. Did you know you’re bleeding?”
Correus looked down to his left where a little trail of blood showed dark on the snow in the torchlight. “I thought it was Flavius,” he said, but his left leg ached like fire.
“Well, it’s not,” Paulinus said sharply. “It’s you. Your boot’s full of blood.”
The hospital lay at the center of the camp, behind and to one side of the Principia. It was built of timber, in contrast to the leather tents that served as offices and barracks in a marching camp. Labienus, the senior surgeon of the legion, a lean, plain-faced man in his thirties, met them at the doorway.
“You can let go now,” he said gently, and Correus loosened his grasp as Labienus and a junior surgeon reached up to lift Flavius down.
Correus slid wearily from Antaeus’s back and limped into the hospital after the others. He found a bench against the wall in the main surgery and dropped down on it. The surgery was lamplit and a half-dozen iron braziers glowed warmly around the room. He sat, letting the cold ease out of his body until such time as someone had the leisure to see what was wrong with his leg.
Labienus and a junior surgeon had gotten Flavius up on a surgery table and were expertly cutting away the shreds of his tunic. Labienus inspected the wound as the sticky bandages came away. He set about cleaning it with a basin of warm water that had been heating on a grill over one of the braziers. The wound was still seeping redly. Labienus put a pad of clean bandage over the gash and held it. Flavius groaned and opened his eyes.
The Centurions Page 14