Richard Blake - The Curse of Babylon

‘Night foragers?’ Rado whispered uncertainly.

‘I don’t see what else they could be,’ I said. ‘Though, if it’s at least a two-day ride to the Larydia Pass, and still more to the big pass, what are they doing here ?’ I thought of my map. That might easily be wrong. But Rado and the boys knew where they were. The details might be less sharp in their minds than they claimed in front of me but that couldn’t put us two days south-west of where they said we were.

I strained to hear the low conversation. From right to left, they were passing by not twenty feet away, and all I needed was for the officer to speak up a little or turn in our direction. I thought at first they’d pass completely out of hearing. But there was a sudden noise of more horses approaching from our left and the men sat up straight.

Rado leaned closer. ‘How big were you told the escort would be?’ he asked. I pressed my head against his for silence. said the new arrivals were about a dozen men on horses similar to our own. So far as I could tell, they had no armour. The hairs on the back of my neck were beginning to stand up.

The officer rode forward a few paces and raised his voice. ‘Have you found anything yet?’ he asked.

‘Nothing to scare whatever old woman issued your orders,’ the man in charge of the larger band jeered in the rough Persian of a highlander. He leaned to the right and spat. ‘But we found a real old woman. She told us she saw two blond boys on horseback stealing a goat.’

‘Obviously not locals,’ the officer grunted. ‘They may indicate nothing but I’ll report back.’

The highlander spat again. ‘Good riders, she said — too good for escaped slaves. But too young, I got the impression, to be western federates.’

‘You made sure to kill her afterwards?’ the officer asked anxiously. ‘You know the orders.’

The highlander laughed unpleasantly. ‘We killed the whole fucking village. Shame we had to leave all their food behind.’

‘Good,’ the officer said. ‘Nothing must be left to chance.’ He stopped and looked sharply right. Someone or something had started a light shower of stones down the far wall of this minor pass. He clutched harder on his reins and got out his sword. He began a babbled charm to ward off evil. Even before I saw his sword’s dull glitter, the highlander and his men were dashing on horseback up an incline steeper and rockier than the one Rado and I had come down. Together, they reached a point about fifty yards up, before stopping for a quiet laugh. The highlander was first back to the officer, what may have been a rabbit skewered on his long sword.

‘Very good,’ the officer said with a recovery of dignity. He put his sword away. ‘Don’t bust a gut over it but if you find either of the blond boys, try to take them alive. And remember the order not to split up.’

Eboric and his brother had the horses already loaded when we got back. Now, they were fighting tears of disgrace as they covered the fire with a mass of tiny stones. This wasn’t the time for flogging their arses raw. Nor would I punish them. ‘It was just bad luck,’ I’d said after telling all three what I’d heard. ‘And it may not even be that,’ I’d added. ‘After all, we have learned something.’

I was right. We had learned something. If only I could be sure what it was. I put wilder conjectures aside and turned to Rado. ‘The questions are piling up,’ I said, wondering how to express them without sounding panicky. I looked at the pebbles he’d arranged on the flat rock. The moon was past its zenith and each stone and heap of stones cast a shadow. ‘It’s no surprise the escort should be made up of Persian regulars. But why night scouting parties, and why so far out? And who’s being chased by them?’ I fell silent. I’d thought at first they were after me. That would suggest Shahin had already met the escort and he was guessing I’d not be far behind. But the ruling out of blond hair had been too emphatic. Also, if they were just looking for me, why the murder of anyone who’d seen them?

I reached forward to touch one of the double lines of pebbles at the top left extremity of Rado’s map. ‘Are you absolutely sure this is the only pass that Shahin can use?’ I asked in Slavic — I’d more chance of a frank answer if no one else could understand.

He nodded. ‘I’ve been looking for days at the shape of the mountains,’ he answered in Latin. ‘Never mind your painted map — we’ve seen nowhere else they could use. As for the escort, there’s no other pass that makes sense.’ The two boys nodded vigorously. I could have interrupted here to ask how they knew anything about the location of the passes, let alone their width. But I’d chosen them for the skills they’d learned before they were taken. I’d seen no reason so far to doubt I’d chosen right. If Rado’s confidence weren’t enough, the boys had been scampering all over the place. While he’d been keeping me from falling off my own horse, they had been over every inch of the ground ten miles either side of our journey and ten miles ahead. I nodded grimly and waited.

‘The escort might be lost,’ he continued with a frown. ‘But those rough men on horseback are like my people. They can’t get lost — not enough to be this far off course.’

We could stand here debating all night and still not get anywhere. I looked at the mounds of little stones and wondered which one represented our hill. ‘If, shall we say, a dozen of your people were hunting us,’ I asked, ‘what would they do?’

Rado pointed at a different mound and turned matter of fact. ‘Given a few dozen of us, we’d keep a watch on these paths — here and here — and we’d send lines of horsemen over each of these hills. There’d be boys with dogs going before them. You’d need to be a mountain fox to escape that kind of dragnet.’ He began moving pieces of gravel about in a way that set my heart sinking faster than the moon. ‘Just a dozen, though — and without orders for an all-out search — and we’d scout round till morning in the most obvious places. After that, we’d keep to the highest points and look down to see if anyone was moving.’

I moved to look at the shadowed pattern of stones from another angle and tried to superimpose on it my own compound map. I pointed to the intersection of the passes and traced a line to our hill. ‘We can take a risk once we’re out of this immediate area,’ I said. ‘Until then, we’ll see how far we can get by night. We can sleep once the sun is up.’ Rado nodded.

I was about to issue another of my ‘instructions,’ when Eboric’s brother came and plucked at my cloak. ‘There’s a line of horsemen coming up from the north,’ he whispered. ‘You can’t hear them. But, if you look hard enough, you can see the moving shadows.’

We spent the remaining hours of darkness jumping at our own shadows. Once or twice, we heard men calling to each other at a great distance. But, once Rado had guided us over a seemingly impossible ridge, we moved steadily forward, now entering one of the more sheltered upland areas. Here we passed over expanses of scrubby grass that soaked up the sound of hooves. There were even little copses of trees to hide us if required.

Then, as the sky gradually turned blue and the sun began moving down the highest mountain behind us, Eboric’s brother hurried back to us.

‘Smell of burning ahead,’ he reported.

I’d already noticed. ‘Was it round here that you stole the goat?’ I asked. He nodded. Rado and I looked at each other. He tickled the right ear of his horse and moved silently forward. I gave my own horse the slightest touch of spur and held on to avoid being thrown.