Tabula Rasa

Chapter 60

The fur traders had apparently left Coria at midday, heading north on their mountain ponies. There was very little daylight left now. No time to round up helpers. No time to leave messages with anyone except Susanna, whose warnings to be careful were barely necessary. Ruso suspected he was about to do one of the stupidest things he had ever done in his life, so he was definitely going to do it as carefully as possible.

Turning the mare’s head north, he urged her into a canter up the long gradient. He wished he still had the bay. Biting was a minor problem. This one’s gait was like riding a cart down a flight of steps. The bay would have been less conspicuous too. The gray would be highly visible against everything except fog, and to his left the sun was drifting downward in a clear sky. Under tonight’s full moon, she would shine like a beacon.

He pressed on, because there was nothing else to do but sit easy and try not to bounce as the mare carried him past the first milestone. He let her relax into a trot for a while as he passed the second. Many of the names engraved on the stones were of places much farther north: destinations no Roman was ever likely to see again. He had met veterans who could remember tramping south down this road, part of a disgruntled withdrawal of troops that left the northern tribes rejoicing as they settled down into their old domestic rivalries. Still, there were some scattered military outposts up here, left behind to keep an eye on the border tribes whose territories straddled the wall. With luck, he would run into one of the patrols from Habitancum or Bremenium on the way up. If he did not, and the traders got the boy beyond the reach of Rome, he had no idea what he would do. He urged the mare back into a canter.

He saw no patrols: just locals, some carrying piles of firewood. People joining their neighbors for tonight’s celebrations, untroubled by any curfew beyond the one they imposed upon themselves because their heads were full of ghost stories. Occasionally a group contained an elderly person clinging on to a donkey or wrapped in blankets and being jolted along in a cart.

Four milestones. The road was rougher up here, although the potholes had been filled with rubble and it was flanked with wide grass verges, a comforting reminder that he was not yet completely out of civilization. He tried to keep an eye on his surroundings, but the sun was sliding down behind the western hills, and every time he looked to the left he was dazzled. Soon it would be dark. If Susanna had managed to let the CO at Coria know that Ruso had rushed off alone in pursuit of the missing boy, it seemed no support had been arranged. There was no sign of any cavalry galloping north to join him, and he doubted they would signal ahead. He would be alone on the road with no protection beyond his weapons and his armor, which were already attracting the wrong sort of attention. He had seen the looks on the faces of other travelers and the way men in the fields stopped work to stare as he passed. He wondered about pausing to hide his kit and picking it up on the way back, but he knew that, close up, he could no more pass for a native than the horse could. He would just look like a deserter, despised by both sides.

And then he reached the fork in the road. He slowed the mare to a walk and stopped to ask a couple of small girls lugging a bucket of water whether they had seen the Northerners go past on their ponies. They stared up at him, openmouthed. One of them let go of the handle and fled as the water sloshed all over the remaining child’s feet. She stood as if paralyzed, her eyes wide with shock. Ruso backed the horse away from her. When the scream finally came, she flung the bucket toward him and ran. Struggling to steady the frightened horse, Ruso debated briefly whether to stay and explain or get away. The sounds of angry voices and footsteps crashing through the woods told him that he and the horse were of one mind. Behind him, the shouts of “Leave our kids alone!” died away and then there were only the hoofbeats and the voice in his head asking, What if the traders went the other way? And even if they had not, the question remained: What are you going to do when you find them? Reason with them? Appeal to their sense of natural justice? Offer them money? He had very little with him, but if they agreed to come to the nearest army base (how likely was that?), he might be able to talk his way into borrowing some. On the other hand, since they had just sold their furs, they might not be interested in money. After all, they had just given some of it away to buy a slave.

His courage was fading with the light. What had he been thinking, back there on the bridge in Coria? That he could tackle half a dozen tribesmen by himself? That the fur traders would be businessmen like Lupus, pretending to respect the law and eager to retain a little goodwill in exchange for the army’s protection? That he could catch up with them and say, Can we have our boy back, please?

Ahead of him, a figure was pulling up the staked chain of a pony that had been grazing on the grass verge. Keeping his distance this time, Ruso asked his question. He was in luck. The old man looked him up and down for a moment as if deciding whether it was wise to speak, and then admitted that he had seen the fur traders pass by some time ago. They might have had a boy with them. No, he did not know what sort of boy. He had not taken much notice. It was best not to have anything to do with the fur traders if you could help it.

When asked why, the old man told him that they lived in the wild and hunted things for a living and were half bear themselves. They had a manner of speaking amongst themselves that nobody understood. Now that they had been to town and traded furs for their winter supplies, they would go back into the mountains and not be seen for months.

Ruso tried to ignore the shriveling sensation inside his stomach. When he asked how long ago they had passed, the man looked blank. Presumably it was not the sort of question he was used to answering. This was a world with no clocks, where an often invisible sun was the only way to judge the passing of time.

Finally the man said, “They may be at the Three Oaks Inn. That is where they leave the road and go toward the hills.”

“How far is that?”

“Two more of your miles.”

Ruso, thoroughly unsettled, thanked him and rode on, partly because of a foolish desire not to look like a coward in front of a native, but mostly because the five or six miles of lonely road behind him were just as nerve-racking as the two in front.

Once the old man and his pony had faded into the gloom, Ruso’s doubts returned. It seemed Branan’s captors would turn off the road well short of Habitancum, where he had been hoping he might muster some help. He was heading alone into unknown territory where he knew none of the natives. He did not have the authority of the Legion, nor the support from Tilla, Valens, or Albanus that he had enjoyed in past crises. He did not even have the slim protection of being able to prove he was a healer: He had brought no instruments or medicines with him that would mark him out from any other Roman officer.

He dug the fingers of one hand into a fistful of coarse gray mane and glanced at the looming shapes of the trees on either side of the road. This was madness. He should turn back. There was no shame in admitting he had made a mistake. He should go back and fetch help now, while he still could.

Except . . . Branan was somewhere ahead of him, and if he did not find those men before they headed off into the hills, he never would. How could he face Senecio and Enica, knowing he had abandoned their child? What would he say to Tilla? He thought of her, back in the relative safety of Parva, hunting for the rumormonger and trying to comfort the family she had so wanted to be a part of. She too had been stolen from her people and taken north. She had spent long months waiting for rescuers who never came.

He was not going to let that happen to Branan. However things turned out tonight, he would do his best to let the boy know he was not forgotten. Someone had come. Someone wanted to take him home.