B007IIXYQY EBOK (57 page)

As the whole of the village was roused by Asa’s tale, Decius was sleeping in his thrall’s hut alongside Athelinda’s barley field. He was awakened by a piercing wail that he thought would crack open the earth and rend the sky, a cry so desolate it brought him shivering out into the night. Later he learned it was Athelinda’s wail. Further into the night, rival warriors, not men of Baldemar’s Companions, began ransacking the hall of Baldemar and all the grounds about it.

At first Decius did not understand, but Athelinda did. They came to search for the sword of Baldemar—a thing they would dare do only if Baldemar were dead. They found no sword, but they did find Decius, a despised Roman, and dragged him off to Geisar.

Decius thus far had saved himself by his wits. Geisar’s priests promptly carried out their grisly task, sparing only Decius—for he had managed to convince them he knew how to find Sigwulf’s missing son.

Decius listened closely to the priests’ talk during that ghastly night, struggling to learn the fate of Auriane. He inferred that at dawn a cart bearing the body of Baldemar, abandoned by its driver, had been found just outside the gate of the Village of the Boar. And shortly after, Auriane was delivered, bound, to Geisar. But he heard nothing more of her other than one tale too bizarre to credit: The Oak Priest called Grunig claimed Baldemar had been murdered by Auriane. Surely, Decius thought, this was a trick of his own delirium.

When Decius heard the same preposterous tale twice more from fresh messengers, he paid it more attention and felt the first throb of fear for her. Why was this monstrous thing being said? Some sinister plot was being hatched; surely this was Geisar’s attempt to destroy her. He knew now that even if he succeeded in escaping, he could not leave her to this vile accusation and her tribespeople’s barbarous punishments.

At midmorning, through closed eyes, Decius heard a fresh and welcome voice.

“Butcher that sack of swine droppings along with the rest of them. I speak with men, not cozzening Roman wolves.”

Sigwulf.
At last. Decius forced open heavy lids. Lightning bolts of pain forked through his arms. The first rays of the sallow sun were small, sharp nails driven into his sleep-starved eyes. Nevertheless, hope struggled up.

Perhaps the ruse that had spared him would now set him free.

“But the thrall speaks of your first son, Eadgyth,” the priest called Grunig protested in his hissing voice, making practiced appeasing gestures with blood-caked hands.

Sigwulf’s grunt betrayed frustrated anger mingled with sharp interest. His second son had been born with no strength; the medicine-woman claimed the babe had fewer breaths left in him than white calves born in spring. Had he hope of finding his firstborn, whom for four moons he had counted lost to slavery?

“If this be a ruse to busy me while Gundobad ferrets out the sword of Baldemar,” Sigwulf retorted, “I will paint that altar with your blood.”

“Never,
beloved of Wodan,” Grunig responded. “We do not favor one man over another.” Sigwulf’s volatile nature terrified Grunig; the priest handled him like a vicious stallion to be petted and cajoled into calm.

“I believe that
like I believe maggots shun rotted meat.”

Sigwulf wheeled his horse about and rode past the corpses in the trees, feasting on the sight of Roman dead; vengeance was the only mead he wanted now. He refused to dwell even a moment on how desolate he felt, passing this first morning of his life without Baldemar; with Sigwulf, despair habitually became rage. He came to Decius’ tree and put the point of his sword beneath the thrall’s chin, slowly lifting it. Decius’ long black hair was matted to his forehead with sweat and blood. His eyes were muddy pools, stagnant with fatigue.

How small and weak are these Roman swine, Sigwulf thought. How could this miserable race, nothing in themselves, be steadily destroying our people?

“Speak, thrall. What is the hold you have on these priests that they refuse to give your stinking body to the god?”

“You are Sigwulf?” Decius’ voice was a dry rattle.

Sigwulf gave an affirmative grunt. Even half dead and slung from an oak, the Roman vermin managed to sound insolent.

“I have records of slave sales taken from the villa of the slave-merchant Feronius,” Decius said. “The name of your son Eadgyth is there.”

Sigwulf flinched at the name.

“Take me to the first fort south of Mogon Spring…” Decius struggled on, his frail voice scarcely audible.

“Set free this meat for flies? Never!”

“You will arm me with lance and sword—” Decius continued as if he had not heard.

“Arrogant wretch. Half our own people do not possess swords.” But fierce hope for his son kept undermining Sigwulf’s wrath.

“…and I will read to you the name of the farmholder who bought your son and the name of his village and estate,” Decius finished.

Sigwulf looked doubtfully at Grunig. The priest held out a soiled roll of papyrus for Sigwulf’s inspection. “It is written here, Sigwulf, or so he
says,”
Grunig explained, apology in his voice. “Auriane brought it with the spoil from the villa. Truly, these could well be the markings of the slave-dealer. I would pay heed, Sigwulf.”

Decius thought wearily—Auriane, your irrepressible curiosity may have saved my life. Can I now save yours?

“Why should we do this thing,” Sigwulf said, looking to Grunig, “when we can torture the thrall with fire until he interprets these signs for us here and now?”

“It’s called
reading,
Sigwulf, and I’m the only one you bastards left alive who can do it.” Vaulting hope lent strength to Decius’ voice.

Sigwulf whipped about to face Decius, eyes simmering dangerously, not catching Decius’ whole meaning—his speech as always was sprinkled with Latin—but certain it was not respectful.

“If you torture me,” Decius continued, meeting Sigwulf’s eye in his goading way, “certainly you’ll get me to say
something,
but how will you be able to prove I’ve spoken the truth? You’ve killed any others who could attest to it. And your son’s freedom is at stake. You are somewhat dependent on my honor in this matter. If you do as I say, still you will not be certain I am telling the truth…but I will say to you, torture
does
tend to put me in a foul temper, and in such a state my natural sense of honor is not so much in evidence.”

“What is this long-winded wretch saying?” Sigwulf muttered.

“The thrall is a liar,” Grunig interpreted freely, nodding placatingly and smiling, “but he will be somewhat less likely to lie about your son if you set him free.”

Sigwulf hurled his spear to the ground in fury. It might be some time before they could capture another slave who could read, and in the meantime his son might be sold again, and all trace of him lost. And he still could not dispell the thought that all this was Geisar’s plot to get him out of the way during the ongoing hunt for the sword of Baldemar—for Geisar fervently wanted Gundobad to to take possession of it, because the red-bearded giant was the sort of man Geisar could easily bring to heel.

“Tell this sack of dog-dung he has his wish,” Sigwulf said at last. “Feed him and strengthen him, then we set out at once.”

Decius’ joy was marred with bitterness. This was the best chance at freedom he had yet been given, and he had waited long for it. But once free, he would have to return. He could not abandon Auriane to this brutal tribe.

Auriane awakened to find herself in a small, darkened pen; from the smell she guessed it a place in which goats were kept. At first there was only smooth blackness in her mind. Then with brutal swiftness the memory came.
Baldemar’s face, stiff with agony. His bound hands. His eyes, emptied of life.
A small moan escaped her lips.

She grasped her right hand, wanting to cut it from her body.

Hertha’s will should have been carried out at my birth. Mother, you should have let her drown me. And of you, Mother, I cannot bear to think. Were I to come before you now, would you spit on the child you once held to your breast?

From snatches of talk she realized she was in Geisar’s hands and that this boarded-over goat shed lay somewhere within the Village of the Boar. She learned also of the sacrifice of the Roman prisoners and presumed Decius hung dead from one of the sacred oaks.

But in the next moment she was curiously devoid of sorrowing and scarcely felt the horror—her senses had been flooded with too much of it in the last day. It was as though she no longer had a heart; her breast was a black gaping wound, a numbed nothingness. Her spirit had shrunk to that of a house-thief in the night, wretched, cowering, caring about little. She never thought of attempting escape, for her enemy was not Geisar. The old priest was only the instrument of her true tormentor, who lived within herself—her own foredoomed soul.

A special meeting of the Assembly was called to unravel the disturbing circumstances of Baldemar’s death. Auriane had killed a kinsman, and by ancient law, intent was irrelevant, for such an act was held to taint the doer. It was the Fates’ determination that
her
hand was on the fatal spear, so the deed was counted one with her nature and fate. Since Baldemar’s kin could exact no blood-price in payment for the slaying—for kinspeople could not avenge themselves upon their own—this was the most devastating of crimes, causing a wound in the collective soul of her kin that could not heal.

But clearly Auriane had obeyed Baldemar’s wish and saved him from the foulest fate that could befall a celebrated warrior—life in captivity.

Was she kinslayer or deliverer? One belief that was absolute was set firmly against another.

Because the case was so baffling, the people raised an outcry when Geisar claimed the right to try her; this matter, they held, was beyond his powers. The Assembly demanded she be tried by Ramis, who best understood the irreconcilable ways of the Fates.

Auriane hardly had a chance to be relieved by this decision when word came by messenger that Ramis refused to act as judge in the case. She offered no reason.

Wretched hag of Hel,
Auriane thought. You do not miss one chance to put terrifying obstacles in my path and make my misery worse.

So she was thrown once more on Geisar’s mercy. Geisar would have taken pleasure in condemning her to be drowned under hurdles, but he knew from the temper of the people that he would not get off with a summary execution. He must make some effort to convince them of her guilt, a thing far from established in most people’s minds. Confusion prevailed even among Baldemar’s Companions, who felt they could not champion the daughter without betraying the father.

And so Geisar turned the matter over to the god he served—Auriane would face a trial by ordeal and let Wodan be judge. The method he chose was the stallion fight. One stallion would be invested with all the evils that lay outside the tribe—the souls of thieves, trolls, murderers, the scaled things of the deep forest. And the other stallion, who would be chosen by Auriane, would be invested with her spirit. If Auriane’s stallion proved weaker than the unholy spirits that possessed the other horse, she was guilty and would suffer death by drowning. Reluctantly the Assembly approved this.

At the same Assembly, Geisar ordered Athelinda to relinquish the sword of Baldemar to Gundobad. Athelinda, who had sequestered herself in the hall, sent Fredemund with her refusal.

“The great lady,” Fredemund reported, “holds that the lowliest thrall would not pollute that sword as much as would the touch of Gundobad.”

Geisar swore silently to find a way to bring Athelinda to her knees.

On the day of Baldemar’s funeral, Auriane, her hands bound with cord, was taken to the west palisade of the village, which overlooked the cremation grounds. By sacred law she could not be prevented from attending the final rites for her father.

Baldemar’s body was prepared for the pyre by the order of cremation priestesses the villagers called the Daughters of Hel, whose duty it was to conduct the dead through the stages of the spirit journey. Auriane watched from the palisade as the people came from the remotest villages; by midday their numbers darkened the gray-green plain below as they arranged themselves about the carefully stacked bed of wood where Baldemar’s spirit would be hurried off to the sky. A few shouted
“Kinslayer!”
at
her while making the sign of cursing. Most, however, simply milled about in numbed quiet. It was as though they had been orphaned.

At midmorning the Daughters of Hel emerged from the birch forest clad in vulture-feather cloaks, moving in one file onto the rise of ground set aside for cremations. Their first priestess was known locally as the Vulture Mother; she walked at their head, her face colored bone-white with chalk. As she ascended the rise, she wailed a piercing, somber song that told of disasters sure to come: The land would never again be green; the barley would wither; the people would die by the sword, now that the Great Protector of the Land was dead.

Behind her, eight priestesses bore Baldemar’s body on a great shield of linden. The pyre was built of woods known for their various powers: apple wood for life everlasting, pine for rebirth, rowan for protection against sorcery. When all thirteen priestesses ringed the pyre, they laid Baldemar’s body on this grim bed.