Terra Incognita (17 page)

Ruso was threading his way through the crowd of men heading for their barrack rooms when the same voice called, “Hey, Doc! I want a word!”

Audax’s office displayed a predictable lack of interest in home comforts. The furniture looked old, hard, and lonely. Around it, a selection of notices hung from nails that had cracked the plaster. The only extravagances, all the more striking because of the plain surroundings, were the crested helmet and scarlet cloak that Audax was now unloading onto the wooden frame in the corner.

Ruso assumed he had been called in to hear the latest news about the search for the missing remains of Felix the trumpeter, but he was wrong.

“I’m telling you this,” announced Audax, kicking the door shut and not bothering with a greeting, “Since you don’t seem to be as much of an idiot as some of the others. You want to keep an eye on that lazy smear of grease that works over in the infirmary.”

“Gambax?” suggested Ruso, reflecting that Audax was not a man one would choose to lead a stealth mission.

“That’s him. The other one never got him under control. Don’t suppose you’ll do much in a few days, but I thought you ought to be warned.”

“Thank you.”

“He’s another one who thinks he can do what he likes.”

“Another one?” queried Ruso.

Audax snorted. “The other one was my problem. Still is. Problem alive, problem dead. Typical. Should have done what he was bloody told for once and come in before curfew. None of this would have happened.”

“Felix.”

Audax shrugged. “Ah well. Shouldn’t speak ill of the dead. Specially not under the circumstances.”

Ruso glanced around to confirm that the door was firmly shut and murmured, “That head on the corpse . . .”

“Fake.”

“I assumed from his funeral that he was pretty popular.”

“Half of ’em probably owed him money and wanted to make sure he wasn’t going to collect.”

This did not seem to explain the distress of the disheveled girls. “Felix was a moneylender?”

“He was a trader. Buying and selling. Everybody’s mate.”

“Can you think of any reason why Doctor Thessalus would have a grudge against him?”

“No more than anybody else. Thessalus wouldn’t harm a fly. No wonder being in the army’s driven him crackers.”

“You don’t happen to know where Thessalus was called out to on the night of the murder?”

Audax did not.

“What did you mean by ‘no more than anybody else’?”

Audax glanced around the shadowy corners of the room. “You believe in spirits?”

“You’re not speaking ill of him,” Ruso assured him, curious. “You’re telling the truth.” It was a distinction fine enough for a prefect’s aide.

“Hmph.” Audax pondered that for a moment, and fingered the charm around his neck. Finally he said, “When I got here six months ago, Felix was paying other men to toot his horn for him so he could wander off doing his fancy business deals. You wanted it, Felix could get it. At a price, and no questions asked. Now, my lads don’t get paid as much as you boys in the legions and I don’t mind them making a bit extra, but they’ve got to do it in their own time. And the minute I put a stop to Felix skipping off duty, he took to going sick with invisible ailments.”

“Bad back?” suggested Ruso, familiar with the list of conveniently unprovable disorders. “Headaches?”

“That sort of thing. Sets a bad example to the others.”

“And he was seen at the infirmary by Thessalus?”

“Gambax.”

Ruso was beginning to see why the medical service commanded scant respect among the Tenth. “You really excused him from duty on Gambax’s say-so?”

“Twice,” said Audax. “Then I cured him myself. Sent him on a twenty-mile run. And d’you know, he was never ill again. Felix was a lazy bugger, Doc. But he was my lazy bugger, and he didn’t deserve to go like that.”

24

I
N THE RAPIDLY
fading light the sensible thing to do would be to hurry straight back to—no, the sensible thing would have been to accept the woman’s grudging offer of a bed for her first night back at home. The second most sensible thing would be to hurry back to her uncle’s house by the fort. Tilla did neither of these sensible things. Instead, she set off up the path to a place she had not seen for three winters and where there would be nothing to welcome her except memories. The woman had made it clear that even if any others had survived, they were not there.

She glanced back at the paddock with the strange ditches cut into a rectangle. With the Votadini for neighbors, this was probably a stupid place to build any sort of a house. She shook her head. Her uncle had always had some very odd ideas. Like giving his daughter a Roman name and insisting that she learn to speak fluent Latin. Her own father had always said it was pointless: The Romans had finally abandoned their attempts to control the northern tribes a few years ago and any fool could see that it was only a matter of time before they gave up here too.

Time, had they known it, was the one thing her family would not be given.

The Votadini had come in the dark. Bandits, thieves—perhaps they too called themselves warriors. Warriors who were too cowardly to show their faces in daylight. She had imagined their approach countless times since that night. Threading their way up through the woods, crouching behind the field wall and listening to Trenus whispering last words of encouragement. Clambering across the ditch and creeping silently over the bank. Excited, perhaps, by their own daring. Slinking across the yard in the dark to surround the house where the family lay dreaming by the warmth of the dying fire.

The dog alone had sensed the danger. He had raised the alarm, but there were too many of them, and this time they had not just come to steal a few cows.

The walls were in poor repair, as she had expected. Yet one paddock was still properly fenced, and a shaggy pony, nothing like the fine horses Trenus had stolen from her family, lifted its head to watch her as she passed.

Someone was living here.

Whoever had built the small round house had set it on the same patch of level ground as the old one. She scanned the earth at its feet for the scars of the burning. Instead the gods had sent new growth. She saw only spring grass, with a couple of chickens pecking for food. The land, it seemed, had a shorter memory than those who tilled it.

She called a soft greeting but there was no reply. Not even a dog. She unlooped the twine and pushed the gate open.

Her ancestors had fought alongside Venutius in the failed struggle for freedom, and her father kept an ancient sword oiled and hidden in the thatch, ready for the day when a new leader would rise up and call them to victory. But the thatch had been ablaze before they realized it. The sword could not be reached.

In the light of the flames she had seen her mother struck down in the doorway. She knew then that the raiders would show no mercy. She had expected to die herself. Instead the knife had been torn from her hand and she had been dragged away into the darkness, still screaming threats she could not carry out.

For the first days and weeks among the Votadini she had waited. Ready to run. She had closed her eyes and her mind whenever she lay crushed beneath the grunting mass of Trenus, and told herself it would not be for much longer. When she was alone, she watched the woods for any sign of the warriors from the south who would come to help her escape. Or even of the army, come to enforce the law they claimed to uphold. But the weeks had turned into months and autumn hardened into winter, and still there was neither a raid nor even any word of anyone offering a deal to buy her back. The melting of the winter snows and the opening of the roads had brought no news. Gradually, deliberately, she had buried all hope of seeing her family again. If they were alive, they would have come for her. She had comforted herself with thoughts of them waiting for her in the next world. But perhaps she was wrong. Perhaps someone was still waiting here.

A lone blackbird was warbling his evening song. The dark bushes behind the house shivered in the breeze. Tilla told herself not to hope too much. Hope would mean disappointment. She looked around her. The sun was gone behind the black skeletons of the trees on the horizon.

That family are all dead.

Dead. As if a family could be summed up and done away with in one word.

She pulled the knotted shawl tighter around her shoulders. Surprised to realize she was trembling, she put her bag down on the stone outside the door—the stone where the water bucket used to rest—and called, “Who is here?”

There was movement from behind the house. Someone was limping toward her carrying a horse harness. A man. A man she had known from childhood . . .

But the hair was too fair. The frame was too broad.

The walk— The walk had stopped. He was standing there with his mouth open. There was dried blood on his upper lip. Bruising around one eye. He reached one hand out toward the wall as if trying to steady himself.

She said, “Are they all dead, Rianorix the basket maker?”

“All dead, daughter of Lugh,” he whispered. “Have you come to haunt me?”

“No,” she said, pushing the door open. “I have come home!”

25

S
HE HAD DONE
her best to treat what the soldiers had done to him at the bar last night, but he had no herbs in store and it had been too late to search for any growing around the house. She had cleaned up the cuts and put cold compresses on the vicious bruises, struggling to see what she was doing in the uneven light of the fire and the smelly rush taper that was almost burned out. “I could do better with some herbs,” she assured him. “I will go and see what there is outside tomorrow. Mam used to grow lots of things. They might have seeded themselves.”

He eased himself into a more comfortable position on the bracken bed, closed his eyes, and murmured, “Your touch is healing, daughter of Lugh.”

“Your flattery is still as clumsy, I see.”

“I am out of practice.”

She said, “You should have gone to your sister. She would have medicines.”

“I have no sister.”

She sighed. “You are still not speaking to Veldicca?”

“She is still not speaking to me.”

She shrugged his spare overshirt back up over her shoulder. Her own clothes were at last put out to dry, draped across a chair by the fire. Running the cool damp rag down the small of his back, she said, “I am surprised you have no wife to do these things.”

He gave a tentative smile: a careful move to avoid reopening the split lip. “If you had been here, things would have been very different.” The faint lisp reminded her that he was still learning to form his words without the shattered tooth.

“I suppose Aemilia would not have you?”

She felt his body stiffen.

“How did you know?”

“I am not a fool, Rian. I used to see how you looked at her when you thought I was not watching.” It was the way all men looked at Aemilia. Tilla had frequently thought that if men were obliged to choose their partners with their eyes closed, they would make far more sensible decisions. She said, “I did not expect you to mourn me forever. But I could have told you Aemilia was not interested in marrying a basket maker.”

“If you had been here, I would never have tried.”

“So tell me. Has she married an officer?”

“Not yet.” He gave a snort of disapproval. “No doubt Catavignus is eyeing the legionaries who marched in this afternoon.”

“And nobody else suited you?”

“I am a busy man with a business to run. Have you not noticed the stock of baskets over by the door? I shall go to sell at the market in Coria tomorrow.”

“With your warhorse between the shafts of the cart.”

“One day I will have a warhorse,” he promised.

“You have been saying that for a long time.”

He sighed. “When I think of the horses we rode when your Da was alive . . .”

“Trenus kept Cloud for a while,” she said. “I tried to steal her and ride home.”

“What happened?”

“I got lost. His men caught us.”

“Bastard,” muttered Rianorix. “You can never trust the Votadini. What Trenus did to your family was an outrage. Did he apologize when he released you?”

“Trenus did not release me,” she said. “It is a long story. I will save it for tomorrow.”

His hand sought hers. “It is not easy to remain strong when your enemies prosper,” he said. “Your family was kind to me. I came here and rebuilt the house in their honor. And now you are home, we can begin again.”

After a moment she wrested her hand free. “You are very thin,” she said. “Was the harvest bad?”

“I am fasting.”

“You have made a vow?”

“I am sworn to protect someone.”

“Who?”

“Never mind,” he said. “That was why the fight happened at the bar. There is a soldier who shamed this person and will not pay compensation.”

“Then the soldier must be punished,” she agreed, feeling the warm muscles of his shoulders begin to relax beneath her fingertips. “Have you spoken to his officer?”

His body jerked. “His
officer
?”

“Sometimes if a man needs to be disciplined—”

He chuckled. “Daughter of Lugh, you have been away a long time. Have you forgotten how things are here?” He touched his split lip. “This is the only answer you get from the army when you ask for justice.”

She said nothing. Her experience with the gate guards suggested he was right. On the other hand, Rianorix’s efforts to negotiate were probably as well-meant but clumsy as his flattery.

He said, “What does my eye look like?”

“People will be afraid of you,” she said. “Small children will run away crying.”

The half smile returned. “Is it very bad?”

“The swelling will go down by tomorrow. The bruise will get worse.” She traced a faint line around the base of his eye socket with her forefinger. “It is all around here, black and purple. And part of the white is red.”

“This is nothing.”