Etruscan Blood

by AM Kirkby

  ***

  "I can't give you the password."

  "I hadn't expected you to," Servius said.

  "All I know is that Gaius took his Roman squad with him, and Arruns was sent to administer the conquest."

  Anybody could have told him that. Interesting, that Tarquinius has sent Arruns and not young Tarquin; a definite hint that Arruns was the preferred heir. And if Tarquinius thought Arruns was old enough to run a conquered city, he must think Arruns was old enough for power; which meant, again, that Servius was on his way out, no longer heir-apparent or possible regent. He'd done enough here; in the normal course of things, he'd have been paid off and returned to Velx, only now there was no Velx to return to.

  Ramtha had already appealed to him. Now Tanaquil was begging for his help.

  "But you can't give me the password."

  "Tarquinius tells me nothing these days."

  A surprisingly honest admission. Cynically, he thought; honesty is the price she thinks she has to pay for my help. He wouldn't return the favour; he'd been on the edge ever since Tarquinius' council, almost ready to go over to Velx again, but he wouldn't let her know that. He would have gone already, but he couldn't think of a way to reach the Vipienas; Velzna was impregnable. (But then, Velx had thought it was impregnable, and how easily it had been taken.)

  "Without the password, there's no way in. I can't break the Vipienas if I can't get to them. And without the Vipienas, there's no one to lead a revolt against Rome."

  "Wasn't everyone supposed to be equal in Velx? Can't you find a new leader?"

  "Given time. "

  "Time and the right man. But time we don't have."

  He saw her jaws tighten as she bit down on her tongue. This was difficult for her, he realised that.

  "Well."

  "Yes?"

  "There might be a way." She was terse; she wasn't liking this. "But I'd want to know...

  "What?"

  "Whose side are you on?"

  "We're talking sides? Rome or Velx?"

  "Me or Tarquinius."

  So that was how the land lay. He stared unblinking at her.

  "I'm on my own side."

  He didn't expect her to smile at that. A smile that started open and honest, and ended cruel and chilling.

  "Well," she said again. "I swore an oath, once. An oath I'm about to break. But Tarquinius swore a pact with Velx, and broke it."

  He nodded. Couldn't see where this was leading.

  "You know I was trained in Velzna."

  He nodded again.

  "The priests and augurs have their secrets. Things the lucumos and magistrates don't know."

  This was what she thought would win him over? Omens, fluttering birds, fidde-faddle?

  "There's a way out of Velzna that only the priests know. If ever it came to a battle between the lucumos and the augurs, the augurs would simply disappear."

  Like Cacus, he thought. An emptiness at the heart of things.

  "A secret way out," he said, savouring the idea.

  "A secret way in."

  She told him all he needed to know. She'd sworn to the gods never to give up the secret; now she'd broken her word, but she didn't try to justify herself – he respected that, anyway, no wriggling, though she could have said, gods knew, that Tarquinius threatened the gods, that Rome imperilled the continuance of the Etruscan polity. She broke her word, and took all the responsibility for doing so on herself, no caveats or justifications or extenuating circumstances. For him, who didn't believe in gods, or not much, that was easy; for Tanaquil, who lived every day in her gods' presence, spoke to them and heard their voices in the fire or the wind, it was bravery of a high order.

  There was one place he'd have to find; a tomb in a field below the cliff, with a solitary poplar standing guard over it. A shaft led down to the tomb chamber itself; and there, among the corpses of the illustrious dead, he'd find an empty chair, behind which a shield hung on the wall. Below the shield was a flagstone he'd have to wrench up, and jump down, trusting her word that he'd find a sandy floor a man's height below. Then there was the maze of passages; if he kept his hand on the right wall, he would find the right path, to a light shaft, and then a long tunnel bearing upwards into the core of the rock on which Velzna was built.

  "Keep going," she said, "till the tunnel ends. Then there's a small hole in the left hand wall; wriggle through it. Jump straight down. You'll be in the open shafts then, below the temple. Remember the place; there's a handhold, a small step in the wall for your feet – you'll recognise it once you've seen it, though anyone else would pass by."

  Of course, using that exit depended on the Vipienas still being in a condition to do so – if they were, indeed, still alive, a slender hope that diminished with every hour that passed. He'd more likely have to fight his way out, with a few men to carry the Vipienas, Servius thought; but at least he wouldn't have to fight his way in.

  "And do you know where they're holding the Vipienas?"

  "No. He hasn't even told me that."

  "An educated guess?"

  "The treasury. It's under the main temple; from the entry hole, straight on, and right into the main passage."

  "What are the chances?"

  She scowled. "They could be anywhere. It's your best chance."

  "Still not a good one."

  "No."

  He knew he was going, however slim the chance; but he sat there for a minute, frowning, rubbing the back of his neck absently with one hand.

  "Not a good chance. And the end of my hopes in Rome."

  "Only as long as Tarquinius rules."

  That was another boundary crossed, he thought.

  "I'll do it."

  "I know you will."

  Sudden certainty in her voice. So even if Tarquinius told her nothing, the gods still did? He wondered. Usually with Tanaquil he could feel her mind working, balancing the probabilities, always calculating; but this was an irrevocable step for both of them; to go against Tarquinius, against Rome even. He was committing his life to her, and she knew it; and though she might deny involvement once the news broke, she'd told him far too much. She'd thrown her lot in with him, he realised, as Ramtha never had.

  Master

  He thought about the damage. Arruns dead, that was the worst. A mistake. Arruns wasn't supposed to be down here in the darkness; he should have been in the temple, in the glitter and glory of his conquest. Arruns dead. The heir to Rome.

  That suited him, of course. One contender for the throne gone; Tarquinius' preferred choice, even better. But it hadn't been meant. A stray thrust in the darkness. How easily that could have been one of the Vipienas. He shivered. How easily it could have been him.

  Venthical of Velzna dead. He'd fallen asleep on his watch. That had made things easier. Avle had cut his throat by the time the fight got properly started.

  ("They let you keep a knife?"

  "A sharpened brooch pin."

  Typical of Avle to spend his imprisonment patiently sharpening one side of a pin on the stone wall, as silently as he could. That accounted for the man Servius had thought must have caught a blow from himself or Camitlnas, and wheeled into Avle's embrace only to collapse and die.)

  Both the Vipienas alive and unharmed. Laris Papathnas Velznach killed by Larth Ulthes, noisily and messily. None of his own men dead. Out of the maze safely. That was better than he'd expected from a fight so confused, the kind of fight he always hated, rash, blind, too fast for thought, too close and crowded. You couldn't swing a sword without the risk of slashing your own men; it was all dagger thrust and wrestling and grappling, and half the time you'd win if you could make your enemy stumble or trip; not honest fighting. But then, honest or not, the point was to win.

  They'd use the rest of the night to put space between themselves and the opposing cities; best, he thought, to head towards Clevsin, still neutral and likely to stay neutral despite the tightening coils of alliance that were gradually swallowing the other citie
s ("Clevsin's always different," people used to say when he was a boy; how long since he'd heard that?). Further plans could wait till then, when they were safe (at least he hoped they were). Retaking Velx, restoring the Vipienas, thinking out his own future now he'd broken with Tarquinius; all that could wait. Now for cold, hard riding, through drizzle on muddy tracks, till they had put all chance of pursuit behind. (How often did it rain in Velzna? And he'd had the bad luck to choose the only rainy night for weeks. Not even honest rain, but incessant drizzle that almost seemed like a haze or a mist, but he'd been soaked through almost as soon as they started.)

  No talk; the road was too hard to follow, the horses often strung out along narrow tracks. ("Good horses," said Avle. "But they would be," said Caile. "With Master in charge." It shocked him a little, hearing his Etruscan name; he hadn't heard it for so long, in Rome, where he was not master but slave.) Little to eat; Larth Ulthes shared out a few handfuls of grain fried in butter; it had been hot and crisp once, but now it was cold and claggy.

  "Eat it or don't, it's up to you," Larth said, seeing Camitlnas' face. Camitlnas took what he was given, but he didn't look happy with it. No one else ventured a comment.

  They rode till the east was greying, the velvet dark of night sky fading to a dirty overcast. He'd be glad to see sunlight; he still hadn't quite shrugged off his fear of underground. Through the night, stray tendrils of nightmare threaded their way into his brain; he was suffocating, buried alive in damp smothering earth; he was fighting in the dark, hearing voices, feeling bodies, not knowing where to turn or who was his enemy; he was in the cave of the oracle with Tanaquil, but she turned into a huge snake with a woman's face, coiling around him, crushing him; he was squeezing through a tiny crevice, knowing there was something or someone behind him that he needed to escape, but he was stuck, couldn't get through, knew his fate was approaching; he was in the dark, and his mother had left him.

  The sunlight never came, only mist. They stopped while the shapes of trees and men were still distinct; as they sat there, the fog closed in, erasing even the trees around the clearing, so they were isolated, the only beings in an empty world. Servius brewed up; a few handfuls of grain which Larth Ulthes doled out grudgingly, boiled in a pot with milk, slightly sour from long storage, and honey to sweeten it. It was poor stuff, but better than the butter-soaked grain they'd had earlier. The others crowded round the fire; but the Vipienas sat together further away, as if they felt their imprisonment had set them apart, barred them in some way from the easy companionship of their rescuers.

  "Velzna's gone to the bad," Avle was saying.

  "Well, they joined Rome," said Caile.

  "No. That's not what I mean. They've lost touch with what they're meant to be."

  "With the gods?"

  "Gods be buggered."

  "What then?" Servius asked.

  "They're meant to have some... feeling for what Etruria is. To guide the cities of the federation."

  "That sounds pretty vague."

  "It has to be. If you made it more specific, it wouldn't work. It's a kind of mysticism, I suppose; not a mystery of religion but a mystery of politics. Sensing the way history is running. The way it should run."

  Crap, he would have said, if anyone else had come out with this kind of stuff – vague, mystical, and self-serving; a claim to power that could be rejected, but hardly discussed or qualified. But Avle didn't spout crap. He'd always been given not to blunt speaking, no one could accuse him of that, but to very precise, reasoned statement;

  "They see which way the power is running?" he asked.

  "No. Not power," Caile replied, but at the same moment Avle spoke, and Caile stopped, as if embarrassed, bowing his head slightly to his brother.

  "Power is a need, a lust, a desire, a means to an end." Avle stopped for a moment, as if taking care over the formulation of a rite or calculation. "Power flows, it's true. But this s deeper. Power is like a river flowing in open fields; what I'm talking about is the hidden springs of our culture, the living water flowing beneath the rock. The way we live. From the melody of a flute to keep the gymnasts' exercises in time to the clicking shuttle of a woman's weaving."

  Larth Ulthes laughed humourlessly at that. "I know what comes next. You're going to say the young people don't worship the gods any more, they don't dance the Great Ring properly..."

  "Shut up, Larth." Servius was out of patience, but Avle was more patient. He shook his head slowly.

  "Larth, look at a Roman. Then look at an Etruscan. Can't you tell the difference? Without asking where they're from?"

  "Sure. Romans talk loud. Always talking about winning. Women, war. They walk square. They've got no rhythm, they can't sing."

  "That's what I'm talking about," Avle said, and smiled gently. "We sing, we have our own rhythm, we walk and live to music. We speak softly, we know lie is to be lived, that winning is less than not important. That's what we are. Fragments of divine melody. That's the treasure the priests of Velzna should be guarding. And instead..."

  Caile's mouth was tight. "Yes. Instead. This." He held out his hands; round his wrists the chafe of ropes, half scabbed over.

  "Winning may not be important," Servius said shortly. "But I'd like to live. Two hours' sleep, and then we'll be going. Marce Camitlnas on watch, please."

  "No second?" Larth asked in surprise. You always had two men on watch; that was basic. One to watch the other; if he slept, if he was a traitor. One to watch the other's back.

  "You think I can sleep?" Servius stood up. He'd stand his watch; he wouldn't sleep till they made Clevsin.