B007IIXYQY EBOK

by Gillespie, Donna

  Her weary mount lumbered through the fort’s narrow gate. He stood braced, ready to throw all his weight against the sagging grain bin, feeling like a beast-fighter awaiting just the right moment to thrust at a lion. Fall out of step with the fatal dance, and die.

  When she was not more than a horse’s length from him, he saw her face.

  For an instant he forgot entirely what he was about; a collection of slingstones fell from his slack hands as he was startled into haunted quiet. That face tore away all memory, leaving only the question, who are you?

  But I know. I expected you, even counted on your coming. And what are these mad words?

  It was difficult for him to understand later the witchery worked by that face, seen in so brief a moment. It was more than its maidenly bloom, its wise warmth, its look of one who scoured for meaning behind meaning. Here was the old-young genius loci of the wood, the fierce-gentle face of nature herself. Long after he would ponder what it was that so snared him and pulled him so immediately close. It might have been that look of hope vaulting out of charnel hopelessness. It was his own.

  She looked steadily toward the wild country that was her destination, and he saw much in that spirited innocence—her refusal to acknowledge the nearness of destruction, how she seemed to expect no help. She galloped past him and still he stood immobilized, aware distantly she uncovered a gaping need in him he scarcely knew existed.

  How can the countenance of a doomed woman so intoxicate me with hope? Her noisy pursuers filled the path, whipping their horses, jostling each other and cursing. He roused himself to action, pushing hard on the grain bin.

  The half-burnt structure was immovable as a standing stone. Swift panic came.

  It must move. Sylvanus, Pan, great Rhea and Diana, I call on all nature’s deities—give me strength!

  He threw his weight against it, trying to shock it into motion. The wood creaked. Something snapped within. Rotted oak timbers were giving way. Gradually it acquiesced to his will, moving sulkily at first, then in a rush, crashing into the opening of the gate, choking it with splintered wood and a small mountain of grain. Slingstones shot out into the path of the pursuing horses.

  The Arabian bowmen’s mounts collected swiftly behind the barrier. He heard the scuffling of hooves as the horses stumbled on slingstones. The flurry of foreign curses was like the screaming of jays. He moved to a gap in the palisade and saw a confusion of brightly robed, long-bearded riders angrily gesturing, their sun-baked faces stiff with rage.

  One raised his bow and took aim at Auriane. Simultaneously, without thought, Julianus shot up behind the palisade, grasped his dagger by the blade and prepared to throw, aiming for the bowman’s throat.

  But their white-bearded commander rode up to Auriane’s would-be slayer and angrily pulled down his arm.

  Julianus supposed then that Domitian had given orders the woman was to be taken alive.

  Startled, he realized he had been prepared to slay that bowman and reveal himself, had it been necessary to save Auriane’s life. He knew then how profoundly she had bound him to her.

  A barking argument broke out among the bowmen as they quarreled over whether to remove the debris or find a route around the fort. They seemed to settle for removing the debris. He prayed they would think this act of sabotage the work of the fleeing warriors.

  As they worked furiously, kicking at slingstones, pushing at the bin, stumbling like drunken men through the grain, Auriane and her wounded companion disappeared through the broken section of the gate at the rear of the fort, and into the uncharted forest that was her domain.

  For the moment, Julianus realized, she was free. But he felt little relief. Her land was shrinking as the Cheruscans pressed down from the north and the Romans advanced; with each passing month she would have fewer places to hide.

  He crept quickly along the palisade; within moments, the bowmen would gain entry. Only Valerius Festus knew enough to draw a connection between himself and the sabotage of the Arabian archers’ pursuit, and he wondered how rich a bribe would be necessary to ensure the First Centurion’s silence.

  Just as the bowmen got past the obstruction and flooded in, he climbed to the top of a damaged portion of the wall, grasped a low-hanging limb of a pine, and leapt down. After a fall of fifteen feet he hit the hard ground just outside the fort; the bowed limb snapped and broke but it softened his impact.

  As he made stealthy progress down the slope, he saw that life was already returning to the mangled campsite, as blood flows back into a shocked body. Camp physicians bent over the wounded, ministering to them where they lay, extracting spearheads, binding wounds, giving wine and mandragora for pain. Some survivors wept. Others helped gather up the dead and put them into wagons.

  Julianus made a slow, careful circuit of the Roman camp to disguise the direction of his return. The noncombatants had taken refuge in scattered places, and he discovered he roused no suspicions, if indeed traitorous activity were suspected at all. He first sought Valerius Festus, who held his life in his hands.

  But soon he learned no bribe would be necessary, for Festus was dead.

  As he returned to the fortress with a company of gravely injured men, he was aware he no longer saw this day through Roman eyes, for this defeat he counted a victory, if a small one.

  The ravaged land now had a name. Auriane.

  A gate was flung open that could not be closed. She could not be kept out as others had been kept out. She swiftly filled his whole mind.

  I may not live. Nor may she. But now all I do must take her into account.

  He knew he had lost something he valued greatly: the invulnerability that caring greatly for no one had given him. There was peace in caring for nothing, along with a certain emptiness. Now it was possible to lose life not once but twice. Peace was banished forever.

  I pray all the gods Domitian never ferrets out my weakness over this woman. He would use it as a tool to slowly pry me apart.

  CHAPTER XXV

  WHEN NEWS OF THE ATTACK REACHED the Emperor, Domitian sequestered himself in his chambers to nurse his fury. He refused to see his senior officers and advisors, every one of whom had miserably failed him. Instead, he ordered a steady string of captives dragged before him, soldiers and officers who survived the ambush, seeking anyone who might aid him in determining who was at fault. As he plied them with questions, he transfixed his victims with brooding eyes, disdainful and melancholy at once, adopting the air of a stern paterfamilias outraged by the shameful deeds of his children. He would not allow himself to be shaved nor would he have a new tunic brought, consenting only to permit one frightened servant to rearrange the folds of the soiled tunic he wore, to conceal its wine stains. He ordered the same for the camp: Until the cause of the disaster was uncovered, no man was allowed to shave or use the fortress’s baths.

  Within the first hour he ordered the execution of all the native spies assigned to the territory the Eighth occupied when attacked, as well as five provincial citizens who he claimed had given him false information. Then he degraded all the surviving officers of the Eighth in rank. The officers of the remaining legions were outraged on their behalf, knowing fault could no more lie with the Eighth than if they had been struck by a thunderbolt. The punishing hand of Domitian was everywhere apparent about the fortress; so subdued were the voices from the common soldiers’ barracks the clatter of crockery and mess tins could be heard as they were washed following the evening meal. There was a curious absence of women’s voices—even the camp followers were banished from the fortress.

  At the eighth hour Domitian learned an earlier report had been confirmed: The Chattians had succeeded in taking hostage three tribunes of the Eighth, including the man of greatest rank, Novius Clarus. Domitian in his fury then gave the order to execute the six Centurions of the cohort that broke and fled at the sight of the ganna who bore arms. It sent a shock of horror through every officer of the legions.

  Marcus Julianus vowed then to halt th
ese punishments. He was crossing the columned courtyard that led to the Commander’s private quarters, meaning to force an audience with Domitian, when he encountered the steady and dependable Senator, Licinius Gallus, the famed gourmand, serving now as one of the Emperor’s chief strategists. He quietly took Gallus aside and in a few terse words told him of the list of men to die. He wanted one man whom he trusted to know of this, in the event that Domitian imprisoned or exiled him after the confrontation.

  “Thank all the gods you’re going to him,” Gallus declared as they parted. “He listens to you alone.”

  “Hold your prayers of thanksgiving—even the most careful of beast-tamers has his luckless day when his charge slips loose and he’s gored. Tomorrow—provided I’m still alive and a free man—you must meet me at the tenth hour. I have…a question to put to you. I will arrange the place and inform your servant.”

  Julianus then secured an audience with Domitian by reporting to the Emperor’s First Secretary that he had gotten “a good, close look at the woman.” He judged rightly Domitian’s inordinate interest in the ganna; within the quarter-hour a Guards’ Centurion conducted him into the Emperor’s presence.

  He found Domitian in the Principia of the fortress, regally slouched on the tribunal before the standards, his rumpled appearance slightly ludicrous within this vast and austere temple of the legions. The Emperor’s eyes were bruised from lack of sleep. He might have collapsed there and slept the night in that stone seat; only the gleam of scorn in his eyes established with certainty he was awake. Gloom, petulance and stale smells hung about him thick as fog. Displayed on the floor at Domitian’s feet was the battered catapult the Chattians had turned on the Eighth Augusta. On the day after the attack it had been recovered in the forest where the barbarians abandoned it, and dragged before the Emperor so he could closely examine it.

  Domitian gave him a smile bleak as a winter sun, savoring the sight of his First Advisor forced to remain unshaved and unbathed.

  “Well, old friend,” he said with soft malice, “I hadn’t heard of a shipwreck nearby. Were you the only survivor?”

  “I congratulate you that you’ve managed to make a shipwreck sound like a welcome thing—it’s a bath of a sort.”

  “Report quickly—and go.”

  “As you say,” Julianus replied quietly. “I have this to report: There were no weapons hoarded within that fort.”

  “About the woman!”

  Domitian’s shriek reverberated off stone. Julianus felt he had touched a torch to pitch.

  “No one who survived saw her,” Domitian prodded him. “You are spewing falsehoods at me!”

  “Not so.” Julianus smiled tolerantly as if at a child’s understandable fit of temper—while feeling he trod a path through a viper pit. “I saw her well—and I am still living.”

  “A temporary condition if your impudence continues.” The Emperor gestured sulkily to a white-liveried servant stationed at the wall, demanding the replenishment of his water and wine. Then his gaze flashed back to Julianus.

  “Where did you see her, Marcus Julianus? Where were you?”

  This was the question Julianus feared. He knew the mute terror of a man on trial for his life, waiting for sentence to be pronounced. He dared not lie—Domitian, if he chose to investigate the matter, would eventually learn the truth. He was acutely conscious of wanting to live.

  “I was trapped in the ruined fort for the duration of the attack.”

  Domitian was sharply alert, a hound scenting game.

  “Then you witnessed that villainous act of sabotage.” He gave Marcus Julianus a malignant smile. The fresh wine and water arrived. Domitian noisily mixed them himself with much clangor of spoons against silver vessels, then took a long draught, offering his First Advisor none of it. Cold fire flashed in his eyes. “Was it enemy sabotage, Julianus old friend?” he said softly, “Or do you despise me so much you took matters into your hands? Did you snatch my prize from me?”

  Moral outrage, Julianus judged, would be his best shield.

  “Foul ingratitude!” He trumpeted the words as if he reached the crescendo of a speech in the Curia. “I expose myself to danger to settle your mind about Regulus—and am nearly slaughtered on the spot by a band of marauders who hang behind to do the deed. And not only do I receive no thanks for my trouble, or any show of interest for what I risked my life to find, but I am insulted with an accusation worthy of an ignorant tyrant like Nero, not you.”

  It was then that Domitian discerned the new remoteness in Julianus’ eyes. Is it a trick of the mind, or does Julianus have the look of one who does not cast his lot with me anymore? I would lay an oath, a line has been cut. An indifference was there, irremedial as death.

  Domitian dimly sensed its shape, and it made him more powerfully anxious than he was ready to admit. Before, he was quite certain Marcus Julianus sought things from him—to encourage him to rule wisely, to have his understanding, and in some measure, his friendship. Julianus seemed to seek nothing from him now. Domitian was seized with an urgent need to lure him back.

  “So,” Domitian said, examining Julianus’ face, wondering if the corpse of a friendship could be brought back to life, “I’ve got one worthy servant among these villains who daily disappoint me. I applaud you then—are you content? Now tell me of her.”

  “She was great in stature, Amazonian, if you will—and spirited, possessed of what seemed a…a low cunning that burned brightly in her eyes. Her hair hung down in barbarous locks.”

  “She was not…fair of face as the nymph Egeria, with the eyes of Artemis?”

  Julianus prayed the small transformation Auriane had already wrought in him was not visible on his face. He felt his spirit contract, realizing he could not bear the thought of Domitian’s soured eyes gazing upon her. He managed an indifferent shrug. “If one cares for that heavy, crude, northern sort of beauty, she was comely enough, I suppose.”

  “Was she…fierce of aspect?”

  “Hardly. She seemed possessed only of an impressive determination.”

  “What then drove thirty men to disgrace themselves and throw away their lives?”

  “Superstition, and no more, I’m certain of it. They’ve heard enough lurid tales of her to distort beyond reason the actual sight of her. Her eyes were not aflame, nor did she breathe fire.”

  Domitian leaned forward. In his eyes was the hard gleam of the obsessed. “Did you see her…strike out with a sword?”

  Julianus knew of Domitian’s fascination with women engaged in swordfighting—it was said he would order pairs of his concubines to fight with wooden swords. He felt a faint queasiness begin to rise in his throat.

  “I did not. She was escaping. She lagged behind the rest from charity—she’d taken on the burden of a badly wounded man.” He realized he strove instinctively to make Domitian think well of her—anything to lessen his wrath, should he capture her. “She was fleeing for her life,” he continued, “and she appeared frightened…chastened.”

  “Did she truly?”

  Julianus could see the word pleased Domitian.

  “But you must be wrong, my dear Julianus. Only a creature of unusual mettle would have dared pull down my statue.”

  “Then what mettle she had has been beaten out of her by this war. You underestimate your success so far. I would say you have won, my lord. However…that order for the executions of the centurions must be stayed. Or you may never catch her.”

  A bright, dangerous light flashed in Domitian’s eyes. “And how is that?”

  “The love of the common soldier was hard won—do not toss it off. You do not see the temper of the individual man as I do—your lofty place does not allow it. Punish those men, and the Eighth, Eleventh, and Fourteenth will mutiny. This is a critical time. You’ll have difficulty replacing them in time with others experienced in dealing with a northern winter. You’ll extend the war into a second year. The Cheruscans can’t harry the Chattians in the north that long. They have no
supply train and must live off the land. You’ll allow the woman ample time to escape.” Julianus added to himself: You need not know, murderer, Auriane will escape anyway. I will see to it.

  “So that is what you came here to say. Have you any more orders for me before I’m dismissed?”

  “I wanted to resign. You would not let me. Am I to understand then I am to resign?”

  “Tricky and thin-skinned—what an obnoxious admixture of qualities.” Domitian then nodded impatiently toward the captured catapult, looking broken and harmless at his feet. “That thing there…tell me, could they have others?”

  Julianus looked at it appraisingly. It was one of the smaller types of spring-gun, but heavy enough to need a mule-drawn cart. He walked around it once, examining the windlass that drew back the bolt, the trigger that released it, the trough down which the bolt traveled before it emerged through an aperture in front of the heavy wood frame. “I think not,” he said at last. “For, you see, very likely the taking of this is meant as a curse. All the tribes of Germania believe you can destroy a man if you turn his own weapon against him. This now they have done. Seizing another would not be necessary.”

  Domitian gave a contented grunt, sedated by Julianus’ certainty, vaguely aware of how naturally he fell back into dependence upon it.

  “Note the narrowness of the aperture…and the grip of the windlass—both show it to be of antique design—”

  “From my brother’s reign.”

  “No. Much older than that. It is of the type used by the First and Fourteenth in the first two years of the reign of your father. This means they’ve kept it about for a long time, saving it for the critical moment. They must know they are finished if they chose to use it openly now.”

  Domitian frowned, unable to dislodge the logic of this from his mind, though he tried. “That mad harpie drove them to this,” he muttered. “For my father and brother everything was simple and normal—they fought men, not war-loving bitch-dogs. This is one more fiendish ploy of the Fates to turn my reign into a farce.”