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

shouted by the Centurion, and a slithering clatter as one of the ramp-timbers went down. For a split moment of time the whole scene seemed frozen; and then, amid a splurge of shouting, the great catapult heeled over and side-slipped with a splintering crash, bringing down the rest of the ramp with it.
    Justin saw men scattering outward, and heard a sharp, agonized cry. He called back to his orderly behind him, and in the same instant was running toward the scene of the crash. The great engine lay like a dead locust on its side among the fallen ramp-timbers, partly on the ground and partly supported by the stone kerb of the battery platform. The dust of the crash still hung on the air, but already men were heaving at the wreckage beneath which one of their comrades lay trapped; and as Justin, thrusting through the rest, slithered in under the splintered framework to the man’s side, he found someone before him, crouching braced under the weight of the beam which had come down across the legionary’s leg, and saw without really looking that it was Flavius with the crest ripped from his helmet and blood trickling from a cut over one eye.
    The injured man—it was Manlius, one of the hardest cases in all Magnis—was quite conscious, and the young surgeon heard him gasp, ‘It’s my leg, sir, I can’t move—I—’
    ‘Don’t try,’ Flavius said, breathing quickly; and there was an odd gentleness in his tone that Justin had never heard before. ‘Hold still, old lad; we’ll have you clear of this before you can sneeze … Ah, here you are, Justin.’
    Justin was already busy with the injured legionary, as hands appeared out of nowhere to help Flavius with the great beam. He called over his shoulder, ‘Can you get this lot shifted away? I don’t want to drag him out if I can help it.’
    He was scarcely aware of the clatter of beams being dragged aside, and his own voice saying, ‘Easy now, easy; you’re all right,’ and the straining, cursing moments as the framework of the great catapult was urged up and over, and toppled sideways away from them; until Flavius straightened, cherishing a bruised shoulder, and demanded, ‘Is he going to be all right?’
    And looking up from the work of his hands, he realized with surprise that it was all over, and the legionaries who had been straining at the wreckage were now standing round looking on, while his orderly knelt beside him steadying the injured man’s leg. ‘Yes, I think so, but he’s got a bad break and he’s bleeding like a pig, so the sooner we get him into the hospital and deal with it properly, the better.’
    Flavius nodded, and remained squatting beside the man as he lay silent and sweating, until they were ready to move him, then helped to shift him on to the stretcher, and gripped his shoulder for a moment with a quick ‘Good luck’, before he turned away, wiping the blood from his eyes with the back of his hand, to see how bad was the damage to the catapult.
    Number Three Catapult was almost past repair. But by evening word of what had happened had gone round the fort and along the Watch-towers and Mile Castles on either side, and the odd thing was that the new Commander of Magnis had very little more trouble with his garrison.
    The weeks passed, and on an evening well into the spring, Justin was packing up after his day’s work, when one of his orderlies appeared in the doorway with the news that a native hunter had come in with a wolf-bite to be dealt with.
    ‘All right, I’ll come,’ Justin said, abandoning his hope of getting a bath before dinner. ‘Where have you put him?’
    ‘He’s out in the parade-ground, sir; he wouldn’t come any further,’ said the orderly, with a grin.
    Justin nodded. By this time he was growing used to the ways of the Painted People, for it was not the first time that wolf-bitten hunters had come up to the fort, wary and distrustful as wild animals, yet demanding that the Cohort Surgeon should make them well. He