When the messenger had spoken all his news, he sought Auriane out privately and said, “There is a message for my lady alone, from the foreigner called Decius, sent to Sigwulf from the Cheruscan camp.”
She felt a sickness and a complicated pain, sharp and tearing as broken glass. Decius must actually be traveling with the raiding Cheruscans.
As the warriors departed, Fastila rose to leave with them.
“Fastila,” Auriane objected, “not you. Stay.” She caught at Fastila’s gray robe. There was a comfort in Fastila’s presence that was a mystery to Auriane; it was more than the sum of that unjudging resilience, that swift understanding of her pain, which she might expect from a woman who also lived a life away from family and hearth. The bond was strong in spite of the fact that Fastila was not particularly of like mind—the younger woman was far more of a nature to be content to let things be. Fastila since the war’s beginning had attached herself to Auriane as a voluntary bodyguard, though as one of the armed Holy Ones she was expected to pitch her tent with her fellows. She looked at Auriane with concern, then sat on the hollowed log they used as a drum, her battered round shield slung across her back.
The youth spoke Decius’ words in the monotone of those who memorize. “I would give my freedom and all my property to pass a single night with you….”
Property? she thought. Decius had never had anything of worth.
“Beloved, we’ve only one life that I know of. Know this, you are doomed. I beg you, save yourself. Do not come to me—it is too perilous. And do not try to return to Ramis and the child—the enemy expects you, and there are traps set for you there. You must flee to a village called Thurin on the River Elbe, in the territory of the Semnones. There I will meet you when this sorry mess is done.”
Auriane rose, turned, and looked off at the far pines.
Decius, she thought, you never did understand, even after all my attempts to explain. My people and I are not separate. You might as well tell one of my limbs to flee east.
“And two more words only, my lady,” the boy went on, Forgive me. He expects a reply.”
Auriane shut her eyes.
Even now, she thought, we are fighting against Decius’ tactics. I recognize them. The Cheruscans harry our foraging parties continuously, just as he would advise.
And yet even now, Decius, you work your own aggravating magic. You benefit from the idea you seeded in my mind, that a man is not to be blamed for the circumstances into which the Fates drop him. You do what you must to live. By our law, your crime is near as great as Odberht’s. But love is clever and deft; it flies round all that and behaves as if your deeds were not.
I know your heart even if I’ll never know your mind. I cannot be the one to break a staff and condemn you.
“Tell him—” she began, and stopped.
Tell him what? That love and hate are mixed in me like honey and poison? That I am half starved for the rough feel of his cheek, his firm, gentle hands—but that if he comes through that gate, I would have to give him to the priests because he aids our enemy? He suffers. Life is simpler than that. End that suffering.
“Tell him yes,” she whispered hoarsely. “I forgive.” She cut a lock of her hair and put it into a white linen purse. “Give him this.”
The boy’s eyes widened in wonder. A woman’s hair was alive with holiness, and Auriane’s was holier than his own mother’s—yet she gave a lock of it to a foreigner. Reverently the lad took it, bowed, and departed.
On the following morning a tribal spy came to Auriane, a woman of the Bructeres called Hwala. She traveled among the camp followers of the Eighth Augusta and dealt in dubious wares, selling aphrodisiacs to the legionary soldiers, while peddling the coveted red Arretine-ware stolen from Roman officers to barbarian chiefs. She was a squat creature almost broader than she was tall, who walked with a turtle’s methodical waddle. Her hair was snarled as a bramble thicket, her skin strangely mottled, and her eyes wide-set and bulging, giving her the look of a demonic toad. Witgern said of her she was the safest creature abroad in the land, for she scared even the wildcats away. Her sources of information were generally the young, fair native girls of the canabae bedded by the Roman officers.
“My lady,” Hwala said, bowing lower than was necessary. Her attitude was carefully respectful, but Auriane knew Hwala did not hold her—or anyone—in reverence. “The Romans have declared Odberht officially dead. The commander of the Eleventh was heard to say it himself.”
Auriane felt a quick, exhilarating flush of relief. “That is well! Very well.” She rose and began to nervously pace, aware relief never lasted long.
Surely, she reasoned with herself, the Romans would know if their ally were dead or alive. “Did they view a body?”
Hwala shook her head quickly with a rapid birdlike motion, indicating she did not know. Auriane felt a small throb of disappointment.
“And…of the other matter?” Auriane asked. Hwala knew Auriane wanted to know if any sign had been given that an attack on their provisions wagons was imminent.
“They’re either cleverer than we know,” Hwala replied, “or they’ve changed their spots. However, the tribune that Mara serves was heard to say: ‘We are one ambush away from going home. We’ve just got to wait for his cursed birthday.’”
“Domitian’s birthday?”
Hwala slowly nodded.
“Nine days after their Ides of October,” Auriane said to herself. “The ogre. A small gift to himself after the Roman fashion, I suppose.” In all likelihood, Auriane supposed, Domitian’s augurs had told him this day would be an auspicious one for such a vital maneuver.
Fastila made calculations with her calendar stone that marked both lunar and solar cycles, and reported that Domitian’s birthday fell on the morrow. The provisions wagons could not be reached before three days’ hard ride, if no raiding parties were met and the weather remained mild.
“If that is what your tribune’s words meant, Hwala,” Auriane said, “then we are warned too late.” The safety of the provisions wagons was left to war-luck of Romilda.
Hwala remained impassive. If this woman ever knew fear or regret, Auriane never saw evidence of it. She gifted Hwala with a gaudily embroidered, amber-studded riding cloth for her mule, then dismissed her.
Auriane tried gamely to convince herself Odberht was indeed dead.
In the next five days Sigwulf’s victorious men began to trickle into the camp. A kinsman of Coniaric’s, an unkempt beast with odd yellow eyes who was called Walest, proclaimed he had slain Odberht. He was brought to Witgern’s tent to be closely questioned. Walest answered their eager questions, but Auriane thought his replies suspiciously vague. He claimed to have done the deed with an axe.
Auriane asked, “How did Odberht behave at the last?”
“He died screaming curses on your name and Baldemar’s,” Walest claimed. “He was running away, as you might expect, but he slunk into an abandoned thrall’s hut and I cornered him. By Hel, the man had the unhallowed light of the walking dead in his eye! His horrible black locks were soaked with blood from the cracking blow I gave him to his head.” The young man’s grin was full of challenge; matted hair and flowing mustache all but concealed his face. In spite of his attempt to present a ferocious demeanor something in his face reminded her of a sheep.
She looked at him sharply. “Black locks? Odberht’s hair is the color of fouled honey.”
She saw a start of unease deep in the sheep-eyes. He mumbled several half-intelligible excuses, protesting he had been told the man was Odberht, his words tumbling over each other as he backed slowly out of the tent.
“You’ve nothing to fear from me,” she said softly, eyes alight. “You’ve Wodan to answer to for the false tale.”
When Sigwulf himself arrived, he agreed Walest was a brazen liar. But he said a body was dragged before him that closely resembled Odberht. Truthfully, the face was cleaved with an axe, so identification was not absolute, but Sigwulf swore by Wod
an he knew those dirty red-blond locks that hung in heavy clumps, that barrel-like girth, those knees like boulders—and this corpse was dressed in chieftain’s clothes, though all rings and brooches that might help identify him positively had been stolen by the time he saw him.
“Why could this not have been a nobleman of the Cheruscans?” Auriane asked.
“I cannot answer that. But Odberht and all his men were together, and they died every one. If that was not Odberht, and I think it was, then another man in that heap of dead was he. What matters it, so long as he is dead?”
“You are right—if indeed he is dead.”
Three days later a refugee from a lonely farm in the grasslands a day’s ride north came to Auriane with yet another tale. He claimed he had seen Odberht alive, ten days after Sigwulf’s victory at the Village of the Boar, in one of the grasslands villages. “I know the Scourge’s face like I know the countenance of my own mother,” he explained. “I was one of Wido’s Companions once, you know.” He said he had traveled a way with this man, who was confident that when he presented himself at the legionary camp of the Eleventh Claudia, the Romans would welcome him as their ally.
“How then did he survive Sigwulf’s slaughter?” Auriane asked.
“He was not with them. Though the hogspawn was close enough to hear the screams. He was panting atop some lusty thrall-wench in a bower safely away from where they camped. Sigwulf missed one man.”
She found herself struggling strenuously not to believe it.
“I found him with four others, trembling in a root cellar behind a burned homestead,” her informant continued. “He took one look at the carnage and fled south.”
Auriane related this new tale to Witgern. “Then,” Witgern noted, “when—and if—this man presented himself to the Romans, he did so after the Romans declared him officially dead.”
“Yes. They might even have taken the true Odberht for some opportunist—a man who resembles him, making the best of it.”
“And he was doubtless covered with filth, stripped of his riches and in rags. And who now at the fortress knows Odberht’s face? Paulinus is gone. When this man said, ‘I am Odberht,’ they might well have answered him, ‘Of course, you are, and I am Nero.’”
With falling hopes Auriane judged that, in the way of such things, the dullest version of Odberht’s story was probably the one that was true.
The curse would continue to curse them. How fiendishly the Fates arranged it so vengeance was impossible. She judged Odberht would most likely be treated like a captive: Either he would be slaughtered so the Emperor could have his quota of dead and his war counted grand enough for a triumphal procession, or he would be sold into the obscurity of slavery and lost to her forever.
She would never know.
Baldemar! Is your spirit even now writhing within the tortured trunk of the Lightning Oak?
She tried to prevent the old farmer’s tale from spreading through the camp and sowing discouragement, but her efforts to suppress it seemed only to speed its travels; it was dispersed like spores on the wind. Soon all camps and even the itinerant traders were muttering that Odberht lived.
As autumn waned, the Eleventh Claudia pressed close to the Chattians’ new sanctuary and began constructing a fort nearly at their feet, protected by hordes of Batavian auxiliaries. The warriors managed one successful attack on a legionary foraging party, and on another occasion they damaged a section of newly completed road by starting a rockslide that killed a number of soldiers—but these successes were of small significance and hardly slowed the Roman advance.
On the seventh day after Auriane’s report from Hwala, a warrior’s wife who went at dawn to the well just outside the hill fort’s gate claimed she saw the well waters turn to blood. Thrusnelda interpreted this to mean that somewhere on their ancestral lands, the earth had just been soaked in kinsmen’s blood. Then at midmorning, when all had eaten their meal of pork rinds, millet bread dipped in sheep’s fat, and honey-sweetened gruel, there came strident peals from the gate’s bell, sounding like frantic cries for help.
The gatekeeper looked down to see three bloodied, soot-blackened travelers, all women, their limbs crudely bandaged, their clothing torn. Two, near death, were astride one horse, propped against one another for support; the third was just well enough to walk the beast.
“Daughters of doom,” the gatekeeper shouted down, “who are you?”
“We are from the provisions,” the strongest of the three replied. “Open, in the name of Baldemar.”
Auriane and Sigwulf conferred, then told the gatekeeper to open the gate. Sigwulf helped the two astride the horse onto rush mats, and they were carried off to the medicine tent. The woman who led the horse rushed at Auriane, seized her arm and collapsed into sobs.
“Put out my eyes,” she wailed. “I will see no more!”
“Sunia!” Auriane cried. Sunia’s face was so swollen from stinging nettles that Auriane did not know her at first.
“All are dead,” she said through heaving gasps.
“What are you saying?” A raging sadness began to boil up in Auriane. The population of the camp pressed close, falling into fretful quiet.
“All who traveled with the grain were slaughtered. Romilda is dead. We alone live. The murdering wolves found us.” Sunia sank to her knees. “Kill me. I should not be alive.”
Auriane caught her and held her. She felt as though the the roof of a hall had crashed upon her head. Our spine is broken, she thought. Now we fight without food. What cruelly efficient predators Romans are.
Auriane supported Sunia as they made their way to the medicine tent, all the while expecting the worst because the skirt of her rough wool dress was drenched in blood. But Thrusnelda soon determined that Sunia was not badly injured beyond painful but treatable burns and a disorder of the mind that caused her to babble and cry. Sunia was bloodied from miscarrying her child.
Auriane and Witgern stayed by Sunia through the night. She whimpered like a puppy, holding tightly to Auriane’s hand, occasionally falling into nightmare-ridden sleep. One of the provisions women who returned with Sunia died slowly in the night from a sword wound that had punctured the lung. The other survived the night, but Thrusnelda determined that she too would not live long after she gave her the onion broth test—the woman was fed strong onion broth, then Thrusnelda sniffed at the wound—and because she smelled onions, she knew the stomach was pierced. Thrusnelda explained to Auriane that this always meant death; they could do nothing but ease her pain with mandrake.
By morning the next day Sunia drank a little mead and seemed prepared to speak.
“They found us before dawn,” came her labored whisper. “Even the basest enemy offers some chance to surrender…” Sunia covered her face with her hands.
When Sunia was able to continue she spoke in an oddly flat voice, as though she had severed the tie from mind to heart.
“We were alerted first by our hounds’ barks. We had no chance of escape. The filthy nidings had ringed themselves about us before the sun came up. A few of us got to spears but most did not—there was not time. It was as though the hand of Wodan snapped out of the sky and pounded us into the earth. Hardly were we awakened before they let fly the heavy javelins—half of us were pinned to the stores where we stood, skewered like meat for roasting. I saw babes thrown into flames. I saw my own mother speared through. Why does Fria allow such monsters to walk the earth.”
Auriane cautiously asked, “And…Romilda?” feeling she reverently approached a body, knowing it that of a friend but still desperately hoping it was not.
“She did not die in the first hail of javelins. I remember her shouting over all the din, ‘Peace! We go in peace!’” Sunia stopped, closed her eyes, and sobbed. “Romilda fought as if possessed,” Sunia continued, “and she killed three or four of them with her spear before they slaughtered her.”
“Romilda!” Auriane whispered. “She was great and good. When this war is done, I will see to
it myself she has the grandest of funerals. What infamy.”
Sunia went on, “I am a monstrous coward. I’m alive because I ate too many chickens’ hearts. I should have tasted once the heart of a boar. I fled the the line and crawled under one of the carts and stayed there through the whole of it, clinging to the underside, watching my people fall, gutted, to the ground for what seemed a day and a night. Eventually the cart was set afire, which smoked me out. But by then the murdering swine had slunk off and I was among corpses, my family and friends draped like bloody rags over the carts. I am the most loathsome of women.”
“You’re innocent as a fawn,” Auriane gently remonstrated. Sunia’s shame made her powerfully uncomfortable; it was a wrenching reminder of her own. “What could you have done? Your mother never even taught you the use of the ash spear.”
From outside the tent, they heard the quavering wails of many women, some high-pitched, some deep; their cries set the hounds to howling and it was as though an unholy music issued from the smoking ravines of Lower Earth. Despair raged like plague through the camp. But throughout the rest of the day Auriane was scarcely aware of her comrades’ mood; she was busied sending out messages to the villages of those tribes that had always been their friends, attempting to arrange a system for bartering for food. As a weak sun sank quickly to the pines, Witgern came to her tent.
“We’ve had four thousand and more desertions since midday. You must speak to them!”
“Desertions! That is madness! Where do they think they can go?”
“Some to the Romans, some to the hills.”
“The cavalry will pick them off one by one.”
“Evidently they do not care. They reckon in the meantime at least they can eat. It’s roasted rat and misery bread for us—when we can get it. Sigwulf harangues them, but he’s doing more harm than good. You are their Daughter of the Ash. They listen to you as they listen to no other. Speak to them!”
Numbly she put on her short, soft deerskin tunic and swordbelt, then took up a single ash spear. Though she too felt all hope gone, fighting was a reflex, like the blind thrashing of the drowning.
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