Read Online Of Merchants & Heros by Paul Waters - Free Book Online Page A

winter sun and clear skies, with a fresh breeze blowing in from the sea. Both agents – Florus and Virilis – were with me, riding beside me along a grassy track, chattering to one another over my head. We had already called on half a dozen farms, and had two more to visit before turning back.
    All of a sudden, from beyond a low ridge, there came the sound of men shouting. Florus, who just then was talking, broke off and stared. I jumped off my horse and scrambled up the ridge, keeping low.
    From the top, where the track joined the main route to Tarentum, I saw a troop of soldiers in Roman uniform. They were fighting off a band of wild, dishevelled bandits who had set upon them.
    The Romans were cavalrymen, dressed in short mail tunics and scarlet riding cloaks. They had dismounted, and were formed into a tight defensive circle. They were outnumbered by at least three to one; but they held their formation, while their attackers came at them like a pack of dogs.
    As I watched, a great rage surged up within me. For a moment, I could hardly breathe. And then I understood: I had seen such men before, and they had torn the heart out of my life. These were not Dikaiarchos’s men – but they were the same creatures, and I needed no more prompting than that. I had no armour, but we were all riding with short swords. I do not know what I intended; all I knew was that I would not stand by and do nothing while other men died.
    I looked back, to call one of the agents to bring my sword from my saddle. My horse was where I had left him, chewing at the grass.
    But the agents were no more than specks in the distance, flogging their mules for all they were worth. They had deserted me.
    I ran down and snatched my sword, then raced up over the summit of the ridge, yelling out a battle-cry at the top of my voice.
    The bandits, remnants of Hannibal’s army by the look of them, were facing away from me. At the sound of my voice they started, and jumped round in surprise.
    The first man I killed outright, with a blow to the chest. The next, who came running, I wounded, making him fall, and one of the Roman cavalrymen finished him off. I had never been in battle before. I was an untrained youth against bitter defeated veterans.
    They had their soldier’s training, and the sharp taste of defeat in their mouths. But I had my anger. It coursed through my veins like fire.
    Time slowed. I moved and ducked as swiftly as a darting swallow, yet my mind was cool and clear. There are things a man knows in his bones, and in his soul, before ever he has time to reflect on how or why. In such a way I knew the hand of Mars the Avenger was guiding mine. Not for nothing do the poets call battle a dance. That was how it felt, each movement and turn following on from what went before, a flowing sequence whose end was life or death.
    Yet soon the fighting was over. The man I killed must have been some sort of leader. When the others saw him dead they cried out to one another in their strange guttural tongue and fled. I paused. Near me an elderly man in Roman uniform had fallen. His horse was half on top of him, whinnying in pain. Two of the others dragged the creature off. I helped to sit the man up against a rock. His breath was laboured. Blood spilled out from under his corselet.
    Beside me one of the soldiers said, ‘Who are you, youth? Where are you from?’
    I gave some reply. I was coming to myself, feeling light-headed and somehow detached. Everyone was crowding round the old man.
    Between his breaths he hissed, ‘Stop fussing! Can’t you see the boy is about to collapse?’
    And then, just before I fell, I saw the welling blood, and the sword-gash in my thigh.
    They bound my wound, and took me back to Tarentum on a withy stretcher. The old man, who had grey cropped hair and a firm- boned, soldier’s face, was borne back next to me. I do not think I was properly conscious, but I remember him saying, ‘Those Carthaginians thought you’d brought the