Night of the Wolf (33 page)

“You are paterfamilias, patria potestas, the head of the family. All of those living in the household, free and slave—including your sister—are in your potestas, your power. They both threatened you in front of a witness. I have not acted before, since you did not assert your rights, but now that you have, I feel I must weigh in on the side of law and support your wishes. But I must say I disagree with your leniency toward Macer and Afer. I believe theirs to be a most serious offense, and they should remain in chains until your sister returns.”

“Thank you,” Lucius said with true and proper gravity.

“Now, with your permission . . .”

“Certainly.”

Aristo departed, nose in the air, surrounded by his usual aura of polite disapproval.

Alia completed her task and left Philo’s room. Cut Ear patted her on the backside as she was leaving. She flashed him a glance that verged on just the edge of irritation as if to say “Who are you to be familiar with me?”

“I have gold,” Cut Ear said.

“Ummm,” Alia said, but there was no disapproval in her expression.

She was a bit old for Lucius, or at least he’d never thought of her in that context, but her body was firm, with wide hips and big breasts. Her face was not pretty—the hooked nose and snapping turtle jaw were too prominent—but she was apparently to Cut Ear’s liking.

Lucius went in to see Philo, but paused at the door next to Cut Ear. “Alia?” he asked.

“Some ‘women trouble.’ ‘Man trouble,’ ‘money trouble,’ ‘litters like cats trouble,’ ‘never work trouble,’ ‘bad temper, want to stick knife in you trouble,’ ‘jealous all the time trouble,’ ‘not looking and they steal trouble,’ ‘wine trouble.’ This one take pay, shut up, no trouble. Ya, is good.”

Lucius nodded.

Philo was lying on a bed, a more comfortable one than he’d had before. His upper body was bandaged, the lower covered by linen sheets and a down counterpane. There was a lamp in the room, but his pupils were contracted. He’d taken opium. “Did she mix that or did you?” Lucius asked.

“I did. I’m not fool enough to entrust that to someone else.”’

“I went to Caesar himself.”

“Zeus thunderer. You took a dreadful risk.”

“Yes.” Lucius did not deny it. “What I want to know is, did I lie to Caesar when I swore on my own life that you were not involved in any plot against him?”

Philo paused for long moments, so long that Lucius thought he’d drifted off to sleep.

“Well?” he prompted.

Philo said, “No, you didn’t lie. But . . .”

“But what?” Lucius glanced quickly around the room to make sure it was empty. Not only were they alone, but the only window was a light well in the ceiling, and the door was closed.

“I do know something.”

Lucius kept himself from moaning by an effort of will. “What?” he asked between his teeth.

Philo told him.

“Why in blazes didn’t you tell that to Antony in the first place?”

“Because it’s a rumor. The sources from whence I got it are hardly unimpeachable and, if I had, our illustrious counsel would have decided that I had more information and I was concealing it. And gone right ahead with my . . . examination. I decided that a posture of complete innocence was the most sagacious one to adopt under the circumstances.”

“Sooner or later they would have gotten the truth out of you.”

“Truth has nothing to do with a man under torture. Sooner or later I would have invented something . . . just to make them stop. Now you know everything I do. Go to Caesar if you must, but tell me in advance so I can prepare poison.”

“I must. I gave him my word,” Lucius said miserably.

“Fine! I’ve had too much opium to care. You’re a Roman citizen. You will be beheaded.”

“Ah, mother of the gods.” Lucius dragged his fingers down his cheeks. “Maybe he will let me commit suicide.”

“That’s not any more fun than being beheaded, Regulus.”

“Regulus was a man of honor. Besides being who I am, I have an advantage in dealing with Caesar.”

“The advantage is Caesar’s,” Philo said. “He’s not stupid. I’m not sure you can say the same for his heavy-handed friend. I suspect that you will arrive home with your head still on your shoulders in no danger of having it removed in the immediate future. The ones I worry about are the conspirators. There seem to be so many of them and their rank is so high and they won’t take kindly to little birds who carry tales to Caesar’s ear. Or, as Caesar’s veteran said to him, ‘Watch your back, my lord. Watch your back.’ ”

It was early afternoon when Maeniel entered the barn. There were no windows and it was dark. He heard Actus before he saw him coming in on the left side, knife in underhand position, ready to drive it in below his ribs. He reacted the way Dryas had taught him, knocking the knife out of his opponent’s hand with a blow of his forearm. He was pleased to see the technique worked well. So pleased, in fact, that he didn’t think of making any other countermoves as Actus managed to sock him in the face. But the blow didn’t even rock him. He simply picked up the ginger-haired man and threw him against the wall.

Actus looked stunned for a moment, then slid down the wall, sat on the floor, and began to cry.

“What’s wrong with you?” Maeniel asked.

He didn’t get a coherent answer, but then humans were mad. They would do the most peculiar things, usually at the worst possible times. He picked Actus up by the scruff of the neck, as he would have done a cub throwing a temper tantrum, and dragged him through the barn door to the half log that formed a horse trough. He punched through the thin skin of ice on the surface in two or three places to make a fairly big hole, then dunked Actus’s head.

Actus came up sputtering and screaming. Maeniel dunked him again; he came up sputtering; then a third time. Actus came up an interesting shade of robin’s-egg blue with purple lips, eyes set and staring, and water draining from his mouth and nose. Maeniel looked at him doubtfully.

Dryas came running up and helped him assist Actus back into the barn.

“I didn’t kill him, did I?” Maeniel asked anxiously.

Dryas propped Actus up against a bale of hay. “No,” she said. “There’s color coming back into his face.” Her foot kicked something and it slid across the floor. “A knife!” She looked at Maeniel. “What . . .”’

“Don’t look at me! I didn’t do anything to him. Not this time, at least. He’s still mad about what I did before when I hit him in the head, stole his clothes, and tried to get Imona to come with me. The very smallest slight will anger you, and then you are the worst creatures about holding grudges. Even an elk would forget after a week or two that I chased it . . . but not one of your kind. Besides, he tried to throw wine in my eyes. He missed because, as a man, my eyes are much higher up than when— Why am I explaining this to you? He tried to stick a knife in under my ribs. I took it away from him. I could have stuck it in him. In fact . . .” He reached for the knife where it lay in the shadows.

“No!” Dryas shouted. “No! No!” She pushed him away from Actus. “Please! Don’t! He’s helpless now.”

Maeniel held Actus’ knife, a long, dark, thin-bladed thing with a boar’s-tusk handle. “So I see.” He sounded truculent, and Dryas eyed him the way she might a big, vicious dog that had just slipped his collar. He caught her expression and then stepped back with a look of disgust on his face. “You’re afraid of me,” He pointed to Actus. “It should be that fool you worry about.” He turned and drove Actus’ knife into the doorframe, snapped it off just below the hilt, then stalked out of the barn.

Actus, who had never lost consciousness, staggered to his feet. His nose was running and his eyes tearing.

Dryas got a good whiff of him. She drew back. “You’re drunk.”

He spat in her face and called her several things in a low voice, most of them in Latin. The language had a fairly rich sexual vocabulary, much of which reeked of denigration and insult. Then he began weeping again and wove off down the street.

Maeniel walked toward the gate in the palisade. “Woman of the night” is how he remembered the queen of madness, the she-bitch of procreation, creation, and, at last, disintegration and destruction. “Woman of the night, I hate being a human!” The only answer he got was the bite of winter wind at his face.

Clouds were rolling in from the north, winging small blades of sleet and sharp, cold snow at him. He remembered the wolf with a deep, hungry longing that he thought he’d put behind him.

Would there ever come a day when he would forget the easy feel of fur, not skin, as he carried his warmth with him; the smooth way the big paws found purchase on the frozen ground; the stamina that gave and gave when he needed to run; the speed yielded by four legs as opposed to the clumsy struggle on two?

The beauty of silence broken only by the rush of water or the faint bell-like sounds of falling snow, wind sighing in the fir and spruce on a mountainside, the spring and summer birdsong as he ran along the river at dawn, as opposed to the endless babble, a constant assault of sound, leveled by these gibbering creatures at each other endlessly.

He paused and sucked in a long breath. The bitter wind burned his throat and lungs.

A wolf’s muzzle is long and warms the air flowing through it. As a human, he hadn’t even that minor comfort any longer. He longed for freedom beyond the walls of the half-ruined town. He hungered for a winter crossing on the ice-covered river and a journey through the frozen forest beyond. But if he attempted it without the wolf to call on, he would probably die. No, he was tied here. Tied as these cowering humans were, fearing the cold and snow, dreading the long dark winter night.

No, he was trapped here, enduring the labor of a slave. At first he hadn’t been status conscious. Whatever needed to be done, he did. But it didn’t take long for him to notice the same jobs he was so often given otherwise went only to either women or the lowest and most despised males of the community.

Separated from the most important part of himself, lonely among these unhappy creatures, he would be left to wear away his life as a servant among the remnants of a broken people. The atmosphere of despair that haunted this last refuge of what once had been a proud people wasn’t lost on him.

He could feel their sorrow and desperation. The miasma of their tragedy was as palpable to him as the cold borne by the winter wind.

Mir called him from a spot under the eaves of the big, round, chiefly hall. The old man stood quietly watching the snow fall.

Maeniel walked over and stood beside him. Despite himself, he liked Mir. One reason was that when he had nothing to say, he didn’t say it. Blaze seemed never to shut up. Dryas—well, Dryas was a mystery. Sometimes he hated her. At others he was afraid. He remembered the desire he’d felt for her, but as she’d said, she was now a woman of snow.

Mir scratched the bridge of his nose. “Feast tonight,” he said. “Cynewolf is having trouble holding his people. Know anything about hunting?”

Maeniel looked down at the old man. He was deeply annoyed, then realized Mir was joking. “A little,” he answered.

An hour later, he found himself on a horse, cantering along the riverbank, the wind in his face. He was warm enough. In his quiet way, Mir was the most efficient of the three.

Blaze drifted easily into esoterica. For instance, “Do the fixed stars move?” He entertained the wolf for three hours on the subject, beginning with what one meant by
move.
“Is the earth round or flat?” “What is the smallest indivisible particle?”

Dryas wandered into stories such as, “If a warrior is forbidden to drink mead after moonrise, but he finds that to save a friend’s life, he must drink mead after moonrise, which is worse for him to do? Go ahead and drink the mead or sacrifice a friend’s life to the letter of the law?”

The wolf considered this absolute, complete, and utter nonsense. He would drink mead after sunrise, sunset, moonrise, or any other rise to save a friend. But he did agree such a situation might be, all in all, a terrible conundrum.

Mir worried only about getting him dressed for the weather and finding him a reasonably steady mount. Some horses still tended to become unmanageable when they got a good whiff of him.

He had on a heavy tunic, loose trousers with cross-gathered leggings, a woolen mantle, hob-nailed boots, and heavy stockings.

He scanned the marsh and riverbank with an expert’s eye. Deer were the most common game near the oppidum. As evening drew closer, they would leave their coverts in the marshes and enter the abandoned fields to feed on what grain remained among the furrows. In the thickets that served as windbreaks for the farms, they could still find fruit of crab apples and quince, hummocks of seed-bearing grasses, and even red, fleshy rose hips.

His saddle was only a triple thickness of blankets. He carried three javelins in a leather quiver hanging near his knee. Mir had given him Dryas’ best. The poles were ash, the tips sheathed in steel. The blades were narrow, but sharp as razors and saw-toothed along the edges to keep them from being easily withdrawn.

To Dryas, this was the world of the hag, the winter queen. Brown, black, green, and gray—those were her colors. The demiwolf rode his horse through a kingdom of desolation arrayed with her symbols.

The wood and marsh were black—damp seeped into the tree trunks, staining them the color of wet mud—but the high branches were brown except where they were festooned with mistletoe’s pale green branches and pearl-colored berries.

The dead grass was another kind of brown, a deep, rich color where it was interspersed with the second-growth scrub trees, but a silvery brown where water met land and hoarfrost coated the dead grass stems. The sky was the gray of rolling mist, staining the marsh pools and the river. Here, it wasn’t frozen over, but bubbled and spat, racing among broken rocks. Only its edges were stilled by cold. The quiet pools and angry river both seemed one with the chill gray sky.

Man is the winner,
he thought,
the winner in the ancient game of survival.

When he was out of sight of the oppidum, he pulled the horse to a walk, keeping the animal near the marsh and away from the river. He was adept at helping the horse pick a route on solid ground between the low places, sodden mud, and standing water so the animal could move silently against the dark background of the scrub forest. The wind was still in his face.