by Cass Morris
“Mennenius is only here because of me,” Vitellius confessed. “He’s younger than me, you know. Most junior of the Eighth’s tribunes; he’d never have been sent on a vexillation like this. But I asked for him to join me.” His lips twisted slightly, a tiny smile. “We met as boys.” He could picture the day so clearly, the bright sun baking the Field of Mars. “I was already halfway through training. He was so eager to learn. I suppose you could say I took him under my wing.”
“He is a man grown now, my friend,” Hanath gently reminded him, “and a tribune of the Aventan military, with that same training. He does not need your protection, and he has sense enough to think his way out of trouble.”
“You’re right . . .” Vitellius sighed. “You’re right, of course. If it hadn’t been so long . . .”
Hanath jerked her head toward the ladder. “You are lonely, Tribune.” She said it so flatly and without judgment that Vitellius could not be ashamed for having shown such a weakness. “Come and take lunch with me and Bartasco. We shall eat salt-fish and speak of how to grow crops inside city walls.” She leveled a commanding gaze at him. “We shall speak of things that can be done, things we have power over. It is always better than to dwell on the dread of fates beyond our control.”
That was easier said than achieved, in Vitellius’s experience, but he accepted the invitation.
* * *
Just after the guard on the half-improved walls changed, the cry of an Arevaci horn cut the evening air. The patrol, coming in from afar. Vitellius tensed, then recognized the sennet: one of aid requested, not an approaching threat.
Vitellius raced to the wall with Bartasco only a few steps behind him, both of them mounting the ladder with the swiftness of goats. “What’s going on?” Vitellius asked one of the sentries.
The young man pointed. “Riders returning, there, sir,” he said. “Looks like Sotir’s group.”
One of Hanath’s fierce maids, leading a group of cavalry. “They had gone—”
“West, I believe, sir.”
Vitellius exchanged looks with Bartasco, then gestured him forward. Sotir was barreling toward the gates; the others were still scarcely visible, coming through the tree line. She pulled her gallop to a halt within shouting distance, but her words were in the Arevaci dialect, too swift and desperate for Vitellius to catch all of it, despite half a year’s tutelage. He thought he caught the word the Arevaci used for “cohort,” though, and turned to Bartasco for confirmation. “What does she say? Did they find—”
Bartasco nodded rapidly. “Tribune Mennenius and the others . . . somewhere near the town of Libora, she says, and . . .” Bartasco’s face had gone pale, his usual bluff manner turned to waxen alarm. “There’s been trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
The horsewoman shouted something else, and in it, Vitellius made out Mennenius’s name. “She says something of Mennenius.” Vitellius caught Bartasco by the sleeve. “Mennenius, she says, and something else. What does she say?”
“She does not explain. She says you should hear it from the Tribune.” Bartasco’s brow creased; he was evidently having trouble following the scout’s scattered message. “She cannot tell, she did not see enough herself. You will need to hear the truth of it from Mennenius.”
“So Tribune Mennenius lives?” Flooded with gratitude, Vitellius released Bartasco and leaned out over the wall, peering as far to the Tagus’s southwestern bend as he could. Straggling up from the south was a cohort, though nothing like in proper formation. The lines were uneven, their steps shuffling, not the even, steady beat of a proper legion on the march. Some were even slung over saddles; others pulled on improvised sledges. This was an army routed, an army in retreat, and Vitellius felt a cold pit settling into his stomach.
“Sons of Dis . . .” Vitellius muttered, then shouted, “Open the gates! Immediately!”
Vitellius’s instinct was to dash across the field to meet the incoming men, but he knew the foolishness of such exertion. Instead, he sent more riders out to assist them, while he forced himself to stand in the gateway, Bartasco at his side, until they drew nearer.
Titus Mennenius, in tattered tribune’s garb, was at the front of the lines, as he should have been—but he looked a dead man walking. His hollow, haunted eyes could barely focus on the city he trudged toward. His face and limbs were dirty, caked with some strange muck, and he shuffled as though he had no strength in him. Once Vitellius could make out his features enough to identify him, he could hold back no longer. “Water!” Vitellius bellowed, breaking out into a sprint. “Bring water!”
“Water, yes . . .” Mennenius did not seem to see Vitellius right in front of him; his eyes drifted to the open sky. “We crossed the river at . . . at Libora . . . we thought that putting water between us would . . . but it didn’t . . .”
“Easy, easy,” Vitellius said, clutching his friend by the shoulders.
“Water . . . we needed . . . but it didn’t . . .”
Bartasco was shouting orders to his horsemen, and what centurions had wits left to them were shepherding the other fighting men within the safety of Toletum’s walls. “Mennenius, where have you been?” Vitellius asked. “We were—that is, we thought—Hellfire, Mennenius.”
Mennenius’s head lolled, and for a moment, Vitellius thought he was going to faint. He snapped back to himself, though, the fog going out of his countenance. “We were lost. Not on the land, I mean, but the land around us . . . We knew where we were, but could never get where we were going . . .” Mennenius frowned, as though he knew how little sense he was making. “Get me in, Vitellius . . . the sun is . . . I am overwhelmed . . .” And saying so, his eyes rolled back and he half-sank in Vitellius’s arms.
VI
“I lost sixteen men,” Mennenius said some time later, inside the tribunes’ quarters within Toletum’s walls. He had been scrubbed clean of what had turned out to be muck from the Tagus, then wrapped in a warm blanket. With that and some bread, Mennenius was regaining sensibility, but Vitellius had given up trying to ask questions. Mennenius was spinning the story around in his own good time, and no impetus from anyone would hasten the telling. “I don’t . . . I couldn’t even tell you why. It was like the will to live just got . . . got drained out of them . . .” He tore off another hunk of bread with savage eagerness as Bartasco came through the doorway; Vitellius gestured with a hand for him to come in, but stay silent. He was worried further interruption might put Mennenius off the tale. “I haven’t slept in days, none of us have,” Mennenius continued. “We—we were wandering. I don’t know how we got so far off-course.”
Mennenius’s hands came up and raked through his hair, then pulled slowly down his face. Bartasco stepped in quietly, closing the door behind him.
“I’m sorry.” Mennenius’s voice was much quieter when he continued. “I know I sound mad. I’ve been . . .” A heavy sigh. “It’s been a rough few days. At times I thought I was going mad for certain. Or that I’d died and been swamped in Lethe’s waters.”
“Breathe easy, friend,” Vitellius said. “I just need to know what happened.”
Mennenius’s eyes were still far away, and he spoke as though relating a tale that had happened to someone else. “The first few days were uneventful. We made it to the mountain line without encountering anyone. Then we heard . . . there was a scout, one of the . . . one of the Cossetans, I thought. He found us as we were marching back towards the river, told us there was a group of Lusetani a little ways to the west. So we went to see . . .” Another sigh, this one shaky. “It was their bastard war-king, Gaius; I’m sure of it. Him with the yellow eyes, that engaged you last year.”
Vitellius let out a slow breath through his teeth. “Sons of Dis. So close?”
Mennenius wagged a slow affirmative. “Not with his whole force, though. Fewer men than he brought to Libora last year. A small band, smaller than our cohort,
I think . . . but that didn’t matter . . .” A tremulous laugh burst out of him, startling Vitellius. “What need you men when there are demons on your side?”
Vitellius and Bartasco exchanged worried looks. “You don’t seem as though you’re speaking metaphorically, friend?”
Mennenius shook his head vehemently, then winced, as though the sudden jerking movement had pained him. He let his head fall into his hands, cupping his brow with his palm. “No, no, there were demons. True demons.”
“Demons?” Bartasco asked. “What demons fight for this Ekialde?”
“Shadows,” Mennenius replied, with a shudder. He dragged himself to sit upright again. “Shadows, following us for days, driving us into a mist . . .” His hand passed over his eyes. “I thought there was a mist, at least. Maybe there wasn’t. We were all so tired. The shadows followed us everywhere, always whispering. I couldn’t understand what they said, but I never needed to.” His eyes flickered over to the jug of water standing near Vitellius’s bed; Vitellius rushed to provide him with a fresh cup. Only after swallowing several gulps did Mennenius go on. “Howling of death and destruction, but with a feeling like . . . like having your family’s penates smashed in front of you. Your ancestors’ death masks trodden upon. A wrenching sense of sacrilege, that crawled up inside of us, like a poison of the soul . . .”
Bartasco gave a low hiss.
Vitellius turned to him. “Speak.”
The Arevaci leader’s face was grim. “I know whereof he speaks,” Bartasco said. “At least I think I . . .” His features twisted in consternation. “It makes no sense! No man in a dozen generations has raised them.”
“Bartasco?”
He huffed through his thick reddish-brown beard. “Akdraugi. Soul-poisoners. Spirits torn from the netherworld.”
“That, I can easily believe,” Mennenius said, draining the cup of water and reaching out for more. “It felt like having Pluto’s own breath on the back of my neck.” He shuddered, spilling the water; Vitellius steadied the pitcher, but Mennenius continued to tremble. “I’m sorry. I can’t . . . Sixteen men just . . . stopped living. Just gave up. Haunted to death.” He shook his head incredulously. “I watched it happen and I still can’t explain it. It was like . . . like something was feeding on each man’s anima . . . and some men were meals more quickly devoured than others. Sixteen men . . .” A shaky half-sob, then he looked up at Bartasco. “What defeats them?” Mennenius asked, panic and desperation written on his face, as though he could take Bartasco’s answer across the river and back in time, to save his fallen men.
“It varies,” Bartasco replied. “In some stories, song will drive them off. In others, pouring rain. But in most of the stories, what works best are . . .” He hesitated. “I do not know what word you would have for it, in Truscan. To us they are the besteki. Good spirits, where the akdraugi are evil. Protective of humans, where the akdraugi feed on them.”
Outside, the wind had picked up, clattering the shutters of the building the tribunes had commandeered for the officers. “Well,” Mennenius ventured, voice quavering, “where do we get some of the good kind?”
“I shall ask the magic-men of my tribe what they know of them,” Bartasco said, “and I shall ask the Edetani to do the same. But I can promise nothing.” He made a helpless gesture. “The akdraugi, these are stories to us now. Things the heroes of legends encountered, but I would no more expect to run into one than you would one of Ulysses’s cyclopes or Jason’s harpies.” Despite himself, Vitellius smiled; the long winter nights had been rife with storytelling, and Bartasco seemed a sponge for a good tale. “But the memory of magic-men is long. They may know something.”
Mennenius wrapped his arms around himself as shivers began to course through his body. “You have to find out. You have to.”
“You should rest,” Vitellius said, clapping his friend on the shoulder. “Bartasco, would you walk him to his quarters?” Something had been tickling at Vitellius’s mind as Mennenius described the akdraugi—something that made them seem not so foreign, not so inexplicable. Aventans, too, had haunting wraiths and protective spirits. Aventans, too, had magic to command them and magic to expel them.
Vitellius needed to write a letter to his sister.
* * *
City of Aven
Latona did not have an office or a study in her husband’s home. He would have considered that ridiculous. What use could a woman possibly have for such a space? But she did have a room off of the garden housing her loom, and she had had Merula set up a table and a small rack which she could fill with scrolls. It was not private, but if Herennius decided to snoop, he would only discover a small trove of religious and thaumaturgical texts, and Latona did not think he would guess at her true reasons for investigating them.
Nor would he suspect that Latona, in truth, had been barred access from these very papers. ‘I owe my baby sister a great deal.’ Aemilia Fullia had apparently convinced half the temples in Aven to deny Latona access to their libraries, but she had not thought to have them bar little Alhena as well. Before she left with their father for Stabiae, Alhena had gone to the Temple of Saturn and borrowed a number of dusty tomes. These were mostly histories of mages and their deeds, from epic tales of the heroes to mundane records of mages using their talents to help build aqueducts, revive crops, or dispense justice. Some other texts, Latona had begged off of Quinta Terentia, the Vestal Virgin. Her friendship with Quinta’s younger sister, Terentilla, had given her some insulation there from Aemilia’s spite. The Vestals had a carefully curated library—curated and, in some ways, limited. The official doctrine, the heart of the mos maiorum, dictated what could be found there. The mos maiorum set out how all things in Aven should be, not laws, but guiding principles and customs, based on the philosophies of the revered men who had founded the Republic almost five hundred years earlier. Latona knew how little that could sometimes resemble the way things actually were.
Few of the books were the practical treatises that Latona was hoping for. There had been a stray reference in one text that seemed as though it should have been expanded in another—but hours of searching had left Latona still unable to locate the source.
Absorbed in the texts and in her thoughts, Latona uncharacteristically lost track of who passed in and out of the garden. Usually her Spirit magic gave her a constant background awareness of other peoples’ presences, particularly when they were as familiar to her as the household staff. So it came as a shock when two soft hands landed on her shoulders and pulled her out of her slumped posture. “Mustn’t slouch!” came her older sister’s chipper voice.
Latona looked, instead of at Aula, over at Merula, who was on the floor nearby, midway through some complex series of stretches. “Aren’t you meant to be defending me from menace? How did she slip by you?” With a little grin, Merula shrugged unapologetically.
“Merula knows your darling and devoted sister would never mean you a moment’s harm,” Aula went on, as Latona twisted to face her. “Speaking of harm, you’re going to strain your eyes, you know, all these hours squinting in poor light.”
“I do not squint.” But she could hear the familiar anxious note in Aula’s voice, commenting on a little worry because a larger one was niggling at her mind. “I’ll find what I’m looking for, sooner or later. But in the meantime, some of these stories . . .” Latona shook her head. “It’s no wonder the Republic has turned towards limiting what mages may do. If even half of these tales are even half true . . . Mages who could hold fire in their palms, even create it out of nothing—” But as soon as she spoke the words, she winced, feeling the wrongness of them. “No, not out of nothing, out of the potentiality of fire. Others who could not just read but control the weather, not with our charms and implorations for rain, but with sea-tossing storms and blistering droughts . . .” She reached back to her desk, seizing a scroll embellished with a black border. “And this one! You wouldn�
��t think Earth could turn vile, but there are stories of ground-rotters, and this Ionian cult of Echidna, mages who wanted to be the mothers of monsters . . .”
Aula shuddered. “No, thank you. Birthing Lucia was quite trauma enough. I can’t imagine if she’d come out with eight limbs or tentacles.”
Latona smiled, grateful for Aula’s leavening presence, even if she had interrupted. No one recognized better than Aula that sometimes Latona needed interrupting, lest she fall too deeply into whatever had currently fixated her attention. She stood up, pushing tendrils of golden hair back where they had fallen from the simple coronet that Merula plaited for her on quiet days, when she didn’t expect visitors. “Yet in all of this, there’s so little on Spirit mages.”
“There are fewer of you,” Aula reasoned. “Didn’t the old Athaecans eschew the intangible elements entirely until the age of Teracles?” Latona nodded. “Well, there you have it. Nothing to write of, for so long.” She bumped her shoulder against Latona’s lightly. “And it’s not up to you to unravel the mysteries of the ages in a single sitting, you know.”
“I know.” She wasn’t sure how to explain the pressing need that had driven her to such intent study. The gods had plans for her, she felt sure, wanted her to use her magic to better purpose. ‘But how?’ The answer remained murky.
Aula put out a hand slightly behind her, gesturing her attendant forward. Not Helva today, Latona noticed, but a small fair-headed woman, who put a folded piece of paper into Aula’s hand. “A letter came for you,” Aula explained, passing it over to Latona. “From Alhena. I had one as well, though all it said was to give this one to you, because she didn’t trust sending it here, lest your husband meddle.” Aula’s lips twitched in amusement. “A directive you might give some of your other correspondents, come to think of it.”
