She arose every day well before dawn, alert as if she had not slept at all. Alone in her hide tent, she performed Ramis’ ritual of fire and prayed to Fria to comfort and preserve Avenahar. Then she put on her gray cloak, wrapped her feet in hides and tramped through the snows, inspecting the stores, seeing to the reinforcing of the walls, joining those who cast spears on the casting ground. She always seemed to know who was losing heart and she sought that person out, her presence as sustaining as mead, as comforting as bread. At night she was last to collapse onto her mat of rushes. Hunger gave her eyes a steady brilliance—and she was hungrier than even Athelinda knew, for in order to keep the two surviving Roman tribunes alive, she secretly fed them from her own ration. She knew no one else would see them fed, and she was determined to see them treated honorably.
She found that for the first time in her life she dreaded the onset of spring. She was certain that this year its promise of eternal life would not be kept, that freedom would melt with the snows.
Spring came swiftly, heralded by the wild warning music of swans. The population of Five Wells ate every third day. The priest called Grunig ordered the empty grain bins torn open so the god could witness their plight. Fastila chewed on bark to assuage her hunger. Auriane put a guard around Berinhard so no one would steal up to him at night and slaughter him for food. The camp dogs disappeared one by one; even the rats seemed to know to stay away. No one dreamed of anything but food; every round stone looked like a loaf of bread; every pool of water brought thoughts of a thick stew. Clothes were so threadbare everyone wore multiple layers of rags against the cold. At night all slept closely packed together for warmth and rank was forgotten; noble wife lay back to back with farm thrall.
One spring morning in the time when the snows were beginning to recede, leaving ugly patches of black mud and brave green shoots, Thrusnelda saw a golden eagle drop a mountain cat cub, torn and bleeding, into the grass outside the fort. The young creature had proved too much for it to carry. The eagle flew off, solemnly flapping, floating, flapping, until it disappeared into the depths of the sky.
“We are the mountain cat cub, of course,” Thrusnelda explained that night around the central hearth, “and Rome is the eagle. It means we will be seized and borne off. We will be crippled and grievously wounded, but in the end we will still have life, young and vigorous life!”
Few of those who listened showed signs of believing this. Auriane thought—the Romans’ coming will be a blessing to many. Slaves at least are regularly fed.
Nightly the Warriors’ Council debated the wisdom of sending men out at once to lay ambushes for any Roman cavalrymen who might penetrate this far. They debated whether the trails were clear enough to allow attacking warriors swift escape. Auriane worried that their their sharply divided councils caused them to delay too long.
Finally, one day well after the fourth moon, before the sun rose above the stand of silver firs guarding the fort’s eastern side, fifteen scouts were sent out to determine the Romans’ position. They were given orders to return at dusk, whether they were successful or not. Actually no success would be true success—it would mean the Roman forces were still camped a comfortable distance away.
When all fifteen scouts failed to return at dusk, Auriane felt a cold ball of iron settle in her stomach. Witgern and Sigwulf and those privy to the plan revealed none of their anxieties to the others, but Thurid guessed it from Witgern’s stricken face.
Athelinda too knew something was gravely amiss. To allay her mother’s fears, Auriane insisted that the men were most likely ambushed by a band of Cheruscans before they got farther than Wolverine Valley. But Athelinda knew each scout had taken a different track. Athelinda said nothing; both felt a shadow cast over them that was grimmer than the fast-falling night.
As the sinking sun touched the crowns of the mountain ash trees on the fort’s western side, one of the sentries on the palisade gave a desolate wail.
Coniaric then called out, a hush in his voice: “Auriane. Come.”
Suddenly all the sentries were shouting, some cursing Wodan for treachery, some imprecating Fria, others crying out the names of kinsmen to come and look.
Auriane dashed to the palisade, not bothering with the ladder, letting the sentries haul her up.
The sight of the primeval Wyrm that girded the earth could not have filled her with more horror. Before her, on the broad, gently sloping southern plain, she saw wisps of smoke drifting from myriad points of quivering light, set out as regularly as planted furrows. Multitudes of cookfires, she realized, stretched out as far as the eye could see.
The fires of the legions. They had come, and with baffling swiftness.
Auriane moved past warriors on their knees weeping and shaking their fists at the sky, and men unable to move, staring at the sight with mute terror. “It is the will of the Fates,” she said, fighting for strength, struggling to reassure. “Our waiting is done.”
She stopped before the faceless wood image of Fria mounted on the palisade, fashioned from a single, polished branch of ash. The sentries were silent for a moment, watching her sun-reddened face as she bowed her head and placed her palms on the wooden idol. For the flash of one moment several thought she might perform some ritual magic that would cause the Roman fires to vanish.
But she prayed, and they were at once caught up in the intensity of it; the effect on them was deep-reaching and physical, almost like the act of love.
“You who are pure light shed from the moon,” she intoned, starting up unsteadily. “You who are the dark as well as the light…in your all-merciful body, life and death are one.” Her voice gained in power. “Great Giver, embrace us. Comfort us with your red-gold tears. Give us peace, the heavenly peace that…comes from knowing that in the beginning and the end of all times, you are benign.”
The gauzy contentment lasted but a moment, then evaporated like groundmist. Below, the whole population of the camp milled, looking numbed, uncomprehending, asking frightened questions for which no one had answers.
“Venison!” Coniaric exclaimed, shaking a fist at the vast field of fires. “Curses on them, they’re cooking venison! And baking bread!” Both smells drifted separately from the legions’ marching camp; they had the overwhelming power of dreams.
Athelinda climbed up to look. “With all the peoples of the earth at their feet,” she said, “it’s bewildering how eager they are for our empty horns and our nettle soup.”
Auriane shouted down to Thorgild, whom she saw fighting his way toward her through the crowd, “Break up the huts and carts. We raise the walls tonight!”
Thorgild nodded, and all worked feverishly by torchlight. There was nothing to be gained by keeping their fires extinguished; who would be fooled? All who could stand labored far into the night, laying fresh timbers along the walls until exhaustion came. Most fell asleep where they worked, succumbing to dreams of venison and bread.
Deep in the night Auriane found Athelinda still wakeful. They sat together, huddled under one ragged blanket. Auriane’s tent was pitched strategically between Berinhard’s stall and the hostages’ wicker cage so she could watch out for the welfare of both. The hostages’ human souls seemed long ago to have fled; some lesser, more bestial spirit animated those listless forms now. If they believed themselves close to freedom, they showed no sign.
There was no moon; Athelinda was just a voice and a snug presence. “You should sleep,” her mother said.
“I know. But I must stay awake to have time to say farewell to everything.”
“This is a wretched place to die,” Athelinda said softly. “Animals will strip our bones. We’ll have no funeral songs.”
“Let the birds sing them.” Auriane rested her head on her mother’s shoulder. Her body was so taut and battle-ready that Athelinda knew she did not feel as undaunted as she sounded.
“Even though we die tomorrow,” Auriane went on, more frailty in her voice now, “I don’t think our people will vanish from the ear
th…. Ramis said once…in coming ages our blood will mingle with the blood of others—and in nine generations’ time, when the wheel turns again, we will overrun and humble them.”
“Ah, to be reborn in that time!”
“But she would say, Mother, it is as likely you would be reborn one of them as one of us.”
“What an odd notion.”
“Mother, I understand none of this. Just when I think I do, life is unmasked—and beneath is an even more frightful mask…. Why must we suffer so? It is my evil…”
“No!” Athelinda gripped Auriane’s face in her hands and looked hard into her eyes in a way that made Auriane feel her mother’s strength. She was the daughter of Gandrida now, tributary of a great river of earth-born power. “Never say it more. I know an innocent heart, and I know an accursed one. First Hertha, then Odberht smeared you with blood-soaked mud, but it did not stick…. You live in grace, you die in grace, like the lily, like the swan. Why can you not know it!”
Auriane let sobs surge from her in welcome waves. Her whole body was overtaken with the rhythmic contractions of long-needed release, but she muffled the sound as best she could, lest she terrify the others sleeping nearby. Her mother’s hand crept over her own with the light, tentative movements of an autumn leaf; then Athelinda seized her hand with strength. When Auriane’s tears were spent and she felt peaceful and empty, she said simply, “Hylda’s oracle was false. I cannot save one flea.”
“Not so. You are a living shield. I tell you your spirit is not the same since your time on Ramis’ isle…. Godly light burns through your eyes. Do you not see how it heartens the troubled, if it does not literally preserve the flesh?”
They heard the moan of a woman in labor. Auriane thought of the sleek, wet form soon to emerge, a fresh creation to be devoured by this savage world.
Avenahar! Have you been consumed already? And I thought I would see you by last summer’s end. I will see you never again in this life.
“No, I do not see it. Sometimes, though, when I stare into the holy fire, I know in the beat of my blood that this is just the part of life that shows—that if we saw all of it, we would understand.”
There was a forlorn stretch of silence broken only by the chuffing of a nightjar.
“Auriane…” Athelinda ventured forward like someone testing a plank over a chasm. Auriane stiffened, alerted to danger. “I cannot let myself be taken captive tomorrow and dragged into thralldom. Tell me you understand. At dawn I mean to ask Thrusnelda for a draught of poison.”
“Mother, no! Do not leave me!”
“Daughter, you cannot fool me into believing we’ve any chance of victory.”
“I would not try. But I won’t act as the Fates. Let the gods say it!” She pressed her mother’s hand to her cheek. “I beg you! All I have loved are gone!”
Athelinda sighed heavily. “For you, then, dear child, I’ll live on a little longer. But just a little. I’ll wait until they’re pouring over the walls before I take my poison.”
Athelinda drew Auriane’s hand tightly to her chest, stroking her hair. In that position they fell into fitful sleep. Auriane dreamed of trolls’ halls, quaking earth, dancing walls reflecting fire, and groaning voices underground begging help.
When Auriane awakened, all still lay in predawn darkness. She disengaged herself from her mother without disturbing her and lit a torch from the central hearthfire. Working swiftly, quietly, she began drawing water from the well, meaning to soak the front gate so it would not burn. Witgern and Sigwulf were roused soon after and without speech began working alongside her. Gradually others rose in dozens, men of Sigwulf’s Companions and her own. While they labored, magpies and jays started their raucous music as if this dawn heralded a day like any other, to be filled with hunting, feasting or ploughing.
Auriane directed the aged, the children and the women who could not fight to the sheds along the north wall of the fort, where the approach was too steep for an army to attempt entry. Among them she saw Sunia, huddled in the gloom of the sunken floor of one of the huts, round eyes watching her mournfully. Auriane strode toward her and took Sunia’s hands in her own.
“Sunia, you have been a great and good friend.”
Sunia gave Auriane one of her cautious smiles. “Can I have a piece of your cloak?”
Auriane hesitated a moment, then took her dagger, pierced her cloak near the hem, and tore off a strip.
“And wet it with your spittle?” The spittle was said to carry the essence of the soul. Auriane complied. If this pitiful charm made Sunia feel safer, where was the harm?
“We’ll not be seated near each other in the Sky Hall,” Sunia said, eyes downcast. “I’ll be by the thralls, and you, next to Baldemar. So farewell for all time.”
“Sunia!” Auriane moved toward her. Sunia clasped thin arms around her.
A sentry’s cry shocked all to stillness—“Look ahead! They’ve readied themselves!”
Auriane left Sunia and quickly made her way to the palisade.
Through the rolling ground mist and gauzy dawn light she saw a legion assembled on the gently sloped plain—a dark sinister square of men at a distance of three arrow shots, protected by a gleaming carapace of massive, interlocking shields. Their javelins formed a bed of spikes, all in neat rows. They were a single weapon trained on the fort, one monstrous machine with the power of gods. Cavalry was arrayed on their flanks, and in back of them a second force waited in reserve, almost concealed in the purple-black shadows of the mountain ash trees.
Panic stopped some hearts and caused others to race. Men went for their weapons, some moving with noble calm, some breaking into a frenzied run, stumbling over empty cookpots, loose timbers and picked-clean bones. Children wailed. A number of warriors, expecting to die and caring for nothing, broke into the last of the rations and consumed them all—they at least would not die hungry. Most, though, could not have swallowed the smallest bite of gruel and cared little that their share had been taken from them.
Athelinda gave Auriane some dried millet bread. She took it so Athelinda would think she ate it, but hid it in her cloak.
Auriane then saw that quantities of water and pitch were boiled so they could be relayed to the walls when needed and cast down on the enemy. At the same time Sigwulf ordered the camp’s hoard of spears brought out. Then she directed the women who were not war-trained to collect stones of various sizes, which they arranged in piles alongside the palisade. Those stones look like cairns for the dead, Auriane thought. All the while she kept an anxious eye on the sentries, who were to sound a horn if the Romans moved.
She found Sigwulf, and together they selected the men of their Companions who were best with a spear and stationed them on the palisade. The boiling pitch was brought, and she readied the lifts. The main body of the warriors—but four thousand and more, all showing the skeleton through the skin and hung with rags—were formed up on the casting ground to act as reserves for the men on the palisade.
Then Auriane mounted Berinhard and rode the circuit of the walls, looking carefully for places where they might be breached. She felt spasms of hollow anguish alternating with strengthening bursts of rage. From time to time all about dissolved into dreams; surely this was all no more than a hearthfire tale. Was that truly a legion out there or some phantom shape conjured up by a mind overwrought by tragedy?
The palisade was thick with men standing shoulder to shoulder, brown cloaks fluttering solemnly in the first stirrings of breeze. Bowmen stood between the spear bearers, their pitch-smeared arrows ready.
As she rode between the two crumbling wells near the east wall, she was approached by a man she had never before encountered in the camp. He was a musician—under one arm was a well-polished harp carved with interlaced serpents and vines. The man grasped Berinhard’s rein and regarded her with bold reverence. He would have possessed the angular beauty of some young hero were that face not so elongated and gaunt. His eyes were light and luminous like an owl’s, seeming
to gaze inward and outward at once.
“Who are you and what are you doing here?” she asked sharply.
“I am Eota, songmaker to all the tribes, lately from the hall of King Chariomer, whom you so boldly defeated in battle.”
She scarcely felt the praise. It came too glibly and often from foreign travelers. “You chose a poor time to pay us a visit. This is not an honorable enemy who respects the nobility of musicians. You will be enslaved.”
“Or killed, perhaps. But I had to come here to see your face, so that when I sing of you people will pay close heed.”
This shifted her off balance. Rarely was she presented with such undeniable evidence of the great regard in which she was held among neighboring tribes. Apparently even Sigwulf’s victory foreigners ascribed to her battle-luck.
She wanted to say: Look at the bitter beaten mortal before you. Surely the sight of me is the undoing of all your adulation. I die alone today, wrest from my child, after having failed in all I sought.
He seemed to see only what might have been.
“You do me greater honor than I deserve,” she replied, feeling uncomfortable. Then she added, smiling, “If I’m to live in your songs, you must live. Go and hide in the well in back of the midden.”
She rode on, but Eota did not move; she felt that spectral gaze clinging to her back. Finally she turned about and said, “Eota! Beware of reverence, it’s a trick of the mind. And when you sing, do not forget them”—she indicated the pitiful host—“all these who did not run away.”
Eota nodded, still staring. Auriane rode past the wicker cage in which the two surviving hostages were kept, and held out to them the millet bread she could not eat. She watched as they accepted it without any show of gratefulness, divided it, and ate it. She said to them with her eyes, This is how I treat my enemy.
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