‘Get going, Flavius,’ Ohannes called, ‘I will seek to hold them at bay.’
‘Never. Pass me that spear.’
Ohannes held it out at full arm’s length as Flavius raised himself up to stand on the wall, grabbing the shaft to turn and raise it for throwing. There was no precise aim, just as a target a clutch of torches, getting closer and closer, into the middle of which he cast it with all the force he could muster, less than full he being so precariously balanced. It was sufficient; a high-pitched scream rent the night air but more telling was the way those flaring centres of light stopped, wavered and then retreated with haste. Only one torch was left where that spear had made contact and it was on the ground.
‘If I have not killed someone, Ohannes,’ he hissed, as he helped the old man make the gap between bough and wall, ‘I have wounded them badly.’
‘Care not for him, care for us, for those fellows who have run away are set to fetch help. So let us get down from here and away.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
The wheat, if not yet ready to harvest, was grown to near-full height, tall enough to make finding the thrown spear difficult, which had Ohannes fuming that it should be abandoned, an injunction ignored. To be without that and his shield, especially now that the older man’s weapon was beyond use, would leave them both at risk. The next difficulty was soon apparent as they made their way through the stalks; a black moonlit line of crushed corn stalks that marked their passage.
‘If we cannot avoid it, we must use it, Master Flavius, by heading south but away from the villa, which is the way we would be expected to go. At the field’s edge we will double back behind the hedgerows.’
The sense of that was immediate; they would leave a clear trail then no sign of their progress at all for, in any field where the planting ran up against a high hedge, the seed would have failed to take so they could move without leaving a trace. There was only one question; did they have time? It was with a heavy sucking sound that Ohannes responded; if marching was purgatory to a man his age then running was hell.
‘Them servants have to get to the bishop’s palace, then they have to rouse him out. Blastos, God rot him, is no more a fighting man than those he left to keep an eye on you, so he will need to get out his bodyguards and that will take time, even more to alert that sod Senuthius. It’s him we have to fear.’
‘The bishop’s men will have dogs to aid them,’ the youngster added with a sudden chill to his spirits.
The Scythian responded with a hissed curse, which told Flavius that he shared the apprehension such a factor produced. Copying Senuthius, Blastos had a deer- and bear-hunting pack, big ferocious beasts, and the house they had just departed had any number of articles that would give the dogs a scent, bedding being the most obvious. The notion of being tracked down by such creatures was enough to make his heart pound; blood up they might drag a human down as they would any other living creature.
Ohannes had to stop to get his breath, which allowed Flavius to look back over the field. The sky was clear once more, the moonlight so strong he could even pick out the movement of the corn tops waving in the breeze. A brief flash of orange made him look back to the villa, a blink of torchlight to indicate that one of the men Blastos had left was in the top branches of that olive tree. Never mind the line of their progress; perhaps those same eyes could make out the immobile silhouettes of their fleeing quarry.
‘I think it best to keep going in the same direction until it clouds over, Ohannes, if I can see the walls …’
The old man was bent over, puffing. ‘A pause, Master Flavius, till I can get my wind again.’
‘Not master now, Ohannes,’ came the gloomy reply, as Flavius hitched up his satchel. ‘I am in possession of nothing more than I carry.’
‘Much more of this,’ Ohannes wheezed, ‘and it may be you will need to carry me.’
‘Which means we must move at a pace that will not see you crippled.’
Still wheezing the old man responded. ‘Before we move at all we must seek to put any dogs off.’
‘How?’
‘By leaving them a smell so strong they will be confused. Time to get your pecker out, Master Flavius, and do as I do, create a circle of piss.’
Was it nerves that made it near impossible to comply? Whatever, it seemed to affect Ohannes less, for he sprayed his urine around with seeming abandon, shaming the dribbling of Flavius who had trouble obeying the other instruction, which was to avoid wetting his sandals, since that would leave a trace for dogs to follow.
As soon as the light faded they moved, this time at a walking crouch, easier for Flavius than Ohannes, but less tiring than jogging, the only impediment the odd overgrown bramble stalk that, having outgrown the hedgerow and invisible to the eye, caught their garments on its spikes. On the north side of the wheat fields it was well-maintained woodland and once in that both men could move freely and at a suitable pace as long as there was moonlight, keeping an eye on the position of that orb to guide their way to the very road they had traversed on horseback two days previously.
Without the moon, which disappeared with frustrating regularity and plunged the woodlands in complete darkness, progress was impossible. Even when they could move they were obliged to stop and let die down the distant barking of farm dogs marking their progress, being as they were in the area that had escaped the recent battles, and that constrained them until they crested the rise that overlooked the area where the barbarians had carried out their killing.
The smell of burning was still in the air, pungent and sickly, either from gutted farmhouses or maybe even from the funeral pyre, as once more an obscured moon halted their progress, making hellish what had been so far disturbing. The sounds now were the faint ones of wild beasts, from feral cats to wild dogs and wolves tearing at rotting flesh, ghostly shapes that emerged in the resurgent moonlight, as did that upon which they were feeding.
Bishop Gregory Blastos admitted he had not seen fit to properly bury the casualties the barbarians had caused, be they the men who had fought under Decimus or those who had succumbed to the massacre before flight. So much for his claim of a communal grave: they had been given no more than a shallow trench and a covering of loose earth, easily scrabbled out by eager claws. In daylight it would be the vultures that fed here, which had the youngster talking about the worst scavenger of all, for this land, with few if any survivors, was now without the families that once tilled and tended it.
Ohannes spat loudly at the mention of the Senuthius name. ‘Word is that he will give any abandoned farms to his men. How can he do that?’
‘By falsifying the titles he can erase any presence of the previous owners. And making his followers tenants buys the loyalty of those he favours and he also gains from their rents.’
That caused the old Scythian to issue what had to be, in his own tongue, a venomous and blasphemous curse not unlike the blasts of spleen that had been issued by Belisarius Pater at any mention of the Senuthius name. That particular bit of chicanery Flavius had read about in that cache of letters.
‘He did it before, Ohannes, with the help of the provincial governor, just before we arrived here as a family. It was the first complaint laid against him after my father took up his duties.’
There had been several big raids that year, followed by loud complaints to Constantinople demanding protection, that being the reason for the appointment of Decimus Belisarius to his post. It had, since that day, been his view that some of those loud in their pleas had got more than they bargained for when the new centurion discovered what was going on. He, in turn, got less when he came to realise he was powerless to stop such officially authorised thievery.