Hands were there a moment later. Senova’s hand, he knew from the soft skin, and Luca’s smaller, rougher palm. One on each arm, keeping him steady, holding him upright. Gradually the nausea faded and he was left with an ache that felt as though a carriage had ridden over him a number of times. He stood still, gulping down air as his vision settled.
The scout on the ground was groaning and shuddering. Rufinus stared, bulge-eyed, as Senova let go of his arm and stepped forward, slowing raising that dreadful falx with the curved, razor-sharp blade. He shook his head – bad idea – and made negative sounds, trying to stop her. Killing a man like that in cold blood was a life-changing thing. Even he, a veteran and a soldier, hated it. It corroded a little of a person’s soul, and he would save Senova that life-long memory. His arm shot out and stopped her. He couldn’t do much about it himself in this state, mind, and Luca’s axe? Well, the lad should not have to do such a thing at his age.
They were saved the decision a moment later as Acheron, like some ancient spirit from Tartarus, padded back through the gate, his head and paws coated, hair matted and glistening, blood running from his jaws. Even Rufinus shuddered at the sight, and even more so as Acheron calmly sauntered over to the shaking man and, as though nudging the food in his bowl in thought, ripped out the side of the man’s neck with one clamp of his terrible jaws. The man gurgled, too oblivious and half-dead already to scream, as blood sheeted from his neck onto the grass.
‘Were they Celer’s men?’ Senova asked quietly, eyes wide.
Rufinus nodded – bad idea – and breathed deeply the metallic-tainted air of the hilltop. ‘His scouts. Both of them. Acheron’s dealt with the other down there. I think… I think I’ve opened a wound again.’
‘I will re-bind it,’ Senova said firmly.
‘Not now. Now we go.’
‘What?’
‘The horses have had three hours’ rest. It will have to be enough. Celer might be expecting these men to report in at any time. All it needs is for him to take an interest and look for them and we’re in real trouble. We’ll have to hope the false trail we left in the minds of the townsfolk works and Celer thinks we’re making for the river down south. Either way, we have to go. Senova, saddle the horses and gather the things, and quickly. Luca, come with me.’
Senova hurried off to deal with their camp and with Luca’s help Rufinus, grunting and hissing, stripped the fallen man of his tunic, trousers and cloak and threw the bloodied corpse down the slope into some bushes. They repeated the action with the second body when they found it, though Rufinus decided to leave the clothes, considering all the tears, teeth marks in the cloth and the huge swathes of blood soaking them. That body joined the first and, carrying his drab haul of clothes, Rufinus returned to the horse. Tucking the items into a bag, he noted Senova frowning at him.
‘Native clothes might come in handy.’
With that, still tired and somewhat dispirited, the three of them mounted once more and set off from Castrum Sex, making for the borderland forts and the edge of the Roman world.
XXII – Frontiers
If Atalanta had ever been close to ridden to death, it was over the next day. The three of them, with Acheron running alongside, had raced away from Castrum Sex in order to put as much distance as possible between them and the tribune’s men. They had travelled fast and far through broad valleys between ever higher hills as the mountains began to rise once more, and the blue sky, buzzing bees and steaming sun could do nothing to break the tension among them.
Rufinus’ solid belief that safety lay beyond the borders of Rome had become the goal and the conviction of all of them, and everyone looked to Commodava as the gateway to freedom. In order to add a little weight to the false trail they had laid the previous day, and to circumvent the town as widely as possible and avoid too much risk of bumping into watchful enemies, they had left along that same road to the south-west but had soon – as soon as they found ground which would not easily mark with tell-tale hoof prints, anyway – veered from that road and cut across a hillside to the next valley, where the other main southerly road marched off in the direction they truly sought.
The journey to Commodava and the frontier forts was somewhere in the region of seventy miles, mostly along good flat valleys and easy terrain, with a short climb over a low pass toward the end. Rufinus had hoped to make it in one day and be free of pursuit with the following sunrise, but it swiftly became evident that his hopes were highly over-optimistic. On a good day, with a fresh, strong horse, a man might hope to cover seventy miles with adequate rest stops. Racing at speed to put distance between them and Castrum Sex before even dawn, with only a short rest and after a previous exhausting day was too much even for resilient Atalanta and the cavalry horse from Potaissa.
In the event, they managed a little over thirty miles that day and even then they had come close to breaking the horses altogether. They stopped for the night nervous, tense, watchful and exhausted. Given the previous two nights’ failures, this time they chose a small area of clearing in woodland in the loop of a small river. The field of vision was not good, but they were far from the recognised road and, Rufinus figured, if they could not see much, they would be equally difficult to spot for other travellers. They slept in blankets under the stars, cold and uncomfortable, taking two and a half hour watches each, allowing more time to rest than the previous two stops. Despite the discomfort, they passed the night in peace with no attacks or searching natives. Rufinus began to feel that perhaps he had been right and killing the two scouts had seriously hampered Celer’s ability to track them. Either way, they awoke the next morning having had more sleep than they’d managed since the night before the escape in Potaissa, and were back on the small country road before dawn with horses that were far from content and strong, but were at least better rested than they had been thus far.
The second day out of Castrum Sex they moved with a little more ease and confidence. Far from relaxed, of course, but less tense than the previous two days. Rufinus found himself thinking ahead and wondering what to expect of the Transalutanus frontier. It would be different, he reasoned, to the borders he had witnessed thus far. Along the journey to this place, the Danuvius had provided much of the border and beyond it had lain an endless flat plain – the lands of the Iazyges. Then, on the journey to, and around, Porolissum, the terrain had been a rolling landscape of high hills and broad valleys, green and dotted with woodland. But the map they had relied upon throughout showed this new frontier as lying amid true mountainous terrain – the Carpates, the same range they had crossed when first moving into the province from Drobeta. And there, they had been close to long-term Roman lands, such as Moesia and Pannonia. Here, on the other hand, they were on a real border, with only Sarmatian tribes beyond it. He doubted it would have even half the civilised feel of the west.
He was right.
They came down from that last climb into a wide valley perhaps three or four miles across, and on the far side of it lay the Carpates. This was no steady climb into the mountains over days as they’d experienced while making for Vulcan’s pass. This was a flat valley and then sudden lofty hills, behind which towered great grey peaks streaked with white snow and half-obscured by cloud that clung to them like a sobbing lover.
Commodava was not hard to find. The valley was partially cultivated by native farmers, and small settlements and villages could be seen dotting the landscape, but the only place of any real substance visible was a Roman fort and its civil settlement sitting defiant in the centre of that valley, silent guardian of the Roman world.
Despite the past day of relative ease, Rufinus cautioned them to care and the small party approached the town. They left the main road as they descended and travelled along narrow farm tracks between fields and small stands of trees, moving through tiny villages and around small farmsteads to the far, south-eastern side of Commodava. Finally they stopped by a farm’s cattle shed, no sign of human life manifest, and Rufinus nodded to t
he others.
‘I’m going into the town, but for safety I should go alone. One man might escape notice, but the three of us and Acheron are too memorable together.’
Luca nodded his understanding. Senova huffed. ‘Why go at all? It is dangerous, and there is no reason to risk it.’
Rufinus gestured at the group. ‘We need more supplies. If we’re crossing the mountains we need to be prepared for hardship, and we don’t know what to expect in Roxolani lands beyond the passes. Fodder for the animals might be very hard to come by too, though I guess we can buy that at one of the farms. Most importantly, all we have to go on is a rather grand-scale map, which doesn’t give us much detail as to where we’re headed. The locals will know the passes, hills and valleys. I’ve got to speak to people here and find out more. So you two wait here with Acheron. I will be as quick as I can.’
With that, he divested himself of the sword he’d been wearing and slipped from his cloak and tunic, donning the Dacian ones he’d taken from the body on the hillside. The change would have been slightly more convincing had he also changed into the native trousers but the difficulty and potential pain of dismounting, changing trousers and mounting again was too much to contemplate after hours in the saddle.
Suitably attired and non-threatening, he bade the others farewell and rode out from the farm buildings along the narrow track. After half a mile it joined a local road, which was really just another farm track, though a wider, better-used one.
Rufinus entered Commodava settlement trying to look unobtrusive and forgettable. Commodava was perhaps the most frontier place Rufinus had ever seen. The whole town was constructed of timber and clods of daub, the roads through it little more than dust and gravel and horse shit. Animals were tied to hitching rails outside buildings, and they were not all horses, either. A few large cows and, notably, two goats were tied up in the main street. The people looked to be generally natives with little visitor blood evident. That being said, the main tongue he heard was Latin, albeit spoken in a thick eastern Dacian accent.
The fort itself was clearly old, dating back to the conquest, probably. Consisting of an earth bank with timber ramparts and gates and wooden structures within, it looked as rough and makeshift as the civilian town outside it. To Rufinus’ trained eye there were signs that the fort had spent some time abandoned and empty and had only been reoccupied for a matter of months. The re-creation of the border was clearly at work here.
Even sitting on Atalanta at the heart of this town, Rufinus was assailed by the feeling that he was on the very edge of civilisation. The white-topped serrated mountains lay brooding at the edge of the valley, guarding the ways into Roxolani lands. Rufinus tried to shake off the feeling and dismounted, grunting with the pain, but the feeling was still there, like those same mountains, no matter where he looked.
Rufinus produced a sack from the saddle bags and hitched his horse outside a shop that was only any different from the other buildings because of a trestle table outside advertising some of the wares to be found within. Inside, a woman with a face like the sole of a military boot and a man who might well have been old enough to remember Trajan’s armies coming into Dacia, shuffled out to sell him their goods. In fact, their wares proved to be rough and basic but of good quality and hearty, and Rufinus bought a few things he thought might be useful on the trip as well as a selection of hardy preserved foodstuffs.
Bagging up the supplies and handing over a few extra coins for their excellent service, Rufinus prepared himself with a steadying breath.
‘Do you get much business from the Roxolani?’ he asked as casually as he could manage while organising the bag’s contents.
‘Roxolani?’
‘Yes,’ Rufinus said, still trying to sound casual. ‘From across the border. I presume there are passes around, what with a fort being built here? Surely the Roxolani come across and trade?’
Boot-face and her ancient husband shared a frown and Rufinus wondered if he’d made some kind of blunder with his question. The woman turned back to him, though. ‘Some Roxolani. Few. Border ones. Live in hill. In mountain. Come buy food. Not common. Only bad winter or troubles. Roxolani not come. Worried. Romans not friend to Roxolani.’
Excellent. While that boded some ill for Rufinus and his group travelling in their lands, it also meant there was little chance of Celer wanting to interfere with them. It added weight to his opinion that the tribune would not pursue them.
‘There’s a valley just to the east,’ he said, still maintaining that casualness in his tone. ‘I guess that leads to a pass?’
‘Many passes.’
Oh good.
‘You want go pass? Roxolani?’
Shit. ‘Not especially. Just interested.’
‘You want know mountains, speak Scoris. In. Inn. In inn.’ She sniffed and Rufinus smiled.
‘Have a good day,’ he nodded to them and slipped out of the building, almost walking straight into two auxiliary soldiers wearing uniforms of an alpine regiment. They lurched out away from the building to go round him, but otherwise paid him little heed – another dirty man dressed in native clothing. Rufinus was about to unhitch Atalanta and hurry away when he heard one of the men say the word ‘legion.’
It was too much of a coincidence. There were only two legions in Dacia and they were both based hundreds of miles from here. Hefting the sack over his shoulder to help cover his features he gasped at the pain that caused in his back. Biting down on it and managing not to cry out and draw too much attention, and hunching over to add a little age to his appearance, he shuffled along the side of the street in the wake of the two soldiers, trying to look downtrodden and inconspicuous, yet stay within earshot. His back burned like acid from the pain and he had to concentrate not to groan.
‘Who the fuck does he think he is anyway?’ grumbled a bearded auxiliary. ‘Tribune from some high and mighty pissy legion off in the west giving orders out as though he was anything to do with us.’
Rufinus felt a chasm opening up beneath him. Celer had been here? Possibly still was? How was that possible? His mind quickly ran down the map he’d been using. There was no quicker route from Castrum Sex to Commodava than the one they’d used. But then Rufinus and his friends had veered off the route to camp in the woods last night, limited to slow movement due to their exhausted horses. Celer and his men would not have been troubled by such things. They had all the authority in the world and nothing to fear. Celer probably just commandeered extra horses in the town and rode here in a day. How he knew to come here was a different matter, though. Had he found their tracks? Did he have new scouts now, hired at Castrum Sex? Or had he just reasoned out Rufinus’ plan? Whatever the case, he had clearly reached Commodava before them.
‘Prefect says the posh bastard is second to the governor,’ the beardless soldier replied. ‘No one’s going to deny Albinus’ pet, are they?’
‘But so many of them. Bang goes the dice game tonight. And I’m on a winning streak, too. I was going to make a pauper out of Blaesus tonight. Now I’m stuck doing double duties here, while that poor bastard is sat up in some pass shivering his arse off.’
Pass? Rufinus’ flesh prickled.
‘At least he picked the low pass. Imagine the poor sods who were sent to the high ones near the snowline.’
The two soldiers suddenly stopped at a fish stall, laughing about the smell, and Rufinus, trying hard to look like a local going about his business, veered around them and walked on one building further, then turned down an alley. He risked a very brief look back, then, but saw that the soldiers were involved in some foul conversation about the fish, snorting and laughing, so he hurried along the alley with his sack.
As he’d left the shop, he had intended to head straight back to Senova and the others, purchase hay from some farm and head off down the main pass through the mountains. That notion had been blown away like dry leaves in a gale by the conversation he’d just overheard. His heart thundered as he hurried along the alley.
Not only were Celer and his men here, but they were so completely ahead of the game that they were closing the passes to him. The tribune must have realised that there was only one route open to Rufinus and was determined to seal him in and trap him. Damn the man. And if he had enlisted the garrison of Commodava for the job, they would be thorough, for they knew the region well, obviously.
Damn it, damn it, damn it.
He’d wanted to spend as little time here as possible, given the dangers, but now he had a new task first. He would have to go to the tavern and look up this man who knew the mountains and the passes. Scopius? Scortius? Scoris. That was his name.
Judging when he’d gone far enough along the alley, he turned into a stinking back-street lined with shoddy timber houses and scurried back along it further than the distance he’d followed the soldiers, then turned and rushed back toward the main street. He emerged close to the store where he’d almost run into the auxiliaries in the first place, and glanced left to make sure. The two men had moved on and were approaching the fort gate now. Rufinus turned and went the other way, remembering seeing on his way in a tavern sign displaying a fat looking pig. Some ten buildings further down, he found it.
The Jolly Pork. The badly-painted pig appeared to be dancing and playing some sort of pipes. These people were weird.
Rufinus pushed open the door and was hit by a smell that was most certainly porcine, though far from jolly. The smell of overcooked meat was laced with a stench of sweat and the odour of burning lamps, and the combination was eye-watering and thick. The room was busy, though. More than a dozen locals drinking, chatting, eating, gambling. No soldiers. Rufinus relaxed just a little. He couldn’t imagine Celer dropping in here, mind. Not when the prefect up at the fort would likely have far better wine.
The disguised praetorian ambled over to the bar, eying the locals as he went. He needed to be as inconspicuous as possible. Given that not one man in that bar was drinking wine or water, Rufinus knew his ill luck was still holding. More than half of them were drinking beer that had things floating in it and looked like it should probably house a frog. The rest were on that perfectly clear Dacian spirit that Rufinus suspected would strip rust off a blade in heartbeats.
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