Eagles of Dacia

by S. J. A. Turney

  Celer was dead. There was no doubt about that. The man’s face was pulped where it had struck the rock and, curiously, Rufinus could see among the hair what he presumed to be brain. But he himself was not in a much better state. He could not even lift his head, and his voice seemed to be nothing but a whisper. He closed his eyes and felt agony and exhaustion claim him. With luck he would expire quickly and not just lie here in conscious pain to be eaten by passing scavengers.

  He thought he must have died, then. It was suddenly all so quiet and dark and peaceful. Then there was a sudden agony in his neck and head and he blinked his eyes open. All he could see was blood. It was in his face and all over his head. He couldn’t wipe it clear. Couldn’t move. Blinked again. A shape above him.

  Senova.

  Gods, woman, you should be running…

  But she wasn’t. She was kneeling by them. Then there was the most horrendous wave of pain as she dragged him off the tribune by the shoulders. The sheer torment was too much and Rufinus passed out again.

  He must have been gone for only moments, but he blinked awake to see Senova above him, cradling his head, wailing and crying. Damn it, woman. Run. Leave me and run! But she wasn’t. She was wiping all that blood from his head. Then she was looking away, up the cliff and calling someone a bastard.

  He heard distant argument. Focus. This was important.

  He could hear them.

  ‘…go down and deal with them all.’

  ‘Fuck ‘em.’ Daizus’ voice. He would be the ranking officer up there now.

  Senova was calling him some very unpleasant and colourful things as she shouted up, some of which Rufinus didn’t know but recognised as Briton curses she used when things broke or she stubbed a toe. Then she was wailing again and rocking back and forth, clutching Rufinus’ bloody head. Even in his moments of demise, Rufinus found himself feeling slightly nauseous and wishing she would stop all this swaying.

  ‘The tribune…’ someone said at the top.

  ‘Is dead,’ Daizus snarled at the man. ‘Just like the praetorian with the broken head. It’s just a woman and a boy now. Not worth the effort. I’m not taking on that bloody dog for them.’

  Rufinus groaned and shifted slightly.

  ‘Lie still, idiot,’ hissed Senova, still rocking sickeningly back and forth.

  ‘What?’

  ‘They’re going,’ she whispered, then let out a huge wail of grief.

  Rufinus lay there for some time, feeling queasy and weak. There was a stench of latrines, too. He realised with distaste that in death Celer had soiled himself right beneath Rufinus.

  ‘They’ve gone,’ Senova said finally. Rufinus made to rise, but she held him down with a grip like iron around his blood-soaked head. ‘Oh no, you stay right there while I cry about my dead man at full volume for a good hour yet.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They could easily come back just to check. And they’ll be expecting to hear my grief all the way down the mountain. You lie still and rest until they’re long gone while I play the grieving widow.’

  ‘I’m not dying?’

  ‘A few broken bones maybe. Nothing remotely fatal, I think.’

  ‘But all the blood? At least I need to bandage my head before I bleed out.’

  Senova shifted slightly, moving her arm into his field of view. She had cut a jagged rent in her forearm a good hand-width long. Blood was pouring profusely from it.

  ‘What in Jove’s name?’

  ‘Had to make it look convincing,’ she said, then let out a huge wail of anguish that bounced from tree to tree across the valley.

  ‘You,’ Rufinus said in wonder, ‘are a very devious woman.’

  ‘Be grateful for it,’ she replied, then tore a piece of cloth from her tunic hem and began to mop and wrap her arm. ‘We’ve got proper dressings and unguents, but I’d rather not bleed out before we can use them.’

  Rufinus chuckled, but the effort was too much, and he passed out again.

  XXIV – Into the unknown

  They waited a full hour in that position, with Rufinus lying still and Senova cradling his head and wailing. Luca began to get bored after a while and started poking around, while Acheron kept sidling up to Rufinus and nudging him with his muzzle, confused and concerned. Finally, when Senova decided the cavalrymen and Daizus must be long gone, she helped him to a rock where he could sit. She then emptied everything she needed from the kit bags and set about stitching and binding her arm, then tending to Rufinus’ injuries with the same offhand lack of sympathy as a legionary medicus.

  In the end, it turned out that Rufinus was slightly more seriously injured than Senova had estimated, but still nothing was potentially fatal. Broken left arm – splinted and slung with all the care and attention of a blind wrestler with a twitch. Three broken ribs – deemed safe to leave and would heal in their own good time. Sprained wrist – stop messing with it. Endless scrapes and cuts – stitched like a sailmaker with a needle that felt like a javelin and thread that resembled a ship’s hawsers. She would never make a surgeon, but Rufinus had to admit that she patched him up remarkably well for a woman with no medical training at all.

  Then they moved. Slowly, and with Rufinus grunting and yelping on every other step. Senova and Luca helped him up into Atalanta’s saddle straight away, accompanied by cries of pain and a lot of swearing. He rode a whole three horse lengths before it became clear that with his broken ribs and various pains riding was simply impossible. Plus, with a broken left arm and sprained right wrist his handling of the reins was slipshod at best.

  So Rufinus became a pedestrian once more, and they moved on across the hills, the slowest any of them had ever travelled. The sun was already low by the time they had settled into a pace and they only managed one mile before making camp for the night, cold and uncomfortable in the forested valley. They followed Scoris’ instructions and by late the next day they had travelled a grand eight miles, passing that high cliff and the disused mines, arriving finally as the sun slid from the sky at a small village that had to be the Coido of which Scoris had spoken.

  Rufinus had been staunchly against going into the village, reasoning that they were still too close to Commodava and Daizus to risk being remembered, even in a native village. Senova blithely ignored him, as she had done most of the day, given that his level of grumbling and complaint had steadily risen over the hours.

  She left Rufinus sitting on a log with Luca and the horse, and wandered off on her own, with only Acheron for company and support. Rufinus sat and fretted, complaining at Luca about everything that popped into his mind and periodically sighing or yelping at his movements. Just as he’d become convinced she’d been raped and eaten by some mindless yokel and rather selfishly begun to wonder what he was supposed to do without her, Senova returned.

  She was very pleased with herself and was full of news and information.

  They were no longer in Dacia. The villagers considered themselves Dacian and spoke the language, but they said they paid no tax to the empire and had seen only an occasional Roman trader in years, let alone troops or settlers. The village had a tavern which had one room they let to travellers and which was free. Best of all it had a bath tub, to which Senova was rather looking forward. They would have beds and hot food for the first time since Rufinus’ arrest. She had managed to converse enough to confirm the next few days’ route through the mountains, which would apparently become easier quickly. She had negotiated for replacement animals – Rufinus started to argue at the price she’d agreed but she simply ignored him and talked over the top. They would have three more beasts and would be able to travel comfortably. And she had acquired a medicine for Rufinus.

  This latter both intrigued and worried the young praetorian.

  ‘Poppy juice? You know I can’t take poppy juice. Remember what happened before.’

  Senova rolled her eyes. ‘Do you believe even for a moment I would let you do that again? No. But this isn’t poppy juice anyway.’
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  ‘What is it then?’

  ‘I don’t really know. I got it from a witch.’

  Rufinus stared in horror at the vial, whose contents looked rather like swamp water. ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea. A witch you say?’

  ‘I think that’s what they were calling her. She had a shrine to Hecate, and I remember you saying she was a witch goddess.’

  ‘You want me to drink swamp water you bought from a barbarian witch?’

  ‘Be quiet and drink it.’

  Rufinus took a sip and made a sour face, though in all honesty it was nowhere near as unpleasant as he had expected and actually left quite a sweet, spicy taste on the tongue. He waited, running his tongue over his teeth and preparing to tell her how pointless it was.

  He woke several hours later, with a slightly giddy feeling and a fluffy warmth throughout his body, in a comfortable bed in a warm room, with a plate of now-cold meat and vegetables on the table beside him. Miraculously, for Dacian food, it seemed to contain no knuckles or hooves, and he devoured it with gusto and considerable difficulty, hissing with pain as he used sprained wrist and broken arm. He washed it down with lightly watered wine. The brew proved to react strongly with his new medicine, and the next time he awoke it was light again, and he was sprawled across the side of the bed, wearing what was left of the late dinner, the plate upside down on the floor.

  Senova had slept in the chair, judging by the blankets draped over it, and Luca on a rug, allowing the injured Rufinus full rein to collapse all over the bed. There was no sign of anyone in the room that morning, and Rufinus grumbled and muttered as he lay and floundered in pain. In the end, with some effort and yelping, he managed to use his right elbow to lever himself up from the bed, ribs shrieking in pain. He looked down at the Dacian scout’s tunic he had been wearing since Commodava. It was covered in dry gravy and blood and smelled like a sick animal.

  When Senova finally put in an appearance he was in dire straits, having decided to change clothes and got himself thoroughly tied up trying to remove the tunic over a slung arm and with no fully working limbs. She rolled her eyes and shook her head, but helped him unsling the arm and change out of the tunic.

  ‘Where’s my good red one? It’s about time I changed back.’

  ‘It’s packed for the journey. Wear these,’ she commanded, picking up the pile of clothes she had brought in and displaying them for him. They were drab and horrible. Barbarian clothes.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Put them on, Gnaeus. We’re descending to Roxolani territory and legionaries are as welcome there as in any other Sarmatian land. Praetorians no more so, I imagine. Your equipment and armour is all safely packed away where it won’t bother anyone. You’ll wear Dacian clothes and keep growing that fuzz until it looks more like a beard. Everyone has beards and you’ll stand out if you don’t. By the time we get down to the Roxolani lands beyond the mountains it will have grown a bit and you’ll blend in.’

  Rufinus tried to argue but it was like trying to persuade the tide not to come in, so in the end he gave up and went back to his constant grumbling. He was taken from the tavern out back and given a hasty breakfast of bread and butter in the morning sunlight while Senova made the last checks. He grumbled about everything and pointed out what she’d done wrong as a matter of course, though in truth she’d done a remarkable job, and certainly as good as he’d have managed. She had purchased three beasts: one mountain pony that looked hardy and strong, and two mangy-looking donkeys. One of these was loaded with pack, as was Atalanta. Luca saddled the other donkey and Senova patted the pony.

  ‘I call her Damara.’

  ‘I take it that’s some weird goddess from your homeland,’ he grunted unkindly. She ignored him and went around to the back of Atalanta. Rufinus noticed now the travois attached to the horse’s tack. ‘That’s for me?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I’ll get shaken to bits on that.’

  ‘I live in hope,’ Senova snapped, ‘that one day you will stop grumbling about everything and express a little gratitude to those people who saved your life and are looking after you.’ He fell into a sullen and rather ashamed silence as she went on, narrow-eyed and acerbic. ‘You cannot walk the journey to the sea, because at the rate we have been travelling we will all have died of old age before we see the first ship. You cannot ride, because of your wrist, arm and ribs. We tried that. Unless you intend to float across Roxolani lands, and the rivers in the mountains are not navigable, by the way, this is the only option. And I have done what I can. We have nailed a number of small wooden battens to the lower edge that Luca hopes will act as a sort of makeshift suspension and cut out the worst of the bumps. I have six great big fleeces that will cushion you and keep you warm. We have nailed an extra batten across the bottom for you to rest your feet and thereby not slide off as we travel. I have looked into all alternatives. There are no wagons or carts in the village, let alone ones for sale, and it seems unlikely we will find one as we travel in the mountains. The villagers in this area don’t travel far and there’s no real farming, so they don’t generally need carts. The Roxolani are nomads and seem to use them from what I understand, but that’s when we get down to the plains and we can’t guarantee they’ll want to part with one. If we find one on the journey we will try to buy it, but in the meantime, you travel on this. Oh, and I tried to see if I could rig up some kind of net sling with Luca instead, but I can’t get the locals to understand the idea and we can only get two lengths of rope anyway. Since we want to get moving and out of these mountains as quickly as we can, Luca and I have done what we could. Now wrap yourself in this,’ she thrust a huge fleece at him and laid several similar on the travois, ‘then climb on, and the next complaint I hear out of you, we will tip you off the thing and leave you behind.’

  Leaving him staring in distress, she moved around the other side of the hardy pony and climbed up. No saddle, Rufinus noted, just a blanket and reins like a barbarian. He crossed to the travois, eyed it suspiciously, and climbed onto it, not daring open his mouth even to hiss in pain. Luca appeared from somewhere, unstoppered the vial of swamp water and tipped a healthy dose into Rufinus’ mouth, waiting until he swallowed it and then moving off, returning moments later with another fleece which he tucked around the recumbent praetorian and then secured him to the thing none-too-gently with a rope. They moved off. Rufinus actually felt warm and comfortable until they hit the first cobble. The second one made him yelp. He was blessedly unconscious by the third.

  He awoke with the sun just dipping beneath the horizon, stomach growling and head pounding. He opened his mouth to complain about aches and pains and quickly thought better of it. They stopped for the night in a small village not unlike the one higher up, but already they had clearly moved through the highest peaks while he slept, and the valley sides here were lower and more forgiving. Rufinus felt a huge wave of relief when Senova, having been into the village, returned and announced that she had bought a cart. They made their way to a barn that she had negotiated as accommodation for the night and as Rufinus collapsed in the hay, Senova lit a small fire outside and cooked goat stew. Rufinus tore through the stew and the bread she served with it like a starving wretch, thanking her profusely and apologising for his earlier behaviour. She smiled and let him off, announcing that the pain had clearly made him ‘out of sorts.’

  They slept well and warm, and together. The next day she laid him in the cart among the fleeces. It would have been a lovely journey had Acheron not claimed ownership of the fleece bed and curled up on it, forcing him to make room. Twice during the journey Rufinus let out a blood-curdling scream as Acheron, in deep sleep, dreamed and kicked out rhythmically at Rufinus’ wounded frame.

  Still, it was a marked improvement on the travois. They moved rapidly that day, stopping periodically and letting the horses rest as required, and the miles were eaten up as they descended the valleys on the eastern side of the Carpates into the foothills. At least it was sunny and warm.r />
  Three days they moved down from the hills, the valley gradually flattening out and delivering the road and the small rocky river they followed onto the plains of the Roxolani. The last two days there had been no villages and no sign of human life in the hills, and they had camped in the wild. Rufinus was rapidly becoming bearded once more and was twitching to shave it off, though Senova would not let him. When the pain got too much she would let him have some of the witch’s swamp water, though she was sparing with it, and with good reason.

  Rufinus resigned himself swiftly to being a patient and taking care with his recovery. He knew from long experience in both the army and the boxing ring that ribs and arms could take over a month to heal, perhaps two if they were bad. These breaks, he reasoned, were not too bad and with his excellent record of recovery, he should be fine within the month. It had already been five days, and some calculation as he bounced along in the cart with the map led him to the conclusion that there was still a hundred miles to travel across the flat land to the great Danuvius and Roman territory beyond, and perhaps fifty miles from there to the coast. At the rate they were travelling, and barring potential delays, he reckoned twelve days would put them at the Euxine Sea. He would have been convalescing for two weeks then, and should be well on the mend. By the time they took a ship, he would be considerably more hardy and mobile.

  The next day they camped on a flat, featureless plain in the lee of the cart, using it as a wind-break. The road had petered out quickly on the flat and the river turned and marched off southwest. The terrain here on the plains was utterly different from everything Rufinus had experienced so far since arriving at Drobeta. An endless sea of grass, the Carpates range gradually diminishing to a hazy blue line on the western horizon. Lakes and rivers were scattered about the great flat land.