Raptor (57 page)

“Indeed? I have not lately been following the affairs of state. Much too busy with my own. I have not even bothered to collect and decipher any messages from my agents abroad. And my converse with—with those persons to whom I have talked—well, we never touched on matters of great moment. What is so new and so sudden, Amalric?”

He said slyly, “You must have been exploring, ahem, fair parts of our city, indeed. The chief topic of other people’s conversation is, of course, our new emperor in Ravenna.”

“What?
Another?!
So soon?”

“Ja. Glycerius was toppled from the imperial throne and replaced by one Julius Nepos. Glycerius has been consoled for his loss by being made bishop of Salona in Illyricum.”

“Iésus! Glycerius was a soldier, then an emperor. Now he is a
bishop?
And who in the world is Julius Nepos?”

“A favorite of the Emperor Leo of Constantinople. Nepos and Leo were somehow related by marriage.”

“Were? They no longer are?”

“How can they be?” Amalric shook his head at me. “Have you not even heard the most resounding news of all: that Leo is dead?”

“Credat Judaeus Apella!” I exclaimed. That was a fashionably smart remark that I had picked up from my acquaintances in higher society. It meant “Let Apella the Jew believe it!” or, in other words, “I find it hard to!”

“Believe it, believe it,” said Amalric. “I told you these are confusing times. Almost catastrophic in their rapid succession of events.”

“Iésus,” I said again. “Leo had been ruling the Eastern Empire all my life, I think. And I assumed he would go on ruling forever.”

“Akh, there is still an Emperor Leo in Constantinople. But now it is his grandson, Leo the Second. That one is just a child, five or six years old, so there will certainly be some regent helping him rule. Meanwhile, if you have not heard
this
—both of the brother kings of the Burgunds have died in this same springtime, both Gundiok and Khilperic.”

“Gudisks Himins,” I muttered. “Those two certainly
had
ruled all during my life.”

“Now their sons are co-regnant. Gundobad at Lugdunum and Godegisel at Genava. And will you yet have heard this? That the king of the Ostrogoths, Theudemir, also has died. Not of old age, like the others, but of a fever.”

“I had not heard. And does his death, too, somehow contribute to the unsettled condition of the empire?”

“Oh vái, of course it does. Theudemir had for years been paid by the late Leo the First to keep the peace along the northern borders of the Eastern Empire. Actually, it was more of a bribe—to keep the Ostrogoths themselves from being troublesome. Theudemir did that, but he also efficiently fought off invasions and depredations by other outlander tribes and nations.”

“Ja,” I said. “I have seen and heard something of Theudemir’s prowess in that respect.”

“Well, then. With both the Western and Eastern Empires now in disarray, from kings and emperors on down, and with the Ostrogoths now leaderless, those outlanders who have long been held at bay could judge this to be their moment of opportunity. Indeed, one nation already has. The Sarmatae of King Babai.”

“I have heard of that people, too,” I said. “What have they done now?”

“They have seized and occupied the castrum city of Singidunum, on that northern border of the empire. But—let us hope—perhaps not for long. There comes word that Theudemir’s son has succeeded to kingship of the Ostrogoths, and he may prove to be his father’s son in more than name. He is reported to be leading the Ostrogoths on a march to besiege and retake that city.”

I remembered Thiuda’s words: “You will find me in combat… and I invite you to fight beside me.” I asked Amalric, “Where is that city of Singidunum?”

“In Moesia Prima, Your Worship. Far downstream on this very river Danuvius”—he gestured toward it—“where the Danuvius becomes the boundary between Moesia Prima and that barbarian land now called Old Dacia. Perhaps three hundred and sixty Roman miles from here.”

“Then the quickest way to get there would be by the river?”

“Akh, ja. No sane man would wish to ride horseback all that way, through forest wilderness and probably hostile peoples…” He paused and blinked. “But surely, Your Worship, you do not contemplate
going
there?”

“I do.”

“Into the middle of a
war?
You will find there no prospects for investment. No comforts and diversions such as you have enjoyed here. Nothing fair—and, if I may make so bold, no
body
fair—to explore, as you phrased it.”

I smiled. “There are things more important, and far more interesting, than crass commerce. More inviting than indolence and entertainment and even fair bodies.”

“But… but…”

“Right now, I am in need of a refreshing long sleep. However, before I retire, I shall visit a fletcher and purchase a good stock of arrows. While I am doing that, Amalric, send someone to the riverside. Have him hire for me a boatman willing to transport me to Singidunum—or, if the man is timorous, somewhere reasonably close to that city. And he must have a scow or barge big enough to carry my horse as well. Then see to the stocking of the vessel. Provisions for myself and the crew. Ample fodder for my horse—and not just hay, but good grain to strengthen him for the rigors ahead. Has Velox been properly exercised every day while I have been here? He will have to stand idle during the voyage.”

“Really,
Your Worship,” Amalric protested, looking hurt.

“Akh, I know, I know. I need not inquire, or instruct you, and I apologize. I trust you to take care of everything needful. Then have ready your reckoning of all I owe you, for I wish to depart at dawn.”

The departure had not been forced on me, nor had I only impetuously decided on it, but the reason for it had come at an opportune time. Neither Thornareikhs nor Veleda would regret leaving Vindobona. I could happily live the rest of my life without ever again so much as glimpsing on some street the despicable widuwo Dengla. As for those women and girls who had been my friends, or more than friends… well, I had every expectation that there would be more of those wherever I went.

I was ready and eager to be journeying again. I looked forward to renewing nay friendship with Thiuda, and mingling for the first time with my other Gothic kinsmen, and paying my respects to their—to our—new king. I also was eager, as I long had been, to experience and partake of a real war. So it was with no reluctance whatever, no looking back, that I shed my identities of Thornareikhs and Thornaricus—and, at least for now, that of Veleda—and set forth into the river mists of the next day’s dawn, once more as Thorn.

The voyage downriver was lazily pleasant, for the Danuvius wended first eastward from Vindobona, then, after some days, turned due south, so it took me and Velox and the bargemen quite quickly into the golden summer that was moving north. There was a great deal of traffic on the water, every sort of craft from barges like ours to the navy’s patrolling dromo boats to immense merchant vessels, some of those wearing sails as well as banks of oars. But there was not much else to catch the eye along the way, because the river’s banks were thickly and monotonously forested, except where those green walls were interrupted, here and there, by a logging camp or a small farmstead or a fisher village. At several of those we stopped to purchase fresh produce or fish to supplement the rations Amalric had loaded aboard for us.

We came upon only two settlements of any size, both of them on the river’s right bank. The first, situated in the province of Valeria, where the Danuvius makes its great bend to the south, was the onetime frontier castrum city of Aquincum. But that place was all tumbledown ruins, and the barge’s master, a man named Oppas, told me why. Over the past century, Aquincum had been so often devastated by marauding Huns and other outlanders that Rome had withdrawn its Legio II Adiutrix from the castrum there, after which the city was deserted by all its once numerous inhabitants.

The other settlement we came to was the naval base of Mursa, situated where the river Dravus pours into the Danuvius. That was a purely utilitarian place of wharfs, piers, dry docks, repair yards, warehouses, horrea storehouses and many drab barracks. There we were peremptorily flagged by a watchtower sentry. When the boatmen steered us close to the tower and poled us to a stop, the sentry leaned from his parapet to impart a piece of advice from his commanding navarchus: that we travel no farther downstream.

South of here, the sentry informed us, there was disorder and danger, what with the rampageous Sarmatae in control of Old Dacia on the far side of the Danuvius, and with the Ostrogoths controlling Moesia Prima on the near side, and with the strategic city of Singidunum being contested between the two foes, perhaps doomed to become another ruin like Aquincum. So the Roman navy had bidden its Pannonian Fleet no longer to patrol the Danuvius between here and the gorge called the Iron Gate, far downstream. Of course, said the sentry, beyond that point and all the way to the Black Sea, the river’s shipping was under the protection of the Moesian Fleet. But here and now, along a stretch of nearly three hundred Roman miles, from Mursa to the Iron Gate, the Danuvius was undefended by dromo vessels, and any trading or freighting or passenger craft must proceed at their own risk.

In some consternation, Oppas asked, “But what of your fleet’s other base, down at Taurunum?”

“Have you never been there, bargeman? Taurunum is directly across the Savus River from the afflicted Singidunum, and will likely share its fate. Our navarchus is not fool enough to keep any of our vessels based there, until and unless the Sarmatae are repulsed.”

“By the Styx!” growled Oppas. “I had reckoned on finding some kind of freight there, to bring back upriver.”

The sentry shrugged. “The navarchus has not
forbidden
anybody’s voyaging to and fro along that length of the Danuvius. My orders are only to counsel against your doing so.”

The barge’s master and his four crewmen all turned to look at me, and not very kindly. That was understandable; my destination, Singidunum, was almost exactly midway down that unpatrolled stretch of the river. During the exchange with the sentry, I had been honing my short-sword with a whetstone, and idly went on doing so, as I said:

“If other vessels are heeding that counsel and going into hiding, Oppas, then there very well may be freight waiting—even spoiling while it waits—and you should get a very good price for its transport.”

“Balgs-daddja!” he snorted. “Only to have it pirated from me before I can get it safely upriver. Or to have my barge sunk under me. Ne, ne. Under the circumstances, we would be foolhardy to travel on.”

“The circumstances,” I calmly reminded him, “include my having already paid you for my passage.”

“Akh! Without a load that my men and I can bring back, and live to deliver, and get paid for doing it, then I charged you only
half
what I should have demanded.”

“That was not specified when we made our contract,” I said, still imperturbably, and still honing my sword. “Besides, when I paid what you earlier asked”—this was the truth—“it took very nearly the last nummus in my purse. Now you will honor your contract.”

Although I had put Thornareikhs behind me, I would still—and, in fact, still do—employ that useful stratagem I had learned by being Thornareikhs. That is, if one assumes an air of authority and fully expects to be obeyed, then other people, more often than not, do obey. I went on:

“I will allow this concession. You may land me well short of Singidunum, and thereby not take yourselves too close into hazard. But to that I append a specification of my own. I must see the city, however far distant, before I disembark. I will not be landed in some remote forest.”

Oppas could only grind his teeth and say uncertainly, “What if we choose to unship you right here? What if we help you hasten ashore by pitching you overboard?” His men all nodded and muttered menacingly.

I said, “I have told you that I go to Singidunum to fight the Sarmatae.” I plucked a hair from my head and stroked it along the edge of my blade; the long hair became two short hairs. “It might profit me to practice some slaying beforehand. And I imagine this barge, even unmanned, would eventually drift me to my destination.”

“Well said, stripling!” the sentry shouted from above us. To Oppas he said, “If I were you, bargeman, I would chance the pirates and barbarians.”

So Oppas, though grudgingly and with many ugly profanities, bade his men lift their poles and let the barge go on. The remainder of the voyage was not very pleasurable, and Oppas and I had no further friendly converse, and his men grumbled mutinously and continuously. I took care, from this time on, never to turn my back on any of them, and at night I slept as Wyrd had done, with my sword unsheathed and near, with one hand clenching a pebble over a basin and my other hand wound with Velox’s halter rope, so I could feel if he gave a start for any reason.

Although this run from Mursa to Singidunum was only a third as long as the distance we had come from Vindobona to Mursa—conditions being what they were, this stage of the voyage seemed to take many more days and nights. However, we traveled the whole way unmolested. Except for the occasional fishing skiff or peat scow, timorously hugging the shore, we had the whole Danuvius to ourselves. It seemed that even the river pirates must have decided to go to ground until the warring Sarmatae and Ostrogoths went away.