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by Gillespie, Donna

  As she moved from cookfire to cookfire, touching an axhead here, a swordblade there, she saw ghosts—that child with bright round eyes held tightly in a warrior’s wife’s arms was Arnwulf on the day of his death; the leering crone squatting beside her with fire dancing in her eyes was Hertha, hissing “Accursed One!” Ten faces beyond was Baldemar’s kingly ghost, tears of sorrow for her in his eyes while he commanded her to kill him. The need to avenge has become a roaring river, she realized—even Ramis had no power to subdue its mighty strength.

  As she moved farther from the altar, the words of the priests’ distant droning chant over the sacrificial animals were distorted by her mind into Ramis’ warning of long ago—“I see you now in a necklace of bones, a cloak of human skin. Go now, priestess of death….”

  At midnight Geisar convened a war council before Baldemar’s hall. The five most celebrated war leaders sat round a bonfire kindled by Sigreda, arguing over the most effective way to halt the advance of Odberht. Sigwulf paced with swaggering step, huge fists clenched, round shoulders defensively hunched, kicking at a spotted hound that kept getting underfoot. Auriane sat still and alert, intent on the fire, half listening, half lost in flights of strategic calculations. Athelinda observed the council from a regal distance, wrapped in stillness, shrewd eyes keenly focused and patient. How many shifts in the world had she seen? Surely this was the last, and she met it less with terror than with detached curiosity.

  Coniaric sat with arms crossed behind his straw-colored head, leaning his long ungainly body against a shield and post, more concerned over their bickering than by the truth or folly of the various plans put forth; he was a lover of peace, even if it was a mask. Thorgild lay on his back nearby, entreating answers from a gibbous moon while chewing on a strand of overgrown red mustache. Both had given up trying to dissuade Sigwulf from a plan that required splitting their forces in half. Witgern alone kept up the fight; he was restlessly on his feet, half the time following Sigwulf, half the time standing still in frustration, arms folded as he glared at the ground. He argued dispiritedly, for both alternatives—that of keeping their forces together, which meant trying to outrun Odberht as they moved south to settle into the Taunus hill forts and lie in wait for the Romans, and that of leaving half their warriors here to meet and destroy Odberht—seemed equally doomed to failure.

  Sigwulf halted and spat into the oak fire.

  “We cannot turn our backs on that god-cursed behemoth. We could leave the supply train behind to gain speed—but all of you say no to that. Your way, Witgern, he catches us in four or five days. It’s wiser, I say, to face him on ground of our choosing.”

  Witgern looked impatiently at Auriane, frustrated that she was not helping him. But still she sat in as silence, unmoving as if in a trance while that mind, he knew, ran swiftly as a deer through the dark. Witgern remembered suddenly how Baldemar had done the same at councils. He would withdraw into his thoughts until all were stamping with impatience, then finally speak his mind after they’d given up on him. But invariably he would put forward a plan that showed uncommon discernment.

  Witgern spoke the words he guessed she was thinking. “What if the force that stays here meets defeat? Odberht moves on over our corpses and catches us after we’ve been halved.” Unconsciously Witgern comforted the young hound Sigwulf had kicked, and the spotted dog appreciatively licked his hand.

  Sigwulf spun round. “How dare you speak that word.”

  “Defeat,” Witgern said, his one good eye glowing with melancholy fire. “Accustom yourself to the sound of it, Sigwulf, I wager you’ll hear it spoken again. Do you think Odberht will come without reserves? He’d never risk his hide if he did not think he brought more than enough men to destroy us.”

  Sigwulf’s look of injured honor shifted to one of bleak resignation, a look Witgern had seen there only once before—when word came that Baldemar was dead. For long there was no sound but the fire, and Witgern was conscious of it crackling, patiently devouring what had once been a mighty living oak, leaving humble ash.

  “I’m thinking of perishing honorably, then,” Sigwulf said finally, with a fierce sadness. “We may as well admit it, we’re caught in a raven’s claw. But I will not make Odberht a gift of the Village of the Boar. By the Fates, it is Baldemar’s own village. And I won’t be herded like kine into the Roman slaughtering pens.” Belligerence flared again in his black eyes. “That fiend will be stopped here. I volunteer myself for the task if no one else has the mettle.”

  Witgern looked at Auriane, surprised this did not provoke her to retort. But still she followed her own thoughts.

  “It’s not a matter of mettle,” Witgern replied, becoming increasingly irritated with Auriane for leaving him to battle Sigwulf alone. “This is glory-lust talking.”

  “I smell craven faint-heartedness here,” Sigwulf muttered, his back to Witgern.

  “Sigwulf,” Sigreda interjected sharply. She rose from her oak chair, the wolf mask she had worn when she kindled the fire still in her hand. “Speak no unholy words.” Sigreda cast vervain on the fire to purify the air.

  “I don’t need Wodan’s servants to tell me how to speak.”

  “Sigwulf.”

  This voice was Auriane’s. She looked up at Sigwulf from her place by the fire, eyes alight, face glowing from the heat; she appeared to have just awakened from a light sleep. All dropped into expectant silence.

  Sigwulf frowned at her, curious but impatient. Sigreda’s eyes glittered like a night creature’s—she resented the immediate, attentive respect Auriane was given. Witgern felt a jolt of relief.

  “At that long-ago feast where Odberht bragged of slaying Baldemar,” Auriane said, “did he not get falling drunk on Gallic wine?”

  Sigwulf gave an expressive grunt that meant, Yes, and what of it?

  Auriane rose to her feet. Sigwulf was a head taller—next to her he was an aurochs beside a deer. “Sigwulf, you will stay behind,” she said, “but we will lose none of our forces, because you will slay Odberht and all his Companions…to a man.”

  Sigwulf drew black brows together and gave a different grunt, this one expressing cynical curiosity.

  “We will first pull up camp and make certain it appears as though every last one of us has fled north,” Auriane continued. “Odberht has a special hatred for the Village of the Boar. As he sees it, all his enemies were spawned here. Deserted or not, he will seek vengeance on it. But not before he loots it.”

  She turned to the fire, pulling her cloak tighter about her against the bitter night wind. “We’ll leave just enough grain and livestock there to catch his attention. He’ll think we were so much in terror of him, we didn’t have time to load it all into wagons. I know Romilda can get Gallic wine in two days. We’ll need to trade some precious provisions for it, but it must be done. We’ll leave enough wineskins stocked in the sheds for two thousand men to get more than their fill. Witgern, you are good at such calculations, tell me how much will be needed,” she spoke on briskly. “They’ll consume it at once, they’ve not the discipline to wait, and they are unused to such potent drink. Perhaps we should add sleeping draughts—”

  “Not honorable,” Sigwulf interrupted, eyes afire with interest. “He dies by the sword, not poisons.”

  “As you wish. Sigwulf, you will bide just beyond Marten Ridge. They will be in such a stuporous haze you will not need half our forces—your own Companions will be enough. I would go by dark, the dark of the coming day. The moon will be one day off full if he comes when we expect him—there will be light enough. It should not be difficult to slay two thousand men lying about in a drunken sleep.”

  Sigwulf grinned, showing flashing white teeth through his bristling black beard. Auriane knew he was pleased with his prominent part in the plan, and the fame the deed would bring him.

  “By the Fates!” He clapped Auriane jovially on the back, nearly knocking her into the fire. “The great niding dies this time!”

  Auriane managed a wan sm
ile full of sadness.

  They ordered the best mead brought out then, to drink to the strength of the plan. Later in the night Witgern said in a low voice to Auriane, not wanting the others to overhear, “I like none of this. The Hall of Baldemar will be burned again.”

  Auriane looked at the hall, that great benign beast of thatch huddled in the dark, sensing dimly she looked upon it for the last time.

  “I am not so bothered, Witgern. When the Romans burned it last time, I never looked at this rebuilt hall without expecting it one day to be burned.” She stopped herself. “Well, this is not entirely true—a part of me will cry out—but a smaller part. I’ve heard Ramis say ‘change is the sound of Fria’s beating heart,’ and I wish I felt the truth of those words, but it frightens me. When we’ve gotten vengeance on Odberht and we have his body, then we’ll not mind what they do to Baldemar’s Hall.”

  Witgern nodded. He saw the glittery light in her eyes from swiftly forming tears and put a companionable arm about her as she rested her head on his shoulder. To his dismay the closeness of her, the wildflower scent of her hair, stirred the familiar pain-filled desire. Forcing it down brought desolate tears to his own eyes.

  On the following morn as salmon-hued light flared out over the black masses of firs to the east, the greater part of the Chattian army set out for the south. Auriane rode at the head of the host, carrying the cat-skull standard. Witgern, Coniaric, Thorgild, and a dozen of Baldemar’s venerable former Companions rode beside her. The Holy Ones who bore arms came behind in a gray flock, led by priests and priestesses of many groves; Sigreda and Grunig rode at their head, and Fastila was among those who followed on foot. Their robes were girded up for ease of movement; fire-hardened spears were their sole weapons. The army came after in ragged ranks, grouped by retinue, or if they were independent, by family. A good half of the warriors were accompanied by their wives, who came to heal wounds and cry out encouragement on the battlefield. Romilda’s provisions wagons trailed the army. In one wagon was Sunia, now a warrior’s wife three months gone with child; the cart’s jolting made her miserable, and she cursed her lot as a daughter of the provisions women. In another, concealed beneath bearskins, was the catapult seized many seasons ago. Those too aged or ill to fight, among them Baldemar’s brother, Theudobald, his sister Sisinand, and Athelinda and her household, traveled with the army for three days, then split off to journey east to a hill fort on the Taunus called Five Wells, which was counted farthest from the lines of battle.

  Two cycles of the moon would pass before they would learn the outcome of Sigwulf’s engagement with Odberht. When the army reached the Taunus ridge, they took possession of three hill forts set in a line along its summit. The third of the army that followed Auriane settled into a grim spirit-ridden fort of sagging timbers and lichen-covered stone built by a long-forgotten tribe; it lay directly in the path of the Eighth Augusta, which runners informed them was methodically making its way north, clearing country and establishing roadways as it advanced. The war council agreed the encampments of the Twenty-First Rapax and the Fourteenth Gemina Martia Victrix could not be engaged, for these legions came forward on open ground. If their ambush of the Eighth succeeded, they planned to move from hill fort to hill fort along the ridge of the Taunus Mount, staying just ahead of the enemy advance. They would lay new ambushes as they moved, while keeping messengers engaged in bringing reports of the movements of the various Roman camps.

  Auriane understood now why the legions came in such force—the soldiers were needed as much for the clearing of roads and the siting of forts as they were for combat. Their forts sprang up everywhere like poisonous mushrooms after a rain. The most secret parts of the primeval forest were laid open to sharp foreign eyes. The land’s wild freedom was insulted with ropes of roads binding it tightly, and rude shouts in a strange tongue. The encroaching line of legions seemed an insatiable engine of death, a mouth full of tearing teeth as it fed on whole villages. As she stalked the palisade walk at night, Auriane imagined she could hear the thin wails of children’s ghosts carried on the night wind.

  During the time of waiting the Chattian host lived on little food, shunning tents and sleeping lightly clothed under the sky to harden themselves to the cold. They passed the mornings hurling spears at posts. Nights were left to gossip and tales to still the fears. Auriane saw that the old catapult was practice-fired, and she sparred daily with Witgern, using weighted wooden poles. She walked about when they gathered for meat, saying calming words to the people.

  It was in this place that an aged smith named Unnan was brought before Auriane, bearing a grim tale. She met him in the stone room built into the north wall of the fort, where she received and sent out messages from runners. Unnan stood uneasily before her, massive arms crossed as he attempted to hide split, blackened nails. Seeing he was unnerved, she had strong mead brought at once.

  Unnan told her that at the last quarter-moon, at the spirit-time when all was wanly lit, a lone horseman had galloped up to his isolated homestead.

  “He called out my name in a voice that raised the hairs on the back of my neck. And I am no cowardly man, my lady.”

  “You look to be nobly brave.”

  “He said he wanted his horse shod. At that hour, and with war begun! As I’d yet lit no fire, I determined to let him think my house empty—I dwell in a lonely place and it was the time of day to walk well around the grave mound. But he must have seen me through the walls. He waited long. So I opened the door. A rush of wind nearly knocked me to my knees. Standing there with his back to me as he stilled his horse was a man taller than any natural man, clad in a black cloak that brushed the ground.

  “I saw at once his horse was not mortal. It had hooves the size of water buckets and eyes that glowed like hunters’ lamps through the forest, and its coat was darker than caverns at midnight. The stranger…wore a broad-brimmed hat.”

  Auriane felt the breath of a powerful spirit on the back of her neck. “You are fortunate to still be living,” she said softly. She had no doubt the visitor was Wodan in mortal guise.

  “He raised a hand and stilled the wind. Then he turned to look at me. I threw my cloak over my head to hide the sight of that dread face, but I was not quick enough. I saw it. There was a countenance that would melt your bones. He had leprous skin…and one fierce eye, and one gory, blackened one.”

  She whispered, “Did he speak?”

  “He breathed one word in the hollow, windy voice of a dead man— ‘Sacrifice.’ That was all. What can that mean?”

  “Sacrifice,” Auriane repeated softly. Tales of Wodan appearing before a smith at a war’s beginning were common; she heard them all her life. But what was troubling and strange was that normally he promised swift, glorious victory.

  “Unnan, swear on your spear,” she said, fighting to steady the tremor in her voice, “you will speak of this to no one.”

  When Unnan was gone, she rode out alone, galloping in gloomy silence past puzzled sentries, down the northern trail leading from the fort until she came to a rain-dampened grove of sacred elms. There she collapsed onto her knees and prayed to Fria to help her understand the meaning of the god’s word.

  What has so upset the balance between the seen and unseen worlds? Have we not sacrificed enough?

  But no understanding came, either in waking hours or in dreams, and the word sacrifice sounded ceaselessly in her mind, disguised in the rustle of pine boughs, in the desolate calls of nightjars as they wheeled through the sunless sky.

  CHAPTER XXIII

  AS SUMMER PASSED INTO FALL, THE Romans continued to advance unopposed. There was no sign of the fabled battle-chiefs of whom they had heard tales, or their white-robed sorcerers, or the ghostly witch Aurinia. Domitian began to worry that his intelligence officers—perhaps in a misguided effort to please him—had sorely exaggerated the battle-readiness of the enemy. Where was the spirited resistance he expected? Once or twice they found and destroyed a foraging party, but all in all he
was slaughtering far too few of the enemy. The new forts the legions were constructing would not be so effective if the natives were not badly crippled at the same time. And once the war was won, the pitiful number of enemy casualties could prove acutely embarrassing. Great wars needed hordes of captives and multitudes of dead, or the rabble would mock him and scribble derisive couplets on the walls when he rode into the city in triumph.

  Nightly as he dined, his military staff listened to his litany of sorrows. “Has some enemy of mine infiltrated their camp and drugged their mead to make a fool of me? Tell me—anyone—how do we draw the wretches out?”

  Once Marcus Julianus responded with— “Perhaps they are confused. For long you condemned them for warring on us. Now you condemn them for not warring on us. Give them some time to sort it out.”

  The Kalends of September came and passed. The one sign of the enemy’s distress was the forest’s massive silence—festival times came and passed, and no bonfires bloomed on the gray-green hills.

  There began a small stream of desertions from the legions, not an unusual thing ordinarily, but remarkable in this war because it stemmed not from fear of the enemy but from spirit-terror. The occasional deserter who was caught was subjected to the fustuarium—a punishment in which the culprit was cudgeled to death by men of his own century. But he would first be questioned closely by the Tribunes, for Domitian was eager to know what inspired such faithlessness. And more often than not the deserter would claim to have seen unearthly lights moving through deserted woodland glades, or to have heard the forest floor crackling with the furtive steps of the walking dead raised up for revenge by the Chattian sorceresses. A soldier of the Fourteenth reported that a headless man approached him at dusk—and the head, which the spirit carried under its arm, bore the features of the Fourteenth’s commander. Another man said he had bent to drink in a pool at dusk, only to see the sweetly demonic face of the witch Aurinia looking at him, blood trickling from her lips.