by Claudia Dain
"You also not die silently."
"No, I will not," she said, inching into a crouched position. "You think, in whatever haphazard fashion you may, that Rome and its citizens cannot stand against you, but I know that you shall never stand long against the power of Rome. However, after seeing what you, in your savage ignorance, have destroyed here today, I would willingly choose death. Kill me quickly, barbarian, for I cannot bear to live in a world in which you have won the day and ravaged my home."
He had understood only some of her diatribe, but it was enough. More than enough. She had dug deep into old and seeping wounds with her runaway tongue.
Rome not beaten today? It was a lie. Rome died a little more each day from defeats such as this.
She would prefer death to seeing him in command of her little Roman world? Looking at her crouched at his feet and ready to spring, he found he could believe it. She had inflamed him with every word, pressing to the limit his ill-used and much-hated Latin vocabulary trying to understand her. She was pushing him toward her own death with such proud and punishing words.
Wulfred smiled grimly in sudden and perfect understanding. She had said it, stupidly revealing her motive: she wanted death because she could not bear to have her rotting Roman world shaken by uncivilized barbarian hands. If death was her preference, then death she would not have.
The girl would live.
"You have flushed her," Cenred said, entering the library. "She is a little thing."
Wulfred did not glance at him, but kept staring at the Roman on the floor. "Snakes are little."
Cenred laughed, studying the little Roman woman who had kept them all waiting. She was very small, even for a woman. And she was very dirty.
Melania, though she could understand but a few words of their garbled language, sensed that they were not behaving in the way of men about to kill. Should they not be more enraged, more bloodthirsty? But then, they were Saxon; they probably killed as easily and thoughtlessly as they wet the ground with their water.
She studied them as they talked. All the world knew that the Saxon barbari were big, but she had discounted much of it as myth. She still wasn't ready to discard her notion that tales of their prowess were exaggerated, but now she found it hard to dispute the truth of their monumental size. They were, without exception, at least three hands higher than any man she had ever seen. They were monstrous giants. A man had to be terribly awkward at such a size. Certainly she could see that they were well muscled, standing half-naked as they were and wearing their uncultured garb of leather covering each leg. It was so... so... primitive. They were each light of hair and covered in it; hair hung down their backs and swirled across their chests.
Repulsive. Surely such backward oafs would kill her without a thought, killing being their only skill. Still, studying the biggest one, the one who had dragged her from her pristine tomb, she could well believe that he would choose not to kill her out of sheer perversity. Every choice he made seemed to have her misery at its heart.
"Wife, sister, or daughter?" Cenred asked, astounded by her flagrant animosity and apparent lack of fear. "She seems too bold to be an unwed daughter or unclaimed sister."
"She is too bold for a wife," Wulfred said.
"A widow?"
"She has the bile, but not the age."
"There's not much left that a woman can be."
"She can be a slave," Wulfred said coldly.
Melania's eyes did not waver from the one who had grabbed her from the flames; she found him the easier to read of the two, and she did not like the way he was looking at her with his unnaturally blue eyes, eyes of such intense blue that they seemed to burn. Why was he waiting? He must have meant to kill her; every action proclaimed it. She would rather die now than later; waiting made the whole thing more difficult to bear.
How like a barbarian to delay so stupidly. He was little more than an unthinking animal; and as an animal he would react.
With a quick lunge, she buried her teeth in the muscle just above his knee. The feel of his hairy leg in her mouth was disgusting, but the taste of his blood was very satisfying. He would kill her now, blind with pain and rage; she had only to hold on and wait.
His blood filling her mouth, Melania felt a rough tug on her hair. Yanking viciously, he attempted to pull her off. She held on, biting harder. She would release him when she was dead and not sooner.
She knew he was in pain and the knowledge fed her; he could not last. He could not hold back the primitive emotions running through his blood; he would have no desire to. Her neck was about to break and he was ripping the hair out of her scalp, but he would give first. And he would give her what she wanted.
Eyes full of challenge glittered with unrepentant hatred into his, defying him, daring him.
Cenred clubbed her from behind and she slithered down Wulfred's streaming leg to huddle in an inert mass on the tile floor.
Wulfred watched her dispassionately.
"Snake."
Chapter 4
The Roman was still unconscious when Ceolmund again dragged Theras to the library. A shadowy flicker of his eyes when he saw the little snake was his only betrayal and would have been discreet enough to have escaped notice if Wulfred had not been watching him so closely. He would have answers from this Grecian slave and he would have them quickly. The Roman's ridiculous perversity had all but destroyed his pleasure in today's victory. He was in no temper for patience.
"Who is she?"
The slave's eyes lifted hopefully and then lowered to the floor. Yes, he knew now that she yet lived and had found gladness in the knowing; this slave was loyal to Rome and her bastard offspring, though Wulfred could find no reason for it.
Wulfred swung his sword in a clean and easy arc. The wound he left behind on the slave's belly was as straight as a lance. The blood flowed freely, but would heal, if left undisturbed. It was the slave who would decide if it would be left undisturbed. Wulfred would have answers, and without delay.
"I will not ask twice," Wulfred said softly, without a trace of gentleness.
"Melania," Theras answered, his voice filled with self-disgust. "Daughter of this house."
"Her father?"
"In the courtyard."
That meant that he was dead. None lived who had fought against them in the courtyard.
"Bring him," Wulfred commanded, and his men obeyed, carrying the mutilated and stiffening body of the old man of Rome into the library and laying it next to the warm body of his daughter. Wulfred was not moved to pity at the sight of them together on the floor of their ruined house. None of Rome would ever arouse less than complete hatred in him.
"Go," Wulfred ordered Theras, and, with a quick look back to the masters he had served, the slave left.
Wulfred and his comrades stood in a loose circle surrounding the pair as they lay prostrate on the broken floor. None spoke. The old man's blood had congealed, his bowels and bladder emptied, his hands half curled into fists in his death throes; he had died fighting for his place in the world. It was the best death a man could hope for. He deserved no pity.
Wulfred's gaze shifted to the woman. He noted again that she was very small. He squatted on his haunches to study this woman who had sent his pleasure racing away with her perversity. Her hair was black as night and straight as straw. Her skin was the color of ripe grain, and while it was without blemish, it also was without the becoming rosy blush of a Saxon woman. In profile, her nose was straight but long by Saxon standards, and her mouth small but full. She was as small and lithe of frame as a snake, and as venomous. He knew enough of the world to know that she was a beauty by Mediterranean standards, but he could see nothing save that she was Roman.
Rome: gobbling the world in its greed and arrogance. Rome: an empire of soldiers and tax collectors. Rome: gorging itself on the people who stood between it and its next conquest. Rome: the enslaver of all, bribing those it subjugated to lick the hand that had destroyed them.
Wulfred wat
ched the pulse beat beneath the fine skin of her throat. She was so small, so defenseless; she would be so very easy to kill.
He placed his hand on her throat, pressing against her windpipe as he dispassionately watched for her response. In moments she began to struggle for breath, squirming against his weight, clawing at his hand, kicking against his hip for release.
He watched her fight for her life with as little interest as one watched a bee tremble and die. He had found out what he wished to know. She cried for death with false zeal; instinct still prompted her to fight for her life.
He released her. Casually he looked toward where her father lay, white and bloodless in the pale light of dawn; she followed his look. Eyes of lightest hazel filled with tears that did not spill.
She looked him full in the face, and those tears that hung suspended in her eyes served to magnify her hatred and determination. She blinked and they were gone. Again she had managed to surprise him.
"As you have done to him, do to me, Saxon. I will not live in a world overrun by such animals as you."
Wulfred rose to his feet, towering above her. "You live or die, I choose."
"Then choose death, barbarian," she ordered.
"You could have died at my hand just now—you fought death."
Melania rose to her feet to stand before him. If she was going to have a debate with this monster, she'd do it face-to-face. Merciful God, his Latin was disastrous.
"I did not fight death. I fought you! Death I welcome and embrace as warmly as a mother—"
"Or a father?"
Melania quivered before him in a glittering fury, and with one breath she turned the tide of the conversation, becoming the aggressor.
"Come, Saxon, see if you can kill me. You have tried and failed" —she smiled— "twice? Three times? Perhaps now, if you try very hard, you will succeed at your task." Her hands on her hips, she said, "Or is it beyond you?"
He understood her to the core. She wanted death's release and sought to goad him into giving her that which she wanted most, yet when unconscious, she had fought wildly for life. Would she so willingly plunge into the darkness of death when a part of her fought for life? Which part of her would rule? Her inborn thirst for life or her rage for death?
With no warning, Wulfred swung his seax out toward her chest in an effortless yet deadly arc. If she stayed still, he would miss her by the width of a finger. But she could not know that.
He waited for her to shriek and fall back from the sharpened blade. She did neither. The imbecilic woman leaned into the blow, her eyes glowing with scorn—and victory. Ceolmund pulled her back, away from harm.
The glow of victory in her eyes dimmed, but not the scorn.
"Since you are so hungry for death," Wulfred pronounced, his voice hoarse with frustrated desire, "you will starve for it. You will cry for release and you will find none."
"I will cry for nothing."
Wulfred smiled bitterly, remembering. "If you can say the same in a year, I might believe you. Today you have suffered nothing, endured nothing. Your words are only ... words."
"And your threats are nothing. You are nothing. You, who know nothing and build nothing and believe nothing. You think to torture me with life, but you will not. You are a stupid savage, a barbari, a pagan, and I will not tremble before such an oaf as you. You are an ass, and since you are determined not to kill me, then you have acquired a Roman citizen as your lifelong enemy, and only a fool makes an enemy of Rome."
"You are good only for talk."
"And you are good only for destruction and death, so do what you are best at, Saxon, or will you admit that you are afraid to kill a Roman woman?"
Wulfred pressed his great length against her, letting her feel his strength and his lack of fear. Fear Rome? For Rome there was only rage. Lifting her head with his hands, forcing her to face him, he spoke the truth of her position.
"I know what you try, Roman; I know what you feel. I will not kill you. That will not be your escape. Talk. You will not win. Your fate is to be under my command for as long as you live. It is your living misery which will feed me."
For just a moment he thought he saw her quiver, saw the shadow of fear cross her face, but then it was gone, subdued. For the moment.
"I do not believe in fate," she argued, wrenching free of his hands and his touch.
"So be it. But you can believe in what I tell you: you are mine to use. When death comes, it will be when I decide it, not you."
"I place my life in God's hands, not yours, pagan."
"And I have taken it out. Your life is mine and your death—"
"Only God has the power of life and death over me."
Wulfred smiled and said almost gently, "Then I am your god, Roman."
"No," Melania answered proudly, her calm restored, "you are my enemy."
Wulfred took her measure before saying with almost grim eagerness, "So be it."
Chapter 5
"She cannot go with us. Women do not go to battle," Cuthred said in his typical single-minded fashion.
"No," Balduff agreed, "but battles don't last all day, and women do have their uses in the off hours. If Wulfred wants her—"
"Wulfred has never wanted a woman before," Cynric said.
"Not wanted a woman?" Balduff laughed. "Of course he has."
"I did not say that he hadn't had a woman, oaf, but that he has never... well, he hasn't ever seemed to care for any particular woman," Cynric argued, uncomfortable with the topic.
"If this is the way he shows his caring, then—" Cenred began with a sarcastic smile.
"Shut up," Ceolmund said, cutting Cenred off. They all stared at him for a moment in surprised silence. Ceolmund rarely spoke, and only when he felt it was important. That he would speak now was peculiar since they only discussed the Roman woman.
"She certainly is a virulent little thing," Balduff said after an awkward pause. "She's not what I expected of a Roman woman."
"Not what you expect of any woman," Cenred said.
"She fought well enough, considering the limitations of her arsenal," Cynric said.
"Teeth count," Cuthred pronounced in impartial martial judgment.
"Yes," Cenred said, "but who would have thought that she would react as she did? I was prepared to see her on her knees and crying for mercy, not snarling for a quick death as she sprang to the attack."
"It was also not what Wulfred expected, but he will have his satisfaction in his own way," Cynric said.
"He wants her with us?" Cuthred said almost piteously.
"I want her with us," Wulfred confirmed, stepping from the shadows of the courtyard to join the circle of his men. "We will stay. You are right, Cuthred. To bring a woman to battle is foolish. But now the battle is here, with this woman. I will have my way with her. I will get satisfaction from her, and then we will go."
They nodded in acceptance if not full understanding, but they were his comitatus and they would follow him in all things. Wulfred could not put into words the pleasure he would get in tormenting her and breaking her spirit. It was a perverse pleasure, but nonetheless real.
"Cynric," he directed, "since we stay, direct the slaves to clean the place. We will not live in this destruction."
"Yes, Wulfred," he responded.
"And Cynric," Wulfred said, and waited for Cynric to face him fully before he continued, "the Roman snake will work. She is no longer free, but slave."
Yes, it gave him a great deal of pleasure.
Except that she did not cooperate.
The fool woman went about the cleaning and organizing of her former household with vigor and resolve. Worse, the slaves all did her bidding, as if she were still mistress of this place. Worse still, when he stormed into the midst of them and declared that she was not to direct their activities, the work faltered without her. He wanted to let it be so, just to thwart her desire to rule and command, but he truly did not want to live in chaos for however long it took to break her, so he reluct
antly and ungraciously ordered them to proceed as they would. The Roman once again directed the slaves, and the work progressed well under her command.
But the worst of all was that none of it seemed to bother her. In fact, she hadn't seemed even to notice his involvement. Being a slave didn't appear to have affected her at all.
Impossible woman.
Wulfred left the villa, a series of rooms facing inward on a walled courtyard, and wandered into the surrounding fields to get some welcome distance from the Roman.
The day was well on, a hot summer day of white haze and little wind. The villa was settled in a small valley surrounded by gentle hills covered with both field and forest. Rocky outcroppings pushed up through the earth like abandoned monuments, dotting the green landscape with splotches of gray. It was a landscape not unlike his own land—except that there were no Roman villas among the Saxons. Wulfred scanned the area as he left the immediate vicinity of the villa.
The east slope was trellised with grapevine supports, but few vines grew, and those that did were thin and yellow of leaf. The barley fields to the north were small, and he could see that there had once been cultivation to the south, abandoned now. Wulfred climbed to the top of the soft slope of the north hill, above the barley fields, which was covered in honeysuckle blowing in the early summer breeze. From here he could look down upon the villa, nestled as it was against the slope of the western hill, snug in a protected little valley.
Protected from the blasts of weather, but not from man. It was an indefensible spot, as he knew well. The very positioning of the house demonstrated the arrogance of Rome. But there was an air of dilapidation to the whole scene that he could take no credit for; no, that belonged to Rome completely. The arrogant Romans; how far they had fallen in this distant place.
A pair of larks erupted from the woods behind him and sprinted across the air, dipping low and then curving to rise up again. They were the only movement in the still summer sky shining above him, and he spared a moment to enjoy their flight. Birds were always free.
