by Whyte, Jack
I still recall with pleasure the effect that cache had on those soldiers, for I had been through a sufficiently long period of self-doubt the previous week to enable me to revel in their wonder. Their eyes grew wide and their mouths gaped, for never had such bounty been seen as the result of one man's solitary hunting in a single day. Again, I offered no explanation of how I had achieved such a harvest, and such was their awe, they would not have considered asking me. I apologized, however, for the unskinned condition of the catch, pointing out that I had neither had the time nor the tools to skin all twenty beasts. I left them to their task then and they set to work immediately, muttering in wonder among themselves and casting superstitious glances my way whenever they thought they were unobserved.
Directly the men were finished loading the meat onto the wagon they had brought, I returned with them to Camulod and made my way straight to the bath house, where I spent little time in the intermediate pools before lodging myself for an hour and more in the steam room. Thereafter, although November's early darkness had not yet begun to fall, I sought my cot and slept like a baby.
They wakened me hours later, in the dead of night, with a hurried summons to present myself in the Praetorium, nominally my own working quarters but in fact the headquarters of the Officer of the Watch at any time of day or night. Alarmed by the appearance of the white-faced, stammering young soldier who had been sent to roust me from my bed, I threw cold water on my face, pulled on a heavy winter tunic, wrapped myself in my cloak and made my way directly to the Praetorium, where I found Ambrose, as tousled as I was, huddled with a group of senior officers including Dedalus, Rufio and Achmed Cato, who, as I perceived immediately from his immaculate uniform, was Officer of the Watch. They broke off their colloquy as I hurried in, each of them scanning me from head to foot as I approached. I saw and accepted that without a thought. I felt fresh and well rested, and I gauged I had already been abed for six hours or more.
"What's happened?" I asked as I strode up to the table. Ambrose reacted first, picking up one of the objects that lay on the table and tossing it to me as I drew near. The silence held as I pulled the flying object from the air and looked at it: part of an arrow, much like my own, save that the shaft had been cut through, leaving no way to tell how long the missile had originally been. Six more exactly like it remained on the table. I sucked in air as I glared at the thing in my hand. Its barbed head and the first handspan of its length were coated with dried and clotted blood, and the cut shaft had been deliberately severed with a sharp blade. I scraped the barbed iron head with my thumbnail, noting the way it had been made and the size and weight of it.
"This is Pendragon." I rapped out the words, an indictment in themselves, looking around at each of them. "Who has killed whom?"
Achmed Cato cleared his throat. "Are you sure of that, Commander? That it is Pendragon?"
"Don't be dense, Achmed. I'm as sure as you are. This was made for a Pendragon longbow. The arrowhead betrays that. It's far too large and heavy for a short bow." I turned to Ambrose. "No one has answered my question. Tell me."
Ambrose shrugged his shoulders and scratched beneath his armpit. " 'Whom' is some of us," he answered in his clear, ever reasonable tones. " 'Who' is unknown. One of our outposts has been wiped out: Calibri, the one farthest to the northwest, closest to the Pendragon lands. Fifty men, all dead, and all the horses stolen. Twenty-four animals—mounts for two squads, one with remounts. The raid occurred less than a week ago. The patrol from the next camp, Horse Farm, waited for them this morning, since they had been scheduled to join the Horse Farm group. When they had not arrived by mid-morning, Saul Maripo, the officer in charge at Horse Farm, led a contingent of his men to see what the problem was. He arrived at Calibri before noon and found everyone dead. A head count showed no one was unaccounted for. There were no enemy corpses."
"Shit and corruption! When did this occur?"
Ambrose shook his head, but it was Achmed Cato who answered me. "Maripo had been there five days earlier and all was well when he left then, just before nightfall. Whatever happened must have taken place the next day or the day after that. From the condition of the bodies, he estimates they had been dead at least three days."
"Damnation!" I curbed my angry reaction and looked around at each of them. All of them met my eyes, and I burst out again. "The raid, you say? Fifty garrison troopers dead and you think this was a mere raid? Are you all mad?" I paused then, looking about me again. There was something in the bearing of all of them that struck me as strange. "What is going on here?" I snarled at Cato. "You are the Officer of the Watch. Have you sounded the Assembly? I heard no horns."
"No, Caius, we have not."
His words astounded me, but I was aware of the general attitude here and realised that I had not heard all there was to hear. I drew a deep breath, stifling the urge to rant further.
"Very well," I said when I had mastered my breathing again, hearing the ominous quiet in my own voice. "Would someone care to tell me why?"
"Saul Maripo will tell you himself," Cato said, his own voice calm and dignified. "I regret he was not here when you arrived, but he arrived himself only a half hour ago, having spent the entire day in the saddle, riding hard, and I gave him leave to go to the latrine while we awaited you. He should be back at any moment."
Even as Cato spoke, I heard the ringing of metal-studded boots on marble and turned to see young Maripo stride into the room and skid to a halt as he saw me. He snapped immediately to attention and smashed his fist against his cuirass in a salute, flushing scarlet. He was stained and dirty and travel- worn, dark rings of exhaustion clearly visible beneath his eyes from where I stood across the room. I waved him down and put him at his ease.
"Saul," I greeted him, nodding. "I hear you have had an eventful day."
"Aye, Commander." He was still at attention, swaying on his feet.
"Sit down, lad, before you fall down. And relax. No one is going to disembowel you." I moved to the chest that stood behind my desk, stooping to raise the lid and withdrawing the flask of mead and one of the cups I kept there for occasions like this. Around me, I could almost feel the tension drain from the other officers. I poured the cup to the rim with the honeyed, fiery drink and carried it to where young Maripo had subsided into a high-backed chair brought forward by one of the others. He accepted the cup from my hand, nodding gratefully, and drank deeply, then caught his breath and coughed against the fire in his throat. No one laughed. When the young man had regained his composure, I nodded to him again. "Take another one, more slowly this time." He did, and then sat back, relaxing visibly, his eyes on mine.
I moved back to the table and leaned against it, placing the mead flask by my side. I took my time now, knowing the floor was mine and no one would interrupt me. Perhaps to compensate for my earlier volubility, I waited longer than I might have and then spoke slowly and clearly.
"The others have told me part of your story . . . the distressing part. All that remains now, it would appear, is for you to explain why no one is raising our army to repel a possible invasion of our territories. Can you enlighten me?"
The young officer nodded. "Yes, Commander. There is no threat—no immediate threat, I mean."
I sighed, loudly. "I see. And how have you arrived at that conviction?"
He flushed again, hearing the irony in my tone. "I looked, Commander. And I looked with great care, and at great length, and with as much speed as I could."
I dipped my head slightly, accepting his word. "Explain, if you please. From the beginning."
Now it was his turn to heave a quick, sharp sigh, and I watched him search for the words to tell his tale. When they came to him, they emerged in the clipped tones of a formal report to a superior.
"I assembled my entire command at dawn, Commander, and set them to breaking camp completely, knowing that this was an unusual day, in that the post would be abandoned overnight, today and tomorrow. It seemed an ideal opportunity to clean up and
prepare the post for a new start by the returning guard, who might appreciate a clean and wholesome billet at the outset of their stay. I also knew I needed to keep the men occupied until the arrival of the force from Calibri—there was a festive spirit in evidence that morning, because of the occasion, and I thought it might be mildly prejudicial to good discipline to allow the men to indulge it. I expected the Calibri contingent to arrive before mid-morning." He paused, evidently remembering, then resumed. "When they had not materialized by the expected time, I became concerned, but decided to allow them half an hour of leeway, thinking they might have decided to clean up their own camp before leaving. Eventually, however, my discomfort drove me to investigate their absence. We ourselves had experienced nothing out of the ordinary prior to that time, and so I took the entire mounted force under my command and made my way towards Calibri at all speed. Before I left, however, anticipating that there might be something amiss, I also sent a rider on our fastest horse to summon the cavalry troops from the next camp to the southeast, bidding the commander there, Decius, to take note of my concern and send his men as backup for my own."
I interrupted him. "Pardon me, Decurion, I have no wish to interrupt your report, and so far I am impressed, but how many horsemen did you have?"
"Sixteen, sir. Two squads; half a squadron. And thirty-four infantry, whom I left in camp, standing to arms."
"I see. Co on."
He cleared his throat, collecting his thoughts after my interruption. "We made good speed to Calibri, and when I was sure that no one was coming to meet us, I sent four scouts ahead on our flanks. The camp was silent when we reached it. It had been burned and there were dead men everywhere."
"I see. All ours; no enemy dead?"
"No, sir." He blinked and I watched his eyes focus on a point somewhere between himself and me. "As soon as I had confirmed the death toll, I began to fear that the enemy, whoever they were, might have outflanked us along the way, hiding until we had passed by, and then riding to attack my own camp at Horse Farm. I knew I had to ascertain, immediately, their numbers and the direction they had taken when they left Calibri. I deployed my men in line abreast to sweep around the perimeter, using the camp itself as a pivot. Fortunately, we found the sign immediately, beginning at the paddock where the horses had been kept, and heading away directly towards the northwest. I examined the signs myself and gauged the raiding party to have been less than a hundred strong. . ." He broke off and his eyes became troubled, then fixed directly on my own. "Those bows, Commander. We've known what they can do for a long time, but they have worked for us until now, suiting our purposes. Used against us, they represent an entirely new form of attack against which we're utterly ill-equipped for self-defence. All our dead were killed by arrows. I know that because I examined each body individually. Not one man bore a sword cut or an axe wound. Every single one had been shot to death by arrows, and most of the arrows had been ripped out of the bodies afterwards. I had one of my men cut some of the few remaining from the bodies of our dead, and brought them with me in the belief that they might be important to the identification of the raiders."
"Aye," I nodded. "They are. The arrows were reclaimed to be used again. They are difficult to make, and much too valuable to be abandoned when they might be salvaged. The few that were left were probably too deeply lodged to be freed quickly, so they were cut through in order to deny their usefulness to others." Or to disguise their source, my mind added, tacitly. "Carry on."
"Sir. One of my men, called Kenith, is a Celt, highly skilled in tracking, and he confirmed my estimate of their numbers. He also divined, and later confirmed from his own observations of the tracks, that the attackers were Celts. He is a scout and a tracker, as I have said, and he pointed out to me that the trail was old, by several days at least. All marks other than the deepest gouges and footprints had been wiped out; the grass straightened by time. And yet their trail was plain, beaten by the hooves of the horses. No rain had fallen in the interim, Kenith indicated, and we might follow them with ease. I so decided, and left a pair of men behind; one to await the arrival of the riders from the other camp, who would be following behind us, and bring them in pursuit of us; the other to return to Horse Farm at all speed, with orders to Sextus Sulla, the infantry commander there, to march his men to Calibri and bury our dead in a common grave." He broke off again, clearly feeling a need to explain. "There was no time, Commander, to do other than that. We could not bring fifty three-day corpses home for burial, nor could we bury them in single graves."
I nodded in agreement, saying nothing, and he continued, apparently relieved by my concurrence.
"That done, I set out directly with my remaining fourteen troopers to follow the raiders' tracks. At all times, Commander, I deployed half of my force as scouts, ranging far out on both sides of our route. I also kept all my men on full alert, so there could be no possibility of missing any sign of a body of men departing from the principal trail. We followed it for four hours, riding hard even through the deep woods—although those we pursued had avoided the worst of the forest and kept to clear game trails—before I called a rest stop in a large clearing where the evidence of their passing was unmistakable. The raiders had stopped there themselves, and had built fires and rested, evidently a clear day ahead of us, since the ashes of the fires were damp and we had had clear skies throughout that day. The horses had grazed on one side of the clearing where the grass was rich, and the men had slept apart from them. We found the days-old guts of a deer just inside the woods, and I knew then that what Kenith had said was true: these men had not anticipated any swift pursuit." Again he stopped, his face reflecting puzzlement. " The raiders had remained on foot, Commander, throughout the entire withdrawal. They made no effort to ride the horses, and they left the saddles and bridles in the stables."
"Probably didn't know what they were," I said. "These are mountain men, Decurion. They've never ridden anything other than their own small mountain ponies. The sheer size of our horses might have inhibited them from trying to master them while still so deep in hostile territory. Carry on with your report; you're doing well."
" Thank you." He cleared his throat again, frowning in concentration. "We cleared the forest, eventually, and came out into rolling grassland. I began to grow convinced our quarry was in full flight, headed for the mountains we could see in the distance north and west of us each time we topped a hill. When I became sure of it, I increased our speed—the open country made that easier—and we covered more than twenty miles, until we came to the crest of a long rise, where the ground fell away beneath us, exposing a vista that was flat and bare as far as the eye could see—probably another twenty miles, since the sun was shining then and the light was clear. There was nothing moving anywhere out there, though all of us scanned the entire valley carefully for signs." He paused and sniffed, then drew another deep, long breath.
"We did see something there, however, Commander. A broad swathe of tracks, disappearing out of sight in a large arc to either side of us, cutting directly across the tracks we were following." He looked around at the assembled group. "We moved down to investigate these signs and saw they had been made by a large party of shod horses, riding from west to east. Again, it was Kenith who observed that they were cavalry, most likely our own, since we know of no other. He pointed out that they had ridden in files, four abreast, and once that had been mentioned the tracks became plain to see. We moved on to the point where these tracks met with our quarry's and found that the cavalry tracks had crossed the other, older tracks. They had stopped there, then followed the old tracks for a while, but the marks of their return were clearly evident. At that point, assuming that this earlier pursuit had proved fruitless, I decided there was nothing to be gained by my proceeding further with such a puny force. I knew the entire garrison of Camulod would be meeting here tomorrow, and I had determined to my own satisfaction that no army on foot could cover the distance from beyond our sight to Camulod in sufficient time to t
ake us by surprise, once I had made my report. I also knew that I had made no move to ascertain, at that point, whether the next camp on the other side, to the west of our perimeter, had been molested. I judged from the regularity of the cavalry arc we had found that those riders, whoever they had been, had ridden well clear of our borders on their way around from the west. So I turned back and met shortly thereafter with Decurion Decius, who was leading his cavalry to join us. I dispatched him, with his own men and mine, to check the next camp west, at Acorn Lake. I then made my way directly here at top speed, stopping only briefly at Calibri to set my own infantry back on the road to Camulod via Horse Farm, and then at my own camp again to change to a fresh horse. Decurion Decius, had he found anything amiss at Acorn Lake, would have sent his fastest rider to confirm my report and add his own. No such messenger has yet arrived, although one may arrive within the hour. If no one comes, we should be able to assume that all was well at Acorn Lake when Decius arrived and he is now on his way with the Acorn Lake garrison as scheduled. I arrived back about an hour ago, and made my initial report to Tribune Cato. That is all I have to report, Commander."
"Hmm. You have acquitted yourself well, Decurion Maripo. Your report, and your presence of mind, are both laudable. Your assumption about the identity of the cavalry whose tracks you found was on the mark. They were our own, sent out in four separate groups to sweep around our entire perimeter, each to a quadrant twenty miles outside our bounds, to check for signs of alien activity that might affect our standing down today and tomorrow. They returned this morning, early. The only sign found by any of the four groups was the one you followed. The sweepers found those tracks a day ahead of you, so your judgment on the timing was accurate, too. You have our gratitude. We will take over from here, so get yourself off to sleep. You have earned your rest."
