Jack Whyte - The Skystone

It took some time, but the prisoner eventually regained his senses, helped by a generous quantity of water that I knew was offered only because of the plentiful supply nearby. As soon as he seemed capable of standing upright again, the barbarian hauled him to his feet and left him there, swaying, while he climbed back up onto his camel. None of his three companions had either moved or spoken. I heard the guttural "Hut! Hut!

Hut!" command to the camel and then, as they began to move again, just before he took his first staggering step, the prisoner turned, his face clean, his eyes screwed almost shut, and looked, unseeing, directly towards my hiding place.

That look had the effect on me of an unexpected plunge into icy water. My skin broke out in goose-flesh and my gut stirred in sheer horror. I knew him. And I knew, suddenly, that this time and this place had been preordained, that the whim that had brought me here had had a supernatural origin. I am not a superstitious man, and I was far less so then, but I knew that this was my destiny, my fate. I've heard a lot of men say that they relived their entire lives in one flash of time when they thought they were going to die. That wasn't quite what happened to me then, but I have never had a stranger experience than I did at that moment, when smells, sounds, feelings and sights assaulted me without warning from a time four years earlier.

I had been on campaign at the time, on the eastern borders of the Empire, but for all I knew as I struggled awake that day, I could have been anywhere. I was flat on my back, completely disoriented, with no knowledge of what had happened to me. And then a surging memory of battle, of being surrounded by screaming, barbarous faces, brought a swell of panic into my throat, and I started to scramble to my feet. And that's when my mind told me I had been killed, because try as I would, I couldn't move a muscle. I couldn't even scream — couldn't bite my tongue. The panic inside me rose to choking point, but then I heard my heart thumping like a drum in my ears, assuring me I was alive. I fought down the panic and willed myself to relax.

I lay there for a while, forcing myself to breathe slowly and deeply and to consider the evidence of the senses I had working for me. I could smell, hear and feel, for a fat fly had landed on my cheek and crawled into my open mouth. I tried to spit it out. Couldn't. Terror writhed in me again like a mass of maggots. I was afraid to try to open my eyes in case they were already open and I was blind as well as paralyzed. The fly flew out of my mouth; one second I could feel it on my tongue, and the next it was gone. I tried to open my eyes slowly. They were working, at least, but the light was blinding and I felt the muscles of my eyelids rebelling against my efforts. The rest of my body was dead. I could feel absolutely nothing below my mouth.

I have no idea how long I lay there, but eventually the bright light against my eyelids seemed to dim and I felt a coolness on my face, and then a solitary raindrop hit the bridge of my nose with a force and a suddenness that snapped my eyes open. I was lying on my back, my face directly towards a sky that was heavy with banked rain clouds. I had never seen anything so beautiful. Something was very close to my face and I swivelled my eyes downward as far as I could to try to see what it was. There was a dead man's face, horribly mutilated, within inches of my own. His skull had been shattered and grey brains leaked obscenely from the hole. The flies were so thick on the mess that they swarmed. I felt vomit surge in me and fought it down in terror, knowing that if I didn't succeed I would drown myself. The nausea passed slowly and I must have fainted. I awoke again looking up at a man who towered above me, the hem of his tunic almost touching my face. It was almost dark now, and I thanked God fervently for sending him before nightfall. I tried to moan, to move, but nothing happened, and not a sound came out of me. Screaming inside, I watched in horror as his eyes moved over everything around me without approaching my face. I felt my eyes fill with tears. I was eighteen years old, stricken, somehow, in my first battle, and doomed to die here within inches of a man who couldn't see me! Through my tears I saw him look down and then stoop, suddenly, out of my line of sight. Then came a heaving grunt and my whole view changed with a lurch, and what seemed like millions of flies sprang into the air. I saw him straighten up again on the edge of my vision, and I knew that he had somehow moved me to my right. The movement had dislodged the corpse whose face had been so close to my own.

"Tribune!" His voice was low-pitched and deep. "I've found their standard. It was at the bottom of this pile."

He extended his arm, and I saw that he was holding the great silver eagle that I had been so proud to carry, perched on its staff above the SPQR symbol of the Senate and the People of Rome. Another, younger man stepped into my sight. He gripped the standard's shaft, looked up at the Eagle and then looked around him, shaking his head regretfully, his eyes coming to rest on my own. He looked just like an eagle himself, a powerful raptor with deep-set, blazing eyes of pale-yellow gold, a great, narrow, hooked beak of a nose and a mouth that was compressed into a lipless line over a strong, square chin. He was gazing directly into my eyes without seeing me, his mind focused on something other than what he was looking at. But then I saw his gaze sharpen. A furrow appeared between his brows and deepened as his attention concentrated on me. He took a step towards me and I saw his fingers, extended like talons, reach for my neck. His face, keen-eyed and predatory, came within inches of my own, and as the tip of one of his fingers touched the wetness of a tear on my cheek, I blinked. I was vividly aware of the crease marks around his eyes, which could only have been caused, I was convinced, by squinting into the sun, for even now, at the moment of my salvation, I was thinking that here was a face that could never smile or laugh.

"This man's alive! Get him out of there, quickly!" Two more men loomed up behind him and he moved aside to let them dig me out of the great pile of corpses that I had been buried in. My relief was so great that I passed out again.

I recovered eventually from the paralysis that had gripped me — the result of a powerful blow of some kind to the base of my spine — and returned to my decimated unit, where I sought and received permission to try to trace the young officer who had saved my life. I never did find him, and his distinctive face had gradually faded into the stuff of my most hidden memories, forgotten until now.

Now those golden eyes looked my way again and reminded me of a debt unpaid. A strange kind of fatalism took hold of me then as I hid among my rocks and watched his captors drag him until they passed out of sight under the shoulder of my hill. By the time they were gone, I knew what I had to do, and I knew that my chances of success were slim at best against four of them, and practically nonexistent if they were bowmen. As a boy growing up in my grandfather's home, I had been fascinated by a huge African bow that hung on one wall of his treasure room, so called because it contained all of the ancient and exotic armour and weapons he had collected in a lifetime dedicated to the study of such things. Grandfather Varrus was said to be the finest armourer and weapons-smith in Britain, but he was also known as an insatiable collector of antique examples of his art, and soldiers brought him curios and relics from all corners of the Empire, knowing he would be happy to pay for them.

Of his entire collection, that great bow was the apple of my eye. It was too big for me to pull, but that only added to my fascination. Since coming to Africa as a soldier, I had acquired a similar, though much smaller version, and had amused myself by learning how to use it properly and well. All my long hours of practice now offered me my only chance to come out of this adventure alive, for I had perfected the art of rapid, accurate fire, plucking arrows from a row stuck point down in the ground and firing them faster than anyone else I had ever come across. But I had never had anyone shooting back at me while I performed the trick. I hoped this occasion would be no different.