With the serious eating over, and the thin Government-issue wine going round, the talk which had ranged wide over Frontier matters, had turned as Alexios had known that it would, to horses and to the new trained horse tax.
‘It is an unjust tax,’ Cunorix said flatly.
‘All taxes seem unjust to those who pay them,’ said the Praepositus affably. ‘Why this one above the rest?’
‘For this reason: we breed and break horses for the Government – we have done that since first the Red Crests came – and we have done it at an agreed price. Now says the Government, “For every horse you breed and break you shall pay us so much.” Therefore is the old price pulled down below what was agreed. Yet how if we say, “So be it, then we can no longer sell to the Red Crests, but must look for better paying markets elsewhere”?’
‘I imagine the Government would make an order that this could not be,’ Montanus said without much interest, taking another fig from the dish before him.
‘I also. Therefore do I say it is an unjust tax.’
‘Say it to the tax-officers then.’ The Praepositus sounded slightly bored.
Cunorix grinned. ‘Do you think that I have not? Na, na, I do but grumble as one man may do to another over supper, when both have an eye for a horse to make common ground between them. It is a long time since I saw a better horse than the one the Praepositus rode this afternoon.’
(‘Now it’s coming,’ Alexios thought, listening with one ear while he continued to talk hunting with a warrior of the Chieftain’s household.)
‘As to that, I doubt very much whether you have seen his equal,’ said Montanus.
‘Oh yes, but seldom, I grant you.’
‘Among your rough-coated hill ponies?’
‘I have seen beyond my own horse-runs. But even there, let the Praepositus never think that there is neither fire nor beauty to be found among our northern herds; or that we of the Votadini take no pains with our blood-lines. I have a mare, part Arab, the beloved of my father the old Chieftain’s heart, before he died –’
‘I have no need to buy a pony, and if I had, this is surely neither the time nor place for horse-coping,’ said the Praepositus, with all traces of his affability quite gone. The two men looked at each other in a sudden silence, as the talk around the table fell away, and face after face turned to watch them.
Cunorix’s eyes seemed to grow larger, gathering the brightness of the lamplight into them. He said very gently, ‘That is as well, since the mare is not for sale. As to the time and place, I can but hope that the Commander of Castellum will forgive me – I would have waited until tomorrow and come to you with all formality, but it has been told to me that you will be here only the one more day, and therefore there is no time for the proper courtesies.’
‘If I knew what you were talking about –’ began the Praepositus.
‘Nay, but you do not. Therefore listen a little. The thing is very simple. The mare is ripe to breed – late, yes, but the autumn has been a long and gentle one, and we have kept her as my father used to do, under our own roof. A foal begun now would be born at a bad time of year, but there would be food and warm shelter for him and his mother.’
There was a pause, during which Montanus’s good-looking fleshy face turned a greyish red. ‘The foal? What foal? Do you imagine that I would lend out a good horse for the breeding of scrub ponies?’
‘No scrub pony,’ Cunorix said, still gently, ‘did I not say she was part Arab?’
Alexios, watching, knew what the gentleness cost him, and judged by that how surely he must want the bay stallion for the fathering of Shadow’s foal.
‘You said, yes, but what proof have I?’ The Praepositus laughed harshly. ‘Nay, do not trouble. If you could show me her blood-line direct from Pegasus himself, can you think of any reason why I should agree to this extraordinary request?’ His flush deepened still further. ‘Do you suggest paying for it?’
‘I had not thought that the Praepositus would wish to be paid. Rather it was in my mind to offer a hunting pony or a pair of hounds as a gift in gratitude. Yet lest the Praepositus should think that also a kind of payment, let him remember only that it was a request made in all courtesy, and a tribute to the beauty and mettle of his horse.’
Slowly, the colour of Montanus’s face was returning to normal. He bent his head somewhat stiffly in acknowledgement. ‘There is no more that need be said. If I was overquick to see offence where none was meant, remember that I am strange to Frontier ways and Frontier manners.’ But there was no warmth in his tone, and it was clear what he thought of Frontier ways and Frontier manners.
Thankfully, Alexios heard the horn sounding from the rampart for the Second Watch of the night. Hilarion, who was duty officer, lounged to his feet and took up his sword which he had slung from the back of his camp chair, saluted the Praepositus, and strolled out. Behind him, the men around the table passed the wine and began idly to talk again of this thing and that. ‘It’s over,’ Alexios thought, ‘it’s over, and not too much harm done. Thanks be to the Lord Mithras, Connla didn’t see fit to join in!’ But the thought made him glance at Connla, all the same, and what he glimpsed for an instant in the face of the Chief’s younger brother, a silken brightness, a kind of dancing devil behind the eyes, made him wonder uneasily if the thing was over, after all.
Next day the Praepositus announced that he wished to spend the morning in the Principia office, looking over the paperwork of the fort. Alexios, hurriedly going over in his mind the state of payrolls and duty rotas and armament and store lists, thought that everything was more or less in order, and that anyway they would be having the same problems about faulty supplies and arrears of pay at Headquarters. Also it would give him a chance to make sure that his Commanding Officer had seen the report that he had sent in after the death of the Weaver of Tales. But when he brought up the subject, Praepositus Montanus heard him out but seemed not at all impressed.
‘That was upward of four months ago, and there have been no further deveopments? No more reports brought back by the Arcani?’
‘No, Sir.’
‘Then I think that it can be safely written off as mere wind-blown rumour. All Frontier folk are fine tellers of tales.’
‘The man died,’ Alexios said.
‘He was drunk and missed his way in bog country.’
Alexios said nothing; and sitting at the office table, Montanus turned to look at him. ‘What is it, then?’
And Alexios could not say, as he had said to Lucius, ‘A feeling like thunder brewing in the back of my neck’, so he said nothing.
‘You see?’ The Praepositus pushed away the papers that had been in front of him. His tone was suddenly kindly but tinged with scorn. ‘I’d be careful about this kind of thing if I were you; sending in too many scare reports. Your record won’t stand it, Ducenarius. Are we finished here?’
Alexios carefully unclenched his hands. ‘Yes, Sir, quite finished.’
That evening, the last of the official visit, Number Three Ordo entertained their new Praepositus to a display of weapon dancing. They had carried out the heavy chair from the Commander’s quarters, and set it just within the entrance to the old waggon shelter, with bundles of hay piled at either side for Alexios and his officers to sit on. And from his place beside the Praepositus, Alexios looked out across the glow of the brazier set before the entrance, and saw the empty space of the Dancing Ground ringed round with torches, and the shadows that moved in the darkness between, and heard the first waking murmur of the drums.
From the shadows on the far side two rows of men stepped forward, each man carrying a pair of native dirks, and advanced to the centre of the open space. They nearly always started with Dirk-Drill, it was a kind of warming up; and a good deal more like drill in the Legion’s sense of the word than anything that was likely to come after. Alexios watched them spread out until each man could just cross dirk-tips with the man next to him, and take their stand, feet a little apart, ready and waitin
g. The drowsing drums woke suddenly and coughed into the night. The blades swung up and over, catching the torchlight, sank, and swung out to touch tips each with the blade next to it – Alexios heard the light kiss of metal on metal – then rose again in perfect time to the rhythm of the drums. A slow rhythm at first, growing faster and faster, beaten out by swift hard fingers and the side and flat of the hand, until the blades whirled almost faster than the eye could follow; until at last, to a final roar of the drums, each man flung his dirks spinning up into the air and caught them again by the blade as they came still spinning down. And that was not in any drill book. Nor was anything else that came after, that night.
The Ordo were doing themselves and their Commander proud, and their Commander watching with a swordsman’s eye, knew it, and felt a warm rush of pride towards them as he watched the shifting patterns of war and hunting dances perfectly carried out, and heard the staccato belly-cries of the dancers, and saw the weapons catch the torchlight and cut the darkness with their speed-flash. And the weapons were not blunted. When two men stepped out before the rest, and laid their crossed swords on the ground and wove their intricate web of steps through and round and over, a false step could have cost the man who made it a foot; and when the lines of yelling spearmen pranced to and fro, a moment’s mistiming could have been somebody’s death.
The dancing was drawing to a close, only the ‘Wolf Spears’ with which they always ended, to come now. The Dancing Ground was empty again, waiting in the torchlight. Alexios was aware of a new creeping cold; a rawness in the air, a kind of curling golden smoke around the torches. There was a mist coming up from the estuary. He was aware also, as the chosen dancers stepped forward, of his Senior Optio standing before him, holding two spears, his own and another. The man grinned, ‘Sir?’ and gave a small upward flick to the spare weapon.
Alexios did hesitate for an instant. The Frontier Wolves had taught him well in the year since the incident of the Bull Calves, but he had a very clear idea what the Praepositus would think of his Ordo Commander joining in the barbarian weapon-dances of their men.
Then he got up and flung off his cloak, and stepped out past the brazier, neatly catching the spear which the grinning optio tossed to him, and took his place in the forming circle.
The deerskin drums woke again, and he moved forward, stamping with his right foot, then his left, then pivoted, crouching low with bent knees.
The beaten ground gave back a rhythmic pulsing beneath his stamping heels, as of a heartbeat somewhere very far down. The swift throb of the drums was waking in him, as it always did, ancient blood-memories that at other times he did not know he possessed, drawing him into a oneness with his fellow dancers, so that while the dance lasted they were all part of each other . . . But the dance was coming to its whirling climax; the voice of the drums rose to a booming howl then fell sharply silent. And the dancers turned, and swept with levelled spears straight for the place where the new Praepositus sat. At the last instant they checked, raising the long-drawn mournful wolf-cry, and tossed up their spears in salute.
And it was over.
Alexios handed his spear to another man and returned to the pile of hay on which he had been sitting. He was breathing quickly, the sweat trickling under his leather tunic. The rhythm of the dance still seemed pulsing through him as he flung on his cloak once more, against the chill of the thickening mist.
‘An interesting display,’ said Glaucus Montanus, but nothing showed in his face save a somewhat chilly boredom.
‘Thank you, Sir.’ Alexios turned and flung up his hand in thanks and dismissal to his men.
From the direction of the Praetorian gate, now that the drums and the stamping heels were silent, he could hear voices upraised in song and laughter. A bunch of revellers returning from an off-duty evening in the town, and exchanging the customary insults with the gate guard.
He supposed that would be something else for the Praepositus to disapprove of. Well, thanks be to the Lord of Light, tomorrow morning the visit of inspection would be over.
9 The Praepositus’s Horse
NEXT MORNING, WITH the cold river mist swirling between the buildings and turning Castellum into a ghost fort, Glaucus Montanus ate his morning bread and cheese and raisins huddled in his cloak beside the glowing brazier that filled the Commander’s quarters with smoke and a little warmth. He had summoned the fort Commander to join him, and was engaged in telling him exactly what he did not approve of in the handling of the fort and Number Three Ordo. There was a good deal he did not approve of, and he dealt with it in detail, so it took some time. To Alexios, sitting with his bread and cheese untouched before him, it seemed that it was going on for ever. From outside, muffled in the mist that seemed to blur sound as well as sight, came the familiar sounds of the ponies being taken down to the drinking-place. He wondered if the men were obeying orders and not touching the Lady as they passed. If the mist got much thicker, the Praepositus wouldn’t leave at all today. The clatter of hooves died into the distance.
The Praepositus had got as far as last night’s dancing. ‘Am I to understand that here at Castellum it is the custom for the Commanding Officer to join in these barbarian war-dances with the men?’
‘All the officers, sometimes,’ Alexios said, determinedly starting on his bread and cheese, ‘not always, but sometimes – on special occasions.’
‘On special occasions? Such as when the Commander of the Numerus is here? It is considered an edifying spectacle?’
‘It isn’t considered anything, Sir.’ Alexios felt his hackles rising. ‘It’s just something that happens. It wasn’t even planned for last night.’
‘I should not let it happen again, if I were you.’ Montanus bit into the last of the dried figs that had been brought out in his honour. ‘That kind of thing is not the best way to keep your men’s respect.’
Alexios wanted to say, ‘When you have served a year with the Wolves, come and tell me what keeps and what loses the men’s respect.’ He wanted to add, ‘That is to say, if they haven’t dropped you head foremost in a peat bog before then.’
But before he could say anything, footsteps came along the colonnade, and there was an urgent mutter of voices outside. The door opened and one of the optios appeared, grey mist swirling like smoke behind him, his wolfskin beaded with a bloom of wet. ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘Sir, the Praepositus’s horse –’
Montanus sat forward with a jerk, ‘What about my horse?’
The optio looked quickly from Alexios to his senior officer and back again; then spoke as it were to the air between them. ‘Sir, I have to report that the Praepositus’s horse has been stolen.’
The Praepositus let out a roar, ‘Stolen? What in Satan’s name do you mean stolen?’
Alexios cut in quickly, getting to his feet. ‘What happened, Optio?’
‘We took the ponies down to water and exercise as usual, Sir, the Praepositus’s groom had the Praepositus’s bay. Everything just as usual till we were clear of the fort, and then,’ the man shook his head as though he simply could not believe what he had seen, ‘he just galloped off into the mist.’
‘No question of the horse bolting with him?’
‘Och, no, Sir. He heeled him into a gallop – and the mist took him. We gave chase of course, but in this murk we lost them. Half a patrol is still out after him, but –’
‘But you let him slip through your fingers,’ Glaucus Montanus snapped. ‘God! If I ever get my hands on that groom of mine, I’ll make him weep that he was ever spawned!’
‘Sir,’ said the optio woodenly, ‘his hood fell back – one of the men says he had red hair. The Praepositus’s groom is dark.’
There was a sharp silence. It seemed as though the cold stillness of the river fog had seeped into the Commander’s quarters. From outside, the sounds of the fort came muffled. A pine knot in the brazier went off with a small sharp crack and a spitting of sparks.
‘Optio,’ Alexios said, ‘will you ask Centenarius
Hilarion to meet me in the Principia office.’ He was already wearing his leather tunic; he slipped his sword-belt over his head, and reached for his wolfskin cloak where it lay across the end of a bench.
‘Red hair – then if it wasn’t the groom, who the Devil –’ he heard Praepositus Montanus’s angry voice behind him.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘that’s what we have to find out. Will you wait here for me, Sir. I’ll be back . . .’
And he plunged out into the mist, flinging on his cloak as he went.
In the office, Centenarius Hilarion joined him, and they stood for an instant looking at each other.
‘Cunorix?’ Hilarion said.
Alexios shook his head. ‘I do not think he’d be such a fool; and his hair’s not red.’
‘Connla, then.’
‘How will he have got in?’ For once, Hilarion was not propping up the furniture.
‘How will whoever it was have got in? Probably with that bunch back from town leave last night.’ Alexios thought for a moment. ‘Send a patrol over to Cunorix’s Rath – with a trumpeter under the Green Branch – to ask if the Praepositus’s horse has strayed in that direction.’
‘Sir,’ said the Centenarius Hilarion.
‘And have a thorough search made of the fort and the town for that wretched groom or his body – try the women’s huts.’
There was a flash of grim laughter in Hilarion’s face. ‘I know the kind of places to look.’ He saluted and turned about.
A few moments later, Alexios was back in his own quarters and once more facing his raging commanding officer.
‘It must have been one of those accursed tribesmen.’ The Praepositus made it sound like an accusation against Alexios himself. ‘And he must have been in the fort all night!’ He was pacing up and down, flinging his words over his shoulders. ‘If I do not get my horse back, I shall hold you personally responsible as the Commanding Officer here. I shall send in a report that discipline is slack and the security at Castellum leaves a great deal to be desired.’