The Adventures of a Roman Slave

by Lisa Cach

  “Our destination,” Maerlin said grandly.

  “Ah.” I’d been expecting something more exciting: a wise old hermit living in a cave; a forgotten Celtic temple; maybe a waterfall in a verdant glade—people were always riding out of their way to look at waterfalls.

  “Don’t be disappointed until you know what it is.” He fairly vibrated with excitement. He waited for me to ask what it was, one of his brows raised.

  I nibbled the inside of my lips and didn’t.

  His brows pinched.

  Chuckling, I leaned over and poked him in the side. “I’m teasing you. You can tell me what it is.”

  He gaped down at where I’d poked him. Maybe no woman had poked him before in a spirit of fun. “Do you have no curiosity,” he asked me, straightening up, “or are you simply unnaturally good at controlling it?”

  “I have too much, and have indulged it too often. I simply liked watching you bite your tongue.”

  “Like a child pulling legs off a spider, enjoying watching its struggles.”

  “You’re far better looking than a spider.”

  His lips parted, his cheeks coloring, and I laughed. I’d found his Achilles’ heel: he was at ease taking a woman to his bed, supremely confident of his sexual powers, but if a woman bantered with and flattered him he was helpless, and at her mercy. He didn’t know how to respond as a person.

  “Tell me what the building is,” I said, as he didn’t look able to take much more teasing.

  “I don’t think I will.”

  “My punishment.”

  “What it is will be obvious to you. Why it’s special is something else.”

  Now I really was curious.

  We were soon at the site, and dismounted. Maerlin greeted the workers and talked with them in Brittonic while I did a quick survey with Bone.

  It was a forge, and off to one side was a clay mound that must be a furnace for smelting.

  Why here, though?

  I ducked under a framework of scaffolding in front of the furnace and walked to the edge of the work yard. The yard had been leveled with the help of a low stone retaining wall, and as I stood at the wall’s top facing southwest, a gust of wind hit with enough force to cut through my clothes and make my eyes water. I wrapped my arms over my chest, holding my cloak closed, and tried to catch a glimpse of the sea.

  Impossible; we were too far away. And yet I could almost imagine that I could catch a hint of salt on the air. It made me think of Jax, and wonder where he was, and whether he and his crew had found a willing woman to be their shipboard goddess.

  If Maerlin was right about me being able to contact any man with whom I’d slept . . .

  I closed my eyes and tried to reach out with my mind. I imagined the open boat with its smells of pitch and cordage, the green-gray sea sluicing along its sides, the silent clouds scudding by overhead. Jax, Jax, Jax . . .

  Nothing.

  I sighed and turned back to the forge, the wind pushing me forward.

  On second glance, the scaffolding I’d ducked under didn’t look to be scaffolding at all. I went back to it, running my hands over the freshly hewn timbers.

  Maerlin joined me. “Have you figured it out?”

  “I don’t know enough about forges and furnaces to even guess. All that this reminds me of is the masts and spars of boats.”

  He grinned. “Yes! We’ll hoist sails upon them.”

  “And sail the hill away? I almost think you could, with the way the winds hit up here. You couldn’t have chosen a more blustery place to put the forge.”

  “Precisely.”

  “But why . . . No, don’t tell me.” I scowled up at the cross-members, and then at the posts stuck in the ground. With canvas upon them, what could they possibly do? The hill wasn’t going anywhere. They were set in a deliberate pattern, though.

  I went back to the edge of the yard, and then walked all around it, looking at the posts and imagining them with sails.

  If the sails were set the correct way, they’d shield the furnace from the wind. But Maerlin said the furnace was set here because of the wind.

  So if the sails were set another way . . .

  I’d only seen a furnace in use a few times, but remembered the bellows used to get the coals burning hotter. Any fire, be it in a forge or in a kitchen or in the hypocaust under a Roman villa, burned better when it got enough air.

  I came back to Maerlin. “Is it a giant bellows?”

  “The biggest Britannia has ever seen!” He laughed, delighted with himself or with me, I wasn’t sure which. Maybe both.

  “But why? What do you want to make, that couldn’t be made in a normal furnace?”

  The story came out in a deluge. Maerlin was so excited by his plans, he seemed to hardly know I was there, except as a target at which to aim his flood of words.

  A journey to an island nation in the distant east; a furnace fired by the force of seasonal storms, their winds captured on hillsides; secret, alchemical mixes of metal and other substances, that created a sword with that rarest of qualities: flex. The need for heat such as no smith in the Roman Empire had ever achieved. Brenn’s genius at helping design the furnace and figuring out how to change the coal to a form that burned extremely hot. Brenn working with Maerlin to perfect the methods of smelting and forging the rare combination of metals and powders.

  “With this furnace, and with Brenn’s skill, we’ll be able to make blades such as the world has never seen. It’s all in the metal, Nimia. I’m certain I have the formula right, or almost right; what I need now is a monstrous storm. Ordinary wind won’t do it.” He rubbed his hands together, his gaze lost in the glowing future, where the storm to end all storms swept in from the sea and up the hill into his sails. “And it has to be this winter. We can’t wait any longer.”

  “Why the hurry?”

  “Hurry?” he said, eyes bright and round, almost mad. “I’ve been working on this since Brenn and I returned to Britannia. The time is finally here; I can feel it. Everything is coming together. You, the chalice, the alliance with Horsa. We’re on the cusp of a great change. We Britons can emerge at last from the long shadow of the Romans and walk proudly into a golden age. Arthur will lead us there, if he has the right help from you and me.”

  “I don’t know what I can do.”

  “You and I can make this happen, to start with,” he said, gesturing at the furnace.

  “Metallurgy is far beyond my powers.”

  “The winds are not.”

  “What?”

  He stepped up close to me and gripped my shoulders, looking down into my eyes. “You calmed the sea, on your journey to Britannia. I saw that in your mind.”

  I shook my head, and tried and failed to slip out from under his grip. “No, it was Jax’s sea goddess who did that.”

  “There are no gods or goddesses, beyond those we create. It was your own power that calmed the storm. That was one of the powers of the druids: controlling the wind. It was said they could call up such great gusts that they could ride upon them, like birds.”

  “I’m not a druid.”

  His hands slid inward to my neck, his thumbs stroking my skin. “No, you are Phanne, and to be Phanne is to have access to powers far beyond what the druids could ever dream of.”

  His touch was having its effect on me, spreading liquid, languorous desire down over my chest, tightening my nipples.

  I wet my lips, trying to keep my thoughts in order, trying to resist his strange allure. “If you can call the winds, why haven’t you done so?”

  “I have. I drew a natural storm to the furnace, but the winds weren’t strong or stable enough, and I hadn’t the strength to whip them higher. I need the type of storm that comes once in a lifetime, and I can’t wait a decade for it to appear. You and I, working together, can create it.”


  If Maerlin had drawn a storm to the furnace . . . then maybe it was possible. I had drawn water out of the earth once; how different was air? A tingle of excitement ran through me. If he could show me how to harness such abilities, how to draw on them at will, I would never again be at the mercy of the weather. And Terix need never fear another dangerous sea voyage, for we could scud swiftly across gentle waters that dare not rise against us.

  Then my imagination went larger: what fleet could invade a shore, if I could send winds to blow it off? A drought could be ended by calling in heavy clouds pregnant with rain. A killing winter could be softened, with lives saved of both man and beast. So much suffering could be eased, if I could control even some small element of the weather.

  If I had the power. If I was strong enough.

  Another thought hit me and my excitement died down, replaced with wariness. “When I calmed the storm at sea—if I truly did—it was while I was being taken by Jax, and caressed by his men. Were you with a woman when you called the storm?”

  He nodded. “It was the only way I could find the energy.”

  “Then you’d want me to lie with you, to call this storm.”

  “Think of the power we’d have, joined together! Working together, toward the same aim!”

  “I’m thinking of the power you’d have over me.” And thinking how hard it would be for Arthur to understand if I slept with his brother, no matter the reason.

  “I don’t want to control you, Nimia. It’s never been what I wanted.” He caught a strand of my hair and wound it around his finger, then let it slide free. His hands dropped down to my shoulders and he moved closer. The wind jostled us, urging us closer.

  I became aware of his strength, his shoulders as broad as Arthur’s, though his build was more lithe. Where Arthur smelled of leather, horse, and male, Maerlin’s scent was of herbs and open air, of stone and metal. One brother was the essence of warm life, the other of cool thought.

  “What do you want of me?” I breathed. “Not just the storm, or how to use the chalice. What do you want of me?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Of course he didn’t. “Do you want to be my friend? Lover? Teacher? Brother? Nothing at all?”

  “I want you to work with me. I want us to share our knowledge.” His gaze was earnest. Innocent.

  And I realized that he’d just paid me the highest compliment he knew how to give. My tension eased and I nodded, accepting it. This physical attraction between us was something to do with power, not with any romantic attraction. I could work with that; I could use it for both our ends without qualms. This was the way of the Phanne. “The storm matters to you. I’m willing to help, even if it means we must touch one another.”

  Joy lit his face.

  I spoke my one condition: “If you take me to Mona.”

  He shoved away from me, nearly knocking me off balance with the force of his rejection. “No.”

  I pursued, putting my hand on his arm, trying to send the force of my need into that touch. “Take me to Mona, and after we return I will gladly lie beneath you. Together we’ll call up a tempest strong enough to rip trees from the ground; to shred your sails; to blow down the walls of your furnace.”

  His struggles weakened, and then stopped. His mouth turned down with an anguish he would not share.

  “There’s no other way I’ll do it,” I said.

  “We’ll both be sorry for this.”

  “Maybe.”

  But I couldn’t care about that possibility right now. I knew I had won.

  We were going to Mona.

  “There’s still time to turn back,” Maerlin said, his face pale. Violet shadows had taken up residence under his eyes, deepening in color the closer we came to the Isle of Mona. The land of his nightmares was now in sight across the Menai Strait, its shores gray and its low-lying land covered with the same bare, brown-branched forest that we’d traveled through for a week.

  “You can if you must. I can go on from here alone.”

  “I can’t leave you in their hands.”

  Which is what I’d known he’d say. His eagerness for my help with the forge may have gotten him started on this journey with me, but with each mile we covered, his attention turned to what awaited us on Mona. His distress troubled me, and made me feel both guilty and selfish for making him come, yet at the same time I was angry that he still hadn’t told me what he was afraid of.

  The captain of the ferry, a weathered, bandy-legged little man, gave a whistle and gestured to us. Our horses had been loaded aboard, shying and sidestepping at the shifting boards under their hooves, then settling after a few words of whispered comfort from one of the mates.

  Maerlin and I found a place to sit forward, amid barrels and bales, and the captain cast off. We had spent the night in the port at the mouth of the Seiont River, and the fort the Romans had built to conquer the druids was still standing, dominating the small town, though occupied now by a force of local Celts more interested in holding off Irish raiders than vanished druids.

  The Romans had done us a favor by building Watling Street, a straight road from Londinium nearly all the way to Fort Seiont; our travel had been swift, and unhindered by the cautious creeping through the forest that had slowed me and Terix while on our own. Maerlin wore a cloak of outrageously bright green and yellow, and had added a crimson outer layer to my own fleece. Our mounts had shining bells woven into their manes and tails, and wore tack adorned with polished silver ornaments. “Boldness will prevent three-quarters of our trouble before it begins,” he’d told me. “My reputation will take care of the rest.”

  He was right. Whereas a man and woman timidly traveling the road, looking ready to bolt into the underbrush at a moment’s fright, would be seen as easy prey, any bandit with half a brain would hesitate at the sight Maerlin and I made. One either had to be an idiot to travel so brightly, loudly, and unaccompanied by guards, or one had to be supremely confident of one’s own power.

  Terix hadn’t wanted me to travel alone with Maerlin, and I’d questioned the wisdom of it myself. Maerlin had promised to teach me to defend my mind from other Phanne during our journey, though, and Arthur, Brenn, and Ambrosius had all sworn that I would be safer alone with Maerlin than surrounded by a legion of soldiers.

  “Don’t waste your time on this journey,” I’d told Terix in private. “I don’t know how long we’ll stay in Britannia; use this time for training with Brenn. You’ll never find another teacher like him.”

  “You told me never to leave you alone with Maerlin.”

  “I have the upper hand; he won’t do anything to jeopardize getting my help with the forge.”

  “You’re a fool if you think you have any control over him.”

  I’d put my arms around his waist and laid my head on his chest. “I don’t want to travel without you, but even more, I want you to keep training.”

  “So I can defend you better?”

  I nodded, though I didn’t care how good with a sword he became. All that mattered was that he desperately wanted to become skilled. I didn’t want to take him away from something that was so important to him.

  “I doubt Maerlin’s traveled alone with a woman before,” I said, and then lowered my voice ominously. “It’s almost time for my monthly flow.”

  I felt the rumble of his laughter in his chest. “May the gods have mercy on him. No magic can save him from Nimia in a moon-flow mood.”

  I pinched his butt, and he squeaked an indignant “Ow!” as I released him. “Already feeling it, are you?” he said.

  “This is my everyday sweet temper.”

  “Never mind Maerlin for protection on the road; I feel sorry for any dumb ruffian who gets in your way.”

  I’d left Bone with Terix, too. We could travel faster, and farther, without him.

  There was one band of thieves
who did try to stop us on the road, and a trio among them who, hearing Maerlin’s name, thought it was time the great wizard had a proper challenge. Maerlin’s eyes had glowed, and he cut them down before their fellow bandits had had a chance to gather round to watch and cheer. The cold, quick efficiency of the slaying unnerved those who remained; I could see they’d been expecting a lasting bout, a struggle on both sides, blows taken and given. They’d expected fun. They may even have expected to end the battle at blood drawn, at which point—depending on whose blood had been spilled—they might rob us and let us go on our way, pursued only by jeers and taunts.

  They hadn’t expected three of their men to be eliminated with the dispassion of a fishwife chopping heads from eels.

  A few had been angered by that, and raised their swords.

  More fish for the basket.

  The remaining men were wise enough to flee.

  “Apparently my reputation needed polishing,” Maerlin said, after cleaning his sword and remounting. “We’re passing through Druce’s territories right now; he’s been at odds with Ambrosius’s plans for an all-tribe alliance. That might be why those men were willing to attack: they knew they’d have free ale for months, if they could boast of besting me.”

  “Won’t your slaughtering those men cause more problems for Ambrosius?”

  “Druce wants his independence; not criminals infesting his lands, interrupting trade and frightening his farmers. He’ll only complain if he finds it useful to do so.”

  I gestured at my cheek, mock-brushing a speck away. A spray of arterial blood had painted a red crescent on his pale skin. I was unsettled, gazing upon that evidence of his lethality while he calmly explained local politics to me.

  “Hmm?” Maerlin touched his face, took his fingers away, and saw the blood. He muttered a curse, dug in his saddlebag, and with the same rag with which he’d cleaned his sword, scrubbed at his cheek. “Did I get it?”

  I nodded.

  He inspected his cloak and clothes, cursing when he found a single drop near the knee of his breeches. He dabbed at it with the dirty rag, and I had to choke back giggles. “Don’t rub,” I wheezed past my mirth. “You’ll have to soak it out.”