B007IIXYQY EBOK (24 page)

“It is time you know it, Auriane—they come of their own will, or I do not want them. I have no use for captives. I want only what the thrall wants when he touches the fire of a living torch to a torch that is cold—to light the hall. I come to cast light upon what you will not know.”

“I know it then, and it means nothing to me. I’ve a choice then? I choose not to be a
ganna.
Am I free, then, to go on my way?”

“Free
is an unfit word for it. Yes, you are free—to take up your bonds again. Or you can die now, and let me show you life. You have come to one of the times of turning, when a new path may be chosen. I was impelled to ask, though I guessed you would refuse.”

Then Ramis seemed to watch Auriane across a gulf of years, and her voice dropped low, becoming woeful music: “Oh, yes, I see you now in a necklace of bones…a cloak of human skin…with corpses strewn at your feet. At your side a bloody sword hangs—the more it drinks the more it thirsts.

“You flee catastrophe, but you cannot see…catastrophe is fertile—it brings forth worlds. You flee sorrow as you feed on sorrow, all the while strewing it in your bloody wake. War will not make you safe, nor will it save your mother. Listen well, little blind one—you strike at your enemy and you strike at yourself.”

Her voice rose up powerfully again. “Off with you now, priestess of death, go and play in the world. I do not want you and I sorrow for you. You’ve stepped into the mirror maze—now you’ll trick yourself for years.”

Ramis wheeled the horse about. Auriane felt a desperate need of her then that she did not understand.

“Why do you not help Baldemar!” Auriane called out, partly to bring her back.

Ramis pulled the horse to a halt and looked round at Auriane. “An empty question from one who knows not what help is.”

“Why did you let Hertha torment me?”

“It was not her torment that gave you sorrow, but your belief in it. If there is some shame lying about, how greedily you take it up and say, ‘It is mine.’”

“How could you allow Wido’s evil?”

“Whom do you take me for? I am a mortal woman, Auriane, not the Fates.” Again she started off down the path.

Auriane felt her rage rising dangerously, a thick soup coming to a precarious boil.

“Why do you torment me? You’ve haunted my whole life. You are a curse in the flesh!”

Ramis pulled the mare to a sharp halt.

“You
started the tales I am cursed with the unholy blood of a water-nixe,” Auriane shouted. “You made my grandmother hate me. All that gives human comfort, you call folly. You come and tell me so—and then you abandon me!”

Those behind listened in stunned horror. Ramis would utter a single word of power and all of them would fall asleep for a thousand winters.

The soup flooded over the rim of the pot. “Yes, abandon me, casually as a bitch-dog walking off from her young. You speak of life. Where is Arnwulf’s life? How is he helped by your twisted, riddling words? You spew out words of confusion while everywhere we are dying of blows. Go and confuse the Romans. You would do us more good. Teach to others your utterings of no sense!”

Auriane stopped, feeling suddenly deflated, and the stark silence all about awakened her to what she had done. Exhilaration gave way to vertigo, as if she scrambled too high up a pine, then looked at the dizzingly distant ground and knew she could not climb back down.

What have I done?
She will call down a bolt of lightning and we will all be cinders.

Gradually, through her fright, she realized Ramis was laughing—yes, laughing—with light clear notes.

The woman is incomprehensible.
Perhaps she is simply mad. But no, madness is emptiness, and never was I so
full
as during that enchantment she sent, or awakened, in me.

“This is well,” Ramis said, softly as a mother now. “I am pleased with you. When I had about as many years as you, I spoke in that wise to my own teacher. Though I believe I called her a she-ass instead of a bitch-dog, if memory serves. Your spirit is great and you progress well,
but it is not time.
I must leave you. We will meet again at the next turning of the times.”

Ramis then galloped off. Auriane for long moments did not trust herself to move, as though the horizon had suffered a slight tilt and she feared she might fall. The stone she had pried from the mare’s hoof rolled from her hand. Soon she was aware that the men were muttering in low voices while stealing baffled looks at her.

She chastised Ramis and was none the worse for it, as they would later tell the tale. And she was received gently by the Mare.

Witgern came up beside her and put a steadying hand on her shoulder. “You’re well and alive. You’ve much courage, Auriane.” She looked at him gratefully and numbly pulled herself back on her horse.

She saw one of the men dismount. To her surprise, he picked up the stone she’d pried from the hoof and kept it, probably to make an amulet. She knew then that no matter how much she tried to deny what occurred on this path, those who witnessed it would keep it alive.

She met Decius’ eyes before they set out again. He grinned at her—that rogue grin. Decius seemed maddeningly unmoved by all that had passed, as though Auriane had paused to ask directions of a farm wife. Were Romans incapable of any sort of reverence?

She felt a stirring in her loins then, for which she cursed the gods. Why now? And why Decius? Why cannot the senseless hungers of the body be controlled? The feast is laid out—and my eye strays to the dish that is poisoned.

Auriane lay awake most of that night, trying on and shrugging off Ramis’ words, and through all her fears for the future—or perhaps because of them?—she was sharply aware that somewhere nearby lay Decius. In one moment, her need to crawl through the grass and find him was so powerful it left her shivering. In the next, the pleasurable shudders brought in their wake a stark picture of what happened to her mother. Glimmers of knowledge of the pleasures of the body had come to her, gathered from dreams, from intuition, from dimly sensing the relations between her mother and father. To be joined in passionate embrace was love made flesh, a heart-warmth overflowing into the loins. She had been certain of that before, but now she wondered, could the same act also be one of hatred, of violence? Was it always a bit of both? Who might she ask? There was unknown danger here, a black shadow cast over desire. It fit well with all else she lately sensed—no place was safe, and nothing was purely the one thing it first seemed to be.
Beware, beware,
she heard in the cry of a low-flying nightjar.

That mocking smile—if I possess it once, will it stop tormenting me? Decius, you are a fiend. I will rejoice when you escape.

As night wore on she struggled to quieten her mind but her body remained tense, as if it knew better and expected something.

In the most still time just before dawn she heard the sound of a leather-soled shoe scuffing against stone. At once she sat up.

Their camp was on a grassy treeless rise; the sentry positioned nearest the forest was not to be seen. She crouched and quietly moved toward his post. The barest beginnings of dawn lightened the sky to a cold iron gray. She stole past the dark sleeping forms on the ground and at last saw the sentry. He lay asleep in the grass.

Asleep.
It was impossible. She felt a twist of sickness in her stomach as she reached out to shake him. He rolled to his back. Embedded deep in his chest was a Roman catapult bolt.

She leapt to her feet. A quick glance about proved the pathfinder was gone.

He led us to this place and deserted us.

She almost stumbled over Witgern. “Arise!” she whispered. “We are betrayed. The pathfinder was our enemy.”

Witgern got to his feet, instantly awake.

Their encampment was well disguised among the long grasses; it would have been difficult for an enemy to find without the pathfinder’s aid. Together they swiftly, quietly awakened everyone, ordering them to stay low and make no sound—Auriane feared their smallest movement might induce any enemy below to attack. Decius was alerted on his own, but at first he kept a respectful distance.

Auriane took Witgern’s arm. “Look.” Witgern followed her gaze and saw the dawn light reflected off something dully metallic in the furze bushes below. A helmet. No, more than one. At least twenty in that one place. “By now, for certain, we are surrounded,” she whispered. Slowly Witgern nodded.

Witgern motioned for them to form a ring, the best defensive position for an attack on all sides. He attempted to put Auriane in the center with Decius and the priestesses, but she pushed roughly past him and took a position in the outer circle, armed with nothing but her fire-hardened ash spear.

“You’ve no shield,” Witgern whispered angrily.

“And a serpent doesn’t have wings.”

“Auriane—!”

The lift of that chin, that will of bedrock, Witgern thought. What am I to do with it? “Get behind me, I command it! I gave my word to your fa—”

“No one commands me. And if you haven’t the mettle, I’ll answer to Baldemar.”

A moment later Decius took a place beside her. Somehow he’d found a spear, probably purloined during the confusion when all were awakened. Auriane heard Thorgild mutter, “That thrall better pray he’s felled—it’s kinder than what I’ll do to him if we live.”

“Leave him be,” Witgern whispered to Thorgild. “The Roman swine fought against us—now let him fight for us.”

Decius called out in a sharp whisper, addressing them all, “Move closer together—much closer—now, shields together. And down on your knees!”

“Decius, what are you doing!” Auriane whispered.

“A speaking thrall,” Thorgild muttered. “Next we’ll come upon a talking mule.”

But in the next instant Auriane realized—Decius is right. Our bodies are better protected that way.

Auriane then ordered softly, “Shields together!” Then she repeated all Decius’ words—he spoke their language so poorly she was not certain they’d understood.

Witgern looked at her, offended at this usurpation of his authority. But when Coniaric hesitantly obeyed, followed by Thorgild and then the majority of the others, he reluctantly did likewise.

But Maragin and two elder Companions, whom age had made stubborn, remained standing; they could not forget that the command was first spoken by a thrall. For the rest it made no difference from whom the words first came; Auriane had rendered the command acceptable by speaking it herself.

Decius commanded, voice low, “Do not break from this form, even if they attack only from the south side—it could well be a ruse.” Again Auriane repeated his words.

From the thickets below rose the dark, discordant moans of many war horns. Spears arched up; they filled the sky, then rained down, a lethal hail thudding hard against upraised shields.

Auriane cried out
“Wait!
Hold your weapons!”

Decius looked at her, amazed—she spoke the very words he meant to say. He judged the spears had been fired from a light war engine; their quarry was still at a distance no mortal arm could hurl a spear. An answering volley would only have divested them of weapons. He wondered, how had Auriane known? I told her of catapults but I did not tell her of anything like this—indeed, I’ve never seen anything quite like this myself. They have improvised weapons.

Spears struck wood and threw up turf; as their rhythm began to slow, Auriane heard a hoarse cry at her back. Maragin and the two elder Companions dropped, writhing, to the ground.

The thought was common among the survivors: They acted against the words of a ganna, and for it, they died.

Auriane covered the dead men’s faces with their cloaks. One high, short blast sounded, and the enemy moved out from their cover, halting just beyond spear-casting range. Auriane and Witgern crawled forward, parted the grasses and looked down.

“Mother of the gods! We are done,” Witgern whispered.

Sunlight gleamed on a small sea of helmets. Upraised spears were thick as marsh grass. The warriors wore the woad-dyed blue tunics of Wido’s Companions; one raised high the standard, a bristle-backed boar carved in wood. They were but a detachment of all Wido’s Companions and they numbered three hundred. In the rear were horsemen in scarlet-crested helmets and glittering mail; by the design of their iron-bound oval shields she knew they were men of the Roman native auxiliary cavalry—doubtless some were the same men who had taken part in the raid.

“Prepare the attack!” Witgern shouted to his own men.

Auriane stared at him in disbelief. “Witgern, no. You see our numbers are pitiful against them!”

“That counts for little in the afterworld. We fight until we die.”

“No! We know what they want.” She grasped his arm. “They want
me!”

“I failed Baldemar once, I’ll not do it again. I pledged to protect you unto death. We fight them!”

“That is madness! I cannot let everyone die in a doomed effort to save me. I shall surrender to them. You are not yielding me up—I go of my own free will.”