After Rome Read Online Free PDF Page A

show in marshland,” Dinas remarked aloud.
    The stallion swiveled an ear to listen. Dinas often talked to his horse. He believed that people did not know how to listen, but a clever animal would detect the subtlest changes of tone and pitch and respond accordingly. The dark horse was clever. Interpreting his master’s voice to indicate the possibility of forward motion in a direction he did not like, he took half a step back instead.
    Dinas reached forward to scratch the base of the horse’s ears, where the sweat gathered. “I hear you, my friend. You don’t want to wade into that, eh? Don’t trust the footing? Neither do I, but remember this place. This could be our escape route if we’re pursued by fools who want to put my head above the gates. I’ve heard some strange tales about Deva.”
    The horse waited.
    Dinas gathered up the reins. “I think we’ve scouted the territory long enough. Let’s have a look at the town. Who knows what we might find, eh? Surely the bloody-boweled Romans didn’t take everything with them when they left.”
    The dark horse felt the eagerness in his rider’s body; the sense of expectation. Waited for the magic words that would release him to action. “Forward. Now.”
    He sprang forward.
    For several days Dinas had been circling the City of the Legion at a distance. He had stopped to discuss the weather with farmers in the fields. Paid fulsome compliments to aging women drawing water from a well. Feigned astonishment at tales told by other travelers who loved to hear themselves talk. It was his habit to listen to everyone he met while divulging nothing about himself. A lean, sinewy man in shabby clothing, Dinas might have been any of the dispossessed who now wandered the countryside. Certainly not a person worth robbing. He would have drawn little attention except for the magnificent stallion he rode.
    When Dinas was a boy their tutor had told them about the great black warhorse that carried Alexander of Macedon to victory. The relationship between the two was legend. “The horse was called Bucephalus,” Lucius Plautius had told his two eager students. “After Bucephalus died Alexander could never hear his name without weeping.”
    Dinas had never named his own dark horse. He would have fought to the death to protect him, but if the stallion died he did not want a name to grieve over. He had no fear the animal would be stolen. If a stranger came too close, the horse pinned his ears flat against his head and gnashed his teeth until foam flecked his jaws. His hooves pawed chunks out of the earth. With eyes rolling and nostrils flaring, he looked ready to fling himself on the nearest victim. The most ardent admirer soon lost interest. “I’d have that brute killed if I were you,” Dinas was sometime advised.
    At night he pillowed his head on the warm silky neck of the dark horse.
    Having made up his mind to enter Deva, Dinas followed the most direct route. The road to the northern gate was as straight as a spear shaft and broad enough for five men to march abreast. The closely fitted paving stones were set on a low causeway to facilitate drainage, and bordered with stone curbs. Dinas rode to one side, keeping his horse off the hard surfaces. Bare earth was easier on unshod hooves. Occasionally Dinas found part of an iron Roman horseshoe lying half hidden in the mud, and spat on it.
    When Deva came into view Dinas halted the horse and sat very still, exploring the atmosphere with senses he could not name. They lay just beneath the surface of his skin. At the backs of his eyes. In the hair on his forearms.
    They detected old dangers. And new possibilities? Perhaps. He could not be certain without a closer inspection.
    Deva Victrix had been built as a statement of naked power. As such it was not a city in the defined sense; not a municipal center entrusted with civilian governance, but a large military garrison