Dawn Wind by Rosemary Sutcliff Page A

war-dog who smells the enemy; something else—another kind of uneasiness that he did not understand … At last, bidding Regina to stay where she was, he crept back towards the stoke-hole, Dog belly-slithering beside him. It was not easy to find the opening now, for dusk had deepened into night, and there was no gleam of paleness filtering through the debris until he was close upon it. But he found it again in a little, and crouched there, his hand on Dog’s collar, listening.
    Far off, through the rain, he heard the intermittent lowing of a cow from the Forum, and that was all. The raiders must have given up the chase and returned to their fire and the cattle and whatever shelter there was to be found among the ruined Forum shops. Probably they would be gone at first light, for even though they had killed all the folk on the one farm it would not pay to linger on the way with raided cattle, and meanwhile, to hunt a girl through the streets was a thing that belonged to the hot blood of the moment; now that they had abandoned the hunt they would not return to it again. He drew a long breath of relief, but settled down to keep watch for a while, all the same.
    It was some while later that he heard Regina calling him: ‘Owain!—Owain!’ in a whisper that seemed straining to burst free of her throat into the most dreadful scream.



7
The Olivewood Fire
    ‘W HAT is it? I’m coming,’ he whispered back. ‘I’m coming, Regina,’ and ducking round, he began to feel his way back with frantic haste, through the blackness towards where he had left her.
    And all the while she kept up that little frozen call: ‘Owain! Owain!’ as though in that way she were clinging to him by a kind of life-line to save herself from some horror.
    ‘It is all right! Hold on, whatever it is. I’m coming— I’m almost there.’ He blundered into one of the hypocaust pillars, hurting his shoulder, scrabbled his way past it, and reaching out into the blackness that pressed against his eyeballs, found Regina’s skinny arm with the lank masses of her hair tumbling over it. ‘I’m here. Nobody’s hurting you. What is it?’
    ‘Make a light,’ she whispered. ‘A light—a light—!’ It was almost a wail.
    Owain hesitated, but the flash of the strike-a-light could scarcely betray them down here, even if there was someone quite close by, and the horror in Regina’s voice could not be denied. He felt for the little leather bag at his belt, and fumbled out the flint and iron pyrites, a dry twig and the whisp of scorched grass he used for tinder. He got his first sparks quickly, and in the instant’s tiny glow before they went out, saw Regina crouched against the wall staring straight before her with wide terrified eyes, and almost touching her knee, the bones of a human foot—just the bones, with nothing over them. Then the sparks went out.
    Regina made a dry sound in her throat. And Owain, with a sudden feeling of suffocation, heard his own voice, shaking. ‘Don’t be afraid, he can’t hurt you. I’m getting the light again.’ His fingers were working frantically at the strike-a-light, made clumsy by his desperate urgency; spark followed useless spark, but he got the tinder to catch at last, and dipped the dry twig into it. A little clear tongue of flame sprang up and in the uncertain gleam of light he saw the skeleton of a man huddled, half lying, into the angle of the wall. It was still partly covered by the rags of a fine woollen tunic, and clutched against it by the delicate fan of bones that was one hand, was a leather bag. It was a little open, and something had spilled out from it. Something that gleamed faintly on the floor; and holding the light lower, Owain saw a scatter of coins, thick-furred with dust, but still showing at their edges a thin rind of gold.
    Ulpius Pudentius, the master of the house.
    The twig was burning down to his fingers.
    ‘I want to go away,’ Regina was whispering. ‘I put out my hand in the dark