The King's Cavalry by Paul Bannister Read Free Book Online

The man’s spine snapped and his head lolled. I dropped the body, noting dispassionately that he had blood running from his mouth where he had bitten deep into his tongue. His troopers were sitting their mounts, gaping and still. Then the spell broke. The first few kicked their horses forward at me, my two men were scrambling out of the trench and I was diving back towards it, to grab a weapon of some kind.
    All I could find was a wooden spade but it badly hurt two of the legionaries before I went down under the flat of a gladius’s blade. It came from the right and made a clunking noise on my skull. I never saw it coming through my blinded eye, but somebody wanted me alive for a slower death than my two troopers had received on the Roman spear points that bright morning.
    The movement and jolting brought me back to consciousness and I found myself staring one-eyed up at the stars, bound and laid out in the bed of a farm wag gon. Alongside me was the body of the centurion I’d killed. To judge by the stiffness and pain through most of my body, I felt he had the better of it, but all I could do was grit my teeth and wait for matters to improve.
    Some things did get better, others got much worse, and three days later, we arrived at their great castrum in Mainz where the sullen troopers had to explain their centurion’s death and where I expected to receive mine. One positive I could take from the situation, I thought as I was pushed into a stone-built cell, was that the Romans had no idea who I was. Another plus: I knew the town. I had been here before when I was recovering from wounds and I had friends among the XXII Primogenia legion that was stationed here, almost all of them Mithraists. If I could get word to them, I might have a hope.

 
    VII - Italia
     
    The legates Grabelius and Quirinus were anxious. They had been summoned back to Vallis by courier and returned with the heavy cavalry, the horses flecked with foam and stained with salt from a long hard ride. They found the citadel gates barred closed and the garrison on alert.
    King Stelamann rapidly painted the picture. “Arthur killed their officer, then was himself captured and taken away. You lost two men in the skirmish. The Romans were not strong enough to enter the fortress, but I did not have enough men here to sally out against them.” The Roman patrol had set fire to the tent lines but had done little else. “They were probably in a hurry to get their dead centurion back to base and to report on the signs of new soldiers here,” said the monarch. “I have called on the local people to hide their valuables, get in what crops they can and bring them selves and their flocks inside, for I expect the Romans will be back in force.” The king had also sent notice to his allies that the legionaries were active again, in case the tribesmen needed to ready for conflict.
    Grabelius asked for and was promised the services of two guides who could lead the British cavalry to the Roman base where they guessed the patrol had taken Arthur. “They will be at Mainz, not Colonia,” said the king. “It is the strategic centre, where the Main empties into the Rhine, and there is a bridge, a big one with 20 or more piers. The place is the key to the east and the keystone of Gaul’s defences against the Alemanni and the Chatti.”
    “We have to find Arthur,” said Quirinus. “We can’t expect to take on a legion with just a couple of hundred cavalrymen, but maybe we can find and free him.” The legates nodded agreement to each other.
    “Give the troops one day to rest and feed the horses and to ready for the next part of this mission,” said Grabelius. “We have to find our king before he is executed. May the gods be with him.”
    The two looked at each other, the thought unspoken. They shared Arthur’s fear that the true gods were angered by their declaration for Christianity. “We should make sacrifice to Jupiter,” said Quirinus.
    “And Mithras,” said