by Ahimsa Kerp
Rowanna slipped back into the camp, seemingly unnoticed in the waning evening light. Her hair and clothes were still wet but she didn’t care what they thought. It had been entirely too long since she’d bathed in the river and nothing—not ice, not her people, and not the lifeless—was going to stop her. The battle that morning had left her covered in blood, sweat, ash, but the worst were the bits of brain and organs that had leaked onto her. The others were men, and hadn’t seemed to care, but she was entirely willing to risk her life in order to bathe in a freezing stream, despite orders not to leave camp.
The water was melted snow, grabbing her with frozen fingertips. Rowanna had slipped into the stream with her clothes still on—they needed a wash nearly as much as she did. The cold was shocking, and the fingers on her right hand instantly turned white. Her body was instantly shaking. She had left her spear on the bank, just in case, but had not needed it.
It was a relatively safe time to be on her own. There had been no sign of the lifeless all afternoon. They hadn’t seen any since killing the hordes of them that morning. After the battle, the survivors had opened the gates and walked with the Dacians for hours. They’d joined a camp filled with other Dacians. Rowanna hadn’t known any of them. Zuste had, and she had left him chatting with some important looking warriors.
The camp could not have been more different from the Roman one. There was no dyke, no fence, and few guards. There were dogs, pigs, women, and children, scattered amongst the men. There was not even a latrine, people just squatted where and when they needed to relieve themselves. Rowanna was amazed at how quickly the Roman way had become the norm for her. It made sense—seeing how organized the Romans were, she could see how they continued to win battles against the Dacians.
She smiled at a few people and received a handful of half-smiles back. It was good to hear Dacian spoken again—her Latin was not bad, but it was a language that lacked music. These people did not know what to make of her, and none of them were from her village. Her stomach growled as wood smoke drifted through the camp. It was past time for a meal—a proper, hot meal.
It took longer than it should have, and the brief winter evening had come and gone, but eventually, Rowanna found the campfire with her friends. Sparks jumped and cracked into the still night air. Something was cooking—it smelled like roast rabbit. There were three men around the fire, but she did not know one of them.
She instantly knew something was wrong. Her king—Decabalus—stood there with a face as hard as misery. There was a man beside him, a man with a furiously bushy beard and robes similar to Zuste’s, who was seething with fury. Iullianus looked like he had eaten something he did not like, something that was still wriggling down his throat.
“Rowanna,” Iullianus said, “where have you been? We looked for you.”
“I went for a swim,” she said. There was no use trying to hide it. “I would have left word had I thought it important.”
Iullianus grunted. His expression was still sour. Her King spoke next.
“Outside the camp? You were forbidden to do so.”
“It was not important,” Iullianus said. “You missed the departure of your friend.”
“What do you mean? Zuste? Where is he?” she asked.
Iullianus looked at her. There was something strange in his eyes. Did he pity her? “He’s gone, Rowanna. Gone. We’ll not see him again.”
“What? After what he did? He saved us!” She looked to Decabalus, her eyes pleading.
“After what he did,” Iullianus repeated sadly, “I was able to save his life. He is on his own now.”
“Why?” Her voice was a fluttering spirit, sinking beneath the waves
“That man,” snapped the man in the alchemist robes and long beard, “he is to blame for everything. I still think we should have killed him.”
“We already have,” Iullianus agreed. “He will never survive out there, not on his own.”
Rowanna stared at the two in shock. “I’m going after him,” she said, turning on her heel.
“Do not go, woman,” said the King.
“Wait,” Iullianus added, “he will not want to see you.” She stopped and turned back to them.
“Will someone,” Rowanna asked, “please tell me what’s going on.”
All three of them shared a long look. She could not imagine what they had to tell her.
“Sit down,” said Decabalus. When she had done so, he offered her a spit of roast rabbit. “Have something to eat.”
“I'm not hungry.”
“As you will. Listen, Zuste has been a friend of mine for a long time. He always gave good advice, and helped our country against the Romans,” he said. “No offense, friend,” he added with a smile at Iullianus.
“No argument here,” the big man agreed, “the Romans are vicious bastards.”
“Have you met Natopurus? He is—or was, when I still had a kingdom—my chief alchemist. He helped Zuste, and others, learn much.”
The bearded man nodded at her curtly, but he spoke to Decabalus. “Just tell her. I don’t understand the point in dicing words around this woman.”
“This woman is stronger than you know,” Iullianus said.
“This woman has a mouth, and ears. Two of them,” she said, losing her carefully cultivated calm.
“What do alchemists do?” Decabalus asked.
“They make potions,” she said. “I don’t see--”
“They make potions,” Decabalus repeated. “Some to heal, some to hurt. Some create fire, others create more terrible things.”
Rowanna stared at each of the three men. In the firelight, their faces looked hardly human. “What are you saying?”
“Rowanna,” Iullianus said, “Zuste created the baleful. All of this, it’s because of him.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Nothing is impossible with alchemy,” said Natopurus.
“I don’t know about that,” added Decabalus, “but I do know that Natoporus was approached by a strange man last year. He was willing to pay more money than anyone should ever be able to pay. We’re talking the kind of wealth that Caesar or Crassus would envy. Natopurus knew the man could want nothing good, but it was a great deal of money. In the end, he came to me. I decided to kill the man and take his money, but by then, someone else had sold the elixir to him.”
“What makes you think it was Zuste? There are many alchemists in Dacia, and countless others in the world.”
“Rowanna,” Iullianus said in a strained voice, “he has the cure. You two told me you used it.”
“Not even I could have created a cure that quickly,” said Natopurus. “Not unless I had created the potion first.”
“That’s not proof,” she insisted. It was growing harder to see. She angrily blinked away the tears, surprised and embarrassed at her reaction.
“Not overwhelmingly, no,” Decabalus admitted. “However, when we approached him, he admitted to it.”
“There is blood on his hands,” growled Natopurus. “Enough blood to choke a sea.”
“He left us, immediately and willingly. I will miss him, but we won’t see him again,” Iullianus finished.
Something occurred to her. “You just said it yourselves, we can’t lose Zuste, he has the cure.”
Natopurus laughed harshly. “This is what comes of having a woman tell you your business. He gave me the formula before he left, of course. It was created not without some intelligence, but some of the ingredients are so rare as to be impossible,” he added. “And it’s a small amendment: he is the cause of all this misery.”
“To be precise,” Iullianus said, trying to lighten the mood, “the Romans would have killed and enslaved you all if the lifeless hadn’t come along.”
Natopurus snarled and Decabalus said something, but she wasn’t listening. Unbidden, she thought of Dapyx smiling in the sunshine with the other warriors. His smile had outshone the sun. Something splashed on her face. She was shaking with fury. Without realizing i
t, tears were leaping from her eyes. She suddenly remembered the fat man had thrown away a purse of gold into the woods. It had not made sense at the time, but now it all fit together.
It was true. Zuste had created the lifeless. Rowanna leaned her head back and screamed.
****
They awoke the next morning and found their camp covered by a slight blanket of snow. Rowanna thought of the alchemist and wondered how he was surviving in the cold. She did not like thinking of him, but half of her wanted to protect him and the other half wanted to kill him. It would be best if he died, she decided. He could lie down and rest, and his body could be covered with snow so that the lifeless could not trouble his corpse. A better end than he deserved, and, yet, she realized some part of her hoped he would live.
She shivered in the frigid morning air, wondering if that fate would be shared by all before much longer had passed. Her feet were going numb—she wore a pair of small sandals the Romans had given her, but they did not provide much warmth in the snow. Most people were still abed, though it was still the half-light of early dawn. Only the children were awake--laughing, throwing balls of snow at each other and at trees.
She was watching them, trying to stay attached to the present, when she almost walked into the man before her. She had apologized before she realized who it was. Natopurus.
“They make too much noise,” he said, having followed her gaze to the children.
“Without their laughter, what good is anything we do?” she asked him.
The man stared at her incredulously. “Women. Always good for a meaningless platitude,” he said at last. “They want to see you over by the fire,” he added, before walking away. His steps sounded heavy in the snow.
She watched him walk away for a handful of moments. Some of his surly manner she had found in Zuste, but the fat man, if pushed, would respond to his inner humanity. This man lacked that spark. He lacked, it seemed, any semblance of humanity at all.
She walked over to the fire and found Iullianus and Decabalus, feeling the cold settle in her bones. She was getting old. No, she’d been old, but had forgotten. Now she was remembering. Only her bones had never forgotten.
The two men nodded at her, but did not stop their conversation.
“If you go to Rome, then Caesar will kill you,” the Dacian King said. “Do not throw your life away.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to understand, but I will take the survivors back to Rome.”
“What survivors? Twenty men? From a legion? I am not Domitian, but even I would kill the general who bore those tidings to me.” Decabalus laughed, a little scornfully.
“Perhaps that is my fate. As long as I can die with a beer in my hand, no man will say it was a bad death.”
Decabalus smiled at that. “I never thought I’d agree with a Roman, but those words ring true.”
“I am not a Roman,” Iullianus said quietly. “And what of your people?”
“Leaving them here is as good as killing them. I cannot allow that to happen.”
Another long stretch of silence followed. Iullianus idly picked up a stick and traced shapes in the snow. Rowanna marveled at how these men used silence—it was for them another language.
“My duty is with my people, but I have a mind to send ten warriors with you. They will take your orders, but I need them to come back to me after you reach Rome,” Decabalus said.
“What of me?” Rowanna asked.
“You may do as you please, though I had thought you would come with us,” Decabalus said. “We are not Romans, like our tall friend here. Our people are free to venture where they wish. I am king of no one who does not wish me to be.”
“I am no Roman,” repeated Iullianus.
“Truly?” asked Decabalus, with a wolfish glint in his eye. “You have a Roman name. You dress like a Roman. You lead Roman armies into battle, conquering territory to expand Roman borders. Where you were born means nothing, Roman.”
Rowanna thought that the red-haired man might hit Decabalus then. Instead, he paused for a moment, head cocked thoughtfully. Another silence that said more than words ever could.
“I see your point,” he conceded at last, “though it is hard to accept. They certainly don’t accept me as a Roman. When I was a boy, I killed Romans by the score. A man never knows where the road will take him.”
“If I am to have a choice,” said Rowanna, filling up the silence, “I should like to know more. What will you do?” she asked Decabalus.
“Survivors have reached me from Berzobis. It was a Roman fort, but they are gone and it is yet untouched by the baleful. It has walls high enough to keep them away. I will gather my people and take refuge from this storm there.”
“A dangerous plan,” Iullianus said. “A safe haven yesterday is not a safe haven today. You could arrive to find the place crawling with lifeless. Or wake up a month hence to find yourselves besieged by them.”
Decabalus gave him a helpless look. “I am the King. I have to protect my people, and we have a better chance surviving behind walls than we do out here.”
“Perhaps. Staying in this infested land is courting death, if you ask me,” Iullianus said.
“I did not. But reporting to your king an entire legion massacred seems just as dangerous.”
“More. I am braver than you, though,” Iullianus grinned, “and Romans don’t have kings.”
“Certainly not,” agreed Decabalus. “One man who rules half the world, with wealth enough to buy armies and navies, who can conquer a nation with a word—he is certainly no king.”
“Exactly,” said Iullianus. “The Romans are masters of saying one thing and meaning another. I accepted your aid with gratitude, and I welcome the men you send with me as well. But the man I need to bring is the alchemist.”
“He’s long gone, dead, or worse,” Decabalus said, lowering his voice and glancing to Rowanna a little too late.
“Not him. The goat-looking one, who constantly looks as though he’s sitting upon a hornet’s nest,” Iullianus said, drawing a smile from Rowanna. “He said it himself. He knows the cure.”
“Which my people will need.”
“So too the world.”
Decabalus was silent as he thought. “No, I cannot chance it. You might not make it to Rome. The Caesar may not believe you, or understand the necessity. You likely will be thrown into chains and sold into slavery without even getting a chance to tell them. I can have him write it down.”
“Not good enough,” Iullianus said quietly. "If we are bit on the way, we will need him. We will need the cure."
“I cannot help the Romans. Do not think I forget why you came here. I am a reasonable man, but do not presume to dictate my course,” Decabalus said, his voice boiling with rage. “I lost many men saving you, you who came to kill and enslave my people. I did not do so in order for you to command me.”
“I guess this is me warning you,” Iullianus said. His smile was a bare blade.
“I’m afraid my decision is final.”
Iullianus moved so quickly that Rowanna didn’t have time to cry out. Decabalus was fast though. He had half-risen, his hand on the hilt of his sword, when the red-haired man’s blade pierced his chest.
He eyes fell upon the weapon. Iullianus grabbed the hilt with both hands and twisted.
“Ah, it is regrettably true that man is a wolf to man,” he said softly. “But you cannot put your needs above the worlds.”
As Decabalus’ body slid into the snow, spurting crimson, Rowanna glanced at the camp with panic. So far, no one had noticed. Most were still asleep, and it was considered improper to approach the leaders with matters less than urgent.
She didn’t even realize that she was in danger until she heard the footsteps. The big man was before her. His blade drip, drip, dripped steaming blood into the snow.
“Do not scream,” he said.
She found herself strangely ready. So many had died already, and this could be a clean death. An end to pain, fea
r, and cold. She could find some solace in that. “Do it,” she said, bowing her head before him. Her hands reached up and moved the hair from the back of the neck. “Make it quick,” she said. Head down, she only saw the white snow, but she could hear the blood falling into it.
“Hera’s swollen nipples woman, have you got a pair,” Iullianus said. “You heard what he said. He gave me a choice of killing him or letting the world die. I don’t have to kill you. Unless you scream, but I would truly prefer not to kill another today.”
“I would truly prefer not to die today,” she answered, wondering if she was telling the truth. Wondering if she knew what truth was anymore. The cold peace of death had seemed utterly comforting. “But how will you get the alchemist now?”
Iullianus looked in surprise at the dead king’s body below him and at the bloody sword in his hand. “You know, I hadn’t really given it any thought yet.”
CHAPTER XX
Rome: 88 CE, Winter
Rufus sat down warily in the Emperor’s study. He had been waiting for far too long and it was already late afternoon by the time he came in. Apart from the Emperor’s Praetorian Guards and a half-dozen servants, he was alone with Domitian. This was unusual, and it left him feeling unsettled and edgy.
“Salve, Rufus,” Domitian said perfunctorily. Rufus responded in kind and looked closer at the man across from him.
The Emperor was ill. He had dark circles under his eyes and he was growing a beard. He had gained weight noticeably since the last time Rufus had seen him, and his head was nearly bald. Only some long, wispy hairs on the sides of his head attested to the Emperor having ever had hair. The study was clean, but there were flies everywhere, crawling on the Emperor’s clothes and bare skin. Domitian seemed not to notice.
The Emperor looked straight at Rufus, his cheeks blushing with excitement.
“I know what you are doing,” he said. “Did you really think you could hide it from me?”
He knew. It was never a good time to cross the Emperor, but now was particularly bad. Just last month, a man named Mettius Pompusianus had been put to death for the crimes of having a map of the world painted on his wall and reading the speeches of kings in Livy. Rufus knew Pompusianus, and the man probably had been conspiring against the Emperor, but he had to admit that his own guilt seemed much more evident. He had not updated his will in months.
