Wounds of Honour: Empire I by Anthony Riches Read Free Book Online Page B

approaching dawn. Curiously unafraid, although his heart was pounding at his ribs with the force of a blacksmith’s hammer, he gently spurred his horse with his boot-heels. Riding steadily towards the horsemen he allowed his body to slump in the saddle, reassuring them that he was already in their grip. Behind him, hoofs clattered on the road’s surface, a fast trot designed to close the distance and put the third man within striking distance. Marcus kicked the horse hard, shouting encouragement into its ear as it surged forward into a gallop. He lifted the sword and shield from their resting places on the beast’s flanks, and into the positions his father’s bodyguard had made him practise thousands of times.
    ‘He’s armed!’
    Bracing himself against the saddle’s projecting horns, and clamping his feet to the horse’s flanks, he pulled the beast towards the man on the right, flinching as something flicked past his head with a vicious whirr. The arrow’s passage was close enough for him to feel the wind of its passing. The men to his front spurred their own horses forward, but his burst of speed caught them by surprise, closing the gap before they could manoeuvre to meet him as they might have wished. Punching out with the shield at the man to his left, he felt the jar of a heavy sword blow-hammer his left arm into numbness. His own weapon, the point thrust forward towards the centre of the other horseman’s indistinct mass as they came together, rang with contact on metal. The sword’s hilt moved in his hand as the blade struck something softer. The pain of the wound was enough to make the horseman wheel his mount away with a shout of anger, leaving a gap through which Marcus’s steed burst with its gathered momentum, too swift for the other man to get in a second attack.
    He rode for his life now, crouching low to avoid any more arrows, looking back for any sign of his pursuers in the greyness behind him. A frantic clatter of hoofs behind convinced him to keep the horse at the gallop, angry shouts lending urgency to his efforts. The shield fell from his numb left hand, its layered wood and leather deeply scarred by the sword-blow. Without its protection the blade would almost certainly have taken his arm off.
    The horse was starting to pant heavily with the exertion when a figure appeared out of the dawn’s murk at the roadside. In a second Marcus pivoted his mount to put the new threat on his right-hand side, within his sword’s striking arc. He pulled the blade back for the sweeping cut he’d been taught up on the wooden practice horse in the villa’s sunny courtyard almost a decade before, high above the rooftops and fume of the city.
    ‘ Marcus! ’
    He allowed the weapon to drop from its slashing path, pulling the panting horse up with a hard pull at the reins.
    ‘Rufius?!’
    He jumped down from the saddle, following the older man’s frantic beckoning to bring the horse into the deeper shadow of a small copse that crept close to the road’s edge. The animal, unimpressed by the events of the previous minutes, baulked at moving into the trees’ threatening gloom. Marcus dug his feet in and pulled, and for a second it looked as if they might succeed in finding cover, but the horse’s resistance had removed the slight time gap between him and his pursuers. The two horsemen who had attempted to block his path before rode out of the darkness, as the two men hesitated between fight and flight into the trees. Marcus grabbed for his saddlebag, releasing the horse’s bridle as his hand gripped the oiled cloth, allowing it to bolt into the darkness. Tossing the bag aside, he dropped into a wide-legged fighting stance with the cavalry sword extended, ready to fight. Rufius stepped to his side, unsheathing his shorter infantry sword and lifting a round gladiator’s shield from the ground where he had let it fall. The horsemen slowed their advance and crowded in closer, leaning out of their saddles with