Fire and Sword. Harry Sidebottom
thrumming. Let us be men. Not looking up at the farm. At every step, the fear of an outcry, or the terrible whistle of an arrow. Five steps, six.
Eight paces, and they were back in cover.
Menophilus dropped to the ground. Heart hammering, he crawled back to the edge of the path.
Once again, he gazed up from behind the bough of a tree.
Nothing moved. Utter stillness.
He watched for some time. From this point on, the piquet at their backs, escape would be infinitely more difficult.
At length, somewhat satisfied, heart beating more normally, he wriggled backwards to where Barbius waited.
They went cautiously up the bank, flitting from tree to tree through the dappled shadows.
Ahead was a blaze of light where the road meandered through the woods.
Again, Menophilus stopped, took cover, and watched and waited.
The backroad was grey, dusty, and empty. A pair of swallows low over it, banking and swooping. A sign of bad weather to come.
Telling Barbius to watch both directions, Menophilus walked out onto the byway, studied it. The distinct marks of military hobnailed boots. No impressions of hooves or hipposandals. The surface was powdery, not tramped down. Only a few of the enemy had gone up to the farm, all of them on foot.
Returning to the shade, Menophilus and Barbius went through the trees parallel to the road.
Soon the road joined a grander, paved version of itself. The Via Gemina was the main route from Aquileia to the Julian Alps, and on to Emona and the Danubian frontier. When war did not threaten, there would be many travellers. Today it was deserted. There were no guards at the junction.
A final rise, and the Via Gemina dipped down to the Aesontius. The river here was very broad. Usually shallow, now it was swollen with spring melt from the mountains. All that remained of the central sections of the Pons Sonti were the stubs of piers, the water breaking around them, tugging at their loosened stones. On the far bank was the beginning of a pontoon bridge. The first two barges were in place. A large body of soldiers was manhandling the next down the bank. Around them was the bustle of disciplined activity. Gangs of men braked wagons down the descent, and laboured to unload huge cables and innumerable planks.
Below Menophilus, at the foot of the slope, a small rowing boat was moored to the near bank. Here all was quiet. A detachment of troops, no more than a hundred, lounged in the shade. An officer had a detail of ten men standing in the road, about fifty paces from their resting companions. Menophilus cast about, and found a tangle of undergrowth from which to observe.
The shadows lengthened, and across the river the work went on. On the near bank, the soldiers passed around wineskins. From time to time, individuals wandered a little downstream to relieve themselves. Menophilus unhinged a writing block, and made occasional, cryptic notes.
It was in moments of inactivity that his grief threatened to unman him. What was the point of this reconnaissance? Of any of it? The risk and the striving; all for what? His friends were dead. Gordian the Father and Gordian the Son, both dead. Of course, he had known they were mortal. Death was inevitable. Friends were like figs; they did not keep.
Philosophy was a thin and inadequate consolation. If they were his friends, they would not want him in misery. But they were beyond that. They had escaped. The life of man was but a moment, his senses a dim rushlight, his body prey to disease, his soul an unquiet eddy, his fortune dark; a brief sojourn in an alien land.
True, they had lived as they wished, and they had met their deaths well. Gordian the Son struck down on the field of battle, opposing the forces of the tyrant. Gordian the Father by his own hand, the decision his own. The world was wrong to see the rope as womanish. Everywhere you looked, you found an end to your suffering. See that short, shrivelled, bare tree? Freedom hung from its branches. What was the path to freedom? Any vein in your body.
Life was a journey. Unlike any other, it could not be curtailed. No life was too short, if it had been well lived. Menophilus knew he should not rail against what could not be changed. Instead he should be grateful for the time he had been granted with his friends. But the pain of their loss cut like a knife.
The shadows were lengthening. Dusk had fallen down at the waterside. Torches sawed in the breeze, as men continued to labour in the gloom.
Menophilus had gathered some useful intelligence. It was carefully noted in his writing tablet. From the bull on their standard, he had learnt that the men on the near bank were from the 10th Legion Gemina, which was based at Vindobona in Pannonia Superior. Evidently they had been ferried over a few at a time by the one little rowing boat. There were not yet many of them on the Aquileian side of the Aesontius. From their demeanour, they were relaxed and confident. They knew that the rebels had no regular army to bring against them in the field. No attack was expected. On the far side of the water, the prefabricated materials of the pontoon bridge, and the proficiency of their assembly indicated that it belonged to the imperial siege train. Another twenty-four hours should see its completion.
What he had discovered was not enough. He needed to know what other troops accompanied the 10th Legion, or, at least, form some idea of their numbers. He would wait. The night might provide more answers.
Darkness fell, and the wind picked up. It had shifted into the south-west. From that direction it often brought rain in these regions. A downpour would further swell the river, hamper the bridge-building. A difficult business manoeuvring the barges in a strong current, and there was the danger of debris swept downriver. If it rained heavily, the pontoon might not be ready for a couple of days. Menophilus committed that to memory; it was too dark to write.
Clouds, harbingers of a storm, scudded across the moon. The wind soughed through the foliage, creaking branches together. The woods were alive with the scuttling and the choked-off cries of nocturnal predator and prey.
Down by the river, streamers of sparks were pulled into the air from the campfires of the enemy. Across the Aesontius the trees were dense, and the riverbank high. Most of the fires were over the crest of the slope. No way of gauging their number from the glow in the sky. Something bolder was demanded.
Menophilus outlined his plan to Barbius. In the ambient light, the youth’s eyes were white and round with fear.
‘Watch my back,’ Menophilus said. ‘Leave everything to me.’ He affected an assurance he did not feel. Stoic training helped.
Menophilus got up, and stretched, working the numbness out of his limbs. When he felt ready, he patted the young man on the shoulder, and set off. Barbius followed close; being left alone possibly seeming the worse of two evils.
They went down crabwise, peering at the ground. With each step, Menophilus first put down just a little of his weight on the side of his foot, feeling for twigs which might snap, stones which could turn, before transferring the whole onto the sole of his boot. Often he paused to listen. Staring through the trees, taking care not to look at the fires glowing between the tree trunks, he tried to ascertain their position.
An owl glided overhead on silent, pale wings.
Menophilus remained still for a time after its passing, before resuming his painstaking descent, angling a little downstream.
In a wood at night, fear in your heart, time and distance lost all exactitude. For eternity the river remained as far as ever, then they were standing on its brink. They retreated a few paces uphill. Each pressed hard against a willow, trying to merge into their shapes, as if hoping to effect some unlikely metamorphosis.
Menophilus could smell the fish in the river, the mud and decayed leaves along its bank. He schooled himself to patience. A brief sojourn in an alien land.
Someone was approaching through the trees. In the dark, Menophilus gazed to the side of the figure, the better to see.
The soldier passed by closer than a child could throw a stone. He went down and stood on the riverbank, fumbled with his belt and trousers.
Softly