Quintillian stared at the man in silence for a long moment, and then began to laugh. He laughed so hard, in fact, that he found difficulty in breathing. Asander simply stood with his arms folded, one eyebrow raised disapprovingly, and catching sight of him like that just made the laughter worse.
‘Bleta alak ulda ghursig!’ bellowed a guttural voice.
‘Shit!’ Asander quickly grabbed the end of the saw and tried to heave it through the thick branch, with little success since Quintillian was out of breath, recovering from his howling laughter. The prince held up a hand to try and mollify the approaching nomad, whose face was a picture of rage beneath his curious rectal headgear. Arse-hat stepped across two of the fallen branches and shoved Quintillian roughly. The prince staggered a few paces backward but managed to retain his footing.
Asander, giving up on the branch on his own, watched the irate nomad closing on his friend again, and saw the hilarity slide from Quintillian’s face, leaving a bleak visage of utter hatred. The scout felt a knot of fear rise into his throat and started to shake his head. Arse-hat was now ranting at the prince in his garbled tongue, too fast and with too unusual words for Asander to be able to follow much. The man shoved Quintillian again, hard, with the palms of his hands, sending the prince tripping back over the next branch. Quintillian recovered himself and rose once more, and Asander felt his spirits sink as he saw his friend’s face.
‘Don’t do it.’
But Quintillian’s eyes were flashing angrily.
‘Quintus, don’t do it!’
Arse-hat gestured towards the deeper forest as he ranted, waving his other arm in the air.
Quintillian hit him.
Asander stared in horror. The blow shouldn’t have been a particularly powerful one. There hadn’t been a swing, after all, just a short jab, and there wasn’t much room for a good thump, but he couldn’t deny the evidence of his eyes. The prince’s blow had spread the nomad’s already wide nose across his face. Blood sheeted down his lips and chin and as Arse-hat staggered back, his mouth opened in shock, and he was now missing both top incisors. His remaining yellow-brown teeth were swimming in blood, which continued to pour from his face as Quintillian lowered his hand, his ire sated for a moment.
‘Tell him if he wants to kill me he can, but I will always be better than him.’
Asander shook his head. ‘If you do that…’
‘Tell him!’ barked Quintillian, and in that moment he was as imperial as he’d ever been. Asander could see the blood of Darius the Just in him. He turned to the nomad and cleared his throat. Slowly, with some searching for words, he paraphrased Quintillian carefully. The nomad’s eyes widened in surprise, then narrowed in anger. Then he began to speak, slowly, so that Asander could follow him. The scout coughed nervously.
‘He says he will definitely kill you. But not here. You have insulted him and he wants to kill you in public. We’re to go to the nomads’ campsite on the edge of the woods and there he will rip you in two.’
‘I’ll still be better than him.’
Asander scurried over as the nomad probed his nose, hissing, ‘Quintus…Quintillian…apologize to him. Try and make amends. You’re my best hope of getting out of this. I can’t afford to let you die in a fight just because you’re too proud to bow to him.’
‘What makes you think I’ll die?’
‘Will you apologize, you bloody idiot?’
Quintillian stood silent, and as the nomad began shouting to his friends, Asander snorted and folded his arms. ‘I wish I didn’t know who you are. As a guard you were excellent. As a prince, you’re a moron.’
‘Call it a test,’ Quintillian murmured. ‘If we just go on cutting down trees and festering in that disease pit back at Ual-Aahbor, we’ll be dead within the month. We have to do something to change the situation. Maybe this is it?’
‘And maybe you’ll be dead within the hour instead.’
Two more nomads appeared through the woods and after a brief exchange with the wounded Arse-hat they grabbed Quintillian’s shoulders and began to manhandle him through the forest. The bloodied nomad drew his straight, razor-edged blade and gestured at Asander to follow.
As they passed through the forest, it became clear that all work had halted. The other worker pairs were being herded to the grassland at the edge of the woods, where they were arranged in a wide circle. The nomads, each with naked blades in their hands, took position around the edge on partial tree trunks or the occasional rocks jutting from the turf.
‘I’m guessing this’ll be to the death,’ Quintillian hissed to his friend as they were herded towards the circle.
‘I presume so. Yours, of course.’
With little preamble, Quintillian was shoved roughly through the slaves into the open circle of grass. The wounded nomad took a moment to carefully blot his face, removing the worst of the blood, then he gestured to his face and made some harsh comment that brought a guttural laugh from his friends.
‘So how does this work?’ Quintillian asked loudly of no one in particular. In answer, Arse-hat drew his sword again and gave it three experimental slashes through the open air, narrowly missing taking the face off one of the circle of slaves. Another of the nomads cast a blade into the ring. It fell to the turf in front of Quintillian and he looked at it with a raised eyebrow.
‘Pick it up,’ Asander said. ‘You have to be armed. It’s a matter of pride for him. He has to kill you while you’re theoretically able to stop him, else he just looks even worse.’
Quintillian bent and collected the sword, weighing it for a moment, testing the balance and the length. It was a little longer than the sort he was used to, and a little heavier in the blade, but close enough to an imperial cavalry sword that he should be able to handle it reasonably well.
‘You were a general,’ Asander called, ‘but you’re also a good fighter. I remember you at the caravan. Hold onto that, and try and survive.’
Quintillian nodded. ‘It was high on my list of priorities already, as it happens.’
‘Could have fooled me.’
There was a single barked word from one of the nomads and Arse-hat closed on him, swinging his blade back and forth, moving from side to side. It was well done, keeping Quintillian watching every move, unable to commit his balance. The nomad knew enough not to allow his opponent to anticipate an attack too easily. With a sudden side-step to his right, Arse-hat brought his sword up in a diagonal, backhand, aiming for Quintillian’s armpit. The prince’s blade met the nomad’s just in time, knocking it aside but close enough that the sword scored a long, narrow gash across Quintillian’s chest, his tunic flapping open and blood suffusing the material in an instant.
The nomads roared their approval as Arse-hat pivoted, spinning back out of reach before the prince could manage a thrust.
‘Come on, Quintillian. He’s dancing around you.’
The old grey-hair turned to Asander. ‘I thought he was called Quintus?’
‘Long story. Stupid one, too.’
Arse-hat was coming in again, leaping from foot to foot bow-legged, tossing his sword from right to left, left to right. Quintillian watched as carefully as he could. Where would the next strike come from?
A lunge almost punctured his shoulder, and the leap back out of the way was awkward. Quintillian fell backward and tumbled to the grass, rolling out of harm’s way and coming up again close to the edge of the circle, only to discover that the nomad had retreated once more anyway.
‘He’s playing with you,’ Asander shouted.
‘I know.’
‘You’re going to have to put him down.’
‘I know.’
The nomad was coming in for a third time, dancing this way and that, grinning bloodily around his missing teeth.
‘Do you remember the tale of the Battle of Samada?’ Quintillian said quietly. Asander frowned. Of course he did. It was one of the stock battles of antiquity that all soldiers knew about. The first great marshal of the early empire had fought the
Pelasian War, and Samada was one of the key strategic locations on the border. Twice, in two successive years, Marshal Crispus had taken the city and held it, only to have it ripped from his grasp by a vastly superior Pelasian force. Then, in the third year of the war, he took it and held it again. This time, when the Pelasian satrap came to rip Samada from his grasp, the aggressor found the city empty. As the Pelasians stalked through the city looking for their suddenly absent foe, the entire place collapsed into the earth, taking a sizeable Pelasian force with it. Crispus had spent six months undermining the place in preparation.
Quintillian had taken two strikes with hardly any attempt at resistance…
Asander straightened, grinning, and looked over the heads of the assembled slaves.
‘Go, Marshal. Undermine the bastard!’
As Arse-hat danced closer and closer, he was as unpredictable as ever. Quintillian remained perfectly still, unable to anticipate where the attack would come from. But he knew one thing. He knew where the ground was.
Arse-hat reached the edge of sword-range and began to lurch more, preparing for his blow.
Quintillian dropped to the turf, his blade swinging out wide. The sharp steel smashed into the man’s shins as he lurched, rending the flesh and cracking bones. Even as the nomad howled in pain, Quintillian was rolling to the side, a second swing taking the nomad in the back of the legs. There was an unpleasant snapping noise as the metal edge snicked through the tendon at the rear of the man’s ankle.
Arse-hat fell, shrieking.
‘Undermined,’ Quintillian said, as he rolled away from the howling nomad’s flailing blade and sprang to his feet with surprising dexterity.
‘You have to kill him,’ Asander said flatly.
‘He can still ride with a ruined ankle.’
‘It’s nothing to do with that. You’ve humiliated him twice now. If you don’t kill him this afternoon, he will kill you soon, be under no illusion about it.’
Quintillian shrugged. ‘Maybe. But one thing I’ve learned in my time is that a man can surprise you. A corpse can’t. Magnanimity is usually rewarded by the gods.’
‘Stupidity and lack of foresight aren’t,’ Asander grunted. ‘This isn’t court. There’s no nobility here. Just brutality and survival.’
But Quintillian had cast the sword back to the turf. Arse-hat was in no state to fight back now, as he rolled around on the grass, screaming and clutching his ruined ankle. Quintillian pushed his way into the circle of slaves and none of the nomads seemed inclined to stop him. Most of them were staring in surprise at the man on the floor, as though they couldn’t possibly believe that a slave had bested him. The prince staggered across to Asander and slumped onto a stone next to him, reaching up and running a finger along the fine cut across his chest with a hiss of pain.
‘It won’t need stitches,’ Asander noted. ‘With any luck you’ll get a day off the logging while it heals, ’cause that’ll keep opening up if you work with it unhealed.’
‘I’m tiring of this place,’ Quintillian whispered. ‘I’m starting to think it’s time we begin to put together the bare bones of a plan.’
‘To escape? I thought you wanted to free yourself and then kill a few of the worst of them?’
‘Things have changed,’ Quintillian hissed. ‘I don’t even know where the clan that attacked the caravan are now. There are too many of them, and more by the day and it heralds trouble back home. I think word of this needs to reach an imperial garrison. There’s more at stake now than vengeance. We start thinking about feasible ways out. Just you and me. Too many people and we’ll fail. Has to be just a couple of us to even stand a chance of success. And while we think and we plan, keep your eyes and your ears open. When we do get out of here, I want to be able to tell our people as much as possible.’
‘You really think we’ll get out?’ Asander muttered.
‘I know it. There’s too much at stake not to. This isn’t a gathering of clans any more, Asander.’
‘No?’
‘No. It’s an army at muster.’
‘The clans don’t band together to fight. It’s not what they do.’
‘Evidence suggests things have changed a little.’
Asander frowned, and Quintillian raised a finger and pointed past the gathered crowds. The scout followed his gesture and squinted off over the gentle rise. It took a moment to spot what Quintillian was pointing at, then his eyes widened.
‘Shit. That’s what we’re logging for?’
Just visible across the top of the rise were the unmistakable tips of siege engines and artillery. Catapults, bolt-throwers, siege towers, mobile shelters.
‘Who taught them that? They’re nomads. They don’t do artillery!’
‘Again, evidence suggests that they do now. A people who don’t work together are gathering and arming. And there can only really be one target.’
Chapter V
Of Powerful Men
The enslaved prince’s mercy was repaid, though not in the manner he’d anticipated.
Arse-hat spent the following week glaring furiously at Quintillian. The prince was fairly sure that the nomad would have dismembered him had it not been for his new-found and most unexpected protectors. The situation had required no translation by Asander – it had been easy enough to grasp with just a little observation. Arse-hat, it seemed, had already been not the most popular warrior among the clans assigned to slave duties. It appeared that he had done something in the past that both haunted him and tainted his reputation with his own people – perhaps that something had been what had turned him into such a sour specimen in the first place.
Then, being bested by a slave had plunged the man deep into a personal hell. It had made him the laughing stock of his clan. His ignominious defeat and subsequent survival at the whim of Quintillian had left in tatters any reputation the man might still have had.
And so Arse-hat had spent a week scowling at Quintillian, yet unable to do anything about it. While he undoubtedly harboured brutal images of revenge in his heart, he was impotent. Those riders who had taken strongly against Arse-hat had begun to treat Quintillian as some kind of pet. He received extra food rations, had a nice new thick blanket to sleep under, was given first cup of the water at each break, and so on.
Arse-hat openly resented it, and the first opportunity he found to be alone with Quintillian, one of them would surely die. Perhaps he had been short-sighted to let the man live, after all. And yet, in a world of hardship and starvation, he was suddenly winning. Well fed, he’d been given a comb and had even been permitted to shave after the imperial fashion. There was a word the nomad womenfolk used around him – Ba’atu – which he suspected meant lord or sir, or some such honorific.
Yet despite his odd change in perceived status, nothing had altered fundamentally. He was still a slave. He still cut trees and slept in the compound. And although he still needed to escape, first he had to know more of what they were dealing with. Patience, he kept reminding himself. Precipitous action would only result in failure in some way. And so, over days, Quintillian, with the help of Asander’s translation and the freedom of his new-found celebrity, began to ask subtle questions of the few nomads – mostly womenfolk – who would talk to him. Few of them even knew what the empire was, and could name no famous emperor or imperial city. When subtly probed about war, most seemed to consider the Jade Emperor in the east to be the most virulent enemy of the horse clans. He had begun a wall ‘as high as the heavens that reached an embrace around his world’ to keep the clans out, according to one unusually loquacious source. And the longer Quintillian watched the siege engines growing in size and number, the more he pondered whether they might actually be meant for this strange eastern warlord and not for the empire at all. Perhaps he had leapt to the wrong conclusion initially? But then the slaves cutting the timber were all imperial, he noted, and not one of this eastern monarch’s people were in evidence. He had to know more.
Standing in the line behind Asa
nder, Quintillian probed his eye. Two days after the fight, he had been cornered at the latrine trench. Someone – one of his fellow slaves – had thrown a punch that blacked the prince’s eye, but before he’d fallen in the latrine and drowned in shit, three nomads had miraculously appeared and helped him out, killing the poor slave who Quintillian assumed had been suborned by Arse-hat simply with the bribe of an extra chunk of bread.
‘What’s the hold up, I wonder?’ Asander murmured, risking a beating just for opening his mouth in the work detail.
Quintillian chewed his lip. ‘Something’s definitely happening. Have you noticed the walls? The number of guards up there has more than doubled and they’re all the best men, I reckon. Lots of shiny armour in evidence. If it weren’t for the fact that the gate’s open and the foragers are out, I’d think an attack was imminent.’
His friend nodded and the pair fell silent again as a nomad began to stroll along the line, eyeing them all carefully and smacking a few with his stick through simple maliciousness. As he reached Quintillian, he gave the prince a gap-toothed grin, patted him rather hard on the head, and then moved on to abuse some other poor bastard. Once he had disappeared again and the line stood waiting to move, Asander turned his head.
‘Look.’
Quintillian glanced past to where his friend nodded, and was interested to see that several of the huge tents were being moved. Not packed for a journey, but repositioned so that a wide path was left from the gate into the heart of the settlement.
‘Fascinating.’
Silence reigned in the column, though not in Ual-Aahbor as a whole, where the sounds of nomad life went on unabated. No, not so much went on as increased. There was a new energy about the place. An expectancy that translated itself into the very noise of the settlement. Time passed, and Quintillian began to hop from one foot to the other and back to keep his legs from seizing up through lack of activity. No one in the queue moved. Despite the fact that the nomads watching them were mostly concentrated in a small group at the front and only occasionally wandered along to check on them, everyone knew better than to move out of line. They were still inside the settlement and punishment would be harsh, if not fatal, for anyone presumptuous enough to step away.
Insurgency (Tales of the Empire Book 4) Page 7