The Singing Sword

XXIII

It was a long, quiet ride back to the Colony. Every man among us had plenty to occupy his thoughts, and the black smoke of the Sulla family's pyre hung all around us, although we had left it far behind. When we arrived, Picus and I went directly to meet with Caius. He was waiting for us in his day-room with Bishop Alaric, who had arrived on one of his regular visits. As we entered the room both men rose to their feet, scanning our faces. I nodded to both of them and spoke to the old bishop first.

"You should have been with us, Alaric. We could have used you."

"For what?" Caius's voice was tense.

"Funeral services."

"It was bad?"

"Worse than you could imagine." I told them what had happened and what we had found in the cellar. Picus did not attempt to add anything or to interrupt me in any way. By the time I had done, both of my listeners were as white-faced as Picus had been when he emerged from the stables.

"You executed the prisoners?" This was Caius.

"I did."

He looked into my eyes, and if he had any difficulty accepting my actions I saw no sign of it. He turned and walked away from his chair a few steps, his shoulders hunched over. "This changes everything," he said. "We had not expected an enemy with cavalry. Now we have to plan our defences differently in every way."

"Not cavalry, Caius, horses." He turned and looked at me, frowning. "I made the same mistake, at first, but the people we chased were not cavalry. They were just mounted men. But that alone makes a difference in terms of the mobility of the enemy. It was obviously the strength afforded by a band of horsemen that encouraged the others to venture so far inland."

Bishop Alaric had so far said nothing. He had merely subsided into his chair and sat looking from face to face among the three of us. Now he spoke.

"But where would these people — Franks you say they were? — where would they find horses here?"

"They didn't, Alaric. They brought them with them."

"From Gaul? How?"

"By boat, the same way Picus brought his."

"No comparison," Caius broke in. "Picus used imperial galleys for transportation. Large ships. The Franks have none of those."

"No, Caius, you're right, they don't," I said. "But they don't need them. We saw only ten or a dozen mounted men. That number of horses could be accommodated easily on two or three longboats. But it's not the numbers that matter, it's the fact that they're doing it at all. We have to find out where they landed and make sure that none of their friends follow them, and if that means constant patrols of the entire south-west shore-line, then that is what we are going to have to be prepared to live with. Picus agrees with me. We discussed it this morning on the ride back."

Caius grimaced. "Then you do think they came up from the south coast? All that way?"

Picus nodded. "Thirty, forty, perhaps fifty miles overland, depending on the route they followed. Yes, we do. The horses would give them the added protection they felt they needed — speed and mobility in scouting the land ahead of them. We estimate that this was a three-boat party, with about thirty-three men and three or four horses to a boat."

"I see." The tone of his voice confirmed it. "So what do we do now?"

I told him. "We call a Council meeting for tomorrow morning to define some new priorities."

"Such as?"

"Such as deciding how much of our land we should give up as untenable under these new circumstances. We absolutely have to abandon some of the villas, even if we continue to farm the land. We have to pull our most outlying people back to where we can defend them properly. And from now on, every party working our fields has to have an armed guard."

He nodded wordlessly, agreeing with each point as I made it.

"What else?"

"Well, I was thinking about our defences all the way back. It seems to me that as soon as we have our harvest safely in, we have to concentrate all of our efforts on finishing the fort on the hill. We should build a permanent headquarters there and be prepared to move all of our people in to shelter at a moment's notice."

"That makes sense. Picus, you agree with Publius?"

"Yes, Father, I do. But remember that you're going to need easy ingress and egress. You're going to need a road, even if it runs no further than from the bottom of the hill to the top."

"Yes, I suppose we are, we have to have some way of getting our people in and out quickly."

Picus hammered the point. "Your people, yes, but mainly your soldiers, both mounted and on foot."

Caius turned back to me. "Varrus, you are correct, this is a Council matter. I'll summon an emergency session tonight."

"No, Caius," I interrupted him. "Not tonight. Tomorrow morning will be soon enough. Let everyone get some sleep. In the meantime, I have some things I have to see to, so if you'll pardon me, I'll go and look after them now." I bowed and left the three of them together as I went to find Luceiia and tell her the sad news of her friends.

She took it far better than I had expected, and her tears were few. It was obvious to me that she had prepared herself for just this outcome and was determined not to let it affect her too visibly. I held her close until she had composed herself and become the mistress of the household once again.

"You must be famished," she said, wiping her nose. "When did you last eat?"

"Last night, before dawn. I gnawed on some of the bread and cheese I had with me. I haven't had much stomach for food since. Picus is in with Caius and Alaric. He must be starved, too."

"Will you eat now?"

"No, my love, I can't. I have to see to Germanicus and talk to Equus first. If I leave now, I can be back in an hour."

She reached up and kissed me. "Go, then, and hurry back. I'll have Gallo prepare the bath-house attendants for your return, and there will be a hot dinner waiting for you by the time you have bathed and dressed."

A short time later, I found Victorex in the stables, gazing in perplexity at the device he had removed from the small Frankish horse. The thing lay on the ground at his feet, and he was crouched beside it, running the palm of his hand across its smooth leather. I slid down from Germanicus and handed his reins to a groom, who led him away to one of the stalls.

"What is it, Victorex? Ever seen anything like it before?"

He shook his head. "No. Damn me if I know what it is, although it's a saddle of some kind." He paused, then ran his fingers over the device again, hooking them under its lower edge and hefting the weight of it. "Nothing like any Roman saddle I've ever seen... as you well know, they're made of leather stretched over bronze plates, for strength. They're light, but they're awkward things. That's why so few of our men ever use them. But this..." He turned the device over to expose its underside. "Look at this! This thing's built on a wood frame... And look here ..." He flipped it right-side-up again. "Look at the back of it, the way it's shaped, and this weird-looking thing on the front... This was never designed to carry a pack! It's shaped for a man's arse! But once a man put his crotch over this, with his backside jammed up against the back piece there, he'd be useless. There's no way he'd ever be able to sway with his mount, or control it, and there's no way even to grip a horse's barrel through the thing. It's too thick! Too heavy and too solid. A rider would bounce right off the horse's back..." His voice faded away in perplexity, then resumed. "Anyway, that's all beside the point, isn't it? It's too small for a man."

"A boy," I said. "The rider was a boy, and I think, in spite of your doubts, that it is some kind of saddle, though why on earth anyone would want or need such a thing..." My attention was caught then by two appendages, one attached to either side of the device, and I nodded at them. "What about those two things hanging down, there? What do those look like?"

He picked one of them up, pulling it towards him as far as he could. It was no more than a broad strip of leather, fastened at the top to the main apparatus, and ending in a loop. A flat piece of wood, carved with a niche at each end, had been inserted across the bottom of the loop, stretching it into a delta shape.

Victorex gazed at it wonderingly for some time, then, "No idea..." he muttered. "Unless..." His voice trailed away and then came back as he tapped the wood-stretched loop against the back of the saddle. "Look, Commander, if this is for sitting on — if it is a saddle of some kind, which is what its shape would suggest in spite of common sense — then there's no way a man could vault into it. The back's too high."

I nodded. "So?"

"So, how does he get up on the horse? I've seen you get many a leg-up onto Germanicus. I've cupped my own hands for you a few times." He waved the loop end under my nose. "This thing could serve the same purpose: a mounting step."

I stared at it. "By God, you're right at that, Victorex! But why would anyone go to all that trouble? Unless the boy had a crippled leg."

"Did he?"

I shrugged my shoulders. "I don't know. He was dead when we found him. I didn't even look. His neck was broken, and so was his back. No one paid any attention to his legs."

"Then that could be it? Because this could have been a harness for a crippled boy. It had to be. He was probably unstable in it, and that's why he fell off in the first place."

It was my turn to be bemused. Why would any man take a crippled boy on campaign? Even a favourite son? A chief's son, as the gold collar and shirt of mail suggested he was? But I had other, more important things on my mind.

"I haven't got time to ponder mysteries. Have one of your people take it up to Gallo at the house and tell him to place it on a saw-horse in my armoury. It will make a memento of a savage occasion."

I left Victorex still looking at the Frankish harness and found Equus at the forge, working outside in the late afternoon sunshine. He had already heard the news of the Sullas and wanted to ask me all about it, but I was in no mood to discuss it yet.

"How are you making out with that new sword design?" I asked him.

He led me inside the forge and showed me the length of metal that lay there on his work-bench. Beside it, on a scrap of papyrus, he had drawn a sword — a sword with a blade twice the length of the gladium, and a handle to match, with a heavy weight at the pommel.

"I haven't had much time to work on it, and I won't guarantee that it will work the way you want it to." He shook his head dubiously. "I knew what the problem would be. I've got to get enough weight into the pommel to counterbalance that bastardly long blade. The thing sticks out there like Rhea's teats, but Rhea's got the buttocks to balance her, and this thing doesn't."

I laughed at that. Rhea was one of the Colony's most outstandingly endowed young women, and Equus had been quietly lusting after her for some time.

He laughed with me, shaking his head. "Ah, that Rhea! Now there's balance! She's so well balanced, may all the gods bless her, that she can fall on her back as lightly as a feather, anytime she wants to, which is most of the time, except when she's around me." He laughed again, a great, raucous laugh directed at himself.

I reached out and clapped him on the shoulder. "You've made a start, anyway. Keep at it, Equus. By the day after tomorrow, I'll be able to work on it with you."

"All right, but you'd better be prepared to spend a lot of time on it. This whore is not going to give in to us just because we smile nicely."

"I'm prepared for that, my friend. And now I'm going to bathe, shave and eat. Council meets tomorrow and I want to be in good shape for the session."

I left him as I had found him, hard at work, puzzling over the weighting of the new weapon.