I gave in. ‘Then we’ll keep the fire out of sight,’ I said. Three heads nodded politely. I sat down. ‘I’ll take the long midnight watch.’
Chapter 53
I dreamed that I was in a room filled with dazzling light. Except the light came from no particular direction, it was like the time when I was lost in the Egyptian desert. All about me, lines of poetry had been turned to balls of coloured light and revolved slowly in paths determined by their patterns of long and short syllables. It was very beautiful to watch and reminded me of something in my early childhood.
At home and in bed, the dream could have gone on all night and given me something to think about in spare moments during the day. Here, it never effaced the fact that I was lying, cold and stiff, on top of a hill so windswept that the few bushes able to take root spread out over the ground, never more than six inches tall. Without needing to open my eyes and look at the moon, I could feel it would soon be my turn to get up and take my turn with the watch. For the moment, I lay still. The wind was up again. Its gentle and continuous moaning was something I now only noticed at times like this. I’d soon learned to accept it as a welcome blotting out of the distant and far more sinister howling of the wolves. In the summer months, I knew, there was safer prey for them than armed men huddled about a fire. Try believing that, however, when you’ve childhood experience of the creatures, and when you’re one of the huddled men. They were up and about, I could be sure. If I listened hard enough, I’d hear them. The wind was up, but not yet enough.
I began to drift back towards the room filled with light. The dream hadn’t entirely faded, but coloured balls that had been resolving themselves, one after the other, into lines of text glowed brighter and brighter again. Then it was all gone and I was awake. ‘If you won’t let me come too,’ Eboric whispered in his sulky tone, ‘I’ll wake him up and tell him.’
I think Rado poked him hard in the chest. He let out an obscenity in his own language I hadn’t yet heard. ‘And if it’s nothing?’ he asked, returning to Latin. ‘If it’s nothing, you’ll get him up for no reason? Stay here and look after things. If he does wake, tell him I’ll be back in time for my watch.’
I threw the blanket aside and sat up into a blast of chilly air. ‘What have you heard?’ I asked.
Rado wiped an angry snarl from his face and got up. ‘I don’t know, My Lord,’ he said evasively. ‘It may be something I’ve felt more than heard. It may be a trick of the wind.’ He stepped towards me and reached down for my blanket.
‘He said he heard horses, Master,’ Eboric said quickly. He twisted sideways to avoid being kicked into the embers of the fire. ‘I’m sure I heard a harness jingle.’
Shahin, running far ahead of any conjectured time, and far from his only sensible route? Not likely. A local traveller about his business? I looked at Eboric’s childish pout. I looked at the dark shadow that was Rado’s face. ‘Where did you hear them?’ I asked. I walked with Rado to the ravine edge and followed his pointed finger down to the left. The moon was heading towards its midnight zenith. If with deceptive clarity, I could see for miles in every direction. Looking down, I stared into total darkness. I put aside the mournful sound of the wind. The wolves had run out of anything more to say to each other, or were out of hearing. I held my breath and listened hard.
It was only the briefest snatch but you don’t mistake armed men on horseback. I turned and looked into the unearthly glow on Rado’s now tense and excited face. ‘Can you tell how far away?’ I asked.
He went to the edge and leaned over. ‘Not far below us,’ he said after a long pause. ‘There’s three of them and I think they’ve come out with padded harness.’
Eboric and his brother were already at work on their bootlaces. I raised a hand for attention. ‘The pair of you stay here,’ I said, quiet yet firm. I waited for their looks of disappointment to fade to sullenness ‘You need to keep an eye on the horses,’ I explained. ‘Be prepared to get them ready for an immediate retreat.’
Rado looked for the right words. Not finding them in Latin, he went into Slavic. ‘You should stay here, Master,’ he said. ‘I might be faster on my own.’
I frowned. ‘Whatever’s down there,’ I said, ‘I need to see for myself.’
After so long of having to treat me like a mounted invalid, Rado could be forgiven for believing I’d been denatured by seven years of prosperity in the Empire. On two legs, I could be still as much the predatory barbarian as he was. To be sure, we had no hills in England like these. But there were animals to be hunted, and travelling strangers to be robbed; and I had grown up surrounded by mile-wide expanses of shingle. It was hard to say which of us was more silent and more unseen, as we hurried down the steep incline. We reached its bottom about a mile from where we’d left the boys in charge of the horses. Dark caps pulled on tight to cover our hair, we crouched together behind a large boulder and waited.
We heard the muffled jingle of harness long before the three riders came in sight. They moved slowly, picking their way over the loose stones. From the first, I thought the horses were bigger than anything normally seen in the mountains. One look at how the moonlight glittered on their helmets and the hairs stood up on the back of my neck.
‘Persian regular army,’ I breathed into Rado’s ear. He stiffened beside me, the same thought probably going through his mind. I watched them come closer. There could be no doubt what they were. I could see their helmets and the fish-scale armour under their cloaks. I could see the outline of their leggings and boots. Still moving slowly, now and again letting the horses cool their hooves in the little stream, it was an officer in front and two men behind.
‘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.’