Total War Rome: Destroy Carthage (20 page)

Polybius dismounted and came alongside. ‘What will you do?' he said.

‘If there is someone following us, he may have been doing so for some time and will know that Rufius answers to me, that he comes back as soon as I whistle. If he has taken Rufius he may be trying to induce me to go back along the trail to look for him. If he takes me down, then you two are easier picking. I'm going to whistle, but I'm not going back along the trail.'

Polybius offered him the boar spear. ‘You'll need a weapon.'

Fabius opened his cloak, revealing the handle of the Celtic dagger his father had given him. ‘I have all that I need. But if he's stalking us he may well have a bow, and we're within arrow range of the treeline. You need to get to those rocks.
Now.
'

He put his fingers to his mouth and blew a long, piercing whistle, repeating it three times. He waited in silence for a few minutes, but Rufius still did not appear. Then he slapped the hindquarters of his horse and watched Scipio and Polybius lead the three animals up into the mist. He took off his cloak, dropped it and then crouched down and ran into the treeline to the left of the trail, ducking forward as he pushed his way through the thicket of spruce and fir that skirted the forest. The dense foliage gave way to more widely spaced pine trees, and he made his way more easily towards a marshy plateau they had passed on the way up, a residue of the mountain torrent where it had overflowed during the spring melt. He worked his way round the edge of the marsh, taking care to keep himself concealed from the trail some five hundred feet to his right.

Midway along the edge of the marsh a small stream cut through and drained the boggy water down the slope, bubbling through the undergrowth below him. It was only about three feet wide, but he knew that the embankments on either side would be less solid than they seemed, saturated with water from the marsh. He spotted a rock in the centre of the stream, leapt over and stood on it, feeling it sink slightly with his weight, and then flung himself towards the far bank, hoping that the sound of the stream would drown out the noise. As he hit the bank it gave way in a cascade of mud and rock, and he scrabbled frantically at the tree roots that had become exposed, grabbing one and hauling himself up onto the bank. He silently cursed the noise. Anyone on the trail would have heard it. He would have to take his chances with an enemy who might now be expecting him to come from this direction, and pick him off with ease if he had a bow.

But suddenly there was another noise, an immense crashing through the undergrowth, a grunting and panting like he had never heard before. A gigantic beast bounded past him, snorting and slavering, its tusks thrust forward and its eyes red like fire. It was gone before he could properly register it, a blur of black, hurtling across the marsh in a spray of mud and crashing into the undergrowth on the opposite side of the trail, intent on some unknown quest. Fabius lay back, trying to control his breathing, and shut his eyes for a moment.
The Macedonian royal boar.
Scipio would be none too pleased that he had seen one and they had not been able to give chase. But he thanked the gods that they had never had the chance. Their spears would have splintered off its sides like twigs, and they would have been gored like prisoners in the circus. He opened his eyes and held his breath, listening hard. The sound of the boar had been swallowed up by the forest. He had been hoping to hear barking. If Rufius had been alive, then the boar would have set him off and his bark would have been audible for miles. But there was nothing, just the discordant cackle and bubbling of the stream and an eerie whistling in the treetops from the wind that was picking up across the mountain slopes.

His heart sank. Rufius had been his link out here to Eudoxia, and he could hardly bear to think of him being gone. He felt an anger stir up inside him, a bloodlust he had not felt since he had stood in the line at Pydna and watched the Macedonians spear his wounded comrades to death.
Whoever had done this would pay.

He thought hard. The sound of the boar would have covered up the noise of his fall. He might still have a chance. He knelt up, listening for anything unusual, and then resumed his trek around the edge of the marsh, keeping below the level of the bank. The mud that now caked his body would camouflage him, help him meld with the underbrush. He would come out on the trail near the last place where he had seen Rufius trotting beside him as he had ridden up towards the treeline. He reached the dried-up stream bed, looked carefully in both directions, and then clambered over the trunks that criss-crossed the bed where they had been felled by the foresters who had cut timbers for Philip of Macedon's tomb a hundred and fifty years before. The trail followed the line of the stream on the other side, and after making his way over the last trunk, he crouched down beside the marks made by their horses' hooves less than an hour before. The snow had begun to fall more thickly, swirling down the cut from the mountain slope, reducing the visibility to below a hundred feet. If his gamble had worked, their assailant would be somewhere ahead of him looking upslope, his back to Fabius, expecting him to come down the trail from the treeline.

He took the dagger from his belt, its blade gleaming dully but the edge razor-sharp where he had honed it by the fireside the night before. He held it in his left hand, the blade pointing backwards, and walked slowly forward with the marsh on his right, half-expecting at each step to hear the whistle of an arrow. After about twenty feet he saw a large black crow hopping determinedly over the rocky ground of the trail, and then another. They were bustling around something, pecking at it, pulling away flesh. Fabius saw a splash of blood on the rocks, then the familiar black and white fur, the feathered flights of an arrow sticking out. He shut his eyes, trying to control himself. He could not afford to stop now, or to disturb the crows. He crept past, gripping the dagger as hard as he could, his eyes focused ahead, hardly breathing.

And then the snow parted and he saw it. About twenty feet ahead a man was lying on his front behind a rock, facing up the slope, a bow of Scythian shape held in front of him with an arrow strung, ready to pull back. He was wearing a sheepskin coat, but the hood was down and his long black hair lay in braids on his back. Fabius recognized him from the foresters' camp three days before, a burly mountain man who claimed to be from Pamphylia in Asia Minor, whom Fabius had taken to be a simpleton. The man had offered to guide them towards the best boar-hunting grounds but one of the foresters had taken Fabius aside and warned him to stay well clear; the man had only arrived a few days before and had no knowledge of the forest, but had known plenty about Scipio and had been asking about his hunting success even before he and Fabius had arrived in the camp. Fabius had put it from his mind, but now he remembered how discomfited the foresters had been, as if they were afraid of him. The man had even played with Rufius and thrown him a stick, feeding him choice morsels of meat until Fabius had stopped him. Now he knew how the man had coaxed Rufius to within killing range. He had been planning this for days. Fabius felt his body surge with rage, a barely controllable desire to kill.

He crept closer. A crow behind him squawked, and the man shifted. Fabius froze, holding his breath. Then the man pulled up his hood and resumed his position. Fabius leaned forward, head down, just as Rufius would have done, his whole being focused on his prey. Then he sprinted forward, leaping with his dagger poised just as the man realized something was wrong, landing heavily on the man's back and smashing his face into the rock. The man howled in pain, blood gushing from his mouth. Fabius ripped back the hood and grabbed his braids, pulling his head back as far as it would go and holding the dagger against the man's throat. He brought his face near the man's ear, close enough to smell the sweat and the oil in his hair. ‘We meet again, Pamphylian,' he snarled in Greek, yanking the man's hair back and seeing the shock in his eyes. ‘If you want this to be quick, you will tell me who sent you.'

The man coughed and spat out teeth, his nose streaming blood, then curled his lips and wrenched his head against Fabius' hold, drawing blood as the dagger sliced into the skin of his neck. He struggled again and then went still as Fabius pulled his head back close to the breaking point. ‘Go to Hades,' he muttered, his mouth clenched in pain.

Fabius whipped the dagger out from beneath the man's neck and slammed his face into the mud below the rock. He brought the dagger down into the man's outstretched hand, driving it hard and twisting it round so that the bones and sinews cracked and snapped. He felt the man convulse with pain and heave upwards as he tried to breathe in the mud. He pulled out the dagger and thrust it back under the man's neck, pulling his face out of the mud and holding it back again. The man coughed and retched, spewing out blood and mud and saliva, his eyes caked over and his nose broken and contorted.

Fabius came close to his ear again. ‘Tell me what I want to hear, and I may decide to spare you long enough for Scipio to question you. Then he can decide your fate. He may be generous.'

The man spat, and said something. Scipio leaned down, listening. ‘Say it again,' he snarled. The man did so, and Scipio heard the name.
So that was it.
He kept the knife at the man's neck, and then looked at the mangled hand, noticing the distinctive red graze on the inside of the man's wrist, the mark of an archer using a bow without a leather wrist guard. He remembered how he had got that mark: the tufts of black and white fur on the trail behind, the crows. He let go of the man's head, lifted him up under his midriff until he was half-kneeling and brought the point of the dagger to just below his sternum. The man stiffened, terrified. ‘What are you doing?' he mumbled, his face dripping blood. ‘You said that you would spare me.'

‘I only said maybe. And then I remembered my dog.'

In one swift move he thrust the dagger in up to the hilt, ripping through the man's heart and lungs, twisting for maximum effect. He pulled it out and then grasped his head and twisted it sideways, breaking his neck. He saw the man's eyes glaze over, and his last breath crystallize in the cold air. He got up, wiped the dagger on a grassy knoll and sheathed it, and then took out his horn and blew three short blasts. The snow was coming down harder now, already lying like a ghostly sheen on the man's body and beginning to obscure the hoofprints on the trail ahead. He started to run towards the edge of the forest where he had last seen Scipio and Polybius. They would need to get down off the mountainside before the trails became impassable. They had little time to lose.

*   *   *

Fifteen minutes later, Fabius reached Scipio and Polybius, who had left the rocks when they had heard his horn and brought the horses back to the edge of the forest. He had found a trickle of water from a spring on the way up to wash the mud off his face and hands, but he realized that he had been sweating profusely, and the halt at the spring and then the bitter wind from the mountain had chilled him, making him shiver. He picked up his cloak and wrapped it round himself, and then took the skin proffered by Polybius, gulping the wine down gratefully. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, passed back the skin and then took the reins of his horse. ‘It was the Pamphylian from the foresters' camp,' he said to Scipio, and then he turned to Polybius. ‘He had offered to guide us, but we were wary of him. He'd arrived only a few days before, asking questions about Scipio.'

Polybius grunted. ‘Did you give him a chance to say who sent him?

‘He killed my dog. But he had his chance. It was Andriscus.'

Polybius looked at Scipio grimly. ‘Andriscus may have been the one who gave this man his instructions, but Metellus would have been behind it.'

Scipio looked pensively up the mountain slope, narrowing his eyes against the snow and the wind. ‘It seems that even here in the abode of the gods I cannot escape the vindictiveness of Rome.'

‘The only way to better Metellus will be to rise through the
cursus honorum
as he has done, to become a senator and qualify as a legate. You will be safer from him in Rome, where you will show the strength of your personality and the power of your
gens,
and make it less easy for him to undermine you. In places like this, on the edge of the unknown, you are no longer safe. Your death out hunting would arouse no suspicions, only regret among those of your
gens
and supporters who have watched you seemingly throw away your destiny and escape as far as you could towards the very edge of the world.'

Scipio looked down at the imprint of the tracks they had seen earlier, now only shapes in the snow. ‘Without Rufius, we have no hope of chasing a royal boar. Perhaps we have strayed too far into the hunting preserve of the gods, and that is one beast beyond the hope of men to see.'

Fabius began to speak, but then stopped, feigning a cough. Scipio's mind was still not made up, and Fabius did not want to be the one to persuade him to stay here any longer. He would tell him about his encounter with the boar at an opportune time later, perhaps when Scipio was at last wearing a legate's helmet and had turned his mind from hunting to war.

‘A wise decision, Scipio.' Polybius mounted his horse and drew it round so that it faced down the slope, and he peered over the treetops towards the west. ‘Do we have to return by the same route, or is there a way out that avoids going past the foresters' camp? Where there's one in the pay of Andriscus, there may be others. Best for them to believe that we have disappeared and the task is done, or else we will be hunted throughout Macedonia until we escape.'

Scipio nodded. ‘About five
stades
back down the trail a narrow track leads off to the west, skirting the edge of the mountains until it reaches the kingdom of Epirus. It is arduous going, but we have our bedding rolls and we can hunt for food. Once we reach the shore of the Adriatic, we can find a ship to take us to Brundisium and safety.'