Tabula Rasa(102)

“All of them. The Northerners came raiding.”

There was no need to explain further: Even a child of this age had heard the stories. He said, “Are you still sad?”

“It is an ache that I carry inside me wherever I go,” she told him. “But I am still glad I have my life here. I do not want to join them before my time comes.”

He nodded thoughtfully. They sat in silence for a while. Dismal, still keeping his distance, allowed the horses to graze. The sun was sinking in a clear sky and a chilly breeze rattled the bushes.

“We must go,” said Tilla, getting to her feet. “I should have taken you back to your family before. They will worry about you, out alone tonight.”

“No they won’t,” he said, and she was afraid it was true.

“I will get someone to take you back.” She was sure the Legion would help. She had visited Aedic’s family on a military-branded horse, with an escort from the fort, and the last thing the army wanted was any whiff of their being involved in the disappearance of another boy. “Do you want to ride my horse?”

He nodded, eager. “I’ve never been on a horse before.”

She gave him a leg up into the saddle, ignoring Dismal’s obvious disapproval, and led the animal down toward the little fort. Halfway there the boy interrupted her gloomy thoughts about being no closer to finding Branan with “Tilla can’t be short for Darlughdacha.”

“It’s a long story,” she told him.





Chapter 60

The fur traders had apparently left Coria at midday, heading north on their mountain ponies. There was very little daylight left now. No time to round up helpers. No time to leave messages with anyone except Susanna, whose warnings to be careful were barely necessary. Ruso suspected he was about to do one of the stupidest things he had ever done in his life, so he was definitely going to do it as carefully as possible.

Turning the mare’s head north, he urged her into a canter up the long gradient. He wished he still had the bay. Biting was a minor problem. This one’s gait was like riding a cart down a flight of steps. The bay would have been less conspicuous too. The gray would be highly visible against everything except fog, and to his left the sun was drifting downward in a clear sky. Under tonight’s full moon, she would shine like a beacon.

He pressed on, because there was nothing else to do but sit easy and try not to bounce as the mare carried him past the first milestone. He let her relax into a trot for a while as he passed the second. Many of the names engraved on the stones were of places much farther north: destinations no Roman was ever likely to see again. He had met veterans who could remember tramping south down this road, part of a disgruntled withdrawal of troops that left the northern tribes rejoicing as they settled down into their old domestic rivalries. Still, there were some scattered military outposts up here, left behind to keep an eye on the border tribes whose territories straddled the wall. With luck, he would run into one of the patrols from Habitancum or Bremenium on the way up. If he did not, and the traders got the boy beyond the reach of Rome, he had no idea what he would do. He urged the mare back into a canter.

He saw no patrols: just locals, some carrying piles of firewood. People joining their neighbors for tonight’s celebrations, untroubled by any curfew beyond the one they imposed upon themselves because their heads were full of ghost stories. Occasionally a group contained an elderly person clinging on to a donkey or wrapped in blankets and being jolted along in a cart.

Four milestones. The road was rougher up here, although the potholes had been filled with rubble and it was flanked with wide grass verges, a comforting reminder that he was not yet completely out of civilization. He tried to keep an eye on his surroundings, but the sun was sliding down behind the western hills, and every time he looked to the left he was dazzled. Soon it would be dark. If Susanna had managed to let the CO at Coria know that Ruso had rushed off alone in pursuit of the missing boy, it seemed no support had been arranged. There was no sign of any cavalry galloping north to join him, and he doubted they would signal ahead. He would be alone on the road with no protection beyond his weapons and his armor, which were already attracting the wrong sort of attention. He had seen the looks on the faces of other travelers and the way men in the fields stopped work to stare as he passed. He wondered about pausing to hide his kit and picking it up on the way back, but he knew that, close up, he could no more pass for a native than the horse could. He would just look like a deserter, despised by both sides.

And then he reached the fork in the road. He slowed the mare to a walk and stopped to ask a couple of small girls lugging a bucket of water whether they had seen the Northerners go past on their ponies. They stared up at him, openmouthed. One of them let go of the handle and fled as the water sloshed all over the remaining child’s feet. She stood as if paralyzed, her eyes wide with shock. Ruso backed the horse away from her. When the scream finally came, she flung the bucket toward him and ran. Struggling to steady the frightened horse, Ruso debated briefly whether to stay and explain or get away. The sounds of angry voices and footsteps crashing through the woods told him that he and the horse were of one mind. Behind him, the shouts of “Leave our kids alone!” died away and then there were only the hoofbeats and the voice in his head asking, What if the traders went the other way? And even if they had not, the question remained: What are you going to do when you find them? Reason with them? Appeal to their sense of natural justice? Offer them money? He had very little with him, but if they agreed to come to the nearest army base (how likely was that?), he might be able to talk his way into borrowing some. On the other hand, since they had just sold their furs, they might not be interested in money. After all, they had just given some of it away to buy a slave.