“Governor Glabrio’s office made inquiries of Second Augusta headquarters in Britannia. Gratillonius, you would normally have received your discharge after twenty-five years of service. That period terminated for you last year. Procurator Bacca maintains that your commission as a centurion expired then, automatically; that you had no right thereafter to lead Roman soldiers; that you therefore stand self-condemned as a rebel and a bandit. You have made no mention of this, nor offered any indication that you tried to regularize your position, either as a military officer or as an appointee of the usurper Maximus. What have you to say?”
It was like a hammerblow. Suddenly the world was unreal. So much time since he enlisted? Why, they were mouthing gibberish at him. No, wait, he could count, season by season. The springtime was unreasonably, unmercifully beautiful when Una told him she must marry a toad—“a toad,” she sobbed, before overcoming her tears—to save her family; and he, Gratillonius, whirled off to join the army. The year after that they’d been on joint maneuvers with the Twentieth across the mildly rolling Dobunnic country—it rained a lot—and the year after that the ominous news came through that down on the Continent the Visigoths had crossed the Danuvius—or was it the year following? Everything lay tangled together, also the years in Ys. Bodilis kept annals, she could sort his memories out for him, but she was unreasonably afar. Where had his life gone?
He could not tell.
Bacca smirked. “Obviously the accused has no answer,” the scrawny man declared. “Since he has shown such complete absence of regard for law and regulations—”
Rage came awake. It ripped the dismay across. Gratillonius lifted a fist against him. “Be still before I stamp you under my foot, you cockroach!” Gratillonius yelled. A crushed face rose into his awareness. Well, Carsa had backed his words with his body, the way a man ought. Gratillonius gulped air and confronted Ardens again. “I’m sorry, sir,” he mumbled.
Louder and clearer: “I lost my temper there. What this… person … spews was too much for me. Oh, doubtless I did lose track. I forgot to write and ask. But nobody reminded me. And I was always too busy, trying to do my best for—Rome.” He had almost said “for Ys.” He folded his arms. “I thought I’d explained. I thought the facts would speak for me. What more can I add? Here I am.”
“Silence,” Ardens rapped.
They waited. Sunlight strengthened in the windows.
Ardens lifted his hand. “Hear the decision,” he said. “Dispute it at your peril. I repeat, the Imperium has business more urgent than any one man’s ambition, or his vanity.”
If only that were true! rushed through Gratillonius.
“I find that the charges brought are essentially without merit,” Ardens went on. “The accused has loyally carried out an assignment which was legitimate when given him and was never revoked. What errors he has made are small compared to the difficulties he must cope with, as well as his actual accomplishments. His conduct with regard to the Franks is not among the errors. Those men were attempting the life of the prefect of Rome. I would order punishment of them myself, had he not already inflicted it in full measure.
“Bacca, you will convey to Turonum a letter for Governor Glabrio. Know that it will require his cooperation with the King of Ys.
“As for the technicality advanced this day, it is ridiculous. I will instruct my own procurator to settle it. Meanwhile, by virtue of the authority vested in me, I will appoint you, Gaius Valerius Gratillonius, tribune, and return you to your duties in Ys.”
For a bare moment, the armor came down. German and Briton looked at one another, antique Romans; and Ardens whispered, “It may be the last wise thing I ever can do.”
2
“I love you,” Dahut said. “Oh, I am drunk with love of you.”
Seated on the pallet, arms wrapped around drawn-up knees, Niall regarded her but made no reply. Wind blustered outside. Cloud shadows came and went; the window cloth flickered between dimness and gloom. The brazier kept the room warm, though at cost of closeness and stench.
She knelt before him, her own arms wide, hands outheld open. Sweat from their latest encounter shimmered on her nakedness and made the unbound locks cling close, as if she were a nymph newly risen from the sea, seal-fluid, tinged with gold and azure and rose upon the white.
Tears glistened forth. “Do you believe this?” she asked. Her husky voice went thin with anxiety. “You must. Please, you must believe.”
He bestowed a smile on her. “You have been eager enough,” he drawled.
“Because of you. The men earlier—I pretended. They thought I found them wonderful. But only you, Niall, only you have awakened me.”
He raised his brows. “Is that so, now? This is the first time you’ve been after telling me about them.”
She lowered arms and head. “Surely you knew from the beginning I was no maiden,” she said with difficulty. “How I wish I had been, for you.”
His tone gentled. “That makes no matter to me, darling.”
When he reached forth and stroked her hair, she moaned for joy and drew close. He shifted position until she leaned against him, weight supported on his right hand, his left arm around her.
She giggled and felt past his thigh. “How soon will you be ready again?”
“Have mercy, girl!” he laughed. “’Tis an old man you’re asking.”
“Old, foo!” Seriously: “What you are is a man. The rest were boys, or one was an animal. They did not know, they never understood.”
“Why then did you take them?”
She flinched and glanced away. “Tell me,” he persisted. “I know how dangerous a game it was for you. Why did you play it?”
Still she kept mute. He withdrew his embrace. “If you’ll not be trusting me—” he said coldly.
Dahut’s resistance broke. “Nay, please, please! ’Tis but that—I feared—I feared you’d be angry with me. That you’d leave me.”
Niall embraced her anew, eased position onto buttocks, freed a hand to rove across her. Fingers played with her nipples. He had quickly discovered how much she enjoyed that. “I would never willingly do so, my dear,” he murmured. “But you must see I need the whole truth. This Ys of yours is quite foreign to me. Would you be letting me blunder into my death?”
“Never. Liefer would I myself die.”
Resolution hardened. She looked straight before her and spoke in rapid words, broken only by a slight writhing or purr when he sent a tingle through her:
“’Tis a story long and long, it goes back in time beyond my birth or my begetting. How I want to share it with you—my mother, my childhood, my loneliness and hoping—and we will share it, we will, because the rest of my life is yours, Niall. But for this day, when soon I shall have to go back to the prison where my father keeps me—
“Well, you’ve heard. Here between my breasts is the very Sign. I am Chosen but I am not taken. I am hallowed but I am not consecrated. I am the Queen who has no King.
“Niall, ’tis not ambition that drives me—that drove me; not vainglory; not even revengefulness. ’Tis that I know, I have known my whole life: The Gods have singled me out. I am the new Brennilis. As she saved Ys from the Romans and the sea, I am to save Ys from the Romans and Christ. I am the destined mother of the coming Age. But how shall I fulfill my fate without a husband, without a King? This my father denies me.
“He denies the Gods. Therefore he must die. Only by his death can Ys live. That I his daughter will weep for him, that is a small thing. Is it not?
“I caused those youths to go up against him for my sake. And he slew them.
“I had the same wish for you, Niall. That you would prevail and make me foremost among your Queens. See how much I love you, that I confess now it was not so from the beginning.
“It has become so. Niall, if you choose, I will flee with you to your homeland. We can escape ere anyone knows I am gone. Better your woman, among your tribespeople but in your hut, better that than Queen of Ys without y
ou.” She lifted her head. Her voice rang. “And let the Gods do Their worst!”
He was long quiet. His caresses went on, but softly, unprovocatively, almost as if he soothed a child. The wind yowled.
At last he said low, “Thank you, Dahut, darling. Your trust in me is a greater gift than gold or pearls or the lordship of all Ériu.”
“I’m glad,” she gulped.
“But what you offer me, dear, that I cannot take of you,” he went on. “You are too fine a flower. You’d wither and die in our wild land. Besides, I fear those Gods of yours. Out at sea, I too have known the Dread of Lir. If you fail Them, Their vengeance will pursue you.”
She shuddered. “And you. Nay, it mustn’t be.” Anguish: “Go, then. Go alone. I will live on my memories.”
He kissed her bowed head. “There also you ask the impossible,” he told her. “How could I forsake you—you—and ever again be more than the dry husk of a man? We are together, Dahut, till death, and mayhap beyond. Never leave me.”
“Never.” She lifted her lips. The kiss burned a long time.
Finally, calmly for a moment, Niall said: “Bear with an old warrior, sweetling. Over the years I’ve come into the way of thinking ahead. ’Tis the young who plunge forward unthinking, and too often fall. I owe you my old man’s wisdom.”
“You are not old—”
“Hark’ee. The course is clear before us, on to your destiny and my joy. I shall challenge Grallon when he returns and fell him.” He grinned. “Indeed then you’ll be Queen, true ruler of Ys, with a simple-witted barbarian like me for consort.”
“Nay, we’ll reign together!”
Her shout cracked apart. Terror snaked through. “Oh, but, Niall, he is younger, and he’ll have his full strength back, and—and—Nay, of course you’re the better man, I never doubt that, but he’s a schooled soldier of Rome, and—without mercy—”
His composure was unshaken. “I told you I am forethoughtful. Sure, and that’s half the Roman secret, as I learned in many a fight. I’ll have time for thinking, learning, asking—asking, too, of the Gods Themselves, in ways we know at home—for how can They want anything other than your welfare, dearest Queen? Never fear; I’ll find how to take Grallon.”
“You will, you will!” she screamed, and swarmed into his arms. “You’ll be King of Ys!”
—Twilight stole seaward. They lay side by side happily weary.
“You shall come live at my house,” she said into his ear.
“What?” he asked, startled despite himself. “But that’s recklessness, girl. You’ll set the whole city against you.”
“I think not.” She nibbled his lobe. “Oh, well call you my guest. But ’tis wrong, wrong, that we must sneak into this kennel. Your own inn is wrong for you, you who belong in the palace. We’ll be brave and proud. If the Gods are with us, who can be against us?”
3
A gale from the west drove an onslaught of rain before it. Never before had Gratillonius traveled in so much rain—since he left Trever-orum, at a season which folk of northern Gallia reckoned as their driest—and this new attack, spears flung straight into eyes, was bringing his beasts to the end of their endurance. The men weren’t far from that, either. Feet slipped and stumbled as badly as hoofs, on pavement unseen beneath inches of swirling brown water. He barely made out the wall ahead of him.
Formation was forgotten. The legionaries plodded however they were able, hunched down into garb as sodden as the earth. They had loaded onto the pack mules the armor they were too exhausted to wear. Gratillonius had finally done likewise. That was after he dismounted, less to spare Favonius, for the stallion alone seemed indefatigable, than to show his soldiers he was one of them, with them. Cynan led the horse on his left, Adminius walked on his right.
“Shelter, sir,” the deputy said through the howl and roar. “’Bout time. Any’ow, there better be shelter.”
“There will be,” Cynan grumbled, “if we have to pitch people out of their beds.”
Adminius leered through the bristles that had sprouted on his hollow countenance. “Right. All I’ll want of any woman is the use of ’er bed, for about ten solid days and nights.”
“None of that,” Gratillonius ordered. “Get back and shape the troops up. We’ll march in like Romans.”
It behooved them on entering Cenabum. This was a place of importance, commanding as it did the routes between the valleys of the Sequana and the Liger. Now it seemed a necropolis, streets empty of everything but rain-streams, buildings crouched close within the fortifications. A man detached from gate guard led the newcomers to the principia. Gratillonius squelched into the presence of the military tribune and made himself stand erect.
“Well, we’ll find space for you,” the officer promised. “Rations may get short. Nothing’s come in—no traffic’s moved—for several days, and I don’t expect it to for several more, at best. Amazing that you slogged on this far. You must be in one Satanic hurry.”
“I’ve a commission to carry out,” Gratillonius answered.
“Hm. The Imperial spirit, eh? Hold on, I’m not making fun of it, the way too many do. But resign yourself, centurion. You’ll be here for a while.”
“Why?”
“I lately got word. The river’s overflowed its banks farther down the valley. Roads are impassable. You’re bound for Armorica, you said? Well, you could swing north, nearly to the coast, and then west, but you’d add so many leagues I doubt you’d save any time—if your squadron could do it without a good rest beforehand, which I doubt just as much.”
Gratillonius nodded heavily. He was not unprepared for that. When he crossed at Lutetia Parisiorum, the river there was lapping close under the bridges. He’d counted on making swift progress along the level highway by the Liger—maybe fast enough that he’d feel free to stop at Turonum, call on old Martinus and thank the bishop for his support—but evidently that was denied him. Any thought of traveling off the main roads, on unpaved secondaries, was merely ridiculous until they had dried somewhat.
“The weather may be as bad to north, or worse, anyway,” he said. “It’s been vile throughout, this year.”
Arrangements completed, he went back into it, to his men where they waited in a portico, and led them to barracks. Afterward he could seek the hostel. Maybe tomorrow everyone could enjoy a hot bath, if the city baths had fuel.
“A shame, sir,” Adminius said. “I know you wanted ter be back in Ys for the spring Council. Well, they’ll manage, if I knows the Lady Bodilis.”
Cynan gnawed his lip, said nothing, squinted into the blindness and chaos that lashed from the west. Gratillonius knew he thought of the Gods yonder, Who in his mind were creatures of Ahriman.
4
Suddenly came a quiet spell among the storms ramping over Armorica at that winter’s close. Clouds still massed on the western horizon, but heaven above stood brilliant and the hinterland rolled flame-green. Ys gleamed as if stone, glass, metal were newly polished. Though breezes blew chill, migratory birds coming home filled them with wings and clamor.
As the sun drew downward behind Sena, the palace gates were opened. A few early guests, of the many bidden, had arrived. They were young, in garments and jewelry that flared like a promise of blossoms. Their chatter and laughter were just a little too loud. They avoided meeting the eyes of the marines who stood guard.
Those men snapped salute when a tall woman in a black mantle strode nigh. Vindilis nodded to them and passed on through, up the path and the stairs, between sculptures of boar and bear, to the portico and thus the main entrance.
In the atrium, candles glowed multitudinous from stands of fantastic shapes between the columns. Musicians on their dais played a lively drinking song in the Ionian mode. Thus far nobody danced. Winecups in hand, now and then a titbit picked off a tray which a servant proffered, the Suffete lads and lasses clustered before Dahut and the man at her side. Vindilis approached. They noticed. Their flatteries and fascinated questions stuttered to
silence.
Dahut was quick to recover poise. She had outfitted herself with demure sumptuousness: samite gown, amber necklace, hair piled high within a silver coronet. Advancing, hand outheld, she smiled hard and exclaimed, “Why, what a surprise! I had not thought our revelry would be to your taste. But welcome, thrice welcome, dear Sister.”
Vindilis ignored the hand. With eyes that seemed enormous in the gauntness of her face, she stared at the big man in tunic and kilt. “Since you would fain have your friends meet your guest, and commandeered your father’s dwelling for this, it is right that at least one of the Nine greet him too,” she said, calmly enough.
“Oh, but of course each of you shall—more privately, I expected,” replied Dahut fast. “Niall, ’tis Queen Vindilis who honors us. But Niall does us honor of his own, Sister. He is a King in his homeland. He can become our, our ally. ’Twas but seemly that we show him respect, and… my royal father remains absent.”
Niall’s blue gaze never wavered from the darkness of Vindilis’s. Smiling, he touched first his brow, then his breast: reverence for what she was, assertion that he was no less. “’Tis delighted I am, my lady,” he said. “The fame of the Gallicenae lives Ériu too. ’Tis a large part of what called me hither.”
Vindilis astonished the others by returning the smile. “Word of you has gone about in Ys, of course,” she said. “You’re the cynosure of the hour: the more so because, I hear, you bear it with dignity.”
“Thank you, my lady. Forgive me if ever I do show ill manners. Never willingly would I offend my gracious hosts.”
Vindilis lowered her voice. “Your hostess. Unheard of that a Queen have a male guest in her house—save for the King of Ys.”
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