The Legions of the Mist

by Damion Hunter

  ‘Ah, Corvus. Sit down and join us.’ It was Cassius, commander of the Fifth Cohort. ‘How goes it, my lad?’

  ‘It goes well enough,’ said Justin, who took the greatest possible exception to being addressed as ‘my lad’ by a man he knew only slightly.

  ‘It goes stinking rotten, you mean,’ said a legionary at the table, with more than grumpiness in his tone. Justin recognized him from his own cohort. ‘The centurion’s right,’ the man went on moodily into his wine cup. ‘Things’ll change when we’ve stood up for ourselves.’

  ‘That’s enough, Drusus,’ Justin said quietly. He didn’t care for the line the man was taking.

  ‘Climb down off your high horse, Justin,’ Cassius said jokingly. ‘Everyone knows this Legion’s a laughingstock.’

  ‘Oh?’ Justin was getting a dangerous glint in his eyes.

  ‘Come now,’ Cassius said. ‘You don’t really think we’ll get that detachment back, do you? Not unless we take a stand.’

  Gwytha brought Justin his wine and he waited until she was out of earshot before inquiring softly, ‘Exactly what are you getting at, Centurion Cassius?’

  ‘Why nothing, my boy, except that everyone knows we’ll be left to rot here unless someone does something about it. The Brigantes will keep trying, you know… or maybe the Pict. And we can’t all get transferred.’ He winked at Drusus.

  ‘And what did you have in mind, Cassius?’ Justin asked.

  ‘Why, whatever’s needful,’ Cassius said, calling for another cup of wine.

  ‘Aye, afore we all get our throats cut for something that’s no business of ours,’ Drusus said.

  Justin stood up, eyeing Cassius thoughtfully. ‘Centurion Cassius, if I were you, I would learn to keep my mouth closed before I crucified myself with it.’

  ‘Aw now, Centurion, we didn’t mean no harm,’ Drusus said. ‘Just a friendly discussion as to what’s to be done, that’s all. I know an officer like yourself knows how we feel, sir.’

  ‘And what might you know about how your officers feel, Drusus? You will also mind your tongue, or it will be the worse for you. Now take yourself back to quarters before you end up in the guardhouse instead.’

  ‘But, sir – I haven’t done anything!’

  ‘I can always trump something up. Now get back to camp!’

  ‘Weren’t you a little hard on him, Corvus?’ Cassius inquired when Drusus had departed grumbling. ‘An officer has to keep up appearances and all, but—’

  ‘And as for you, you fathead –’ Justin turned on him. ‘If I hear one more word out of you, I’ll break your head. Are you trying to start trouble?’

  ‘You seem to forget, Centurion, that I’m three cohorts senior to you,’ Cassius said.

  ‘You try any more funny business with my men, and I’ll see you’re three months in hospital.’ He spotted Licinius across the room. ‘If you will excuse me, Centurion. I shall leave you with this thought: Stay the hell away from my men.’

  * * *

  ‘The man’s a rabble-rouser,’ Justin said next day when he had told Licinius about the incident. ‘I don’t like him.’

  ‘What’s he after?’

  Justin, occupied with cleaning his armor, looked up over the edge of his breastplate. ‘I’m not sure. I’m not even sure he knows himself. I think he’s one of these people who likes being subversive and going about dropping hints. It makes him feel daring and important and a hell of a fellow.’

  ‘Well, he’d best watch it, or he’ll start something he can’t stop,’ Licinius said. ‘This Legion’s wobbly enough. All it needs is a few dangerous clowns like Cassius to give it a good push and it’ll dissolve.’

  ‘Oh, Mithras. It’s bad enough to be fighting the natives without fighting the damn Legion too. Why don’t they either get enough men and equipment to garrison this country properly or pull out?’

  ‘Because the Senate’s either too complacent or hasn’t got enough guts to buck the Emperor, that’s why.’

  Justin stood up. ‘Well, the problems of the Empire will just have to get along without me for a while. I’ve got a date with a girl.’

  ‘Gwytha? I’d go carefully there if I were you,’ Licinius said.

  ‘Don’t worry, my intentions are as pure as snow… she’s not the type. I only like her company.’

  ‘That’s good. She’s had a tough enough time, poor kid. I’ll come with you. I want to look in on Aeresius. I don’t like that cough of his.’

  * * *

  Licinius had looked dubious when he met Justin and Gwytha at the wineshop door after their walk, but all he said was that Aeresius should be kept warm and he would be back the next day. He handed Gwytha a phial of medicine to give her master later in the evening.

  But by the end of the month, it was obvious to anyone who saw him that there was something seriously the matter with Aeresius. His face was drawn and he had grown thin and he spent most of his time, on Licinius’s strict orders, wrapped in a blanket on his bed while Gwytha saw to the running of the shop.

  As a result, Justin saw little of her. He thought she was worried, but when he did manage to snatch a moment’s talk with her, she seemed to steer carefully away from the topic of Aeresius’s health. As Justin had his own problems, and those of his repellent cohort on his mind, he didn’t really notice Gwytha’s peculiar reticence on the subject until the day when she turned a small, white face to him and said, ‘He’s dying, Centurion, how should he be feeling?’ and burst into tears.

  When he tried to comfort her, she told him for the gods’ sake to leave her alone, and ran into the storeroom. Justin stood looking after her helplessly for a moment, and then went to find Licinius.

  The surgeon, when Justin finally tracked him down, was in the hospital cleaning instruments which, as far as Justin could tell, didn’t need cleaning.

  ‘He hasn’t much longer, I think,’ Licinius said slowly when Justin told him what had happened. ‘He put it aside as nothing more than a cold for the better part of the summer. It’s gone too far. I have done all I can. Everything. I drained the pleural cavity this morning in the hope… but it’s a painful thing. I wonder now if I haven’t only hurried it along for him.’ His voice was tired and the scalpel he was polishing was one which he had finished and set aside a moment before.

  ‘Why didn’t she tell me?’ Justin was hurt. ‘I had thought we were friends, she and I. Why didn’t you tell me?’ he added accusingly.

  ‘She wouldn’t tell anyone, for fear Aeresius would hear of it,’ Licinius said.

  ‘You mean he doesn’t know?’

  ‘No man ever really thinks he’s dying, even if he has been told. She said if it were she, she would sooner it was something that came and was done with rather than something that she waited for,’ Licinius said. ‘And I thought perhaps she was right. I would rather have it that way myself, I think. But I shall know anyway. It’s part of the job.’

  ‘I should want to know,’ Justin said. ‘And not be coddled and fooled by my womenfolk.’

  Licinius looked up at him. ‘Would you really?’

  Justin was silent.

  ‘Aye, one doesn’t know, does one? Still, for Aeresius, I think this is best. I wanted to bring him here at first, where I could watch him, but she said would it make his chances any the better, and I had to say probably not. So Aeresius stays where he is, in the hope that he’ll die in some sort of peace.’

  * * *

  It was the changing time of year, when life went out in a flurry of fall leaves and the wild things of the wood dug deeper into their burrows and watched the last of the plentiful times whisk by on the wind. In the gold- and copper-colored woods of the High King’s family holding, a pony trotted softly along a buried path, his hooves sending drifts of leaves fluttering about him. A warrior on the outskirts made as if to bar his way and then, recognizing the slight, flaxen-haired form of the rider, drew back again.

  Galt halted at the hut of the healer priest, but sat for a long moment on the pony�
�s back before he dropped to the ground and pushed aside the door hangings. It was the first time he had seen the High King since the day that he and the queen’s father and brother had carried him into this same hut, unconscious and as close to death as any still-living man might be, and Galt was more than a little afraid of what he was going to find.

  The High King lay with his face to the wall, but by the set of his neck and shoulders it was obvious that he was not sleeping, and his thoughts, too, practically shouted themselves aloud.

  In the High King, Vortrix knew (and Galt knew) lay the power of his people, and they were the power in him. Therefore, the kingship must be held by an unblemished man, lest the diminishment of his powers diminish them as well. And yet, there was no one but him who, by the force of his own will, could hold the Tribe together. And what did that count for, he wondered, in the eyes of the god? He became aware of Galt watching him.

  ‘Why have you come?’

  ‘To see that you did not go away from us altogether,’ Galt said softly. He and the king were of the same age almost to the day. They had been closer than most brothers from the time they could walk, and Galt knew the High King’s mind too well for comfort. If that arm should wither and die, the High King might well choose to die with it.

  Vortrix kept his face resolutely to the wall, although Galt knew that the High King had known who stood in the doorway even before he had spoken. ‘It is my right,’ Vortrix said finally.

  ‘If the time comes when you must exercise that right to a purpose, brother, I’ll not stay your hand. But to take that road now… you throw your people to the wolves.’

  Vortrix was silent for a moment. Then slowly he turned to face the harper, and Galt flinched in spite of himself. The High King’s face was pinched with the lean look that comes of much pain, and his bright eyes were clouded. The wounded arm, swathed and hidden in bandages, lay along the edge of the bed, and the white hand that trailed from those bandages was still and lifeless.

  Galt knelt beside him as if he could somehow pull the High King back from the strange country in which he traveled. He stretched out a hand toward the bandages, but Vortrix’s good arm came up suddenly and blocked the way.

  ‘No! There are only two roads left for me to travel, brother, and until I know which I will take, no one sees that arm, not even the healer priest – he leaves the salve and I do for myself these days. And most especially not you, brother. I’ll put no man at odds with the god for my sake.’

  For Galt’s part, he would willingly have traded even his soul for the High King’s peace, but being both more cynical and more practical than his brother, he knew that his insistence on that fact would only set a new demon to ride on the High King’s back, and the gods knew he had enough of them already. So he stood, regretfully, his pale bleached hair and the cacophony of jewelry clattering at his wrists at odds with the seriousness in his face. ‘Then I expect the best service I can give you is to pacify your Council,’ he said lightly. ‘Old Cathuil rather likes being the High King’s father-in-law. Between us we can hold them in check yet awhile.’ He sketched a formal bow, and then touched one hand lightly to the High King’s forehead. ‘The god keep you in his hand.’

  * * *

  To the south, it was raining, great dark drops that spattered upward when they hit the ground. Justin made his way back to the town after a day’s hunting, with Finn prancing happily at his side, snapping at raindrops and smelling abominably of wet dog.

  The Watch passed them in their evening rounds, their hooded cloaks drawn over their heads and their mailed sandals clacking on the wet pavement. Finn waved his tail at them, his tongue lolling out between his teeth, and the last man eyed him nervously. Justin grinned. Finn was a very friendly dog, but that crocodile smile put people off.

  He put a hand on the dog’s collar. ‘No, fellow, I don’t think they want to make friends.’ He pulled his cloak closer about him, and they turned into the Street of Neptune.

  Lamplight shone from the windows of the wineshop, but the door was closed and the place looked unusually still for a rainy evening when anyone with sense would be in out of the wet, warding off chill with a cup of hot wine.

  ‘We are closed tonight,’ Gwytha said as he opened the door. ‘Oh, it is you, Centurion. Come in, then.’ Her eyes and nose were red and she looked miserable.

  ‘Gwytha, what is it?’ he asked, flinging his cloak down by the fire. ‘Aeresius?’

  Gwytha nodded and sniffled, a thoroughly unfeminine noise which somehow went straight to his heart. ‘He died… an hour ago.’

  ‘I… I don’t have to tell you how sorry I am,’ Justin stuttered a bit. He never knew what to say at times like this, an incapacity which infuriated him. ‘He had no kin, had he? You’ll be needing help with the burying and the shop. Please… tell me what I can do.’

  ‘That will be for the new owner to decide,’ Gwytha said in a small voice.

  ‘New owner?’ Justin hadn’t thought of that.

  ‘Aye. He… he owes a… a great deal of money to a wine merchant in the south. It was to have been paid from this winter’s profits. Now he will have the shop instead.’

  ‘Couldn’t you run the place and pay him? You’ve been doing it alone lately anyway.’

  ‘I?’ Gwytha gave a strange, choking laugh. ‘I go with the shop, along with the tables and the wine jars.’

  Justin realized with horror that he had forgotten she was a slave. Aeresius had been kind enough, more an uncle than a master, but now it was unthinkable that she should go back to a life of being handed about from one master to another. Not Gwytha. It happened all the time, of course, but for some irrational reason, Gwytha was different.

  ‘But Aeresius would have wanted you freed,’ he stammered. ‘Didn’t he do it?’

  ‘He was unconscious.’

  ‘I see,’ Justin said slowly. ‘And he didn’t know he was dying. Gwytha, why didn’t you tell him?’

  ‘Should I go to a man who has been good to me and tell him he is dying and, please, will he free me before he does?’ Gwytha said bitterly.

  ‘But it would have meant your freedom.’

  ‘Aeresius gave me all the freedom I’ve ever known since I was ten years old. I couldn’t.’ She sounded tired and her voice was flat, as if worn out with weeping. ‘Anyway, it is done now. There’s no way to go back and change things about.’

  ‘We’ll see about that.’ He snatched up his cloak and turned for the door, telling Finn to stay. Gwytha watched him go, her face even more miserable than before. Then she turned back to her work.

  Justin stepped out into the rain, which was now coming down in sheets, and tried to think. There must be something. A flicker of movement caught his eye and he turned to see a thin, familiar figure wandering aimlessly toward him down a side street and whistling softly to itself.

  ‘Hai! Hilarion!’ The figure stopped, peered at him, and ambled forward again. Justin saw that he was wearing nothing but his tunic, and his hair was plastered flat to his head. ‘What in Hades are you doing out like that?’

  ‘Getting wet,’ Hilarion said mildly.

  ‘Where’s your cloak?’

  ‘She threw me out. On my ear.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘Claudia.’

  Justin found himself laughing. Hilarion was famous for his frequent and generally disastrous romances. ‘How did you lose your cloak?’

  ‘Forgot it,’ Hilarion said. ‘In the, uh, heat of the moment. Didn’t seem like a good time to go back and ask for it.’

  Justin regarded him suspiciously. ‘Are you drunk?’

  ‘Not as drunk as I was, in all this rain. I recommend it highly to anyone who wants to sober up in a hurry.’ He peered at Justin. ‘What’s the matter? You look like Jove with one thunderbolt left over.’

  Justin pulled the other man into a doorway out of the rain. That was exactly what he felt like. Damn Gwytha. She had no right to be such a self-sacrificing idiot. ‘Aeresius died,’ he told Hilari
on.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Hilarion said. ‘I liked the man. What about Gwytha? Who’s taking over the shop?’

  Hilarion didn’t have any trouble realizing Gwytha’s position, Justin thought irritably. Nobody did, except himself. He was the idiot. But the fact that Gwytha wasn’t free came up so infrequently, and was so unapparent, that he had hardly thought about it.

  ‘That’s just the trouble.’ He explained what had happened, and Hilarion swore softly and inquired what he was going to do.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Justin didn’t stop to wonder why everyone seemed to think it was his responsibility to do something. ‘I can’t buy her. She’s worth too much.’ There was something unpleasant about discussing the price of Gwytha, but this was no time for a fit of gentlemanly airs and graces.

  ‘And she can’t either,’ he went on. ‘Aeresius would have let her go for the price of the debt he got for her, but this merchant won’t.’

  ‘Maybe if we got together?’ Hilarion suggested. ‘We all have a little money.’

  ‘Think of it, man. She’s young and strong, she can read and write and keep books, and the gods know what all else.’

  ‘And good-looking to boot,’ Hilarion added.

  ‘Yes, damn you, that too.’ Justin shied away from the thought of what a new master’s reaction to that asset might be. ‘We haven’t enough money between us to make up half of what he’d ask. If Aeresius had only freed her before he died…’ Justin let the words trail off. He looked at Hilarion, who looked back at him nervously.

  ‘Justin…’

  ‘Do you remember when we revised the Legate’s speech last summer? You came so close to the scribe’s hand, the poor fellow had Ahriman’s own time getting off the hook with the Legate.’

  Hilarion’s mouth twitched as he remembered his commander’s now famous pep talk, but he said, ‘Oh, no. Absolutely not. Aeresius couldn’t write above halfway anyhow. He’d have had a scribe do it for him, and they’ll want to know which one. It’ll be so awkward when no one comes forward.’