by David Drake
“You and I were the only people who simply stood,” the sage said with a slow smile. “Are you fearless, Lord Varus?”
“I’m afraid of many things,” Varus said. “But not particularly of death. And I certainly wasn’t going to run away from an experience which was new and wonderful.”
The path toward the horizon—the eastern horizon, Varus saw, now that the normal sun hung in the sky—was a lush green wedge through the varied landscape to either side. Trees heavy with fruit sprouted from what must have been grain fields. Irrigation ditches now meandered. The nearest to the road sparkled with wine rather than the trickle of muddy water Varus had noticed before Bacchus swept across the landscape.
Grapevines covered every tree and outcrop. The broad leaves shaded but could not hide clusters of huge purple-red grapes. Bhiku twisted two from a bunch and handed one to Varus.
They bit into the grapes together. They were swollen with wine, not juice. It spurted out and dribbled down Varus’ chin.
“This is the finest wine I’ve ever drunk,” Varus said, holding the half grape out where he could examine it. It looked perfectly normal except for the size. “Some of my father’s friends would give half their estates for a dozen jars of this.”
He tossed the uneaten portion into the ditch. “It’s also by far the strongest wine I’ve ever tried,” he added, “and I don’t think this is a good time to drink myself incapable. If there ever could be.”
Giggling, Bhiku dropped the remainder of his grape also.
“You two!” a voice from behind Varus said. “You’re still here?”
“Yes, Your Lordship,” Bhiku said, bowing as Varus turned.
Ramsa Lal was approaching from up the road—on foot, however, and bareheaded instead of wearing a crimson turban. His scabbard hung empty at his side.
“Are you such powerful magicians that you can stand against Bacchus?” Lal said harshly.
Varus straightened and spread his feet slightly as he faced the rajah. “Say rather, Your Lordship, that we are philosophers and saw no need to flee when we were not being attacked.”
His tone was coldly sneering, scarcely politic behavior toward a superior. On the other hand, Varus didn’t recognize Lal as his superior except in terms of physical force. At the moment, Varus thought he could strangle the rajah with his own sash if necessary. Any kind of babbled nonsense would send the nearby guards running away, certain they were being cursed.
Varus smiled. That expression could have made the situation worse, but in fact it seemed to have frightened Lal, much as the gibberish curses had done to the guards.
“Your pardon, Lord Varus,” Lal said, stepping back. “I was upset by what has just happened. Ah—could you cause the god to turn away from my domains?”
Varus frowned, remembering the radiant power blazing from the face of Bacchus. “Certainly not,” he said. “If chance had sent the god directly toward me instead of at an angle to where I stood, he would have rolled right over me.”
“We may not be affected by the god’s powers in the same fashion as your soldiers were, Your Lordship,” Bhiku said, “but chariot wheels would have crushed us the same as they would anyone else.”
“I see, I see,” Lal muttered, shaking his head. He added something in his own language, then caught himself and said, “Rupa, my own magician, says she can do nothing, and Govinda, our King of Kings and the greatest wizard who has ever lived—even he cannot stop the incursions.”
Lal looked down the track that Bacchus and his entourage had blazed. “If they kept going a mile in that direction…,” Lal said morosely. “They will have wiped out two villages. If they went a second mile, it will be three villages.”
“Wiped out?” Varus said. “It didn’t seem to me that many people died, even among the soldiers who attacked the, ah, progress.”
“The peasants may as well be dead for all the tribute they’ll be paying!” Lal said. “Half of them will have gone off with the god and the rest will lie around and eat the fruit that grows everywhere. The land doesn’t get back to normal for five years after an incursion like this. Grain rots in the fields and the next year’s crop won’t be planted! How am I to feed my troops and pay my tribute to our lord Govinda?”
“Perhaps King Govinda will show forbearance,” Varus said. “Since you say he too is powerless against the god.”
Lal snorted and stalked away. A trooper approached on foot leading a skittish horse, and Lal mounted. He turned in the saddle and said, “Lord Varus, I’ll have one task for you to perform in exchange for my hospitality, but that can wait till we reach my palace and refresh ourselves.”
“I don’t question that you are a great wizard, my young friend,” Bhiku said in a low voice as they followed Ramsa Lal’s track. More soldiers had rejoined the escort than Varus had expected, but the column more shambled than capered this last part of the journey. “But I wonder what Rupa could not do that Lal believes you can. She is … I cannot judge Rupa’s power, any more than a slug can judge the size of an elephant.”
“We’ll listen to what Lal asks,” Varus said. “I didn’t ask for his hospitality, though, and I’ll have no hesitation over turning my back on it if that seems the better course.”
Ramsa Lal might have his own ideas about what the foreign wizard would be permitted to do, but that was a problem for another day. After a meal and a night’s rest, ideally.
“Ramsa Lal thinks that Rupa is in his service, the same way as his soldiers serve him,” Bhiku mused aloud. “He feeds her and he grants her access to whatever she requests, but this is nothing that she could not get from any rajah. In Govinda’s domains, or beyond.”
“Why does she serve Lal, then?” Varus said. They were on the portion of the road that Bacchus had crossed in his progress. The air had a tingle, and the ditches ran with wine.
“Dreaming Hill is in Lal’s territory and I know Rupa visits it daily, far more often than I once did,” Bhiku said. “But as for why she serves Lal, I’m not sure. I’m not sure that she does.”
A gate of brick or red stone loomed ahead of them. “I was feeling thirsty enough to drink more of Bacchus’ wine,” Varus said. “But I hope something less potent will be on offer shortly.”
In the back of his mind, though, he was thinking of the cold, smooth face of Rupa. Varus wasn’t worried about the task Lal planned to set him: he would attempt it or he would not.
But Mistress Rupa might not be so easy to shrug off.
* * *
ALPHENA TWISTED TO LOOK PAST the driver. The wagon in front was rounding a bend. Since they left Polymartium proper they had been following what seemed to be a track laid out by sheep, but the guide—a town councillor, now riding in the lead vehicle—had said that the ceremonial site was nearby.
“I learned on the frontiers that you can’t trust rustics about how far anything is,” Corylus said. “Or how long it’s going to take to get there. Still, it shouldn’t be very much longer.”
As their mail coach started into the corner, the driver shouted and hauled the reins back, standing on his seat for purchase. The leading wagon had halted in the middle of the road with a score of soldiers in polished armor around it.
Praetorians!
“Hold up there, you!” said the centurion—his horsehair crest was transverse—who had been shouting at the passengers in the lead wagon. He swaggered toward the mail coach, flanked by two subordinates holding javelins.
“I’ll take this, my man,” Alphena said to the driver. She swung her legs over the seat, then hopped to the ground using her right hand on the coach frame as a pivot. Her tunic was a little longer than the male garment she had worn until a few months ago, but it still wasn’t a demure fashion in which to leave the vehicle.
Alphena wasn’t feeling demure. Furthermore, it was important that the soldiers realize that she was a woman and therefore not in their minds a threat.
“He has held up, sirrah!” she said, trying to copy the tone her mother used when
she was putting underlings in their place. “He had no choice but to do so, since some idiot has stopped my servants’ vehicle where it blocks the road. Are you in charge here? I am Lady Alphena, here on a mission for my father, Senator Gaius Alphenus Saxa!”
The centurion didn’t flinch—the Praetorian Guard reported to its prefect and beyond him to the Emperor alone—but Alphena’s tone and words changed his attitude. He straightened almost to attention and lowered his right hand with the knobbly vine-wood swagger stick to his side instead of slapping it threateningly into his other palm.
“I’m sorry, Your Ladyship,” the centurion said, “but I’m afraid that this area has been sealed by the order of my prefect. There’s been some trouble here.”
“There certainly has,” said Corylus. “The senator has directed us to find out what has happened to his wife and son. They seem to have disappeared during a religious ceremony two days ago, and Senator Saxa is afraid that they were abducted by foreigners who are plotting against the Emperor.”
Corylus’ voice had startled Alphena, but she didn’t look around. He had dismounted discreetly and was remaining politely behind her. He wasn’t the sort of man who could approach tense soldiers in a non-threatening fashion.
The centurion grimaced. The Praetorians had originally been the headquarters’ guards of a commander. A company of Germans now acted as the Emperor’s bodyguard, but five thousand Praetorians provided backup to the City Watch in case of unrest in Carce. They could be sent immediately to deal with trouble in Italy proper, since there were normally no troops here in the center of the empire.
Furthermore, the Praetorians provided many of the officers for the regular legions. This man was neither stupid nor unsophisticated.
“My father the senator is at our house on the Bay,” Alphena lied: Saxa was in Carce, not in Puteoli. The centurion didn’t have any reason to doubt her, though. “He immediately went to the Emperor with his concerns. By courier they ordered me and Master Corylus to Polymartium while they determined a broader response.”
“You said that your prefect ordered you to close off the area,” Corylus said sternly. He had picked up her cue. “Was this before he got the Emperor’s orders, or has he simply decided to ignore the Emperor’s wishes?”
This time the centurion did flinch. For the most part the Emperor spent his time in his palace on the island of Capri, leaving the business of Carce to the Praetorian Prefect. A senator who happened to be in Puteoli across the Bay from Capri might have gone to the Emperor in a crisis, though, and the Emperor was a notably suspicious man. The prefect wouldn’t want to appear to have overridden the Emperor’s decision, and a centurion certainly didn’t want to be the cause of embarrassment or worse for his superior.
“Hercules!” the centurion muttered. Grimacing, he said, “All right, Your Ladyship.”
He stepped back from the coach and turned toward the troops around the lead wagon. He gestured with his swagger stick and bellowed, “Silvaticus! This lot can go through!”
“We have a third vehicle following,” Corylus said. “We weren’t sure what we were going to run into here. We didn’t know you were already on the scene.”
“The third wagon too, Silvaticus!” the centurion added. To Corylus he said, “I’d say don’t make things worse, but I don’t bloody well see how they could be worse. Every bloody thing’s gone to hell. But it’s not dangerous; it’s not that kinda trouble.”
Corylus handed Alphena into the coach and followed. The driver clucked the mules forward even before Corylus had settled beside her.
“You were brilliant,” he said. “The way you handled that. I didn’t expect Praetorians, though I guess I should have.”
“I was frightened,” she said, squeezing her hands together. They had started to tremble as soon as she and Corylus were past the guards. “I could have gotten my father executed. I could have gotten all of us executed!”
“You didn’t,” said Corylus. “You and I don’t know what’s going on, but if the Praetorians are here, then the stories the escort came back with are probably true. And if that’s so—”
Corylus smiled. He seemed to be enjoying this. That was ridiculous, but Alphena felt a rush of relief anyway.
“—then being executed might be a relief compared to what else may be waiting for us and everybody else besides.”
Alphena started to speak but burst out laughing. “Publius,” she said, “that’s a stupid way to make me feel better, stupid. But it works!”
They pulled up beside the lead vehicle. Drago and Rago had gotten down with the nervous-looking guide between them. The Illyrians were former pirates, and a stranger could be excused for wondering if “former” was necessarily the correct adjective.
“This guy, Herminus, says from here on out it’s on foot,” one or the other cousin said. He turned, so Alphena could see the missing ear: Drago. “Is that all right with you, lady?”
What are you going to do if it isn’t all right with me? Build a carriage road over the gully ahead? Alphena thought.
Aloud she said, “That will be fine. We’ll cross the rope bridge.”
“Illyrian tribes have queens sometimes,” Corylus said softly. “I think that pair have promoted you. You’re not just the mistress.”
The guards from the leading wagon crossed the swinging bridge with no trouble: the gulley was only twenty feet across, and the banks—though steep—were nowhere more than ten feet above the small stream at the bottom. Herminus, the councillor who had been their guide, waited at the near end.
He bowed to Alphena and said, “Your Ladyship? May I wait for you here? I had nothing to do with the ceremony, I was in my office going over the tax assessments. I—I really would rather stay on this side of the creek.”
“Yes, all right, my good man,” Alphena said. She hoped she sounded kindly, but the fellow’s obvious fear worried her. “We’ll still want you when we go back, so don’t go far.”
Corylus would have led her over the bridge, but she waved him back. There was nothing difficult about it, even when Corylus’ weight behind her changed the way the support ropes moved … but at mid-point … when she was on the other side of the flowing water—Alphena felt, well, felt odd.
“I want to do a handspring,” she said, turning her head back toward Corylus. “I’ve never managed to do a handspring right in the gymnasium, but I feel that I could now.”
“Umm,” said Corylus as he followed her off the bridge. For a moment she thought that was all he was going to say, but he added, “Herminus must have come here after whatever happened. I guess everybody in the district did, just as they’d go see where some scullery maid slipped when she was feeding the hogs and they ate her.”
“It doesn’t feel bad,” Alphena said. She wished she could describe what she did feel better, but words were her brother’s affair. “But it’s funny. I can see Herminus not wanting to come back here.”
The area was rocky and wooded. There were paths but no open spaces that Alphena could see. “Were there ever farms here?” she asked.
“You couldn’t plow it because of the slopes and all the rocks,” Pulto said, looking around. “There’s goats, though—”
He pointed the toe of one hobnailed sandal at a pile of round droppings near where they stood.
“—and they keep the undergrowth down.”
“There should be people here,” Corylus said, eying the three paths that branched in equally unpromising fashions before them. “Maybe we should have brought the guide after all.”
Someone giggled beyond the screen of bushes. Corylus said, “No, Pulto!” Raising his cornelwood staff, he stepped between his servant and the sound. “Remember the Praetorians!”
Alphena frowned, then realized that Pulto had started to draw a sword from under his outer tunic. That wouldn’t ordinarily have been a problem in the countryside—within the sacred boundaries of Carce it was a crucifixion offense—but in the midst of soldiers sent to put down unrest it could
easily be fatal.
A middle-aged man and a heavy woman who might have been younger walked down the right-hand path. They were arm in arm. “Who are you?” the man asked.
“Why are we going this way, dearie?” the woman said to her companion. “We were going to find some more grapes, and they’re the other way.”
“I’m the Lady Alphena,” Alphena said, stepping forward. Corylus had started to speak, but she raised her voice to be heard over him. “I’m looking for my mother, the Lady Hedia. She came here to lead the welcoming ceremony for Mother Matuta.”
“I led the ceremony,” said the man. He bowed with grave formality but would have fallen if the woman hadn’t tugged him upright. “Lady Hedia merely led the dance. I am Doclianus, the priest of Matuta. Or I was.” Doclianus turned around and started in the opposite direction.
“Where is my mother?” Alphena said as she followed the couple. She had let her voice rise.
“Her Ladyship is a fine woman,” Doclianus said without looking back at Alphena. “I’m sure she worships Bacchus now. We all worship Bacchus; I do and Sophia does and everybody will.”
The woman giggled and hugged herself closer to the priest.
“Sophia,” Doclianus said. “That means ‘wisdom,’ did you know? But Sophia is as stupid as one of her husband’s cows, aren’t you, Sophia?”
“If you say so, dearie,” the woman said cheerfully.
“Where is Lady Hedia now, Master Doclianus?” Corylus said in a calm but very firm tone.
“Don’t know,” said the priest. “Don’t care. Bacchus is my god.”
The vegetation here—ordinary trees and bushes as it seemed to Alphena—was overgrown with vines from which dangled clusters of grapes the size of a baby’s fist. The trees had set fruit also. The several spiky trees in sight of the trail bore huge purple plums. A branch of one had broken under the weight of the fruit.
