Caius grimaced. "Then you do think they came up from the south coast? All that way?"
Picus nodded. "Thirty, forty, perhaps fifty miles overland, depending on the route they followed. Yes, we do. The horses would give them the added protection they felt they needed — speed and mobility in scouting the land ahead of them. We estimate that this was a three-boat party, with about thirty-three men and three or four horses to a boat."
"I see." The tone of his voice confirmed it. "So what do we do now?"
I told him. "We call a Council meeting for tomorrow morning to define some new priorities."
"Such as?"
"Such as deciding how much of our land we should give up as untenable under these new circumstances. We absolutely have to abandon some of the villas, even if we continue to farm the land. We have to pull our most outlying people back to where we can defend them properly. And from now on, every party working our fields has to have an armed guard."
He nodded wordlessly, agreeing with each point as I made it.
"What else?"
"Well, I was thinking about our defences all the way back. It seems to me that as soon as we have our harvest safely in, we have to concentrate all of our efforts on finishing the fort on the hill. We should build a permanent headquarters there and be prepared to move all of our people in to shelter at a moment's notice."
"That makes sense. Picus, you agree with Publius?"
"Yes, Father, I do. But remember that you're going to need easy ingress and egress. You're going to need a road, even if it runs no further than from the bottom of the hill to the top."
"Yes, I suppose we are, we have to have some way of getting our people in and out quickly."
Picus hammered the point. "Your people, yes, but mainly your soldiers, both mounted and on foot."
Caius turned back to me. "Varrus, you are correct, this is a Council matter. I'll summon an emergency session tonight."
"No, Caius," I interrupted him. "Not tonight. Tomorrow morning will be soon enough. Let everyone get some sleep. In the meantime, I have some things I have to see to, so if you'll pardon me, I'll go and look after them now." I bowed and left the three of them together as I went to find Luceiia and tell her the sad news of her friends.
She took it far better than I had expected, and her tears were few. It was obvious to me that she had prepared herself for just this outcome and was determined not to let it affect her too visibly. I held her close until she had composed herself and become the mistress of the household once again.
"You must be famished," she said, wiping her nose. "When did you last eat?"
"Last night, before dawn. I gnawed on some of the bread and cheese I had with me. I haven't had much stomach for food since. Picus is in with Caius and Alaric. He must be starved, too."
"Will you eat now?"
"No, my love, I can't. I have to see to Germanicus and talk to Equus first. If I leave now, I can be back in an hour."
She reached up and kissed me. "Go, then, and hurry back. I'll have Gallo prepare the bath-house attendants for your return, and there will be a hot dinner waiting for you by the time you have bathed and dressed."
A short time later, I found Victorex in the stables, gazing in perplexity at the device he had removed from the small Frankish horse. The thing lay on the ground at his feet, and he was crouched beside it, running the palm of his hand across its smooth leather. I slid down from Germanicus and handed his reins to a groom, who led him away to one of the stalls.
"What is it, Victorex? Ever seen anything like it before?"
He shook his head. "No. Damn me if I know what it is, although it's a saddle of some kind." He paused, then ran his fingers over the device again, hooking them under its lower edge and hefting the weight of it. "Nothing like any Roman saddle I've ever seen... as you well know, they're made of leather stretched over bronze plates, for strength. They're light, but they're awkward things. That's why so few of our men ever use them. But this..." He turned the device over to expose its underside. "Look at this! This thing's built on a wood frame... And look here ..." He flipped it right-side-up again. "Look at the back of it, the way it's shaped, and this weird-looking thing on the front... This was never designed to carry a pack! It's shaped for a man's arse! But once a man put his crotch over this, with his backside jammed up against the back piece there, he'd be useless. There's no way he'd ever be able to sway with his mount, or control it, and there's no way even to grip a horse's barrel through the thing. It's too thick! Too heavy and too solid. A rider would bounce right off the horse's back..." His voice faded away in perplexity, then resumed. "Anyway, that's all beside the point, isn't it? It's too small for a man."
"A boy," I said. "The rider was a boy, and I think, in spite of your doubts, that it is some kind of saddle, though why on earth anyone would want or need such a thing..." My attention was caught then by two appendages, one attached to either side of the device, and I nodded at them. "What about those two things hanging down, there? What do those look like?"
He picked one of them up, pulling it towards him as far as he could. It was no more than a broad strip of leather, fastened at the top to the main apparatus, and ending in a loop. A flat piece of wood, carved with a niche at each end, had been inserted across the bottom of the loop, stretching it into a delta shape.
Victorex gazed at it wonderingly for some time, then, "No idea..." he muttered. "Unless..." His voice trailed away and then came back as he tapped the wood-stretched loop against the back of the saddle. "Look, Commander, if this is for sitting on — if it is a saddle of some kind, which is what its shape would suggest in spite of common sense — then there's no way a man could vault into it. The back's too high."
I nodded. "So?"
"So, how does he get up on the horse? I've seen you get many a leg-up onto Germanicus. I've cupped my own hands for you a few times." He waved the loop end under my nose. "This thing could serve the same purpose: a mounting step."
I stared at it. "By God, you're right at that, Victorex! But why would anyone go to all that trouble? Unless the boy had a crippled leg."
"Did he?"
I shrugged my shoulders. "I don't know. He was dead when we found him. I didn't even look. His neck was broken, and so was his back. No one paid any attention to his legs."
"Then that could be it? Because this could have been a harness for a crippled boy. It had to be. He was probably unstable in it, and that's why he fell off in the first place."
It was my turn to be bemused. Why would any man take a crippled boy on campaign? Even a favourite son? A chief's son, as the gold collar and shirt of mail suggested he was? But I had other, more important things on my mind.
"I haven't got time to ponder mysteries. Have one of your people take it up to Gallo at the house and tell him to place it on a saw-horse in my armoury. It will make a memento of a savage occasion."
I left Victorex still looking at the Frankish harness and found Equus at the forge, working outside in the late afternoon sunshine. He had already heard the news of the Sullas and wanted to ask me all about it, but I was in no mood to discuss it yet.
"How are you making out with that new sword design?" I asked him.
He led me inside the forge and showed me the length of metal that lay there on his work-bench. Beside it, on a scrap of papyrus, he had drawn a sword — a sword with a blade twice the length of the gladium, and a handle to match, with a heavy weight at the pommel.