Ranvig made a move on the Wisdom board and sat back. “I will play you again. I am beginning to like this.”
Correus thought that that wasn’t all they were playing. He moved a piece carefully, suddenly aware that Ranvig had been watching him.
“An odd way to make a friendship,” Ranvig said.
Curiously, Correus thought that Ranvig meant that honestly. For an instant Correus’s face twisted into the old bitterness that comes to any spy over the number of lies that shape the paths open to him. Then he said lightly, “We have much in common.” He nodded at their captors, drinking beer by the fire. He hoped violently that he and Ranvig were not so much alike as he was beginning to think.
* * *
Nothing else surfaced until the night Theophanes killed one of his own men. Correus had spent most of his time playing Wisdom with Ranvig, or staring at the ground and trying to figure out where in Hel’s domain he was. (Odd how quickly he’d picked up the old Rhenus slang again. All the soldiers stationed on the Rhenus began to invoke the German gods once they’d been there a month or so. They seemed to belong to the dark, tree-shrouded mountains and the mist-wrapped lowlands more than the bright rulers of Olympus did.)
Every time Correus got the chance, he would scratch in the dirt the pattern of the channels and islands and the gray coastline that he remembered from the voyage to Theophanes’s hold, afraid to make a permanent record lest it be found, afraid not to lest he forget. A fleet could hunt Theophanes’s pirates for a long time in these inlets and never get a smell of them without a guide.
When the pack ponies and their drivers had been and gone, there was a sharing out of the payment the next morning, and any particular booty or slaves, women mostly, that one of the men had an eye to were kept back from the shipment and could be bought with their share. These were quarrelsome sessions, and Theophanes kept order like a man with a pack of ill-tempered dogs.
The morning after the pony train left, the expected ship was due. And so there was a raid, and the sharing out didn’t come until evening, when the long crocodile shapes of the liburnians had been beached again and the cargo unloaded. As predicted, it was mostly slaves taken by the ship’s captain in raids of his own along the north coast beyond the Roman zone. The slaver captain was drowned with his ship, a death for which Correus found it hard to grieve, and the slaves were no worse off than they had been.
But there was trouble among them, in the form of a blond woman with the face of a virgin goddess and the body of a wanton. Wide blue eyes gazed out on the men above full breasts and the wide curve of her hips, all too visible through a wet, torn gown. Theophanes should have known better than to let the men bid on her at all.
The slaves were huddled in a ring of torchlight while Theophanes and Cerdic sorted them out, and Ennius stood looking at the blond woman with a hunger in his eyes that made Correus nervous just to see it.
“I’ll give half of my share for that ’un.” A tall graying man called Wulf put out an arm and pointed at the blond woman. Correus turned to see that Wulf’s eyes had the same hungry look.
The woman stood motionless. Maybe she didn’t understand the dog Latin they spoke in the camp. Or maybe she didn’t care anymore which man she went to.
“No.” Ennius started out of his trance. “No, Theophanes, I want her.”
“I spoke first!” Wulf growled. He looked like a wolf, gray and scarred, in rough gray tunic and breeches. There was a dagger with an amethyst in its silver hilt stuck through his belt, an incongruous touch of riches against his worn clothing. He laid his hand on it and looked at Ennius.
“No!” Ennius said again, louder. The woman turned her blue eyes toward him, and Ennius said, still watching her, “I don’t ask for favors often. I want her.”
There was a sharp indrawn breath next to Correus, and he turned to see Cerdic’s dark woman standing beside him. “She is trouble, that one,” Cerdic’s woman said. “Better Theophanes sell her fast, away from here. Or slit her throat.”
“I spoke first!” Wulf said again. He sailed on Theophanes’s ship, not Ennius’s. Two of Ennius’s crewmen edged toward him watchfully.
Theophanes looked from one man to the other, and then at the woman.
“Theophanes—” Ennius said. His voice was almost pleading. The woman moved a little so that her pale hair rippled around her shoulders. It glowed like ripe corn in the torchlight.
“You are both fools,” Theophanes said. “But Ennius has the rank. Take her,” he said to Ennius. “But look you that you don’t take to spending all your time in her bed. Grow soft, Ennius, and I’ll find another captain.”
“No,” Ennius said. “I will remember.” He was still looking at the blond woman. He took her by the arm and led her away out of the torchlight. She went quietly, her walk docile, her beautiful face unprotesting. She made Correus nervous. Beside him, Cerdic’s woman made the Sign of Horns as they passed.
Wulf stood staring after them, his eyes still hungry, and angry now. Then he turned away and stalked into the shadows.
No one saw gray Wulf for the next two days while Ennius took the blond woman into his bed. Presumably Wulf was lying low and sulking, and presumably Theophanes knew where he was and would knock some sense into him when he thought he needed it, if Wulf didn’t drink away his bad temper in a day or two.
Theophanes left it one day too long.
The mist came down with the sunset as usual, and Correus was prowling among the buildings of the compound less because he thought he might learn something than to walk away his own restlessness. Ygerna’s pregnancy would come to term with the onset of winter, and it was maddening to be unable to get word. Meanwhile he could imagine the baby coming too early, or too late, or Ygerna dying, or… The possibilities were endless. Worse, the only person he could talk out his fears to was Eumenes, who slapped him on the back and said jovially that women came through these things all right; his mother had had five.
He browsed moodily through the camp and almost fell over Wulf propped against the wall of the armory with a beer horn in his hand. He was drinking wine from it, unwatered, and there was a half-full wineskin on the ground beside him.
“What are you doing, Roman?” Wulf said sourly.
“You will be sick if you drink all that,” Correus said.
“Not as sick as some,” Wulf said.
“Why didn’t Theophanes let you have that woman?” Correus asked. He sat down beside Wulf. The man looked as if he might talk, if suitably prodded.
Wulf growled and didn’t say anything further. He took another drink and sat staring at the wineskin. Finally he said, “Ennius can pay more. He’s a captain. He gets more to start when we split the take.”
“That doesn’t seem fair,” Correus mused. “You all risk your necks, same as the captains.”
Wulf snorted. “Tell that one to a sailor on a horse. Four shares for Theophanes, three for Ennius and the other captains, two each for Cerdic and the mates, and one for each o’ us. And three for the man in the office.”
“For who?” Correus kept his voice disinterested.
“For the information,” Wulf said. “I dunno. The man in the office, that’s what Theophanes calls him.”
“You don’t know his name?”
“Ziu, no. Theophanes doesn’t, either.” Wulf didn’t care. “He sends a boat.”
“Who – Theophanes?”
“No. The man in the office. What do you care?” Wulf seemed to realize through the wine haze that he shouldn’t be talking.
Correus backed off. “Where have you been all this time?”
“Waiting,” Wulf said.
That didn’t sound promising. If Wulf was going to get out of control, Correus thought he would rather be elsewhere. “Waiting for what?”
“For that bastard.”
The door to one of the longhouses opened, and Ennius stood framed in torchlight. He stuck his arms out and stretched, then stepped off the stoop and went around the longhouse. Behind h
im, the woman came into the light. She swayed, and the gold hair swam around her like water. She had on a silk gown now.
Ennius came back, and seeing her in the doorframe, he took her by one hand and tugged her toward him. She came down the step and out into the mist with him obediently.
Wulf stared after them. The woman’s laughter came oddly disembodied through the mist. It was the first sound Correus had heard her make.
Wulf made a noise that was somewhere between human and animal. Correus was still sitting on the ground when he realized that Wulf was running through the mist and that something gleamed white in his hand. Correus jumped up and ran after him, and somewhere ahead of him something screamed.
Doors flew open, and suddenly there were men and torches everywhere. The mist was spotted with them, and the salt scent of the air was full of burning pitch. There was another scream, and someone shouted, “That way!”
Wulf and Ennius were rolling on the ground by the storeroom door, and the woman stood to one side, silently watching them. Her sweet, goddess’s face was expressionless, but Correus thought he saw, just for a moment, the flash of triumph in her wide blue eyes. There was a knife in Wulf’s hand, and Ennius was groping frantically for his own. Wulf’s other hand was at his throat. They were growling at each other like animals. It hadn’t been the woman who screamed, Correus realized. That half-human sound had come from Wulf as he dove at Ennius.
Wulf had his dagger in position now, and Cerdic jumped to pull him off when Theophanes pushed him aside. He caught Wulf by both shoulders, spun, and slammed him back against the storeroom wall. Wulf leaned forward, both hands pressed against the wall behind him.
“Fighting over a woman!” Theophanes said. “No man in my camp fights another for anything he possesses – especially not for a gold bitch with thieves’ eyes!”
Ennius struggled to his feet, his face furious. The golden woman was still silent. Correus thought she might be smiling.
Wulf snarled again. He launched himself at Ennius, and Theophanes stepped between them, knife out. He caught Wulf in the belly with it, and Wulf suddenly folded up around it. Theophanes let him fall to the ground and stood with his knife dripping, looking at Ennius.
“Go and put the signal out for Beorn.”
“We don’t have any cargo,” Ennius said.
“Yes, we do,” Theophanes said. “She is cargo.” He pointed at the blond woman. “Shut her in the slave house till Beorn comes.”
“No!” Ennius had his knife out now.
Theophanes held his own knife point out. “She is cargo. Or do you want Wulf’s death? She is poison, Ennius. She’ll poison you.”
Ennius looked at the blond woman and seemed to read something there that might have been confirmation. He put his knife away and turned toward the slave house. She followed him. Her blue eyes were still and lovely, but there was something about her that made Correus think of goats and the horned god, whose pipes can make a man less than human.
Theophanes turned to the rest of them. “Is there anyone who wants to dispute me?” The knife was still in his hand, and his dark eyes reflected the torchlight so that a man couldn’t see into them. “Anyone else who thinks he can break my rules and stay on this side of Hades?”
A few glared back at him, but they were silent, Cerdic’s fingers tapped a pattern on his hip, just beside his knife hilt. The man who fought Theophanes would fight Cerdic afterward. Correus wondered how often these two had to face down the rest. They were a wolf pack. A leader they weren’t afraid of they would tear to pieces one night.
Theophanes prodded Wulf’s dead body with his foot. “Put him in the bog.” He picked up the silver-handled knife from the ground and stuck it through his own belt.
Two of the pirates picked up Wulf, and the others edged away, back to their hearth fires, their women, and their beer. The bog was a fast and easy burial, but it was a secret one, too. The man who angered Theophanes just now might go into the bog himself, dead or not, and no one liked to think of that cold green slime for very long.
Ranvig stopped beside Correus to watch them carry Wulf away. “A woman like that,” he said. “You should just give her to your enemy and let her take him under for you. But keep her – merciful Wuotan, no. She is Earth Mother’s, that one.”
Correus thought of Ygerna. Ygerna had been the Mother’s priestess, but she was her own woman, also. This one was of the Mother, part of her. She ate men. He felt sorry for Beorn, and for whoever bought her in the slave market, if Beorn got her that far.
“I knew a man like that once,” Ranvig said. “He… consumed. Women, power, whatever came to his hand. But there was something… amputated… from him. I often wondered who he belonged to.”
“You think that that kind of twist must have a god’s hand behind it?” Correus asked. “Maybe you’re right.” Most gods had their dark side. “What happened to your man?” he asked idly.
“He died,” Ranvig said shortly. “He was killed, but he managed to twist what he had touched beforehand, and left a better man than he was maimed.” His expression said plainly that he wasn’t going to say more than that, and Correus grew quiet and cautious. There was something there that was a key to Ranvig, he thought.
“I’m cold,” Ranvig said. “I want to drink.” Correus followed him back to their sleeping cubicle in the longhouse and sent Eumenes for beer. Ranvig swallowed his at a gulp. “That will be the last ship, I’m thinking. There’s a gale brewing up now.” The wind had begun to howl outside, and the fire wavered and danced as gusts blew in under the door. Correus could feel it bite through his clothes. “The Romans will be digging in along the river,” Ranvig said, “and hoping no one starts trouble before spring.”
“It looks peaceable enough to me,” Correus said. He took a swallow of beer. “Is someone thinking of starting trouble?”
Ranvig shrugged. “There is always trouble along the Rhenus. Each new emperor comes out and tries to stop it, and then there is a war, and then it is quiet again for a while.” He looked at Correus. “The Romans like to keep busy. They make their own trouble sometimes.”
Correus laughed. “The emperor doesn’t see it that way, I expect.”
“What does he see?” Ranvig’s tone was only mildly interested, but Correus began to get the feeling of an oyster when someone is wiggling a stick in to open it. Ranvig held his horn out to Eumenes.
“He doesn’t tell me,” Correus said. “I’m not the military type, you know. Someone else can go around all plated up like a tortoise and wave a stick for the empire at the barbarians. Me, I just want to go back to Italy before I freeze.”
Ranvig’s crooked face was pleasant but watchful. The sensation of being poked open grew stronger. Correus poked back, gently. “What the emperor does along the Rhenus won’t affect the wine business in Augusta Treverorum, I shouldn’t think.” In other words, if you have a blameless father in Augusta Treverorum and not a smuggling business in some Chatti village, what do you care?
“I expect not,” Ranvig said. He swirled the beer around in his horn, watching the froth it made. “Still, a war always rebounds on someone. One doesn’t like to get in the way.”
“Does it?” Correus said. “Yes, I suppose it does, if you’re close enough. We don’t get many ripples in Rome.”
“Perhaps you should stay in Rome, then,” Ranvig said.
“Oh, I intend to. Perhaps you should stay away from the Rhenus.”
Ranvig laughed, his oddly set eyes genuinely amused. “Believe me, I would like to.”
* * *
Two weeks later, winter came down in full measure, and Theophanes told Correus that his family was stalling with the ransom. If Correus wished to keep both his ears or whatever else might be cut off to prove the seriousness of his situation, then Theophanes strongly suggested that Correus write to his father again. Correus heaved a sigh of relief. He’d been afraid that Theophanes might cut first and suggest a second message later.
He took the parchment
scrap Theophanes handed him and put down his plight in the most dramatic terms he could, consistent with the code he had devised with Flavius. He thought of asking Flavius if anyone on the frontier had heard of a man named Ranvig in connection with the Chatti, but that was not a question that had been planned for in the code. In any case, when he had finished with the pirates, that should take care of the Chatti’s connection with them also. Time enough to send a few more scouts into Chatti lands in the spring.
Ranvig was sitting across from him in the straw, watching his efforts. Don’t do it, Correus almost said, wishing he could show him Nyall Sigmundson’s grave, and all the others who had decided to make war against the empire. Don’t take on Rome.
* * *
It is none too easy to get a message across the Alps in midwinter, especially when it has to go through three or four hands to blur its origins. It was the start of spring in Italy when Appius Julianus took the sealed papyrus out of the woolen wrappings it had traveled in, thanked the blameless merchant who had carried it, and paid him for his trouble. He read with raised eyebrows and sent a slave into the City for Flavius.
* * *
“Take a look at this.” Flavius handed Lucius Paulinus his brother’s letter and a rough translation of its hidden content, scrawled in Flavius’s hand on a wax slate. Lucius read it while Flavius sat and watched him with his mouth twisted into a grim expression that boded someone no good.
Lucius looked up and whistled. “Pretty damned conclusive, if you ask me. Knowledge almost to the day of ships out of Ostia, and within a week for ships out of other Roman ports and ships bound back for Rome. Have you taken this to the emperor yet? And you have cleared your slaves out of here, haven’t you?”
“No, and yes,” Flavius said. “First I wanted to see if your reaction tallies with mine. And my household knows better than to come within a mile of me when I tell them not to.”
“All the same…” Lucius flicked a finger at the wax and picked up a stylus. “Mind if I scrub this out?”
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