Raptor (48 page)

The province of Pannonia, he said, was more or less the point in Europe where the separate influences and interests of the Eastern and Western Empires collided. So the Emperor Anthemius at Rome—or, rather, the “King-Maker” Rikimer, who was the real power there—and the Emperor Leo at Constantinople were forever contending and conspiring against one another to push Pannonia’s imaginary dividing line this way or the other, to extend their respective domains of influence. Rome had long held and still maintained a firm grip on the garrison city of Vindobona at the Danuvius River frontier of the
entire
Roman Empire. But the southern reaches of Pannonia—including such sizable towns as Siscia and Sirmium, and such lesser settlements as this one—were continually being overrun by troops of one or the other half of the empire, and made to pledge allegiance, now to Rome, now to Constantinople.

Clearly, neither Rikimer nor Leo could be so brazen as to order any imperial legions in his half of the empire to go into combat against brother legions in the other’s half. So each contender employed foreign allies, or hired mercenaries, and put them under the command of supposedly “renegade” Roman officers. The hireling forces of Rome included the Scyrri of King Edika and troops imported from Asia, such as the Sarmatae of a king named Babai. That explained the mixed composition of that column I had seen on the move. The Emperor Leo, said my informant, relied mainly on his longtime confederates, the Ostrogoths, under their King Theudemir. Hearing that, of course, made me glad that I had not chosen to join the troop I saw that day.

“But what,” I asked, “accounts for the atrocity that happened here?”

“About thirty months ago,” said the wood-gatherer, “that conflict’s battle line was shifting back and forth in this very vicinity. But we assumed that we were, at the time, safely on the eastern side of the line. And, in our innocence, we gave provender to the men and horses of a troop of Theudemir’s Ostrogoths. That was a mistake. Very soon, Edika’s Scyrri made an assault that pushed the Ostrogoths well east of here. We were accused of having collaborated with the enemy, and it was Edika himself who decreed that we all suffer the same punishment of dismemberment. Those children whom you see with hands have been born since then. We are most anxious to see them grow up, and we earnestly hope that Edika will not return before they do. Now, stranger, can we offer you anything for your kind help with the wood? A meal? A pallet for the night?”

I declined the offer, and I believe it must have been the sentimental feminine part of my nature that inclined me to do so. I could imagine what toil and trouble it must have been for any of the hamlet’s women to prepare the meals she
had
to prepare. And I felt such pity and helplessness at the sight of all those maimed wretches that I had no wish to spend any more time among them. So I merely asked in which direction lay the city of Vindobona, and how far away.

“I have never gone there,” said the man. “But I know that there is a fine Roman road due east of here. It will take you north to the Danuvius and the city. The road is perhaps twenty-five Roman miles distant. From there to Vindobona, perhaps another twenty-five.”

Only one day’s steady riding, dawn to dusk, to reach the road, I calculated. Or two days riding leisurely. And to the city, another two days.

“But keep your eyes and ears wide open,” the man added. “The imperial ambitions and conflicts may be only simmering right now, but they can come to a boil in a moment, and you could find yourself in the cauldron. Remember, too, that anyone you meet may be a partisan of Rome or Constantinople, of Edika or Babai or Theudemir. If perhaps you favor one of those, and should foolishly confide it to the serpent spy of a different one, well…” And he showed me both his stumps.

I said I would be careful and closemouthed, and I wished him and his people a future happier than their past had been, and then I rode on.

However, even before I came to the Roman road, I fell victim to misadventure, and it involved no human serpent, but a real one. In late afternoon of the next day, I paused at a sparkling streamlet, dismounted to let Velox drink and knelt a little way upstream of him to take a drink of my own. I steadied myself with my right hand against a rock, a blackish rock mottled with green. Then those colors suddenly and violently squirmed, and I felt a sharp pain in my forearm. Of all the places where I might have leaned for support, I had picked the one where a snake was soaking up some last warm sunlight. And, of all the snakes that might have been sunning itself, this was the greenish-black and lethally venomous adder.

I snarled a curse and instantly smashed the reptile’s head with another rock. But then what to do? I had had no experience of dealing with snakebite, but I knew that my life could be at stake. All I could think of was that my juika-bloth, if it had been alive, would never have given the adder a chance to bite me. And Wyrd, if he had been still alive, would have told me now what to do.

“Whatever you do, do not move,” said a voice of authority, but it was not Wyrd’s.

I looked up to see a young man standing on the other side of the stream. He was of about my own age, but considerably taller and broader. He had long fair hair and a pale fuzz of first-growth beard, and he wore woods dress, but he was too handsome to be one of the local peasantry. Now I saw him reach for the knife in his belt and, remembering what Handless had told me about spies and speculatores, I made a grab for the short-sword at my own side.

“I said do not move!” the young man barked, and leapt easily across the streamlet. “You should not even have exerted yourself to kill the adder. Any movement makes the venom course more quickly through the veins.”

Well, I thought, if he was concerned about my welfare, then he was no enemy. I left my sword in its sheath and obeyed his order to stay still. Kneeling beside me, he slashed the right sleeve of my tunic and bared my arm, where, near the elbow, the twin punctures were bright red.

“Grit your teeth,” he said, as he pinched my skin there between his thumb and forefinger, then carefully positioned his blade to cut me.

“Hold, stranger,” I protested. “I had as soon die of poison as bleed to death.”

“Slaváith!” he said sternly. “Bleeding is what you need. But you will not bleed overmuch. You can rejoice that the serpent bit you where it did. Any part of the body’s flesh that can be pinched up between two fingers can be safely cut without risk of severing any vital blood vessel. Do as I say. Grit your teeth and look elsewhere.”

So I did, and gave only a stifled whimper at the fierce pain of his slashing away that collop of my skin and flesh.

I swallowed and asked, “Am I saved, then?”

“Ne, but that will help. So will this.” He whipped off his belt, wound it around my upper arm and cinched it tight. “Now put your forearm under the cold water. Hold it there and let it bleed. I must go and tether both our horses before they wander off. We will be here for some time.”

I was puzzled as to what sort of person this young man might be, and was more so when I saw him lead his horse out of the woods beyond the stream. It was as fine a Kehailan steed as my Velox, and the saddle and bridle were similar to my own, but richly garnished with silver bangles and studs. The young man was definitely of Germanic origin, though I could not identify the accent with which he spoke the Old Language. And, since he was neither a Roman nor any of those Asiatics whom Handless had mentioned, why was he equipped like a Roman cavalryman? For the time being, however, I was grateful enough to have his help that I asked only one question when he returned:

“Might we introduce ourselves before I die? My name is Thorn.”

“Then we have the same initial. I am called Thiuda.”

He did not inquire why my name was
only
an initial, perhaps because his own name was quite as odd as mine. Thiuda is a plural noun, and means “people.”

“Anyway,” he went on, “you are not likely to die, though you may wish you could when the snake’s poison takes effect. Here, drink this.”

He had plucked and brought back with him some stalks of the common spurge plant, and now he squeezed their milky, sticky sap into his flask—one exactly like my own—added water from the stream, briskly shook the mixture and handed the flask to me.

While I struggled to drink the bitter potion without gagging on it, Thiuda murmured, “That adder truly was most obliging. It was lying coiled upon its own best antidote.” He scraped a quantity of the green moss off the black rock, lifted my gashed arm from the water—the bleeding had diminished to an ooze—plastered the moss upon the wound and tied it there with a strip of cloth torn from the hem of his own tunic. He also loosened, then tightened again the belt around my upper arm.

I asked, in a thin voice, for the infusion of spurge had rather puckered my mouth, “Do you wander these forests just to minister to unfortunate vagrants?”

“I daresay I would aid anyone who had been struck by an adder. But I take you to be no ordinary vagrant peasant, since you are Romanly caparisoned. Would you perhaps be a deserter from some cavalry turma?”

“Ne, ni allis!” I said indignantly, but then had to laugh. “I wondered the same about you.”

He laughed too, and shook his head. “You tell first, Thorn. While you can talk coherently.”

He might yet, I thought, turn out to be a spy or speculator for one of the contenders here in Pannonia, but he would hardly be patching me together just to lop off my hands. So I told him truthfully how I had, some time back, been temporarily in service against the Huns with the Claudian Legion, and how I had been rewarded with my Velox and weapons and other items. I also told him, rather too condescendingly, that I had lately earned a respectable fortune in the fur trade, that I was nowadays traveling only for pleasure, and I concluded, “I shall of course be happy to pay you for your ministrations, Thiuda, as I would pay a professional medicus.”

“Akh, one of the
benevolent
rich, are you?” He gave me a hard look and said, even more loftily than I had spoken, “Hear me, you malapert. I am an Ostrogoth. I would not ask pay or thanks for my good deeds any more than I would ask shrift of my wicked ones.”

Contrite, I said, “It is for me to ask forgiveness. That remark of mine was exceedingly stupid. I should have known better, for I am myself of Gothic lineage and pride.” But I had to add, “I have heard other Goths speak, and you do not sound like one.”

He laughed again. “Naí—I mean ja. You are right. I must endeavor to shed my Greek accent. I have lived too long in the east, and only recently returned to my own nation. Only recently, but too late.”

“I do not understand.”

“I hastened here to join my people in combat against the loathly Scyrri. But the battle was over before I could lend assistance. It was fought on the river Bolia, one of the Danuvius tributaries, and I did not hear of the engagement until too late.”

He sounded downcast, so I said sincerely, “I am sorry your people were defeated.”

“Oukh—I mean ne! They were not! How dare you even think so?” he said severely, but laughed yet again. He was obviously a merry-natured young man, at least when I was not foolishly provoking him to haughtiness. “My people simply did not need
me,
and only for that am I sorry. Ja, they soundly trounced the Scyrri. They slaughtered many and sent the remnants fleeing westward.”

“I believe I saw some of those retreating.”

“There could not have been many of them,” Thiuda said with satisfaction, and added proudly, “I hear that it was my own father who slew their contemptible King Edika.”

“I am pleased to learn that someone did,” I said, remembering Handless and his fellow villagers.

“Akh, well, there still remain the Sarmatae of King Babai to be fought, so I shall yet have an opportunity to bloody my blade. But at present, after what happened to their Scyrri allies, the Sarmatae are prudently in hiding. So I decided, during this lull, to visit the city of Vindobona. I was born near there, and have not seen my birthplace in many years.”

“Indeed? I am also going—” I began, but was interrupted by a sudden sensation of giddiness. “I mean… I will… when I feel better…” Then I could say no more, for there was a rush of bile into my throat.

“Go ahead, lean over the water and vomit,” Thiuda said cheerfully. “You may as well start getting used to it. Let me just loosen and tighten that belt again. Then I will lay a fire and spread our sleeping furs.”

He continued to chatter good-humoredly while he went about those chores, but I have no recollection of what he said. Nor do I remember much about my ensuing period of illness, though Thiuda later told me that it endured for three nights and nearly three days, during which, he said, I frequently complained of seeing two of everything about me, including himself, and at other times talked so confusedly that I could not be comprehended.

I do recall that Thiuda now and then cooked a meal, but not because I ate any of it; quite the contrary, because the smell of its cooking so violently nauseated me. I recall also that I was most of the time in excruciating pain, my stomach cramping, my head and every muscle aching; and that Thiuda at regular intervals, day and night, loosened or tightened the belt about my right arm, until he finally dispensed with it altogether; and that Thiuda also had often to restrain me—sometimes waking from his sleep to do it—to prevent my clawing the moss poultice off my forearm, because the scab forming on the gash itched so maddeningly.

The only thing, as I recall, that I was capable of doing for myself—and the only thing that Thiuda would let me do, either to spare me embarrassment or to spare himself disgust—was to go lurching off into the woods on the many, many occasions that I had to spew my bowels empty. I am thankful that I had at least the will and the strength to do that, and to undress my nether parts myself, thereby to keep from soiling my clothes and, not incidentally, to keep secret from Thiuda the nature of those parts of myself.

Anyway, on what Thiuda said was the third day after our meeting, my head finally ceased aching and my mind cleared and I was speaking rationally and my various other pains and cramps diminished—everything but the itching of the wound—and Thiuda declared that I had survived my envenoming.