Simon Scarrow - When the Eagle hunts

Prasutagus nodded, hearing the words but unable to tear his gaze from Diomedes.

'You can take us there?'

Prasutagus nodded again.

'How far?'

'Three days.'

'Then we'd better get moving. The Druids have a day's head start on us. If we push it, we might catch them before they reach this Great Fortress of.theirs.'

'We're not going to catch them, are we?' Cato said to Boudiea as he chewed on a leathery piece of hardtack.

After Diomedes had died, they had hurried back to find Boudica to begin their pursuit of the Druids at once. Even after dawn had broken, Macro had ordered that they continue; the need to catch up with the Druids and their prisoners before they could take shelter in the Great Fortress outweighed the risk of discovery. From the rushed translation provided by Boudica, it was clear that once inside the vast ramparts of the fortress, protected by a large garrison of selected warriors – the bodyguard of the King of the Durotriges – the hostages would be beyond any hope of rescue. The general's family would either be exchanged – if Aulus Plautius allowed himself to be so humbled that it would destroy his career – or they would be burned alive in a wicker effigy under the eyes of the Druids of the Dark Moon.

So the two Romans, and their Iceni guides, had ridden their horses hard all through the night and well into the next day until it was clear that the animals were spent and would collapse and die if they were pushed any further.

They hobbled the horses in the ruined pen of an abandoned farm, and gave them the last of the feed carried by the ponies. Tomorrow, before first light, they would set off again.

Prasutagus stood the first watch, while the others ate and tried to sleep, huddled in their cloaks in the cold air of early spring. Macro, as usual, fell into a deep slumber almost as soon as he had curled up under his cloak. But Cato's mind was restless, tormented by Diomedes's terrible fate and the prospect of what lay ahead, and he fidgeted and fretted.

When he could take no morel, he threw back his cloak and stood up. He added some wootl to the glowing embers of the fire and helped himself to)ne of the air-dried strips of beef in his saddlebag. The meat was as hard as wood and could only be swallowed after a great deal of chewing.

Which suited Cato, who needed something to occupy him.

He was on his second stril5 of dried beef mwhen Boudica joined him in front of the fire. They had risked a small fire, concealed by the crumbling-walls of an abandoned farm.

The thatch roof had fallen in and now lazy flames licked around the remains of the roofing timber Cato had chopped to bits for fuel.

'We might catch them up,' she answered him. 'Your centurion thinks we will.'

'And what happens if we do?' Cato said quietly, with a quick glance towards the bundled form of his snoring centurion. 'What will three men be able to achieve against who knows how many Druids? There'll be some kind of bodyguard as well. It'll be suicide.'

'Don't always look for the dark side of a situation,'

Boudica chided him. 'There's four of us, not three. And Prasutagus is worth any ten Durotrigan warriors that ever lived. From what I know of your centurion, he's a pretty formidable fighter as well. The Druids will have their work cut out with those two. I have my bow with me, and even my small hunting arrows can kill a man if I'm lucky. Which leaves you. How good are you in a fight, Cato?'

'I can handle myself.' Cato opened his cloak and tapped his fingers on the phalerae he had been awarded for saving Macro's life in a skirmish over a year earlier. 'I didn't get these for record-keeping.'

'I'm sure you didn't. I meant no disrespect, Cato. I'm just trying to work out our chances against the Druids and, well, you don't have the build or the look of a killer about you.'

Cato gave her a thin smile. 'I try not to look like a killer, actually. I don't find it aesthetically pleasing.'

Boudica chuckled. 'Appearances aren't everything.' As she said this she turned her head to look at the sleeping centurion and Cato saw her smile. The tenderness of her expression jarred vcith the cool tension that had seemed to exist between her and Macro over recent days and Cato realised she still bore more affection towards Macro than she was willing to admit. Still, any relationship between his centurion and this woman was no business of his. Cato swallowed the shred of beef he had been chewing and stuffed the rest into his knapsack.

'Looks can certainly deceive,' Cato agreed. 'When I first saw you back in Camulodunum, I would never have guessed you enjoyed this kind of cloak and dagger stuff.'

'I might say the same about you.'

Cato blushed and then smiled at his reaction. 'You're not the only one. It's taken me a while to gain any kind of acceptance in the legion. It's not my fault, or theirs. It's not easy to accept having a seventeen-year-old foisted on you with the rank of optio for no better reason than that his father happened to be a faithful slave in the imperial secretariat.'

Boudica stared at him. 'Is tSat true?'

'Yes. You don't suppose I'm old enough to have earned such a promotion through years'of exemplary soldiering, do you?'

'Did you want to be a soldier?'

'Not at first.' Cato smiled, sheepishly. 'When I was a boy I was far more interested in books. I wanted to be a librarian, or maybe even a writer.'

'A writer? What does a writer.do?'

'Writes histories, or poetry, or plays. Surely you have them here in Britain?'

Boudica shook her head. 'No. We have some written words. Passed down to us by the ancient ones. Only a handful know their secrets.'

'But how do you preserve stories? Your history?'

'Up here.' Boudica tapped her head. 'Our stories are passed down through the generations by word of mouth.'

'Seems a pretty unreliable method of keeping records.

Isn't there a temptation to try to improve the story with each telling?'

'But that's the point of it. The tale's the thing. The better it becomes – the more it is embroidered, the more it grips the audience – the greater it is, and the more enriched we become as a people. Is it not so in Rome?'

Cato silently considered the matter for a moment. 'Not really. Some of our writers are storytellers, but many are poets and historians and they pride themselves on telling the facts, plain and simple.'

'How dull.' Boudica grimaced. 'There must be some people who are trained to tell stories like our bards do.

Surely?'

'Some,' admitted Cato. 'But they are not held in the same esteem as writers. They are mere performers.'

There performers?' Boudica laughed. 'Truly, you are a strange people. What is it that a writer produces? Words, words, words. Mere marks on a scroll. A storyteller, a good one, mind you, produces a spell that binds his audience into sharing another world. Can written words ever do that?'

'Sometimes,' Cato said defensively.

'Only for those who can read. And how many in a thousand Romans can do that? Yet ev6ry person who hears can share a tale. So which is the better? The written or the spoken word? Well, Cato?'

Cato frowned. This conversation was becoming unsettling.

Too many of the eternal verities of his world were in danger of being undermined if he should entertain the vision Boudica offered him. As far as he was concerned, the written word was the only reliable way a nation's heritage could be preserved. Such records could speak to the generations as freshly and accurately as at the time they were written. But what was the utility of such a marvellous device for the illiterate masses that teemed across the empire? For them only an oral tradition, with all its foibles, would suffice.

That the two traditions might be complementary was anathema to his view of literature, and he would have none of it. Books were the ultimate means by which the mind could be improved. Folk tales and legends were mere palliatives to beguile and distract the ignorant from the true path of self-improvement, t Which thought led him tO cgnsider the nature of the woman before him. She was clearly proud of her race and its cultural heritage, and she was also educated. How else did she come to have so ready,:a grasp of Latin? 'Boudica, how did you le.aoa to speak Latin?'