by Cass Morris
Shortly after the water clock showed the third hour of the night had passed, Obir heard thumping footsteps rapidly approaching the door.
“Captain!” One of the boys, still a year or two away from manhood, Esquiline born and bred, burst through the door. All heads snapped toward him, except for one man who was too deep in his cup to notice. “It’s happening again. The insula above the apothecary!”
Obir was already on his feet. Ebredus as well, snapping out of his meditation, but Obir waved a hand at him. “Stay here, in case there’s more trouble!” But he grabbed his whistle off its peg as he pelted out the door, blowing out a summons: two short blasts, then a long. ‘On me,’ the signal demanded, a military order that Obir had instilled in all his employees. Two young men loitering outside scrambled to their feet, and others would follow.
It was one of the larger insulae in the neighborhood, five stories high, with a wine shop, a shoemaker, and an apothecary on the ground floor. Obir knew the place well, and its people. Like most insulae, it was home to a variety of citizens: well-to-do merchants and even an equestrian on the lower floors; artisans in the middle; laboring freedmen and women or newcomers to the city and their families crowded into the smallest apartments at the top of the building.
He heard the shrieking as he rounded the corner. A crowd had gathered in front of the building—some of them tenants who had already fled, others who had come out from other buildings to gawk. “Is it fire?” someone shouted as Obir dashed by.
“No!” he called back, praying it wasn’t a lie. Fire was a greater terror than any other in the city.
Or so he thought, until he raced into the atrium at the center of the insula.
XXVIII
Few lamps were lit at this late hour, and the moon was not in the right position to shine down through the opening in the roof. The air inside the insula had a strange chill, entirely at odds with the stifling summer heat and uncomfortable on Obir’s sweat-damp skin. ‘This is not natural,’ he thought, as the ice crept down his spine and knotted somewhere in his gut. ‘Not at all.’
A pair of women were huddled at the bottom of the stairs that led to the upper apartments. One was petting the other’s hair, murmuring soft words, but at Obir’s approach, her head dragged up. “They’re upstairs! They’re on every floor!”
“They?” Obir questioned, but the woman’s lower lip trembled, and she shook her head, curling back in toward her companion. “Go, go on, get out of the building.” Obir gave her a slight nudge as he went to the stairs. “Go to the collegium tavern, you’ll be safe there.” He stopped on the first landing but waved the men behind him to continue upward. “Check all the apartments, get everyone out, take them to the tavern if they have nowhere else to go.” He went to the nearest door, beyond which he could hear a low keening mixed with hysterical sobs.
Obir had seen much in his nearly forty years, wonders and terrors, mundane and magical. He had seen a wildcat kill a viper, right at the foot of his bed; he had been in the midst of a battle when enemy mages called up a sandstorm; he had seen men die, in howling agony and in silent despair. Nothing had prepared him for the scene inside that apartment.
A man was on his knees in the middle of the room, with a woman behind him, clutching a hiccupping toddler to her chest. The man’s hands were outstretched toward a hovering gray shape, like smoke made of silver. It was almost human in form and size, but indistinct. From where Obir stood, its features were like an image in a cheap and badly polished mirror, sometimes dark and sharp; sometimes distorted and blurred. “Please . . .” the kneeling man begged. “I have honored your memory . . . all the rites . . . your tomb . . .”
Obir averted his eyes from the shade and stepped up behind the woman as quickly as he dared, not wanting to alarm her more than was necessary. Still, she shuddered when he placed a hand on her shoulder. “Come, madam,” he said, when she turned tearful eyes to him. “Come, out of here. You’ll be safe outside.”
“Wh-what did we do?” she blubbered, even as she allowed Obir to lift her to her feet and guide her toward the door. “W-We’re g-good people!”
“I have no doubt, madam. Go on downstairs.” At the door, he heard footsteps on the landings above, some padding rapidly down the steps. Obir turned back to the man and the specter within the apartment. “Good man, come away.”
“Why have you returned?” the man howled, but not at Obir. All his attention remained fixed on the silvery-gray mass swishing through the room. “Why?”
Obir laid his hand on the man’s arm, more firmly than he had with the woman. “It will not answer you,” he said, and once again had to hope he wasn’t lying. “Come away from there. We will send for a priest and—”
“But why is he here?” The man finally looked at Obir. Tears tracked down his pallid face, and his eyes were wild with terror. “We did everything properly! Why would he not be at rest?”
“I do not know who you mean, my friend,” Obir said, starting to pull on his arm. “But if you come—”
“Her father!” he shouted, flapping a hand at the shade. “Dead six months, and now here? Why?” He sucked in a wet breath. “His restless shade has returned. Don’t you see?”
Against his better judgment, Obir looked up at the specter. At first, he saw only the amorphous features he had before, man-shaped but vague. Then, as a heavy coldness settled in Obir’s gut, the shape solidified, stretching taller—taller even than Obir, with long limbs and hair in tight knots. To Obir’s eyes, it appeared not as the weeping woman’s father, nor any other Truscan-born soul, but instead as someone he knew as well as he had ever known himself.
His brother Nisso, as he had been in life. But no, not as in life. Nisso had had a cheerful spirit. Never had he looked so dour, so mournful. His eyes had never shown such despair. Never, except in those last moments, when he had watched Death’s approach, blood and viscera spilling from the gash in his stomach.
Obir hardly heard the sobbing man now. The shade of his brother did not speak, but Obir felt as though he heard him anyway, asking why, why Obir had let this happen, why he had not done more to save him. Utter anguish swelled in Obir’s chest, a sorrow that had lived at the bottom of his heart for many months and now rose like bile, expanding as though it might choke him.
“I am so sorry, brother.” Obir’s hand moved of its own volition, reaching out toward the shade. Obir liked to think himself strong, a man carved of oak, but gazing upon the image of his brother, he felt every crack, every flaw in his soul. Every weakness, every failure. “So sorry . . .”
Dimly, he heard the other man being dragged from the room, less gently than might be. Then someone seized him, rough hands gripping above his elbows. “Sorry ’bout this, captain.” Obir did not fight it; he allowed himself to be led, but his eyes lingered on his brother’s smoky shade until he had been hauled out onto the landing.
* * *
Obir took a moment in the atrium to gather himself, splashing water on his face. His men had done well, clearing the building. Some six or seven shades had manifested, it seemed, and from the scattered cries and nervous chatter he overhead, everyone had seen the dead. Some recently departed, others long gone. Often members of the same family saw the same shade, but not always. Some, as with Obir and the man he had tried to help, looked upon the same smoky substance and witnessed entirely different shapes.
‘Dark mysteries.’
As soon as he stepped out, a fleshy woman with glossy dark hair set upon him: the mistress of the building. “What has happened here, captain?” Her tone was half-begging, half-demanding.
“I do not know yet. But I vow to you, I will find out.” He repeated that, louder, for the benefit of the gathered crowd, then added, “Those of you who do not have somewhere to go, come with me to the collegium tavern. We will care for you there.” It would be somewhat crowded, but perhaps that would be for the best. Comfort could be found in a t
rial shared.
As the herd started moving, either dispersing into nearby homes or trudging along to the tavern, Obir found one of his boys, a russet-haired youth of sixteen, and caught him by the elbow.
“In the morning,” he said to the lad, “send to the house of Aulus Vitellius—and to the house of Numerius Herennius. Tell the Lady Aula Prima that Vatinius Obir would impose upon the assistance she offered, that her family would stand in place of my patron’s.”
“And at the house of Numerius Herennius?”
Obir’s gaze went skyward for a moment, searching out a friendly star. “Tell the girl Merula that she was right, damn her, and to bring her mistress as soon as may be.”
* * *
Camp of Legio X Equestris, Outside Toletum
“General!” Hanath dismounted before her horse had come to a complete stop, swinging easily down to the ground and into a brisk stride toward Sempronius.
He had been walking the perimeter of the camp, speaking to the centurions, getting a sense of the men’s moods. There had been deaths attributed to the Lusetani magic, men who had been too deeply affected by the demons and who let terror and melancholy consume them. Many cohorts were growing restless, needing action. It strained the nerves, being so close to an enemy but not able to strike them. Harrowing though their skirmishes were when the akdraugi manifested, though, they were not fearful. Confidence in their leaders had not yet waned—but Sempronius knew he was running short on time.
He’d sent patrols further afield, searching for allies to the south and east. More cavalry could be helpful, but more importantly, he wanted the opinion of every friendly magic-man they could find from Toletum to the coast. If the Lusetani had revived ancient magics, perhaps someone in another tribe at least knew enough of their methods to determine how to counter them. Hanath often joined the patrols, since she knew many of the local chieftains, by reputation if not directly.
She always reported to Sempronius promptly, but her haste and stony expression concerned him. “What is it, Lady Hanath?”
Her dark eyes glanced left and right, and Sempronius immediately turned to fall into stride beside her, angling toward the command tent. “Send for Felix,” he called to one of the junior tribunes as they passed.
Once they had gathered in the tent, Hanath shared her bad news. “It seems your fellow praetor has finally bestirred himself to action,” she said, acid lacing her tone. “He has responded to the people of Corduba, who have long implored the legion in Gades for protection against brigands and slave-traders.”
Felix’s brow furrowed. “The Lusetani haven’t struck that far south. Not since digging in here, at least.”
“Not Lusetani,” Hanath said, shaking her head. “Counei, perhaps, or others, not allied with the Lusetani but merely taking advantage of the chaos.”
The very chaos Aven was supposed to be quelling into peaceful prosperity. Sempronius felt the needle, even if Hanath had not intended it.
She continued. “Praetor Rabirus, in search of the raiders, found a village. A Tartessi village.” Her lips pressed thin; there was a shine on her cheeks, and the muscles in her throat looked tight with the effort of speaking carefully. “The people of Corduba have had no complaint with the Tartessi, but that did not seem to matter to the praetor. He attacked without warning, and when he had won his cheap and unjust victory, he let his men fall to rapine and pillage. They were not our enemies, but Rabirus treated them as he would the Lusetani.”
Sempronius and Felix were both silent a moment. Felix exploded first. “That damned viper!” he snarled. “May all the fires of Tartarus and all the tortures Pluto can invent be insufficient for him, the sun-blasted worm—”
First cold, then heat ran through Sempronius’s blood. Pillage happened in all warfare, of course. The legions considered spoils part of their fair pay. Sempronius had never thought sacking towns to be the wisest course, even in the defeat of legitimate enemies. His natural abhorrence for waste rose up at the notion. When the time came, he intended to deal as fairly as he could with the Lusetani, without risking the ire of the legions or his Iberian allies. That Rabirus would have deliberately attacked an unaffiliated town, when they were in such sore need of local assistance . . . ‘Did the man not know what he was doing, or did he simply not care?’
As Felix began pacing, still swearing with his usual creative force, Sempronius looked Hanath straight in the eyes. “How many dead?”
“Half the village, it sounds like. The other half raped or brutalized. Their fighters were taken unaware and swiftly dispatched. Some few escaped and raised the alert in neighboring towns. Others they believe taken as slaves and sent to Corduba, or maybe all the way back to Gades.”
“Who is ‘they’?” Sempronius asked, voice low. “Who told you this sorry tale?”
Hanath settled back, crossing her arms. “Other Tartessi, who are heading this way to avenge their kin.”
“This way?” Felix asked. “Why not—”
“Oh, no doubt some will set their sights on Rabirus’s forces,” Hanath said, her voice faster and her accent slightly thicker in her anger. “The foolish ones, and no doubt Rabirus’s legions will cut them down like so much barley. But many are heading north, crossing the plateau from the Baetis to the Tagus, intending to join their strength with the Lusetani.” She flicked her fingers. “Rabirus did not seem to mind which Iberians he slaughtered, so they do not mind which Aventans they kill.”
Sempronius released a breath in a slow hiss. “I cannot undo the evil Rabirus has done. I will make what amends I can, when opportunity arises.” Hanath’s silence conveyed what such a vow would be worth, to those who had lost all. “How long before the Tartessi reach us?”
Hanath calculated. “Twelve days if they are swift and the weather favors them. But they will have to cross two mountains, or else cut wide to the east, and cross the Anas River.”
“And get to this side of the Tagus, as well.” He passed a hand over his brow. The gods had not yet seen fit to help him puzzle his way out of the trap he was in. He moved to his desk and braced both hands against it, bending over the map. “It has become even more essential that we break this siege. We can’t let the Tartessi come around and hit us from behind. If we can break and scatter the Lusetani before they arrive, then I might stand a chance at reasoning with them.”
“It would show their faith in the strength of the Lusetani less well placed, at least,” Felix said, scuffing irritably at the ground.
Sempronius raised his eyes to Hanath again. “I cannot thank you for the nature of this news, Lady Hanath, but I am grateful to you for bringing it to me. I am sorry that Praetor Rabirus is . . . the man that he is.”
Hanath’s fingertips drummed against her bicep. “It would have been too much to expect all Aventan generals to be as you and Gaius Vitellius,” she said. “War makes monsters of many men. I have seen this more than once, in other lands. Do not fear that the Arevaci will be so foolish as to forsake you for another man’s errors—but it comes to me, General, that we have also not discussed how things will be, between Aven and Iberia, once this war is won.”
Sempronius nodded solemnly. “I know. I know, and we will, I promise you.” He had thought much on it, when his mind had not been churning over their impasse. Aven would owe much to their Iberian allies—and not all of Aven would want to be gracious in repaying that debt. He had plans for their recompense, and he was trying to lay the groundwork in his messages to Marcus Autronius and other friends, but he could not be sure of success. Not yet. “When we have redeemed your husband and the rest of Toletum, we shall have a lengthy discussion.”
He received a tight nod in acknowledgment. “First, we have a battle to win. Somehow.”
* * *
City of Aven
“My husband believes me when I say I have a religious duty to fulfill, even in the dead of night,” Vibia said, fluffing her
crimson mantle back from her shoulders. “And Ama Rubellia, I presume, may come and go as she pleases. But what on earth did you tell Herennius?”
“He thinks I’m at my father’s,” Latona said, bending to adjust her sandal. “And my father, of course, thinks I’m at home. Anyway, it’s not the dead of night.”
“Yet.”
“Yet.” The three mages had convened at the tavern of the Esquiline collegium just before sunset. Sextilis was winding to a close, but the sun still lingered long hours, and the air remained hot and thick even as its light faded away. All three had dressed as simply as possible.
Latona had only had time to finish one mantle so far. It hadn’t needed to be crimson, really; Latona could have woven the charms out of wool dyed any color. It felt right, though, to choose the same red that the men of the legions wore, the same red protecting her brother and her lover in far-off Iberia. By common agreement, Vibia had donned it for this evening, saying, “We’ll all be better off if this works and you don’t have to try and pull me out of the abyss in addition to fending off whatever fiends are plaguing these people.”
When dark fell, Vatinius Obir and a cordon of his men escorted the ladies to the afflicted insula. Vibia and Rubellia had both arrived with maids, but they remained in the tavern. Rubellia’s girl, born on the Esquiline herself, accepted this cheerfully, but Vibia’s attendant sat stiff and uncomfortable in the corner. Merula, of course, had refused to be left behind, for all that she seemed to get along with the collegium brethren just fine.
