B007IIXYQY EBOK (21 page)

Auriane looked guardedly at the flask, then exuberantly seized it with both hands, put it to her lips and began gulping it down as though it were a horn of mead.

Table manners, Decius mused, were another nicety of civilization that stopped abruptly at the Rhine.

Before he could stop her, she drained half the flask. Her face reddened and she spat much of it into the fire. Laughing and shaking his head, he took it from her, while she regarded the flask as if it were a hound that snapped at her.

“It’s
unwatered
wine, my feisty princess—did I forget to tell you?”

She frowned, smiling tentatively, only half understanding. Decius lapsed into Latin when he did not know a word in her tongue, and his manner said, “If you don’t understand, it’s your own problem; do not expect me to explain.”

“Like this.” He demonstrated, taking slow, measured sips.

She took it again and imitated him with the barest hint of mockery. Something in that small show of pride she mustered in spite of her sadness reached the rarely touched tenderer parts of him.

The wine seized hold of her with numbing swiftness and she suddenly sat still. He saw the sharp point of sadness in her eyes dissolve somewhat, to be replaced by a softer, more open look. She seemed not so far from him now. One of the unsung properties of wine, he observed, is that sometimes it can cause the chasm between different races of men to seem more like a fissure.

She looked at him. “Decius,” she said, slowly pronouncing the syllables of his name as if it were three words. “I have great numbers of questions for you about the magic of your people, and…a gift to ask of you, if you will give it. In return, I’ll give to you what gifts I can, anything you desire, and if I can’t get it myself, perhaps my father can. Please, do not laugh at me.”

“I laugh not at
you,
princess, but at the world. I like a bartering spirit! But I hardly see what you can give a man
like me. I’ve got a roomy hut large enough to turn around in, and all the stringy half-rotted deer meat I can eat, and field mice for companions at night…and fine rags to wear, plus plenty of water through the roof. I want one thing from you, my saucy maid, and I know you can’t give it to me—to get out of this pesthole.”

“You are unhappy here.”

“Curses, you’ve found me out. I thought I’d concealed it better.”

Auriane made a quick snatch at his bookroll and examined it closely, turning it round and round.

“Grimy paws off that, you little vixen. That’s my
one
book—”

“These are words? Just as we are speaking? Tell me what is spoken here.”

“Slow up there, frisky filly. It’s about…dull and complicated things that young maids and barbarians don’t need to know anything about.”

She held him fast with that bold gaze; he felt like a snared animal. Something in those eyes, their mixture of lucidity and pain, brought a sudden silence around the heart.

“I am no
young maid
.
I am a
woman full grown, who celebrated three whole years ago the time of her first woman’s blood.”

He managed to suppress an expression of mild surprise and cover it quickly with a wan smile. Fissure became chasm again. What woman of his own people would speak of such a thing, let alone speak of it with pride? Pride, and something else—it was as though she expected him to be intimidated by knowing this.

“Pleased
to know that, I’m sure, and a million apologies. Now that that’s
settled, I’m—”

“You are mocking me.”

“You’ve got to learn to ignore it, pet. I don’t know any other way of talking. The army’s crawling with crude roughened beasts like me. Now let’s hear those questions before the wine runs out and our senses return.”

“Your people have the most powerful sorcerers on earth. I want you to teach me what words you utter over your weapons…what songs you sing before battle….”

“If I had powerful magic, would I be
here?
I’d be flapping out of here on wings. I might stop first, though, to bewitch you into my bed. You’re infinitely more appealing than the field mice.”

Her dead grandmother would have wanted Decius drowned in the lake for speaking those words. Another maid of her age and rank would have at least sprung up and haughtily stalked off. But Auriane was a huntress close to her quarry; she would not be distracted.

“If it pleases you to be rude, I will endure it. You are Roman, after all.”

“Rude? That’s a soldier’s flattery, little pet. Forget this gabble about magic—we invoke our gods like anyone, but where war is concerned, it’s live or die by your wits. We employ only dull, practical good sense.”

“Then why do your javelins fly farther than our spears, though your people are no stronger of limb than ours? And why do the javelins sink into our shields so they are useless and we have to throw them down? And what are those bolts that fly at a distance no man could hurl them…and what are those monsters that tear down cities?”

“I’ve a mutt fastened to my leg that won’t let go.” He laughed softly. “These are all things that men
make,
Auriane, and nothing more. To a man who eats roots and berries, a plow is magic, I suppose. I’m not sure the javelins do fly farther—they’ve greater penetration, perhaps, because there’s a thong attached at the point of balance which causes them to twist and spin as they fly. Why am I telling you this? They sink into your shields because the iron of the barbed point is left in a soft state, not hammered. And if you want an explanation of catapults and siege engines, I’ve already had too much wine. You’ll have to come back tomorrow.”

Undeterred, she asked in fast succession how close together legionaries normally fought, if they always attacked all at once, how many men they normally left in reserve, how cavalry was placed, and about the siting of camps. He was stunned by the thoroughness of the questions. He found that answering brought him pleasure and a sense of pride in his homeland, for the questions themselves were a form of tribute. He did not worry that he might be revealing secrets to the enemy, for he counted this maid a precocious oddity—barbarians in general had little interest in foreign ways and weapons, and he believed her fellows would show no inclination to put this knowledge to use.

She asked as well questions about Rome. Was the Emperor truly divine? If so, why did he suffer death? Where were the Roman women? She had never seen one. Why did they not follow the men into battle to bind the wounds, take up fallen spears, and help when a battle hung in the balance, like a normal woman? Had they no love of their country? Romans ate lying down, she was certain of it. Why did he eat sitting up? And was it true they all lived in stone houses grand as small mountains, through which they trained rivers to run?

And as he listened to these tireless questions, without his realizing it, without her intending it, some part of him adopted her. Subtly, surely, his soul was allying itself with hers, pulled close by the earnest eagerness in her voice, the guilelessness of that pride mingled with womanly confidence, the glint of coltish playfulness in her eyes, the way she carefully selected her words, as though the fate of her world rested in getting them right. For too long now he’d had no one to care for but himself. Now he yearned to shield her from the precariousness of life; it drew him from his own misery. More and more he felt a thought not fully voiced: She might get into trouble without me. I’d best watch her. It was a tribute as well: He sensed she was capable of getting herself into prodigious amounts of trouble.

Finally she hesitated, then said with great gravity, “Decius…I have something to show you.” She began opening the linen-wrapped bundle. He guessed she’d needed to test him first and make certain he treated her questioning sincerely before she risked revealing to a man outside the tribe whatever potent treasure was within. When she shook the contents out onto the ground, Decius gazed, puzzled, at an ivory-handled dagger, a roll of papyrus, a heavy leather belt and the broken-off head of a spear.

“What sort of man was this?” she said, her voice faintly hushed. “He came with the raiding Hermundures—if Hermundures they were. He chased me for a long time and made a great effort to kill me.”

Decius was remote in silence for a long time. He first picked up the dagger, looked at it briefly, and tossed it down. Then he unrolled the fragile papyrus. She saw his face contract into a frown of mild disbelief.

“It’s a map,”
he said at last. “By the paps of Medusa, what next? The savages will be turning ballistae on us. Something’s not right in this, I say.”

“What is ‘map’? Is it something to work a curse on us?”

“No, nothing of the sort. It’s just a…a picture that tells a man who knows nothing of your territory where to go. A thing no warrior of any of your tribes would need or have because he would know your land like he knows the backside of his plough-ox.” He took up the belt with its tall, graceful letters carved into the leather, its heavy silver buckle inlaid with black niello. “By the tail of Cerberus, what’s this?”

She sensed it had many messages for him but for a frustrating length of time he said nothing. Once she thought she saw a fleeting look of mournful regret cross his face.

“Tell me again…. He
chased
you, you say?”

“Why do you look so, as if you know him? He is dead. I killed him with a spear.”

“You…?” His response began as a question and ended as a statement soft with disbelief—“killed him.” He looked at her then, and was aware suddenly of the length of her still growing limbs, of the bow casually slung from her side, the hilt of a dagger just visible through the opening in her cloak and those strong hands, well capable of using it, of the implacable soul just visible beneath a veil of shyness, and he shuddered within. What
was
she? Woman or demoness? Had this grim smoking land conjured up Atalanta, the hunting maid of ancient tales?

“Auriane,” he said gravely, “had he roughened skin, here, along the jaw, as if from a childhood pox…a healthy head of black curly hair, and strangely light eyes?”

Slowly she nodded. “Decius, how come you to know a warrior of the tribes? Are these things signed somehow on the belt?”

She watched impatiently as Decius sat in troubled silence.

Abruptly he turned away from her. “Already, Auriane, I have spoken too much. If I speak on, I will be a traitor to my people.”

“To
your
people?” The air about her seemed to delicately spark. “What have your
people to do with this? Anyway,
my
people are your people now. You are a thrall and you belong to us, and it is to
us
that you should be true. You are vile—you
tell me just enough to goad me to madness, then fall silent. I’ll not be played with so!”

She got drunkenly to her feet, half stumbling, then righting herself with exaggerated dignity.

“Auriane, I beg you, stay. I’ll tell you anything else you wish to—”

“May Hel’s hounds take you. Sit on your silence. It is time for me to depart. I’ll behave as if we’ve never spoken.”

With that swift soldier’s stride, Auriane began stalking down the path that led through the crumbled place in the wall.

Desolation fell on him. She left a draft of bone-chilling emptiness in her wake. Conflicting feelings jostled in him; rapidly he wrestled to sort them out.

What does it mean anymore, to be a traitor? Can a man truly be called one, if his words harm no one?

The word, as he reflected upon it, sounded shrill and empty here, no more than the army’s means of compelling obedience from afar from a man who no longer had anything to gain. The legions seemed more remote with each passing season—that cumbersome machinery that functioned quite well without him and seemed evidently to have forgotten him, with its aristocratic commanders who knew nothing of what it was to carry a hundred-pound pack all day or dig a ditch around a fort, working until the blisters bled….

As for my oath to the Emperor, he thought, it no longer seems a living oath—it was based on a comradeship, however distant, but
that
ceased with my capture.

Auriane, on the other hand, was vital and close; that she
needed him was painfully evident, and, the gods knew, he needed her. She was a brilliant bloom on a plain of ice.

“Auriane!” She did not slow.

“All right, you have it then! Anything! I’ll tell you anything. What do I owe the cursed army anyway? They haven’t even come looking for me. To Hades with them! You’re right. I belong to you. Come back here!”

She stopped and turned. He expected to see a glint of victory in her eyes, but there was only softness and tragedy. She is what we were once, in the days of Romulus, he thought. We fight for pay. She fights for love. I cannot compete with her—not by myself anyway, in this bleak, god-cursed place.

When she settled herself again, he testingly tried a fatherly hand on her knee, and for the first time in his memory, he was not certain of his motive with a woman; he could not say whether this was an artless attempt to seduce or a clumsy groping for companionship. She accepted it more as a child than as a woman, one who badly needed the comforting of an adult.