Bending to examine the seemingly helpless man more closely, the young centurion held his sword ready to strike as he pushed the barbarian onto his back with a booted foot. The scout’s eyes were pinned wide, their pupils shrunk to the size of tiny dots as he stared sightlessly up at the Roman, and the arrow spilled from his nerveless hand, the shaft’s last fingernail length painted a deep and ruddy red. Bending closer to look at something that caught his eye on the man’s arm, Marcus heard the faintest of noises, the creak of a bow being drawn back, and used the split second’s warning to thrust his shield forward toward the tiny fragment of sound. An arrow slammed into the board with enough power to punch clean through the layers of wood and linen, only stopping when the heavy iron head impacted on his mail shirt’s iron rings with a hard rap. A powerful stench of something rotting filled Marcus’s nostrils, and he rolled away from the spot into the shelter of a tree, calling out to Silus: ‘There’s another one here! Flank him!’
The Tungrian troopers advanced into the trees to either side, shouting to each other as they sought to trap the second archer in an enveloping movement, but in a scatter of twigs the man was up and running to Marcus’s right faster than the dismounted Tungrians could follow. As the Roman watched through the trees, his ambusher vaulted onto a waiting horse and bolted for the road, looking to make his escape before the Tungrians could remount. Pushing up the cavalry helmet’s facemask and fighting his way back out of the undergrowth, Marcus almost blundered into Qadir as the Hamian coolly nocked an arrow to his heavy framed hunting bow and pulled the missile back until its flight feathers were level with his ear. Qadir waited patiently as the scout’s horse crashed through the undergrowth towards the road, allowing a slow exhalation of breath to trickle from his lips as he readied himself for the shot. Bursting from the trees, the rider whipped his mount to a gallop, crouching low over the animal’s neck to present a smaller target, and for a moment Marcus wondered if his friend might hold back the shot for fear of hitting the horse. Qadir leaned forward a fraction, his eyes narrowing in concentration, then loosed the arrow and lowered the weapon, making no attempt to reach for another. Struck cleanly in the square of his back the barbarian scout arched convulsively, toppling over his horse’s hindquarters and smashing down hard onto the road’s cobbled surface.
Walking forward with his shield raised against any further attempt at ambush, his nose wrinkling at the fetid smell from the bone arrowhead still poking through a long split in the wooden board, Marcus watched the trees to either side warily. Reaching the fallen rider he prodded the man’s arm with a toe, sliding it away from the long knife sheathed on the man’s belt.
‘No need. He’s as good as dead.’ Glancing up, he found Silus approaching with a look of disgust. ‘It’s a shame. I’d like to have shared a few quiet moments with him to discuss this. .’
The decurion reached out and broke the shaft of the arrow stuck through Marcus’s shield, pulling out the barbed head and sniffing at it. Pulling a face, he held the offending missile at arm’s length and called for an empty feed sack.
‘Poisoned?’
The cavalryman nodded grimly at Marcus’s question, wrapping the arrowhead in several layers of sacking before snapping it from the shaft and knotting the little package closed.
‘Here, it’ll be a souvenir for you. Just don’t cut yourself with it.’ He kicked the dying man hard in the head, his face white with anger. ‘No, let the fucker lie here and die as slowly as he likes. And if you’ve got any problem with that, you’d better go back and see the state your horse is in.’
Marcus started guiltily and hurried back to where the big grey lay rigid on the verge with its legs sticking stiffly out from its body, trembling violently and rolling its eyes in terror while Arminius and Qadir stood over it, turning to greet Marcus with shaking heads. A single arrow protruded from the horse’s right shoulder, its shaft painted the same deep red as the one in the dying archer’s open hand. A froth of foam was trailing from the animal’s open mouth, every shallow exhalation of breath accompanied by a soft groan as the arrow’s poison tore at the horse’s innards. Shaking his head in sorrow Marcus squatted beside the horse’s head, stroking the long face gently as he pulled a hunting knife from its place on his belt. The blade was almost supernaturally sharp, one of a dozen he had paid a swordsmith to forge and edge with metal from the Damascus steel sword he’d taken from the bandit Obduro in Tungrorum. To his brother officers’ great delight he had given them all one of the resulting blades, although whether he had managed to neutralise the evil he had sensed in the sword from his first touch of its hilt by doing so, or simply distributed it more widely, he was unable to tell. Tracing a hand down the horse’s throat he put the knife to the beast’s sweat-slickened neck and made a single fast cut, opening the veins hidden beneath the twitching flesh and staring down with a sad smile as a stream of hot blood poured out onto the ground.
‘Farewell, Bonehead. You were a good mount.’
Waiting until the horse’s eyes closed he stood, wiping and sheathing the knife with a regretful sigh.
‘Properly done, brother. We’ll make a cavalryman of you yet.’ Silus turned away from the dead animal, shaking his head at the waiting troopers standing around him. ‘We won’t be eating horse tonight, not unless you lot want to risk meat with enough poison in it to knock this big sod over in less than a hundred heartbeats.’
Marcus walked into the trees and found the spot where the first archer was stretched out in his death agonies, cutting his throat with a single expert pass of the knife’s fearsome blade and picking up the quiver of arrows that lay beside him. Bending close to the corpse, he saw that the mark on the man’s arm which had drawn his attention briefly during the fight was a scratch, the skin discoloured around the small wound. He went back to the spot on the road where the scout was slowly expiring under Qadir’s impassive stare.
‘Kill him. He’s not going to give us anything that’s not already obvious from their presence here, and if I’ll do it for a horse then I owe him the same dignity.’ He handed the Hamian the quiver, waving a hand at the dying man before them. ‘You’d better collect his arrows as well. They may come in handy, and I’d rather not leave them lying about here. And watch out for the ones with the red paint, the slightest puncture will kill a man, from the looks of it.’
He walked on up the road’s gentle slope until he reached the place where the dying man’s mount had come to a halt after its rider had toppled from the saddle. The horse was cropping contentedly at the verge’s grass without any apparent concern, and the Roman walked slowly towards it, speaking soft words of reassurance as he advanced with unhurried care until he was within touching distance of the beast. Reaching out slowly and carefully he took hold of the horse’s reins, stroking its flank and blowing in its ear.