by Lisa Cach
This was not a dog for herding sheep. This was not a dog for hunting birds. This was a dog whose ancestors had been bred to go to war for the Greeks, taking on lions and elephants.
What was a horse to such a dog?
The two soldiers flanking us drew their swords.
“Bone!” I screamed, thinking I don’t know what; that I could warn him away. Instead, my cry only spurred him on, his head lowering for the attack.
I heard shouting, and saw three mounted figures come out into the intersection ahead.
Bone threw himself at our horse, jaws locking on to its neck. Our mount stumbled, recovered, spun; I clung with all my strength to my fistful of mane, while around me Sygarius tried to control the reins. The soldiers wheeled their own mounts, and slashed at Bone, their blades flashing in the moonlight. Our horse tried to rear against the weight of the dog on its neck, forelegs pawing, and I heard the sickening sound of hoof connecting with flesh, and Bone dropped away with a piercing yelp. Our mount, thrown off balance yet again, dropped onto its haunches.
I acted before I could think: I released the mane and twisted under Sygarius’s arm, sliding off onto the ground. Deadly hooves danced in chaos around me as Sygarius shouted my name and the horse regained its feet. “Nimia! Get back here! Nimia!” And to the soldiers, “Get her!”
They circled round me, the three of them, arms reaching, and then the other riders were upon us, blowing apart the circle like wind against a dandelion head. Metal engaged with metal, clanging, hammering. I heard the grunts of effort, shouts of battle rage, and then from beyond the mêlée Terix’s voice, “Nimia, this way!”
I dodged through the horses and the fighting, feeling a sword pass within a breath of my shoulder. I glanced back and saw Clovis, his face deadly with focus, engaged in battle with Sygarius. Sygarius’s left arm hung limp at his side: he was wounded.
Clovis was winning.
I hesitated too long. A Roman arm swept me up, and the soldier turned his mount and began to flee the scene. “Clovis!” I screamed.
Both he and Sygarius looked. For a moment they became, under the moonlight, a marble frieze of warriors at arms, carved in stone.
Sygarius acted first, taking advantage of Clovis’s distraction to turn his mount and ride—in the opposite direction from me.
Clovis’s head jerked, catching the movement, seeing that his most hated enemy was escaping. He turned his horse to follow.
“Kill her!” Sygarius shouted over his shoulder to the soldier who held me.
I twisted in the soldier’s grip, to see a bloodied blade being raised above me, point downward, aiming for the space between collarbone and neck. A whimpering cry was all the protest I could offer.
And then the man’s sword arm was gone.
Gone. Lopped off. Blood spurted from the severed arteries.
His grip on me slackened and I began to fall . . . only to be caught, and pulled onto Clovis’s mount. I clung to him, stunned, as the soldier crumpled and fell, and his horse ran off into the city.
And then it was over. Both Roman guards and one Frank lay dead, and Sygarius was gone.
“You let Sygarius go!” I cried. “You have to catch him. Go. Track him down. Kill him.” I hooked my fingers around the top of Clovis’s breastplate, and shook. “Kill him! Kill him!”
“Nimia, shhh, my love. Shh.” He held me to his hard armor and stroked my head. “He won’t get far.”
“You have to kill him. Or let me.”
He planted kisses on my cheeks, my forehead. “Nimia, Nimia, what did he do to you?”
“You let him get me. You left me with him.”
“His capture of you . . . I failed you there. I didn’t know there was a catacomb under the church. But I didn’t leave you with him. I brought three armies to conquer the city, to get you back.”
“You would have done that anyway.”
“Eventually. But not so soon; not with so little preparation. It was a close thing; Sygarius had more men. And Gararic—” He stopped himself, and put his hands to both sides of my face, forcing me to look at him. “Never mind all that. I went mad when he took you, Nimia. Anyone can tell you. I felt like someone had ripped out my guts.”
I sucked in a breath. They were the first words of real caring I’d ever had from him.
“Ragnachar had to hold me back from charging into the city alone, to find you. I wanted to rip out Sygarius’s heart with my bare hands.”
“You let him go . . .”
“Because your survival mattered more than his death.”
And then he was kissing me, and I was crying and opening my mouth to him, and he took me with him off the back of the horse and we stumbled to the wall of a house. The stones against my back were still warm from the heat of the day.
“Erase his touch from me,” I begged between breaths. “Make me forget.”
He hoisted one of my legs around his waist, and then he was in me. He gave a quick few thrusts, then slowed, diverting his attention to his hands on my buttocks, his tongue in my mouth. I wrapped my fingers in his hair and let myself go, losing myself in him, feeling safe in his arms. And cared for.
He cared for me.
He’d gone to war for me.
He’d let his greatest enemy escape, for me.
Joy flowed through my veins. As he slowly thrust inside me, his hands massaging my buttocks, the hum of the golden swarm surrounded me. Filled me. And a vision came:
Myself. Alone. Standing on a slight rise in the middle of a vast, grassy plain. Gray skies, and wind blowing chill against my skin. And a feeling of such loss and emptiness as I had never known.
My heart broke, and I grieved for I knew not what; but in the waking world, my body found its release, and a moment later Clovis groaned out my name and found his own.
The wrenching vision faded away, leaving behind a strange hollowness that I fought to fill, placing my hand gently on Clovis’s cheek. He grasped my hand and pulled my palm to his lips, kissing it, and then held my hand to his chest.
A lovely gesture, which would have been more lovely without the metal breastplate in the way. I quirked a smile at him. He kissed me quickly on the corner of my mouth, and carefully withdrew his rod from my cunny. I straightened my skirts, in a pointless display of modesty; I hoped Terix had had no interest in watching.
Stupid thought, that. Of course he had watched.
We walked back to Terix and Bone. “Thank Wotan for those two,” Clovis said, breaking the tender silence between us. “Terix knew Bone would find you, given the chance.”
Bone, brave creature, held one hind leg off the ground, and Terix was using his own tunic to bandage a wound on his side.
“We’ll get him sewn up, and the leg splinted,” Clovis said. He hugged me to his side, and kissed me on top of my head. “Don’t worry.”
I wrapped my arms around his waist. For this night, at least, I wouldn’t.
Two weeks later I was living in Sygarius’s grand city house and sleeping in his bed—with Clovis. Lady Lydia and her daughters had fled before we arrived, and her quarters were now vacant, pending the arrival of Basina and Audofleda. Clovis had decided to move his court to Soissons, the better to subdue the province and secure his hold.
“It’s weird, isn’t it, Nimia?” Terix said, as we strolled the gallery surrounding the large courtyard garden. Guards stood watch over an ever-growing pile of loot squashing the plants in the center. “Being back in this house.”
“It feels like we’re dreaming, doesn’t it? Everything looks familiar, and yet everything is different. The rules have changed, and I don’t know yet what we’re supposed to be.”
“I know. We’re no longer slaves, but then, what are we?”
We paused to step into the garden and give Bone’s ears a scratch. He lay in the sun, heaving dog sighs of contentment. He�
�d been stitched and splinted, and given more meat than his belly could hold, and more doting attention than he knew what to do with.
We resumed our stroll around the shaded gallery.
“And have you noticed the way everyone looks at us?” I said, as a female servant scurried past, eyes flashing a sidelong, wary glance. “People I’ve known most of my life look at me as if I’m going to stick a dagger in their ribs, just for the fun of it.”
“Girls look at me like I’m going to order them to bend over and spread their legs. Mind you, I think most of them are hoping that’s what I will do.” Terix hooked his thumbs in his belt and puffed out his chest. “What with my new status as a mighty conqueror. Gets them wet, you know.”
I laughed.
The house had been empty of all but a few aged servants when Clovis took it over, but over the past week the slaves and servants had begun to return. They needed food, shelter, a place to work—no matter for whom. Clovis had given me the authority to choose who could work in the house, based on what I knew of their loyalties and their character.
In short order the house was running almost as smoothly as I remembered: the servants were eager to make a good impression on their new lord, and they put their backs into the effort. They were wary of Terix and me, perhaps recalling past moments when they had been less than kind to us, but with increasing frequency I was catching cautious smiles from familiar faces.
A group of Franks entered the far side of the garden, their arms laden with treasures they added to the pile. Clovis had explained that it was their custom that all the spoils of war be shared out by drawn lots, with the captains of each regiment making their choice of the loot, with all shares to be equal. Everything looted from the city was brought here, and should any man be found to have secretly kept a piece of treasure, he would have both his hands, and then his head, lopped off.
One of the Franks caught my attention. Instead of tossing shining metal onto the mound, he was squatting to one side, carefully unwrapping something protected by layers of cloth. As it came out from its covering, it caught the sunlight, glinting and flashing.
I sucked in a breath.
The pink, transparent stone vase, from the church. The one with the labyrinth inscribed inside it. The one that had given me a vision of my future child.
I rushed over to the Frank, my limbs shaking as I squatted down across the vase from him, my hands fluttering above the glimmering surface.
The Frank grinned at me: most of them still thought I was a daughter of Nerthus, a demigoddess who had come to use her powers in service to Clovis and the Franks.
“Beautiful,” I said in Frankish; I’d learned a smattering of the language by now.
“Like my lady.”
I smiled back at him. I wanted nothing more than to scoop the vase up and run to my quarters with it, there to gaze into its depths and feel what messages it might bring me. Instead, I forced myself to stand and walk away from it. I was as bound by the Frankish laws of treasure division as were the others.
“I want that vase,” I said when I rejoined a mildly puzzled Terix.
“That? When there are jewels, and piles of gold?”
“I have to find Clovis. I have to have it.”
“I can’t imagine you won’t get it, even if Clovis has to choose his loot last. No man in his right mind will pick a stupid pink vase over gold. You’re the only person who could possibly want it.”
But he was wrong.
I found Clovis some hours later, after he returned from a tour of the city. There was still looting going on, but he had put a stop to destruction, and patrols were in place to keep the citizens from harm by warriors drunk on both victory and wine.
I dragged him to the courtyard and pointed out the vase, but instead of the easy, “Of course I’ll get it for you,” response I expected, he pulled his hand over his face, stopping with his palm covering his mouth as he thought.
“There’s a problem,” he said at last.
A sick feeling roiled in my stomach.
“Someone else already came to me, asking for it.”
“Who?”
“Remigius. On behalf of Albus, and the entire Christian Church. He asked that even if none of the gold is returned to them, that at least the vase be.”
I fisted my hands, panic fluttering in my breast as I gazed at the vase, which sat now in the shadows of twilight. “He can’t have it. You can tell him no, can’t you?”
“I already said I would give it to him, if possible.”
“But why does he want it?” I complained. “It’s not a Christian thing. It has nothing to do with his church!”
“How do you know?”
“I know!” I was losing control of my emotions, and wasn’t sure why I was getting so upset, so quickly. “I think it’s from my people, the Phanne. I feel it.”
“Then why would it be in a Christian church?”
“Maybe they stole it from us.”
“Nimia, that doesn’t make any sense. The Christians want no part of the old gods, the old religions.”
“Why is Remigius so eager to get it back, then? Doesn’t that strike you as strange? What reason did he give?”
“He said it was from the Holy Land, and that it made the local Christians feel closer to their Christ. He said it was an object of beauty in their otherwise difficult lives.”
“He’s not telling you the truth. It’s a thing of power, Clovis. I felt it. It brought on a vision when I touched it.”
That perked his interest. “Of what?”
“I saw—” I started, but found I did not want to tell him of the boy child I’d envisioned. Not yet. “—the golden swarm I always see, when a vision is coming. But then those men grabbed me.”
He sighed, and ran his hand through his hair. “I already promised the vase to Remigius, and that may be for the best. He and his church will be happy, and you can go see it in the basilica whenever you want. It’s the best of both worlds.”
“But the vase is not for the Christians! It was never meant for them!” I raged, my emotions spinning out of control again.
“Stop it! I’ve made my decision. I won’t have you question me.”
I burst into tears and ran from him, back to our quarters. Even as I threw myself facedown on our bed, weeping bitterly, a part of me stood to one side, watching, and wondering what had come over me. I was acting like a madwoman.
Was it the vase, causing this chaos inside me?
Or was it . . .
I caught my breath and held it, listening to my heartbeat. And listening, too, to my body. I rolled onto my back and placed my hand over my womb. Was there something there? Inside me, too small to feel, had a life begun?
My woman’s flow, regular as the tides, was due to arrive on the morrow. My emotions might be no more than the turmoil that hit me every moon at this time.
Or it might mean that the son I’d envisioned was already forming.
Sygarius.
Clovis.
Either could be the father.
Gods help me if I was pregnant, and it was Sygarius’s seed that had taken root.
Three days later, the Frankish leaders gathered to divide the spoils of war. Neither I nor anyone else was allowed to be present, as was their custom. Clovis said that emotions ran too high when there was gold for the taking, and the leaders did not need the added pressure of greedy warriors shouting what they wanted, like children clamoring for sweetmeats. There was always the potential for violence, as a leader saw the man before him take the jeweled goblet he’d been eyeing, or the gold armbands he’d thought to share out among his men.
I sat on a stool in the atrium, playing a cithara and trying not to think about what was happening in the garden courtyard. Because our quarters looked out on the garden, I—and everyone else—had been banished from that pa
rt of the house.
A shallow, rectangular pool sat in the center of the atrium, the ceiling above it open to the sky, allowing rainwater to refresh the pool. Remigius paced in slow circuits of the pool with his hands behind his back, his expression serenely confident, while Albus perched on a stool against the wall, looking equally at peace. They knew they would get what they came for.
The twentieth time Remigius strolled by me, I stopped my strumming and asked, “What is it that is special about the pink vase?”
Remigius stopped and looked at me. “So you are speaking to me again?”
I stared at him.
“I can only say again, Nimia, how very sorry both I and Father Albus are for what happened. It never occurred to us that Sygarius might use the catacomb to spirit you away.”
“I suffered greatly for your lack of foresight.”
He grimaced, and spread his hands in a helpless gesture. “My mind is not one made for subterfuge. I should never have attempted to arrange such a meeting, with so much potential to go wrong. I reached beyond my limits. And now I fear I have lost your faith, not only in me, but in Christ.”
“I’ve had a difficult time,” I said, a non-answer he could interpret as he pleased. Like Clovis, I saw no reason to estrange the man when he was basically goodhearted, and besides that might prove useful in the future. “Tell me about the vase.”
“In truth, we know little of its origins. Legend has it, though, that it is the vessel from which wine was served at Christ’s Last Supper.”
“Do you think that’s true?”
“Who’s to say? I am tempted to believe it, for there is something special about that vase. One has only to touch it, to feel its holiness.”
With that, I could not argue.
A roar of angry voices echoed through the rooms and closed doors between the courtyard and the atrium. We both turned our heads that way, listening. Muffled shouts. Rumbles of upset.
Remigius and I exchanged glances. “I suddenly do not mind being barred from the event,” he said.
I nodded.
The disturbance, whatever it was, settled down, and it was sometime later that the atmosphere shifted, and doors were thrown open. Servants appeared with flagons of wine and trays of cups.
