CHAPTER THIRTEEN
It was impossible to stay out of sight forever; once within the confines of the empire they were in a land of settlement and cultivation, where forests had been cleared centuries before and where the peasantry tilled long-ploughed land either for themselves or as tenants of someone wealthy. Having made good progress in the dark, not without the odd scrape from a wayward thorn, or an ankle risked from some hole in the ground, they stopped at the forest edge to eat and let the dawn come up, this so they could observe what lay ahead.
‘I wish to stay away from the established paths as long as we can,’ Dardanies said, addressing Ohannes, his manner suggesting that to include his main charge would be a waste of breath. ‘Once we reach the road south it is to be hoped it will be busy enough for us to pass unnoticed.’
‘Not easy,’ Flavius responded with some force and obvious pique. ‘No farmer will bless you for crossing his fields.’
‘Good way to get seen too,’ the old soldier added, as Dardanies produced a look of doubt. ‘And if they see us as a threat they are bound to raise some kind of unease outside their own land.’
‘How far before we get beyond you being recognised?’
‘Several leagues, I occasionally rode round with my father when he visited the outlying settlements.’
‘Me too,’ Ohannes said.
That had Dardanies looking to the sky, as if seeking a divine answer to an intractable problem. Here he was in a province where to be discovered might, after the recent raid, end up with him being flayed alive and he was in the company of two people who stood a chance of being recognised all over the district. Flavius was still wearing the garment he had donned to search the riverbank for his canvas sack and the Sklaveni referred to it now.
‘Pull up that cowl and keep it well forward over your head, look at the ground as you walk. If anyone talks to us, let me answer.’ Then he produced a knife and moved closer to Ohannes. ‘That long hair of yours is too obvious, best we cut it off.’
‘Been better to have done it afore we set out.’
‘Which I would have if I had thought on it, but I didn’t.’
Even with a knife sharp enough to fillet a fish, such a thing could not be carried out with anything approaching neatness, so Ohannes ended up looking like a badly shorn sheep, with bits sticking up in some places and near bald patches in others. Added to the lack of shaving for several days, it made him look older, though Flavius thought that an opinion to keep to himself. He knew from past experience such comments were unwelcome, his late maternal grandfather a prime example, he having been proud of his bearing. Vanity did not diminish with age.
‘How long before you have a beard?’
Ohannes felt his stubble. ‘Four or five more days.’
Then Dardanies looked at Flavius, leaning closer. ‘Be a couple of years for you, though I do spy a touch of fluff.’
‘How’s the shoulder?’ Ohannes asked, before the offended youth could respond.
Flavius swung an arm, and if he winced, the pain was nothing like as bad as it had been, saying it was better before posing a question to Dardanies. ‘How far south do you go, assuming we can pass out of the orbit of Senuthius?’
‘Somewhere between here and Marcianopolis, it has been left to me to decide.’
‘So you could leave now?’
‘I could but I won’t, and besides, if I arrived home too soon …’
‘You might be punished?’
‘I do not do this for fear of punishment.’
‘Then why?’
‘You would not understand.’
‘You could try me.’
That got a shake of the head so firm there seemed little point in pursuing the question. The grey dawn light went as the sun rose, to allow the trio to see much further across the ground they would need to traverse, split as it was by hedgerows. There were already people out and about, at this time of year, women and small children seeing to livestock or picking vegetables close to their dwellings, men further out in the swaying wheat, which they were beginning to harvest.
Flavius pointed out a high-framed hay cart, empty now, and a distant line of scythed men, some twenty in number, tramping forward in a bent-over row, their implements cutting at the stalks, before turning to walk upright and away for a goodly distance, the classic way of using their blades while also saving their backs.
‘We cannot avoid being spotted by them,’ he contended. ‘Whoever is taking the sheaves onto the cart can see any unusual movement for half a league.’
‘They will be youngsters, boys and girls.’
‘With eyes like hawks as well as voices to tell men armed with scythes what they have seen.’
Ohannes spoke next, there being no need to say that a man with such a cutting blade would be a dangerous foe on his own; in numbers they could be deadly. ‘We could wait here till the day’s work is done and move when the sun goes down.’
‘Best to get away from here, and you would say that too if you knew who these fields belonged to.’
‘I do know,’ Flavius replied, ‘just as I know that over those hills you can see to the west of us, the ones lined with vines, lies the villa of Senuthius Vicinus.’
‘Who might venture out to see how the harvest is progressing.’
‘Never!’ Ohannes snorted. ‘If he wanted to know he would send a lackey.’
‘Who will be on a horse, able to set off a swift hue and cry,’ Dardanies insisted. ‘I say we cannot stay within the boundaries of any land he owns and the sooner we are clear of anywhere where his writ has a presence the better and, since it is to me the task has been given to get you to where you will be safe, it is my decision that we gather up our things and go now.’
‘So you can get back to your own people as soon as possible?’
‘Yes, Flavius Belisarius, and if I am stuck with you, never ever suspect that it gives me pleasure to be so.’
When they did move they sought to mask their profiles by always having a hedgerow as a backdrop, yet to keep to that constantly was impossible, just as it was impractical to seek to get past every dwelling and the folk close to it at any distance. Spears were trailed along the ground to keep them as much of possible out of sight. Working their way through an orchard, too, brought contact with others, those tasked to trim the trees and seek out and dispose of the pests that loved to feed on them.
They passed under one fresh-faced young girl up a ladder, so close they could see the sparkle in her eyes, or at least Ohannes and Dardanies could, for Flavius kept his head down. But he too heard the blessing she shouted down and he was made just as curious by it as the others, a loud cry taken up by those working nearby but out of sight.
‘What did she mean by that?’ Dardanies asked, when they were out of earshot. ‘What did all those cries mean? How could we be on our way to doing God’s work?’
‘I have no answer to that,’ said Flavius, lifting his cowl so he could look the Sklaveni in the eye. ‘But she told everyone in earshot that we were soldiers of Christ.’
‘She favoured us with a smile too,’ Ohannes responded, looking uncertain.
‘Well, there’s no time to ask and she’s bound to tell everyone she comes across that she has seen us, so let’s put a good stride in and get well away.’
As they came out of the orchards it was possible to see that line of scythe-bearing men once more, still in the distance, as well as the hay cart now halfway to being full with the sheaves. There were a couple of lads on the top who could clearly see them for they waved, which obliged Ohannes to wave back despite an instruction not to do so from Dardanies.