This jolted him to attention. A raven, a doe? She must be the very maid he read of in his father’s records, whose name brought to mind the tangle of the wild vine. Auriane. She still lived.
Who are you, wild and brazen spirit not even fearful of your own gods? How came you to have the mettle to take up our weapons against us when none of your people have ever done so?
He realized then he was not going to reveal that this was Baldemar’s daughter, that he was withholding information from the Emperor in order to protect her. Have I taken leave of my senses?
“My advice is to leave the matter strictly alone,” he replied emphatically. “The scorpions, doubtless, have been sunk into the deepest bog as an offering to their god Wodan. We’ll never recover them. And the maid’s power resides in her people’s grief—once these other measures are carried out, it will cool her fire.”
“Well enough. then, all this gives us some place to begin.” Vespasian then added in an offhand tone that obviously masked a grave concern: “Oh, yes, there is one last little matter, before I dismiss you.” He pulled a bookroll from a wall niche.
“This was published under your name.”
Julianus took the bookroll by its gilded umbilicus, saw the imprint of Tryphon’s bookshop on its parchment label and himself listed as author, then unrolled it just enough to read its opening columns. It was a clumsily vicious, mocking diatribe against the imperial government that mentioned Vespasian by name.
“I did not write this, nor did anyone under my instruction, I swear to you by my father’s ghost. Were I to attack you, which I would not, for truly I hold you the wisest ruler since the god Augustus, I would not do it with such…crudeness and lack of all common wit.” He felt a sickness within.
This was no less than an attempt at murder.
Veiento. This is his work. His vengeance has begun.
“Such is your nature, Julianus, that I believe you,” Vespasian replied. “You’ve got a determined enemy out there. I would watch him closely.”
GERMANIA
CHAPTER XIII
IN THESE TIMES NO ONE REMEMBERED peace.
The Emperor Vespasian’s offer of payment in gold was brought by Roman emissaries from the fortress at Mogontiacum to the Assembly of the New Moon on a bitterly cold night in early spring. The people gathered at the Assembly were bewildered by this unaccustomed show of remorsefulness. Some seemed inclined to accept the wergild, among them Geisar—for the Roman Governor meant to hand the coin over to him for distribution among the people, which would strengthen the First Priest’s power over the chiefs and give him an opportunity to hold back a portion of the gold for himself.
But for most, anger was not assuaged. Many had seen the blackened dead of the five villages, where babes in arms and armed warriors were slaughtered alike. And the Roman emissaries, even as they made this concession, managed to sound like princes chastising subjects. When Baldemar rose to answer the Roman delegation, the people began to cheer him before he spoke.
As so often before, his words breathed one soul into them. “Who among you does not know it is the highest dishonor to carry a slain kinsman in your pocket?” came his proud cry in sonorous voice. “Go back to your master, Roman slaves, and tell him we refuse. We will determine the price—and it will not be in the coin of your slave-run mines, but in the coin of your blood!”
The last words hung in every mind season after season, like some immortal tone struck on a god-forged bell; they outlived the man who spoke them. The Roman emissaries barely escaped with their lives that night. The battle chieftains set their Companions even at peaceful settlements now, and nightly in the raiding months Chattian warriors swarmed into Roman-held Gaul.
It was the still time just before dawn, on the first day of the waxing of the Fourth Moon. Auriane shivered in the dark. The waters of the Rhine were brutally cold at night; the bear’s fat she and her fellow tribesmen smeared over their bodies before they ferried themselves across the river on their shields kept them alive, but did not keep them warm. Her wet leather tunic was like ice pressed to her flesh.
There came to her the familiar dark excitement at being on the wrong side of the Rhine. The second of the nightly Roman naval patrols passed upstream just before they set out; the third was not due until well past dawn. They secured on the bank the two coracles they had brought for transporting the spoil, and laid down their sodden shields. Then Auriane and the thirty young warriors—all drawn from Baldemar’s Companions—crept up the bank and paused at the edge of a vineyard. Before them was the villa of the slave dealer Feronius, notorious among all the tribes, a wealthy Gallo-Roman trader who dealt in children.
As the sky lightened to iron gray, the evil place could dimly be seen—a huddled group of bleached-white buildings with their complex jumble of many-leveled, red-tile roofs, the whole stocked with untold riches, all bought with kinsmen’s blood.
Softly she uttered the cry—“Vengeance!”
The small band sprang up as one, eager as hounds released on fleeing game. She prayed they remembered her instructions: Do not strike at the old, the very young, the enslaved. We want only Feronius and whoever protects him, and to purify the villa with fire.
“…in the coin of your blood.” Baldemar’s words tolled in her mind. Today we take one more payment.
She felt a rush of joyous animal strength. They were nature’s fury—a breaking storm, an angry river flooding its banks.
But as always a small, sharp knife-blade of fear pierced her heart.
I have seen my twentieth summer and still I’m gripped with visions of the grim halls of Hel at a battle’s beginning. I thought age and greater knowledge would lessen the fear. It does not.
She had raided with this band of thirty-one since the dark of the year’s second moon, constantly shifting the location of their encampment. Thus far this year they had followed Baldemar’s advance, striking at smaller targets such as isolated signal towers or poorly protected work details from the legions as the Romans cleared paths and surveyed the land of the Wetterau for sites for forts, catching them off guard when they thought Baldemar had done with them. Twenty-eight were young men just initiated into arms, and two were maiden daughters of priestesses of the groves, children of the spring rites who, like herself, were consecrated to the god of war. She discovered she took great pleasure in laying war plans and seeing them carried out. In these times Baldemar heaped praise on her deeds of valor at every feast. This raid was the last before they returned to the Village of the Boar for the most beloved festival of the year, the great dawn celebration in honor of the goddess Eastre, a time when weapons of iron must be laid down.
They vaulted a vine-laced stone wall and surged on, shifting spears into battle position. Then they flooded into a graveled carriage-way, meaning to enter through the slaves’ quarters.
There came a cacophony of barking, and a dozen mastiffs rushed at them. They were prepared for this. Auriane cried, “Wulfstan! Now!” Wulfstan was a warrior son of Geisar by one of Wodan’s priestesses—a ponderous, evil-tempered giant who resembled neither parent. He cast a hunter’s net over the dogs, entangling them in one boiling mass of snapping and growling, making them easier to dispatch. The company used their spears as lances; soon all lay dead but one who was not caught in the net. The beast fastened powerful jaws on the hand of Fastila, younger of the two shield maids. Fastila shrieked, fell to the ground and rolled, the mastiff still attached. Auriane fell on the dog from behind and cut its throat with her dagger.
Fastila clung tightly to Auriane while sputtering curses at Wulfstan for failing to net all the dogs. Fastila was small and strong, with a deer’s grace, her hair glossy black like a crow’s wing—a child still, who was fiercely devoted to Auriane and subject to small eruptions of temper that put Auriane in mind of a furiously pecking bird. Fastila had followed them in concealment until it was too late to send her back to the main camp alone. She should not be with us, Auriane thought—she is too young and untried
, and if she is killed, I will be responsible before Baldemar.
Auriane hastily wrapped Fastila’s torn hand in a length of linen and helped her rise. Then they swiftly rejoined the others. In the gloom of the whitewashed wall a dozen shadowy human forms came forth; Auriane knew at once from their timidness and disorganization they were not war-trained guards.
“Hold back!” she called out sharply. Half obeyed, half did not. Wulfstan cast a spear and brought one of them down; then he hesitated, realizing too late what sort of resistance this was. The remainder of this timid crew dropped the sticks and clubs they carried and bolted for the fields.
“Halt!” Auriane cried. “Do not pursue—they are slaves.”
Auriane paused briefly by the body of the man Wulfstan had felled. She recognized him as a captive from one of the tribes dwelling near the Amber Sea; his forehead was disfigured with the red-brown scar of a brand. “Curses on Feronius’ name,” she said with soft contempt. “The coward was warned. Feronius fled, and left his dogs and his slaves behind to defend his lair.”
“Niding’s slaves—we should destroy them all,” Wulfstan retorted, needing to justify his haste. He was the one man of the band she disliked; he put her in mind of an evil-natured guard dog that snapped and bit at all that moved, not seeming to know enemy from friend. She supposed it was the blood of Geisar in him.
Auriane ignored this and moved away from Wulfstan, gliding into the shadows pooled about the villa, the rest of the band close about her. Wulfstan followed eventually, with sullen reluctance. The company slowed, stalking rather than running now, moving through a block of slaves’ cells, then into a peristyled garden, and on into the dark chambers of the villa itself.
They had penetrated a number of forts and encampments, but never had any of them entered the private dwelling of a wealthy Roman citizen. Curiosity dazed them as they regarded the bewildering spaces, the confusion of the textures of floors and walls, the baffling array of finely wrought things. It appeared the household’s departure was recent and hasty—oil lamps still burned in several rooms, spilled wine had not dried, and in the kitchens some evil-smelling stew still boiled in an iron pot. The place was theirs for the taking. This is the luck of the Fourth Moon, she thought, a blessing of Eastre.
They separated then and began to loot and destroy. In adjacent rooms she heard her fellows hurling statuary to the floor, cracking fragile vases on stone. She felt the heat as they set fire to carpets and brocades, feeding the flames by dousing them with amphorae of oil. Several moments passed before she consciously realized she was not doing her part. A bewitchment had settled over her; she could only stare at the marvels about her, like some child at a first festival.
As dawn poured more light into this labyrinth, the wonders multiplied. Now they did more than stun the senses; they began to subtly reshape the soul.
It was one thing to hear Decius tell of the things his people made, but quite another to know them with her own senses.
One room was filled with human images of stone. Some were in graceful poses, half clad; others manifested only the head and shoulders; as she walked among them she almost expected them to reach out and beg her to release them from an evil spell—she was near certain they were once alive, frozen in place by the magic of Roman sorcerers. On the walls of the next chamber were vibrant renderings in paint, brilliant as Athelinda’s unmixed dyes; they depicted fantastic dwelling places stacked atop one another, regal goddesses, their pink flesh flushed with life, and beasts—misshapen behemoths such as never walked the earth by light of day. One bore a tiny human rider and had a curled serpent growing from its head. In the next room the floor was strangely warm, as though it were alive; she dropped to her hands and knees to touch it. It was as if some dragon slept beneath the floor. And in a great stone entranceway with a hole in its roof was a pool of tamed water captured and put into a square bed of stone—not nature’s water such as ran wild in rivers. Decius told her his people possessed the magic of calling water and making it do their bidding, but she did not know it could spout in a silvery stream from the mouth of a fish-man holding a three-pronged spear aloft, arcing with magic grace into a pool.
She came to a table laden with slender vessels of pale-colored glass, meaning to topple them, but she hesitated, feeling an odd paralysis overtake her limbs.
These marvels should be known, not destroyed. Decius’ people do great evil, but they are cleverer than the most god-inspired smith, and they bring forth things of startling beauty. Surely these wonders could not exist without the blessing of Fria, the great source of all souls. There is a majesty in all this, a mystery as profound as fathomless black pools. What if destroying these things is a desecration?
But that is dangerous madness, she cautioned herself. These are the works of the spawn of Lower Earth, the great nidings of the South who were suckled by a she-wolf and raised up on our blood.
The two beliefs warred in her. A part of her wished she had never set eyes upon these things.
She felt a hard gaze on her back and turned to see Wulfstan watching her with contemptuous curiosity. He dared speak no chastising words, but she read clearly in the look—why do you not break and burn? Auriane felt a momentary twist of alarm, knowing Wulfstan would go to Geisar with the tale of her strange reluctance; it would be one more deed counted against her on that inevitable day when Geisar felt the time right to denounce her before the Assembly.
Fastila came around Wulfstan. “The fire burns too swiftly,” the maid said anxiously to Auriane. “It’s time to flee.” Auriane guessed from the bright, angry light in Fastila’s eyes that the girl just spoke sharp words to Wulfstan in her defense. Fastila’s loyalty had such sturdy roots, Auriane reflected, she might have been a child of the same mother.
They gathered up all the treasure they could fit into the two coracles—silver bowls and plates beautifully wrought, amphorae of the pale golden wine of the region, finely worked jewelry of topaz and silver, lapis and jet, abandoned by the women of the house.
As they fled, they passed through a room with honeycombed walls—here were hundreds of niches, many filled with rolls of that thin bark covered over with Roman signs that Decius could read. She gathered up as many as she could carry, remembering how bitterly Decius complained he had only one book, and stuffed them into one of the sacks of silver and precious things. Wulfstan glanced back and scowled. They are worthless and unholy; why do you want them? But Fastila halted and came back to help; hastily she, too, gathered up armfuls of bookrolls.
No sooner had Auriane and Fastila rejoined the company in the courtyard than the fire found its strength, this dragon they had set free, and suddenly it was beyond all human control, raging, voraciously feeding, engulfing roof after roof, its searing breath driving them back to the safety of the open vineyard.
When they finally reached the riverbank with their sacks of treasure, panting and coated in mud and ash, Fastila laughed softly. “All is well, very well! None opposed us!”
Each took a swallow of the villa’s wine, then Auriane poured some of it into the Rhine as a gift to the river nixes, then sprinkled some on the air as an offering to Wodan.
They then launched the treasure-laden boats; two would row, the rest would paddle across on their shields. They would have to hurry; the smoke of the fire was easily visible from the fortress at Mogontiacum; at any time cavalry might be dispatched to investigate.
Before immersing herself in the water Auriane looked back once to view their handiwork and gave a small cry of dismay. Others turned to look.
The villa was spewing bats—first the smoke was speckled with them, then blackened by their numbers; they spiraled out, maddened by the heat. She realized those loathsome night creatures animated by spirits of the unholy dead must have long colonized the crevices beneath the roofs.
Fastila turned away, shielding her eyes. Wulfstan’s surliness dissolved to terror, and he fell to his knees in the water, making the sign against sorcery. Auriane watched wit
h a throb of hopelessness; the old specter of her coming doom embraced her with dark arms.
It must be close, she thought, for such a dread omen to appear. A multiplication of evil, as many sorrows as there were of those leathery sprites, would be released upon them in the coming year. And as it was she who set them on the villa, she would be its cause.
There was little talk as the company of thirty-one traveled at their best speed to the Village of the Boar, hoping to be home in time for the hallowing of the ground. The sight of the bats caused a gloom to settle over them. Rains and mud and swollen rivers slowed them; fifteen days had elapsed and they had lost half their treasure at river fords, when at last they came to the River Fulda and began following it downstream to the River Weser.
Auriane rode her bay mare, the mount of a Roman cavalryman felled in an attack on a river patrol; Decius rode beside her as always. Her people generally believed the Roman slave accompanied the band to see to the horses and do thrall’s chores such as foraging for firewood, skinning game and raising the tents. Her band saw that she spent as much time in Decius’ company as in their own, and knew she asked his advice in matters of strategy—but with the exception of Wulfstan, they did not question. She was a bringer of victory, and her acts were blessed. But because of Wulfstan she was careful, always staying within the Companions’ sight when she spoke to Decius.
On the last day of the journey Auriane watched with pleasure as Fria revealed her Eastre face: Flowers spilled over every steep hillside; the softly rolling earth, far as they could see, was fully clad in all shades of green, from pale soft yellow tones to the near-black of the yew groves. She was aware of how the forest pulsed and teemed with life, from the scuttling beetles in the earth to the naked white fungi, deathly pale but so very swift-growing and alive, to the furry, sharp-toothed creatures stirring in violet faun-filled shadows, to the winged ones flitting through the canopy of trees, to the leaf caterpillars, some gaudy, some plain, to the squirrels rippling up pines, skimming their surface, seeming not to touch the tree as they ascended. All were sheltered by the solemn trees themselves, with their muted consciousness, their lofty serenity, those pillars of life that made the whole of the land a temple.
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