They mounted the shuddering ponies once again and quested round, like wolves, for a scent. Tigidius said to Marcus, “This is a bad business, lad. But no one can be held to account for it. There are four Romans here to bear witness; you and I will make a formal report when we are able.”
Marcus flared out at him. “Witnesses! Reports!” he shouted. “Can you not bring your wooden brain to think of anything else? Do you think that all the world is ruled by witnesses and reports? Do you think all folk are Romans? Is there not room for a little pity in that barrack-block of a world you live in?”
The centurion sat rigid in the saddle while this was said. Then he bowed his head stiffly between his shoulders and said quietly, “The fault is mine, Tribune. I spoke as the Legion trained me. I ask your pardon. I can say no more.”
He said this simply and with no expression in his voice. Marcus looked at him in astonishment, then suddenly realised that this man was old enough to be his father, though they had always gone side by side, like youths in friendship. He realised that Tigidius had been his own father’s most trusted officer. He turned his pony towards the man and put out his hand. “It is I who should ask pardon,” he said. “I spoke ahead of my reason, friend. I am sorry.”
The centurion looked him in the eye steadily and without feeling. “The fault is mine, Tribune,” he repeated. “When we get back to the Colonia, please put on record that I have said those words, sir.”
He glanced sideways at the two legionaries as he spoke and they smiled in understanding. Marcus began to pull his pony round and wave his hand to explain himself, but just then Cynwas came beside him and said, “My best tracker has scented the way the killers took. He has a fine nose and these Iceni go in bare feet. Come, it is to the east. They must be gathering on the Long Road. Come.”
They all turned and, gaining the lip of the slope, swung their mounts away to the right, towards the wolds that wallowed like gentle green dolphins with the tall sky over them, blue and empty.
Cynwas spoke only once as they galloped. He said, “When we come up with the Iceni I shall teach them a stern lesson, Tribune. If my sister is unharmed, I shall take off their right hands—no more. If she has been misused, then I shall turn them on spits over a charcoal fire. And you, Tribune, shall have the honour of lighting that fire.”
Marcus answered, “I have a sister of my own. If this happened to her I should go to law and have the magistrates put the appropriate sentence on the ill-doers. But I should not make myself a worse man than they are by going back a hundred years to gain my vengeance. We Romans did not march half-way across the world to teach you hand-chopping and charcoal fires, Cynwas.”
The young chieftain laughed with scorn into the blue air. “Before you came we did well enough, invader. In those days a child could wander in the woods unmolested. All she had to watch for were four-footed wild beasts and little snakes. Now, since you have civilised us, as you say, the beasts have two legs and wear helmets and ride on horses. Rome has given us a great benefit, a great education. I tell you, when we come up with them . . .”
He did not finish the sentence. Instead, as they topped a green rise, they saw below them and almost half a mile away a strange thing happening along the straight military road, and in the green meadows on either side of it. There was a great confusion of horsemen and footmen, all milling round like fallen leaves in a whirlpool—and many of them, both men and horse, had fallen and were littering the road and fields.
Tigidius cried out, “Tribune, it is the Ninth. I can see the Eagle and the Cohort flags. It is my own Cohort, but most of them mounted. There are three Tribunes with them on white horses, men you know.”
Marcus said drily, “Petillius Cerialis is at their head. I can see as far as you can, friend. I can see his gold helmet with the red plume from here. The legate is laying about him.”
As he spoke, the two legionaries who rode behind the party suddenly yelled out, “The Ninth! The Ninth! Up the Ninth!” and galloped forward, kicking their horses’ flanks like madmen. Cynwas watched them go, thudding the turf and scattering sheep on either side of them. And when they had gone twenty yards, he turned and nodded to a long-faced man who sat hunched behind him. “Now, Glappi,” he said. The man nodded and almost lazily swung his yew-bow from his back and fitted arrows to it. All at once the Romans lay sprawling among the sheep while their puzzled ponies cantered on, then turned and came back to the main party.
Marcus stared at the Celt in fury. “Who gave you orders to do that?” he said. “You have broken the law, you savage. They are my men. Not yours to do with as you please.”
Cynwas looked back at him with a hard face. He said, “No one gives me orders in my country,” he said. “It is they who broke the law—my law. And as for being your men, they were no one’s men, being traitors. If you now want to speak the Roman law to them, you are welcome.”
Tigidius rode over to the legionaries and dismounting, turned them over. Then he rose and shook his head before returning.
Glappi the long-faced bowman got off his pony smiling, then ran over to the fallen soldiers and carefully withdrew his arrows from them so as not to bend the slender shafts.
Cynwas leaned down to him as he came back and said, “Not bad, not bad, old one. They were more difficult targets than a roe-deer, but you brought them down within a count of five fingers. Remind me to reward you when we get back with my sister.”
Marcus was so angry he could not speak; but the centurion edged his horse beside him and said, “I have made a note of their names, for the records, sir. Both of them come from Heracles so you will not have letters to write home to their families. They were runaway slaves and have none.”
Marcus had regained his breath now and turned towards Cynwas, but the Celt put up his hand and silenced him. “Pay attention to what goes on below you, soldier,” he said. “What has happened to these two is happening to all your Cohort. See, they are falling everywhere; and now their leader, the little man in the gold helmet, is turning and leading them away northwards, back up your fine road! I must say, you Romans make fine riders—when the enemy is at your tail.”
The centurion gasped, “Oh no, oh no! Look, sir, they have given ground. My Cohort is retreating.”
Cynwas said calmly, “Soon you will have no Cohort, friend. Those Iceni down there run like the wind and cast their spears as truly as Marru, the God of death. If five of them get to your Lindum, to shriek at the gates for them to open, then they will be lucky men and should go home and turn their hands to farming straightway—before an arrow takes them.”
Tigidius rode forward, his hard face set in an expression of quiet anger. He said, “Do not jeer too quickly, Briton. The Ninth never leaves a setback unavenged. There are other Cohorts, almost as good as my own. They will come out of the gates you scoff at, and then these Iceni will mourn for their dead, mourn for their tribe, and mourn for their lost past, the rest of their lives—those who are left to mourn.”
Cynwas did not even look at him, but whistled ironically into the morning air like a gay lark.
This angered Marcus more than anything. He said quite loudly, “You seem to have forgotten one thing, horse-thief. Your sister whom you profess to love is down there, among the savages. No doubt they will be doing to her what they are doing to my fellow-Romans since, as you have said, they will think she is of my people.”
Now Cynwas stopped whistling and gazed down, his face changed as though a cold hand had passed over it. “Come,” he said, “there are wagons among them. She will surely be there, among the women of the tribe.”
He galloped off without any more words and the others had hard business to keep up with him.
Here and there the moorland had been broken into by the ploughshare, and the upturned clods of earth flew back under the horses’ hooves into the faces of the riders behind. Then, in other places, stones and even boulders had been dragged out of the ground to make square sheep-pens, sometimes with walls running beside them to keep out wolves. The Celts were lazy builders but even so they had set up waist-high barriers of drystone, and most riders would have reined their horses round these walls. But not Cynwas; he galloped over them or crashed through them, sometimes coming close to bringing his pony down. It was like riding behind a madman. Once Marcus called out to him, “Pull in, you fool, or you’ll have us all down.”
But Cynwas went on silently, like a grey ghost riding through a black dream. He did not ride in the world of men now, but in the world of vengeance. His eyes were blind to walls and his ears deaf to words. He went like an earth-skimming hawk after its quarry, daft to all reason.
Then at last they went into a low green valley, where sheep were grazing and a narrow stream wound about among the stones. The far side was a steep one and even Cynwas had to give his mount a breathing-space now.
So they were long enough in topping the rise, and when they could see the road again, most of the armies had gone, leaving only the wagons and the folk who looked after them. And the dead.