The Legions of Fire

by David Drake

  All Carce was like that. All the earth was like that, a gathering of elements each as discrete as a grain of sand. Gaius Varus was alone, except for the maddening drumming in his mind.

  “What is your business, Master Oannes?” he said stiffly. “And what do you see as my part in it?”

  “I’m a magician,” Oannes said, looking toward the pool. “Of a sort—I don’t want you to mistake me for your Nemastes.”

  Varus straightened in surprise. “Why do you say that?” he demanded. He tried to be commanding, but he noticed with embarrassment that his voice wavered on the last syllable.

  “I was told by the stars,” Oannes said simply. “I saw your need, and I know my own capabilities. So I came to you.”

  He faced Varus again with a slight smile. “My abilities differ from those of Nemastes, you see, but they’re real nonetheless. You need a guide to bring you to the Legions of Surtr, which you’re to lead. My wife is in the spirit world, and she will supply you with that guide.”

  What are the legions of Surtr? Varus thought. And who would want me to lead anything?

  Aloud he said, “What am I to pay you for this?”

  “For me, nothing,” Oannes said. He grimaced and turned toward the pool again. In a changed voice he continued, “You will pay my wife in the coin she requests. The charge will not be exorbitant.”

  “Why am I to lead legions?” Varus said, hoping to find wisdom if he worked the words around in his mind for a while. “Why should I lead anybody? Not me!”

  But as he spoke, he felt the insistent rhythm in his mind. He knew that the stranger was right.

  “I don’t know the purpose,” Oannes said. “I don’t know if anything has purpose, Varus. I know only the means.”

  He looked directly at the younger man. “I love my wife more than life itself,” he said, “but I cannot go to her. When I die, no one will send her visitors. She will wear away to hunger; nothing but hunger. Therefore—”

  Oannes smiled. Varus looked into his eyes; for an instant he saw a skull, but only for a flash of time.

  “—I must live even longer than I have lived already.”

  “What if I don’t want to go?” Varus said.

  Oannes shrugged. “I was told you needed my help,” he said. “If the stars were wrong, shall I protest to them? But the stars are never wrong.”

  The rhythm pressed and pressed harder. Varus felt his mind strain, trying to squeeze out of his eye sockets and through his ear canals.

  “All right,” he said. “What am I to do?”

  “Stand where you are,” Oannes said quietly. He opened his satchel and took from it what looked like a handful of ground millet. He walked around Varus, dropping pinches of the dust on the ground as he went.

  Oannes seemed to be chanting under his breath, but Varus couldn’t be sure that he wasn’t hearing the dancers in his mind instead. There was a haze between him and the traffic of the busy highway. No one was looking at him and Oannes, but no one had looked at them earlier either.

  The fog grew thicker and enveloped Varus.

  CORYLUS EYED THE CREEK with satisfaction. It was only about a dozen feet across, but it had undercut its banks and carried a considerable flow. The water had the same milky opacity as that of the river it would join in a few hundred yards; that was ideal for his present business: catching trout for his dinner.

  He set his gear a safe distance up on dry ground and took a three-point stance on the bank, facing downstream. Any silt that he stirred up would drift onto the fish he was approaching, dulling their senses; though as cloudy as this stream was, it probably didn’t matter.

  Corylus stretched his right arm toward the far bank, then bent it at the elbow with his hand pointing back at him. Only then did he lower his hand and forearm into the water. He couldn’t touch the bottom, though he judged the back of his hand must be close. Slowly, controlling not only his breathing but his heart, he brought his hand toward the bank.

  A Batavian scout on the Danube had taught Corylus to tickle fish. He’d done it often before his father had retired to Italy, but then it had been an amusement—like learning to throw the javelin accurately. Now his life depended on the technique.

  He smiled faintly. It was possible that javelin throwing would turn out to be another necessary survival skill.

  When Corylus didn’t find a fish on the first attempt, he edged a few feet downstream and repeated the process. The stream was literally icy, but that couldn’t be helped. While he was concentrating on the task, nothing else mattered.

  As his second pull neared the bank, Corylus realized that his forearm was touching a fish. He did nothing for long moments, calming his heart. The pulse in his arteries was enough to spook the trout if he wasn’t careful.

  The trout felt the warmth as well as the minute pressure, but it didn’t move except for flicks of its fins to keep it in place. The current this close to the bank was scarcely noticeable.

  Corylus lifted his hand—or perhaps his hand rose; he wasn’t really conscious of making it happen—until his fingertips touched the trout’s belly. He didn’t move farther. The creek burbled past; sometimes the swirls showed patterns, or seemed to. The surface was as white and opaque as a sheet of marble.

  The ravens had followed; they croaked now with quizzical interest. Corylus smiled faintly. He’d have something for them before long. But he wouldn’t let them eat a man’s eyes.

  Corylus might have moved in a moment, but the fish took the initiative: it began to undulate, rubbing itself against his fingertips. The contact was scarcely more than the brush of a butterfly’s wing.

  Corylus let his fingers slide down the length of the trout’s belly, then back toward its throat. It writhed slowly against his touch. He gradually increased his contact with the fish, but he remained very gentle.

  The fish relaxed. Was it asleep? He didn’t know if fish ever slept. He continued to stroke its belly, but he began to curl his fingers around it as well. He didn’t really plan for the next step, but when his hand was close to the trout’s balance point—not far behind its gill covers—his fingers closed and jerked the fish straight up.

  The fish thrashed, but its powerful tail had only air to flap against. Corylus swung his arm back over the bank and brought it down fast and firmly, as though he were using the trout’s head to club the rock he’d placed there, ready for the moment of need. The trout went limp after a spasm.

  Corylus laid it on a bed of damp moss in the basket—it made an excellent creel—and moved a little farther downstream. The ravens were excited, but they could wait. Patience was the essence of fishing, after all.

  By the time Corylus had worked his way down to the river, his basket held three trout running two or three pounds apiece. He kept an eye on them as he dragged driftwood to the spot just above the strand which he’d chosen for his fire.

  The ravens were watchful, but they appeared to accept the situation. Occasionally one uttered a peevish cluck, but a glance was enough to move them back if they hopped within twenty feet of the basket.

  Corylus smiled. He was starting to appreciate the birds’ company: he’d never been so completely alone before. The dead man’s presence meant there must be living humans nearby, though. The kayak wasn’t something you could make long voyages in, and the man’s equipment had been well made and sophisticated in design. He hadn’t been an outcast living alone.

  Among those items of equipment was a sealskin case with an elderberry rod, a round elm knob with a socket, a short cedar board, and a leather strap about the length of his outstretched arm. At first Corylus hadn’t been sure what the packet was, but as he handled the wooden pieces their use came to him the way objects become visible when sunlight burns the fog away.

  He held a strap drill for starting fires. It would be very nearly as valuable as the obsidian knife.

  Corylus built a fireset with shavings from a birch which a collapsing bank had dropped into the stream several years before. He placed the ce
dar board on the ground and held it down with a branch which he kneeled on. Setting the elderberry rod on the board with about half the strap wrapped around it, he fitted the elm socket on top, then bent to grip it with his jaws.

  Corylus had to keep his head in the direction of the creel, since he couldn’t watch the ravens themselves while holding the top piece. He took one end of the strap in either hand and began to spin the rod back and forth.

  The mouthpiece filled Corylus with a sort of motherly sadness. He felt an urge to comfort a spirit that he felt as a blurred presence, but the elm was beyond anything except regret. The same was true of the man who’d fashioned the socket, of course. It was the way of life.

  The elderberry began to smolder. Corylus decanted the coal into dried willow catkins from a separate pouch. When they were burning well, he placed them on the shavings and bark pith at the center of his fireset and breathed gently on the flames. As the fire grew, he added fuel until branches the thickness of his wrists were starting to burn.

  When the fire was going, Corylus cleaned and gutted the fish. He dumped the heads, tails, and guts at a point midway between himself and the ravens. The birds were on the offal, croaking grumpily, by the time he’d seated himself to cook the filleted trout on a grill he’d tied together from stems of rye grass, last year’s crop.

  “You’re eating before I am, my friends,” he reminded them. The ravens grumbled anyway.

  Corylus smiled. There are people like that too.

  His face sobered as he wondered how long it would be before he saw people again. With nothing else appearing, he’d start walking south in the morning. Perhaps he’d wait to catch more trout and smoke them into jerky; tonight’s grilled leftovers would do for tomorrow, but fish wouldn’t keep long without proper drying. That would take eight hours over a slow fire, and Corylus wasn’t sure he wanted to wait. Perhaps he could deal with that after a day of walking, but now—

  Now he felt as though ants were crawling under his skin.

  The trout were delicious, even without salt. He wouldn’t have as much remaining for tomorrow as he’d thought. This was early in the year for berries, but likely enough he’d find cattails or other edible roots. He didn’t think he’d starve.

  Corylus looked over his shoulder at the smoking volcano. It was bigger by far than the daily presence of Vesuvius, which he’d viewed from his father’s perfume factory on the Bay of Puteoli. Vesuvius had an air of menace, but this stark cone was far worse. Well, he’d be far to the south by tomorrow evening and farther yet in succeeding days.

  With his stomach full, Corylus cut a trench in the lee of a hummock and lifted out the turfs to raise walls for his shelter. He floored it with a layer of ferns—still green, but some protection from the clay ground—and settled himself into it without a coverlet. Tomorrow he’d fashion something, but tonight he was too tired.

  Though the sun had finally set, the twilight lingered. Corylus fell asleep anyway.

  A figure strode toward him out of the darkness of his sleep; its features were those of the man he had buried.

  “Well met, Corylus,” the figure said. “I’m Odd’s Vengeance. We have business, you and I.”

  CHAPTER XI

  Corylus thought he was dreaming, but he’d thought that in the forest also. Indeed, maybe he had been dreaming—but he was pretty sure that if the wolves had gotten their teeth in him, he wouldn’t have returned alive to Carce.

  “You’re the man in the kayak?” he said. This fellow was fully dressed including boots, but he had to be the same man.

  “No, that was Odd,” the figure said. “He’s at peace now, thanks to you. I’m his vengeance.”

  The sky was light enough to show the visitor’s features. He looked younger than the man Corylus had buried, nearer twenty than thirty, but the blood congested in the face of the corpse had probably aged its features.

  Corylus rose to his feet. He hesitated a moment before stepping up from the trench he’d dug, because he didn’t want it to seem that he was trying to use his greater height to dominate his visitor.

  This man—if he was a man—wasn’t going to be dominated that way or any way, Corylus decided. He preferred to stand on turf rather than moss cuttings laid over clay, so he stepped out.

  “Sir,” he said. “You’re a ghost?”

  “If you wish,” the figure said. “I’m Odd’s Vengeance, as I told you, but it doesn’t matter if you prefer to call me a ghost.”

  Corylus laughed, because he might as well. “All right,” he said. “Have I done something that requires vengeance? If I was wrong in taking your tools for my own use, I apologize; and if an apology isn’t enough, then you have me here to settle it in such fashion as you choose.”

  I fought wolves, he thought. I suppose I can fight a ghost.

  Vengeance laughed. “You’re a castaway yourself,” he said. “You honored Odd as you could, and you took nothing he needs where he is now. He’s at peace, as I told you.”

  He turned to the river and gestured. “There’s an island in midchannel,” he said. “Do you see it?”

  “Yes,” Corylus said. Now it was a flat, dark line against the white water, but he’d noticed it before sunset. It was treeless, but some brush grew among the rocks.

  “That’s the Isle of Dreams,” said the figure. “Odd went to the island three days past, to sleep under a spell and enter the spirit world. But while he slept, his brother Frothi, the chief, and Frothi’s wizard, Nemastes, followed him to the island also. While Odd dreamed and could not waken, they laced him into his kayak and held it upside down until Odd was drowned.”

  Vengeance laughed again. The sound was harsher than the ravens’ croaking.

  “Odd went to the island to learn secrets known only to the dead,” he said. “Now he knows all those secrets. And he is at peace.”

  He smiled. “Frothi thought the overturned kayak would float to sea,” he said, “until Odd rotted and fell to the bottom where the eels would eat him. And so it might have happened, had it not been for Odd’s knowledge and your help, friend Corylus.”

  “Did Odd bring me here?” said Corylus. “He was a wizard too?” He’d been assuming—

  “Nemastes sent you here,” said the ghost. His smile was one that Corylus had seen before, on the faces of soldiers talking about the grim butchery that a victory on the border meant. “And your own good nature led you to give Odd the only help he was still able to receive.”

  “I’d thought Nemastes was responsible,” Corylus said. “I don’t know why he did it, though. Sent me to this place.”

  “It was his mistake, one of many that wizard has made,” said the ghost. “As he will learn in time. But you will help me repay Frothi, Corylus, and I will help you return home.”

  Corylus didn’t speak for a moment. The ravens had flown north over the river after they’d finished the scraps of trout. He wondered whether they were roosting in the tall trees at the base of the volcano or if they’d simply settled for the night on the island. He doubted that a fox could swim across to attack them in their sleep.

  He looked at Vengeance. “How is it that you speak Latin?” he said abruptly. “Do Odd and the other people here speak Latin?”

  “Vengeance can speak any language, Publius Corylus,” the ghost said, “but we are not speaking Latin now. The whisper of the breeze is the same to birches in the heart of Carce as to the birches here in Thule, and all languages have become the same to you. You may think of it as Nemastes’ gift, though he didn’t intend it.”

  “Master Odd didn’t intend to save my life when he put on his tool belt for the last time,” Corylus said, grinning wider in his mind than he allowed to reach his lips. “I’ll admit that I feel better disposed to Odd than to Nemastes, but perhaps I’m being unjust to the wizard.”

  “You may feel any way you please toward Nemastes,” the ghost said, perfectly matching the youth’s grin. “But you will do as I direct regarding Frothi. Say the words: the words will bind you.�
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  “My word always binds me,” said Corylus. “I will help you repay Frothi as you wish. A man who drowns his sleeping brother is no friend to me.”

  He cleared his throat as he considered the situation. The sky had finally become fully dark; the constellations were subtly distorted from what he expected.

  “Sir?” he said. “Vengeance? What do I do next?”

  “What you would do anyway,” the ghost said. “Walk south. By midday you’ll meet the tribe. Tell them that Odd is dead, drowned in the Ice River, and that you buried him.”

  “Will they accept me?” Corylus said, frowning.

  “If they respect you,” said the ghost. “Do you think you can make them respect you, Corylus?”

  “Yes sir,” he said. He flexed his hands, feeling suddenly warm. He grinned. “Or I’ll die trying.”

  Man and ghost laughed together at the joke.

  “And one thing more,” Vengeance said. “You will say to Frothi that he must give you Odd’s flute because you buried Odd’s body. When you have the flute, you will be able to return home.”

  Again Corylus pondered the situation. “Will he give it to me?” he said. “Frothi, I mean.”

  “Eventually,” said the ghost. “If you force him to. Will you be able to force him?”

  “Or die trying,” Corylus repeated, and again they both laughed.

  The figure of Vengeance was fading. Corylus didn’t remember lying down on the moss and going to sleep; but suddenly he was dreaming, and after that his sleep was dreamless.

  HEDIA STIRRED THE MIXTURE AGAIN, then set the whisk on the garden bench she was using as a worktable. The supplies she’d used were lined up on the ground beside her: the urn holding the remainder of the ashes of Calpurnius Latus; the mortar and pestle with which she’d ground a spoonful of them; the carafe of wine she’d mixed the powdered ashes with; and the small jar of honey which she’d just finished adding to the wine and ashes.

  She didn’t know whether ashes had any taste: they might well be as bland as charcoal or rock dust. Since they were part of her late husband, however, Hedia expected them to be bitter.