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long,’ warned the oldest, a taciturn man called Villius.
    ‘Give us enough time to see who’s out there,’ snapped Quintus. ‘Otherwise you could ride into a trap. They could be all around us.’
    Villius gauged his companions’ mood. ‘All right. But on the count of a thousand, we’re riding away.’
    ‘That might not be sufficient,’ protested Quintus.
    ‘I don’t care.’ Villius’ tone was snide. ‘I’m not hanging around here to be butchered by Gaulish savages.’
    There was a chorus of agreement.
    Quintus shot a furious glance at Calatinus, who shrugged. He swallowed his anger. Their comrades’ reaction wasn’t surprising, and this was no time to hesitate. ‘Start counting.’ He turned his back on Villius’ sour smile. With his spear at the ready and Calatinus two steps behind, Quintus loped off. ‘You keep count as well,’ he growled.
    ‘Fine. One. Two. Three . . .’ answered Calatinus.
    Quintus silently matched his friend’s speed. They came first to Calatinus’ horse, and then his own, muttering calming words to both beasts as they passed. Quintus’ gaze roved from left to right at speed, taking in every detail. Thirty-eight. Thirty-nine. An old forked beech, taller than a block of flats in Capua. A spider web on a bush, its radiate patterns picked out by the frost. Leaves frozen to the ground singly, in piles, on the surface of puddles. Above them, bare branches rose up in a meshwork of layers to the grey sky. A dead oak, its gnarled trunk blackened and cracked by a lightning strike, leaning against the tree next to it, as if drunk. A flash of colour in the branches as a woodpecker – the one he’d heard? – flitted off in alarm. Quintus paused, but he could see nothing ahead. He hadn’t heard any fresh whistles either. The bird must have taken fright at their arrival. His pulse rate didn’t decrease, however, and he had to keep wiping the sweat from his eyes. He glanced around, saw his friend’s knuckles white on the haft of his spear, but Calatinus gave him a determined grin. Reassured, Quintus kept moving. Two hundred and fifty-five. Two hundred and fifty-six.
    They had had a couple of glimpses through the trees, but as the slope bottomed out, Quintus had his first decent view of the stream. He peered at it from the concealment of a chunky beech. Calatinus tumbled in beside him. It was as he’d remembered, with a narrow grassy bank on this side, and trees right down to the edge on the other. The watercourse was mostly shallow, but with a deeper, rocky section in the middle. Spray rose into the air as the water struck the boulders. The stream was easy enough to ford on a horse, but slippery and cold for a man on foot.
    ‘Where the hell are they?’ whispered Calatinus. ‘Were we imagining the whistling?’
    ‘You know we weren’t.’ Four hundred. Four hundred and one. Quintus considered going down the slope, but this was as far as they could go without the risk of the others leaving. Calatinus knew it too.
    They watched in silence.
    Flakes of snow began twirling down from above. They came almost dreamily at first, but it wasn’t long before they were falling in earnest. The visibility began to deteriorate. It might have been Quintus’ imagination, but the temperature dropped as well.
    ‘My count is four hundred and seventy-five,’ Calatinus announced. ‘What’s yours?’
    Quintus sighed. His breath plumed before him. ‘Four hundred and sixty.’
    ‘You know that that piece of shit Villius will ride off the moment he reaches a thousand?’
    ‘We can run all the way back. That will shave a hundred, a hundred and fifty off the total.’
    Calatinus scowled, but to Quintus’ pleasure, he didn’t move.
    They gazed down at the stream, their muscles stiffening in the cold. Quintus reached five hundred and eighty without seeing anything untoward. He decided that whoever he had heard must have moved off in another direction. It had all been nothing to worry about. He