We found no trace of Lorco’s turmae in Lugdunum. No one had heard of him or from him since he and his party passed through on the way north a month earlier. And so Ursus delivered a formal report to the military authorities, describing all that had happened, to the best of our limited knowledge, and left another written missive with the commander of the garrison for delivery to Duke Lorco when he arrived. That done, Ursus and I ate in the garrison refectory that night and slept soundly for eight hours in one of the barracks rooms before striking out again at dawn along the broad, straight highway that followed the Rhone river to the lake called Genava in the ancient territories of Cisalpine Gaul.
We rode with the river on our right, and at first we had no shortage of companions along the route, teamsters with laden wagons, and self-sufficient pedestrians, and an occasional string of laden mules led by handlers as taciturn as the creatures they led. But as we traveled farther and farther beyond the protection of the military headquarters, our traveling companions reached their various destinations in hamlets and small towns and villa farms and left us to travel on without them, until eventually we were alone again on the open road. We no longer had any need to hunt for food, which pleased us both, for once Ursus had established his identity and his membership in Duke Lorco’s squadrons, he had been able to draw some of his unpaid stipend from the offices of the military paymaster in Lugdunum. With those funds he had immediately gone looking for a commodious tent of hand-sewn leather panels to replace the one he had lost in the ambush by the river. I was most impressed with the workmanship I could see in the tent’s finish, but Ursus waved a hand dismissively, saying it was nowhere near as large or as fine as the one he had lost. Then, having bought the tent, he also bought a horse to carry it, for the thing was much too large to carry on the horse he had inherited from Lorco. I watched closely, but said nothing while he negotiated with the horse trader, but I was satisfied that he had acquitted himself well and had bought a fine, strong animal.
From the horse dealer’s premises, we next made our way to the armories, where he replenished his supply of arrows and purchased a bow and another quiver full of arrows for me before taking me on an expedition to purchase rations for the ensuing week, and now our saddlebags were filled with provisions: fresh crusty loaves of heavy, rich brown bread; several kinds of dried and salted meat and fish; four rounds of cheese, two soft and new, and two hard and dry; a flask of the garlic-enriched fish oil that had been beloved of Roman soldiers for countless hundreds of years, together with a vial of thick, aromatic black vinegar and even two earthen jars of salty, fat green olives preserved in their own oil. We were men of wealth on this portion of our journey, at least when it came to eating.
On the afternoon of our second day out of Lugdunum it threatened to rain heavily on us and we could see no signs of any rift in the thick-piled banks of cloud that had swept in upon us from the north, so we decided we would rather make camp early and sit warm and dry in our new leather tent than press on for no good reason and endure the deluge.
We picked a spot in the open, about a hundred paces from the roadside and close to the river, in the shelter of a huge dead tree that would provide us with all the firewood we might need. It took us almost an hour to pitch the tent to Ursus’s liking, since this was the first time we had tried it and every tent ever made has its own quirks and peculiarities. By the time we had it up and ready to use, my hands were sore and bruised from struggling with stiff new abrasive and unyielding ropes. As soon as that task was done, I went gathering ferns for our bedding, no great hardship compared to pitching the tent because, as close as we were to the water, ferns grew in lush profusion among the trees on the riverbank.
By the time I had brought back four enormous double loads of fresh green bedding, Ursus had built a healthy fire that he felt confident would burn throughout the coming storm, and we settled in to eat and wait for the storm to break. We ate well that night, and the storm held off until we had eaten our fill and seen to our horses’ needs for the night. We could hear thunder rolling in the distance and so knew that the storm was out there, but no rain fell for a long time and we saw no signs of lightning throughout the time the sun set and night fell. I fell asleep almost before it grew completely dark, and Ursus was already snoring by that time, and I slept soundly through the earliest stages of the breaking storm.
I snapped awake sometime in the middle of the night, my eyes full of the remembered flare of a burst of brilliant light, and my breast shocked near to death with the concussion of a single massive, booming explosion. I sprang upright, leaping from the softness of my bed to land on my feet, glaring blindly about me and trying to tell myself that I was not afraid. I had no memory of drawing the sword that filled my hand and no awareness of where I was or what was happening. All I knew was I was in pitch darkness and something terrifying had happened. But then I heard the solid, steady roar of heavy rain on the leather panels just above my head, and my memory returned.
I sucked in air, hard, and tried to calm the thumping in my chest, but it was still pitch black in the tent, and that, combined with the fury of the storm, was frightening, despite the fact that I now knew where I was. Another flare of lightning lit the tent, followed after a moment by a rolling crack of thunder, far different from the one that had brought me leaping from my sleep. Even as the lightning flared and flickered out again I thought I saw something moving at the door of the tent. I opened my mouth to call out to Ursus, and then heard the sound of a heavy blow and muffled curses.
Without giving myself a moment’s pause to listen again and be sure, lest I lose my nerve, I threw myself toward the front of the tent just as another lightning flash showed me the flaps hanging open. I had closed them myself when I went to bed, and Ursus had already been asleep. I leaped forward and pushed through the flaps to where I could see movement, a struggle of some kind, taking place ahead of me. Ursus, I knew, and someone else. I called his name and moved forward, raising my sword and trying with my free hand to clear the streaming rainwater from my eyes as my feet slipped and slid in the muddy grass, and then I saw more movement looming close beside me, and before I could begin to turn something, someone, hit me hard across the head and I went down.
Whatever it was that had struck me, it was not metal, and at first I thought it had done me no grievous harm. I felt the wetness of long, sodden grass against my cheek and I rubbed my face in it gratefully before rolling away. No one was pursuing me, I could see, but that could change at any moment. I took a deep breath and tried to rise to my feet, but my head blazed immediately with pain and I barely managed to struggle to my knees. I made one more effort to stand and fell instead, to support myself on all fours while the rain hammered down on me. Appalled at my own weakness, I stared into the blackness and saw Ursus, his back against a tree again, facing a group of crouching figures. Lightning flared again, and in the darkness that followed it I saw six figures lit in the blackness of my mind. I knew then that Ursus was a dead man, for I was utterly incapable of rising to my feet, let alone of rushing to help him.