by George Green
‘That was close, up there,’ he said, indicating back up the mountain path with an inclination of his head.
Serpicus agreed. ‘Lucky,’ he said. ‘If Cato hadn’t been there I’d be lying down in the valley now, making a lot of crows very happy.’
Snake said nothing and carried on rhythmically tossing the knife. Serpicus stopped undressing and looked at him searchingly.
‘What’s wrong? You want to say something?’
Snake frowned and, with a flick of his wrist too fast for Serpicus to follow, sent the knife six feet through the air into a dead branch lying on the ground nearby. They both watched the handle quiver.
Snake seemed to come to a decision.
‘I was on the wrong side of the horses when you started sliding. That’s why I couldn’t get to you sooner.’
Serpicus smiled. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Everyone was. Don’t worry about it. Luckily Cato was close.’
Snake bent forward and retrieved the knife. ‘I saw his face.’
Serpicus waited. ‘So?’
‘He hesitated.’
‘I was sliding over a cliff. I’d have hesitated myself.’
Snake shook his head. ‘He watched you slide. He did nothing.’
‘I’m not surprised. No one moved at first. It takes a while to react to something like that, especially when you’re freezing cold.’
‘He smiled.’
‘What?’
Snake looked absolutely serious. ‘I saw him. He saw you slipping, he watched and he smiled.’
Serpicus didn’t know what to say. ‘What are you saying? That he wasn’t going to save me? Then why did he? It would have been easy enough to have let me go.’
Snake shook his head again. ‘He changed his mind. He saw you go, he smiled, and then he suddenly pulled his cloak off and started running. I don’t know why.’
There was a pause.
‘That’s ridiculous,’ Serpicus said.
‘I know. I already knew it would sound like nonsense when I said it. But I know what I saw.’ Snake shrugged. ‘I wanted you to know.’
Serpicus waited, but the Cretan had apparently finished.
‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘Thanks. I’ll remember what you said.’
‘Let’s hope you won’t need to,’ said Snake and walked away, brushing past Brutus as he went.
‘What was all that about?’ the big man asked, watching the Cretan’s retreating figure.
Serpicus shrugged. ‘I don’t really know. He says Cato thought twice before saving me.’
Brutus made a face. ‘I’m not surprised,’ he said. ‘He could easily have gone over the edge with you.’
‘That’s more or less what I told him,’ Serpicus said. ‘Snake says he saw Cato watch me slipping, then changed his mind. Says he smiled.’
‘They’ve never got on, those two,’ said Brutus. ‘Maybe there’s trouble brewing. I’ll keep an eye on both of them.’ He knelt down and put his cupped hands in the stream, then brought them up to drink. ‘I’ve got a bigger worry than those two falling out,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘The snow. It’s cold today all right, but the winter has hardly started. I’m wondering how the hell we’re going to drag a bloody great bear in a cage over the Hinterrhein in a month’s time when there’s a blizzard blowing in our faces and five feet of snow and ice on the ground?’
Serpicus said nothing. His family would die if he couldn’t get the cage over the Pass. Therefore the cage was going over, there was nothing else to say. How, he had no idea.
Chapter Twenty-One
The rest of the journey down the mountain passed without serious incident. Apart from a sore finger Serpicus had no lasting damage, but the cold had got into him and he was glad to be moving towards the lowlands.
For several days the countryside was strangely deserted. They passed villas without inhabitants, fields without workers. Ragged figures watched from a safe distance and returned to scavenging when the heavily armed group were safely on their way.
Then the land became less fertile and the villas fewer and smaller. They rode past thick clumps of trees and undergrowth, often too thick to pass through. A day more and they were on a low ridge. The great forest stretched in front of them, dark and silent.
Galba and Serpicus rode on ahead to scout the forest edge taking Scipio and Cato with them. Brutus and Severus stayed with the main body. The idea was that if either group met with Germans then either Brutus or Serpicus should be around to explain who they were. Decius wanted to come and scout too but they made him stay behind with Brutus, and the main group.
The trees in this part of the forest were unusually sparse and relatively easy to pass through, although the rough bushes still scraped like coral against a rider’s legs and long black thorns still snagged at his clothing and scratched at his exposed skin.
A steady damp drizzle laid a fine spray on Serpicus’ jacket, the sort of rain someone hardly notices until their clothes are utterly sodden. Serpicus smiled and tilted his head back so that it could fall on his face. He didn’t mind the rain. After seven years under an Italian sky he’d forgotten what honest rain felt like. His sun-leathered skin soaked up the moisture like an open mouth.
‘Look.’
Galba pointed to the ground. Tracks were clearly visible. Scipio swung down off his horse and knelt by them, tracing the indentation in the soft earth with a forefinger. Then he stood and looked up and down the trail. He raised his hand in a signal for the others to stay where they were and he loped off on foot. They waited in silence, the bored horses chewing at their bridles and flicking their tails idly.
Scipio returned a little later. One of his fists was closed around something.
Galba leant forward and folded his arms on his horse’s neck to give himself a place to rest his chin. ‘Any ideas?’
Scipio nodded. ‘Two people. A grown man on a horse, and a woman or a boy on a pony. The man’s horse was lame.’ He pointed to the prints on the ground. Serpicus leant forward to look. Now that Scipio had pointed it out, he could see that there were two sets of hoof-prints, and that they were different sizes and depths, and that one of the larger hoof-marks was less well defined than the other three. Easy when you knew how.
‘How long ago?’ asked Galba.
Scipio opened his palm and offered the contents up to them. ‘Any idea what that is?’
Serpicus looked at it, and then stared unkindly at Scipio. ‘I was a chariot driver. I work under the arena every day. If there is one thing I know more about than anything else, it’s horseshit. I’m an expert on it. If the Senate needs to know about horseshit I’m the man they call for. Don’t offer me a handful of it and then ask me if I know what it is.’
Scipio grinned. ‘Fair enough. And you hunt and trap animals for a living, so you must know a bit about tracking. So, what does this fine specimen tell us?’
Serpicus took some of it in his hand, feeling slightly ridiculous, and thought hard. It was round and quite dry, soft to the touch. ‘Not much. It’s cold, so not very recent. It isn’t rotted, so less than – what? – a week old?’
Scipio nodded with pursed lips, like a sympathetic teacher with a slow pupil who may just get there if he is given long enough. ‘Anything else?’
Serpicus thought harder. ‘Yes. It hasn’t lost its shape.’ He patted his sleeve and the fine mist came off in drops on his hand. ‘This wouldn’t be enough to do anything to it for a good while, but there was heavy rain at around dawn today. It must have been dropped after that or it wouldn’t be this shape and it wouldn’t be as dry.’
He thought Scipio was going to burst into applause.
‘Excellent. So, the horse laid it between dawn and a short while ago. Anything else?’
Serpicus had the feeling he was back at school. He’d never liked school. ‘No, it’s just horseshit.’
Scipio leant forward and prodded it with a finger. ‘Even texture. This horse only eats grass.’
‘It’s a horse,’ said Galba. ‘That’s what horses eat.’ Scipio got back on his horse. ‘German horses, yes,’ he said. ‘Roman horses, on the other hand…’
‘Hay,’ said Serpicus, with a gesture of acknowledgement. ‘They eat hay.’
Scipio nodded with satisfaction. ‘Just so. No dry grass fibres in the shit, ergo, this is not a Roman horse. So, do we follow them?’ The lesson was apparently over.
Cato leant forward on his horse’s withers. ‘Might they perhaps be Romans riding German horses?’
‘Or Romans who’ve run out of hay?’ asked Galba.
‘Or Romans trying to put us off the scent by cleverly denying it to their horses?’ said Cato.
‘I doubt it,’ said Scipio. ‘For one thing, because they think everyone is frightened of them, it wouldn’t usually occur to Romans that they needed to disguise their tracks. For another, we’re in Germany and there’s a rebellion going on. Romans in this sort of situation typically tend to go around in large heavily armed groups, not on their own with women or boys for company.’
Galba looked at Scipio wide-eyed. ‘Can you tell all that just from looking at one piece of shit?’ he asked.
Serpicus and Scipio grinned. Serpicus didn’t get Galba’s joke. He chewed on Scipio’s reply for a few moments, and then nodded. ‘Fair enough. So, if they aren’t Romans, do we need to keep following them?’ Galba and Serpicus looked at each other, and Galba raised an almost hairless eyebrow. ‘They’re your people. I only know about Romans, not Germans. You know the best way to approach them.’
Serpicus thought about it for a moment. Finding the Treveri was the point of the expedition. A man and a boy would be harder to track than a war party of men, but less likely to lie in ambush for them.
‘We’ll follow them, see if we can catch them up, but let’s go carefully. Try and see them before they see us.’ Scipio gestured towards the tracks. ‘Shouldn’t be too hard. That lame horse is in trouble. The rider will need to keep a slow pace and take a lot of rests or he’ll soon be walking home.’
They pushed their horses forward and for the next hour they followed the tracks in silence. The imprints were clear in the damp earth and had not yet filled with water. The two riders weren’t far ahead.
Cato pulled his horse up beside Serpicus and Scipio. ‘We could save some time here,’ he said, pointing up the track.
Serpicus paused and looked around. The track was heading straight towards the base of a steep hill directly in front of them. If the riders were heading north they would have to skirt around the hill, there was no way a lame animal could have climbed it. Cato pointed, drawing a line in the air. Serpicus looked along the length of his arm and saw what he meant. There was an animal path cutting a jagged but clear line from the track up the side of the hill. If the riders were going around the hill, the pursuers could climb and cut across their path, perhaps even overtake them. Of course, if the riders were going around the hill but heading east, then the pursuers would miss them and have to swing back in a wide arc until they crossed their trail again. Serpicus made a decision.
‘Galba and I will take the hill. You wait for Severus to catch up and then carry on following the trail. If we can see them from the top we’ll come down and introduce ourselves. They shouldn’t be too frightened by just two of us. If we can’t see them or find their tracks, we’ll wait and meet you at the bottom of the hill on the northern side. Carry on following them if you have to but don’t let them see you. Wait until we catch up with you again. All right?’ Scipio nodded and pulled his horse around, and the rest of the men followed him. Cato looked as though he wanted to make another suggestion, but then stayed silent. Galba was already tackling the path. Serpicus heeled his tired horse after him.
The hill was stony, and the path was narrow but it was there. Galba and Serpicus wound their way up the hill and breasted a ridge near the top. In front of them and on all sides the forest spread out into the distance. A pale sun broke through the clouds and Serpicus sat up in the saddle as the warmth hit his face. They had been under dark clouds and the trees for days. It was good to see bright light again.
He looked around. Below them on the north side of the hill, Serpicus could see two horses picking their way around the trees. Scipio had read their tracks well. One was an older man, with silver hair and dressed in a long robe, and he was accompanied by a boy on a pony. As Serpicus watched, the two riders stopped to share a skin of water.
From high above them on the hill, Serpicus and Galba had a panoramic view of the trail the two riders were following and what lay in front of them. Which meant that Serpicus and Galba had an excellent view of the six Roman horses lined up in wait behind a dense thicket about a bow-shot down the hill.
Two bored legionaries were looking after the animals. Galba and Serpicus dismounted, pulled their own horses back under cover and moved forward so that they could peer down over a large rock without being seen. ‘Where are the rest of them?’ whispered Galba.
Serpicus shaded his eyes and looked carefully. For a moment he couldn’t make anything out. Then he realized what he was looking at. There were dark outlines in the trees and bushes on either side of the track that could be men. He waited a little longer and saw one of them move, then another.
‘I can see five or six men in the trees waiting for them.’
‘Look,’ said Galba. He pointed back along the track, behind where the two riders now stood. There were soldiers there too, about the same number. They were on horseback, but still behind the trees, waiting for something, a command or a signal. They had let the two riders pass without revealing themselves.
‘Ambush,’ Galba said softly.
Serpicus nodded. ‘What are they up to?’ he said. ‘There are at least a dozen Romans, there may be even more down there who are better at hiding than the ones I can see. Why sneak up on them? Why not just go and get them? Why would they go to all this trouble to ambush a boy and a man on a lame horse?’
Galba shrugged. ‘Maybe he’s a great warrior?’
‘He’ll need to be,’ Serpicus said grimly. There was something about the silver-haired man that reminded him of someone. ‘I’m going down to have a look,’ he said.
Galba looked at him doubtfully. ‘Are you sure? If there’s going to be a fight I’m not sure we should get mixed up in it.’
Serpicus swung back onto his horse and urged it forward. ‘I think I know who that is down there, and if I’m right then I know why they have a dozen Romans out to catch him. Stay here, I’ll be back.’
The route directly to the bottom of the steep hill was clear enough, but it wasn’t an option for Serpicus. The horse would have got a few steps and then tipped over and gone head first the rest of the way and Serpicus would have gone tumbling straight after him. There was a goat track at a sharp angle down the hillside, precipitous but possible. The horse picked his way down it and Serpicus concentrated on counting Romans. The path brought him onto a small shelf of rock which was almost directly above the two slowly moving riders. From there the hill dropped all but vertically to the track. Serpicus vaulted off the horse. He crouched low and edged closer, trying to keep out of sight of the soldiers. He picked up a stone and threw it overarm with all his strength down towards the road. The stone fell short, hit an outcrop and bounced high, landed a few steps in front of the pair of riders and clattered on into the forest. The old man looked at it and then reined the horse back to see where it had come from.
Serpicus looked down at his long face and thin beard and felt the warmth of memory flood him. He knew for certain who the rider was.
The old man didn’t shout or give any sign of recognition. He stopped and waited, as if watching to see what Serpicus would do. Serpicus gestured emphatically back along the trail, then as emphatically up the way the two riders were travelling. He couldn’t at that moment think of a good mime for ‘Roman’, but he felt it probably wasn’t necessary. His agitation obviously meant trouble, and trouble usually meant Romans. The old
man pulled the horse hard round away from the hill and towards the forest. In a moment he and the boy were in the trees and out of sight.
‘You’ve made some enemies down there,’ Galba said as Serpicus breasted the hill dragging his horse behind him and sat, gasping for breath. Serpicus looked back down the hill. Mounted Romans were approaching at speed from both ends of the track. One of them, an officer by his helmet plumes, waved most of the soldiers into the trees after the man and boy. He waited on the track, his horse pawing the earth, and looked up at the two men on the steep hill. It was too far away for them to see his face, but Serpicus felt he could have taken a fair guess at his expression.
‘Not a happy man,’ said Galba. ‘What do we do now?’
‘Wait, I suppose,’ Serpicus said. ‘They’ll get bored and move away and then we can ride on.’
‘What happens if they catch up with the old man and the boy?’
Serpicus smiled. ‘They won’t.’
‘You’re very certain. His horse was lame and the Romans are just behind him. It’s odds on they’ll catch him in no time.’
‘If I weren’t an honestman I’d take that bet,’ Serpicus said. He looked back down the hill. ‘They’ll not catch him.’ He picked up a rock and tossed it in the air, feeling its weight. ‘You want a real bet, how much says I can knock that blond bastard’s helmet off from here?’
‘Good idea,’ said Galba, shaking his head. ‘You’ve only ruined his ambush, he’s hardly likely to be seriously annoyed yet, let’s pelt him with rocks and make absolutely sure.’
They retraced their path to the top of the hill and watched from behind a clump of bushes. Soon the Roman soldiers came back out of the trees, slower and much dirtier than when they went in. The officer was still on the road, and he kept looking up the hill back at where Serpicus and Galba had disappeared from sight. He took his helmet off and wiped his forehead on his sleeve. His hair shone a bright yellow-blond in the sun. Serpicus remembered where he had seen hair like that before. Weeks before, standing in the entrance to the Palace of the Partner, when a young Roman with hair like straw threatened to kill him for no reason at all.