The Mark of the Horse Lord by Rosemary Sutcliff

his back against an alder trunk, tipped his sheepskin hat over his eyes and became instantly and peacefully one with the landscape. But Phaedrus, making sure that the halters were secure so that the ponies could roll without danger of getting entangled, before going back to the corral, kept one eye on the men upstream.
    He had seen bands of the Frontier Scouts once or twice since coming north of Hadrian’s great wall, but they were a strange breed to him, not like the Legionaries, or the Auxiliaries of the Wall garrisons who came down to Corstopitum on leave. Of course he had heard stories . . . They were lean, rangy men who he knew could cover the hills on foot almost as quickly as on horseback if need be; many of them British born. A wild lot, the stories said, but said it in a tone of unwilling respect, and watching them as they stood by, relaxed but watchful while the ponies drank, one leaning against a hazel trunk and whistling through his teeth, one frowning over some adjustment to his bow – a light horn bow such as the Cretan Auxiliaries used, good for work on horseback; two more arguing softly and fiercely, an argument that looked as though it had gone on all day and might well go on all night, but each with an eye on his mount to make sure that he drank what he needed and no more, Phaedrus could believe something of their reputation and understand something of the respect. No Legion would have been seen dead in their company, breeched like barbarians, wolfskin cloaked, some with the wolf’s head drawn forward over their own in place of cap or helmet. Something about them seemed familiar, waking an odd pang of longing in Phaedrus that surprised and puzzled him, until he realized that it was the oneness of the pack, the strong bond that he had known in the Gladiators’ School.
    But the little, red-roan pack-mare was water-greedy, and in seeing that she did not guzzle half the pond and give herself colic, he lost track of the Frontier Scouts until a twig cracked, and he looked round to see that the Captain of the band had come strolling down the stream side with an eye cocked on the ponies.
    He nodded towards the mare. ‘She looks as though she had a bit of breeding to her.’
    ‘She’s not—’ Phaedrus began, instantly on the defensive.
    And the other laughed. He was a thin, very dark man, maybe in his late twenties, with a hooked nose too big for his narrow face, and a pleasant pair of eyes set deep and level on either side of it. ‘Ah no, I’m not accusing her of Arab blood! I was thinking merely that she seemed a bit too good for pack duty. She might make a hunting-pony. I wonder if Sinnoch would sell her.’
    Phaedrus, beginning to coax the mare back from the water (‘Enough, greedy one! Back, now! Back, I say!’), looked round at the soldier. ‘You know my master?’
    ‘I have been in these parts three years now – seen him through three times into Valentia with his re-mounts, and three times back into the hills again with his wine and amber. Everyone on this sector of the Wall knows Sinnoch, and relies on him for news of the outer world. But as to the mare—’
    ‘You had better ask him.’
    ‘Maybe I will.’ The man had put up a hand that was thin and dark like himself, and began fondling the mare’s wet muzzle as she turned unwillingly from the water, coaxing her to him. ‘There’s my girl. See, we are friends already, you and I.’ But his gaze was still on Phaedrus’s face, considering; and suddenly he said, ‘You’re a new man of Sinnoch’s, aren’t you?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘And like the mare, you have not the look of the pack-train.’
    ‘I have been other things – more than one – in my time.’
    ‘Among them, perhaps, a gladiator?’
    Phaedrus’s head jerked up. ‘I gained my wooden foil something over two months ago.’
    ‘So-o. This seems an unlikely way of life for a gladiator to turn to.’
    ‘It’s meat and drink. My kind still needs to eat, even when the arena