Ruso and the Root of All Evils

50

The leather water-bottle thumped against his side as the horse thudded across the burned stubble of the wheat-field, cutting off the corner where the track led up to the main road. Ruso jammed his fluttering hat lower on his head and glanced down to check that he had fastened the safety strap on his knife. He urged the horse to leap the ditch and flung it into a sharp turn to veer past a train of startled pack mules. Ignoring the angry yells of the driver, he dug his heels into the grey flanks and headed along the verge at a gallop.

He could hear nothing around him: only the rush of air and the thump of hooves. Ahead of him, a flock of sheep scattered at his approach. He yelled an apology to the shepherd — who should have had more sense than to use the road anyway — and urged Severus’ horse on. It responded with a further burst of speed that would have set the stable lad laughing with delight. This was as near as a man could get to flying. At this rate, he might even catch them before they reached Arelate. Whatever transport this Solemnis had to offer, it would not be as fast as his own.

With luck, all that would be needed was to make Solemnis one very sorry carter and deliver a lecture on why women should never travel with strange men, even in a civilized country. If they were unlucky … Severus’ contact might be in the port. He did not want to dwell on what the man might do to silence two women who were asking the wrong questions.

Ruso squinted at the sky. It must be past the eighth hour by now. The sun was well over the zenith, and it was appallingly hot. His eyes felt gritty. The kerchief he had tied over his nose was slipping down. He pushed it back into place, wrinkling his nose in a futile attempt to hold it there and finally yanking it down out of the way and swearing at it. He had never intended to hurtle across to Arelate at this speed. As usual, he was having to clear up somebody else’s mess. And as usual, instead of talking things over in a sensible manner, Tilla had decided to make his life far more difficult than it was already. Sometimes he wondered whether she did it on purpose. A one-woman rebellion against Rome.

Severus’ horse, out of condition from its enforced rest, was already beginning to tire. He would have to pick up a fresh animal halfway — and since he was not on active duty, he would have to pay. In the meantime, he slowed to a canter and swerved to overtake a heavy-goods vehicle, not bothering to wonder what might be under the tarpaulin at the back. Nobody facing a journey of over twenty miles would travel by ox-cart: it was quicker to walk. He was just urging the horse past a panniered donkey when it struck him that Tilla might well be doing what he least expected in order to avoid detection. On the other hand, if he paused to inspect every vehicle he might not catch up with them before the light began to fade and the town gates closed.

There was no sense in looking over his shoulder, but he did it all the same.

As he had expected, there was no blonde head poking out from under the receding tarpaulin. Instead, the wagon was being overtaken on both sides. Two more riders were pounding towards him, evidently staging some sort of race.

The road ahead was clear to the next rise. Fields dotted with the orange roofs of small farms stretched away into the distance on both sides. He wondered if the shepherd had managed to regroup his flock before those two idiots thundered past and scattered it again. As he topped the rise to see more empty road ahead, he could hear the racers’ hoofbeats. He nudged his own horse aside to let them pass.

Two men with kerchiefs over their faces drew level with him, one urging on a black horse and the other a big roan. Both men looked old enough to know better. The roan was much too close.

‘Move over!’ he yelled, just as the roan barged him. Ruso’s horse leaped sideways. A front hoof slipped on the side of the ditch and he was sent lurching over its shoulder. The horse managed to scramble up and Ruso righted himself, wishing he had a cavalry mount and a decent saddle. He was still trying to calm the horse when he realized the men were turning back.

‘I’m all right!’ he yelled, holding the animal steady in the middle of the road, well away from the ditch in case it decided to spook again at their approach.

They were coming too fast. Both shouting. He saw the odd movement of the hand. The flash of metal in the sunlight. For a moment he stared, unable to believe what was happening. To have survived Britannia, only to be attacked by bandits here at home.

His fingers fumbled with the safety strap. They were almost on him now: the one on the black with knife raised, the other reaching forward, ready to seize the reins of his horse.

No time for his own knife. He urged the horse towards the gap between them, ready to barge the roan whilst hooking at the knifeman’s arm with the end of his walking-stick. He had to get away from them and go to warn Tilla.

It would have worked. It would have worked beautifully. In fact it was on the way to working when his own mount stumbled on that front leg. He heard the rider of the roan cry out as the two horses collided. Ruso’s lunge towards the knifeman became a wild wave in mid-air as the grey horse gave way beneath him and they crashed to the ground in a crunching confusion of hooves and tail and elbows and gravel.

Ruso’s first instinct was to curl up, hands protecting his head. Only when the thrashing about had stopped did the pain start to burn its way through the shock.

Someone was nudging his shoulder. He wanted to say, don’t just poke the casualty, talk to him! but then he remembered in whose company he had fallen. He lifted one arm — at least that much was working — and found himself staring into the whiskery nostrils of Severus’ horse, which was examining him with an air of puzzled concern.

He rolled over on to his back. A shadow fell over him and an oddly shaped fist clutching a knife filled the centre of his vision. Beyond it, he managed to make out that the other man had unrolled some sort of document.

‘In the name of Senator Gabinius Valerius,’ announced the reader, ‘I order you to come with us. Put it away, Stilo. He’s got nowhere to run.’

The man backed away. As he sheathed his knife, Ruso saw that someone had done an untidy amputation of the last two fingers. He sat up and began to inspect himself for damage. He said, ‘You’re the investigators.’

‘Calvus and Stilo,’ said the knifeman, who must be the one the gatekeeper had described as the muscle. ‘I’m Stilo.’

Ruso wiped the blood off a scrape on his elbow and decided the rest of him was only bruised. Mercifully he had done no more damage to his foot. ‘Why didn’t you say so before?’

‘If you didn’t know who we was,’ countered Stilo, ‘why was you running away?’

Ruso unstrapped the bottle that the stable lad had filled for him. Evidently he had not bothered to rinse it: the water tasted disgusting. ‘I wasn’t running away,’ he said. ‘I need to catch up with somebody.’

‘A lot of people need to catch up with somebody when we want to talk to them.’

‘Get back on your horse and come with us,’ said Calvus, gingerly easing his shoulder backwards and forwards with the opposite hand and wincing as he did so. He was slightly built and several inches shorter than Ruso: a man who might be irritated by his bluff companion but who would need his bulk as backup.

Ruso stifled his professional curiosity about the state of Calvus’ shoulder and moved on to examining the grey horse.

He stumbled as a hand shoved him from behind. Stilo said, ‘He said, get back on.’

Ruso retrieved his stick and urged the horse forward a few paces. Its gait was not dissimilar to his own. He swore quietly. There was no way he was going to catch up with anyone on this animal. ‘I’m trying to get to a friend,’ he said, without much hope. ‘She’s in danger. I need to borrow a horse.’

The answer was in the looks on their faces. The best he could do was to get home and try and persuade someone — Lollia Saturnina? — to let him borrow a fresh mount. ‘This one’s lame,’ he said, ‘and so am I. It’ll take me hours to walk anywhere.’ He glanced from one to the other of them.

‘Get on Stilo’s horse,’ ordered Calvus. ‘The exercise will do him good.’

The glare that accompanied Stilo’s handing over of the black horse’s reins suggested that Ruso would be sorry for this later.