The Wolf's Gold Read Online Free PDF Page B

undergrowth towards the road, allowing a slow exhalation of breath to trickle from his lips as he readied himself for the shot. Bursting from the trees, the rider whipped his mount to a gallop, crouching low over the animal’s neck to present a smaller target, and for a moment Marcus wondered if his friend might hold back the shot for fear of hitting the horse. Qadir leaned forward a fraction, his eyes narrowing in concentration, then loosed the arrow and lowered the weapon, making no attempt to reach for another. Struck cleanly in the square of his back the barbarian scout arched convulsively, toppling over his horse’s hindquarters and smashing down hard onto the road’s cobbled surface.
    Walking forward with his shield raised against any further attempt at ambush, his nose wrinkling at the fetid smell from the bone arrowhead still poking through a long split in the wooden board, Marcus watched the trees to either side warily. Reaching the fallen rider he prodded the man’s arm with a toe, sliding it away from the long knife sheathed on the man’s belt.
    ‘No need. He’s as good as dead.’ Glancing up, he found Silus approaching with a look of disgust. ‘It’s a shame. I’d like to have shared a few quiet moments with him to discuss this . . .’
    The decurion reached out and broke the shaft of the arrow stuck through Marcus’s shield, pulling out the barbed head and sniffing at it. Pulling a face, he held the offending missile at arm’s length and called for an empty feed sack.
    ‘Poisoned?’
    The cavalryman nodded grimly at Marcus’s question, wrapping the arrowhead in several layers of sacking before snapping it from the shaft and knotting the little package closed.
    ‘Here, it’ll be a souvenir for you. Just don’t cut yourself with it.’ He kicked the dying man hard in the head, his face white with anger. ‘No, let the fucker lie here and die as slowly as he likes. And if you’ve got any problem with that, you’d better go back and see the state your horse is in.’
    Marcus started guiltily and hurried back to where the big grey lay rigid on the verge with its legs sticking stiffly out from its body, trembling violently and rolling its eyes in terror while Arminius and Qadir stood over it, turning to greet Marcus with shaking heads. A single arrow protruded from the horse’s right shoulder, its shaft painted the same deep red as the one in the dying archer’s open hand. A froth of foam was trailing from the animal’s open mouth, every shallow exhalation of breath accompanied by a soft groan as the arrow’s poison tore at the horse’s innards. Shaking his head in sorrow Marcus squatted beside the horse’s head, stroking the long face gently as he pulled a hunting knife from its place on his belt. The blade was almost supernaturally sharp, one of a dozen he had paid a swordsmith to forge and edge with metal from the Damascus steel sword he’d taken from the bandit Obduro in Tungrorum. To his brother officers’ great delight he had given them all one of the resulting blades, although whether he had managed to neutralise the evil he had sensed in the sword from his first touch of its hilt by doing so, or simply distributed it more widely, he was unable to tell. Tracing a hand down the horse’s throat he put the knife to the beast’s sweat-slickened neck and made a single fast cut, opening the veins hidden beneath the twitching flesh and staring down with a sad smile as a stream of hot blood poured out onto the ground.
    ‘Farewell, Bonehead. You were a good mount.’
    Waiting until the horse’s eyes closed he stood, wiping and sheathing the knife with a regretful sigh.
    ‘Properly done, brother. We’ll make a cavalryman of you yet.’ Silus turned away from the dead animal, shaking his head at the waiting troopers standing around him. ‘We won’t be eating horse tonight, not unless you lot want to risk meat with enough poison in it to knock this big sod over in less than a hundred