Lady of the Light

by Donna Gillespie

  Avenahar, I did not know you were the sun. A mother should perish from the earth before a daughter. Or else who will welcome that daughter to the Ancestresses?

  THE EIGHT HUNTSMEN wheeled their mounts about and gave chase as the aurochs thundered away from the net. The Governor’s bay stallion shot in the lead, crashing through the grasses. A bruised but uninjured Camillus was close behind, astride a fresh mount. Maximus urged his agitated, sweat-darkened stallion alongside the bull and steadied himself for another throw of the lance. This shot was high, grazing the hard hide of the bull’s back. The aurochs surged onward with its strange, heavy, rocking gallop, until game-beaters at the far end of the meadow rose up from the grasses and drove it back toward the net.

  Moving at a fluid and ponderous slow-beat trot, the pale bull seemed perversely obedient as it ambled back into the hunters’ midst; its languorous gait suggested surrender. It halted and began rhythmically shaking its head. As the hunters tightened their circle, the oddly submissive monster remained very still, watching them with great care, showing the whites of its eyes in a slightly mad but most expressive manner. To the hunters, it was disturbing—the creature seemed to know them, to be laying plans. The wind drew in a breath; the net softly deflated. From the direction of the distant camp came the whimper of a Celt hound wounded earlier in the day by a boar that now hung, skinned, over drifting smoke. The aurochs and all the earth seemed to await the best moment to catch the noble hunters off guard.

  Then the bull swung itself round like a heavy boom, once more its gloriously unpredictable self. It thundered straight for Julianus—a mountain in motion, a barreling behemoth unstoppable as a cart full of boulders careening downhill. Its eyes were bright with ire; it thought Julianus the author of all its hurts. Snorting, chuffing sounds came from it with the impact of each heavy stride.

  Marcus Julianus’s panicked horse scuttled backward. He gathered his wits just in time to manage a swift, hard throw of the lance, embedding it deep in the bull’s heavily muscled shoulder. This fresh strike had no immediate effect; he might have thrust a toothpick into the beast. But an instant before the monster would have collided with his mount, it slung its bulk around, and rotated twice—the crazed motion of a beast in pain.

  Then it made an erratic, arrow-quick dart between the hunters’ lines and sped off, the strange, sloped bulk hurtling along with remarkable speed as it careened into a portion of the meadow where no game-beaters were positioned. Maximus held his bay stallion in check; the horse did a liquid dance-in-place while the Governor signaled angrily to the game-beaters, commanding them to come round and close up the open place. It had required a grueling morning’s work to position the beast for the kill; now all was set to be lost.

  The aurochs never slowed as it burst upon a hunter’s trackway that ran alongside the meadow’s edge. A few more ground-grabbing strides and it would be lost in the forest.

  Then the hunters discerned a distant human figure, nearly in the beast’s path—one of the grooms. The man was on foot, returning to the hunt camp from some errand. The bull shifted direction slightly and bore down on the groom, turning all its wrath on this lone specimen of its two-legged tormentors. It caught the helpless slave on its horns and flung him into the air as if he were a straw doll. No one was near to give aid.

  To Maximus’s astonishment, Marcus Julianus wheeled his dappled mount about and urged it to a gallop, rushing to the aid of the fallen slave.

  “Dogs of Cerberus, what’s he doing?” Camillus shouted in a fury, bringing his horse up beside Maximus’s. “He’ll drive it farther off, he’ll dash what we’ve spent half a day setting up.” To himself, he muttered, “Never bring a philosopher along on a hunt.” The eccentric pedant, he thought. I could buy five slaves like that one, with what this magnificent beast’s hide is worth.

  “Hurry, my Lord, he’ll steal your kill,” cried out a hunter who had placed a large wager on Maximus. But the Governor wasn’t willing to forgo dignity to chase after strayed quarry.

  As Julianus’s horse flashed past Maximus, the Governor saw his friend’s normally mild features hardened into a look of grim purpose. Julianus’s flying dappled-gray cleaved the grass, while Julianus himself was bent low over its neck, moving easily with the horse’s powerful strides. Maximus was more amused than angry, marveling somewhat at this quietly intense, city-bred man-of-ideas suddenly turned hunter, and for an instant he considered that perhaps the philosopher’s life could adapt a man to any exigency, if it could so instantly transform his scholarly friend into a swift and deadly predator.

  When Marcus Julianus had closed the better part of the distance between the hunters and the strayed bull, a second huntsman shot off in Julianus’s wake. This was a fellow called Attius Ferox, who’d arrived at the campsite only that morning; the hunters knew him as the newly appointed official in charge of the legionary savings bank. The tribune Camillus shouted angry expletives at his fleeing back; their formation was reduced to chaos. The Governor frowned, puzzled that this Ferox, a man of scant experience in the hunt, would display such eagerness to aid in the rescue.

  Julianus galloped between the great bull and the fallen slave, hoping to confuse it and redirect its fury. The injured groom lay unmoving in the long grasses. The aurochs loomed taller than Julianus’s horse. The mammoth bull had ceased mauling the body of the groom and began pawing at the earth, its doleful eye on Julianus as it emitted a series of dark, irritated grunts.

  Marcus Julianus brought his nervous horse as close to those heaving, bleeding sides as he dared. But he never had a chance to hurl his lance. The aurochs gave a cry like a blast on a war horn and slung its bulk at him; with a quick twist of its head, one long horn tore open the belly of Julianus’s horse. The dappled gelding towered upward, forelegs clawing at the sky, then toppled onto its back. Julianus flung himself free. To the distant hunters it appeared as though both Julianus and horse were submerged beneath a sea of long grasses.

  The dappled gelding struggled weakly to rise, then ceased its efforts. Julianus found himself stunned, but with no broken bones. Crouching, he crept toward his swiftly dying horse, meaning to use the poor beast as a shield, snatching a brief moment to look once, heartsick, at the long, ragged slash in its belly that laid gray ribs bare. The aurochs was so close, he could see deeply into the labyrinth of one mad eye. The reek of musk, damp fur, and rot enveloped him. His second lance lay just beyond reach. He had only the dagger in his belt.

  From somewhere unknown, a poignant shout of protest arose. It could have been an eagle’s cry, except it was edged with human passion.

  It came from afar—beyond the net.

  Julianus stole the briefest look in that direction and was surprised to see that a distant rider had climbed aboard what was, surely, his own spare horse—another desert-bred dappled-gray, out of the same dam as his slain mount. The rider, though impeded by grooms grasping the reins to stop him, was urging the horse to a gallop on a course straight for himself and the aurochs. It made no sense—no mortal horse could clear that net.

  The same quick look revealed that help was coming from several quarters. Closest at hand, one of the hunters—what was his name?—Attius Ferox?—rushed for him at good speed. Well behind him, roughly half the hunt party, Maximus in the lead, approached at what seemed to Julianus’s fevered mind an excruciatingly slow pace. And two separate parties of game-beaters armed with nets and goads fanned out across the meadow, coming even more slowly on foot.

  The bull bore down on him; he might have been trapped beneath a plummeting ten-talent block of marble. The body of his horse wouldn’t even slow it. He would be pounded to pudding beneath anvil-sized hooves.

  Julianus whipped off his cloak.

  When the bull was one stride short of trampling him, he cast his cloak at the lowered head. It caught on curved horns, then molded itself about the beast’s head and shoulders. The aurochs jammed both forelegs into the earth and gave a shrill bellow of surprise. It became a bovine pen
dulum, loosely swinging its ponderous head to free itself of the insulting piece of cloth.

  From the edge of his vision Marcus Julianus saw that the young treasury official, Attius Ferox, had dropped from his horse and was running to his aid. Even in the chaos of that moment, as Julianus was shouting into the wind—“No—too dangerous—wait until the rest come up”—he sensed something odd in this rescue. But he dared not take his eyes from the blinded colossus before him.

  Julianus was judging the distance between himself and his lost lance when he felt a powerful blow between his shoulder blades. What in the name of the gods—? It jammed the breath from his body. In one disoriented instant he thought: Has the monster split itself in two? Was its twin goring him from behind?

  No, it was Attius Ferox, gone mad.

  Numbness flashed down his arms. Then came a tearing pain like scalding water, a deep drag of agony across his back.

  Julianus twisted round to face his attacker, his own upraised dagger poised to rake flesh. Ferox’s blade came down a second time, sinking into Julianus’s shoulder, catching in bone.

  Julianus twisted free and seized the younger man by his muscular forearms, striving to contain him. The two were locked in mortal struggle, each restraining the other’s blade as survival was thrown upon brute strength and will.

  Ferox was the stronger; steadily, hungrily, his dagger edged toward Julianus’s throat.

  This cannot be my end. It’s too senseless.

  “What madness takes you!”Julianus gasped, arms shivering with the effort of striving to push the younger man off. But are not most ends senseless, even when we choose the hours of our deaths? Ferox continued to steadily overwhelm him. Julianus felt blood coursing down to his collarbone as the young man’s blade pricked flesh near the windpipe. Ferox’s eyes were sightless with a rage so unbreachable, so certain of itself—so impervious to appeal—it inspired its own sort of horror.

  “Murderer . . . of . . . my . . . Lord!” Ferox forced out the words through deep, heaving gasps for air.

  Casperius Aelianus.

  Of course. All will count my death the work of the aurochs.

  This man did not fit his informants’ description, but he scarce had leisure to wonder over this.

  Neither man was aware of the earthy grunting of the frustrated bull. Huge forehooves sank to the fetlock in moist ground as the beast continued its elaborate efforts to free itself from the cloak, dragging one horn along the ground, grunting and lowering itself to its knees, then comically flinging its head skyward, as if taken with fits. Marcus Julianus was conscious only of a simple and primitive desire for life. As he collected his wits, something stubborn as bedrock rose up in him. He refused to be forced down into darkness. He wouldn’t leave the world before leading his children into adulthood. He wouldn’t go where Auriane was not. The doggedness of this fellow and his perverse allegiances filled him with fury—and fresh strength flashed into his limbs.

  He lashed out with a mule-kick to Aelianus’s knee; it broke the younger man’s hold on his wrists. Without a halt in motion Julianus brought up his own knee and delivered a battering-ram blow to Aelianus’s stomach. The younger man folded and fell forward, mouth gaped wide as breath left his body. Julianus managed then to tear the dagger from Aelianus’s hand; he flung it far into the rippling grasses. As Aelianus collapsed onto the lifeless body of the horse, Julianus grasped a lock of the young man’s hair, suspecting, now, how Aelianus had disguised himself. And Julianus found himself holding what looked like a small, dark pelt. False hair. The freshly exposed close-cropped straw-blond hair beneath was true to his informants’ report.

  The man who so lusted for his death was possessed of an almost Apollonian beauty, even with the blood drained from his face. His short, muscular body rolled off the belly of Julianus’s horse, coming to rest beneath the muzzle of the aurochs. Simultaneously, the bull, with a final, mighty toss of its head, freed itself from the cloak. The woolen cloak drifted down, blanketing Aelianus’s body.

  The aurochs bellowed, then turned all its fury on the cloak. It raked the cloth with one horn, then the other, and pawed at it with iron hooves. Blood bloomed on the cloak. The young man flailed his arms, which excited the bull all the more. Julianus shouted at the aurochs and waved his own arms in an attempt to draw its attention from the bloodied man at its feet—enemy that Casperius Aelianus was, no human creature deserved to perish this way.

  Maximus cantered close then; Camillus, Sabinus, and the rest of the hunt party were just behind. The sight of the man they knew as Attius Ferox, mangled and groaning beneath the forehooves of the bull, caused all to feel doom closing round like a god’s fist. It was all the more ghastly, concealed beneath the cloak.

  Four hunters flowed about the bull, lances in position. Maximus dropped from his horse and dragged the young man out of the path of hooves and horns. Julianus limped off to retrieve his lance. Aelianus’s dagger seemed still lodged in his back; each step caused him to feel some fiend gave it a twist.

  Maximus was then aware of furious motion just beyond the billowing and receding hunter’s net. A dappled stallion hurtled toward them with raw fury unleashed, like water from a burst dam. Its rider was was almost invisible; in his hand was an upraised spear. What did this man think he was doing? Only a winged horse could clear that net.

  When Julianus looked, he felt a surge of love and dismay. It was, indeed, his spare horse. Astride it was Auriane.

  When did she come to the camp? She doesn’t know she’s charging, full-tilt, into forbidden ground—these men will not want her aid.

  For a moment no longer than a heartbeat or two, Julianus watched, transfixed, as Auriane and her mount came up to the twisting net. She reined in the horse slightly. Julianus understood: She studied its motion, feeling for the rhythm of its billowing, so she could send her mount over it at the precise moment it sagged low enough for the horse to clear it; her sense of such things was precise as an acrobat’s. Horse and rider shot forward at a moment that seemed randomly chosen—and the net sagged obligingly to the height of her horse’s withers. The dappled gray rose like a crane; woman and beast were one creature, and that creature flew. The horse’s leap was a wave that crested then crashed to earth, to be lost in the grass sea.

  When they reappeared, Maximus, too, recognized Auriane. She rode with the grace of a desert nomad. She was a bird of prey skimming low over the grass.

  The aurochs broke into frenzy. A leftward lunge and swipe of a long horn hamstrung Sabinus’s mount; it bucked violently and Sabinus was flung ingloriously over his horse’s head. A rightward lurch, a lumbering stride—and the tip of a horn caught in the leather strapping of Camillus’s boot; he was tossed over the bull’s shoulder, onto the grass. In a bare instant, the aurochs had unhorsed two hunters.

  Julianus pierced the bull’s shoulder with his lance, lodging it in bone; he held desperately to the thin, bowing shaft, in a futile attempt to hold the beast in place. Men’s shouts battered his ears. Through the chaos of blindly struggling men, the reek of sweat and blood, a pitch of horror that recalled for Julianus his single, long-ago experience on a battlefield, he knew the bull was swiftly, efficiently savaging the fallen Sabinus. Camillus saw the fate of his fellow hunter and bolted off in primitive fright, sprinting like an Olympic runner. His flight took him vaguely in the direction of other humans—the approaching beast-fighters. Excited by the sight of the running man, the great, pale beast launched itself in that direction, closing on Camillus like an avalanche. It laid him flat; moans of dismay came from the approaching beast-fighters as the bull ravaged Camillus with hoof and horn. Several fled off in spirit-terror. Day had turned to endless night. All felt the rank, stifling breath of the gods of slaughter.

  This bloody work done, the bull paused, blowing pinkish steam, then barreled toward Maximus. The Governor’s weapons were spent. Escape was impossible. It would roll over him like thunder. The long grasses were littered with the fallen. Maximus remained dignified and
still, bracing himself for a terrible death.

  Auriane shot into their midst.

  Her flying horse cleaved a diagonal line between Maximus and the bull. The noble hunters watched with blank surprise as, with swift and casual ease, she curbed her dappled mount’s exuberant flight and began cantering in ever-tightening circles about the aurochs, while her horse threw up clods of earth to the sky. It was as though she bound the bull with invisible ropes. She was so steady in the presence of the earth-born monster, none thought to question what sort of help could come from a lone woman armed with a fire-hardened spear. Chestnut hair flew from her loosened braid; as she circled the white bull she was some sylph riding the mist, a creature that resembled nothing they knew from civilized life, an emanation of ancient days—Atalanta of myth, or the fighting maidens that somehow always flourished in history’s remote shadows.

  And Julianus, who believed only in Providence, found himself praying. He beseeched the most ancient spirits of the earth, Juno and Diana, protectresses of women, to see this did not end with her lying horribly mangled in the grass.

  The aurochs’s strangely knowing, brightly malicious eyes were fixed only on Auriane now. The mammoth bull attempted to turn with her, becoming confused, angered, and dizzied by her circling. When her circle had become quite small, with a dancer’s precision she pulled her horse to a nimble halt-and-turn. Auriane faced the bull’s flank. As her mount half reared, she smoothly rose up in the saddle; fluid as a lynx whipping off its mark, her spear-arm flashed out.

  It was as though her spear and the heart of the beast were already joined in the minds of the Fates.