The middle horseman of the
three looked familiar. I glanced back at him and met his eyes, intensely
watching me from under his dripping hat brim, as I trudged on the edge of
the trudging rabble. A hot qualm surged through me. It was, it certainly
was, the very same man I had seen in the very same guise on the road
below Villa Andivia as Tanno and I passed by on our way to our fatal brawl
at Vediamnum; the very man who had peered in at me and Capito during his
fatal conference with me in Nemestronia's water-garden, the man whom Tanno
had asserted that he knew for an Imperial spy. I felt recognition in his
gaze; felt that he knew me for my very self. And his nose was hooked.
At our halting place, when Agathemer and I were alone, I asked him in
Greek if he had noticed the three stationary horsemen. He at once, without
my mentioning my suspicions, declared that he also had recognized the
middle horseman precisely as I had. What his presence there might forbode,
what his apparent recognition of me might portend, we could not
conjecture. We agreed that, although both of us had been on the lookout
for Imperial emissaries all the way from Placentia, and alertly watching
from Ariminum southwards, this was the first time we had set eyes on any
man whom we could take for a secret-service man.
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