The barman nodded a greeting and Rufinus gestured at the back of the counter where all the drinks were kept and decided to gamble. ‘One of them,’ he said vaguely. The barman frowned as though Rufinus was playing a trick on him, but turned with a shrug and opened up the tapped keg, filling a large clay beaker. Rufinus shuddered at the glugging noise. The beer looked revolting, but it was probably still a safer bet than the spirit. He took the mug, paid the two copper coins with a thank you and tapped another on the counter. ‘Don’t suppose Scoris is in?’
The barman’s frown deepened, but his gaze dipped to the coin. He pointed at a wide fireplace. ‘Over there.’
Rufinus turned to look. Two men were deep in conversation. Both had that perpetual outdoor complexion that made their skin look like badly-worn saddle leather. Both had beards the colour of yesterday’s fire ash and long enough to hide a ferret. Both wore the traditional Dacian hat and the tunics and furs of hill men like those he’d first met months ago in the Vulcan pass. He decided not to bother pursuing the question as to which one was his target. Instead, he slid the coin to the barman with another nod of thanks and then slowly wandered across the room to the two men. As he neared them, he cleared his throat. ‘Scoris?’
One of the pair looked around suspiciously.
‘What?’
‘Might I have a word in private?’
Scoris shrugged and said goodbye to his friend, gesturing to a door. Rufinus followed him through it into a back room with a long table set up for some large-scale meal. The room was empty of life apart from a mangy-looking beige dog lying on a thick rug, who opened one eye in curiosity and then closed it again and went back to sleep. There were two other doors – one to the kitchen and one out to the back, Rufinus surmised – but both were firmly shut. Scoris closed the one behind them and leaned on the wall.
‘What?’
Rufinus breathed slowly. This was a dangerous moment. ‘I’m looking for a way over the mountains into Roxolani land.’
Scoris nodded slowly. ‘One not full of legionary sentries, I guess?’
Rufinus nodded. ‘Something like that.’
‘Why are they after you, then?’
Rufinus felt his heartbeat jump. This was descending into the level of dangerous discussion rather quickly. ‘I can’t say.’
‘Then I can’t help.’
The young praetorian fumed, sucking on his teeth while Scoris simply leaned on the wall and watched him calmly. ‘I escaped punishment at Apulum fortress. I’m on the run from the Thirteenth.’
It was the truth, after a fashion. He hoped the man wouldn’t be curious as to why such a large detail and a senior tribune had been sent after him. Fortunately, Scoris simply gave an odd grin.
‘Fell asleep on duty? Pissed on a centurion? Shagged the tribune’s wife?’
Rufinus shivered. Much worse. Much, much worse.
‘I had a bit of a problem with my optio. We ended up coming to blows. I mangled his leg.’
Again: all the truth, after a fashion.
Scoris nodded. ‘So you ran from a beating? And now if they catch you it’ll be a lot worse.’
‘Fatally worse,’ Rufinus nodded.
‘Ah, that tribune’s a tossbag,’ Scoris snorted. ‘And his pet centurion’s a thug, too. I’ve a mind to help you, runaway soldier.’
Thank you, Fortuna. Thank you.
‘I’m so grateful. I…’
‘Cost you, though.’
Rufinus nodded. Of course. And whatever his price, it would be worth it.
‘Three gold aurei.’
Rufinus’ eyes widened. His memory slammed figures into his conscious mind. That was something like seventy five denarii! Near half a year’s pay for any of those men in the fort. A month’s pay even for a centurion. His shock must have shown on his face, for Scoris’ expression hardened. ‘That’s my price to go behind the back of the Roman army and put my life on the line.’
Rufinus hurriedly nodded a lot. ‘No, that’s fine. Three aurei. It’s a lot, but for the risk…’
‘More, then,’ the man said. ‘And I bet if you’re willing to pay three without argument, then six is likely too.’
Rufinus’ eyes narrowed. ‘I’m not rich.’
‘Me neither, but I’m a free man. Would you rather be poor or dead?’
Rufinus ground his teeth. ‘Six, then, but no more. And your help better be worth it.’
Scoris nodded and held out his hand. Rufinus dropped his bag and rifled in his purse. To make it clear how little he could afford, he did it quite openly, and had to find silver to make up the cost when he discovered he had only five aurei. Luckily, of course, much of their coin was hidden in his kit on Atalanta outside the shop. He handed over the coins.
‘You sure you want to go into Roxolani lands?’ the man asked. ‘Might be easier handing yourself over to the legion.’
Rufinus shook his head. ‘Roxolani. Nearest direct route that won’t be guarded.’
Scoris shrugged. ‘All the passes and crossings will be guarded. Nowhere where there’s a straight crossing. The way will be difficult.’
Rufinus nodded quickly. ‘Fine. Tell me.’
‘You’ll need good horses. There’s a logging road near here but it’s steep, long and narrow. You’ll see two valleys off to the east opposite Commodava. They fork, you see. The right hand one runs over the mountains and is quite wide. An old trade road. That’ll have a garrison. The left only runs into the hills and turns northward. But you’ll find the logging road about two miles along it, off to your right. Can’t miss it. There’s an old stone there carved with local markings. Follow that road. There are lots of crossings and side tracks, but you need to make sure you keep heading straight east for a while. You know how to do that? Check the moss on the trees.’
Rufinus nodded. ‘Wettest side,’ he said, cursing and blessing Senova simultaneously under his breath.
‘Yes. In those hills the moss will generally grow on the south side. Keep heading east. Once you get to the highest point, you’ll pass some big rocks and an escarpment. You’ll be able to see a great big cliff. Aim for that. Behind that, which will take some getting to, you’ll find an old abandoned mining settlement. The track that leads down from there will take you about six miles further on. You’ll come to a tiny village called Coido. Follow the stream from there down the valley and you’ll eventually meet the main pass I first described, but by then you’ll be outside Roman territory and in Roxolani lands. The men watching for you will be up in the high pass and you’ll have gone round them at some distance.’
Rufinus nodded, trying to commit it all to memory. ‘I don’t suppose I can persuade you to guide us?’
‘Unless you robbed the gold mines in Alburnus, you ain’t got enough money for that.’
Rufinus snorted. How close to the truth…
‘Alright then. Sounds straightforward enough. But I warn you, if you’ve lied…’
‘No lie. No point. You’ll not last a day among the Roxolani. They don’t like Romans much, and legionaries not at all.’
‘Thank you.’
Scoris simply shrugged and opened the door, slipping back out into the bar. Rufinus made to follow him and his blood froze at the sight of two legionary cavalrymen sitting at a table near the door with their feet up. They gave a toast to some fellow called Tullus, clacked wine cups together and threw down the contents in a single gulp, laughing. Damn it. Scoris gave him a crafty grin and then wandered back to the fireplace to talk with his friend. Rufinus let the door close and then hurried over to the other exits. Both the kitchen door and the exterior one were locked tight. He hurried back to the bar one and pushed it open a tiny bit. The innkeeper was pouring out two cups of wine, but ran out and had to go for another jar. They had to be for the soldiers again – no one else in the place was drinking wine. Rufinus needed to get past them unobserved. He needed a distraction, for they were facing the door and would most definitely see him. If there were a way he could also perha
ps put them out of action, even for just a while?’
His gaze dropped to the fireplace in the dining room, where yesterday’s ash remained uncleared as yet, and he grinned. Old trick from training days with the Tenth: when you wanted to get out of some awful duty, you mixed ash into your drink and sucked it down. It made you so sick as a dog you actually went green and threw up copiously for an hour or so. Just long enough to convince a centurion or even a medicus you were actually ill. Then you recovered quickly and the rest of the day was yours.
He emptied the coins from his purse into his other pouch, then crouched and quickly swept up ash into it. Taking a deep breath he opened the door and walked out into the bar and over to the counter.
‘Can I have one of those breads?’ he said, pointing at a pile of small loaves at the far end of the bar. The barman looked irritated as he had just been making to pick up the wine cups to take to the soldiers. Rufinus slid him a coin and he grunted and hurried away along the bar to get the bread. Rufinus quickly upended the purse into first one cup then the other, stirring them with his fingers. He’d just dropped the purse back down below counter level when the barman returned with the bread.
‘Here.’
Rufinus took it with a word of thanks, then wandered over to stand by the wall, waiting. He watched as the barman delivered the drinks, placing them on the table in front of the soldiers. The innkeeper then turned and walked back to the bar. The soldiers made a toast to some woman called Apinna and then lifted the cups and threw back the contents. There was a single heartbeat of silence and then both men cried out angrily, coughing and gagging, rising from their seats and turning to the bar. Rufinus left the wall and slipped out through the door during the commotion.
As he hurried off down the street, he could hear the shouting and anger in the “Jolly Pork” behind him. Both men had drunk it all, and would be sick beyond limits for the next hour or so. Good. Rufinus reached Atalanta and tied the sack to the saddle, mounting with some difficulty, even with the aid of the ready-make block there. Finally in the saddle, he moved off. He would not risk staying on the main street, and turned into that side alley again, then along the filthy back road all the way to the edge of town, where he walked the horse out through the fields until he felt safe and then began to trot and then canter back to the farm.
He had a plan. Celer might be clever, but Rufinus was more so. He would slip through the tribune’s net and make it to freedom in the next day or two. It was tantalisingly close now. As he rode, he ran over Scoris’ instructions again and again, hammering them up on the wall of his memory to stay there for immediate recall later. And at the farm he would tell them to Senova and Luca. Then they would be as prepared as they could.
Roxolani lands awaited.
XXIII – The end of the world
Scoris had been perfectly accurate with his instructions. The left-hand fork of the twin valleys curved around to the north, rapidly narrowing into a deep cleft with high sides covered with thick forests of pine, brown and green against the grey of the hills and the blue of the sky.
They moved at speed, knowing that Celer was somewhere in the area and his men with him, as well as the Raetian auxiliaries from Commodava who occupied the passes and crossings, watching for them. The only human life they saw in that mile from the town and the two up the valley, though, was a local hunter with a bow over his shoulder and a dog that looked like a brown reflection of Acheron. The man nodded a greeting and wandered on about his own business.
They found the marker just as Scoris had said they would. A stone standing by the side of the valley on a low plinth with indecipherable markings scratched across the lichen-coated surface. Beside it, a narrow track climbed the hillside, just wide enough to move with a horse, branches cleared out of the way to allow a beast of burden to descend dragging timber. Rufinus took Atalanta up it first, Acheron padding out ahead, with Senova and Luca on the other still-unnamed horse behind. There were marks of regular usage by men and beasts along the track, though not in recent days as far as Rufinus could see, which gave him a little confidence.
The track climbed back along the side of the valley and then, as it neared the top, turned and marched off at a tangent, heading east into the mountains. Rufinus remembered what Scoris had told him, and had passed it all on to Senova and Luca too. They crested the hill but were not treated to any stupendous view due to the ever-present forest that covered every hill. Continuing on east, occasionally checking the moss of the trees, but equally using the sun whenever the arboreal canopy allowed, they followed the trail, ignoring the various side tracks that joined it, leading off presumably to logging sites.
They had travelled perhaps a mile across the hills when disaster struck. Rufinus did not see it happen, riding ahead and keeping his eyes fixed on the track they followed. All he heard was the shouts of surprise from Luca and Senova and he turned just in time to see them tumble from the horse. Senova fell some distance and thudded against the bole of a tree, winded. Luca, unimpeded by the pines, rolled off some way down the hill, yelping, before he scraped to a halt in the bed of mud and needles.
The horse was down, but struggling to rise.
Rufinus slid – painfully as always – from Atalanta and tied her to the nearest branch, then hurried back along the track. Senova was already rising, dazed, but waving her hands at him, protesting that she was fine. Luca was some distance down the slope, but had stood and was staggering slowly back up. Rufinus went over to the horse, content that both his companions were unharmed. The animal had risen finally, and he thought for a moment all would be well. Then he grasped the beast’s reins and tried to lead it forward. The horse hesitated and, when it placed its fore near hoof to the ground and moved, it almost collapsed in a heap, that leg trembling and skittering beneath it.
Lameness. Not just a strain or something either, but a more major injury. He let the horse stand still and gently, calmly ran his hands down the leg from shoulder to hoof. He found the break at the hock and shook his head sadly. Even a cavalry fort’s equine surgeon would be able to do nothing about that. The beast was done for. Not a step more. It must have trodden in one of the many rabbit holes that abounded on the hillside and broken its leg.
Senova was stepping toward the horse, making soothing noises, and her eyes widened in shock as Rufinus drew his pugio.
‘What are you doing?’ she hissed. Rufinus ignored her, making soothing noises to the horse as he moved close. Stroking the animal gently, he ran his hand down its neck, then up again, looking for the correct point beneath the jaw.
Senova’s mouth opened to an O of shock.
‘No!’
But it was done. The beast shuddered and tried to buck, collapsing on its broken leg as blood jetted from the sharp wound, almost catching Rufinus has he leapt back out of the way. It fell in a shuddering heap and quickly fell still as blood continued to pump from the wound.
‘What did you do?’ Luca whispered, climbing over the edge onto the track with ashen face and wide eyes, all the deference of the slave forgotten in this awful scene.
‘What I had to,’ Rufinus said bleakly. ‘He was lame. Badly lame. He’d not manage another step.’
Senova nodded slowly. She still looked unhappy, but she understood. Luca clearly didn’t.
‘But…’
‘One cut. Quick, and as painless as I could make it.’
‘But…’
‘The alternative was to leave him to die of exhaustion and exposure, in pain, possibly prey to bears or wolves. This was a kindness, Luca.’
The boy was crying now, and Senova embraced him in a crouch as though he were her child. Rufinus busied himself removing the packs from the already-still horse. Dragging them over to Atalanta, he began to throw out anything he considered unnecessary, combining the packs and consolidating everything.
‘We’re going to be slower now,’ he said with a tinge of irritation. ‘Atalanta will have to carry the packs and we’ll have to walk.’
&
nbsp; ‘Luca needs to ride,’ Senova said.
Rufinus turned to her, preparing his arguments against such idiocy, but one look at her face told him that this was a debate he was destined to lose. He nodded. It took a short time to prepare everything, but soon they were moving again. Acheron still padded ahead, Rufinus leading Atalanta by the reins, Luca and the packs weighing her down, and Senova following on at the rear.
They rounded a bend at the next crest and Rufinus paused for a moment, peering ahead through the trees. He could see blue sky. There was a steep descent coming, then. His scouring gaze managed to penetrate the deep forest and he could just see the brown expanse of a cliff in the distance through the trees. He thought back to his instructions at Commodava.
Once you get to the highest point, you’ll pass some big rocks and an escarpment. You’ll be able to see a great big cliff. Aim for that.
That brown expanse had to be the cliff of which Scoris had spoken, and that meant that the steep slope he had noted coming up must be the escarpment. Scanning the area he spotted the rocks among the trees. He moved on slowly once more, careful and watchful for a change in the gradient.
‘Gnaeus!’
His head snapped round to see Senova at the back, pointing. She had stopped walking. Rufinus hooked the reins over the back of the horse’s neck, passing them to Luca, and then hurried past. Stopping beside Senova, his eyes searched the forest in the direction she was pointing. It took him a moment. Movement in the trees not far back.
‘It could be locals?’ she hazarded. ‘Loggers or hunters maybe?’
Rufinus shook his head. The figures glinted occasionally as the sun penetrated the high, narrow trees and reflected off their armour.
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