Terra Incognita Read Online Free Page B

Metellus turned up he did not know what else he could do.
    It was a while before he noticed the drawing. Scratched in charcoal on the plastered wall above Felix’s body was a crude sketch of a man. Audax scowled. Whoever had done it wasn’t much of an artist. He supposed those things that looked like two trees sprouting from the man’s head were meant to be antlers. It was not a good picture, but that didn’t matter. It didn’t have to be a good picture to make a great deal of mischief.

4
    L AST NIGHT’S STORM seemed to have washed the sky clean but already a stiff breeze was blowing fresh clouds in from the west. Beneath them, a cavalry outrider had stationed himself in a dramatic pose on the top of a distant hill from whence he could see not only the column but also the approach of any potential marauders. Ruso, whose horse was ambling along as if it were asleep, wished he could join him. Instead he was expected to keep pace with infantry. The goods convoy the infantry was escorting on this last-but-one stage of their journey included a wagon carrying lead for replumbing Ulucium’s leaky latrines, so the pace of the column was excruciatingly slow.
    Ruso rubbed at an itch on his elbow, muttered, “Pick your feet up, will you?” to the horse, and urged it into a trot. As he passed up the hill along the column he scanned the glum faces of the Twentieth. The prospect of drying out in Coria this evening seemed to offer little cheer. It occurred to him, not for the first time, that the man who invented a tent that could fend off rising as well as falling water would have a statue erected in his honor in every army camp in the empire.
    Finally spotting the soldier he wanted, Ruso allowed his mount to relax into a walk. “ ’Morning, Albanus.”
    A slight figure in a damp tunic looked up from the ranks. “Good morning, sir.”
    The clerk did not look quite as weary today. Ruso suspected that Albanus had suffered on this march. No matter how keen a man might be, and how regularly he attended physical training, a life of writing letters and organizing medical records was poor preparation for carrying a full pack across the hills in all weather for days on end. Rubbing his elbow again, Ruso said, “Just as well nobody called me out last night, eh?”
    “Very lucky, sir.”
    He wondered what Albanus would think if he knew that he had been paid with Tilla’s stolen money for being willing to get up and fetch Ruso—who should have been in one of the tents—if a doctor were needed. “I don’t suppose you got much sleep anyway,” he ventured.
    Albanus smiled. “Oh, I was fine, sir. My mother says I’ve always been the same. Once I’m off, nothing ever wakes—” He stopped.
    Ruso hid his amusement. “I see.”
    “I would have got up, sir, of course—”
    “I’m sure you would,” said Ruso, truthfully. There was no fun in teasing Albanus. It was like poking a kitten with a stick. He slapped at his elbow. The itch shrank away for a few seconds, then crept back.
    The road was still running along high ground, offering views to either side that would have been dramatic had there been anything new to look at. But even native house fires were no longer a novelty. There was another one now. A fresh plume of thick black smoke rushing skyward from a settlement in the middle distance. It was hardly surprising that people who insisted on lighting fires in the middle of thatched huts would have mishaps, but as they drew closer he could make out a squad of men clad in armor marching away down the valley, ignoring the frantic figures who were trying to beat out the flames.
    It occurred to him that perhaps some of the other fires had not been accidents either. Everyone said the natives were more difficult to manage in the north.
    Ruso yawned. He had not slept well. Tilla had finally consented to join him in the bed, but his efforts to warm her up had led to an unexpected cry of “Cernunnos!” at a crucial moment, and