A mile further and the landscape remained nothing but bog and pond and it was beginning to look as if the only place they’d be able to make a bed was in the roadside ditch with their feet in the water.
‘Maybe we should—’
‘Listen!’ Serpentius drew his sword and Valerius strained his ears for the sound that had alerted the Spaniard. Faint, just a whisper on the wind, but when the mind made sense of it, unmistakable.
‘A woman crying,’ he whispered. ‘Here?’
Serpentius shrugged, wary as a hunted deer hearing the distant bay of the hounds. ‘It came from up ahead.’ His expression said they could either stand around like idiots waiting for whoever it was to go away or do something about it.
‘I’ll lead; you hang back.’ Valerius ignored Serpentius’s angry shake of the head and kicked his mare slowly into motion, drawing his sword and carrying it low by the horse’s side. With each nervous step he scoured the impenetrable, puffball curtain of swirling fog. In vain. All he could make out was drifting shadows and ethereal, indistinct shapes, any one of which could hide an enemy. His mount hesitated, but the sound of harsh female sobbing raked Valerius’s brain like a steel spike and he urged her forward.
After an eternity, a vague form emerged from the misty curtain ahead and he drew the mare to a halt. Tall and slim and wearing a dress of brown drab beneath her cloak, she clutched a swathed bundle to her breast and her shoulders shook with the power of her anguish. When she looked up he was surprised to see how young she was – and how beautiful. She raised a hand to her mouth in alarm when she saw the mounted figure approaching.
‘I mean you no harm,’ he said hastily. ‘Where is your husband – your protector?’
She swayed and he thought she might collapse, but she collected herself and after two attempts found the composure to speak, her voice shaking with emotion.
‘May Venus preserve you, master. My husband left two hours since, after our pony foundered. He said he would return soon with a new beast to carry little Gaius and me, but I fear something has happened to him.’ The sobbing began again and he hushed her, preparing to dismount, but before he could move she staggered forward to the mare’s left flank and clutched at his leg.
He saw the moment her eyes widened when she noticed the sword in his left hand, the feral snarl that changed her face from beautiful to ugly as she dropped the cloth-wrapped bundle to stab the long knife it had hidden towards his groin. He had a momentary thrill of pure horror as the blade plunged towards his body. In battle he had seen men bleed out in seconds from such a wound and he knew there was no surviving it. He twisted desperately in the saddle, but it was the horse that saved him, rearing up in fright so the point missed its mark and slammed into the leather-covered wooden saddle. As the girl struggled to haul the knife free, he lashed out with his foot, raking her with the iron studs of his caliga sandal, until she staggered away screaming with blood on her face. But even as she’d struck the mist had filled with shadowy figures who now converged on him, howling. Ragged men, thieves and outcasts had set the girl as bait, and like a fool he had snapped at it. Before he could react he found himself surrounded by rusty blades of every shape and size, each as potentially lethal as a well-sharpened sword. He knew that against these numbers his most effective weapon was speed and he kicked his mount forward to batter another knife-wielding figure aside, slashing widely to his left and feeling the fleshy crunch as edged metal bit home. The satisfaction was short lived, because it was clear this fight could only have one ending. Then, as Valerius prepared to welcome death, Serpentius galloped out of the mist screaming his war cry and smashing his enemies aside, the heavy cavalry spatha cutting right and left in disciplined sweeping arcs that struck terror into the men who faced him.
‘Ride, Valerius!’
The Spaniard’s unexpected appearance froze Valerius’s attackers and he used the breathing space to carve an avenue through them. Just when it looked as if he was clear he felt hands grabbing at his cloak and a lithe figure leapt up behind him on to the horse’s back, long, dirt-caked nails clawing at his eyes and teeth snapping at his neck. The reaction was automatic. He reversed the spatha with a gladiator-taught flick and plunged it into his nemesis’s body. A terrible high-pitched shriek pierced him as his assailant fell away and he had a momentary vision of dark eyes wide with horror as the girl bounced on the gravel roadway. With a surge of relief he found himself alone in the mist. Serpentius should have been a heartbeat behind, but when he looked back the Spaniard was nowhere to be seen. Even as the knowledge scarred his brain he heard the unearthly scream of a horse in its death throes. He roared a cry of fear and frustration and turned his mount, hurling her back the way they’d come.