His possible target spoke quickly in his own tongue, which had several bows lifted, the arrow points lined up on the Scythian’s chest. ‘Even if death is certain, something tells me you might still try.’
‘Spare the boy if I do.’
‘No need to kill him.’
‘If you intend to hand me over to Senuthius,’ Flavius croaked, his hand going to the hilt of his sword, ‘then I would rather you did.’
‘A noble death?’
‘Better that than what the senator has in store for me.’
‘Take out your sword slowly, and if you have a knife that too, then lay them on the ground. No one is going to die here and nor will it be decided what is to happen when we leave this glade.’
‘Ohannes?’ Flavius asked, unsure what to do.
‘Obey, Master Flavius, there’s no choice.’
‘Why did you call me that?’ came a hiss.
‘Look into his eyes,’ Ohannes replied as he stepped away from the spear, Flavius drawing out his sword and dropping it. ‘He has no doubt who you are.’
Without another word the Sklaveni leader spun on his heel and began to walk away. There was no need for him to actually say they had to follow nor did either think it prudent or useful to ask. The others fell in alongside and behind them, a couple staying to gather up their weapons. The way the party moved told Flavius these people knew these woods well, there being no deviation from a course that paid little attention to thinning undergrowth. The man merely barrelled his way through bushes and ferns, with Ohannes softly counting off the number of paces.
‘Never know,’ came the whispered reply, when the youngster asked him why.
The hut they came to was well hidden by foliage. Made of sods of turf interleaved with rough strands of wood, it was roofed in evergreen tree branches that had it blend into the surroundings. It had to be a hide for hunting, a place in which a body of archers and spearmen could wait until the forest forgot their presence. As they were ushered in under an opening, only the Latin speaker followed them, the rest remaining outside, and the first thing he did was to take from Flavius the small sacks of coins tied to his belt.
‘I dare not take you to the town. I must leave you here and under guard, for if I do not, word of your capture will get across the river before the sun dips tonight.’
‘You are not going to hand us over to Senuthius?’
‘The decision is not mine. Food will be brought to you and I advise you not to try for an escape, because the men I leave behind will have orders to kill.’
‘Am I allowed to know your name? You know mine.’
‘No harm in that, Flavius Belisarius, my name is Dardanies.’
‘And who are you, what are you?’
That got a wry smile. ‘Am I not a mere barbarian?’
‘You speak good Latin.’
‘One day you might find out why.’
As soon as he exited the hut a wickerwork panel was placed across the entrance, plunging the interior into darkness, the only sound Flavius could hear the breathing of his companion. He was dying to ask what they should do now, until he concluded that would be useless; they were trapped and prisoners. Slowly, as his eyes adjusted, he realised there was some light coming in through the gaps in the roof, not much, just enough to see the outline of Ohannes, who spoke in a low and incensed tone.
‘Didn’t take Senuthius long to set these particular dogs on us, did it? Happen that boatman set the riverbank afire, spreading alarm with talk of evil spirits. I should have killed him.’
Flavius did not want to dwell on that, or to say that had Ohannes tried he would have endeavoured to stop him. Why kill a man for the mere fact of his being in the wrong place?
‘I wonder what has been offered for our heads.’
‘It will be a price hard to resist.’
The movement was felt rather than seen, that and the sounds of Ohannes tapping the walls, the injunction soon issued that Flavius, like he, should look for something loose, a thick branch or a stone that they could employ as a weapon.
‘If we are to be given food, then it will be handed over by one of the men he has left to guard us.’
‘Who will be expecting us to try something,’ Flavius replied, the pitch of his response less than encouraging. ‘It might be best to wait and see what that Dardanies discovers.’
‘You would put your fate in the hands of a Sklaveni?’
‘He does not know what to do with us, which means that even if Senuthius has offered a sizeable reward, there are people unwilling to take it. My father dealt with these people-’
The interruption was sharp. ‘That I know! Did I not accompany him?’
‘I never heard him claim them as bad and I doubt you did. To his mind they were more sinned against than wicked.’
‘If he’d had the men he needed your papa would not have crossed the river to talk.’
‘If he’d had the men he needed he could have reined in Senuthius.’
The wicker panel was pulled aside, flooding the hut with light, but only long enough for the pair to see a wooden board with bread and a hunk of cheese upon it thrust in, then sent across the packed earthen floor by a foot, that followed by a hand setting down a jug right by the entrance. Then it was back in place and they were in darkness once more.
‘Might as well eat,’ Ohannes said, the gloom in his voice obvious. If that was the way they were going to be provided for, the chance of catching the giver off guard was near impossible.
Time soon lost all meaning, even if they could see through the gaps in the roof, and the shifting brightness, the way the sun moved in the sky. Having found nothing that would aid them to escape, both sat on the floor in quiet conversation, Flavius learning more of the older man’s past and the service he had seen with his father than he had been gifted hitherto, it being a story, he suspected, replicated all over the fringes of the empire.
Life could be harsh for the folk that lived within its borders, yet Ohannes was sure it was worse without. As the youngest son of a large brood, and with uncles who were less than fond of anyone that might split what little the family owned, horses and cattle, there was nothing for him to inherit when his father died, which left the choice of labouring for others or crossing into the Roman Empire and once there taking service as a soldier.
‘For your citizens are too soft to do what fighting needs done on their own.’
‘Tell me about serving with my father.’
‘What’s to tell, Master Flavius? That he was a good soldier, yes, that he did not rise as high as he might, that he had occasion to use his whip on my back more than once?’
‘He whipped you?’
‘As he did to anyone who deserved it, an’ there were many of that ilk.’
There was a sense in the tone of Ohannes’s voice that had Flavius ask him if he was smiling.
‘I am, as I ever do when I recall some of the mischief I got up to when I was a young buck. What man can resist women and wine, Master Flavius, for I never could and the fellow who had to keep us up to our mark was the likes of your papa. He was only a decanus then, mind – once he got a leg-up to a higher rank using the sapling himself did not go with his dignity.’
‘You sound as if you hold no grudge.’
‘Why would I, me being the sinner, as all soldiers are, given half a whiff. Your papa was fair, and there is not much more you can ask than that, for there were others of his rank who used the whip for pleasure and there was many another punishment they could mete out if they were so minded, which meant they had to worry about a spear or a sword in their back when we got into a close and busy fight.’
‘Their own men would kill them?’
‘Didn’t happen often, but happen it did.’
Ohannes kept talking and Flavius kept listening, for there was nothing else to do, and given his years, not much for the youngster to relate. The pitch of the voice changed, depending on whether Ohannes was talking of fond memories or things that had upset him. He did not object to being questioned, as when he related the fights he had taken part in, Flavius eager for detail on the two major campaigns in which he had served.