The Silver Branch [book II] by Rosemary Sutcliff Page A

completely at ease!)
    ‘We must be very healthy just now, up at the fort, that our Surgeon can spend the evening at a cocking main after a whole day’s hunting,’ said Posides in the faintly aggrieved tone that was usual with him.
    ‘We are,’ Justin said quietly, mastering his stutter with a supreme effort, ‘or I should not be here.’ He had meant to add ‘Centurion Posides’, but he knew that the P would be his undoing, so he left it, and turned his attention firmly to what was passing on the matting before him.
    The tawny cock had been returned to its owner, and to the accompaniment of much advice from rival supporters, the two men had taken their places and set their cocks down at opposite sides of the chalk circle. Now, suddenly as their owners loosed them, the birds streaked forward, and the fight was on.
    It did not last long, that first fight, though it was fierce enough while it lasted. It ended with a lightning strike of the red’s spurs, and a few feathers drifting sideways on the matting, and the tawny cock lying a small dead warrior, where he had fallen.
    His owner picked him up, shrugging philosophically, while the other man took up his crowing and triumphant property. Bets were being settled, and quarrels breaking out in a score of places at once, as generally happened at a cock-fight, and under cover of the noise and the shifting of the crowd, Justin murmured something about speaking to Evicatos of the Spear about the Commander’s wolf-skin, and getting up, made his way round to the far side of the ring. Evicatos was waiting for him, and as they came together, close-jammed in the crowd, the sealed tablet passed between them under cover of their cloaks.
    The thing was done so easily that Justin, his ears full of his own voice talking somewhat at random about the wolf-skin, could have laughed aloud in sheer relief.
    The quarrels were sorting themselves out, and another cock had been brought in and set opposite to the red, as he turned back to the Arena. This time the fight was long drawn and uncertain, and before the end of it, both cocks were showing signs of distress: the open beak, the wing dragging on the blood-stained matting. Only one thing seemed quite unquenched in them, their desire to kill one another. That, and their courage. They were very like human gladiators, Justin thought, and suddenly he sickened, and did not want to see any more. The thing that he had come to do was done, and Evicatos of the Spear, when he looked for him, was already gone. He slipped away too, and made his way back to the fort.
    But as he went, Centurion Posides, on the far side of the ring, looked after him with an odd gleam in his eyes. ‘Now I wonder,’ murmured Centurion Posides, ‘I wonder, my very ill-at-ease young friend, if it really was only the wolf-skin? With your previous record, I think that we will take no chances,’ and he rose and slipped off also, but not in the direction of the fort.

VIII
THE FEAST OF SAMHAIN
     
    T WO evenings later, Justin was making ready to leave the hospital block after late rounds, when Manlius appeared in the surgery doorway with a bloody rag twisted round one hand. ‘Sorry to trouble you, sir, but I hoped I might find you here. I’ve chopped my thumb and I can’t stop it bleeding.’
    Justin was about to call the orderly who was cleansing instruments nearby and bid him deal with it, when he caught the urgent message in the Legionary’s eyes, and changed his mind. ‘Come over to the lamp,’ he said. ‘What has happened this time? Another Catapult on top of you?’
    ‘No, sir, I’ve been chopping wood for my woman. I was off duty—and I chopped it.’
    The man moved after him, pulling off the crimson rag; and Justin saw a small but deepish gash in the base of his thumb from which the blood welled up as fast as he wiped it away. ‘Orderly—a bowl of water and some bandage linen.’
    The man dropped what he was doing and brought the water. ‘Shall I take over,