Felix had solved the mystery, which would satisfy the legate’s orders. He knew the thief’s opportunity, means, and even had a witness. But, not the motive, and he was a curious man. As he pushed his nervous horse alongside the column of legionnaires, the first rain of a promised storm began to fall. The dark clouds he could see promised a far worse downpour. The already crap situation was getting worse by the minute.

“Quaestor! You’re going the wrong way!”
A centurion chided from the long line of marchers, but his humor was forced. No one was relaxed in this dark and near-impenetrable forest. A place where trees grew toward the sky and blocked the sun, it forced the men to march in tight and frustrated formations. The few times the forest opened up, it turned into a stinking bog, where they would sink and slog through the mud. And that misery only ended when the land became a forest again. A loop of misery. Felix forced his mount against the current of soldiers, until further down the long column he spotted a dash of blue. A colorful variant among the marchers’ drab brown woolen blankets and red tunics. Like him, the thief ran against the flow.

“Gotcha.” Then he yelled. “You! The damn midget in the blue cape, stop!”
It had the opposite effect. And the thief dove into the line of marchers to escape him. The legionnaires didn’t laugh, mock, or cheer the runner with the blue cloak who ducked and weaved between them before plunging into the forest. However, they had many choice curses for Felix as he forced his horse to follow the fugitive through their line.

The chase was short. With a grunt, Felix grabbed the boy by the back of the cloak, yanked him off the ground and propped him on the saddle. Two small terrified eyes stared back from behind the eye holes of the silver mask under the hood. A too-young hand rested on the hilt of a gladius. He wondered who he’d stolen that from but didn’t care if the owner got it back or not. If the soldier was so careless with his weapons, he’d learn his lesson the hard way.
“Runt, give me the mask, and I won’t have you whipped.”
That would take some doing, but whipping children was not something he liked to do. The owner of the mask on the other hand.
The boy’s grungy hands shook so badly it took a few tries before he could unfasten the cavalry mask and hand it to him. Felix looked at the face of the boy. He was white with fright, and his lips were drawn back in a tight downward line that showed his lower teeth. What the hell was he so scared of?
“Why did you take this?”
“To scare them! They follow us. They are coming.”
Follow us, who, what’s following? Felix straightened in the saddle and took off his helmet. The breeze through his damp hair brought him a few moments of pleasure as he closed his eyes and listened. His ears picked up the boy’s shallow breathing, the horse’s steady ones. The sound of the marchers they had left behind. The rain that now fell faster no longer in random drops but in the promised downpour. And far away, muffled by distance and nature, the sounds of screams so faint a mind could trick itself into imagining them as nothing.

And then he understood.

The irony, that Verus’s petty assignment to recover the cavalry mask could save his life. He could run, but his friendship, his honor, his training demanded he remain. He lowered the boy back to the ground and gave him his purse and signet ring.

“Go. Run, tell them what happened in the forest of Teutoburg.”

Wren Cavanagh is a writer from the Pacific North West

Copyrighted 2024 Notch Publishing House

_{This is a work of fiction. All the names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents in this book are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.}