The Mark of the Horse Lord by Rosemary Sutcliff Page B

– no Roman could have heard a word of it and so it must have been Tacitus’s speech really – you see that? He made Calgacus say of the Romans, “They make a desolation, and call it peace.” So even Roman Tacitus could have his doubts.’ He was surprised and infuriated, even while he was speaking, to find how much of his mother’s race those dead villages had roused in him. Fool, to be crossing swords with this dark man, just when it was most needful that he should not get into trouble, or draw attention to himself in any way! But still, he did not stop until the thing was said.
    Mercifully it seemed that the Roman officer was unusually slow to take offence. There was no gathering frown of affronted dignity on his face, only the look of a man arguing with another who has different beliefs from his own, and who respects those beliefs even while he will not yield to them one hair’s breadth.
    ‘I think you must have been almost as unlikely a gladiator as you are a pack-driver. I’m sorry I can’t persuade you; I believe you would have made a good Frontier Wolf.’
    There was the jink of a hanging bridle-bit as one of the cavalry ponies tossed up his head, and from the fort, a trumpet call sounded through the evening air; and Phaedrus realized that the shadows were beginning to thicken among the alder roots. ‘Aye, well, I’ll have a word with Sinnoch about the mare,’ the Captain said, and turned on his heel to stroll back upstream to his own men.
    Phaedrus stirredVron out of his sleep with a friendly foot. ‘Come on, old one, time to be getting them penned for the night.’
    Late that evening, in the lamplit store-shed behind the wine-shop, when the fat woman had gone waddling off to attend to her customers and Vron had betaken himself to a cock-fight, Sinnoch said, ‘And what were you and the Captain, Titus Hilarion, talking of so earnestly, down at the horse-pool?’
    ‘
That
will be Vron,’ Phaedrus said. ‘I doubted he could have gone to sleep so suddenly.’
    ‘Vron always sleeps like a hound – one ear cocked and one eye open.’
    ‘
Sa
– I have noticed. Well then, he can tell you what we talked of.’
    A dry smile twitched at the corner of Sinnoch’s mouth. ‘Alas, you spoke in the Latin tongue. Vron has only three words of Latin, and one of them is “drink”. . .What did the Captain want?’
    ‘He was interested in buying the roan mare.’
    Sinnoch nodded. ‘I thought he might. He was needing a new hunting-pony when I came by on the road south, so I kept my eye open in the Corstopitum horse-markets.’
    ‘You thought – then why all this pretence of her being a pack-pony?’
    ‘Why bring her all this way like a fine lady eating her head off, when she can earn her keep on the trail? Besides, it was in my mind that he would be well pleased with himself to discover breeding under a pack-saddle, and a man pleased with himself pays the better.’
    ‘You wily old fox,’ Phaedrus said in admiration.
    Sinnoch made a small deprecatory gesture, as of one modestly turning aside a compliment. ‘It is merely a matter of knowing one’s market. He is a bright enough lad, our Captain – good at his job. He’ll be commanding one of the outpost forts in a year or two, if he isn’t broken for going too much his own way, or dead in a bog with an arrow of the little Dark People in him; but like most of his kind, his mind works in straight lines. Maybe that is what has made Rome the ruler of the world, but there’s no denying that when it comes to buying or selling a horse, the man who can think in curves has the advantage.’ He leaned forward abruptly, his face in shadow, one heavy ear-drop of coral and silver catching the lamplight as it swung. ‘What else did he say?’
    Phaedrus frowned, and was silent an instant before answering. ‘That an ex-gladiator might do well enough among the Frontier Scouts.’
    ‘And you are thinking it, maybe; a sad pity that you never thought of that before you