B007IIXYQY EBOK (92 page)

“The common soldier will think she bewitched you. They’ll count you a fool.” The taste of defeat was acrid in his mouth.

“Well then, no one shall know about her, Marcus, old friend—except you.”

CHAPTER XXVIII

W
INTER WORE ON IN THE
C
HATTIAN
camp, and the hunters could not keep apace. As Domitian intended, starvation did his fighting for him now. Hunting parties were sent out every day into the snows, seeking the gray-brown roe deer that foraged in morning or herds of elks with their young; once they caught an aurochs calf abandoned by the herd. They sought smaller creatures as well—the far-leaping red squirrels active just after dawn, the occasional hazel grouse, the mallard ducks in the frozen marshes, or the common brown hares with black-tipped ears that everywhere left their fast signatures across the snow. In spite of the hunters’ small successes, by the third moon after Yule the population of Five Wells dared not eat more than once every other day. Wolves were heard to creep close at night. Daily they lost warriors who fled from fear of starvation or of the coming final battle.

Auriane while hunting was glad of the snow—it blanketed the bodies of slaughtered refugees scattered throughout the forest, leaving all innocently white. Never had she been made so conscious of the struggle of all creatures to survive. Flocks of starlings pecked frantically at the snow, desperate for food. The frozen carcasses of deer lay everywhere, the delicate sickle-curve of their white ribs visible where their flesh had been torn open by wolves.

Like the animals, now we too can be massacred by winter.

In the camp there was little talk or spontaneous movement; many passed whole days playing lethargic games of dice, using as stakes their rations of dried aurochs flesh. Some fell into a kind of human hibernation, crouching silently in their hide tents; others became wild and maddened. Sigwulf was like a nervous stallion confined too long in a stall. He strode about seeking fights, and eventually was avoided by all after he killed a man who accused him in jest of planning to “go over the wall.” Coniaric initiated contests to see who could bring in the most game, which he pursued with frenzied zeal and regularly won. Athelinda came forth from the isolation she had imposed on herself since the death of Baldemar and was like a mother with a thousand children, formidably patient as she sat all day with those stricken with illness, telling tales and wrapping wounds. Witgern’s placid wife, Thurid, cried constantly and her sixth child was born dead. Witgern himself divided his time between long stretches of sentry duty—he volunteered for more than was necessary to keep away from Fastila, who ever more piteously and aggressively showed her love for him—and concealing himself within his tent, where he composed mournful, meandering love songs to the tinny notes of his battered lyre. The songs were for Auriane, but he scarcely let himself know it.

Auriane was often alone on the palisade, a single sentinel ardently gazing southwest—as if by constant watching, she could keep the enemy at bay. As Athelinda comforted the aged and ill, Auriane gave strength to the warriors. The times enhanced the tales of her, and more than one man imagined as she restlessly paced the palisade on moon-washed nights that this great, somber spirit was kindred to the swift-flying Choosers of the Slain, the ghostly battle-maids of songs who were half warrior, half swan. She lit the way to vengeance. As Athelinda preserved life, Auriane promised death would have meaning. All felt that if there was purpose here, it was hers. Without her, when the Romans came the fort would become simply a slaughtering ground; with her, it was transformed into a temple of sacrifice.

She arose every day well before dawn, alert as if she had not slept at all. Alone in her hide tent, she performed Ramis’ ritual of fire and prayed to Fria to comfort and preserve Avenahar. Then she put on her gray cloak, wrapped her feet in hides and tramped through the snows, inspecting the stores, seeing to the reinforcing of the walls, joining those who cast spears on the casting ground. She always seemed to know who was losing heart and she sought that person out, her presence as sustaining as mead, as comforting as bread. At night she was last to collapse onto her mat of rushes. Hunger gave her eyes a steady brilliance—and she was hungrier than even Athelinda knew, for in order to keep the two surviving Roman tribunes alive, she secretly fed them from her own ration. She knew no one else would see them fed, and she was determined to see them treated honorably.

She found that for the first time in her life she dreaded the onset of spring. She was certain that this year its promise of eternal life would not be kept, that freedom would melt with the snows.

Spring came swiftly, heralded by the wild warning music of swans. The population of Five Wells ate every third day. The priest called Grunig ordered the empty grain bins torn open so the god could witness their plight. Fastila chewed on bark to assuage her hunger. Auriane put a guard around Berinhard so no one would steal up to him at night and slaughter him for food. The camp dogs disappeared one by one; even the rats seemed to know to stay away. No one dreamed of anything but food; every round stone looked like a loaf of bread; every pool of water brought thoughts of a thick stew. Clothes were so threadbare everyone wore multiple layers of rags against the cold. At night all slept closely packed together for warmth and rank was forgotten; noble wife lay back to back with farm thrall.

One spring morning in the time when the snows were beginning to recede, leaving ugly patches of black mud and brave green shoots, Thrusnelda saw a golden eagle drop a mountain cat cub, torn and bleeding, into the grass outside the fort. The young creature had proved too much for it to carry. The eagle flew off, solemnly flapping, floating, flapping, until it disappeared into the depths of the sky.

“We
are
the mountain cat cub, of course,” Thrusnelda explained that night around the central hearth, “and Rome is the eagle. It means we will be seized and borne off. We will be crippled and grievously wounded, but in the end we will still have life, young and vigorous life!”

Few of those who listened showed signs of believing this. Auriane thought—the Romans’ coming will be a blessing to many. Slaves at least are regularly fed.

Nightly the Warriors’ Council debated the wisdom of sending men out at once to lay ambushes for any Roman cavalrymen who might penetrate this far. They debated whether the trails were clear enough to allow attacking warriors swift escape. Auriane worried that their their sharply divided councils caused them to delay too long.

Finally, one day well after the fourth moon, before the sun rose above the stand of silver firs guarding the fort’s eastern side, fifteen scouts were sent out to determine the Romans’ position. They were given orders to return at dusk, whether they were successful or not. Actually
no
success would be true success—it would mean the Roman forces were still camped a comfortable distance away.

When all fifteen scouts failed to return at dusk, Auriane felt a cold ball of iron settle in her stomach. Witgern and Sigwulf and those privy to the plan revealed none of their anxieties to the others, but Thurid guessed it from Witgern’s stricken face.

Athelinda too knew something was gravely amiss. To allay her mother’s fears, Auriane insisted that the men were most likely ambushed by a band of Cheruscans before they got farther than Wolverine Valley. But Athelinda knew each scout had taken a different track. Athelinda said nothing; both felt a shadow cast over them that was grimmer than the fast-falling night.

As the sinking sun touched the crowns of the mountain ash trees on the fort’s western side, one of the sentries on the palisade gave a desolate wail.

Coniaric then called out, a hush in his voice: “Auriane.
Come.”

Suddenly all the sentries were shouting, some cursing Wodan for treachery, some imprecating Fria, others crying out the names of kinsmen to come and look.

Auriane dashed to the palisade, not bothering with the ladder, letting the sentries haul her up.

The sight of the primeval Wyrm that girded the earth could not have filled her with more horror. Before her, on the broad, gently sloping southern plain, she saw wisps of smoke drifting from myriad points of quivering light, set out as regularly as planted furrows. Multitudes of cookfires, she realized, stretched out as far as the eye could see.

The fires of the legions. They had come, and with baffling swiftness.

Auriane moved past warriors on their knees weeping and shaking their fists at the sky, and men unable to move, staring at the sight with mute terror. “It is the will of the Fates,” she said, fighting for strength, struggling to reassure. “Our waiting is done.”

She stopped before the faceless wood image of Fria mounted on the palisade, fashioned from a single, polished branch of ash. The sentries were silent for a moment, watching her sun-reddened face as she bowed her head and placed her palms on the wooden idol. For the flash of one moment several thought she might perform some ritual magic that would cause the Roman fires to vanish.

But she prayed, and they were at once caught up in the intensity of it; the effect on them was deep-reaching and physical, almost like the act of love.

“You who are pure light shed from the moon,”
she intoned, starting up unsteadily.
“You who are the dark as well as the light
…
in your all-merciful body, life and death are one.”
Her voice gained in power.
“Great Giver, embrace us. Comfort us with your red-gold tears. Give us peace, the heavenly peace that…comes from knowing that in the beginning and the end of all times, you are benign.”

The gauzy contentment lasted but a moment, then evaporated like groundmist. Below, the whole population of the camp milled, looking numbed, uncomprehending, asking frightened questions for which no one had answers.

“Venison!”
Coniaric exclaimed, shaking a fist
at the vast field of fires. “Curses on them, they’re cooking venison! And baking bread!” Both smells drifted separately from the legions’ marching camp; they had the overwhelming power of dreams.

Athelinda climbed up to look. “With all the peoples of the earth at their feet,” she said, “it’s bewildering how eager they are for our empty horns and our nettle soup.”

Auriane shouted down to Thorgild, whom she saw fighting his way toward her through the crowd, “Break up the huts and carts. We raise the walls tonight!”

Thorgild nodded, and all worked feverishly by torchlight. There was nothing to be gained by keeping their fires extinguished; who would be fooled? All who could stand labored far into the night, laying fresh timbers along the walls until exhaustion came. Most fell asleep where they worked, succumbing to dreams of venison and bread.

Deep in the night Auriane found Athelinda still wakeful. They sat together, huddled under one ragged blanket. Auriane’s tent was pitched strategically between Berinhard’s stall and the hostages’ wicker cage so she could watch out for the welfare of both. The hostages’ human souls seemed long ago to have fled; some lesser, more bestial spirit animated those listless forms now. If they believed themselves close to freedom, they showed no sign.

There was no moon; Athelinda was just a voice and a snug presence. “You should sleep,” her mother said.

“I know. But I must stay awake to have time to say farewell to everything.”

“This is a wretched place to die,” Athelinda said softly. “Animals will strip our bones. We’ll have no funeral songs.”

“Let the birds sing them.” Auriane rested her head on her mother’s shoulder. Her body was so taut and battle-ready that Athelinda knew she did not feel as undaunted as she sounded.

“Even though we die tomorrow,” Auriane went on, more frailty in her voice now, “I don’t think our people will vanish from the earth…. Ramis said once…in coming ages our blood will mingle with the blood of others—and in nine generations’ time, when the wheel turns again, we will overrun and humble
them.”

“Ah, to be reborn in that time!”

“But she would say, Mother, it is as likely you would be reborn one of them as
one of us.”

“What an odd notion.”

“Mother, I understand none of this. Just when I think I do, life is unmasked—and beneath is an even more frightful mask…. Why must we suffer so? It is my evil…”

“No!” Athelinda gripped Auriane’s face in her hands and looked hard into her eyes in a way that made Auriane feel her mother’s strength. She was the daughter of Gandrida now, tributary of a great river of earth-born power. “Never say it more. I know an innocent heart, and I know an accursed one. First Hertha, then Odberht smeared you with blood-soaked mud, but it did not stick…. You live in grace, you die in grace, like the lily, like the swan. Why can you not know it!”

Auriane let sobs surge from her in welcome waves. Her whole body was overtaken with the rhythmic contractions of long-needed release, but she muffled the sound as best she could, lest she terrify the others sleeping nearby. Her mother’s hand crept over her own with the light, tentative movements of an autumn leaf; then Athelinda seized her hand with strength. When Auriane’s tears were spent and she felt peaceful and empty, she said simply, “Hylda’s oracle was false. I cannot save one flea.”