Decius was little impressed by this; it seemed but a collection of lucky chances. The accomplishment that most filled him with pride was that he was known throughout the fortress as the only man of his cohort who never paid for love. He had no need to fall back upon the tepid embraces of the camp followers with their tick-ridden blankets and battered tin cups rattling with coins; he had his pick of the shy, doe-eyed maiden daughters of the canabae, those settlements of native craftsmen that always sprang up in the vicinity of a legionary fortress. He took them in the open fields where the brisk northern wind burned the skin, and often as not they declared their great love for him and followed him back to camp. That, he maintained, was success in life, but the army stubbornly refused to give decorations for it.
And then came the day that Fortuna abandoned him. He was overseeing a detachment of the Fourteenth engaged in laying logs for the base of a rampart of a fort under construction in the valley of the Wetterau, gateway to the limitless forest northeast of the Rhine. At dusk, when his men were exhausted from heavy labor, a horde of Chattian savages came boiling from the forest; Decius’ unit was a tiny craft swamped in a barbarian flood tide. The men not slain at once were dragged off to be nailed to trees as a sacrifice to Wodan, their blood-loving god. He was never certain why he was spared, but thought it might be because he had a bookroll in his pack. The barbarians northeast of the Rhine seemed to worship the alphabet—or at least, their own distorted form of it which they called runes from their word runa, which meant “secret”—and he surmised that his pitiful, stained copy of Martius’ Art of Siege Warfare caused them to take him for some sort of holy man.
He unrolled that book now, letting the all-too-familiar sentences conjure up comfortable memories of the safe sameness of his days in the army, waiting while his boiled calf’s head broth heated over a small yew fire. After a moment he sensed he was being watched. He looked up.
There she was again, the daughter of their chief, the fierce little vixen who had bitten him. Auriane. He felt a clutch of excitement. Often she came to stare at him, but never had she crept so close as this. She stood motionless before the crumbled place in the stone wall, a sorrowful figure almost wholly concealed in a gray-brown hooded cloak.
He made a show of ignoring her and returned his gaze to his book. Yet he found himself wishing her closer, trying to draw her with his mind. You are lonely, he admonished himself, to want the company of one of their women. Bury your wants—she’ll not come any closer.
But when he stole another glance, he saw she had halved the distance between them. He was surprised at the pleasure this brought. This maid was the only one of his captors with whom he felt any kinship whatever, perhaps because she alone exhibited curiosity, a rare quality in a savage. She almost seemed to study him in the manner of a Greek naturalist—a curious reversal of common roles, he reflected once—here, nature studies man, instead of the other way about.
Careful, Decius, he cautioned himself. She’s food to a starving man. Anyway, their women are notoriously chaste.
Normally he thought of this little, for the Germanic women in general did not interest him—if women they could be called, these she-beasts of the north who preferred torturing prisoners to decking themselves in colored silks. They were mostly sturdy beasts of burden on whose broad faces he could not imagine powder or paint. They provoked a powerful uneasiness in him—perhaps it was the lack of womanly compassion in them, or that every one had the taint of sorcery about her, or that their nature truly was as violent as the men’s. Tales abounded of women taking bloody vengeance with a sword when they found their menfolk slow to act. But this maid might have passed for a woman in fact, if someone would teach her a little grace—she walked like a soldier on a forced march—and coax her to comb the brambles out of her hair.
He heard the snap of a branch. Now she was very close, but still animal-silent, approaching with the timid persistence of the red foxes that often crept up to his campsite. Her head was slightly raised; she seemed to be taking his scent like a beast. Her eyes were bold and hurt. And so, he thought, the savagery of her fellow savages has shaken her a bit and reduced our haughty barbarian princess to a little beggar for scraps of—what? What did she imagine that he, a lowly thrall, could give her?
He felt sharply for her in one moment, but tender words would not come out of Decius; life had never taught him to speak them.
Her long silence began to annoy him. “Greetings!” he called out in her tongue. “Do you speak? No?”
She cocked her head slightly, struggling to pick out the words concealed beneath his Latin accent.
“What schemes, I wonder, drive the daughter of Baldemar to abase herself and have dealings with a thrall? Could it be you’re drawn by the enticing aroma of boiled calf’s head? Or maybe you liked the taste of my flesh so well you’d like to try a bite of my other hand?”
She cast her eyes down, full of hurt-animal wariness.
“I am sorry for the bite,” she said at last. Her voice suited her, he thought. It was milky and low, venturesome and vulnerable at once. “It is the god’s will you stopped me. I could only have done harm, and I could not have helped…anyone.” Anyone instead of my mother. Decius supposed the unobstructed truth brought too much pain.
Slowly Decius mastered his surprise. He expected anything from her but remorse. Finally he held up his swollen, purplish hand and replied clumsily in her tongue, “Never mind about it, it’s healing well, and all is forgotten.”
She came forward then and held out a silver arm-ring. “I give you this ring in payment for the bite,” she said gravely. “Fria, Wodan, be you witness that I have paid.”
Hastily he got to his feet to accept her gift—to hesitate would give greatest insult. Her gesture was a startling departure from tribal custom. Never in all his time in this country had he seen anyone give a reparation gift for an injury done to a thrall. Thralls were not a part of the human community. This was, he realized after a time, because they were without families, and a person’s measure of humanness in this place increased with the greatness and number of his kin. But for reasons known only to her, she chose to treat him as a man of the tribe.
He quickly mustered the polite response. The Chattian words felt knotted and strange in his mouth. “May your family grow strong as the many-branched Oak. May your cattle increase and your fields be blessed, all your long life.”
He then brought from his hut the length of rough wool that served him as a blanket and spread it on the ground for her before the fire. She hesitated a moment, then set down her burdens: a basket full of some weeds with white trumpet-shaped flowers—thornapple, he guessed, for some witches’ brew—and a mysterious, bulky, linen-wrapped bundle. Then she warily settled herself before his fire.
He took out a leather flask of brownish wine acquired with great difficulty, through barter with a fellow Roman slave who dwelled in the village. Then he settled himself beside her and held it out to her. “For you, I bring out the best wine in my cellars! Drink in friendship.”
Auriane looked guardedly at the flask, then exuberantly seized it with both hands, put it to her lips and began gulping it down as though it were a horn of mead.
Table manners, Decius mused, were another nicety of civilization that stopped abruptly at the Rhine.
Before he could stop her, she drained half the flask. Her face reddened and she spat much of it into the fire. Laughing and shaking his head, he took it from her, while she regarded the flask as if it were a hound that snapped at her.
“It’s unwatered wine, my feisty princess—did I forget to tell you?”
She frowned, smiling tentatively, only half understanding. Decius lapsed into Latin when he did not know a word in her tongue, and his manner said, “If you don’t understand, it’s your own problem; do not expect me to explain.”
“Like this.” He demonstrated, taking slow, measured sips.
She took it again and imitated him with the barest hint of mockery. Somethi
ng in that small show of pride she mustered in spite of her sadness reached the rarely touched tenderer parts of him.
The wine seized hold of her with numbing swiftness and she suddenly sat still. He saw the sharp point of sadness in her eyes dissolve somewhat, to be replaced by a softer, more open look. She seemed not so far from him now. One of the unsung properties of wine, he observed, is that sometimes it can cause the chasm between different races of men to seem more like a fissure.
She looked at him. “Decius,” she said, slowly pronouncing the syllables of his name as if it were three words. “I have great numbers of questions for you about the magic of your people, and…a gift to ask of you, if you will give it. In return, I’ll give to you what gifts I can, anything you desire, and if I can’t get it myself, perhaps my father can. Please, do not laugh at me.”
“I laugh not at you, princess, but at the world. I like a bartering spirit! But I hardly see what you can give a man like me. I’ve got a roomy hut large enough to turn around in, and all the stringy half-rotted deer meat I can eat, and field mice for companions at night…and fine rags to wear, plus plenty of water through the roof. I want one thing from you, my saucy maid, and I know you can’t give it to me—to get out of this pesthole.”
“You are unhappy here.”
“Curses, you’ve found me out. I thought I’d concealed it better.”
Auriane made a quick snatch at his bookroll and examined it closely, turning it round and round.
“Grimy paws off that, you little vixen. That’s my one book—”
“These are words? Just as we are speaking? Tell me what is spoken here.”
“Slow up there, frisky filly. It’s about…dull and complicated things that young maids and barbarians don’t need to know anything about.”
She held him fast with that bold gaze; he felt like a snared animal. Something in those eyes, their mixture of lucidity and pain, brought a sudden silence around the heart.
“I am no young maid. I am a woman full grown, who celebrated three whole years ago the time of her first woman’s blood.”
He managed to suppress an expression of mild surprise and cover it quickly with a wan smile. Fissure became chasm again. What woman of his own people would speak of such a thing, let alone speak of it with pride? Pride, and something else—it was as though she expected him to be intimidated by knowing this.
“Pleased to know that, I’m sure, and a million apologies. Now that that’s settled, I’m—”
“You are mocking me.”
“You’ve got to learn to ignore it, pet. I don’t know any other way of talking. The army’s crawling with crude roughened beasts like me. Now let’s hear those questions before the wine runs out and our senses return.”
“Your people have the most powerful sorcerers on earth. I want you to teach me what words you utter over your weapons…what songs you sing before battle….”
“If I had powerful magic, would I be here? I’d be flapping out of here on wings. I might stop first, though, to bewitch you into my bed. You’re infinitely more appealing than the field mice.”
Her dead grandmother would have wanted Decius drowned in the lake for speaking those words. Another maid of her age and rank would have at least sprung up and haughtily stalked off. But Auriane was a huntress close to her quarry; she would not be distracted.
“If it pleases you to be rude, I will endure it. You are Roman, after all.”
“Rude? That’s a soldier’s flattery, little pet. Forget this gabble about magic—we invoke our gods like anyone, but where war is concerned, it’s live or die by your wits. We employ only dull, practical good sense.”
“Then why do your javelins fly farther than our spears, though your people are no stronger of limb than ours? And why do the javelins sink into our shields so they are useless and we have to throw them down? And what are those bolts that fly at a distance no man could hurl them…and what are those monsters that tear down cities?”
“I’ve a mutt fastened to my leg that won’t let go.” He laughed softly. “These are all things that men make, Auriane, and nothing more. To a man who eats roots and berries, a plow is magic, I suppose. I’m not sure the javelins do fly farther—they’ve greater penetration, perhaps, because there’s a thong attached at the point of balance which causes them to twist and spin as they fly. Why am I telling you this? They sink into your shields because the iron of the barbed point is left in a soft state, not hammered. And if you want an explanation of catapults and siege engines, I’ve already had too much wine. You’ll have to come back tomorrow.”
Undeterred, she asked in fast succession how close together legionaries normally fought, if they always attacked all at once, how many men they normally left in reserve, how cavalry was placed, and about the siting of camps. He was stunned by the thoroughness of the questions. He found that answering brought him pleasure and a sense of pride in his homeland, for the questions themselves were a form of tribute. He did not worry that he might be revealing secrets to the enemy, for he counted this maid a precocious oddity—barbarians in general had little interest in foreign ways and weapons, and he believed her fellows would show no inclination to put this knowledge to use.
She asked as well questions about Rome. Was the Emperor truly divine? If so, why did he suffer death? Where were the Roman women? She had never seen one. Why did they not follow the men into battle to bind the wounds, take up fallen spears, and help when a battle hung in the balance, like a normal woman? Had they no love of their country? Romans ate lying down, she was certain of it. Why did he eat sitting up? And was it true they all lived in stone houses grand as small mountains, through which they trained rivers to run?
And as he listened to these tireless questions, without his realizing it, without her intending it, some part of him adopted her. Subtly, surely, his soul was allying itself with hers, pulled close by the earnest eagerness in her voice, the guilelessness of that pride mingled with womanly confidence, the glint of coltish playfulness in her eyes, the way she carefully selected her words, as though the fate of her world rested in getting them right. For too long now he’d had no one to care for but himself. Now he yearned to shield her from the precariousness of life; it drew him from his own misery. More and more he felt a thought not fully voiced: She might get into trouble without me. I’d best watch her. It was a tribute as well: He sensed she was capable of getting herself into prodigious amounts of trouble.
Finally she hesitated, then said with great gravity, “Decius…I have something to show you.” She began opening the linen-wrapped bundle. He guessed she’d needed to test him first and make certain he treated her questioning sincerely before she risked revealing to a man outside the tribe whatever potent treasure was within. When she shook the contents out onto the ground, Decius gazed, puzzled, at an ivory-handled dagger, a roll of papyrus, a heavy leather belt and the broken-off head of a spear.
“What sort of man was this?” she said, her voice faintly hushed. “He came with the raiding Hermundures—if Hermundures they were. He chased me for a long time and made a great effort to kill me.”
Decius was remote in silence for a long time. He first picked up the dagger, looked at it briefly, and tossed it down. Then he unrolled the fragile papyrus. She saw his face contract into a frown of mild disbelief.
“It’s a map,” he said at last. “By the paps of Medusa, what next? The savages will be turning ballistae on us. Something’s not right in this, I say.”
“What is ‘map’? Is it something to work a curse on us?”
“No, nothing of the sort. It’s just a…a picture that tells a man who knows nothing of your territory where to go. A thing no warrior of any of your tribes would need or have because he would know your land like he knows the backside of his plough-ox.” He took up the belt with its tall, graceful letters carved into the leather, its heavy silver buckle inlaid with black niello. “By the tail of Cerberus, what’s this?”
She sensed it had many messages fo
r him but for a frustrating length of time he said nothing. Once she thought she saw a fleeting look of mournful regret cross his face.
“Tell me again…. He chased you, you say?”
“Why do you look so, as if you know him? He is dead. I killed him with a spear.”
“You…?” His response began as a question and ended as a statement soft with disbelief—“killed him.” He looked at her then, and was aware suddenly of the length of her still growing limbs, of the bow casually slung from her side, the hilt of a dagger just visible through the opening in her cloak and those strong hands, well capable of using it, of the implacable soul just visible beneath a veil of shyness, and he shuddered within. What was she? Woman or demoness? Had this grim smoking land conjured up Atalanta, the hunting maid of ancient tales?
“Auriane,” he said gravely, “had he roughened skin, here, along the jaw, as if from a childhood pox…a healthy head of black curly hair, and strangely light eyes?”
Slowly she nodded. “Decius, how come you to know a warrior of the tribes? Are these things signed somehow on the belt?”
She watched impatiently as Decius sat in troubled silence.
Abruptly he turned away from her. “Already, Auriane, I have spoken too much. If I speak on, I will be a traitor to my people.”
“To your people?” The air about her seemed to delicately spark. “What have your people to do with this? Anyway, my people are your people now. You are a thrall and you belong to us, and it is to us that you should be true. You are vile—you tell me just enough to goad me to madness, then fall silent. I’ll not be played with so!”
She got drunkenly to her feet, half stumbling, then righting herself with exaggerated dignity.
“Auriane, I beg you, stay. I’ll tell you anything else you wish to—”
“May Hel’s hounds take you. Sit on your silence. It is time for me to depart. I’ll behave as if we’ve never spoken.”
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