Free Terra Incognita by Ruth Downie

hills come down to enjoy their leave here. Coria is where the north and the east–west roads meet.”
    Ruso wondered what sort of posting would lead a man to think of a road junction as an exciting holiday destination, and scanned the bridge for any sign of the Twentieth’s arrival. “So where’s the border?” he asked.
    “Just turn a little to your right.”
    Ruso frowned. All he could see was another road, with a dispatch rider just out of the west gates urging his horse into a canter.
    “That’s more or less it,” said Metellus.
    Looking from one side of the road to the other, Ruso failed to discern any difference. He felt a faint slump of disappointment. Was this what he had traveled all those miles to see? “Where are the barbarian hordes?”
    “The tribes just across the border are officially friendly,” explained Metellus. “And just to make sure, we offer the usual incentives.”
    “Which are?”
    “We’re giving some of their sons a free education down in Londinium, and we send advisers to their meetings.”
    “I see,” said Ruso, assuming that the sons were effectively hostages and “advisers” meant “spies.”
    “In exchange, we ignore the odd cattle raid and their head men get invited to dinner when the governor comes to visit.”
    “It’s not quite how I’d imagined it.”
    “Oh, the hordes are out there, believe me,” said Metellus. “On both sides of the border. Sulking and skulking, most of them looking like perfectly innocent hill farmers. According to my informers, this Stag Man business has them all very excited. That’s why this murder has come at the worst possible time, and why the prefect’s being scrupulous about investigating it. We have to make it clear that the culprit’s getting a fair trial. We don’t want to give them an excuse to dig out the weapons they aren’t supposed to have and march on the nearest fort demanding justice for Our Poor Innocent Boy chained up by the Evil Romans.”
    “I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t gotten involved in this.”
    “Frankly, my view is that the fewer people involved the better,” agreed Metellus. “But a report from a medical officer won’t do any harm. We can be seen to be taking the inquiry seriously.”
    Ruso watched the dispatch rider growing smaller in the distance. A road patrol was approaching in the opposite direction. As they passed, he saw arms raised in greeting. He wondered how many soldiers were holding the string of isolated forts and watchtowers that must lie out along that border road, compared to the number of sulkers and skulkers lurking in the surrounding hills—although why anyone should bother to fight over land that seemed to contain nothing but a few peasants and sheep was a mystery.
    “I had imagined the border would be more . . .” he paused, searching for a word. “Watertight.”
    “We don’t want it watertight,” said Metellus. “We want it porous. We want long strings of well-laden merchants traveling in and out of the province paying border taxes. We station men here to run the customs posts, the men spend their wages, and that gives the locals a chance to turn a profit. It all works very nicely as long as everybody behaves themselves.”
    “I see,” said Ruso, wondering what the northerners could offer to sell or afford to buy. “So this business with travelers being ambushed—”
    “It’s making things very difficult,” said Metellus. “There’s been an interesting change in language up here lately,” he said. “Travelers are no longer talking about arriving at their destination. They’re starting to call it getting through .”
    “I’m told there are people who think the Stag Man is some sort of god,” said Ruso, not adding that his housekeeper was one of them.
    “The locals are a superstitious bunch,” explained Metellus. “They think stags are messengers from another world. You don’t have to go back too many generations before you find human sacrifice and all