“I would that we still had some of that wine that they took,” Henric said, looking in his cup.
“You’ll drink what’s on hand readily enough,” Gaiseric laughed. “But I agree. I was getting spoiled living off the bounty of the rich. Poor man’s wine and soldier’s food is better for the work at hand. Only the hard can cross these mountains.”
“Nothing’s wrong with taking a little comfort where you can,” a man named Ogdren said. “Anything to ease the load.”
“Aye, and now what’s worse? That Sarus stole our share of the treasure, or that we probably burned it in turn?” Gaiseric said.
“The warrior takes what Fortune gives him, but holds it with an open hand,” Valia said. “What we gain we just as easily lose. That is the way of it. I tell you this, though – there is much more treasure than what we have ever had waiting for us in the cities of Italia. Once we join Alaric outside Rome there will be no poor men amongst us.”
The men raised their cups and drank their thin, sour wine.
“But what will you do then?” Connor asked. “Once we join Alaric and either Honorius or the City gives in, what will you do when it is over?”
“What will we do, I hope you mean,” Valia corrected amiably.
“Of course, God-willing,” Connor replied, lifting his cup slightly in an implied toast to their leader. “But what I mean is, say Honorius meets Alaric’s demands and this whole crisis comes to an end; what then?”
“It’s a good question,” Valia said, though from some of the blank looks Connor saw around the fire it was not a question many of them were used to thinking about. “We Visigoths get our recognition and are paid our recompense; we are treated to the place in the Imperium we deserve – then we keep our part. We fight for Rome. We go back to fighting the Persians in the east, the Franks and Burgundians in the north, the usurpers in the west, the Moors in the south. And we take our revenge on the Huns. We push the Huns back to the steppes. We make things right again. Right on our terms.”
“So it is to be endless war,” Connor said.
“Such is the way. It is good for the warrior to have war. What else would we know?”
“And if our demands are not met?” Connor pressed.
“If they are not met? They must be met. We have the city of Rome at our mercy.”
“But what if they were not met?”
“Then we would take Rome, and push on perhaps to Ravenna, Mediolanum, Genua, Portus Pisanus, Neapolis – all of Italia would be at our feet. We could take the whole land for ourselves, punishing the faithless slayers of our kin as we went. Depose Honorius and raise someone else in his place.”
“Then it would be us who were surrounded on all sides by enemies,” Connor said.
Valia laughed, and most of the others joined him. “Can you remember a time when you were not surrounded on all sides by enemies?”
“I can,” Connor said. “Perhaps that is my problem. Let me change my question, my friend. What will you do when the enemies are pushed back and you are too old to fight? If there was a chance for peace, would you take it?”
Valia was quiet and then took a long drink.
“Yes,” he said finally. “I would retire to the country when it was all over, when I had gone as far as I could go. I would not go back to our homeland across the Danube. That land is gone forever now, closed to us. It is the land of Huns and unquiet ghosts. But I could find a place. Not in Italia – it is too crowded – but perhaps in the Gallic countryside. Perhaps that place you brought us to when we first met you. That was good land. A man could be happy there.”
“Indeed he could,” Connor said. “If happiness came from within, it could flourish there.”
Valia nodded. “On our first morning there, while you were still hiding away with that silent woman of yours, one of the slaves came to me begging to bury his dominus. It was a touching sight, really, for the man was obviously terrified of us – he was stammering, repeating himself, and rubbing his bald head. You could almost hear his knees knocking together. But his loyalty to the man who enslaved him was stronger. Right there and then I told him that I had seized that land for myself, but I would make him my steward. I had Strabo come and write up a document, which I gave to him, saying that the whole estate and everything in it was mine and that the slaves were to mind the property and share the profits in common. I told him that I would come back to claim my land and the profits when I could, whether it be months or decades from now. I told him that he better be ready, for if I found him abusing what was mine I would flay him alive!”
The men gathered around the fire laughed, but Connor leaned closer.
“Can you do that? I mean just with a lawyer’s document?”
Valia shrugged. “The courts of Constantine here, the courts of Honorius there, and the Burgundians pressing in to sweep them all away – who knows what you can do? I figure one official-looking document might be just as good as another when the smoke settles. You should have seen the solemn little fellow’s face when I made him swear to me. It was hard not to laugh, but at the same time I had to respect his metal. I do think I made things a little easier for him by giving him a job to do. Now he and the others think that they are following my orders while they really are just looking out for themselves; and that ruse might just give them the cohesion they need to survive these next years.”
Connor shook his head. Philip. The man Valia described had to be Philip. So his old friend was now charged with the welfare of all the slaves and the land, keeping it for one domina taken away as a captive and another dominus who had small intention of ever returning. What would become of his old friends? Could they weather the coming storms, or would they just be swallowed by them?
“If I do not die in battle I will buy a villa in Lusitania,” Gaiseric said.
“Why Lusitania? You’ve never even been there,” Henric asked.
“I hear it’s a pleasant place. And what is more, is that there are no Huns,” he said, playfully punching Tuldin’s shoulder.
“Yet,” Tuldin murmured.
“Well, I am going to North Africa,” Henric said. “Because I for one am tired of being cold and wet and hungry.”
The others added their ideas, and Connor smiled as the energy brought by victory, wine, and the warmth of the fire raised the volume and pace of the conversation. He could hear the chatter from the other campfires warming too, as the spirit of this group of wayfarers – now so much smaller than it had been – glowed on the barren hillside. But Connor kept his dreams of his peaceful end to himself. Whatever illusion of safety surviving battle and the companionship of his fellow warriors brought him, and no matter how heavy his homesickness, he would not conjure thoughts of Eire in this desolate place. He was too far away to allow his hopes to get up, for fear that once aroused he would not be able to bring them back in.
A slim dark figure walking out of the camp caught Connor’s eye. Lucia was moving slowly through the open ground, just outside of the perimeter. One of the watch dogs lifted its head to watch her, but soon relaxed again. As always, the baggage carts were safe in the middle of the camp. The latrines were in the other direction, hidden behind the rocks. Connor knew that the cult of Isis did not worship in the open. A glimmer of fear sparked in his chest as he thought she might be simply walking away. But Lucia was walking slowly, her gaze straight out towards the north. Some of the men laughed or crooned teasingly as Connor stood to his feet, but as Connor brushed the bread crumbs off his tunic and set down his wine cup he noticed Henric and Valia looking at him. He was not fooling them at least, for anyone paying attention could see that Lucia had shunned him.
Connor followed the small footsteps in the hoarfrost. Lucia was about twenty paces ahead of him. He could see by a subtle turn of her head that she was aware of him, and he was relieved when he saw that her pace did not quicken. In the duress of the last month, the headstrong girl who had once been his domina was capable of anything, Connor thought; and the last thing he wanted
tonight was a scene in front of the others. But Lucia only took a few more steps and then, smoothing the frost away with her foot, sat down on the bare ground. She pulled her cloak and wool blanket closer against the chill as Connor approached her.
“Good evening,” Connor offered, not expecting a response. He ventured to sit down next to Lucia. Whether Lucia still held him responsible for the loss of her family and home or reason had slowly begun to clear him, the girl was used to his near proximity from their shared quarters and did not recoil.
“They are beautiful, are they not?” she said, keeping her gaze to the tall mountains that stretched north.
Connor smiled inside, the way he always did on these few occasions when she would offer soft words. It was she who was beautiful, he thought, as he looked at her face in the moonlight. A breeze brought a lock of hair across her cheek, and she brushed it back over her small ear. Her green eyes looked ahead, but they seemed wet from more than just the cold.
“They are beautiful,” Connor said. “But they are a fearful sight to me. In my home we have mountains, but I have never seen mountains like these. They go on forever, and they are sheathed in impenetrable ice. I feel as if I am not supposed to be here, as if this is a place mortal man should not trespass.”
Lucia smiled. “High mountains have ever been home to the gods.”
“I would not think your desert goddess would come to this cold place.”
“My goddess is the Great Mother and the Queen of Heaven. She is everywhere. I would build a temple to her there – in the heart of the White Mountain.”
Connor followed Lucia’s gaze to the most conspicuous of the peaks. All the mountains in view were white, but he supposed that the girl had some local knowledge he knew not of.
“And would she come to you there?” Connor asked.
“Of course. And I would be her priestess and forget the world.”
“Alone?”
“I am alone now, am I not?” Lucia said.
“No, you are not,” Connor replied. Lucia said nothing.
“My God is here, too, in these mountains,” Connor said. “He is always with me. There have been times when I did not believe that, but now I know it is true.”
“Do not speak to me of your god,” Lucia retorted. “I know all about your god. Where was your god when my mother died? Or my father, or my brother? Where was he when all these problems started? When the Rhine froze and the delicate balance was broken? I do not see your god. I see chaos wherever he is said to reign.”
“I have felt the same. But I know that he was there with you, as he has always been with me. He suffers with us.”
Lucia snickered theatrically, but offered no rebuttal.
“Well, I need not be alone anyway,” Lucia said after a brief pause. “I would need other priestesses, and priests as well, to perform the rites of the Goddess. You were wrong when you said that this was no place for mortals. People have lived and lived well in these mountains for centuries. We haven’t seen them because most live on the more hospitable slopes and valleys, and all have the sense to shun the passes used by bands of brigands.”
Connor nodded, wondering what sort of hard men could thrive in mountains such as these, where even goats seemed to have trouble finding purchase. This thought was quickly replaced by wondering what role priests might play in an exotic eastern fertility cult. Lucia’s words cut into his inflammatory musings.
“Why are you with these thugs, anyway?”
Connor was about to defend his friends – for friends is what many of them had become. They had showed him respect. They had kept their word to him, and given him the benefit of the doubt more than once. Still none had pressed him to reveal his origins or history. They accepted Connor as a man; respecting him not because of birth or status as the Romans would, but because of what he offered to the group. As they had shared dangers together over the road that bond was strengthening. They had backed him against Arastan; Valia had not turned him over to Sarus; and they had fought side by side against the bacaudae, relying on each other and overcoming their enemies as a team. Connor had been forced to trust these men with his life and so far they had not let him down. But how could he say this to Lucia, who had seen these same men loot her house as her father’s blood cooled in the courtyard?
“I would have left them long ago,” Connor said. “But I cannot. Because I am taking you to your uncle in Asisium; and then I need to find money to buy a kinswoman – a girl no older than yourself – out of cruel slavery in Massilia. When these things have taken place I will cover the ground and the ocean waves as I race for my home far, far away. But not until.”
“You still claim that you did not bring them to my home? That you did not bring them to our gates seeking revenge?”
“You know well that the mysteries of the divine hand are easy to trace but difficult to understand,” Connor said. “As I have said before, we were brought together on the road. Their course was set by forces larger than any I could manipulate. All I have done here has been for you, and to keep my oath to your father.”
Lucia hung her head for a moment and then looked back out to the mountains.
“I hear that you were something of a hero today,” she said at last.
“I did my part,” Connor said. “We were lucky, and God looked out for me.”
“Everyone was talking about it. How you and those three found the trap, but you scouted it out and then kept it from Sarus; then you and the others laid the stratagem and you killed the chieftain of the outlaws. I could hear the screaming as the rest of us crossed through the ravine. I could smell the smoke. I kept looking up to the top of the walls, expecting evil men to attack us; but you kept them away.”
“We kept them away,” Connor corrected, trying not to smile though he felt a surge of pride at her words. “I would have been killed without the others’ help. We never would have made it. So many things nearly went wrong.”
“Many of the women ask about you. They ask me where you are from, and what sort of man you are.”
“And you tell them that I am just an old slave of yours and no one of consequence,” Connor said, half-joking.
“I tell them very little of what they want to hear,” Lucia smiled. “But I tell them that you are a good man.”
“I am trying to be.”
XXIII
Suddenly – when they last thought it would –the valley opened up before them. It was the middle of December – near the end of the Pagan Saturnalia and just before Christ’s Mass – and the fertile fields were now brown and dusted with snow, the old trees gnarled and bald, ice forming around the banks of the streams. But to the column that trod down the steep foothills it looked like the valleys of Elysium. The snow covered Alps were behind them, as were ten days of scarcity and cold, and eleven nights of fear and shivering in the dark. How many hours had they spent wondering if they would even make it – most not really knowing how much farther it may be through the dangers of unseen bacaudae, precipitous falls, avalanches, or simply being blocked by a strong snow storm and left to starve in the barren lands? How many times had they looked out at the mountains, the forbidden world of the spirits and the gods, not knowing if they would ever be able to enter back into the world of men? But then just a few days ago the descent had begun, almost imperceptibly at first – the cold and ice gradually diminished and it slowly became easier to breath. Soon the tallest peaks were all to the west, and the slopes began to dive down. Although then – as if in mockery to their hope – the way became even more treacherous, with horse and man sliding on the unsteady grades, and carts being caught in the rocky passes. Undaunted, Valia’s followers pushed on. None had died, and though many were sick now and a few injured in battle with the bacaudae or from accidents on the road they were not going to let anything stop them. Then that morning they had finally entered into the Alpine foothills of Liguria. Men, women, and children alike entered in awe and silence, like wanderers entering into the Garden of Eden. They had
crossed the Alps. They were in Italia.
But as they continued their march, Connor could see that this was – or at least no longer was – an Eden. There was no safety here, no peace. They were far from the cities of the greatest land in the world, the heart of the Imperium, the Pax Romana, but even in the foothills there were some small villages, villas, and homesteads to be seen. They all told the same story. Many of the structures that were not burned stood abandoned – their occupants fled or perhaps killed. The palisades around some of the villages that still were inhabited shut their gates at the sight of Valia’s men. Frightened plebes and not Roman garrisons quickly rushed to defensive positions on the walls. Though the Visigoths were badly in need of fresh supplies, Valia ignored them. Approaching the towns in their state of alarm could only lead to a standoff that none of them could afford. They kept marching, past the villas with grapes shriveled on the vine, past fields with wheat dried brown and weighed down by frost, past cottages where only stray dogs came out to watch them pass. As the winter sun climbed high and the column stopped to eat some of the last of their rations, reality began to set in. They were here. They had survived. But now what?
“When one is presented with multiple explanations, the simplest one is usually the truth.”
“What?” Connor asked, snapped back into the present. His mind had drifted as he looked at the burned remains of an isolated cottage.
“You heard me,” Rufus, the Visigoth’s priest, said. Over fifty, but still with sandy-colored, untonsured hair and a straggly beard, Rufus did not fit even Connor’s picture of a priest. His eyebrows were bushy and silver, and they seemed to dart and move improbably above the gaunt face of dried leather. Rufus was missing half his teeth – seemingly from being knocked out rather than through decay, if his other teeth were any indication – and he spit whenever he got to talking animatedly. As he did so he would gesticulate wildly, his bent, wiry frame swaying like a tree in a thunderstorm beneath his dirty woolen robes. He carried no cross-pieced staff or other ornament marking him besides a wooden cross around his long neck. At his side, dangling from his ancient belt hung an old, worn gladius – the short, broad-bladed sword that was once the weapon of choice for legions expecting close combat.
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