Corax cried out for them to halt, then deliberated for long moments while absentmindedly pulling at a flabby lip. Auriane watched his face, feeling frenzy accumulating in her blood. Pass her, you brutish infant.
“Thorgildus, Sunia—both pass.”
This brought murmurs of surprise from the half-dozen veterans who collected to watch—did true skill count for nothing in these times?—and looks of contempt from the agents of the Finance Ministry.
Auriane was exultant with relief. She could only suppose Corax felt hard pressed to provide a certain number of women. As Sunia walked past Corax, her soaked tunic clinging closely to her thin but gracefully formed body, she saw Corax moisten his lips while tracing in the air with his hands the outline of her hips.
Auriane felt a flash of fury. There, then, was another reason he passed her. Auriane knew Corax had forced himself on Sunia at least twice in the secrecy of the storerooms, though Sunia was too filled with shame to speak of it. Evidently he was not finished with her.
Others took their turns; Coniaric when his time came performed with cool competence and passed easily. He was beautifully conditioned and had acquired much grace; when the halt was called, the visitors broke into spontaneous applause, and Auriane saw the veterans exchange knowing nods. Corax grinned and nodded, acknowledging the applause as though it were meant entirely for him.
It was near midday when Corax called out in his shrill, snappish voice—“Celadon—Auriane.”
The number of spectators had greatly increased—noontide seemed to draw them out. A dozen upper trainers and seasoned fighters collected about the ring—as the taverns were closed, there was little else to occupy them. Corax started with alarm when he saw Erato, a powerful trainer of the First Hall, moving casually among them, surveying the novices with an unhurried, predatory eye. There was no man Corax despised more. It was insult enough that Erato had used the fortune won in his fighting days to purchase the tenement block in which he, Corax, lived, then promptly doubled the yearly rent. But twice now Erato had stolen promising novices from him, claiming Corax was incompetent to train them. May he rot in Hades, Corax thought. And the pirate appears now, as Auriane goes in. My pestilential luck.
Auriane rose up eagerly, feeling a rush of animal exuberance, thinking of little else except that Sunia was, for the moment, safe. She felt she readied herself for a rite of celebration. While Celadon accepted the first wooden sword he took up, Auriane did not hurry, testing one after another for balance until she found a weapon that pleased her.
Corax nudged her with the butt of his whip. “What do we think we’re about here, plucking posies for a spring festival? Move along you hot-blooded daughter of a shrew, or taste the whip.”
Two assistants roughly strapped on their greaves and arm guards. As they entered the practice arena, Celadon glanced once at Corax strutting saucily before the upper trainers, then met Auriane’s gaze with a vaguely pained look that said: Have you ever seen a more colossal fool? It caused her to like him the more. Celadon was not a captive of war, nor was he a criminal under Roman law; he once explained to Auriane that his former master had sold him to the school because he needed money to stave off creditors who were preparing a ruinous lawsuit. It was Celadon’s evil fortune to possess the intimidating bulk and heaviness of bone counted ideal for this trade, and he had fetched a fine price. His face at first look appeared brutish and closed as an executioner’s, but the man himself certainly was not. Auriane found him always in benign temperament; he seemed to her a great, genial, lumbering bear.
They began quietly. At first she was careful, deliberate, consciously testing and drawing him out, all the while holding herself in check, feeling vulnerable before the crowd’s stares. She did not want these rude foreigners spying on her while she was lost in an activity that could fill her with the rapture of the ritual of fire. This polite, guarded dialogue continued for a time; then, gradually, it became something else. Celadon executed a deep attack that nearly struck her side; she was roused to a counterattack that put her in range—and then they were ignited. Strike and counterstrike came with whip-crack speed, and the wild, random rhythms made her feel she took wing; in spite of herself she was jolted into the old waking dream. The school dissolved into haze. She might have trod earth packed hard by dancers’ feet, whirling round a midsummer fire. The loud, hollow clack of wood striking wood was the body’s mute poetry. She was aware of Celadon’s sword only as an insistent resistance round which she danced; it was firm earth beneath hammering hooves, the air resisting the beat of a wing, the sand encountered by the fanning wave. She began moving round him as though he were a maypole, binding and unbinding him. For a tantalizingly fleeting moment she was joined to all things, far and present, and old words of Ramis’, more felt than heard, wove their way into her mind: “Know, blind one, when you strike at your enemy, you strike at yourself.”
She struggled to shake these words off, for she did not want to understand them, and the effort pitched her back into worldly awareness. Now she knew she rippled through deft strokes off the rhythm, executing attacks with no name, anarchic parries of Fria’s devising, not her own. She felt herself a powerful animal running, conscious of long strides held in check, and a small, strong voice cautioned—do not reveal too much or let these people see the full measure of your joy. She moved through Celadon like wind through trees. From the first he did not know what to do with her, while she detected his patterns at once—her every feint drew a parry. She moved him about the ring as if he were an animal she had leashed.
Finally, drunk on her own exuberance, she began rapidly taking ground with the joyful frenzy of the race horse that finds a ferocious burst of speed at the finish. She backed Celadon into the low barrier; she had forgotten it was there. He toppled over it and fell to the stone floor beyond.
“Halt!”
Corax’s shout made her feel she struck a wall. Mundane reality settled round her once more. She felt dazed as a bird jerked from flight. Almost shyly she extended a hand to Celadon to help him rise. In her eyes was faint disappointment that it was over so soon; she was not tired. Celadon panted hard.
It was then that she noticed the odd silence all about. The assistants stood with slack arms, duties forgotten. The spectators on the stone seats sat unnaturally still, as if a specter had manifested itself and then vanished, leaving them to wonder if they had lost their wits. Slowly she realized they were staring at her. Then she saw the collection of veterans and trainers giving her hard, probing looks; some spoke in covered voices, frowning and slowly shaking their heads.
What do they find so strange and surprising? Stop staring so, you unmannerly people.
The light, efficient hands of the assistants scuttled over her, removing her equipment, taking the wooden shield. She saw Celadon was unhurt. Slowly life returned to the room.
Then the stout, florid-faced man she knew as Torquatus’ secretary pushed his way to the front of the crowd, moving officiously past Corax. His voice was sweetly boyish, but with a knife-edged underside.
“Celadon and Auriane, both pass. Celadon, return to your place. Auriane, to the trainers’ offices.”
CHAPTER XXXIX
AND NOW WHAT DREAD PUNISHMENT WILL they inflict? Auriane wondered as she approached the line of oak and iron doors set between slender pilastered columns; here were the chambers that housed the mysterious activities of the school’s upper trainers and procurators. Behind her a violent argument erupted between Corax and the trainer called Erato. From the tone of Corax’s voice she guessed he had already lost.
“You’ll not get off with this! I found her, I trained her.”
“When I want comedy, I’ll go to the theater.”
“Lay a thieving hand on her, you shameless poacher, and you’ll learn just how foul your fortunes can become. Your tenement’s a firetrap—I’ll have you dragged before the aediles. I’ve dozens of tales for Torquatus. You take bribes. You thieve privileges for your men. I’ll expose you—”
“Then do it quickly, little man,” Erato replied, refusing to raise his voice, “because you’ll not be about much longer when the Prefect learns of what we witnessed today. Half these men have no notion of what they’re doing, and the women aren’t even fit for battle spectacles. Meting out punishment is not training. You’ll ruin her. Either move out of my way, or I’ll have the guards drag you off. Choose!”
Then Auriane heard no more, for a school guard opened one of the oak doors for her and ordered her to stand at attention in the small chamber beyond. Before her was a wall like a honeycomb, filled with records, broken only by a niche with a statuette of Nemesis before which the smoke of incense drifted, and a long, rough-carved table heaped with bewildering clutter. All that was recognizable there was an inkwell and quill—Decius had had these things in his pack, though the ink was long dried—and a crude bust of Domitian, looking out on the room with smug bad humor.
Within moments Erato entered and slammed the door so loudly she jumped.
Moving nimbly about the table despite a pronounced limp, he sat facing her on the long bench. Auriane knew this man’s history, for everyone knew it—in his youth he had been a slave in a brick factory. Then he murdered an overseer who had made amorous advances—it was said he was cursed in those days with Olympian beauty—and his master condemned him to the arena. His was one of the rare tales of glory—deftly he escaped slaughter and managed to kill his way to the highest heights; he was, in his day, almost as celebrated as Aristos. His loyal followers had given him the name Erato, Muse of erotic poetry, as a jest after several noblewomen sent him salty poems describing how they would like to use him in the bedchamber. After three years and a hundred brilliant bouts he was pardoned by the Emperor Vespasian and granted the wooden sword of freedom. But the love of fighting was all he knew in this world—he signed on as a free man and continued to win. As a freedman, he had been able to earn rich purses, enough to buy property in the city—the six-story tenement block across from the Temple of Concord that housed Corax’s one mean room, a lucrative shop that produced votive images, a company that imported fish sauce from Hispania—and, just for the irony of it, the old brick factory where he had been enslaved. Erato’s string of victories had ended abruptly during a bout with a treacherous Samnite swordsman. The man was down—he had begged mercy of the crowd and gotten it. Then he sprang up when Erato’s back was turned and hamstrung him. The school’s best surgeon tried to knit the tendon, but only worsened it. Erato took a post as a trainer then, hired at once into the First Hall because of his formidable skill. By common agreement he was the finest trainer of the school.
It was difficult for Auriane to believe this man with the soft, dignified manners of one who originated in the Greek-speaking provinces, the open, amicable face and faintly mischievous eyes of a man who would prefer to be passing hours telling humorous tales in taverns, was an extraordinarily successful killer of men. The one sign of all those years lived on the border of life and death was that pinpoint of wary light in his eyes—always he seemed poised to whip about and defend his back. Erato had the expansive manner of a genuinely generous man. He was shorter than she but sturdy as a tree stump; surely he could hoist a mule with one hand. A scar like a lightning bolt interrupted one brow. He had a fine head of curling black hair, combed forward; on his massive arms was a latticework of whitened scars. She noticed with a jolt that he was missing an ear. She had been taught to fear the human body when it was not whole; to her surprise this man’s misfortune roused only pity. Erato was the chief trainer of Thracian gladiators, one of the two most popular styles of fighting; these were the lightly armored swordsmen so despised of Domitian, who preferred the more heavily equipped Samnite swordsmen.
Erato regarded Auriane at leisure, taking her measure, while she looked at him, alert, questioning, unafraid. Her sweat-darkened woolen tunic clung to her chest; her cheeks were flushed rose, her forehead gleamed. She made him vaguely uneasy—it was as though she were too large for this room.
Erato thought, this is a fighting animal…a born predator. I’m not certain what my chances would have been against her.
“Let us play openly with one another,” he began gently but firmly. “Aurin—how is it you say your name?”
Carefully she pronounced it.
“Auriane.” He leaned forward; his eyes seemed to sharpen to points. “Where did you learn to do what we saw out there?”
“I have fought since my sixteenth summer. I had little choice—your people stole our peace. Why do you ask me this? There is nothing remarkable in it.”
Her voice appealed to him—it was soft, yet it commanded silence; it sounded so young and unhurt.
“Corax never taught you to fight like that,” Erato pressed, “and I know you did not learn it from your countrymen. Until they’re properly taught, they all swing a sword like they’re chopping wood. Now I saw you execute a maneuver called the trap, followed by a double-vertical feint, and the difficult forward-falling attack—and it was all done so smoothly and quickly even the well-trained eye could scarcely follow. Novices are not taught these things.”
“I…I did not know I did these things. I did not know they had names.”
“Enough of this,” he said irritably, an ominous light flaring in his eyes. “You displayed an art learned from teachers, and good ones. I’m easy enough to get along with when a man or woman is honest with me, but play with me and you’ll wish you hadn’t. Don’t trample on my patience.”
Eyes afire with affront, Auriane turned from him and faced the door. “You’re a foolish man to speak so rudely to me. Leave me—I’ll have no more words with you.”
Erato grinned. “Ordering me out of my own chambers, are you? I like that! Calm those ruffled feathers. It is just that I saw a thing today that cannot be,” he said more amiably. “This sounds like utter madness as I say it, but in my fifteen years of training, I’ve seen all types—from lucky brutes like Aristos to great masters of training-manual technique—but I’ve seen nothing like this. It is more than mere skill, it is…what?…something god-touched, like a great musician’s or dancer’s art, but full of an animal’s thoughtless grace. If a cat had human genius, it might fight like that. It is a sort of thing a trainer might see once in a lifetime, if even then. And yet, you had no teacher.”
“There was a captive kept by our tribe who was a man of your people, a soldier,” she said with reluctance. Protecting Decius was instinctive, but why do so now? And something in this man’s nature elicited from her an urge to be truthful. “He showed me the standard cuts that legionaries are taught.”
“Ah. Truth trickles out. I once heard of such a man, a soldier taken by the natives who rose to some importance among them. Was he not called Decius? Yes, tales of that man man have come to us here.”
She shrank within, looked down and whispered, “Yes.” But she realized the pain she felt at the sound of that name had somewhat faded.
“Interesting, yes, but alas, it’s still not enough. I know what legionaries are taught, it’s quite straightforward, and what you did was far beyond it. The perverse humor or Fortuna—to find such bewildering skill in a woman.” He smiled companionably. “You look somewhat baffled by all this.”
And truly, she was. Decius’ early mockery of her fledgling efforts had done their work. His repeated taunt, “Do not ever let on I taught you,” still jangled in her mind. She never supposed her skill to be much beyond the regular competence exhibited by Coniaric or Thorgild. Decius had eventually said, “You have flown beyond your teacher,” but only after she took up the sword of Baldemar. Today, however, she had used a clumsy sword of wood—and so was forced to concede that if there were artistry here, it must have been her own. Then suddenly she knew she had dimly sensed it; when Decius mocked her progress, some deep part of her had always protested. She trembled now at the certainty. I am extraordinarily skilled. It is apparent even in this place where they make a cult of skill and see fine points my people did
not. Part of her yearned to try that skill to the limit—not to do so brought to mind the fast horse never allowed to race. She thought suddenly of Marcus Julianus, sensing he was no stranger to such feelings, that he would at once understand.
Stop—this is madness. You are leaving this sad and terrible place. But humor this man Erato. He is better than most.
“If you say it, I accept it is so.”
“So earnest and solemn you are! From this day forth I mean to instruct you myself. It still has to be arranged. For now you’ll go on living with the novices, but you’ll not go to Corax—you’ll come to me in the west yard at the third hour, do you understand?”
She nodded, still wondering at all this. Erato said softly to himself, smiling as if at a fine prank, “No one is going to believe this.” He rose, signifying the audience was near an end. “Is there any favor you wish of me? Ask it.”
“A favor?” she said softly. Yes, came a bitter voice within, give me back my life, my country, my child. “A…a cell for Sunia and me alone, without rats, and with a window. And…protection from whoever is trying to poison me.”
“Poison, you say? The lawlessness about this place would make a pirate camp look like a sheepfold. Yes, yes. Done. I will see to both those things.”
“And…leave to sit for a time at night in front of the hearth fire in the kitchens, after the day’s work there is done.”
“For what purpose? Witches’ spells?”
“It is for a rite of my religion.”
“I thought your people worshiped trees, not fire.”
“Trees are holy—”
“Never catch me prostrating myself before a tree.”
“Trees, at least, are alive with the soul of Fria, noblest of all the gods. Your idol”—she nodded at the bust of Domitian—“has the soul of a weasel.”
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