But a yell went up before we could turn our horses. A small advance party of scouts on horseback—for all I knew, the same ones the tribune and I had tangled with last night. Distantly I saw a spear pointed in our direction, heard a long shout—and the horses began to move.

Ten of them.

I dragged my horse’s head about, back toward the bend in the road. “Back!” the centurion shouted, “back, back!” but no one needed his orders. We were all fleeing.

The patrician boy whitened, but he wheeled his mount too. I thumped my horse in the ribs, but the hell-beast just squealed and veered violently into another horse. That legionary went over his mare’s head, and by the time I clutched mane and hauled myself upright in the saddle, a bubbling war scream reached my ears and I saw that the first of the Dacians was catching up to us. “To me!” I shouted to the man I’d spilled in the road, spurring toward him as his own mare dashed away in panic, but he gave a shriek and ran away from me, straight up the road with his arms flailing.

I yanked my horse at the first Dacian as he spurred toward that stupid fleeing soldier, and I had a bare impression of greasy beard, meaty mail-clad arms, a gap-toothed snarl as he turned his eyes to me instead. I barely had time to touch the lump under my breastplate that was my father’s amulet, and then the Dacian was on me. His spear went through my shoulder, or it would have if his horse hadn’t stumbled, and I took the opportunity to lop the head off the spear and leave him with a haft of wood. I reversed the thrust and bashed most of his teeth in with the gladius’s heavy hilt, and as he shrieked I turned. The other Dacians were catching up fast, and the man I’d unhorsed was still keening fear as he sprinted up the road. The centurion on his good horse was drawing away at a flat gallop, not caring how many of us were killed in the rear as long as he could get back to Mog with the news, and the other soldiers galloped after him without a rearward glance. It was Tribune Six-Names who turned his horse, putting a hand down to give the man an arm up. The legionary gave such a panicked yank that he tumbled the tall boy out of the saddle and into the road.

Another war cry sounded behind me, and I saw two spears leveling.