The Centurion's Empire (16 page)

"I don't even have the men to defend this part of my brother's kingdom. This did not worry you when Bishop Paeder was
poisoned, and you first realized that the assassins were still in pursuit."

"But we didn't realize that the Master had nowhere safe to hide."

"Well, you shall damn well have to learn to cut stone and build another chamber. In the meantime, Vitellan will stay in
my care, and in the service of King Ethelred of Wessex."

"No! He is ours," shrieked Gentor, jumping to his feet in a flurry of snow. "Only we can protect him."
Shouting at high authority was overstepping the mark in itself, and it was time to remind Gentor of it. Alfred unfolded
his arms, let a hand fall to the pommel of his sword, then began to advance. Gentor tried to rally his defiance, but failed.
He took a step back, caught his foot on something hidden in the snow and fell sprawling. Alfred glared down at his
vanquished foe. To the onlookers it seemed as if the Prince had pushed him over by magic.

"You could not protect the Frigidarium from those who have been pursuing Vitellan through time, Gentor. Go now,
build a more secret chamber, then Vitellan will return to you. While I guard him he will show us how to fight as the
Romans did. We shall impose the Pax Romana on the Danes, and the land will be even more safe for your Master's
sleep."

"Lucia's descendants nearly poisoned him while he was in your care," whined Gentor.

"While you stood behind his back. I understand you, Gentor," he said as he nodded and allowed himself a grim smile.

"Without him you are just a churl, but while Vitellan is in that chamber you are the keeper of an immortal, you become
part of something immortal yourself. I need Vitellan too! I would not exchange him for five thousand men-at-
arms. Now go away and dig your chamber, and do a better job of hiding it this time."
Wessex, the British Isles: 7 April 870, Anno Domini

As the winter eased and gave way to spring both Vitellan and Paeder recovered their strength, and both returned to the
fighting. The Danish host was trying to advance into the heart of Wessex, but the defenders had fought them to a
standstill. It was the Danes' first serious setback in Britain, and there were more to come. Alfred and Paeder sat
watching their men prepare an ambush while their horses grazed beside the road. Tall poplars were being cut almost
through, and were already braced with ropes.

"Sometimes I feel like hunting down that Gentor and making him drink some of that poison himself," grumbled
Paeder, rubbing his stomach. "Eight months of watered beer and beef soup, and even now the physician cannot say if I
shall ever eat solid food again."

"He only poisoned you by accident," replied Alfred. "Even with Vitellan, he fed him only enough of some type of poison
to unsettle his stomach and make him think that he was sick."

"He should be punished," muttered Paeder, continuing to rub at his stomach. "If you caught one of your servants doing
that to you, why he'd be worm food within the hour."

Alfred felt curiously relaxed, even though a battle was only minutes away. Now that the unseen enemy had been
defeated, it was almost a welcome relief to be fighting mere Danish warriors.

"Gentor was fighting for the most important thing in his life, like a priest defending his church from the Danes.
Besides, he is the Icekeeper, the hereditary captain of Vitellan's ship of ice, and our Roman friend may want to use it
again. Whatever else you could say about Gentor, he is probably the best, most dedicated Icekeeper that the village has
ever had."

Paeder breathed deeply, as if fighting down a cry of exasperation.

"But why would Vitellan want to be frozen again? His

stomach is better, now that his loyal servant has stopped poisoning him, and we have been able to keep him safe from
those assassins. He may well live to be an old man."

Alfred frowned slightly, anticipating that his friend and tutor would one day want to leave. He had faced up to the idea
and accepted it already, but he was no happier about it.

"Perhaps as an old man, with his friends dead and not many years ahead of him, he may decide to travel a thousand
years into the future to die. I wonder if my family will still rule Wessex in Anno Domini 1870? Perhaps we could leave a
tradition to welcome the Master when he awakes."

"How did you come to suspect Gentor, anyway?" Paeder asked. "To me he seemed like a model of fawning devotion
where Vitellan was concerned."

"Vitellan's breath. It smelled of strong drink when I was talking to him after you were carried out, yet he had supposedly
been drinking water. Gentor probably had a little jar of his poison in his sleeve, to add to his Master's soup and water.
Vitellan could taste nothing, but I could smell it. Besides, Gentor was too calm when the note was discovered. Such a
terrible threat to his Master should have made him hysterical for Vitellan's safety. I decided on a little test, and had a
scribe draw up the secret message. Daegryn delivered it for me—the chief would do almost anything to annoy Gentor."

"A man after my own heart," muttered Paeder. "How did you know that Gentor wrote the first note?"

"I did not. I took a guess about that. They tell me that Gentor is looking for a hidden cave to seal off and turn into a new
ice room."

"That will keep him away from us, and good riddance."

The ambush was on a road bordered on one side by a river and on the other by dense woodland. The Danes had taken to
raiding in small mounted parties that would meet up to form a much larger group'for the trip home, a group so large that
no Wessex force would dare attack. Vitellan proposed to divide the Danish force by felling a dozen poplars across the
road as they passed. The Danes would fall back toward the river as the Wessex churls and soldiers poured. out of the
woods, but the Roman had chosen a part of the

bank that was all deep mud and marsh. His own men were armed with long spears to pick off the raiders as they
wallowed about, trying to regroup.

In the distance a scout with a mirror flashed a brief signal to them, just as the Romans had once done. The Danes were
three miles away, with their own scouts riding a short distance ahead. Vitellan rode along the site of the ambush,
making sure that no glinting weapons or colored cloth would betray the four hundred men and thirty women who were
hidden among the bushes. At last he rode to where Alfred and the bishop were waiting.

"Are all the ropes bracing the trees hidden too?" Alfred asked, more to prove his diligence than anything else.

"They have been smeared with silt from the river, my lord," Vitellan replied. "They blend with the shadows so well that
I myself am not sure which trees are ready to drop."

"Splendid, splendid," said Paeder, unstrapping the axe from his back and hefting it. "I'm looking forward to my bowl of
soup at the victory feast already."

They laughed, and Alfred took a small, ornate dagger from his belt. He looked at the blade for a moment, reading the
letters engraved on it.

"When I was ten years old my father, Aetherwulf, made me custodian of this little family treasure," he said, handing it
to Vitellan. "He told me the legend that goes with it, and made me swear to hand it on to another member of the family
if I could not do my duty with it during my lifetime."

Vitellan blinked, then looked intently at Alfred after glancing at the little weapon. Paeder looked from one to the other,
scratching his beard uneasily, then rode a few steps away and pretended not to listen.

"Are ... are you sure that you wish to break such an oath, and such a long tradition?" Vitellan asked.

"My oath is sealed still. You are part of my family, after all." He looked down in embarrassment, toying with the mane
of his horse. "I am proud to be descended from you," he said quickly and quietly.
The pressure of hundreds of years suddenly lifted. Vitellan straightened, as if he had been relieved of an enormous
weight. He wanted to say something in gratitude, yet what words could match events and emotions like these? Like a
good tactician, he changed the subject.

"You would have been proud of Lucia," he said wistfully. "A fine, determined, resourceful girl, the sort of person that
royal dynasties could grow from when the circumstances are right. Such a pity that—"
His voice snapped off as he saw another glint from the signaler. A cloud of dust iri the distance marked the approach of
the Danes.

'Time to hide," said Alfred, following his stare.

Vitellan looked down at the dagger again, reading the engraving on both sides of the blade. "Thank you for lifting this
shadow from me. I never thought that I would know such a sense of peace again."

"And thank you, too, for giving Wessex the Peace of Rome."

Alfred motioned Paeder to come with him, and they urged their horses across the road and through the dense bushes.
They turned to see that Vitellan was where they left him. Suddenly Paeder gasped loudly and exclaimed in Latin.

"You!"

"So you caught on at last. Yes, the Royal House of Wessex is distantly descended from Vitellan and Lucia. Did you never
stop to think how I knew what to put in that note that I used to frighten Gentor?
Lucia vivit
and
Romanus immortalis ad

mortem ducatur
are engraved on that family heirloom's blade."

" 'Lucia lives,' 'Kill the immortal Roman.' " Paeder laughed and slapped Alfred on the back. "As a father of the Church
of Christus I cannot praise your forgiveness highly enough. At last, after seven hundred years, the chain of hate is
broken."

"It broke long ago," he chuckled, pleased with his own deviousness. "My father thought that it was a tradition of
stamping out Roman paganism. He knew nothing of Vitellan."

As they watched Vitellan suddenly flung the dagger out over the river in a long, glittering arc. It struck the water with a
small splash, and he watched the bubbles disperse

before walking his horse across the road and into the woods. In the distance they could hear hoofbeats as the Danish
scouts approached.

"He must stay. He will stay," whispered Alfred to himself as he held his hunting horn ready and the Danish scouts rode
past. The main column of raiders was very close. "Wessex is his immortality now, just as he was Gentor's. He would not
desert his own flesh and blood."

The vanguard of the Danish column drew level with Alfred and Paeder, and the young prince lifted the mouthpiece of the
horn to his lips.
Pax Romana vivit,
he thought as he blew a long, clear note and the trees began to crash into the Danish
column.

In the following year Alfred was crowned king, and although his great victory at Edington was still seven years in the
future, the promise of ultimate victory over the Danes had already been transformed from a dream to a real possibility.
Gentor became so obsessed with secrecy that he would not allow anyone else to see the secret cave he had found for the
new Frigidarium. He stayed away for weeks at a time, doing his own masonry and woodwork deep underground, and
Vitellan was forced to appoint and train a deputy Ice-keeper to keep the old Frigidarium in order.
With Alfred and his kingdom seeming more secure, Vitellan began to long for another jump across time. After all, if the
steps that Alfred was taking toward civilization were to come to nothing, Roman skills might be needed in the future. He
could be a type of weapon himself, to be revived in times of great crisis, but otherwise to be kept frozen. Gentor was
delighted when the news reached him, and he set off at once to meet his Master and discuss his plans. All Gentor's work
came to nothing, however: the Icekeeper died in a Danish ambush before Vitellan was refrozen, and the location of the
new Frigidarium was lost.

Vitellan was refrozen early in 872, after feigning death from his stomach trouble. The village of Durvonum made a show
of going into mourning, and within a few years the memory of its ice chamber faded from common knowledge in the
surrounding countryside.

The Danes were never decisively defeated, and control of the land changed hands through many battles and treaties. The
millennium did not see the end of the world, as many had been predicting, but 1066 saw the Normans' successful
invasion. The village survived unscathed, and without having to wake its frozen Roman. By now its name had been
changed from Durvonum to Durvas.

The climate was not quite so kind to the villagers. A warm interglacial fluctuation drove up the average temperature.
Snow ceased to fall in winter, and even frosts became rare. At first ice was carted across from the highlands of Wales,
then a treaty was made with a Welsh landlord to allow a dozen men and women from Durvas to live in the highlands
permanently. Vitellan's frozen body was secretly carted there and kept in a new Frigidarium cave.
Not having the Roman sleeper within the village weakened the tradition of tending him, yet that tradition was centuries
in dying. Finally, in the late thirteenth century, the strain of maintaining an outpost of Durvas in the Welsh highlands
began to prove too much in the face of changing social structures and the continuing wanner climate. As the fourteenth
century opened, Tom Greenhelm was appointed Icekeeper, and he immediately called a meeting to decide how best they
could serve their Master as the village continued to decline.