Tabula Rasa(103)

His courage was fading with the light. What had he been thinking, back there on the bridge in Coria? That he could tackle half a dozen tribesmen by himself? That the fur traders would be businessmen like Lupus, pretending to respect the law and eager to retain a little goodwill in exchange for the army’s protection? That he could catch up with them and say, Can we have our boy back, please?

Ahead of him, a figure was pulling up the staked chain of a pony that had been grazing on the grass verge. Keeping his distance this time, Ruso asked his question. He was in luck. The old man looked him up and down for a moment as if deciding whether it was wise to speak, and then admitted that he had seen the fur traders pass by some time ago. They might have had a boy with them. No, he did not know what sort of boy. He had not taken much notice. It was best not to have anything to do with the fur traders if you could help it.

When asked why, the old man told him that they lived in the wild and hunted things for a living and were half bear themselves. They had a manner of speaking amongst themselves that nobody understood. Now that they had been to town and traded furs for their winter supplies, they would go back into the mountains and not be seen for months.

Ruso tried to ignore the shriveling sensation inside his stomach. When he asked how long ago they had passed, the man looked blank. Presumably it was not the sort of question he was used to answering. This was a world with no clocks, where an often invisible sun was the only way to judge the passing of time.

Finally the man said, “They may be at the Three Oaks Inn. That is where they leave the road and go toward the hills.”

“How far is that?”

“Two more of your miles.”

Ruso, thoroughly unsettled, thanked him and rode on, partly because of a foolish desire not to look like a coward in front of a native, but mostly because the five or six miles of lonely road behind him were just as nerve-racking as the two in front.

Once the old man and his pony had faded into the gloom, Ruso’s doubts returned. It seemed Branan’s captors would turn off the road well short of Habitancum, where he had been hoping he might muster some help. He was heading alone into unknown territory where he knew none of the natives. He did not have the authority of the Legion, nor the support from Tilla, Valens, or Albanus that he had enjoyed in past crises. He did not even have the slim protection of being able to prove he was a healer: He had brought no instruments or medicines with him that would mark him out from any other Roman officer.

He dug the fingers of one hand into a fistful of coarse gray mane and glanced at the looming shapes of the trees on either side of the road. This was madness. He should turn back. There was no shame in admitting he had made a mistake. He should go back and fetch help now, while he still could.

Except . . . Branan was somewhere ahead of him, and if he did not find those men before they headed off into the hills, he never would. How could he face Senecio and Enica, knowing he had abandoned their child? What would he say to Tilla? He thought of her, back in the relative safety of Parva, hunting for the rumormonger and trying to comfort the family she had so wanted to be a part of. She too had been stolen from her people and taken north. She had spent long months waiting for rescuers who never came.

He was not going to let that happen to Branan. However things turned out tonight, he would do his best to let the boy know he was not forgotten. Someone had come. Someone wanted to take him home.





Chapter 61

The gate guards were unusually welcoming, although they were disappointed when Tilla told them the nervous-looking boy she had brought in on an army horse was not the one who had been stolen. The watch captain had a message to show her: It seemed Branan had been taken to Coria by a slave trader, and her husband had gone to get him back. In the light of this the tribune had called off the local search and he was now relying on Tilla to persuade the father to stop hanging around the fort and go home.

“Has the old man been told this?”

“We tried, miss, but he won’t believe us.”

Senecio wept with relief when she told him the news was true: She had read the words for herself in her husband’s own writing. Branan was alive, and the army was on the trail of the slave trader. Aedic stood pink-faced and staring at the ground as she knelt beside the old man and assured him that slave traders looked after their stock and that none of them wanted to be seen dealing in stolen children. Grasping Senecio’s cold hand, she reminded him that her husband was a man of authority. Such an officer had only to say that Branan had been snatched from his family and the trader would have to hand him over.

Finally, the old man agreed to go home. The watch captain was so relieved to be rid of him that he did not even bother to object when Tilla asked to have Aedic safely delivered home too.