Raptor (15 page)

That was why I had waited for her husband to absent himself. He might not have been so easily daunted by the juika-bloth, and might have summoned some patrolling vigiles to interrogate me or confiscate my one piece of money or even arrest me. Of course, a silver solidus is worth only one-sixteenth of the value of a gold solidus, but, nevertheless, it was an extraordinary amount of money to be carried by a scruffy peasant youth. My possession of it could have proclaimed me not just a runaway slave but a thieving one as well.

Since there
were
cohortes vigilum patrolling Vesontio during all the watches of both day and night, I did not risk stealing anything to eat or seeking some hideaway in which to sleep. My knife had cost me half of my solidus, but the purchase had left in my waist wallet a comfortably jingling number of denarius and sesterce coins. And now, in wintertime, the city’s many gasts-razna and hospitium inns that catered to summer visitors were quite empty, so they had accordingly reduced the prices they demanded for bed and board. I managed to find one of the very cheapest boardinghouses—a small hut with a single guest room let by an old widow woman so nearly blind that she did not comment on my uncouth appearance or even my companion eagle. I stayed there for two or three days, sleeping on a pallet not much more soft or warm than the bare riverside ground I had lately been used to, and living on the simple gruels, that were all the old woman could cook in her nearly sightless condition. Meanwhile, I roamed the city’s humbler quarters, in search of clothing I could afford.

There were numerous mean little shops, all of them kept by elderly Jews, that traded in the apparel cast off by folk of higher classes. In one of them, after I and the cringing and hand-wringing old proprietor had haggled long over the price, I bought a woman’s gown, much worn and faded, but still serviceable. And while the Jew tied it into a bundle, muttering that I had denied him the least nummus of profit on the transaction, I filched and stuck inside my smock a woman’s kerchief, and got away without paying for that. In another shop, I bought a man’s leather tunic, much scuffed and wrinkled, and trousers of coarse Ligurian wool, not yet quite threadbare, that terminated in heavier-woven “foot-mittens.” And there, too, while the Jew was rolling and tying them, I purloined another item, a man’s leather cap. It shames me now to remember how I pilfered from those shopkeepers who were almost as poor as myself. But I was young then, and inexperienced in the world, and I shared the attitude of the rest of that world—which is to say that not even the law-enforcing cohortes vigilum would have frowned at anyone’s stealing from a
Jew.

What little money remained to me after those purchases I spent for a substantial string of smoked sausage that would keep for a long time. Then, on my last evening in Vesontio, I tested my two disparate identities and their effect on other people. First, in my rented room, I donned the leather tunic over my smock, and drew on the trousers, tucking the skirt of my smock down inside them, and put on my boots over the foot-mittens, and set the leather cap on my head. Leaving the juika-bloth in the room, and wearing my sheepskin only casually slung across my shoulders, I went down to the waterfront street of prostitutes, and strolled along it with manly stride. The painted women sitting in doorways and on windowsills flipped open their heavy furs to give me glimpses of their bodies, while they variously cooed at me, whistled at me, called, “Hiri, aggilus, du badi!” and several of them all but leapt into the street to drag me into their lairs. I gave them a cool, manly, distant smile and continued walking, quite pleased that they had considered me worth soliciting.

I returned to my room and changed clothes, now shedding everything but my waist-high hose, putting on the gown, tying the kerchief over my head, and wearing my sandals instead of my boots. Again draping the sheepskin loosely over my costume, I went back to that waterfront street, and sauntered along it with a feminine gait. Where before the prostitutes had called, “Come here, angel, to bed!” they now eyed me coldly, kept their furs bundled about them, and some sneered or hissed at me, and some snarled, “Huarboza, horina, uh big daúr izwar!”—“Keep going, whore, and find your own perch!” Since I was wearing neither jewelry nor paint, they took me for a female of low class, and a newcomer who might be competition for them. I gave them a warm, womanly, compassionate smile and continued walking, quite pleased that they had considered me femininely pretty enough to be a fledgling prostitute.

So I was satisfied that I could dress as befitted either of my two natures, and do it sufficiently well to convince other people. Alone in the world I might be, and friendless and poor and defenseless and fearful of my fate, but I could at least—like the creatures of the wild—assume the patterns and colors and configurations of my surroundings, and blend into them, and be taken for a normal human being. I was even encouraged to vow to myself that, if I lived long enough, someday I would dress and adorn myself as the very
highest
class of man
and
woman.

Right now, though, since I was about to go again across country, there was no need for me to be either male or female. I did put on the masculine trousers over my hose, but only for their welcome warmth. With my head uncovered by either kerchief or cap, with my smock and sheepskin and boots my only visible apparel, I was once more a rustic peasant of indeterminate sex. I threaded my new knife’s sheath onto my waist rope, rolled my sausage and my other acquisitions into the bundle I carried, lifted the juika-bloth to my shoulder and left Vesontio behind.

This time I went due east, away from the busy road and the busy Dubis River and every other evidence of civilization. After passing Vesontio’s outlying salt works and timbering camps, I was in the deep woods, the trackless wilderness.

Except for the comparatively few places on this continent where men have long been settled—as farmers, herders, vine growers, orchardists, miners, timber cutters—almost all of Europe, from Britannia to the Black Sea, has been densely forested since the beginning of time, and still was when I wandered over it, and still is, for all I know. However extensive may be the cleared and cultivated patches, and however numerous may be their human inhabitants, and however imposing may be their towns and cities, those clearings are but islands in the great primeval sea of trees.

As I tramped eastward into the forest, I was leaving the lands of the Burgund people for those of the Alamanni. Here I could expect to find no henhouses to plunder or hayricks to take shelter in. The Alamanni are nomads, who have never planted farms or vineyards or even homesteads. As the saying goes, “they live all their lives on the backs of their horses.” The Alamanni do not have one king, as most nations do—or even two kings, as the Burgunds then did—but have a multitude, because they call “king” the petty chief of every paltry tribe of them. Those Alaman bands constantly roam the forests, and live off the land, and live by their wits and woodcraft, and so should I now have to do.

Up to this point in my journeying, the winter weather had been tolerably mild. But here I was in the high forelands of the immensely higher peaks named in Latin the Alpes. And these lower mountains that I was traversing are called in the Old Language the Hrau Albos—the
Raw
Alpes—because of their savage winters. Savage indeed was this year’s winter, and ever more savage it became as I pressed on eastward. Even at midday, the woods were dark and bleak and cold, and snow fell on snow, and I was forever breasting an ice-flecked wind that might have flayed an ox.

Of woodcraft, all I knew was what little I had learned from experience while roving about the Balsan Hrinkhen. I did know enough to take care not to lose my flint and puffball tinder from my waist wallet. I guarded them as conscientiously as I did the precious phial of the Virgin’s milk. And I was capable enough at finding deadwood with which to build a fire, and I knew never to make a fire under a tree or rock shelf burdened with snow that would loosen in the heat and fall and kill the fire.

I had become proficient enough with my sling to drop an occasional tree squirrel or snow hare, but even the squirrels were few, while the white hares were difficult to see against the snow. The mountain brooks were too small to contain any fish larger than minnows. So I was often weak and faint with hunger, but I only infrequently ate of my coil of sausage. For one reason, I wanted to make it last as long as possible and, for another, eating it made me insatiably thirsty. I would have thought that eating snow would allay that thirst but, curiously, it did not. Therefore I resorted to the sausage only when I camped beside a brook that was of a size to have some water flowing beneath its coating of ice.

It was my juika-bloth that taught me how to find food more easily. The eagle remained always plump and healthy and strong, and never seemed to have to fly far or for long to find some prey. I watched, and saw that it simply investigated rock clefts and found therein all manner of serpents and lizards deep asleep in hibernation—sometimes great bundles of snakes intertwined for mutual warmth.

So I emulated the bird, and carried a long stick that I poked repeatedly through the deep snow as I slogged along, and by that means sometimes found a small cave in the rocks or a cranny in the ground that turned out to be the den of a hibernating hedgehog or dormouse or tortoise. I was most pleased, though, when I came upon the dens of sleeping marmots. Marmot meat is both tasty and loaded with fat, which helped maintain my body heat for a long time after I had eaten it. Also, a marmot’s den is always full of nuts, roots, seeds and dried berries that it has stored for a light repast in case it awakens betimes, and those make a delicious side dish for the marmot meat.

I was prudent enough not to investigate any large caves that I came across, in case they might be the winter quarters of hibernating bears. I was not at all certain that I could kill a bear, even in its deepest sleep, with one thrust of my knife—and I knew that the one thrust would be all that I would be allowed. I also took care to avoid some other animals, bigger than myself, that were still awake and active in winter. Several times I climbed trees to get out of the way of a massively antlered elk or a high-humped bison. And once I had to stay high in a tree all night, while a gigantic úrus—it was at least a foot taller than myself at its shoulders—enraged at not being able to get at me, rampaged and bellowed and tore up the ground with its hoofs and chopped at the tree trunk with its fearsome horns.

There were many days when I thought I would die of hunger or thirst, and many nights when I thought I would freeze to death. I kept wishing that I would come across one of those wandering bands of Alamanni, who might let me join them and share in their hunts and learn how to live and thrive as a nomad.

Almost as often, I wished that I
might
die, if only I could go to the pagan afterland called in the Old Language “the abode of the chosen”—Walis-Halla—which some pagans believe is situated on the far side of the moon. (The pagan Romans contorted the name Walis-Halla into Avalonnis, and believe it to be some sort of Fortunate Isles, situated far west of Europe in the Ocean Sea.) Anyway, both the pagan Germanic peoples and the pagan Romans say that the afterland has six seasons a year,
and none of them winter.
The seasons consist of two bright springs, two sweet summers and two golden autumns of bounteous harvest. In my frequent moods of despair, that notion held much appeal for me. However, considering the sinful life I had led so far, it was more probable that I would “die twice,” as the Germanic Christians believed the wicked do—dying first into a fiery hell, then into a frozen “Foggy Hell.” Or perhaps, I mused, especially when I was dizzy with hunger, I already
had
died twice and was
in
that unbearably cold Foggy Hell.

Occasionally on my way I came upon evidence that the Alamanni had passed that way before me, but not recently. Sometimes I would find nothing more than some split stones, but on looking closely I could tell that they had been split by fire, meaning that some person or some body of persons had laid a campfire there. Sometimes I would emerge from the forest into a broad clearing, where a goodly number of people obviously had camped for quite some time, but the growth of underbrush indicated that that had been a long while ago. In some of those places I found other tokens of Alaman occupation. There might be a flat rock or a rough wooden plank in which was chiseled the cross of four right-angled arms that represents Thor’s hammer being swung, and under it would be runes inscribed in a circle or triangle or in serpentine loops.

Only one of those artifacts could I decipher in its entirety, and this is all it said:
“I, Wiw, made these runes”
—as if Wiw, whoever he was, had laboriously carved the message just to proclaim to posterity that he had carved the message. But others I could at least make out to be what were called in Gothic “the favorable runes, the victorious runes, the medicinal runes, the bitter runes.” Each kind carved slightly differently, those were employed, respectively, to thank some pagan god for some blessing or favor, to thank some god for having helped win some battle, to invoke some god to heal some wound or illness and to call upon some god for vengeance against some hated person or enemy tribe.

And in one of those old clearings I found a very large piece of wood, lying flat on the ground, bearing a long message that was carved entirely in the more modern Gothic script. The wood was weatherworn and mossy, but the words had not been obliterated, and I could read them all:

Passerby, short is my say.

Stop and read these runes.

This somber slab covers a beautiful woman.

Her name was Juhiza.

She was my light and my only love.

What I wished she wished also.

What I shunned she shunned also.

Good she was, and chaste, loyal, discreet.

She walked nobly and spoke kindly.

Passerby, I have finished.

Go.