We were already running; us and the rest of the legion. We got close enough to see the sweat running down man andhorse, so that both were slick, and steaming, and near to broken in wind.
Horgias was wilder than he had ever been; unshaved and unwashed, his hair bound back by a leather thong, he could have been a barbarian come amongst us, except that he wore the red tunic of our cohort and the mule’s tail was painted on the scabbard of his gladius, and in any case everybody in both legions knew Horgias by name and sight by now.
Everybody except Paetus, obviously. He emerged from his newly built house and stood on the top step, softly pink as from a hot bath, with his hair wet and his face half shaved, holding a towel in one hand and a pomegranate — a pomegranate! — in the other.
‘Who is this man?’
Cadus was there, one step ahead of trouble. ‘He’s a scout, lord. He was sent to watch the Taurus Mountains, whence any attack is most likely to come. It would appear one is coming, and he has seen it?’
This last, he directed to Horgias. I was next to him by then, acting as his groom, giving water to man and beast.
Horgias saluted first to Cadus, and then to Paetus, as he must. And then he gave his report there, in the open, in a voice that bounced from one rampart to the next, and never mind that Paetus was trying to invite him inside to give it in private.
‘Vologases, the King of Kings, rides at the head of his army. He has with him, I would estimate, ten thousand cataphracts, fifteen thousand light cavalry, five thousand infantry. They go slowly, held back by the pace of their marching men. In two days’ time, they will traverse the Taurus Mountains south and east of here. There is a place we could stop them. At a fast march, we could be there in half a day. A legion, perhaps, could hold them, allowing the rest to finish the defences here.’
He spoke into a hollow silence. We sucked his words in and drained them dry of meaning and still we did not fully comprehend the size of the army that came at us. Paetus understood least of all. His gaze flickered from Cadus to Horgias and back as if he suspected both of some kind of conspiracy to unman him.
At length, Cadus said, ‘Perhaps the senior centurions could meet with your excellency to discuss our strategy?’ and Paetus was persuaded inside.
Horgias was dismissed without a second glance. We led him away to find food and water and wine, and Syrion and the Rabbit stayed back in case there was anything we needed to hear.
Horgias said, ‘I’m sorry about your colt.’
Beneath the filth of four days living wild, his face was unreadable. He had never been an easy man to befriend, but since Proclion’s death he had become a blank slate with nothing to see, nothing to know, except on those few occasions when we faced the enemy, when he became a lethal, screaming demon. The rest of the time he didn’t talk much; the horse was his exception, he spoke about that.
I shrugged. ‘He’s fine. His tendons are whole; you didn’t break him. In a while, when he’s had fodder and water, I’ll stand him in the river and let him cool off properly. For now, we’ll light a fire and cook you something to eat.’
We reached our camp, the rows of tents with ours at the head of our cohort. We had firewood under a goatskin awning, and a fire pit that we had dug while he was away. I crouched and began to gather the tinder, and small twigs to start the fire. Horgias crouched with me, and caught my hand.
‘Let me,’ he said quietly. ‘I haven’t lit a fire in four days. I miss it.’
Even if it hadn’t been Horgias, I wouldn’t have argued with that; a man needs to light fires to keep his soul warm, or so my father taught me.
I let the twigs fall at the side of the pit, set down the bunch of fleece that I planned would hold the flame and set my fingers to my belt, where I kept the glow from the last fire in a pot.
‘Have you fire to light it? If not, I can-’
A horn split the air from the far side of the camp. Three notes, rising, and two falling; it was the call to witness a sacrifice, which all men must attend who do not wish to call ill luck on themselves.
It came from the lines of the IVth legion. Horgias cursed softly, viciously, and tilted his head to look up at me. What could I say? ‘We’re going to war. Best not to offend the gods, even for the lousy Fourth.’
‘Right.’ He set his fire-making things down with careful precision and rose and together we ambled over at our leisure, drinking in the late sun, the scent of smoke, the sound of corn cakes frying.
In time, we came to a trench dug twenty paces in front of the tent lines of the IVth; the foundation for their quarter-stores. They had decided to build them in stone, an affectation they brought from the Hawk mountains. We didn’t share it, but we failed entirely to talk them out of it, and it was, I think, a way for us each to show our differences, lest any man begin to think we were one unit.
Whatever the reason, they had dug foundations and someone had been into the town and bought a dark-fleeced shearling ram for the sacrifice. It was a fine, stout animal, with yellow eyes set with the vertical slit that makes them seem like demons, when in fact they are as terrified as any beast can be. Certainly this one was not being held with the calmness that is due an offering given to the gods. The young conscript who held it had evidently never done so before; inthe time it took for us to fall into ordered lines he kept losing his grip and reclutching in a way designed to induce panic in any creature’s breast.
The ram, for its part, had been dragged from the town to a place it did not know, amongst unfamiliar men who sharpened knives in its easy view; terrified, it fought its bonds fiercely. That could have been put to use if the priests and augurs had the sense to use its fighting spirit for our good, but these were small men with small minds and they were already drenched in fear at the size of Vologases’ army.
So when they caught it up, and cut its bonds, there was a moment when neither the conscript nor the chief priest was fully holding it, and it lunged out with feet and horns, thrust the former to the ground and the latter into the priest’s ribs and, with a kick and a butt, was free to leap out, over the foundations, past the tent lines, through eight ranks of men and away to freedom.
You could have heated the silence then, and beaten it flat to make a sword. Soon, though, the first mutterings rolled through, as men spelled out for each other the doom that was on us all. A failed sacrifice. Failed! We’re finished.
The idiot priest made an effort to read something good in the beast’s escape, but he was wasting his breath; every man in the empire knows that a failed sacrifice is the clearest statement the gods ever give that the endeavour — whatever it is that the sacrifice was for — is doomed.
So the IVth couldn’t build their quarter-stores on those foundations. And we were dead men if we tried to face Vologases’ army.
I turned, and found Horgias beside me. ‘Let’s go,’ I said tightly. ‘There’s no good to be had in staying here.’
Back at our own tent lines, we set to making our evening meal. For a while, I watched Horgias as he devoted himselfagain to the fire, laid the tinder and the wool and shaved peelings from a dry block around them.
He borrowed my glow-coal and nursed the infant spark it gave him, feeding it small twigs that he had kept in the breast of his tunic and dried with his own body’s heat. In time, he had a youthful, boisterous blaze that sent thin smoke spiralling to the sky.
He took wheat meal and water from his bag, spices, some dried rosemary, a little bead of lamb’s fat, rolled and rolled until it was hard as beeswax. Mixed, they made a mash that he squeezed between his hands until it made small, flat cakes.
He oiled his mess tin and set the cakes to roast and it had the ritual feel of a last meal, shared amongst friends, amongst brothers, amongst men who knew their lives to be short, and yet still cherished each other’s company. If anything, I thought Horgias looked at peace, and was glad for him.