B007IIXYQY EBOK (22 page)

“First of all, Auriane, he was certainly
not
a warrior of the Hermundures, nor was he a man of Wido’s Companions. What I see here, I take as certain proof none
of them were men of the tribes.”

“How can that be?”

He firmly held her gaze. “That raid was a ruse, Auriane, a trick to incite your people into war with your neighbors. Those raiders were Romans disguised as Hermundures. Do you understand? They inflame you into making war on the Hermundures, both tribes suffer great losses, and the native population is effectively pruned back, without shedding a drop of Roman blood. It’s a trick old Julianus used to talk of, that, apparently, he finally decided to try. These men were drawn from a Roman cavalry cohort, picked because they closely resembled Hermundures in features and size.”

He saw a jump of horror in her eyes, as if the earth cracked open to reveal nothing but blood and rot.

For Auriane the turmoil and uncertainty all about condensed into one form: the Romans. It was they, then, who savaged her mother, who tore them all from the peaceful round of life. It was their coming in disguise that haunted her most. They were shapeshifters who winnowed in, burrowing into sacred places; no spear, no palisade could stop them. Would storms in the sky, would ravaging wolves also prove to be masks of the Romans?

For long moments she sat intent in silence, and Decius knew the course of her life was setting like quicklime.

Finally she said, eyes brilliant with hurt, “We cannot live on this earth with you. We believe ourselves free, but we are your prisoners already, all of us. Your people cannot abide the sight of anyone living in freedom. We do not belong to you, nor will we ever, even if you murder us all.”

Decius thought, they suffer as we do. We are tormenting children, murdering parents. But it has always been so, and a frontier must be maintained. It is my misfortune to view their suffering so close.

“You are right,” he said gently. “It’s just that the world doesn’t particularly care that you’re right. The powers on earth listen only to other powerful voices.”

He picked up the belt. “In answer to your question,” he continued, “I know this man because it was hard not to know him. He was Valerius Sylvanus, prefect of cavalry, a man of equestrian rank—that is, a sort of chief. The words carved here name his cavalry cohort, the First, and here,
Legio XIV
—the Fourteenth Legion. He was probably the expedition’s leader—which makes a certain amount of sense, I suppose—a man of the rank and file would not have broken off to pursue you.”

“I killed a…a sort of chief?”

“I knew you’d smile again one day. He must count for at least forty or fifty ordinary soldiers, no?”

“It makes the deed’s power greater, if that is what you mean. Decius…, when I travel to the Assembly, I would have you accompany us. You must tell these things to my father.”

Decius carefully controlled his delight. He knew how close to the frontier line the place of the Assembly was.

“I will come willingly.”

“Too
willingly, it appears. I see your thoughts clearly as I see that pot. You plan to desert me once we’re there.”

“I’ll see you get whatever it is you want first.
You
are
the one who should not go, lest you blunder into Julianus’ net and find yourself joined in marriage to that blustering lummox Wido calls son. Why do you not flee to the north?”

She was silent a moment while she met the gaze of the moon’s soft sleepy eye as
it nested in the tops of the firs. In one mad instant Decius imagined some swift communication between the moon and Auriane.

“You know me little, Decius. I would never, never leave her.”

Decius assumed that
her
referred to Athelinda, but Auriane did not know as she spoke whether she meant her mother or the land.

She then announced with a drunken mockery of queenly calm, “I have not asked you for the gift or spoken of its terms.”

“The gift. Right. You should ask for a fast horse. Auriane, my troublesome pet, you’re missing a useful element of human nature—honest, healthy fear.”

“The first part of the gift is this—I want you to teach our armorers precisely how your Roman short swords are made, and the shields of bull’s hide, and the far flying javelins. Of course, before you begin, I must persuade my father to convince the Assembly to agree to this. And the second part must reach no one’s
ears, not even
those of your fellow thralls. It is this, Decius. I want you to instruct me in the art of the sword, exactly as your legionary soldiers are taught.”

As she spoke, her eyes ignited with soft fire. She might have been a maid at a first tryst, catching sight of her lover.

“No more of
this
for you,” he said, putting the flask of wine out of her reach.

“Ask me tomorrow, without the wine, and I will speak the same words.”

“I’ve seen all kinds of pitiful madness in my time, but this is a novel sort.”

“Your churlish jests, Decius, will not sway my mind.”

He reached up and took her hand. “You’ve got it all backward and inside out, Auriane. Will you let me be a schoolmaster for a moment and give you a very brief lesson in military science and history? Listen, pet. It’s not the weapons, they’ve little or nothing to do with it. You’ll not chase the Romans out of your country with a few miserable copies of legionary arms—even if you
could
persuade your people to actually use them in battle instead of stringing them up in trees.
It is our people.
We
fight as one. We obey our commanders, even in time of peace, a thing your people call slavery. We’re not hobbled by a thicket of sacred laws—we do whatever brings results. It’s discipline,
not weapons. The whole world is with us now and has been for over a century. You might as well go armed to the seashore and do battle with the waves. Give it up. Certain races were ordained by the gods to rule, and others, to be used by them and knocked about, and we poor fools in the middle of it all have little choice but to stand out of the way and make the best of it.” He paused and sighed. “I can see clearly I might as well be speaking to a rock, but I’ve done my best. So much for lessons in military science and history.”

“I want you to begin instructing me at once,” she went on, eyes intent. “By next spring, Decius, if I am adept, you may have anything you wish of me—anything, that is, that is honorable.”

By next spring? he thought. If I agree, I scuttle my chances of escaping from Baldemar’s camp.

He was aware suddenly of how swiftly light drained from the sky, blackening the trees, shrinking the world to the size of the warm bright place around his fire. In one moment he envied her that she belonged in this world—to her the nighttime forest was a womb. To him it was bleak, and malignly alive.

“All right, you have it then. I guess I have less sense than I thought. If I can help one sparrow become a hawk, where is the harm? I’ll attempt to turn you into a fair copy of a legionary soldier, as well as I’m able given your certain appealing physical limitations, if that is what you truly want. But here is what I ask, and I’m sure you know it already. I want out
of this pestilential swamp.”

“Decius—you belong to the whole tribe. If I help you escape, I would be stealing from the whole tribe. It is not done among us.”

“Horseballs! I can’t believe I’m hearing this. Everything I see you do ‘isn’t done.’ Why draw the line at
me,
you capricious wench? You boasted before you were a woman full grown. Well then, prove it and act on your own. Do you think I care less for my family than the Chattian warrior who kills himself when he’s captured so he can return to his? A thrall’s not born a thrall. Restore me to my family, and I’m a thrall no longer.”

“Decius, please, I am wounded for you, but I cannot do this thing. We would say, you have the fate and luck of a thrall, so you
were
born a thrall—”

“Then send me back, and you change
my luck. Admit to it, I won that throw!” He saw doubts collecting in her eyes, so he pressed harder. “This
is curious. Suddenly, I’m forgetting everything I ever knew about swordsmanship. It’s all leaving me. Who’s going to instruct this testy Amazon?”

She looked at him challengingly, then turned away, eyes in ferment. He waited tensely. Part of her dwelled with her people, and a part of her dwelled—where?—in an empty place, a land without laws or roads, a world where rivers had no banks. She is a strange creature, he thought, so unlike her fellows. To this void she seemed irresistibly drawn. I pray it draws her now.

“I judge that you are right,” she said at last, “and not because of your threat to not teach me, which dishonors you. It is a larger tribe you speak of, but the law is the same. You lost your family. I will try to bring you to them. Decius, I will help you. I will get you a horse and guide, but not before next thaw.”

“Blessed Fortuna. You had me worried there a moment, little dove. Now how do we prevent you from being carried off by my countrymen? If that happens, I’m still in prison.”

“That is in the hands of my family and the gods. Just be ready to travel south with us at cockcrow, on the day after the morrow.”

“Curses. You’ve scarcely given me time to settle my many affairs and pack up all my belongings.”

She swiftly rose, and he caught an amused smile as she turned, a smile she did not mean for him to see. He kept his eyes on her, watching her protectively—yes, protectively, he realized—until she made her way through the break in the stone wall with that stalking stride and became a fluttering gray ghost that melted into the blackness of the forest.

He realized he was as unsettled by her troubles as he was by his own. He found this utterly bewildering. How can she, in such a brief time, have made me care for her so much?

CHAPTER VI

T
HE COMPANY OF
C
OMPANIONS MOUNTED THEIR
horses by torchlight before the skeletal frame of Baldemar’s unfinished hall. They waited impatiently while Thrusnelda’s novices completed their ministrations—working swiftly, two rubbed the nine-herbs ointment onto the horses’ legs to ward off injury, while two more wound wolf’s hair round the browband of every bridle to protect the party from ambush. There was little talk among the twenty-five Companions; to Auriane their faces looked haunted and gaunt in the cold predawn light. In every eye she saw the question: How long can Baldemar hold the people’s love if he is too broken in body to lead them?

Auriane sat a lean, long-limbed bay gelding—a captured Roman cavalry horse, as were all the mounts of Baldemar’s Companions. At the withers the beast was nearly as tall as a man, and Auriane was uneasy with this new, greater distance from the ground. It matched the way she felt about all life in these times—
I am thrust up into the world of women and men before I am ready.

As they left the yard at a brisk trot, Auriane stole a furtive look at Decius, who rode in the rear among the pack animals, appropriately mounted, she thought, on a mule. Her mind was aflame with his words—
the raiders were Romans.
Her mothering forest roused a new wariness in her; before, it had been a temple demanding difficult worship but giving all in return. Decius, in a few words, transformed it into a lair of monsters.

As they set out, Witgern rode at their head with Maragin, a seasoned Companion whose beard was flecked with gray, and the feast-loving, golden bearded Coniaric, a newly made Companion recognized by all for his formidable feats of strength. Alongside them rode the pathfinder, a man of mixed Batavian and Gallic blood recruited from the
canabae.
In the next rank were the Holy Ones—three swans taking flight in their billowing robes of snowy white. One was Hylda, who came to stand as witness to the Ash Grove slaying; the middle rider was an apprentice in attendance on her. The third was Auriane in disguise, the hood of her cloak pulled well forward to conceal her face. Witgern looked back from time to time to torment himself with longing glimpses of her, dulling his pain with the thought that Auriane’s circumstances were now at least as pitiable as his own—for when next the moon was full, Wido might well call her daughter.

And Auriane from time to time glanced farther back to snatch looks at Decius. The man, his stores of knowledge, and his Romanness were mingled in her mind, enhancing him in her eyes until what began as sharp curiosity became a full-blown seizure of youthful awe. In spite of the fact that he was an initiate into the mysteries of the greatest power on earth, still he was close and real with his world-weary look, that face so like a devilish boy who had missed a night of sleep, that quick, disarming smile coupled with warning eyes that pushed you away. A hundred times she cautioned herself: He is a foreigner and a thrall. You cannot allow yourself to care for him, or even worse, desire him. Yes,
desire
him. There, you have thought it. Are you staring mad? Remember what another man of Decius’ race did to your mother.