The Mark of the Horse Lord Read Online Free PDF Page B

arched like a stallion’s against the sinking fire; and a coldly disgusted voice from under it said, ‘One of them! And they have half-gralloched Gerontius.’
    All sounds of the chase were pounding away into the distance. Phaedrus twisted in his captors’ hands and began to fight. Four years of the Gladiators’ School where private quarrels were settled without weapons and far from the eye of authority, had taught him other ways of battle than those of the sword and he used them all, every clean and dirty trick of them. But the part-reopened wound hampered him, and when he tried to knee one of his captors in the groin it again played him false.
    ‘Ah! You would, would you, you stinking pole-cat!’ someone snarled, and he was wrenched sideways, and something that felt like a thunderbolt took him under the left ear. Jagged flame shot from the point of impact through the top of his head, and he plunged down into a buzzing blackness between spinning sun-wheels of coloured light.

3
M IDIR OF THE D ALRIADS
    PHAEDRUS SAT ON a pile of filthy bedstraw in the corner of the cell, scratching at the blood-stained rag that was tied round his knee, and watching the last daylight fade out beyond the high, narrow window-hole.
    It had been noon when they hauled him out of the main prison hall and flung him in here. At the time he had been too sick to care, almost too sick to notice. There was something odd about that sickness; it had leaped upon him as soon as the morning bannock and water was down his throat, so suddenly and horribly that he had wondered if he were poisoned – until he stopped being able to wonder at all. His head still ached, but dully, a leaden soreness instead of the black pounding of a few hours ago; and his belly crawled clammily within him; but he no longer sweated and shivered. And he had begun to wonder with a growing urgency why he had been shifted into this small cell shut away from the rest of the prisoners. Because of that sudden sickness? Had they feared that it might be something that would breed and spread and break loose of the prison into Corstopitum. Or had the wounded Legionary died? He had not been dead when Phaedrus was thrust into the city gaol six days ago, that much they had told him, but he could have died since. Was this solitary cell perhaps the place where prisoners on a death charge were held for trial? It was one thing to make a good end with one’s sword in hand and the packed theatre benches baying, quite another to die like this . . . Not a pleasant thought, and it brought with it an unpleasant sense of the damp stone walls closing in.
    He pushed the walls back with care, and steadied his breath. The fact that he had not struck the blow would stand him in no kind of stead; he realized that. In the eyes of Roman justice, they had all struck, had all, equally, drawn the knife. And the others had all got clear. Well, he would do for a scapegoat – ex-gladiator, paid off with the wooden foil, gets drunk to celebrate and knifes one of the Watch in a street brawl; it made a nice neat story for the records, all the ends properly tied in; no need to look any further.
    There was a heavy step outside, and the gaoler appeared beyond the iron grid of the cage-like door, stooped to thrust the evening food bowl under the lowest bar, and tramped on without a word; a few moments later Phaedrus heard the sudden uproar from the main hall that always greeted the food. He looked at the bowl which the man had left on the floor, but the look of the black rye-bread and watery bean-stew made his stomach heave, and he left it where it was and went on sitting. It was dusk in the cell now, though there was still light in the sky outside the small, high window; and beyond the cage-work door there began to be a faint tawny glow, an echo of the torch that burned all night at the head of the steps.
    Presently the gaoler returned, but instead of merely reaching in for the bowl and passing on, halted and produced