The Winter Sword: A Novel of Germania and Rome (Hraban Chronicles Book 3)

by Alaric Longward

  ‘Will I be able to spend time there after?’ he asked so softly I could not hear him.

  ‘What?’ I asked, smiling.

  He hit the table so hard our armor and weapons fell off it. Hund smiled again, wider. He had the strangest grin, wide and full of white teeth. ‘You bastard, Hraban. You know I want to go there.’

  I pushed him with a mischievous grin. ‘You fake.’

  ‘My soul is burning with the shame, Hraban,’ he said with a thin smile and slumped. ‘What else do you know?’

  ‘Agetan spoke to Cassia,’ I told him with a roaring laugh. ‘You seem to be getting on with the girl preparing the food. Pretty thing, no?’

  ‘Agetan?’ he asked me with confusion. ‘He doesn’t speak. Neither does Bohscyld. What are you talking about?’

  ‘They speak to Cassia,’ I told him and clapped a hand on his shoulders. ‘This evening, Hund there will get too friendly with her. You will be unhappy about that and make trouble. She is still your girl, Tudrus, but Hund will toss you out. You will see the girl later, yes, but at Wart’s. And Hund will be loved by Oril.’

  ‘Donor’s balls,’ he breathed, his face red. ‘Hund had better not touch her improperly!’

  Hund laughed. ‘I’ll sit her on my lap. And you throw me down, then attack Oril, and I will kick you in the ass. Make it look good. Gerhild is a fine girl and all yours.’

  ‘She is just a friend,’ Tudrus said with a blush.

  ‘For now.’ I laughed.

  ‘Shut up. I’ll suffer this duty for the girl. When, and let it be soon, we will confront Oril, what shall we wish to know?’ he asked me. ‘Of this Gulldrum?’

  I nodded. ‘It’s not a hall. It’s a cave. We have to know what is in there. And if Odo is in there as well. And Sigimer. That way we will have one thing less to worry about in the spring. And I have kept my word to Thusnelda.’

  ‘I’m not sure I like this new Hraban, the one keeping oaths,’ Tudrus complained.

  ‘I hate him,’ I told him.

  So, Hund made friends and Tudrus took a beating.

  Oril, who turned out to be of the Chauci tribe and the seedy man, had indeed been grateful for brave Hund, who saved him from Tudrus, who had pulled a pugio at the whore master. And soon, Oril paid Hund to keep the place in order during the evenings, but Tudrus met his girl at the Wart’s place after hours. During the winter, Cassia listened to Hund speaking of the girls. ‘One is fat and quite smart, very smart, in fact,’ the merry Batavi said in wonderment. ‘Never thought they might be smart. I mean, you know? Most are thin and only get fed if they bring in enough silver. I hope we deal with this Oril soon. Or you? I don’t know how I figure in your plans.’

  ‘You’ve earned a place to die for Hraban’s mad plans,’ Tudrus laughed from the side. ‘Gerhild safe?’

  ‘She is,’ Hund said. ‘Oril barely notices her. She cleans and none bother her.’

  ‘Not even ...’ Tudrus began.

  ‘Not even I,’ Hund grinned. ‘But I hate that man. Hate him. I’d like to rinse my signum in his anus but that would dishonor it, would it not?’ he wondered. ‘The signum, I mean,’ he added.

  Fulcher grunted. ‘There will be other Orils, soon enough. Men want girls. Girls need copper and silver and so they will need someone to make it all happen and someone who protects them.’

  ‘How much copper do you give them?’ Brimwulf asked Fulcher irascibly.

  ‘I don’t visit the place,’ Fulcher told the archer woodenly, glowering at him.

  ‘I give them food, not silver,’ Hund sniffled. ‘It’s enough Decurion Hraban asks me to frequent the place, but I cannot bear to see what is happening to them. There are Batavi and Romans visiting them, and while most treat the girls fine, it is dishonorable. I miss home.’

  I snapped my finger at Hund. ‘Start telling him how much you hate me. I am a bully, slave driving thief and the men hate me. Loath even. You would love nothing more than to stab me in the ass. Or gut.’

  Hund raised his eyebrow and nodded reluctantly. ‘You want me to lie?’

  ‘You can pretend to clobber Tudrus, but you cannot lie?‘ I asked him with incredulity. ‘What if Oril asks you if you are in league with me?’

  ‘He won’t, Hund said sullenly. ‘And we are doing this to free your daughter? This Odo is out to hurt her?’ I had not told him enough, I realized.

  The others glanced at me murderously. ‘Yes, that is one reason,’ I told him.

  ‘There is something else, right?’ he asked, his face confused. ‘But that’s fine. The boys like you, and I’m happy you trust me. So, I’ll lie for you. I will. And if he bites?’

  ‘Odo wants me,’ I grinned. ‘Let us see if he still does.’

  ‘Try to keep Gerhild out of it,’ Tudrus grunted at us.

  ‘What would your father say about this Gerhild?’ I chided him.

  He sighed and held his head. ‘Father and Mother. They would whip me.’

  ‘Is she noble and … how did you put it? High?’ I teased him, and he pelted me with a log.

  ‘Good for you,’ Cassia grinned, and Tudrus smiled tentatively.

  ‘Brimwulf?’ I said and nodded him closer. I leaned over him.

  ‘You want me to find his place? Odo’s?’ Brimwulf stated. ‘Near the Buck? Yes?’

  ‘I hope Oril will eventually spill his guts on what is waiting for us inside. But we will have to find it,’ I told him. ‘You and Fulcher should go and see what is going on there when the snows allow. I need you to find their haunt.’

  Brimwulf sniffled. ‘I will find Odo’s place. Easy enough. Keep Fulcher here. He would make a mess of it. Stumbling over branches and his spear.’

  ‘I can stay. Mathildis likes my company,’ Fulcher said viciously from the side, and the two eyed each other angrily.

  ‘Can you both go, please? And both come back?’ I bashed my hand on the desk, and they agreed with reluctant nods.

  So, during that winter Hund visited the brothel, complained like a drunk, made sure everyone knew he hated me. I had robbed him, humiliated him, he had no future in the riders, and he had once been a lord of the Batavi. So he drank to my death, for many an evening.

  And slowly, Oril began to believe him.

  In the meantime, Brimwulf and Fulcher rode the lands to the east.

  We waited. Yuletide came, and we celebrated it, thanking Hercules, Woden and quite a few gods, for not all of the men were native Batavi. Some were Gauls, and things could get confusing when men toasted their divines. We celebrated, drank, ate, and patrolled, and enjoyed life as best we could. The Romans celebrated Divalia in honor of the goddess Angerona, a festival for happiness and mirth, and the two celebrations mixed just fine.

  Brimwulf and Fulcher rode out when the weather was mild and always came back together.

  Then, one day Fulcher pulled at me. ‘We found it.’

  ‘Where?’ I asked, excited.

  ‘It’s an hour away from the ford of Buck River. We rode past it many times, but then we spotted a hunter of theirs and followed him. It’s a low hill, very hard to see.’

  ‘Show me, soon. Now, there is something else I need.’

  Fulcher listened to me and nodded, smiling.

  I rode out with Cassia one month after Yuletide, for we had had precious little time together. I pulled her to my horse and buried my face in her hair, and we did not speak as I guided the Moon to a wooded hill above the castra. A serene fir wood hid the hill, thick and evergreen as I took the horse deeper and higher and there, in the middle of the wood was a snow covered well, and beyond the well a sturdy, small hall. I guided the horse to the front of the hall and jumped off. I smiled up at her.

  ‘Inside? I smell meat roasting!’ she said with wonder, but I shook my head as I sat down on a boulder. Fulcher stepped out from the house, smiling at me. He took the bridle from Cassia and nodded at me.

  ‘What is going on? Are you going to murder me?’ Cassia asked, smiling.

  ‘Not today, love,’ I told h
er and took off my caligae, and the snow began to sting my feet, even through the socks. I took them off, as well. ‘This is how you Celts do it?’ I asked her as I indicated my feet.

  She looked at me as if I was mad as a hare. ‘Do what? Get sick? You are standing in the snow, you damned fool.’

  I laughed at her and stood up calf deep in snow. ‘I asked the Wart Face. He is a Gaul. He said he has never been captured like this, but he also told me it should be done in the woods, barefooted. That is the way a man and a woman make ties to each other.’

  Cassia’s eyes were large as eggs.

  I grunted as the cold started to get uncomfortable. ‘He told me that there are several ways to marry. Some make a deal, where property is exchanged, and I have no property. Another way to marry is to agree you are a husband and wife when children are born. Gods know I don’t want to wait that long to call you wife. There is the simpler ritual of hand fasting that can be performed before the actual marriage, and I say we do this, then I shall take you in and by morning, we are married. Fulcher?’ Fulcher tied the horse to a bough and came forth with a linen wrap, carefully eying us.

  Cassia was taking deep breaths and then calmed herself after a visible struggle. She shook her head. ‘The Wart Face knows precious little about marriages, it seems. But it matters not. You are, essentially, proposing to me?’

  I shrugged. ‘Yes, of course. I love you. You are the stone in my life that I cling to.’

  ‘I sound harsh and uncomfortable, cold and abrasive,’ she chided me with a scowl.

  I waved my hands at her in denial. ‘You know what I mean. Now I don’t know if this is a proper Celtic wedding or not, but a wedding it is. It could be a Germani wedding where I just ride off with you, but I have things to do here in the spring and summer so would you just say yes.’ I grinned and shivered, and I noticed the cold was making my feet blue.

  ‘Will I be happy with you?’ she asked with mock concern, ticking her finger on her tooth. ‘So far I have been running away from tribes of angered Germani and mad vitka and then worried myself to death as you learnt of honor and love. And then last year you were idiotic enough to disappear. Hmm.’

  ‘I hope I manage to make you smile once a day, at least,’ I said, rubbing my feet together. ‘I will try to build you a life worth living. Unless I die in the year.’

  ‘Die,’ she breathed. ‘Or I.’

  ‘Never,’ I told her.

  I pulled the Winter Sword and thrust it in the snow. ‘In Woden, All-Father’s name I make an oath to you. If, this year I shall not kill Father—‘

  ‘Hold,’ she said softly, and I stammered. ‘Say rather “deal” with Father. Perhaps, after all, you will not kill him.’

  ‘What? He must die!’

  ‘Is your father, Hraban,’ she said sadly.

  ‘I ...’ I began and shook my head in simmering anger but defeated the vaettir shrieking in my mind to deny her words. I calmed myself and did as she asked. ‘Deal with Father and his men, deal with Odo, deal with Antius and Cornix and Catualda. I shall, this summer deal with any man who stood against me, even lord of the land, Segestes. Let them all be here, and let gods guide my sword, this sword, and I shall pledge over it I will abandon all my oaths that are unfulfilled by the summer’s end. We shall follow Drusus and this … Winter Sword shall not come with us. My family is gone, this sword was theirs, but you are my family now and so pledge I will serve you over me. I’ll abandon this thing.’

  ‘And shall you serve me over Drusus? Never again wage war?’ she asked sadly.

  ‘I cannot,’ I said softly and shook my head. My feet were near white, but I shrugged. ‘He is a good man.’

  ‘He is a Roman patrician, a high lord in war and politics of Rome, and he will use you like your father did,’ she pointed out. ‘But I agree he is a good man. Sometimes that man rises over the mean and dirty needs of his world and those times we can be happy.’ She was tense, obviously thinking hard, but finally she giggled and shrugged. ‘You know, one’s feet are indeed supposed to touch the ground while doing this, but I think even Celts have shoes in the winter, if they marry then. Most marry in the summer for this reason. But I shall let that pass.’

  ‘It is not ill luck there is snow on the ground, is it?’ Fulcher asked with a frown. ‘Should we dig until there is mud?’

  I nodded, grimacing. ‘I cannot walk, so can you dig?’

  She shook her head and pulled off her shoes, jumped down to me, and we held each other’s hands. She snapped her finger at Fulcher, who chuckled in pity for me and came forward and wrapped our hands together with a linen strip of cloth, smiled and walked off to his horse. We stood there until the bitter cold started to get too painful for Cassia. ‘You ready to give up?’ she said giggling.

  ‘I can’t feel them, so it’s no problem if you want to stand here a moment longer,’ I told her with chattering teeth.

  ‘Best go in then, so you won’t lose the feeling in anything else,’ she told me and laughed as we grabbed our footwear and ran inside. I fell a few times, cursing the tingling feeling in my toes and then we were under the low, overhanging roof when she turned my head to her. She kissed me. She did so for a long time, and when she was done, her silvery eyes regarded me. She said: ‘My blood is yours, yours is mine.’

  I nodded. ‘Mine is yours; yours mine.’

  We were married.

  ‘There had better be food and drink in here,’ she told me as she pushed in. There was, Fulcher had arranged it well and had kept Bohscyld and Agetan far from the ale. We spent a night there, and in the morning returned to Castra Flamma, our hand fasting turned to marriage by what we did in the darkness of the night. I was oath bound again and touched the sword on my side. I would let it go and felt both pain and relief at the thought of it.

  When I rode to the gate, saluting the guards, Hund grinned and came to me.

  ‘Where have you been?’ he hissed, eyeing the guards.

  ‘Sir,’ I said, and he glowered at me. I leaned down and whispered. ‘You are supposed to hate me, and so you can call me sir. None of the others do.’

  ‘Where the hell have you been sir,’ he said loudly and leaned closer. ‘Oril is making plans for you, Lord. And a man or two arrived today. They had an extra horse. With a saddle. Looked strange.’

  ‘The horse?’ I asked him.

  ‘The men! Joyless and dour both of them,’ he told me. ‘Look, I don’t want to be seen talking to you. But Oril spoke to them. I overheard them.’ There was an excited note in his voice, and as Hund glanced around, I saw he was evidently enjoying his double-faced operation.

  ‘Anyone from the castra or the village giving him special attention?’ I asked him. ‘Anyone he speaks with?’

  ‘No. Plenty of men speak with him, but he does not give any special attention,’ he told me. ‘There two did, however, get rooms. Look out, some of the Batavi.’ I noticed two men walk around the corner and wave at me.

  I ignored them, spat at Hund’s feet and harassed him like a Decurion would the most useless man in his command. He glowered back, and then I spoke to him again. ‘They got rooms?’

  ‘They did,’ he said. ‘And I think there are more than just two. They mentioned names and this castra.’

  I cursed. ‘That will complicate things.’

  ‘If you don’t want to have Odo prepared for you, sir, then you had better know all your foes,’ he said.

  ‘So what did you hear?’ I asked.

  ‘Oril told the men he would produce the package this spring, and they should sit tight,’ he whispered. ‘They are to lead the package away. Guides, they are.’

  ‘How did you learn of this? Surely he did not speak like this in front of the customers?’

  He looked bothered. ‘I know the whores. They have holes in every wall, and they gossip. They keep the holes secret because they look out for each other.’

  ‘And they told you?’ I asked, incredulously.

  ‘They told me; they trust me,’ he said,
strangely proud. ‘They are like cats. They hate Oril, but even if I get paid by the man, they have a hunch I don’t like him.’

  I walked to the side with him and continued our discussion in the shadows. ‘You sure you have not told the girls anything? Oril trusts you?’

  He huffed. ‘The girls are noble. Many are. There are so many nobles here in the east, I don’t know how they manage to command their armies. And such girls are very smart. They smell treason, and some have a hunch Oril is in trouble. Or perhaps I just glower at the man’s back so much. I know the girls very well.’ He blushed.

  ‘They probably hope you will take over the establishment.’ I sighed.

  He shook his head. ‘I’ve said nothing. And yes, Oril trusts me because he is an idiot, but only to a degree. Later, after he spoke with the two men, he told me he has a job for me, one with silver involved. I drooled,’ he said. ‘Then I nodded. He told me I would enjoy the job.’

  I laughed, looking around and making sure none saw us. ‘Make sure you remember I’m your friend.’

  Hund snorted. ‘He told me it would be months, early spring, but I should be ready. They will act the day the armies of Drusus are near.’

  I paused. ‘Why then? That will make it very hard for us to take on Odo. They will expect us to soldier for Drusus.’

  Hund looked bothered. ‘The Batavi are twenty men. Who will miss them? We might very well ride out, and who knows what orders you have received, eh?’

  ‘I can lie to the Tribune, but I would not like to lie to the men,’ I told him morosely.

  He leaned forward. ‘Chariovalda trusts you. The Batavi do as well. They will fight for a good cause.’ I nodded at him, cursing Thusnelda’s request. The men would not take kindly to freeing Sigimer. I clapped his shoulder, unsure what to do.

  In the spring, late spring or early summer we would settle it all. I stroked the Winter Sword and tried to learn patience. Oril had taken the bait. But we had to wait.

  CHAPTER 26

  It was end of Martius and the snows had partly melted. We had sent scouts around to the south, but I had taken some men to the east. We sat on our horses, Fulcher and I, in the wooded hills near the Buck River. Up to the south in the low mountains of the Chatti, a smoke pillar rose up to the sky, and it was the same all over the land. People were out and about. The snow had been replaced by mud of drab brown and grey color though grass was starting to push up in many places.