The Border Wolves by Damion Hunter

Author:Damion Hunter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canelo Digital Publishing Ltd
Published: 2021-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

They headed west again along the tracks that bordered the Danuvius, unpacking their goods at each small river settlement, while Correus inquired with casual disinterest about any caravans passing through. The roads were passable, not up to Roman standards, but often graded and smoothed for the Dacian patrols that kept a presence on the north side of the river. Where pale limestone bluffs occasionally rose from the southern bank, on the north the land was marshy and the towns set well back from the river and its floodplain. The path off the main road into these was more often a cow track than a road and the wagon lost a wheel in the ruts at predictable intervals. Tsiru and Dotos kept their ears open in the taverns and won a fair amount of silver teaching the other patrons a complicated board and dice game, but no useful information was forthcoming.

They were mending the wagon wheel yet again, now a few miles from the main road down the rutted track to Sucidava and pulled over on the muddy shoulder, when a troop of Dacian horse clattered by. They halted abruptly just beyond and the captain turned back.

“Bad luck,” he commented. “Where’s your permit?”

“No one’s told me a broken wagon wheel requires one,” Correus said, looking up from the mud.

“Travel permit and mind your tongue.” He stared at Correus under the rim of a peaked helmet and Correus noted that someone had broken his nose at some point.

“For the pass?” Correus ventured.

“No, for the Olympics in Greece. Permit!”

Correus stood up. “We didn’t know we needed one, Captain.” He touched his cap in apparent repentance. “We come from Thrace, and we’d a mind to see Sarmizegetusa. Everyone says it’s a wonder.”

“It’s a long way upriver to the Iron Gates if you don’t fall off the cliff passing the gorges.”

Correus looked perplexed. “We had heard there was another pass, near here.”

“No.”

“No? Not even with a permit?”

“Not if you didn’t know you needed one. Fix that wheel and go back the way you came.” He put his heel to his horse’s flank and kicked him into a gallop, setting up a spit of wet ground.

“Well, that was useful,” Tsiru said, wiping mud off his face. “He came out of Sucidava. How far do you suppose his range is, before he turns around?”

“Long enough for us to get there and get lost if we hurry,” Correus said.

Dotos had been at work while they talked and he sat up now, tools in hand. “That’ll hold. It had better. That spoke’s our last spare.”

Sucidava was one of the fortified border villages built by Decebalus’s allies to defend the river from the Dacian side. It was largely unseen from the gray stone ramparts of the Roman fort across the river at Oescus, but large enough to disappear in if no one was looking for you. They left the wagon in a clump of willows that screened it from the track and took the ponies out of their traces.

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