Jack Whyte - The Singing Sword

I glanced over my shoulder then to see, to my great dismay, that my squadron had strung out far behind me, and when I looked ahead again, the fugitives had vanished beneath the brow of a hill. Then I felt my great Germanicus falter, and I knew he had reached the end of his endurance. Raging inwardly, I released the pressure on him and let him slow down in his own good time. By the time I crested the brow of the hill, he was walking, his breath coming in great, shuddering snorts, his flanks heaving like mighty bellows. Then, as the crest of the hill dropped below my line of sight, I could see our raiders still galloping for the safety of the forest in the distance, and I nearly wept with fury and frustration.

I heard a noise from below and looked down to see a riderless horse, rearing and flailing as it tried to free itself from its reins, which were tangled in the branches of a fallen tree. There was no sign of its rider. I heard the sound of my own men coming up behind me and waved them away. They stopped. I scanned the hillside below me. Nothing moved, except the snared horse. I guessed at first that it had stumbled and thrown its rider, but then I noticed an oddity about its appearance and decided that it must be a pack-horse, for it had a pack-saddle of some kind strapped to its back. That was why I could see no rider. It had none.

I waved for the men behind me to come forward, and when they had approached I sent one of them down the hillside on foot to bring back the trapped animal. He stopped some distance from the horse and bent over something in the long grass, and his voice came back up the hill to where we sat watching him.

"There's a dead man here, Commander."

I sent two more men down to bring up the body. They picked up the corpse with surprising ease and carried it back up, while the first man gentled the frightened horse, freed it and began to lead it back up the hill.

The corpse was dumped unceremoniously on the ground at my horse's feet and he sidled away from it, nervously.

"It's just a boy."

"Aye, Commander. A rich boy, whoever he was. Look at his clothes."

"I'm looking. Here, take these." I handed him my shield and spear and unslung my bow from around my shoulders, handing it down, too. Unencumbered now, I swung my leg over Germanicus's rump and lowered myself to the ground, where I knelt by the side of the dead boy. His face was badly scraped, but there was little blood, and his head sagged unnaturally sideways.

"Broken neck."

"Aye, Commander. Broken back, too, by the way he flopped when we tried to pick him up the first time. He landed among some fair-sized, solid rocks down there."

The boy was blond and wore a tunic of some rich, blue material. There was a gold collar round his neck and strong leather boots on his feet. Over his tunic he wore what looked like a metal shirt that laced right up to his neck, made of thousands of tiny, overlapping metal rings. I reached out and undid the thong binding it at his throat and slipped my fingers inside the shirt. It was lined with soft, supple leather onto which the rings were sewn. It was impressive, much finer than the one left me by my Grandfather Varrus with his treasures so many years before. The art of crafting them was improving. I straightened up.

"He can't be any more than fourteen, but he was old enough to ride to war, and old enough to die for it. Strip that tunic and shirt off and throw the body back where you found it. He was no Christian, whoever he might have been, and I have a feeling we'll have all the burying we can handle when we reach Sulla's place." I looked at the horse that had been brought up from below. "Bring that horse over here."

It was a fine-boned animal, small and suited to a stripling lad, but it was the contraption on its back that held my attention. I looked around me. Everyone was staring at the thing. I stepped forward and laid hold of it, pulling it towards me. It was some kind of saddle, as I had guessed, for it was solidly anchored, fastened firmly around the horse's belly. It didn't budge when I pulled at it.

"Does anybody know what this is for?" No answer. "Has anyone ever seen anything like it before?" No one had.

"Some kind of saddle, but it looks more like a chair, set sideways, doesn't it?" someone said, obviously referring to the thing's high back.

"Then it's a damn small chair," said another voice.

"Aye, Brutus, too small for your fat arse!" There was a roar of laughter which I silenced with an abrupt motion of my arm.

"That's enough! We have little to laugh about this morning. Someone leg me up onto my horse. And bring that with us." I pointed at the horse. "I'll examine it more closely later. Have you got those clothes safe? Don't lose that shirt, or I'll have your hide." They had just finished stripping the torso, which looked white and pathetic on the cold ground, but I had no sympathy to squander on raiders merely for being young. As I had already said, if they were big enough to go to war, they were old enough to die. "Get rid of that," I said, nodding towards the corpse. "Let's go."

I stepped into the cupped hands of the soldier who was waiting to help me up, and he hoisted me to where I could throw my leg across Germanicus. I swung him around, hard, and headed back in the direction of Vegetius's villa. Just before we reached it, I looked back. My men were all behind me, riding two abreast. "All right, there, smarten up! We didn't catch the enemy, but that doesn't mean we should ride in looking like failures! Form up on me!" I flicked the reins and brought Germanicus to a trot and we arrived at the villa looking like a military unit.

We found the place deserted, except for a few scattered corpses, and the stink of charred wood was appalling. I looked all around, but I could see no female bodies and no children. Then I saw Vegetius. I had looked at him and past him already, not recognizing him, for his face was completely masked in blood, but now I recognized his armour. He lay huddled on a pile of straw bits at the base of a stone wall. I flung myself from my horse and went to him, thinking he was dead, but as soon as I touched him I knew he was alive. He had taken a bad blow from something that had torn the skin from his forehead, leaving a bloody flap dangling down over his eyes. I lifted it clear and pressed it back into place on his brow with the palm of my hand and he immediately looked far better. There was hardly any blood in his eyes at all, but he was unconscious.

"Cato!" I yelled. "Bring me that boy's blue tunic!" He brought it at a run. "Rip me a strip off that and bind it round Vegetius's brow. Be quick." He did as I ordered. "That's better. Now help me to move him up onto this pile of straw." As we moved him, I wondered idly why the straw had not burned, and then I really looked around me for the first time. Most of the buildings were intact. Only three had burned: the villa itself and two others. It made sense that the stables would have survived, since the raiders had ridden horses. As I looked around me, Cato spoke.

"Here come the others, Commander."

I turned to see Picus and Bassus emerge with their troops from the edge of the trees that surrounded the rear of the yard. They saw us and cantered towards me ahead of their men.

"Is that Vegetius?" Picus nodded towards the activity by the wall.

"Yes. Not dead, just unconscious."

"Where was he? Where did you find him?"

"Right here, against the wall, but don't ask me how he got here."

"I don't have to. He came alone, ahead of everyone else. He led the infantry into place and then disappeared. He must have been trying to reach his family."

"Aye. Well, he didn't find them."

"How did you make out? Did you catch them?"

I grunted my disgust. "No. We lost them. Their mounts were fresh. They outran us. What about you? Much trouble?"