Island of Ghosts by Gillian Bradshaw Page B

dry underfoot, and rugs and cushions brought from the wagons, we were able to make ourselves and our guests comfortable. I’d arranged for fresh meat for all the men while I was in Bononia, and Arshak had purchased an ox in the marketplace for the officers, together with good Roman bread, apples, carrots and leeks, fresh cheese, and a kind of sweet made from nuts roasted with honey. One of the tribunes brought a scented oil, with which the Romans like to anoint themselves at banquets, and Comittus brought some wine, as he’d promised. I fetched the set of gold drinking cups from my wagon and we drank some wine and ate some cheese while we waited for the ox to finish roasting, the Sarmatians sitting cross-legged, and the Romans reclining against bales of straw. None of the tribunes commented on the fact that the drinking cups were of Roman design. Perhaps they thought I’d bought them.
    We introduced our squadron captains to the tribunes, and received in return the important information that the eldest of the three men, the married one, Marcus Vibullus Severus, was assigned to Arshak; the second, Gaius Valerius Victor, to Gatalas; and Lucius Javolenus Comittus to me. Comittus smiled at me when he announced this. I was pleased as well. Severus seemed a more serious and responsible man than his younger colleague, and might do better with Arshak. Though Comittus had won back some esteem from my brother princes during the dinner—largely by admiring our weapons and our horses.
    “I never realized what ‘armored cavalry’ meant until today!” he exclaimed enthusiastically. “By Andate! You hardly look human in all that gear. I’m not surprised that no one’s ever beaten you on a field where you could use the horses.”
    Arshak smiled and rubbed the hilt of his sword. “We are the best cavalry in the world,” he said complacently. He and Gatalas were still wearing their armor. I’d taken mine off, and told one of my bodyguard to see to it when he’d finished oiling his own.
    “How strong is that armor?” asked Severus. “Is it as good as plate?”
    In answer, Gatalas held out his arm in front of Severus; the tribune tapped it, then fingered the scales, and the other two picked themselves up to examine it as well. “Two layers deep?” they asked. “What about the men who have horn for the scales, instead of iron? How does that compare?” “How long does it last?” “How long does it take to make?” “Will it turn a sword?” Gatalas and Arshak smiled, preening themselves, and boasted of their armor’s strength.
    I watched them irritably. “A direct blow from a good sword will cut through it,” I said, and at once regretted it. They all looked at my leg. I was sitting with the bad knee up in front of me because it still hurt to cross it.
    “The man that hit your leg was Dacian, yes?” said Gatalas. We were speaking Latin, and he was less fluent than Arshak or myself. “He used one of the long swords with two hands.”
    Arshak’s eyes glittered. He lifted his own two hands above his head, and brought an imaginary sword down on my leg, whack, whack, whack. I’d been warned by his eyes, and managed not to flinch. The gesture was not one of serious malice—but he wouldn’t have done it if he hadn’t been annoyed at my admission that the armor was not impenetrable. “It was almost an axe,” Arshak said, abandoning his imaginary sword again. “And even so, Ariantes, without your armor, you would have lost your leg. A man in this armor is almost impossible to wound.”
    I remembered lying in the mud with the Dacian hacking at me. Arshak still believed in his invulnerability. That is the problem with armored cavalry; that had been the problem for all our people. If we’d believed we could lose a war with the Romans, we never would have started one. “A long spear, used as a pike or a lance, can go through it, too,” I said, stubbornly. “And a catapult bolt. And an arrow from a Hunnish