Ruth Downie: Terra Incognita

Stationary and bored, soldiers who had had nothing interesting to look at for some miles were craning to their left and yelling abuse. A rider was galloping at full tilt along the margin of the woods not 150 paces below the road. Ruso blinked. He rubbed his eyes. The rider definitely had the head of a stag. And the stag had antlers.

The cavalryman wheeled his horse around and plunged headlong down the hillside to join his comrades in pursuit. Ruso was wondering whether to follow them when over the shouting he heard someone farther back in the line roar, “Clear the road! Out of the way!”

What happened next was over in seconds and seemed to take hours. Ruso urged his own horse aside to the sound of screams and the bellowing of frightened animals. People were trampling over one another in the rush to escape the path of a heavy wagon careening down the road out of control. The axles were shrieking, the oxen galloping and skidding in a vain attempt to outrun the vehicle to which they were still yoked.

Ruso grabbed a fistful of mane as the terrified horse reared beneath him. One of the front oxen fell. The others were dragged down around it. The wagon collided with the thrashing tangle of black bodies. It slewed off the road, crashed onto its side, and rolled down the hill. For a moment there was a terrible silence. Then came the sound of men screaming.

Finally bringing the trembling horse to a standstill, Ruso surveyed the chaos. Further back, two carts had tipped off the road. One had a pair of mules still struggling and kicking in their harness. A boy had slid down from the bank above them where he must have leaped for safety, and was wiping the mud from his hands. A woman was comforting her sobbing children. People were calling the names of friends and of gods, gathering their scattered possessions or sitting dazed at the roadside while drivers set off toward the woods in pursuit of fleeing animals.

Legionaries were running to form a guard as two men with bloodied swords stepped away from the carcasses of the oxen. Down by the stricken wagon, Postumus was barking orders and a squad was struggling to heave the cargo of lead out of the wreckage.

He could not see Tilla.

He dismounted and put his hand on the shoulder of a pale boy who was standing motionless with his fingers in his mouth. “Are you hurt?”

The boy shook his head, still staring at the scene.

“Hold her steady for me,” ordered Ruso, pressing the reins into the boy’s hand. The child looked relieved to have something to do.

As he strode up to retrieve his medical case from one of the stricken carts, Ruso glanced down at the woods. The Stag Man, or Cernunnos, or whoever he was, had vanished.

The gray-faced carpenter laid out on the grass gave a moan of pain. Ruso had not revealed the severity of his injuries to the man, nor to his hysterical girlfriend, who turned out to be Lydia, Tilla’s patient from yesterday. The tiny bundle of cloth she was clutching had the sort of persistent rasping cry that set one’s teeth on edge. Finally the man himself had summoned the strength to tell her to go away and see to the child: He would be fine. Ruso, knowing the state of the leg hidden beneath the blanket and suspecting further internal injuries, could not imagine that he really believed it.

“We’ll get you down to the sick bay at the fort,” he promised, relieved to see that the man he had dispatched with a message to the fort by the river was already weaving his way back up through the jammed traffic on the road.

The news was not good. The sick bay had flooded during the storm. The patients had been evacuated. The building was full of orderlies padding about in mud with mops and buckets.

Ruso checked the state of the leg again. The bleeding was more or less under control, but the man would not survive the journey across the hills to Coria without surgery.

He helped the stretcher bearers maneuver the carpenter across the slippery remains of the damp bridge, then strode ahead up the road, examining the line of vehicles waiting to cross in the opposite direction. Picking out an empty carriage that had the luxury of suspension, he commandeered it with the optimistic promise to the driver that the army would pay the owner well for his trouble. The vehicle was maneuvered out of the line and parked farther up the hill away from the traffic. One of the stretcher bearers lit a fire at the roadside.

Ruso began to lay out the instruments: needle and thread, hooks, scalpel, cautery… Finally alerted to the enormity of what was happening by the appearance of the bone saw, the driver had to have his objections quieted by the promise of more cash and an imminent flogging if he refused to cooperate. The carpenter was in turn quieted with mandrake and held steady by two less-than-confident stretcher bearers as Ruso cleaned up the mess that had been a leg and prepared for the drastic surgery that might save its owner.

Later, as the carriage rumbled up out of the river valley in the direction of Coria, it held four men in addition to the disgruntled driver. Ruso was tending the carpenter, whose truncated thigh was now neatly sewn over with a flap of skin hidden by a temporary dressing. Behind them, a bandager plucked from the ranks of the Twentieth was looking after the unfortunate slave who had been in charge of the wagon when it ran out of control.

“Not long now,” Ruso promised the carpenter as a particularly nasty pothole caused the man to groan. “We’ll have you properly patched up in the hospital.”

The slave’s injuries were less serious. He had leaped clear just as his vehicle tipped over, and escaped with cuts and bruises only to find himself chained and beaten up by the soldiers who found him weeping beside his fallen animals. Postumus had asked Ruso to get him away from the scene before somebody killed him.

The slave had tears welling in his swollen eyes, but to Ruso’s surprise they were neither of pity for himself nor sorrow for the trouble he had caused. “Poor old Speedy and Star,” he was mumbling through broken teeth. “Poor little Holly. Never a bit of trouble. Even old Acorn. Poor old boys. They didn’t deserve to go like that. I wouldn’t have let them go like that, sirs.”

“Wiggle your toes,” grunted the bandager. “Right. Now flex that knee.”

Ruso gave the carpenter another sip of honeyed water. The slave bent his knee as far as his chains would allow, shrinking away from the injured man as if he were afraid he would leap up and attack him. “It weren’t my fault, sirs,” he insisted. “Honest it weren’t. I tried the brake at the top, I swear I did. I always try the brake. I don’t know what went wrong. It was holding all right yesterday and the hills was just as bad.”

“Keep still,” grunted the bandager, splashing more cheap wine onto the bloodstained cloth and wedging the flagon in the corner of the cart behind him. “And shut up. You’re bothering me.”

Ruso glanced down at the carpenter to check that there was no more bleeding, and scratched at his own ribs. The man was very weak. He might survive, and he might not. Nine walking wounded were being patched up by the medical staff back at the flooded fort. The hillside was littered with shattered cargoes, damaged vehicles, and the carcasses of one mule and four oxen. Nobody-for the moment-was going to be very interested in hearing the slave’s excuses.

“It weren’t the animals, sirs,” the man was continuing, glancing from the bandager to Ruso and back. “They’re steady old boys. I trained them myself. I looked after them like-ow!”

“I said, shut up.”

But the slave was clearly desperate to get his point across before someone decided to punish him again. “They’ve never run off like that before, officers. Never!” He reached out and grabbed Ruso’s arm, evidently deciding he was the more sympathetic of the two. “It was the Stag Man, sir! I saw him.”