Raptor (128 page)

“I can believe that. I know Witigis.”

“Now tell me. How many others besides yourself were posted at a distance from Bononia? How many might Brunjo not have had time to collect before he charged the Roman columns?”

“I cannot be sure. I know where three others were stationed before I was assigned my place.”

“I hope they are still at their posts, or somewhere to be found. I shall have work for them to do.”

We came to where Tulum had left his horse tethered to a loose paving-stone of the road. The night had lightened enough for me to see that the signifer was a man younger than myself, tall and strongly built, wearing cavalry leather armor. What had made him so nearly invisible was that he had obscured his pale Ostrogoth complexion and beard with a smearing of marsh mud. As we proceeded, leading our horses, I recounted to him everything that had happened since Concordia. I concluded by repeating what I had read of the torches’ message.

“Everything else, Tulum, you know, except for what I have sworn to myself—here, this very night—that I will make Tufa pay for his treachery and savagery.”

“Good. How can I help?”

“I am going into Bononia, and there I shall disappear. You will circle wide around the city. Find as many of those surviving lookouts as you can, and tell them to report to me. Then you go on northward at a good gallop. To Herduic at Verona—or to whichever of our officers you may encounter before—tell everything that has occurred and is occurring here. Be sure the word gets to Theodoric, so that he knows why I have not returned. It may take much time for me to get close enough to Tufa to strike at him. Once you have delivered the news, well… you have missed much of our war, Tulum. Go and join the fighting at the Addua or wherever it is now being waged.”

“Gladly, Saio Thorn. But how, if you are disappearing inside Bononia, are the men here to report to you?”

“To a surrogate of Saio Thorn, I should have said. I remember seeing a fountain in the central market square. The market is a crowded place, of course, so strangers will be inconspicuous. Have the men doff and hide their armor and weapons. Wearing only street dress, they are to loiter about the fountain—day after day, if necessary—until they are addressed by a certain woman.”

“A woman?”

“They are to respect and obey her as if she were wearing my own insignia of marshalcy. Make sure they remember her name. She will introduce herself as Veleda.”

On arriving in Bononia again, I hired a stall at a stable and left Velox there, along with most of what belongings I had brought from Verona, including even my borrowed sword. I took away with me only a few necessities, among them the two articles of my Veleda attire that I had packed just in case I should find use for them. One was the beaded hipband undergarment that, as Veleda, I always wore to conceal my virile organ and to affect Roman-womanish modesty. The other was the coiled bronze Haustaths breast guard that, as Veleda, I sometimes wore to make my bosom more prominent and pretty.

In shops around the market square I bought—“for my wife”—only rudimentary feminine raiment: gown, kerchief and sandals. Then I slipped into a secluded and unfrequented alley and quickly changed. My masculine clothes and boots I simply left there, for any beggar who might want them. Next I sought out a cheap taberna for visiting traders and rented a room—“while I wait for my husband to arrive and join me,” I told the caupo, lest he be reluctant to admit a woman traveling alone. Over the next three or four days, I purchased more apparel, all of the best quality, and some costly cosmetics and a few really good ornaments of Corinthian aes. Then, finely dressed and adorned, I left the lowly taberna and presented myself at Bononia’s most elegant hospitium. As I expected, I found the hospes there not at all chary of renting very expensive chambers to such a beautiful and well-spoken and obviously well-to-do lady traveler as myself.

I had made Thorn “disappear.” It would be up to Veleda to stalk the prey. I had decided on that because I remembered the warning of the old gravedigger. According to him, others before me had made attempts on the person or the life of Bononia’s legatus, so now no one was allowed into the man’s presence without being scrutinized and searched and avouched incapable of doing harm to him. It meant that I had to devise a killing weapon that was invisible and undetectable. I already had one in mind, but it was a weapon that could be employed only by a woman, and only at a certain moment—the moment that I well knew from my own experience both as man and woman—the one moment of all moments when
any
man is most vulnerable and helpless. To bring Tufa to that moment, though, I had first to scrape acquaintance with him, and do it in such a way that seemed not at all of my own doing.

So I went again to the market square. At the shop stall of a tool vendor, while I examined various whetstones and finally purchased one of them—“for filing my nails,” I explained to the admiring but bemused merchant—I scanned the crowds moving about. In a thriving Roman city like Bononia, there are people of all the world’s nationalities to be seen, and of course I did not know the face of every man among Theodoric’s thousands of warriors. But almost everybody in the marketplace was busy on some business. I had no trouble in identifying the one man who was unbusily idling about the central fountain and looking very bored. I waited until I could be sure that I was the only person keeping an eye on him. Then I sauntered over and said in an undertone:

“Did the signifer Tulum post you here?”

Instantly he snapped to the military posture of rigid attention and barked, “Ja, Lady Veleda!” Several strollers turned to stare.

I stifled a smile and muttered, “Easy. Be easy. Let us seem old friends casually met. Sit with me here on the fountain curbing.” He did so, but still stiffly. I asked, “How many of you did Tulum find?”

“Three, my lady. The signifer has now ridden on northward. We three have waited here for you, as instructed, taking turns at loitering close by this fountain.”

“Beckon the others to join us.”

The three cavalrymen were named Ewig, Kniva and Hruth. If they found it queer to be submitting themselves to the orders of a woman, they refrained from showing it. In fact, they maintained such martial demeanor and bearing that I had repeatedly to whisper for them to unbend.

“As well as we have been able to ascertain,” said Ewig, “we and Tulum are the only survivors of Brunjo’s century. Tulum told us that you and the Saio Thorn are here to avenge our fallen fellows by slaying the bestial General Tufa, and we are ready—ne, we are burning—to assist in whatever way you command.”

“Let us walk while we talk,” I said, because we were attracting notice. Various women passing by, even some ladies of quality, were casting envious glances at me, attended as I was by three such stalwarts.

“Our quarry, the despicable General Tufa,” I said as I steered them in the direction of my hospitium, “is at present in Ravenna, some forty miles east. But he must eventually return to his legatus duties here, so it is here that I shall wait for him.” They gave me sidelong looks, so I added, “I and our Saio Thorn, I should say. But Thorn must remain out of sight until the time comes to strike. That building yonder—take note of it—is the hospitium where I am quartered, and where you are to report to me. Now, there are various tongues spoken in this city, including our own, but of course Latin is the most common. Are any of you fluent in it?”

Kniva said he could fairly well understand and be understood in Latin. The other two said apologetically that they could not.

“Then, Kniva, you will be my helper here inside Bononia, and you, Hruth and Ewig, will be my speculatores outside. Ewig, I want you to take horse and hasten eastward along the Via Aemilia to where the Ravenna road branches off. Doing your best to be inconspicuous, you are to lurk in that vicinity and watch for Tufa’s leaving Ravenna, and then come galloping headlong to tell me. I will hope to hear you report very soon that he is coming this way. But if he seems to be riding toward some other destination, I need to know that too. Go. Ride. Habái ita swe!”

Ewig started to snap his arm up in a salute, but I frowned, so he dropped it, mumbled, “At your command, my lady,” and strode off.

I turned to Hruth. “I want you to ride there also and prowl that same area, but you are to watch mainly by night. Ravenna is kept informed of the progress of the war by torch signals. You will intercept those messages for me.”

I was quite sure that a simple horse soldier could not read, write or even set down numbers, so I did not try to explain to Hruth the intricacies of the Polybian system. I simply told him how, every time he saw the lights, to make scratch marks on a leaf or a piece of bark to represent the lines of five and four torches, and additional marks to indicate in sequence those lights that got raised to communicate a letter.

“If you can do that,” I said, “I can read the marks.” Hruth regarded me with some awe, but swore he would most conscientiously comply. I went on, “I want every message recorded thus, and brought to me straightway. It may mean your having to ride back and forth almost every day, between there and here, after your having watched all night. But do it you must. Habái ita swe!”

“And my orders, my lady?” asked Kniva when Hruth had gone.

“I want you to get drunk and stay drunk.”

Kniva blinked. “My
lady?”

“I want you to go all about Bononia, drinking in every taberna and wineshop and gasts-razns—and buying drinks for the other guests. Here is a purse of silver so you can afford it. In both Latin and our Old Language, you are to proclaim that you are celebrating because you have recently enjoyed a nightlong revel of the most delicious and delirious sexual pleasure you have ever known.”

Kniva looked stunned. “My
lady?”

“You are to boast drunkenly and loudly, in both languages, that you spent that night with the most beautiful, most accomplished, most wanton whore you ever bedded. Say that she is newly arrived in Bononia, that she is hellishly expensive, and that she is fastidious about the partners she accepts, but that she is incomparable in the sexual arts, well worth the cost and the courting.”

Kniva looked staggered. “My
lady?”

“Ja, the lady Veleda, of course. And be sure to mention the hospitium where the lady Veleda is to be found.”

Now Kniva looked as if he had been thunderstruck. “My
lady!
You will be besieged and solicited by every man in Bononia!”

“By one in particular, I trust. Look, Kniva.” I pointed. “Yonder is the palace and praesidium of the legatus Tufa. See how it is ringed about with armed guards stationed almost shoulder to shoulder. I must somehow get inside there, so I can kill—I mean, so I can somehow admit our Saio Thorn to do the killing. The villain Tufa is notorious as a lecherous libertine. I want him to hear of my talents and prowess, so he will invite me in there.”

“My
lady!”
Kniva protested in a strangled voice. “You would prostitute your body in this cause? You would actually—?”

“Merely spread the word that I do so, for a select few, for a substantial price. I assure you, Kniva, just as people are ever ready to believe the gossip that the most upstanding man has taken to drink, they will as readily believe that the most piously sedate woman has taken to promiscuity. It need only be told of her. Go, Kniva, and tell it everywhere.”

When I first installed myself in Tufa’s city of Bononia, it seemed that I would not have long to lie in wait for him. Only days after I had sent Hruth and Ewig eastward, Hruth came galloping back, delivering to me at my hospitium a small sheaf of tablets of bark.

“Last night…” he gasped. “Torches signaled… from northwest…”

I immediately set to deciphering the message. It began with Hruth’s having scratched these marks—| |||—and I nodded with satisfaction, for that indicated “first torch on the left, third on the right,” and
that
indicated “first alphabet group, third letter in the group,” and
that
indicated the rune thorn. As I had observed before, the same rune was insistently repeated here: thorn, thorn, thorn, clearly meaning “Theodoric” again. Then came just nine more runes, no two alike, giving me MEDLANPOS. There were any number of ways I could have broken that apart into separate abbreviations of Latin words, hence any number of plausible meanings I might have conjectured. Frowning at what I had set down, I muttered at Hruth:

“This is all of it?”

“Ja, Lady Veleda.”

“You are quite sure that you counted correctly?”

“I believe so, my lady. I did my best.”

So I puzzled some more over the message and, applying what I knew of Theodoric’s recent whereabouts, I perceived that the message should be broken thus: TH MEDLAN POS. “Median” does not look to be a Latin word, but I divined that it must be the torches’ condensation of “Mediolanum,” for that is the name of the biggest city in the vicinity of the Addua River. The third word had to be one of the inflections of the verb “possidere.” I grinned exultantly; this was good news. It meant that Theodoric had not been defeated or even stopped at the Addua. He and his army had forged on west of that river to “take possession” of Mediolanum. He already had done that, or was in the process of doing so, or at least was
about
to occupy the city that, after Rome, is the most populous in all Italia.

I said cheerfully, “You have done well, Hruth. I thank you and commend you.” I rather surprised him, I think, by giving him a comradely, not very ladylike, clap on his shoulder. “If this news does not yank Tufa out of Ravenna, the man must be already dead. In any case, you hasten back to your watching-post. I trust you will be quick and efficient in bringing to me every further message.”

Hruth could not have got far outside Bononia again before he would have passed his fellow trooper galloping in. It was only two hours or so later that Ewig’s horse skidded to a halt in the courtyard of the hospitium. Lurching into my chambers, Ewig gasped, “Tufa… this morning… emerged from Ravenna…”