by L. Sprague de Camp;Frederik Pohl;David Drake;S. M. Stirling;Alexei
Faustulus lurched unsteadily to his feet. “Lady!” he cried. “We’re Amulius’ men, all of us here.”
“Are you?” Herosilla said. “Is that what you believe?”
She stood and pointed to her right. “Remus, when Numitor would have seized you the other day, was it Amulius or your own right arm that preserved you?”
She turned and pointed to Romulus on her other side. “Romulus, when you gathered men to free your brother, did you bother to ask Amulius for help? No, you expected to have to fight all the men of Alba, because you knew the king’s spine is as soft as wax in the August sun!”
Her tone was harsh and hectoring. The shepherds had never heard a trained voice before. It stunned them the way sight of Herosilla’s finery had blasted the wills of those she needed to impress in Alba.
Herosilla swept her eyes around the assembly. “If your children were starving this winter, would Amulius feed them? Though you know his table never lacks for the meat you raise! If this Amulius owns your souls, then indeed the gods have sent me to the wrong place. I was meant to go to a land of men, not ewes!”
As a scholar, she sneered at the notion of deities. When she fought—verbally or in other fashions—she used any weapon she thought would be effective.
Herosilla paused, letting the murmurs die down. Before she could resume, Remus said, “Lady?”
She nodded curtly to him. Remus remained seated, but everyone in the village could hear his voice.
“Lady,” he said, “all you say about Amulius is true. But how can we trust Numitor after we’ve made him king?”
“An excellent question,” Herosilla said, directing her cold smile to the full audience. “When we’ve succeeded, you and your brother will lead a colony of the citizens of Alba who hate Numitor worst. You’ll found a new town right here in company with the folk of Palatium and the other villages on these hills, brought together in such strength—”
The crowd gasped with a sound like surf on gravel. Romulus jumped to his feet.
“—that Numitor won’t be able to touch you!”
Herosilla crossed her arms. No one could have shouted over the shocked babbling. Trying to do so would have made her ridiculous.
The brothers looked at her from either side. After a moment, Romulus began to smile.
The sun was still a finger’s breadth below the eastern horizon, but a few early comers were arranging their wares in Alba’s forum. The owner of a fish stall bartered with a herdsman’s wife as she hung skeins of naturally colored wool on a tripod of sticks.
Servius, the chief of Numitor’s guards, opened one leaf of the gate enough that Herosilla could slip out. Servius himself stayed, hidden.
Herosilla stalked across the forum in brisk majesty. The fishmonger, then the wool seller, turned and gaped.
The guards at the king’s gate didn’t notice Herosilla until she was halfway toward them. They stiffened. One lifted his spear, then leaned it against the stockade behind him as if embarrassed by his initial impulse.
Herosilla wore her festival garb. The predawn halflight didn’t show her to best effect, but the glinting, shimmering adornment still provided a more-than-regal effect in this drab age.
“Oh cursed man!” Herosilla said. She pointed her left arm toward one of the guards: limb and index finger made a single threatening line. “Open the gates that I may warn your master of the doom that awaits him!”
“The king will hear petitions after midday,” the other guard said. His shield was a heavy concave round of wood with a bronze facing. He twitched it forward slightly as if he were about to meet the shock of an enemy charge.
Herosilla lowered her left arm. Her right hand continued to grip the hanging end of her shawl. “Fool!” she said. “Do the gods wait on man’s convenience to voice their warnings? Will you send your master screaming to the Underworld because you didn’t choose to break his sleep? The death you bring him will be a sleep never broken, you blasphemous yokels!”
The guards looked at one another; neither found an answer in his fellow’s face. “Mistress,” said the one who’d spoken before, “we can’t let you in. If Amulius didn’t flay us, his chamberlain Oscus would. Please, mistress.”
“Then send for Oscus,” Herosilla said flatly. She put her left hand on her hipbone and flared the elbow out akimbo.
“Right,” said the other guard in relief. “Let him sort it out. Boy!”
“Sir?” peeped a small voice from the other side of the gate.
“Get Oscus here right now,” the guard snarled. “I don’t care if you have to drag him by his pecker!”
“Yes sir,” the boy said. The words faded slightly as he sprinted across the compound.
Herosilla waited, as still as a statue. She faced the closed gate with a grim scowl. The guards fidgeted to either side of her glare.
Nothing happened for several minutes. Stars faded in the eastern sky. There were sounds within the compound: footsteps, a querulous objection, and finally the crossbar rasping through the shackles that held it.
The gate leaves swung inward. A man in his tunic stepped into the opening. He was the attendant who’d carried Amulius’ staff during the audience. He held a crimson sash in his hand, but he hadn’t managed to tie it around his waist.
“What in the name of Jupiter is this—” he said.
Herosilla swung her right arm. There was a rock the size of her fist in the tip of her shawl. It struck the chamberlain in the middle of the forehead, felling him in the gateway like a sacrificed lamb.
“Hell and Death!” a guard shouted. He seized Herosilla with his right hand; the shield bound his left. She elbowed him reflexively. The blow clanged on his bronze breastplate and her arm went numb.
“Attack!” the other guard cried. “We’re being attacked!”
Herosilla bit the hand of the guard holding her. He batted her against the stockade, once and again as she continued to struggle. Her sight dimmed. The other guard was trying to close the gate, but the chamberlain’s body lay in the opening the way Herosilla had planned. The guard bent to drag Oscus clear, still bellowing a warning.
Herosilla heard a loud clang. The man holding her grunted and let go. She fell into a sitting position, her back against the stockade.
Romulus rammed his spear with both hands into the remaining guard’s back. His bronze armor made the spearhead chirp, but it couldn’t stop a thrust with the shepherd’s full strength behind it. Remus, his spear already bloody, jumped the body and led dozens of bellowing herdsmen into the royal compound.
Herosilla tried to get up. The guard who’d held her lay across the hem of her tunic. He’d knocked off his helmet when he fell against the stockade wall, showing his bald patch.
She tugged the tunic free. The man made a faint gurgling sound. Only his fingers moved, clasping and unclasping on nothing. Blood oozed from the hole in his backplate.
Shepherds milled in the forum. Those nearer the front of the attack blocked the gateway to Amulius’ compound. Numitor and his own six guards, fully armed with breastplates and shields, came from their stockade in close formation. Citizens appeared, then vanished into their houses to arm themselves and wait nervously.
“Let me through,” Herosilla said to the back of a shepherd in the gateway. She gripped his shoulder to steady herself. His forearm was splinted.
The man turned; he was Roscio. “Lady!” he said, “Here, make way for the goddess!”
Using the butt of the spear in his good hand, Roscio forced a path for both of them through the confusion. A shepherd trying to hold in his intestines lurched against Herosilla as he plodded toward the gate. A woman was screaming.
The crowd parted. Celer came from the king’s house, ducking under the low doorway. He wore a looted helmet.
“Where’s Amulius?” Herosilla demanded. “Is he dead yet?”
Remus, then Romulus, came out of the dwelling. They dragged Amulius between them. Romulus held a straight-bladed sword that he’d taken from
a guard.
Amulius was naked. His eyes were wild, and there was a fresh gash on his left cheek.
“Why isn’t he dead?” Herosilla said shrilly. “Even a cowardly worm like that is too dangerous to let live now! Do I have to do everything for you?”
For a moment she viewed the scene from high above her body. The spell of dizziness passed.
The brothers stared at her. “No,” Romulus said. “You don’t.”
He stabbed Amulius in the chest. The king screamed and gripped the blade with both hands in a vain attempt to prevent the iron from grating deeper through his ribs. The edges cut his hands, but he didn’t let go until blood gushed from his mouth and his body collapsed in spasms.
Herosilla was above her body again. She sneered at the clumsy blow. Romulus was a herdsman, unfamiliar with swords. Flavia Herosilla had hundreds of times watched experts in the arena.
“Now I’ll go outside and tell the people that justice has been done,” she heard her mouth say. “The heaven-born twins have removed the usurper Amulius and set the real elder brother, Numitor, in his rightful place as King of Alba.”
And by the end of the month, even the folk who’d grown up with Numitor and Amulius would believe the story…
The moon in its first quarter rode in and out of the clouds. If Herosilla squinted she could imagine that the sheen of the boggy pasture was marble rather than standing water and that the shadowy trees were the columns of the great public buildings that would someday surround the Forum.
This time she recognized the firm steps coming down the track behind her. “Tonight I ate before I came,” she called without turning her head.
“I know,” Remus said. “There’s wolves here occasionally, and you’re not really familiar with the path in darkness. Although—”
She heard the smile in his voice; not quite a chuckle.
“—I suppose you will be before long.”
“Come sit,” she said, patting the smooth stone beside her.
“I was planning to wait up by the cypress,” Remus said. “I just wanted to tell you I was here so that you didn’t think I was spying.”
“Sit,” Herosilla repeated. “It’s a good place to think. I’ve been wondering if Aeneas was real too.”
Remus lowered himself onto the seat with the careful grace of a cat relaxing. “Aeneas?” he said.
She smiled wryly. She said, “Nobody you’ve heard of, then. He was a Trojan hero who was supposed to have founded a colony here after the fall of Troy four hundred years ago. Four tens of tens of years.”
Remus shook his head. “Four tens of tens,” he said. “It’s hard to believe anybody knows what happened so long ago.”
He turned his face toward her and added, “It’s because you can read that you know about these things?”
“I suppose so,” Herosilla said. “I know a lot of things that aren’t true as well. Since I came here last month I’ve had a hard time deciding which things belong in which category.”
Remus laughed, then sobered slowly. “It’ll be good having our own grainfields with the new colony,” he said after a time. “I’m not sure that I’m going to like living in a city of six hundred people, though. It’ll take some getting used to. At least we’ll be able to get the drainage right.”
“You’ll have more power,” Herosilla said, watching her companion to see how he would react. “Real power. The ford here is the best route across the river for many miles. You can grow wealthier than Numitor ever thought of being.”
“I’m not my brother,” Remus said; an observation rather than a gibe. “Living as a free man among free men is…”
He looked directly at her again. That he desired Herosilla was as clear as the fact he had no intention of acting on that desire unbidden. “I was going to say ‘enough’. But I honestly can’t imagine anything better.”
Herosilla didn’t speak for a moment. She’d met very few people whom she really liked, and there were fewer still natural gentlemen. To find both rarities combined in a shepherd from a barbarous village was as remarkable as the lightning bolt that had transported her here.
A very handsome shepherd, besides.
“Remus,” she said briskly. “Do you ever worry about dying? Of being killed?”
“No,” he said with a dismissive shrug. “Oh, I expect it’ll happen. I’m not one to start trouble, but often enough somebody else will and I’m not going to stand back, either. A man can’t worry about that, though. Not and live like a free man.”
“Much as I thought,” Herosilla said. She patted his arm. “Help me up,” she directed. “We’ll go back to the village now.”
As they rose, as graceful as a pair of panthers, Herosilla added, “And since you’re not going to worry about keeping yourself alive, I’ll take care of that too. Along with the drainage.”
The colony celebrated its first night on the Palatine with mutton and vast quantities of beer. It seemed to Herosilla that at least half the settlers ate and drank more like mourners at a funeral feast than in joyous anticipation of the future.
The moon was full again. Flavia Herosilla had lived in this age almost exactly one month. The location was nearly the same as well: the brothers had decided to place the settlers’ temporary shelters on the broad pasture at the north side of the hill rather than clustering them around the existing houses of Palatium.
Herosilla thought of looking for the oak that lightning blasted when she arrived; she decided the sight would depress her even more. Besides, several families were probably using the stump to support one end of their lean-tos.
She’d been alone during most of her former life. Now she was lonely: there was no one in this age with whom she shared more than a month’s worth of memories.
“Mistress Herosilla?” Romulus said, coming out of the shadows. Dozens of small cookfires burned among the warren of shelters, but at any distance the vagrant light they threw was more distorting than an aid to vision.
“Leader?” called a burly man coming from the other direction. He wore a cape with a patterned border, marking him as a person of wealth. “Can I speak to you? I’m Gaius Helvius and I’ve got a pottery workshop.”
“Co-leader,” Herosilla said.
“Co-leader,” Romulus agreed with a nod. He looked over the other man and added with a slight frown. “Are you a member of the colony, Helvius?”
“We’d like to be,” Helvius said nervously. He was wringing his hands beneath his cape. “I wasn’t going to come, you know, not and live in a field for, well, the gods know how long. But the wife and I talked this morning and with Numitor king…well, can you take another household, us and my slaves?”
“Always glad to have another citizen, Gaius,” Romulus said. “We’ll be making the allotments at the assembly tomorrow, so you’re not even late.”
He turned his back on the potter to end the conversation. Helvius babbled thanks anyway, then scurried into the darkness.
“There’s a hut on the knoll,” Romulus said to Herosilla, nodding toward the drystone building she remembered from the evening she arrived. “Will you walk up there with me where we can talk without people interrupting?”
“Yes, all right,” Herosilla said after a moment’s consideration. The beehive structure was slightly above the camp, but it was well within the distance she could shout if there was trouble. “But we’ll stay outside.”
“Whatever you want,” Romulus said curtly. He led the way up the track worn by generations of sheep. Herosilla followed, stumbling occasionally but better able to stay with him than she would have been a month before.
Sheep rubbing themselves on the shelter’s lower layers had worn the stones smooth. Tufts of wool fluttered from crevices and the air breathed the warm, slightly sweetish odor of lanolin. Herosilla could see and hear more of the encampment’s sad bustle than she had when she stood on a level with it.
“You don’t like me, do you, lady?” Romulus said bluntly.
She sniffed. “No,
of course not,” she said. “Why should I like you? You’re a boor, a braggart, and you tried to rape me. Nonetheless, I want the same thing you do: a city here that will become the greatest the world will ever see. You—your presence, your vision—is necessary for that dream to succeed.”
Romulus nodded. He didn’t appear to be offended by her equal frankness. Though pride got in the way of his thinking on occasion, Herosilla knew Romulus was far more than a stupid shepherd.
“And you do like my brother,” Romulus said. “That’s true too, isn’t it?”
“As a person?” Herosilla said. “Yes, I rather do. He has just as much will and intelligence as you do, though he directs it differently. Do you know, he says he wants to learn to read?”
She smiled ruefully. “Not that there’s a great deal to read in this age.”
She heard the rustle behind her. Thick cloth covered her head before she could turn. She tried to strike backward but Romulus snatched her feet into the air.
Herosilla hit the ground hard. The impact knocked the air from her lungs; the cloth was smothering her. She stabbed with her fingers and tore flesh.
“Death take you, Celer!” Romulus snarled. “Get her arms!”
Callused hands twisted Herosilla’s wrists together. She tried to shake the bag away from her head. A fist hard enough to drive tent pegs slammed the pit of her stomach.
For a moment Herosilla’s consciousness was a red glow hovering close to black. She felt herself being moved; the movement stopped. Hands stuffed a wad of raw wool in her mouth, then tied a strip of cloth at the back of her neck to keep the gag in place.
A figure knelt over her, silhouetted against the low door arch. She was in the herdsman’s shelter; hints of moonlight came through chinks in the stones.
“Listen to me, lady,” Romulus said. He paused to control his breathing. “I can’t trust you not to turn the crowd against me at the assembly in the morning. You’ll wait here until it’s decided who rules the colony. If you’ve been quiet, you’ll be released with no harm done…but if you try to raise a fuss, well, Celer’s going to be right outside. He’ll hear you before anybody else does, and he’ll cut your throat.”
