by J K Ishaya
Howard's face turns bright red, and his heartbeat thrums loudly to my ears. He continues to bite back offense at my language, accepting it as honest to the station that I and my men held as vulgar warriors.
"The men guffawed loudly with Bastiza shoving Diourdanus in the back. He stumbled into Comosicus who punched his shoulder, to which he punched back, and then a wave of more shoves and laughter went around the group. I wished I could laugh along with them, but they had not seen Decebal as I had, and they needed some humor to keep them going. They also didn't have Bendis staring acidly at them as she did at me.'
"'We're sitting here waiting to die,' I reminded them. 'They aren't going to up and march away on their own, and we are supremely outnumbered. If we surrender, they'll still kill a great many of us. They'll most certainly execute our king, me, everyone in this room because we are the strongest and still a threat.'
"'Or humiliate us in front of their Republic,' Vesina added. 'Then they'll kill us.'
"I nodded to this truth of the worst fate a Dacian could meet. As I spoke, I could see how Bendis nodded her head while still frowning, conflicted, as one would expect. The men's humor tamped down and they contemplated, and then I asked who supported me. Scorylo, of course, raised his hand because it was his idea to begin with and then quickly the others followed. So we made our plans and momentarily parted ways so that the men could tell their own families to where we would soon be disappearing and issuing false certainties of our return.
"'Did you really coax approval out of your father?' Bielis asked when the others were gone and Vesina had returned to his station at the temple. Bendis had also disappeared, but I knew where she had gone.
"'No,' I confessed and presented my previous thoughts that were he rested and at his fittest, Decebal would approve. Bielis' eyes narrowed, perhaps expressing disagreement, but he nodded and left, saying he would return to the western wall to answer any queries the men posted there might make should they notice the elite suddenly missing from duty.
"I went up to the connection of rooms where my family slept on the third and top floor, where the windows had been boarded over to hide the activity within from any Romans gaining a vantage point beyond the wall. There I found my wife, standing over the bed where our daughter, Breslin, lay curled up. I crept up to Bendis and embraced her from behind, stared over her shoulder at the little figure on the bed. Breslin, at four, had been stricken with constant lethargy from dehydration. We allowed her to sleep to conserve her energy, rousing her every few hours to get her to drink her water ration or eat a little. This child… so vivacious when healthy, when our world had been stable and strong.
"I see her playing now, running around with a poppet in her arms, sometimes chasing her brother. In better times, Bendis and I often took them down to the river and we would eat there, watch them splash about in the shallows and scream at each other. She often brought her doll to her mother to have a new rip repaired. At first, she would be upset, crying as if all was lost, and then Bendis would sew it up and restore the balance, until finally there were never tears over it at all because she knew her mother could fix anything. But this… neither parent could fix this. It pained us both deeply, but circumstances required holding all emotion together at all times.
"I felt such overwhelming tightness in my chest when I looked at her sleeping face that night. Her cheeks still managed to maintain their roundness, but they were colorless, her eyes sunken. Her skin had an overall waxy look to it, and her little gown had tangled around her body as she lay on her furs with that poppet, a ratty mess, snuggled in her arms. It reminded me, all the more, why my men and I needed to retrieve water. The first sups would go to my daughter and, of course, Decebal, whose state of health had become suddenly as dire.
"'Are you so sure of this plan?' Bendis asked.
"'I am sure of absolutely nothing anymore,' I said and turned her in my arms to look at her face, touch it, stroke hair back from her forehead. Her eyes were reddened and damp, looking all the larger and observant with her long lashes matted together. I leaned in, cupped her face in my hands, and touched my forehead to hers where our markings aligned. Then I applied a kiss to which she responded most deeply, and then I couldn't help but chuckle over it."
I do not give Howard any more details of the actual kiss. They are details for me alone, how I ran a fingertip along her brow and observed it to be soft with oils from her skin, gritty with salt from her sweat. How I traced the soft dip below her nose.
"'What is so funny?' she asked me, and I reminded her that she had declared she would never kiss me again after the goat blood. Her scowl expressed no mood for irony, but I coaxed a smile out of her anyway. That smile…”
I cannot finish that it was the last smile I would ever have from her. "Then we broke apart. I reached down and pulled my sica from my belt and rested it in her small hands. 'Take this, keep it with you at all times.'
"'No, you will need it,' she argued, and I countered that I would find another. It was the distinct sica of a nobleman, with a signature blood red jewel in the hilt, given to me by Decebal when I turned sixteen. She relented and held it down by her side, then I moved past her to the bed side and took a seat to lean over and kiss my daughter's cheek. I jostled too much and stirred the covers.
"'Papa?' Breslin said, voice high and sweet but raspy… parched. Her eyes, soft blue and sleepy, cracked open for me.
"'Yes, my little cub,' I whispered back to her. I promised her that she was safe, that I would bring her water soon."
I realize my hands are out before me, palms facing, fingers curled in as if I hold Breslin's heavy little head between them. Immediately I drop them. The room, suddenly smaller, stifles me and I rise, seized with a gut-wrenching moment of need to step away. "I believe some fresh air is in order."
"Yes, of course, Mr. Corvinus," Howard says and rises to his feet.
Kvasir is quick to put Bulfinch aside and rise as well, his large feline eyes flashing concern. His mind stays silent as he simply gives me space.
I do not grab my coat or hat from the bed post. I just move out of the room, down the hall, and past the parlor with its sleeping occupant. Rushing out onto the street, I feel nothing from the cold air, but it is better to breathe than the stagnancy in Howard's tiny box of a room.
Chapter Six
On the street, I'm swathed in blessed darkness and my personal silence. The street lamps emit a pale yellow that offends my vision. A heavy fog has settled on the block, cooling and soft, a gift from the Seekonk, but I smell the river’s tangy, fishy scent and turn the other way: west. As I go, I incidentally touch a few sleeping minds in the houses along the way; some are quiet, others stir with dreams that are perfectly tame. They involve no vast stairways, no portals into the abyss, which, as Howard reflected, does indeed stare back at me and taunt me and I know that he is out there, the one with whom I'm most at war, and then there is the war within me which goes far beyond Howard's grasp or what I will tell him tonight. Tonight is for beginnings, and that is all. I hear the boy coming, heels scuffing on the pavement.
He arrives at my side in his long coat with the big collar turned up to protect his neck and his arms are crossed to hug the bulky wool closed. I sense that his chill stems not merely from the cold and fog but the company he keeps and the dark around us. His note book is crammed under his arm and pinned against his ribs just in case I should reveal another nugget to write down. In our wake, Kvasir's figure appears and slowly walks toward us. Too slow, damn him. He wants me to take this moment with Howard alone and see what happens.
"I find madness a fascinating subject," Howard says, avoiding the inclination to push me to continue the story. He hesitates for a moment, a new stirring in his mind, and then he takes an impressive dive where I had expected him to be more guarded. "My father suffered it," he confesses. "He was admitted to Butler Hospital when I was just a child."
Ah, hell. He's trying to relate to me where insanity and fathers are concerned.<
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"They diagnosed him with general paresis, and then later the Pox, but had that been the case, would not my mother and I have contracted it? It would have been quite advanced to induce psychosis, which means he would have been infected prior to my birth—no, to my conception—and thus I would have inherited it. In fact, neither my mother nor I would likely be alive now given how much time has passed.”
He only speculates but I know far more about how Winfield Lovecraft ended up in that hospital than the boy needs to know right now. "Syphilis," I say distastefully and wonder how the doctors ever came up with that diagnosis. Easier for them than to puzzle out whatever ramblings Winfield spewed in his psychotic throes.
"Indeed, the thought of it has plagued my mother's nerves for years, but I've never accepted it. He fell into dementia while at a trade show in Chicago. It began with him ranting about someone threatening my mother and me, a black man, a Pharaonic figure. Egyptian, I mean. Mother and I were in Boston and him there, so he could not have known of any threat to us over that distance. At least, that is what I've heard."
I freeze for a second and close my eyes to take a breath. "Shit," I whisper, but Howard doesn't hear it, lost in his own family concerns as he is.
"Mother will not speak of it, but my aunts—my dear, dear aunts—they are given to chatter if I ask the right questions. Definitely madness of some sort anyway, but I do not believe the Pox caused it. I barely had a chance to know him, though I have a few old memories. Slapping his knee. For some reason, I remember that, and I recall his accent, very English. He came from a very proud line of English.”
I say nothing to this, knowing that Winfield’s accent was purely a bit of an affectation indoctrinated into him by said proud family. It also annoyed me tremendously but that is another time and place that Howard does not need to know about now.
“I have inherited his clothes,” Howard goes on, verifying what I already know. “I prefer their cut to the men's clothing made now. Anyway, I have always been curious what it was like for him. What creates such a breaking point? I believe it is fear. Acute, persistent, and irrational. Decebal was afraid for an entire kingdom, for his only son and people, with time growing so short and your god doing nothing about it. Perhaps he came to the realization that Zalmoxis did not exist. It sounds as if his nerves finally couldn't handle the strain. You, though. You are a man who is the thing feared. You said yourself that you cannot die. You have nothing to fear."
"On the contrary, Howard," I say as I continue walking. "Deathless does not mean I am without my vulnerabilities." It feels a risk admitting this, but he will learn anyway as I continue spilling my figurative guts. "I have plenty to fear, and I have been driven quite mad at least twice in my existence. It is a frighteningly easy state to acquire, human or not." I flash a bitter grin at him.
He hugs the coat tighter at my words, readjusts the collar. "Are you not cold? You left your coat behind."
"I am fine."
I manage to get a quiet stroll in for another block, gathering my thoughts to continue. Howard is companionably silent for that time, but I can hear his heartbeat thrumming a little quicker. Upon touching his mind anew, I find he is unnerved being completely alone with me, unaware of Kvasir tailing us. I only told him that I am a monster. He has not seen a demonstration, but the suggestion is enough. It is titillating for him, wondering what else is hiding below my surface.
Then suddenly he is barely there at all. His footsteps cease, and his breath staggers a little. I stop and turn to look back, finding him frozen to the spot as he stares intensely at a large house to our right that peers through the fog just enough to taunt him. Three stories sit behind a short iron fence with block steps leading up to a small, decorated side porch and glorious entrance. Beyond the main structure, I make out shadows of additional outhouses, all part of the whole property. The memories that course through him sting my own mind and I realize I have made something of a mistake by coming this way. It is the same old house which he spoke of, the grand family estate in which he used to live, in which he first glimpsed the night-gaunts in his dreams, in which his beloved grandfather taught him to read books that were beyond the average child’s comprehension. He rarely comes this way now to avoid the wash of those memories, but now he wonders who is sleeping in his old room. What happened to all of the books he adored, especially that deluxe edition of The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner? What have the new residents done with the old pagan garden which his mother allowed him to keep in the back with its pitted marble Pan? He had mostly grown out of the interest and the little plot ignored and gone to weed by the time he and his mother moved out, but he still wonders.
I leave him to his bitter reverie for a moment longer before I decide to relieve him. “Let’s go the other way,” I say. Before I’ve even turned, Kvasir has already repositioned himself out of our path where he can fall in behind again still unnoticed by our charge.
Howard snaps to, looks at me and nods, catching up his pace as we move away from the accursed house and its memories. His breath comes tight and shallow when he asks, "So you and your men went over the wall?"
"No, we did not, but we came very close before the tide turned. I headed straight for the chosen point on my own, while Scorylo and the others went to speak to their wives and then round up what other supplies we would need. On my way, I found Tsinna still down in the square and took him aside to tell him what we were doing and to keep it quiet. He wanted, as expected, to go with us. ‘I can help with the water,' he insisted. 'I can help you kill them.' Even being a warrior then, I cannot say that any parent wants to hear his child speak of killing so freely, but that is the state into which we had fallen.
"'No, boy,' I said, and ruffled his hair. 'You will serve best by guarding your mother and sister.' When he attempted to gripe, I gave the look, the one that a parent utilizes to quash any juvenile rebellion, but then I did not wish to leave the situation at only that. With a gentler voice I added, 'Tsinna, it is just as brave a deed to protect what you love than to rush head long into battle.' He had a sica of his own, a plain one with the beginnings of some crude ornamentation that he had been gradually carving into the handle whenever he had a chance. I knelt before him and ran a finger tip along the work, noticing that he had been keen enough to design something that would not interfere with his grip. 'This is good,' I said, 'keep at it. I would like to see that finished by the time I come back.' He nodded along, still disappointed. Then I all but spun him around and with a little pat to his back sent him scrambling to the tower house.
"I then proceeded into the spiritual district and padded quietly along the line of the south wall, policing for wanderers who might make enquiries. I also had the stranger on my mind which continued to raise my hackles with the feeling of being watched, and I looked for him, too, all the while still not a little worried that my mental capacities really were deteriorating. Beyond the big temple, there were no guards posted since everyone remained focused on the western wall and the south stood above the steeper side of the mountain that did not need to be watched so much.
“Soon I heard a whistle mimicking a night bird, and I answered back. This continued until Scorylo and the others had crept to my position with compact loads of rope and empty water skins that we took up the steps to the top of the wall. We stripped off our armor down to our tunics and I rigged my falx to carry on my back for the climb down. We were perfectly capable of climbing in our maille, but upon reaching the most south-eastern corner of the wall, we realized that the moonlight made every little steel shingle gleam brightly, and that would not do for camouflage. From our vantage, just enough forest remained standing out of the burn area that could give us cover, so we dropped the ropes and prepared to go over.
"I went first, and just as I positioned myself, leaning heavily back with the rope in my grip and preparation to begin the climb down the wall, I looked up and saw the flicker of orange light and sparks rising from the distant town district. Not the simple camp fires
of the square gathering but larger, consuming flames that licked higher and higher from rooftops. The greatest, visible source of them came from the upper part of the tower house.
"My heart lurched up into my throat and I immediately pulled myself back into a stance upon the wall and pointed. The others turned and took it all in and then we heard the battle horns in the distance, coming from the western gate. No doubt the men's blood froze as did mine. These were Roman signals bellowing out coded orders, while from within the walls came the Dacian response. We all choked back streams of curses and I cannot tell you what all of the others were feeling, only that my twisted back immediately burned with new tension, my gut swam, and my heart slammed so hard in my chest as to almost make me dizzy. The tower house, and its uppermost floors, were rapidly going up in flames, so much that the boarded windows, meant to mask the occupants, were already burned through and belching out pillars of smoke.
"Ropes and water skins, we dropped it all and, in our frenzy, also abandoned our armor to rush off back down the steps and through the district. Already those citizens who had been worshipping along the path to the temple were crying out in horror. Some were running back toward the town with us, others stalling, perhaps in denial that this moment had finally come.
"All I could think about were my wife and children in that tower. My pace quickened, my peripheral vision dimmed completely as my focus deepened on only the path ahead of me as I ran full tilt back past the temple and onto the main path. My falx flopped awkwardly in its makeshift binding on my back and I even felt its treacherous curved tip graze at the back of my leg, but I kept going. I could hear the others' voices shouting in my path, their actual words incomprehensible to me. When I came upon the west gate back into the town, hundreds of citizens choked the passage. Whole families cried out to each other as they tried to get out, and I waded through, glancing quickly among the faces and calling out in hopes of finding Bendis and our own little ones, but when I did not see her, I continued to weave my way onward until the crowd thinned and I could once more break into a run.
