Heather, Oak, and Olive by Rosemary Sutcliff

Author:Rosemary Sutcliff
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Paul Dry Books

At the last instant the Captain gave a great shout, then with his cloak flung across nose and mouth, plunged straight into the wall of flame. Aracos galloped at his side, face driven down into the wolfskin. Hideous, blasting heat lapped him round, not a wall of flame but a whole world of flame. He choked into the wolfskin as pain tore at his eyes and throat and lungs—then they were through. There was a stink of singeing horsehide, sparks hung in the rough wolfskin and in the horse’s mane, a fringe of flame lengthened the tail of the scarlet serpent. Ahead, the blackened and smoking hillside rose to the spur where the Painted Men still laboured savagely about the great teetering boulder. But away to the right, something moved under cover of the smoke, and next instant a flurry of javelins and sling-stones took the Dacians on the flank. Men and horses went down. Still riding hard for the spur, Aracos was aware of the Captain swaying beside him, clutching at the shaft of a javelin that stuck out from under his collar-bone—choking to him a last order to take them on and clear the spur, before he pitched down among the horses’ hooves.

So he took them on, through a vicious squall of sling-stones. Where the ground grew too steep to ride they dropped from the horses and ran on, crouching with heads down behind their light bronze-rimmed bucklers. By the time they reached the spur, hearts and lungs bursting within them, he had no idea how many or how few were still behind him; he had no chance to look round. He did not even know how many of the horses, lightened of their riders’ weight, had come scrambling after them, bringing their own weapons, the stallions’ weapons of teeth and trampling hooves, into the fight. He only knew that the time came when there were no more Painted Men left alive on the spur, and that the terrible boulder, swaying as it seemed to every breath, was still there.

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