B007IIXYQY EBOK (30 page)

The days flowed quickly, blending to one. Painfully, slowly, she began to learn the nuances of turning a retreat into an attack, of tricking an enemy into exposing himself to her blade. All went well but for his habit of belittling her efforts, which grew worse as they became more accustomed to each other.

“Now pay close attention while I show you the right diagonal cut,” Decius began one day. “I pray all the gods the ghost of my father isn’t watching. For the fifteenth time, or is it the sixteenth?—you are not standing right.” He took hold of her shoulders and forcefully moved her. “There. Now do as I do. What I will not endure for freedom!”

She imitated his downward cut a little unsteadily at first, then after several repetitions, with smooth sureness.

“A bit better, but not much. Now stand, again, in the balanced position.” She obeyed.

Not much better? She could not argue it—she had no one with whom to compare herself.

“That’s passable, but just. That expression on your face is not necessary, though. Frighten the enemy with your skill, instead.”

“Oh, let me be!”

But she knew, too, there was much wisdom in his teaching.

“Now ready yourself,” he began on another day. “I am the enemy, I am gaining ground. Now when I think I have mastered you, I want you to strike. Remember, choose the moment when I lift my foot so you’ll catch me off balance—then lunge forward into my step.”

Without warning he leaped at her and made a powerful downward cut, almost knocking her wooden sword from her hand. She recovered and met him with strokes that were broad and clumsy but also, he thought, surprisingly brisk and aggressive.

“Press on! Advance!” he ordered.

She came at him steadily, doing exuberant imitations of the two basic cuts he taught her; he gave ground. Then he snapped forward, easily evading her defense, and delivered a blow to her stomach with the point of his wooden weapon.

“A strike! You are dead or dying from that one.”

But she hardly heeded him; she doubled over for a moment, collected herself, then, gritting her teeth against the pain, redoubled her efforts, once again pushing him back. Then a hand snapped round her wrist and jerked her hard in the direction she was already going. She fell flat onto her stomach.

“That was unfair, treacherous and vile!” she said through gasps for breath. He helped her up, amused and unapologetic.

“All war is treachery. Your enemy does not follow your rules. You assumed wrongly that the sword was the only weapon in that bout. But the enemy also has hands and feet and teeth, not to mention anything he might pick up from the ground. You moved in too close, and you exposed the whole front of your body. And what else?”

“I was off balance and you turned it against me.”

“I used your own strength to pull you down. I did very little except stay alert. All that I did came from you. I forgot myself and entered your mind. I felt your blindness and simply moved where you were not.”

They shared the water they had brought and sat in silence, watching kites circle an unseen carcass below. Then Decius spoke.

“Auriane, what is your father doing?”

“He bargains for arms with Gallic traders to get better weapons for us, he sends out pleas to the villages of other tribes—”

“No, I mean why does he not strike? He knows all he needs to know. The advantage in this battle clearly lies with the force that strikes first.”

She was silent a moment, caught between wanting his opinion and wishing him to think well of her father—and a desire to avoid the ridicule her reply might bring. Finally she answered carefully as if she moved through a thicket of thornbushes, “I will tell you then. It is secret knowledge, but I suppose it matters not at all if you know, for you are not one of us. We wait for the moment the moon is swallowed by a wolf.”

Decius frowned, thought for a moment, then began softly laughing, shaking his head. “Forget about it, pet. A primitive people with no knowledge of the motion of heavenly bodies cannot predict the times of the moon’s eclipse—only a few Alexandrian masters and Chaldean magicians can do it properly. It isn’t going to happen. I hope you weren’t depending on it too much.”

“You arrogant rooster. Ramis always knows when the wolf will come. What is ‘predict’? What is an eclipse?”

“I never guessed a frisky maid’s curiosity would be the cause of my death…Auriane, there is no wolf.”

She narrowed her eyes. “So
you
say.”

He smiled. “It would have to be a monstrously large wolf. Three centuries ago a clever Greek named Hipparchus calculated the moon’s diameter at—”

“Again you spew out words you know I don’t know. Did I say what size wolf?”

“Auriane, the earth is a ball,” he said, reaching to pick up three stones. “A sphere, if you will, like the glass spheres you use for divining. This stone is the earth, and—”

“You haven’t said which earth—Middle? Lower? or—”

“By Minerva, I don’t know. Let’s say, all of them. The sun is here,” he said, lining up the three stones on the ground, “the moon here, and here’s the earth—or
earths
, if you prefer—in the middle, see? This fearsome marvel is nothing but the earth’s shadow on the moon.”

She looked away, a long-suffering look in her eyes. “You are trying my patience with such nonsense. You are only an ignorant Roman after all.”

He laughed easily. “Then why do you ask me so cursed many questions!” He tossed the stones one by one down the rocky slope. “You’ve been given privileged knowledge of the sages, and you’re too benighted to know it.” Half to himself he added, “It’s a great shame it won’t happen—it would frighten my people as much as Wido’s men—they’re such a superstitious lot, soldiers are. And as a rule they tend not to read Hipparchus or Eratosthenes. It might give you some chance at victory. As it is now, you’ve little or none.”

“Decius, be silent, or you curse our luck.”

“That’s been done already, I think. I taught you retreat is the first method of defense. It is true in this grander case as well. Your people should retreat into the cover of your forests—that’s where your true strength lies. You do not know the size of the world, nor do you know the size of Rome. She has trifled with you to this day. You may win a skirmish here and there, but woe unto all of you if my people turn their full strength upon you. Do you know the Isle of Britannia?”

She frowned and shook her head.

“Albion?” he tried.

She brightened. “Albion, yes, the land of the White Moon, where druids are schooled.”

“Right. Do you know of its size and the number of its tribes?”

“Many peoples dwell there, yes.”

“Well, near all of them revolted against the Empire seven—or is it eight?—years ago now. I was there at its beginning. In one season the Britons did more injury to the legions than your tribe has done in all your battles with us. But within a year the island was thoroughly put down and chastised. More died miserably for their foolhardiness than you have warriors in all your tribe. So you see, if you lose this battle, you lose, and if by some freak of providence you win, still you lose. You might thrust a nail into the heel of a giant. You might do him some small injury that seems large at first to you. But beware the day he turns his full wrath upon you and destroys you.”

“Perhaps you are right,” she said thoughtfully. “But it does not matter. We have cat spirit in us, and the wild cat does not submit to the cage without a terrible and bloody fight.”

When but five days remained before the coming of the Wolf, Auriane came as usual at dawn, bearing drink and meat for Decius. On this day when she sparred with him, something was not the same.

Always before when they practiced she would struggle to remember his words, then give directions to her limbs, a clumsy two-step process. But on this day there were moments she had the curious feeling her movement had a wisdom of its own. Once or twice it seemed she took flight, soaring above thought, and all seemed play—but the sense did not last long. It was not too dissimilar from the odd and brilliant stillness Ramis caused her to feel. Decius noticed nothing—or at least, she thought, he behaved as if he had not.

She was almost certain then there was a knowledge steadily growing in her, far from fully expressed. But not certain enough that Decius’ mocking insults did not cause doubt. She wondered if her efforts were not the awkward first steps of a foal, a halting creature that would one day be a horse plunging into valleys, galloping mightily, flying over a wall. If that were true, why could Decius not have patience with the foal?

But her frustration never lasted long. Curiosity and the animal joy she took in fighting left little room for it.

“Decius,” she shouted out once as they parried, “did you ever set eyes on your Great King?”

She thought she saw faint embarrassment in his face.

“The Emperor Nero?” he replied reluctantly. “Well, yes, once.
Stop!
Badly
done! Hold it like this. And don’t step so far! See, you left yourself open beneath the arm. I was in Rome for the village market day.”

“Yes?” she prodded breathlessly. “What did he look like and what was he doing?”

“He was on a stage….”

“Stage?”

“A place where stories are acted out by people pretending to be other people.”

“Well then? Why don’t you finish? What sort of story was it and what was he doing there?”

He slowed and stopped, heaving for air. Discomfort left his face; now she sensed only Decius’ anger at their king. It puzzled her.

“In one play he acted the part…the part of a woman in one of our myths, Nemesis take us all, he played the part of a woman in labor, on the stage.”

She gave him a spirited glare. “I do not want ever again to hear you say my people are odd.”

“You do not understand. It is depravity, not oddness, for him to be on a stage at all—Hades take him! Now, if you are not tired…”

“I am not at all tired.”

He was tired, and impressed by her endurance, as well. But he would not say it. That enthusiasm was relentless—it was not dampened by bruises, strained limbs or sharp criticism. And was it his own imagining, or was she learning with striking speed?

“Now we will do the third attack. You must be perfectly relaxed as you begin….” And this time as they sparred, he did notice her growing grace; it struck him all of a sudden, like someone who took note of a tree in bud yesterday and today finds it in bloom.

“That is enough. I’m tired if you’re not.”

“Decius,” she ventured cautiously. “I…cannot be doing as poorly as you say. Am I?”

“You do not need to know if you are doing well or not,” he said irritably. “Praise makes for laziness, especially in the young.”

“You might at least tell me perhaps just once when I have done a thing well.”

“But I see so much more wrong than right. Praise would only confuse you.”

She threw the wooden sword to the ground.

“You goad me to madness! When you escape it’s me you’re going to have to worry over! I’ll tell my father’s men which way you’ve gone and set them after you and laugh when they toss you into the slimiest bog!”

“Ungrateful wench,” he said, grinning broadly. As usual, that grin had a strangely powerful way of disarming her. She shut her eyes so she would not see it, but perversely, saw it with even great clarity in her mind.

“Just do not ever let on I was the one who instructed you,” Decius continued, “and I’ll die in peace.”

“I understand you now. You are like a porcupine.”

“Not again. That’s what all the women I’ve bedded say to me.”

“Oh, silence, and listen! Your mockery is like a porcupine’s quills. It is a way of keeping people at bay. And that is all it is. And there is this about you: You want me to do well, but only so well, and only so long as my efforts give praise to you. You are the teacher. If I were the teacher, you would not know what to do with me. If I were the teacher, you would abandon me.”

She just caught an off-balance look in his eye that revealed her aim was true. Then his face softened, but only slightly. “Perhaps I am a bit too hard.”

“A bit? A very large bit.”

“Much too hard then,” he amended, smiling amiably. “But it is the way I was taught.”

“Your teachers then are in the habit of making a laughingstock of those they teach.”

“All right, you have it. I am sorry. You are doing…surprisingly well.” But the words sounded like another put them into his mouth. She glared at him in quiet frustration; this was not much better than his insults.

She left her eyes steadily on his, probing without result for whatever it was in him that drew her. Surely it was more than that cursed smile. If that were all, she thought, if he never smiled, then I could forget him.

He looked at her for long moments, trapped like a fly in amber in that gaze. “Auriane, I…I am sorry,” he tried awkwardly, as though the words would disengage him from those soft, engulfing eyes. What mad words had she uttered? A
porcupine?
Perhaps it is true. But doesn’t everyone speak words to keep others at bay? Why cannot I say words of affection, an affection that, in fact, I feel? “It…was not my wish to wound you in any way.”