B007IIXYQY EBOK

by Gillespie, Donna

  When they were alone once more, Julianus continued, his tone resonant with warning, “I mean not to frighten you, but there is something you must know at once. You see, you are a slave still, in spite of all—only now, to that lyric-scribbling brute in the Palace. Nero is outgrowing his old tutor, Seneca—and when he outgrows people he kills them. Already he has poisoned his foster brother and suffocated his first wife in her steam bath, and I fear that someday soon, when he gathers up the courage and finds a way to make it look like someone else did it, he’ll murder his own mother. And Seneca, who has long been my friend, is not separate in Nero’s mind from me. Soon he will turn on us, if not this year, then the next, and if I am away or no longer living, you will bear it alone. You must learn to curb that stubbornness, or drag yourself and all our family to our doom. You must learn to flatter and to bend. And it is not, I fear, your nature to do so.”

  Marcus briefly met his father’s eyes, then looked off again, thinking it better not to say: Surely there were ways other than flattery to ensure the survival of those you must protect. Why cannot they be preserved with truth, as the philosophers suggest?

  Julianus saw the resistance still very much alive in the boy’s eyes, though settled now into a low-banked fire. And he found himself thinking once more of Archimedes’ prediction that one day the fate of the country would rest in his son’s hands.

  “You must. It is a greater lesson than any tutor’s. One day you will be the prow of the ship. One day you will stand in the Senate instead of me. All the lessons in literature and music and philosophy will not serve you so well as this one. Learn to bend. Or perish.”

  GERMANIA

  CHAPTER III

  IT WAS MIDSUMMER, THE HEIGHT OF the raiding season.

  The valley was sacred to Wodan, god of the spear. It lay in the wilder part of Chattian lands, where tawny mountain cats slunk over sandstone escarpments and scrub pines made a stubborn stand in sandy soil. The god’s sad, wise presence seemed everywhere—in the quiet, bold eyes of a fawn, the incantation of a brook that had dug its way into this valley for millennia, in the moody sky, which, to the south, was a fierce, joyous blue and, to the north, frowning with thunderclouds.

  Among the stalks of yarrow a hare hesitated, upright on its haunches. Its free forepaws seemed to ask a question. Its black eyes were fixed on everything and nothing.

  Nearby was another pair of eyes—these were steady, gray, and full of patience, and clear as the mountain pools whose striking clarity conceals great depth. They saw the hare and nothing else. These eyes belonged to Auriane, who had lived now through sixteen summers.

  She sat a dun-colored pony. One tanned arm drew back the string of a bow that Baldemar had made for her. As she took aim she imagined herself a hunting cat, aware only of the sun’s nurturing warmth, the fine movement of her hands on a weapon that, like a cat’s claw, seemed not separate from her body. Her hair was pulled back into a single careless braid matted with bark and leaf. It was closer in color to the coat of a chestnut horse than the many hues of blond so common among her people. Though her finely molded cheek and high, clean brow were a close copy of Athelinda’s, Auriane’s features were a sturdier rendering of her mother’s. She wore a sleeveless tunic of bearskin that made her appear one more furry predator of the wild. Strung on a thong around her throat was a Roman silver denarius.

  In her gamebag were three hares taken already. Auriane was glad of them; Hertha was less cruel to her when she brought home fresh meat.

  The flowery air of midsummer brought drowsy contentment, and she gave no thought whatever to raids. She had heard the gruesome tales told around winter hearthfires and knew this system of valleys was often used by their tribal enemies as an entry gate to Chattian lands, but she had the boundless confidence of a child who has never been grievously hurt. The name of Baldemar had always served better than any fortress, and no raiding band ever dared come near her family’s hall.

  In the moment before she let the arrow fly, she squinted, imitating Baldemar.

  An animal sense warned her to look up. She stifled a cry.

  At the rim of the valley where ground mist rolled down like smoke, blotting out the spires of pines, she saw one flash of red, then another—the deep blood-red of warriors’ tunics. And then she saw dozens of them, massed together as they ran, appearing, disappearing, moving swiftly into the heart of her people’s lands, where their rich fields lay, and their herds of sheep and cattle. She knew at once these were warriors of the Hermundures, their ancestral enemies from the southeast.

  A raid.

  Arrow was returned to quiver and she wheeled the pony around, giving him a hard kick with her heels. The pony, whom she had named Brunwin, lunged forward and settled into a choppy gallop, dodging thickets, hurdling fallen logs, losing his grip on the stony ground, running on a track roughly parallel to the raiders above. She knew she must outdistance them and sound the alarm before they reached the farmlands and villages. To do this, she must reach the ford in Elk River before them—which would not prove too difficult if the pony kept his pace.

  She leaned far over the pony’s bristly mane, holding back a raw cry of joy. She felt like a racehorse released, eager to test speed to the limit. Here was adventure that was not mere child’s imaginings. Always she felt a pull to be at the center of the fray, as if all life existed there. She would never go round a ditch or high wall if she thought she could send her pony over it. There was a strain of madness in the family, she often heard Hertha say, that skipped only Hertha herself. Baldemar had it in great measure and he had passed it on to Auriane.

  She felt, too, the brash pride of the young: I saw them first, and I will be first with the alarm. She called on Epona, goddess of horses, and prayed the heron feather affixed to Brunwin’s bridle would make him swift. It was, she thought, a cowardly time to strike—the most celebrated warriors of her people had not yet returned from their last foray, an attack on a detachment of Roman soldiers erecting a line of wooden watchtowers on the Taunus Mountain, which lay deep in the territories her people claimed as their own.

  The signal towers had been burned and the Romans driven off—though she knew they would return; they were persistent as horse flies. But the warriors had not broken camp because Wido—the second powerful chieftain of the tribe and her father’s enemy—delayed them with an endless dispute over the spoil, haggling over every last silver horse bit or ivory-handled dagger that had been taken. “He waits to see what I want,” Baldemar reported to Athelinda in a runner’s message, “and it becomes what he wants.” Because of Wido’s petty greed, she thought, her people’s fields and villages were left vulnerable, protected by the old, the very young, and the farm women whose knowledge of weapons did not extend beyond hurling pots and stones.

  Maid and pony shot through the deep shade of a stand of olive-gray beeches, galloping almost soundlessly over a sandy forest floor and into a muddy meadow divided by a melancholy line of willows. The path sloped steeply downward into Wolf’s Head Bog, and for the first time this place did not fill her with spirit-terror; she knew only the excitement of the race. Here nature’s corpse was laid out rotting. The brackish pools to either side of the narrow path were graves, crowded with the remains of generations of men given in the spring sacrifice or convicted of great crimes and drowned by the Assembly of the Moon. At night their spirits took the form of the fire that played over the water, the baleful will-o’-the-wisps, beckoning anyone who ventured close to join them in restless death. She whipped past the maternal bulk of the Initiation Stone, half hidden among tall ferns, where Athelinda had brought her for her ceremonies of womanhood; it was still stained with her first moon blood. Near it was a cluster of smooth, faceless wooden images of the goddess Fria, springing like mischievous mushrooms from the damp. Lady of the Bog, she prayed silently, protect me from the wrath of the living and of the dead.

  The pony scrambled up a steep slope and clattered onto drier ground. As they whipped past the tortured shape
of the Lightning Oak, she averted her eyes. In that corpse of a tree, her grandmother told her, were imprisoned the souls of all the wretches who let kinsmen lie unavenged. When she was still so young she was not allowed to ride alone, Hertha had brought her there and cuffed her until she memorized the words—“If one of our own is slain, I must draw blood in return, even if it takes to the end of my days. Vengeance is holy, it gives life to the clan.”

  As they struggled up the long, fir-clad rise, she judged herself close enough to the villages to sound the alarm. Taking up the cattle horn that hung at her belt, she blew three urgent blasts—the signal for a raid.

  And to her surprise, from ahead she heard an eruption of answering shouts. As she flashed past a break in the trees, she saw, far ahead of her, a second band of warriors, at least a hundred in number, just as they crowned the rise that concealed Elk River and disappeared. She felt a first spasm of fear—they would reach the ford before her, and she would be trapped on the wrong side of the river. She was a maid alone. They would cut her throat and pitch her into a bog for hunting in territory they claimed as their own. Or they would take her as a slave, and she would live out her life as some warrior’s prize, a miserable creature no better than his cattle or sheep.

  Then from behind her came still more warriors’ cries. A third band followed her. How came there to be so many? The three bands seemed almost to run in formation. The men behind were perhaps meant to hold the ford, or to serve as a reserve force. Something about this was sinister and wrong. Hermundures never raided in such numbers, nor with such foreplanning. And what war band would ever agree to follow another? It would bring too much shame. Among both her own people and the Hermundures, warriors fought all their lives for the coveted places at the head of the charge.

  Again she lifted the horn to her lips and blew three blasts, knowing as she did so she might be giving up her life in warning, for she signaled her own position. But life left little choice in these matters. The safety she would have won by silence was the safety of a niding, the strongest term of condemnation in use among the tribes, which roughly meant: “wretch who loses his soul through betraying his kin.”

  And this time she heard the answering horns of her people, carrying on her warning to the remotest parts of Chattian lands. The droning and trilling increased, moaning through the wood, sounding near then far, until the horns became so numerous they melted into one powerful disharmonious tone. Her spirit rose with the horns and she was seized suddenly with a fierce love of all this country. She felt her mind a great wing stretched out protectively over the land.

  Brunwin struggled up a path cut long ago through the scrub pine and at last gained the top of the ridge. She looked down. At first she saw only the gleaming serpent-shape of the river, molten in the sun. Then she saw them, three hundred and more, swarming in a dark knot, bristling with a thicket of upright spears. The sight was fascinating and terrifying at once, like coming upon a nest of wasps. Some forded the river in thin files while others milled behind. She pulled Brunwin to a halt, fearful they would see her.

  A slingstone slashed through the boughs from above and grazed the pony’s rump, searing flesh and bringing blood. Auriane looked up. A warrior left to serve as a sentry had climbed a pine. She watched, paralyzed by the sight of him, as he took aim a second time.

  Brunwin kicked out once, nearly throwing her over his head. Then he bolted. His belly low to the ground, with strenuous strides he flung her toward the busy ford. She clung to his mane, knowing bit and rein were useless now. Brunwin would not slow until he reached his own shed in the horse pens of the hall of Baldemar. Branches lashed her face. Dark patches of sweat appeared on the pony’s neck. Then they broke free, onto the wide, treeless bank of the river.

  She shut her eyes. They saw her. Sharp barking shouts were raised. With a grim innocence she thought—and so, death comes. Except for Hertha’s torments, life was kind and good. Why should anyone expect to live long?

  Her one hope was that they would consider a lone maid on a bolting pony not worth their trouble while greater plunder waited beyond the river. Brunwin had just enough wit left to know to stay away from them; as he galloped he edged to the right. Four of the warriors broke from the band, shouting and laughing in the tribal tongue, and darted across her path. One playfully cast a spear that missed.

  But a firm command in a strange tongue called them back. More surprising to her still, the four obeyed.

  Brunwin’s hooves broke the river into showers of crystal; as he lunged through knee-deep water, she heard bits of a shouted argument.

  “…a pretty wench…spirited and proud….”

  “This one’s mine, you lust-maddened brigand!”

  “Take one of mine if you’re so in need. We’re already found out—there’s no time.”

  “We’re doubly found out if you let her live. Get her!”

  Auriane gained the stone-strewn far bank. A spear was aimed in earnest. It ripped through the side of her bearskin tunic and tore flesh near her ribs. The pain was like scalding water but panic quickly numbed it.

  Then the pony’s right shoulder pitched sharply down. He struggled up with Auriane clinging to the side of his neck, skittered sideways, then settled into a lurching canter that was painfully slow. With a fresh seizure of dread, Auriane realized he had slipped on a stone and lamed himself.

  From behind came the sound of leather-clad feet slapping the ground in rapid rhythm, followed by splashing as they struck the water. She looked back. Three warriors raced each other in their eagerness to catch and kill her. Each was lightly armed with one short spear. Two had hair of dirty yellow, menacingly long, trailing in the wind. The third was smaller in stature with hair that was unusually dark. He pulled slightly ahead with a grin on his face that was fixed and triumphant like a skull’s.

  Fright froze her muscles. She cried out jumbled words to Fria, hardly knowing what words she spoke, and managed to lash the trailing end of the rein across Brunwin’s rump, but her hardy mount, as terrified as she, was already doing his best. The pony followed no path, struggling and crashing through the underbrush, while she bowed her head to avoid being struck from his back by low-hanging branches. For the moment at least, the thick forest rendered their spears useless. She prayed they would become discouraged and give up the chase.

  She looked back to see if they gained ground. They had. She felt her bones go limp. Her soul slid quietly toward death, not protesting, feeling a dull throbbing acceptance, a muddy sense of punishment deserved, dragging her down.

  It was meant to be. Was I not cursed from birth? Hertha knows it. Could I not always see my evil reflected in her eyes? The earth purges itself on me. My own cursedness coughed up these fiends. Why struggle? Why not slip from Brunwin’s back…and into the talons of the Fates?

  The forest broke; they burst in on the side path of a narrow field of einkorn wheat. Here she sensed human presences. On the field’s far side was a humble thatched house smeared with brilliant clay; it resembled a misshapen hornet’s nest. A crone named Herwig lived there with her thralls, the grandmother of a vast family scattered over all their lands. But now there was only evil stillness about; the house and all who sheltered there had taken to the souterrains—the farm’s underground storage pits—at the first sounding of the horns. Some, doubtless, hid in the field. She screamed out the old woman’s name, even though she knew her voice would not carry far enough. From the door of the thatched house a curious cow thrust her head. Auriane’s tears of hopelessness were blown off by the wind.

  One fair-haired runner dropped back, exhausted. The remaining two gained a horse length. She realized Brunwin’s staggering canter would take her through the great Ash Grove, a dread and hallowed place she would never enter willingly for fear of rousing the brooding spirit of the Ash. Hope surged again. Surely her pursuers would fear to follow her there.

  Another spear was cast. It arced above her, piercing the ground ahead of her, standing upright as a boundary pol
e. She looked back and saw that one of the remaining runners meant to come no closer to the dark grove; he slowed, then cast his spear before turning back. But the dark-haired warrior seemed not to know an ash from an apple tree. He ran with the frenzied energy of a hound closing on game, powerful strides pulling him steadily closer. His broad chest strained against the close-fitting red tunic. The muscles of his upper arms seemed ready to burst the warrior’s ring that encircled them. He meant to have her.

  With one hand she sought beneath her tunic for Ramis’ amulet of sacred earth, the aurr, and pressed it to her breast. She thought she felt it quicken and grow warm. Sacred earth, flesh and mind of Fria, keep me on the path to my fate, she prayed. But perhaps her fate was to die.

  When she came alongside the upright spear, she acted without thought, grappling with it desperately, then managing to pull it up, nearly unseating herself. From behind she heard a sputtered curse. The spear felt heavy and awkward in her hand. Athelinda had taught her spear-casting along with the many arts of the homestead, for a woman must be able to defend field and hall in time of raids. But the spears she used were lighter, and not iron tipped, and she cast them at nothing more fearsome than posts.

  I’ve enraged him—now he will kill me cruelly and slowly. But he has one spear—if he misses, I’m armed and he’s not. Surely he will think of that. I’ve never killed a man, only hares…. I cannot! Yet it is done every day. Will his ghost pursue me off the world’s edge? I know my ghost would pursue him. Does Baldemar consider these things before he slays? I will not live to ask him.