Hertha rose stiffly. “How dare you lay a hand on a free woman.” Her voice was a cat’s spit-and-hiss. “I’ll see you dragged to the lake and drowned beneath hurdles.”
With great effort Decius wrestled Auriane down and pinned her arms behind her back; then he eased himself on top of her, using his weight to hold her down. Above them a horse’s hoof tore through the brush; instinctively all covered their heads. Decius recovered himself first. Long ago he learned to cover panic with calculated glibness. “The minds of savages,” he said with elaborate amusement between gasps for breath, as Auriane thrashed beneath him, “I’ve given up trying to puzzle them out. By Jupiter’s thunderbolts, they fairly lust for the chance to throw themselves on each other’s weapons.” He added, grinning down at Auriane, “By the way, my pugnacious pet, that’s a sword, not a garden hoe.”
Auriane nearly succeeded in pitching him off, but he kept his seat. “My apologies, venerable old woman,” Decius said to Hertha, but chose a word that gave the meaning “venerable ogress” in the local dialect. Hertha withdrew as though Decius had flung poison in her face. Then she advanced on him, counting stick brandished. Decius went on easily, still grinning, “But surely you see, as long I’ve still got most of my wits, I cannot be expected to idly sit by while this battle-crazed filly reveals our hiding place.”
He looked down again at Auriane. “And as long as we’re on the matter, here’s another bit of badly needed advice. A smarter bitch would have picked up the spear, not the sword—then you wouldn’t have to get in so close.”
Hertha’s counting stick cracked against Decius’ back. As he wrenched about to fend her off, Auriane bit his hand down to the bone.
“Daughter of Hades!” Decius cried, shaking Auriane off as he might a rabid mutt. She got free and clambered up again, sword in hand. This time she managed to force her head past the wattlework frame before Decius recovered himself and got a secure grip on her ankles. But in the moment before he succeeded in dragging her back again, Auriane saw a scene that would shatter her peace forever.
At first she saw only the fire. It was some torch wielded by Giants, thrust into her face, searing her skin. A great yellow column of flame snaked as if to underworld music, unashamedly devouring the seat of the chief of chiefs as though it were any other dwelling, gathering all the more power because of the great spirit that lived in that hall. The furious yellow demon ate her cradle, her mother’s loom, her father’s high seat, the wood floor where she took her first steps.
Then she saw the Hermundures. It seemed all three bands converged upon this place—this must have been their destination from the start. They were a plague of red crawling things, swarming everywhere, seeming animated by one mind. Their dirty yellow hair swung free; their faces gleamed with sweat. Some rode wild-eyed horses with boars’ tusks affixed to the bridles; bulging sacks of treasure and rich pelts were slung from their shoulders. Others threw fresh brands on the fire or cast spears at the fleeing sheep, slaughtering them for sport. One led a captive thrall woman by her hair. Some sang drunken war songs while performing a clumsy loping dance. At a distance a group of them whipped a great herd of cattle amassed from several homesteads.
Then a low-rolling coil of dense smoke was chased off by a gust of wind—and she saw Athelinda.
Her mother lay on her back on the ground. Arnwulf was nowhere about. Athelinda’s hair had been torn from its plait and it fanned out about her like a silken coverlet. The linen shift she wore had been slashed open down the front with one stroke of a sword. Her bare legs were startlingly white against the dark soil. White legs, black earth—this was a picture that ever after would intrude on Auriane’s mind at unexpected times and she would try to hold the image, to keep at bay the memory of what she saw next.
One of the warriors approached her mother on all fours like some stealthy wolf; then he lowered himself slowly over her limp body. A hard knot of nausea formed in Auriane’s stomach as she realized he meant to lock together with her as animals did. Her mother’s legs, pale as bleached bone, and the warrior’s, tawny and muscular, were pressed together. He sank into her, making her flesh his flesh, stabbing at her center, befouling the temple that was her mother.
Where were the gods? The demon-warrior’s mouth was fastened to her mother’s neck and Auriane imagined he sucked the blood from her, drinking in her nobility, taking the elixir that would give him the luck of all her ancestors. He would leave her a husk, with nothing left in her but his poison seed.
Auriane struck out, blind and crazed as a dog with the mouth-foaming disease, her mind shapeless with rage as she raked rigid fingers over the ground and grabbed at roots. She longed to put out her eyes, to snuff out every torch, to stamp out all life and to return to chaos. She hated all weakness, even Athelinda’s.
The sight melted her mind into a new shape. If her mother was prey to whatever comes, then so was she. Readiness for battle would follow her even into sleep.
Decius was braced for her struggles, his hands tight about her ankles. Gradually he dragged her down once more. Then exhaustion overcame her and she collapsed next to him in a limp heap. Though it ceased to be necessary, he kept a secure grip on her.
Hertha’s eyes were glassy as though she would not touch the world more, even with her sight. She gazed with a vaguely accusing look at the torn place in the wattlework hurdle, as if it were a living thing responsible for their plight.
For long moments all was still in the souterrain. At last the shouts above became more infrequent and they knew the raiders retreated, ebbing off like a storm tide, leaving sad wreckage in their wake. Finally there was only the roar of the fire and woeful silence.
Auriane drew herself up by force of will, pushing Decius away when he tried to help her climb out.
The bodies of animals were strewn everywhere as if blown about by a powerful wind. The hall of Baldemar was a raging furnace. Auriane ran over broken crockery and fell down beside her mother.
She covered Athelinda’s naked legs with her cloak. Her mother turned her head weakly, and her lips moved. Auriane felt she leapt from bottomless cavern to sunny meadow. Her mother lived.
She pressed her cheek to her mother’s, shaking with hard sobs, not realizing she moaned aloud, “I should have come…I could have saved you…I am cursed!”
From behind her she heard Hertha. “Auriane.” That voice was a serrated blade sawing at Auriane’s heart. “Do not touch her. She must be cleansed by sacrifice.”
Auriane looked round. Thusko stood near Hertha, hiding his face in her cloak. The boy was unharmed. But Arnwulf lay lifeless in her grandmother’s arms. The warrior who attacked her mother, she quickly realized, must have first hurled the child to the ground, and to his death.
Auriane tore Arnwulf from Hertha’s arms and turned round, fearful Athelinda would see him. She must not know yet, Auriane thought. Let her be stronger before she knows.
She crushed Arnwulf to her chest, as if her body’s warmth might restore the small body to life. There was so little difference between those eyes shut in sleep and in death. It could not be. The mercilessness of the day was unending. She sank to her knees holding him, and seasons might have passed full of unvoiced shrieks of fury, and pleas to the gods to give her back her brother, her home, her childhood.
She was aware that Decius paused, lingering behind the other thralls, watching her for a time. She had no words for him. And she knew vaguely that behind her, Hertha was slowly, deliberately unbraiding her hair, while uttering a prayer commonly spoken during rites for the dead. But Auriane cared for nothing more in the world. Her mind was reaching for her brother’s soul and finding only emptiness.
As the sun sank, flaring at the tops of the pines, twelve Oak Priestesses from the temple-lodge below the Village of the Boar came soundlessly from the forest. These priestesses were skilled medicine women, come to see who lived and who needed their ministrations. Fearful pity showed in many faces. Their long hair, never cut in their lives, were so man
y lustrous manes of bright gold, dark gold, chestnut and sienna, nearly sweeping the ground. The bronze sickles, strike-a-lights, multiple knives and balls of crystal slung from their belts made a delicate music. They looked at Hertha with alarm, whispering purposefully among themselves. But they dared not interfere with a woman of her rank.
Hertha stood facing the flames, palms outstretched, her hair loosened and streaming down. Auriane in her misery made nothing of this.
The Oak Priestesses flocked around Athelinda. Thrusnelda, their silver-haired first priestess, had tears in her eyes as she smoothed the hair from Athelinda’s forehead. Then four of them gently lifted her and laid her on a straw mat. They meant to carry her to the Oak Lodge, where they would heal her with herbs and ritual magic.
They took Arnwulf from Auriane with difficulty; her arms were locked about him. He must be prepared for the rites of cremation and the urn burial of his ashes. Thrusnelda tried to get Auriane to follow her, but she could not move. Her soul was cold and heavy as a standing stone. She sat very still, fascinated by the fire.
“Daughter, there will be wolves,” Thrusnelda said, all intrusive benevolence as she put her padded hands on Auriane’s shoulders, sheltering Auriane with her motherly bulk. She smelled of the thousand herbs dried and stored in her lodge. “This ground is unhallowed, and night comes. You must come with us.”
Auriane gave no sign she heard. “Auriane,” Thrusnelda tried again, gently still, but with more urgency. “Your grandmother prepares to do a thing you should not see. Come with us now, I beg you, in the name of the great ghost of the Oak.”
“What can I see more horrible than what I have seen already?” Auriane said then. “Let me be, please. Wolves will not come while the fire burns.”
“I knew your mother and grandmother as babes and I do not know what is best?” Thrusnelda allowed herself the smallest display of irritability. Then she shrugged. “Stay then, and come when you are ready.” The old priestess left bread and mead for her, then removed her own cloak and put it about Auriane’s shoulders. Four of the holy women then lifted the mat on which Athelinda lay and bore her off.
After a time Auriane could not help but notice Hertha. Her masses of dove-gray hair collected about her then unfurled like some flag of surrender as she began walking with grave, measured steps toward the blazing hall. Her face was rigid with purpose.
Auriane realized she meant to walk into the flames.
The sight thrust Auriane back into the world. She leapt up. “No!” Her cry was a long, forlorn howl.
Auriane ran until she was abreast of her grandmother. She thought the raging heat would melt the features from her face. She could not bear another death.
She seized Hertha’s arm, but her grandmother recoiled and fought her off savagely. Hertha’s hair lashed Auriane across the face.
“Your touch fouls!” Hertha cried out. “Shadow-walker, stand off from me!”
“Grandmother…despise me if you will, but stay with us. Our kin have lost too much already on this day.”
Auriane was ashamed of her quavering voice, but she struggled on. “There is no greater sign of ill omen than the death of a mother. In doing this, you harm Baldemar grievously and give aid to Wido. At least, think of your son!”
Hertha looked at her, those sallow eyes nearly emptied of life. Gusts of heated wind filled her linen dress and caused it to dance lightly like some frolicksome ghost. Her lips were parched; that voice was the hissing sigh of a bellows. “You know nothing of life and death and harm. The gods have fled from this hall, ignorant child, or these calamities could not have come to pass. I do not wish to live on without honor.”
To her amazement, Auriane found her fear of her grandmother suddenly vanished. It was as though this single day drove her from childhood, and she saw Hertha as she truly was: not august and terrifying, but a brittle, bitter girl grown old, to whom life was a series of punishments alleviated only by occasional opportunities to inflict punishment on others.
“Grandmother, you desert us all. Your answer to our weakness is to weaken us more,” Auriane cried angrily over the roar of the flames, dimly astonished at her own presumption. “It is wicked of you, and cowardly. Honor can be reclaimed. You know Baldemar will avenge this, swiftly as thunderclap follows lightning. They murdered his son! They outraged his wife! He will lay waste to their whole country.”
A lethal light flashed in Hertha’s eyes. “And who will avenge him, when he dies by a kinswoman’s hand?”
“What are you saying? Who has said these things? What kinswoman?”
“Arnwulf’s murder can be avenged, but no one in all this Middle-world will be able to avenge Baldemar’s. For who can take vengeance on their own? It is the greatest evil that can be laid on a clan, for vengeance cannot cleanse it. What passed today is the first sign of this curse.”
Auriane sensed the beast that had tracked her all her life was poised to spring.
Hertha went on with triumph in her eyes, “He will die by your hand, Auriane, and so it has been foretold.”
“I cannot believe such loathsome words come from your mouth! Do you not see how I love him? Athelinda does not love him more!”
But her grandmother was sealed once more in her tower of silence. Hertha wrestled free of Auriane and resumed her processional walk toward the burning hall. Auriane followed for a time, vigorously shaking her head, her voice a shriek.
“Grandmother, no!” she repeated until she thought the heat would boil her blood. Hertha never slowed. Her step seemed almost eager, as though she joined a fiery lover. She was a demoness whose will was stronger than fire.
At the last she was a wriggling black thing against molten gold, more worm than human, and to Auriane it seemed she danced in delight. A sense of doom settled over her as she watched Hertha’s form swaying, thinning, thickening in the blast of heat, rippling like an eel under water.
Auriane felt her chest collapse. A savage guilt battered her heart, as if she pushed Hertha into the fire herself. So that is why she despised me always, Auriane thought. But why is she so certain I will commit a crime too wretched to name that she walks into flames?
Auriane retreated from the heat and returned to the place where her mother’s blood stained the ground. She felt herself tied to the tail of a dragon, lashed first one way, then the other—first her mother, then Arnwulf, and now this—and with this last blow she felt all the struggle run out of her. The sun seemed to wane in grief as she fell among the potsherds, tumbling into lurid dreams where elves and giants danced on the corpse of her family, a world where only fire and the sword were real.
CHAPTER IV
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, WHILE THE HILLSIDES still smoked from the raiders’ fires, Witgern and twenty of Baldemar’s Companions galloped noisily into the yard. Where the hall of Baldemar once stood was a charred and glowing midden, hotter than a forge; here and there a living flame still stirred, seeming to taunt them. The young Companions rode round it, staring in dazed disbelief.
The Hermundures have gone mad, Witgern thought. How had those slinking foxes summoned the mettle to maul a mighty aurochs? Surely they know that when Baldemar punishes them he will be a scythe leveling ripe wheat.
One of the young Companions, fearing the fiery hall was a sign from the gods that all who served Baldemar were cursed, stole off alone into the wood and used his bridle reins to hang himself from a pine.
Finally Witgern saw Auriane. The sight tripped his heart. She lay curled on her side, asleep or dead in the shadow of a watering trough for kine. The others saw her, too, but they kept a discreet distance so that Witgern could approach her alone.
Witgern was tall and strongly made, with thick red-gold hair that settled at his shoulders, and morose blue eyes in an earnest face that was clean shaven. It was the face of one who might compose songs when he was alone, a countenance that made it difficult to believe he had performed the bloody deeds attributed to him. But they were true enough. Though Witgern had seen only twe
nty-four summers, he alone vied with Sigwulf, a seasoned warrior, for the coveted position at Baldemar’s right hand in the charge. His wolfskin cloak was fastened with the tusk of a boar that had fatally gored four warriors before Witgern brought it down alone. His horse’s bridle was adorned with the bronze medallions of two Roman cavalry Centurions he slew in a single foray—a feat Baldemar himself had not matched. But Witgern was shrouded in a stubborn melancholy that mystified his fellows, for it seemed there was no gift of the Fates he missed: His father’s herds were second in size to Baldemar’s, and his mother’s fields were nearly as vast as Hertha’s. He knew a different tale for every day of the moon; he could down nine horns of mead and still stand upright, and rarely did he lose a spear-casting contest; he even somehow managed to win consistently at dice. And beyond this, Baldemar intended to grant him the greatest gift he could give—his only daughter.
Two spotted dogs edged close to him, fangs bared. Witgern beat them back with a barrel stave and knelt down beside Auriane.
His first thought embarrassed him because it did not seem it should be his first: Cover her! They should not see my wife-to-be in this state, bare of her fine ornaments, and her clothes shredded by dogs. Is my great prize still alive? How Sigwulf would rejoice if my one chance of a kin-tie to Baldemar were torn from me.
He put a hesitant hand to her throat to feel for her pulse. She lives. He felt a wild rush of relief, followed by a giddiness he was certain was love.
That summery innocence. No wonder Wido wanted her in his family more than he wanted a thousand rings of silver. But this wonder belonged solely to him.
He tore a bit of cloth from his own tunic, dipped it into the water of the trough, and gently wiped the blood from her face.
Look away, you rogues, and do not despise me for having the great good fortune to love the woman to whom I am to be married. Do not think I don’t hear your thoughts: Witgern carries on like some coddled prince who drinks wine from fountains. Love’s a luxury only the pampered peoples of the south can afford.
B007IIXYQY EBOK Page 9
