by Cass Morris
As she rounded a bend in the path, the stench of rotting flesh assaulted her nostrils, yet that was not chiefest among her concerns. Something else, beyond her usual five senses, cried out a warning. Then, on the far side of the outcropping, she saw it: a desiccated animal carcass hanging from a carob tree, its entrails heaped beneath where it dangled from a branch.
Aula gave a little shriek when she saw it, then clamped her fingers over her nose. “What in Jupiter’s name could have done that? A—A leopard?” She almost sounded hopeful. There weren’t leopards in these woods, of course, but considering the possibility looming over them, it would have been the preferable answer.
Latona’s sensibilities were less delicate than Aula’s, and she drew closer to the grisly scene. The carcass was not merely slung over a branch, but tied there with blackened rope. The entrails were piled over tree roots that had been deliberately exposed, dug out from the safety of the ground. “No. No, this was done intentionally, and by human hands.” She pressed a hand to her stomach, trying to settle rising nausea.
“Do you think—” Alhena began, her voice thin and piping. She paused, swallowed, and tried again. “It’s so near our home. Do you think that’s . . . intentional?”
“Maybe.” Latona’s eyes drifted from the carcass to the tree itself, and what she saw concerned her. All along the branches, the bark was cracked and peeling away from the sapwood. Here and there, leaves had shriveled, crisped to black at the edges, but the effect was sporadic; some were still a verdant green, almost over-bright. The joints where the branches met the trunk were starting to split. Left much longer, the whole tree would slough to pieces.
Latona forced herself to take another step toward the gruesome spectacle—and immediately reeled, her magical senses recoiling from what they encountered. Like poison with sharp edges, like suffocation in a thundercloud. An arm curled around her waist. Alhena, steadying her. Latona’s hand went to her throat, memories swirling through her, memories of feeling drained, bled dry of all her power. “I recognize this.” She could barely scrape the words past her lips; her throat had gone dry, her lips numb.
“Oh, no . . .” Alhena sighed, but her voice seemed far away.
Hunger. Endless, yawning hunger, too great to ever be satisfied, always demanding more, more, more. “I recognize this magic, the signature. I remember it.” Her power, splayed out as a delicious morsel next to an eager abyss, ready to snap her up. A voice in her ear, telling her to burn, because the brighter she did, the better meal she made for the gaping maw. ‘I will leave you behind, a colder corpse than most.’ The fear, the terrible certainty that this was how she would die . . .
“Here, with me.” Alhena’s voice, gentle in her ear even as her arm was tight around Latona’s middle. Then Aula pried her fingers away from her neck and grasped her hand: softer flesh than Alhena’s, but no less fierce. “With us.”
Latona thought about her heartbeats; about her blood, the same that ran through her sisters’ veins; Aula’s pulse in her palm, beating in time with her own; Alhena’s lemon-clean scent. ‘Here. With them.’ With a shuddering breath, Latona hauled her mind and soul back to the present moment. ‘You are not dying. You did not die, there in that warehouse, and you are not dying now.’
As her head cleared, Latona was able to distinguish the nuances in the Fracture magic. It wasn’t precisely the same as Scaeva’s: hungry, destructive, but not as fixedly predatory. She raised her head, shaking her hair back from her shoulders. “I recognize the magic, not the signature, quite. But this is absolutely Discordian magic.”
“Yes,” Aula drawled. “We gathered as much.”
“It’s so near the villa,” Alhena said. “Do you think it was—was meant for you? Or us?”
“I don’t know.” Latona’s body sagged. Fighting off the ill effects of the Discordian charm had enervated her limbs. “It seems too much to be coincidence, and too little to be intentional. If it were Scaeva’s signature, I’d be sure it was meant as a message to me, or a threat.”
Alhena’s hands went to her head, her fingers smoothing back her brilliant red hair. “I saw so many shattered hills. If each one of them means something like this . . .”
“Then surely someone else will have noticed,” Aula said. Her brisk tone, familiar and reassuring, put some strength back into Latona’s blood. “We can put our ears out, see what the locals have encountered. Then we decide what to do next.” Her arm slid around Latona’s shoulders, steering her back toward the path. “For now, we are going home.”
“No!” Latona cried, her body lurching back at the horrific remnants. “No, I have to fix it—”
Aula jostled her sharply. “Latona, look at me.” Latona obeyed. “Do you know how to fix this, right now?” Though she hated to do it, Latona shook her head. “No. I have every faith that you can figure it out, my honey, but I don’t think you can manage it here, before dark.” Her rosy lips twisted in a wry smile. “And I certainly don’t want to find out what Merula would do to me for letting you try.”
“Aula’s right,” Alhena said. “We need more information. Then . . . then maybe we can fix it.”
Warring instincts pounded in Latona’s chest. Half of her wanted to flee as far as she could from the Discordian sacrifice, and the other half yearned to set things to rights. The Spirit of her nature was terrified, revolted, and indignant in equal measures; the Fire was simply angry. “Very well,” she said. “Home. But—give me a moment.” Latona turned back toward the grove, sending her Spirit magic out again. ‘Whatever you are, wherever you came from, this is not over. I will be back, to cleanse this place.’ A malevolent pulse sent her skin prickling up, but she glared at the grisly display. ‘That is a promise.’
IX
Toletum, Iberia
Even a man who knew little of walled cities could see that Toletum’s defenses had been freshly built.
“No,” Ekialde said in a whisper, peering closely upward. He had come by night, and without torches, bringing only a handful of his war-band, his most trusted warriors, along with him. They moved quietly, slowly, creeping toward the city like a wildcat on soft paws. They kept well out of the circles of light cast by the Aventan torches, and they kept a cautious eye open, in case the Aventans sent out patrols. He did not want to engage the Aventans this night. He wanted to learn. “Not fresh-built, but improved upon. Do you see, Angeru?” He shouldered his second-in-command and pointed halfway up the walls. “They’ve built on top of the old walls, and extended them all the way to the river bluff.”
This Aventan commander was a clever man, and he had not wasted the winter. Nor were those walls their only preparations. The tree line had been cut back, so that the Lusetani warriors could not leave the shelter of the forest without coming within arrow-range of the city. The Aventans had tried to dig trenches across the field between the walls and the tree line, but only in patches. The ground was too rocky, and in most places, the Aventans had only managed shallow ditches. Not enough to stop a charge, but enough to slow it, forcing attackers to negotiate a jagged path toward the city, all while stones and arrows rained down upon them from the walls.
‘No doubt such a clever, careful man will have prepared his stores as well as he prepared his defenses.’
Another commander might have been daunted. Ekialde only smiled. He still did not understand what had protected his Aventan opponent from his magic the previous year. Bailar had been so certain the charm would work, and that Ekialde would have an ensorcelled Aventan leader under his control. ‘Bailar is not infallible.’ As his wife was ever reminding him. Precious Neitin, she begrudged Bailar his every failure nearly as much as she resented his successes.
Ekialde was willing to be tolerant. Much of Bailar’s work was experimental. He was attempting things no other magic-man of the Lusetani, or of any other tribe, had reached for in many generations. There would be some errors, as when a child first learned to us
e a bow.
This, though. This, he was sure would work. He had already seen it enacted, against the straggling legionaries they had harassed along the river. More difficult, certainly, to bewitch a fortified town of two thousand souls, but more worthwhile, as well.
“Fear not, my friends,” he said. “Our magic-men have beaten the path for our allies from the netherworld, and no walls can keep them out.”
* * *
Central Iberia
As the crash of swords rose like a tide on all sides of the cart, Corvinus decided he most definitely did not enjoy warfare.
He had not been with Sempronius when the dominus had served in Numidia. Junior officers didn’t bring servants with them on campaign, so Corvinus had no prior experience of the battlefield. ‘Or the battle road, as the case has proven to be.’ Long, hot marches interspersed with brief periods of violent action: thus did the Eighth, Tenth, and Fourteenth legions cross central Iberia. Since they had turned south, away from the Ebrus River and down toward the tributaries of the Tagus, few days passed without some contact with the rebellious tribes—not the Lusetani, they had learned, but their allies, the Vettoni. The legions rarely had trouble driving them off—in fact, the Vettoni seemed perfectly eager to retreat after a little blooding—but it slowed their progress, and it shot ripples through Corvinus’s usually placid nerves.
He rode in one of the carts of the command train, behind the vanguard and the commanders but ahead of the main body of the legions. He hadn’t yet decided if this was preferable to riding farther back with the baggage train. The commanders attracted plenty of attention, but they were also better protected. The baggage train relied on the rearguard, and those were mostly local auxiliaries, not the relentlessly drilled Aventan legionaries.
Corvinus’s cart had high sides and a roof, for which he was particularly grateful whenever he heard a sling-bolt crack against the wood. All too easy to imagine what that stone could have done to his skull. Outside, horses shrieked, in outrage or in agony, but the cart remained motionless. The mules which drew it were difficult to impress, unlike their high-strung cousins. Corvinus had developed an affection for the glumly suffering beasts.
He wasn’t alone in the cart. Apart from the trunks of the legion’s paperwork and the staff officers’ gear, Corvinus had the company of a pair of clerks, both slaves owned by the state, and the mule-driver, a grizzled man from Tarraco. One of the slaves was muttering prayers in a ceaseless whisper. Irritating, but Corvinus couldn’t blame the fellow. ‘At least I chose to be here. After a fashion.’
For no one else would he have made the choice. As Sempronius’s steward, he could have remained behind in Aven. There, he had a comfortable house, predictable duties, and the company of his handsome lover, Djadi. But the dominus needed an attendant he could trust. ‘Not to mention a cooler-headed adviser than Autronius Felix generally proves.’
The bond went back decades. Sempronius had seen the marks of magic on Corvinus even before Corvinus himself had known his gifts for what they were. The next day, Sempronius had arranged for Corvinus’s manumission under the mandate of the tabulae magicae, though Corvinus had been only a boy of ten and Sempronius still a stripling lad, not yet wearing the toga of manhood. It had necessitated a trick, to reveal Corvinus’s magic without letting on that Sempronius knew about it thanks to his own hidden gifts—but he had let Corvinus in on his secret, the only person in the world so trusted besides Lady Vibia. Then he insisted that his father pay for Corvinus’s education, so that a learned man would grow out of the enslaved child who’d been born in a muddy Albine farmhouse.
Only the bone-deep loyalty such actions inspired could have brought Corvinus to the Iberian hinterlands, to sit in the dark while fury-driven raiders harried them on all sides. ‘Exile in Abydosia was a seaside vacation by comparison,’ he thought, as one of the horses shrieked. Yes, they’d had to flee Truscum with assassins on their heels, and he hadn’t enjoyed the sea voyage, but life in Tamiat had swiftly developed a routine. One knew what to expect from the days, the people, and the politics.
That routine, of course, had bored Sempronius to distraction, but Corvinus did not have so restless a soul. He liked a day where you woke up and knew, for a certainty, that a horde of bearded maniacs wasn’t going to try to murder you. ‘Admittedly, that was mostly because the Abydosians were far more interested in murdering each other.’ The Vettoni tribesmen, alas, had no such inward-focused interest.
Corvinus wished he had light by which to inspect a map, but of course they had closed all the cart’s shutters. He had been trying to determine if there were any patterns to the attacks. They came at all times of the day, sometimes just as the legions were setting out, sometimes when the sun was highest and hottest, sometimes late in the afternoon when the men’s vigor had begun to flag. Corvinus’s inner sense of order told him there had to be some underlying reasoning—something that would lead them to the Vettoni stronghold, or provide information about their scouting tactics. ‘And,’ he thought, as the song of swords and shields beyond his wooden barrier seemed to reach a crescendo, ‘having a map to focus on would be a pleasant distraction.’
As soon as the attack had begun, it ended. The sound of horns was muffled by the cart’s walls, but Corvinus’s ears had grown practiced in listening for the Vettoni call to retreat. In its wake, the shouts of the fighters and the banging of weapons faded away. Then, the “all-clear” from the Aventan horns, far closer and louder. The mule-driver kicked open the flap at the back of the cart, resolutely returning to duty, and Corvinus followed him, desperate for fresh air.
* * *
The Tenth Legion stopped to make camp in a large meadow between two strips of spiky trees. The clearing did not look natural, dotted as it was with small stumps where saplings had been cut away. The vexillation from the Eighth, perhaps, had stayed here back in the autumn. It was not large enough for all three legions to camp together, so the Fourteenth had gone on an extra mile to another clearing, while the Eighth lagged a little behind.
Corvinus helped to set up the command tent, swiftly unpacked Sempronius’s essentials, then went to wait at the camp’s main gate for any approaching messengers.
As anticipated, a rider came from each of the other legions, reporting on their status. Corvinus thanked the messengers and sent them to get water for themselves and their horses while they awaited any replies from Sempronius. Then, as the Tenth’s rearguard trooped in with the auxiliaries, Corvinus sought out a gangly, wide-eyed youth called Eustix. “Any birds today?” he called out, before the young man had even hopped down from his cart.
“Yes, sir, yes!” Eustix reached into the sack at his side, pulling out several sealed parchments. “Parvus and Paullus both came back today, dear things, I think they must’ve gone through a storm—”
Sempronius had hired Eustix in Nedhena. The boy’s father was that town’s greatest Air mage, and the son had inherited the talent. Like Marcia Tullia, Consul Galerius’s wife and the foremost Air mage in Aven, they had the ability to direct letter-bearing birds to the appropriate destinations. Sempronius might have had to lay out more money, had the youth not been so eager to leave home and see some adventure. As it was, the payments were not so much wages for the boy as a bribe for his father’s indulgence.
Through the young man’s power, Sempronius had birds making daily circuits to Tarraco, to pick up any messages delivered locally. Others went all the way to Aven, bearing regular reports of the action in Iberia and bringing missives back, so that Sempronius could receive news from the Senate in a few days rather than the half-month or more it might take a ship-borne letter to find him. An expensive venture, but Sempronius considered it worthy—and Corvinus was not sorry that the messages originating in Aven all passed through Djadi’s hands. Every packet included a personal note for Corvinus, even if it was nothing more than a few lines: ‘Be well. Be safe. I love you.’
Eustix prattled
on as he pulled the letters together. “Wouldn’t it be a fine thing if they could talk to us?”
“Talk?” Corvinus echoed, a pale eyebrow lifting in confusion.
“The birds!” Eustix grinned, holding out two packets. “If they could tell us, ‘Oh yes, it was raining in Maritima yesterday, so I flew a little further north.’ I think that would be fascinating.” Still smiling, he leaned back toward the cart, wiggling an affectionate finger at the nearest bird.
“Indeed.” Corvinus withheld any other commentary. ‘Strange boy.’ The lad was pleasant enough, dutiful to a fault, and had given no complaint during the occasionally harrowing journey south, but he was, undeniably, a bit odd. Sometimes Corvinus thought he rather resembled his birds, with dark eyes set slightly too far apart, a beakish nose, and a tendency to chirp without prompting. ‘They say the magic shapes the mage, sometimes,’ Corvinus thought, glancing through the papers as he walked toward the command tent. ‘I wonder if Marcia Tullia ever tries to converse with her birds.’
When Corvinus entered the tent, he found Sempronius already there, sharing wine with Autronius Felix. “I don’t like having to release the Lacetani without reinforcements to take their place, but I don’t see any way around it,” Sempronius was saying. “They have their own people to defend—and our supply trains.”
“They’ve promised safe passage, then?” Felix asked. Sempronius nodded, rubbing at his chin. “Well, let’s hope gratitude for being released keeps them honest.”
“We’re entering Edetani territory. Tribune Vitellius wrote of them as solid allies, quite helpful.”
“If we can find any,” Felix said, with a little snort. Every village they’d encountered in the past two days had been either pillaged by the Vettoni or abandoned in anticipation of such treatment.
