The Legions of Fire

by David Drake

  Hedia laughed. “You haven’t, not at all,” she said. “And I think you’d best call me Hedia while it’s just the three of us. As I said, we’re all girls together here. As for witchcraft—we women can’t do things the way men do, so we have to find our own ways.”

  She sipped her wine. It was a good enough vintage to have appeared at her husband’s table. She looked at Anna over the rim of her cup and raised an eyebrow in question.

  The old servant sighed in relief. She drained her cup with less ceremony than wine so good deserved. “Aye, that’s so, your ladyship,” she said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “We don’t have the strength that men do—”

  She grinned at Alphena; Hedia thought for a moment that she might reach out and pinch the girl’s cheek. The standards of an army camp were different from those of a noble household.

  “—not even you, little one. I’ve heard about you, sure, but that’s not the way. You listen to”—she nodded forcefully toward Hedia—“your mother here. She knows a thing or two, I’ll be bound.”

  “What I know at the moment …,” said Hedia. Even without the cheek pinch, she thought her stepdaughter might burst like a dead dog. This wasn’t the time to laugh at her, though. “Is that Nemastes the Hyperborean is a danger to my husband and our whole family. I presume you’ve heard about Nemastes?”

  Anna snorted. “Not from my man or the boy either,” she said, pouring more wine for herself when her guests waved it off. “But that something was going on, sure. I could smell the magic on them each time they’d been to your house, milady. Though I hate to say it.”

  “Smell?” Alphena blurted in amazement. Her cup was raised, but Hedia didn’t think the girl had begun to drink. “I don’t understand?”

  Anna shrugged. “Smell, feeling, call it what you like,” she said. “I don’t know how to name it if you haven’t noticed it yourself. And you haven’t?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Hedia said. She placed her empty cup on the table, a little closer to Anna to answer the question the hostess would surely ask. “We’ve come to you because you know things that we don’t, mistress. But we’re not in doubt that there’s something wrong with Nemastes and whatever he’s doing.”

  Alphena took a gulp of wine. “He’s awful,” she said, glaring at her companions as though they were going to argue with her. “I can tell when he’s around because my skin prickles. And when he’s looking at me, I feel slimy.”

  Hedia smiled, though she found the girl’s comments—and Anna’s knowing glance at her—disquieting. “Well, I’ve been called insensitive before,” she said. “Nonetheless, I knew something had to be done even before the business yesterday at my son’s reading.”

  She looked at Alphena. “I wasn’t in the hall when it happened,” she said, “but you were, dear. What did you see?”

  “I didn’t see—,” Alphena began angrily, but she stopped herself. She swallowed, forced a weak smile of apology, and continued in a quiet tone. “I’m not sure what I saw. I thought a painted sphinx flew off the wall. And I thought things were coming up from a pit underneath me.”

  She’s young, but she’s no more flighty than I am. Nevertheless something has frightened her.

  Alphena licked her lips. She seemed more composed now that she’d forced herself to think about what had happened. She said, “There wasn’t really a pit. The floor was the same to my feet, I just couldn’t see it.”

  “If you’d been my daughter, girl …,” Anna said, giving Alphena a look of sharp appraisal.

  Hedia bit back a harsh—well, harsher—response and said only, “Which of course she isn’t, mistress, she’s the daughter of the noble Alphenus Saxa. Whose Hyperborean companion concerns at least me and Alphena.”

  “I spoke out of turn, your ladyship,” Anna said, nodding into as close to a bow as she could manage while seated at the table. “Sorry, I’m an old fool who never had a child of her own, you see.”

  “Quite all right, my good woman,” Hedia said. The thought of Alphena being brought up as a witch had taken her aback in a very unpleasant fashion. It was bad enough that the girl dressed as a gladiator! “This business is enough to put anyone on edge.”

  Anna looked at Alphena again, this time pursing her lips in thought. “You say the floor was still there, child,” she said, “and in this world that must have been so. But there are other worlds than ours, you know. It sounds like this Nemastes was bringing another one close—or maybe closer than that. It’s good that it didn’t go on beyond what it did.”

  “I don’t think it was Nemastes,” Alphena said toward the mixing bowl on the table. “I think it was my brother, or something using my brother. He was saying funny things about fire. And I could see the fire, but—” She lifted her hands, then laid them flat to either side of the cup before her. She still didn’t look up. “I don’t know how I saw it. Not with my eyes.”

  “When Pulto and me got married after his discharge,” Anna said carefully, “I promised him that I wouldn’t do anything, you know, serious. A little charm or a potion to help friends, well that’s just neighborly.”

  She gave her companions a lopsided smile and shrugged. “But after he and the boy come home yesterday—and they didn’t tell me a thing except that you might be coming by, your ladyship. But it was all over them, especially the boy, like they’d been rolling in pig shit. Begging your pardon.”

  “That’s how it felt to me too,” Alphena said. Her smile was real, though faint. “Not that I’ve ever rolled in pig shit really, but what it seemed like.”

  Acting on instinct instead of by plan—and she usually planned things, particularly the things that other people thought were done without thinking—Hedia put her arm around the girl’s shoulder and gave her a hug. Then she opened her short cape and removed the little fabric-wrapped object she’d pinned there. She handed it across the table to Anna.

  “I would have brought you some of Nemastes’ hairs,” she said, “but he’s as bald as an egg. His whole body’s bare so far as I could see—and I assure you I’ve seen as much of it as I care to, no matter what you may have heard about me.”

  Alphena lifted a shocked hand to her lips. Anna guffawed as she undid the bundle, a twig from the frost-killed pear tree.

  “Nemastes—Nemastes and my husband, that is,” explained Hedia, “were in the back garden when this tree was killed. It was the same time when Varus was reading. I think—well, there must be some connection, mustn’t there?”

  Hedia was uneasily aware that the gymnasium where she’d been talking to the veterans was adjacent to the garden. The masonry wall was high enough to block words unless Saxa and the Hyperborean had been shouting, but she felt that she should have had some inkling if, well, a tree-killing storm had been going on a few feet away.

  She hadn’t been aware of anything unusual going on during the reading either, not until she listened to the frightened babble of the audience pouring out of the room. She looked from Anna to Alphena and smiled wryly.

  Anna held the twig between the tips of her index fingers. She felt Hedia’s eyes and looked up.

  “I’m apparently not sensitive at all,” Hedia said. “But I suppose I don’t need to be, since both of you are.”

  Alphena turned to her. “You were sensitive enough to try to stop Nemastes before anybody else did,” the girl said. “That’s why we’re here. I don’t see any use in the way I feel.” She shrugged with her whole body, her face scrunched up. “Slimy. Awful.”

  “We’ve a long way to go before we know what’s useful and what isn’t,” Hedia said briskly. She turned to Anna and continued. “Will the stick be helpful, mistress?”

  This was the first time Alphena had spoken to her in a tone that wasn’t either angry or sullen. Hedia didn’t dare remark on the fact or she would spoil the moment—the start of an improved relationship, she hoped.

  “It may,” Anna said judiciously. She eyed her companions. “It should. It’s the full moon tonight. I�
��ll be off to the old graveyard on the Aventine to gather some things I’ll need.

  “Herbs, you mean, Anna?” Alphena asked.

  The older woman looked at Hedia—who kept her face expressionless—and then to the girl. “Things, dear,” she said deliberately. “Some herbs, yes.”

  “Oh,” said Alphena. “Oh, I’m s-s …” She turned her head away as her voice trailed off.

  “I’ll need your help, your ladyship,” Anna said. “Not with my end—I wouldn’t ask you for that, of course. But I hope you’ll talk to my Pulto. When we were married, like I said, I gave up serious business. He didn’t tell me to, but it’s what he wanted and I did it. Now, though …?”

  “Yes,” said Hedia. “I’ll make it clear to your husband that I’ve asked you to do certain things for me.”

  Pulto would accept anything a noble demanded, Hedia knew. If she asked him to dig up ancient graves, he would obey. He wouldn’t like it, but—her smile was cold—he’d been a soldier. As he’d said, he was used to doing things he didn’t like.

  “That will be helpful, your ladyship,” Anna said, nodding in relieved approval. “And now, if my ears haven’t tricked me—”

  The door opened. Corylus strode in, followed by Pulto.

  “—I’d say my men were home!”

  CORYLUS STEPPED TO THE SIDE as he entered the apartment; if he’d stopped in his tracks he’d have blocked the doorway for Pulto. That was training, however. His first instinct had been to freeze when he walked in the door talking over his shoulder to his servant and saw Alphena out of the corner of his eye.

  “Hercules!” Pulto blurted as he saw the visitors. They’d known that the women would be visiting Anna, but they—or at least Corylus—had put out of their minds the possibility that Hedia and Alphena might still be present when they returned from the Forum.

  Corylus hadn’t fully realized how much he counted on the apartment being a safe haven in a city of strangers. He felt a flash of violent resentment, which embarrassed him just as violently. Nobody looking at him could’ve guessed he was more than normally startled to find company in his front room, though.

  “Oh!” said Alphena; she jumped up. She looked as startled as Corylus was. To his surprise, that made him feel worse than he had before.

  “Master Corylus,” said Hedia. She rose as supplely as a cat stretching. He wouldn’t have thought there was room for her to get out without shoving back the seat or the table, but she did it easily. “Lady Alphena and I were just taking our leave. Thank you for your gracious hospitality, and please convey our appreciation to your servants.”

  “Ah,” said Corylus. He hadn’t expected the formality, but of course it was the right course under these unusual circumstances. Hedia likely picks the right course every time, at least by her own lights. “Your presence honors my dwelling, your ladyship.”

  “I’ve asked a favor of your Anna here,” Hedia said. She nodded vaguely in the old woman’s direction, but her eyes continued to hold Corylus’s own. “I trust you won’t regard this as too much of an imposition?”

  “No, your ladyship!” Corylus said. “Anything you need, just ask!”

  The words tumbled out so quickly that he almost got his tongue tangled in his teeth. Alphena colored again.

  “And I hope you’ll direct your servant to provide what help Anna may require?” Hedia continued, raising an eyebrow.

  “Umph,” said Pulto as though a blow had gotten home on his belly. Hedia hadn’t looked at the old veteran, and he didn’t respond to the indirect order he’d just gotten, but Corylus knew how he felt about it.

  Pulto would do what he was told, though. Duty was duty.

  “I’m sure that whatever you ask will be important to my well-being, your ladyship,” Corylus said carefully. “Some recent events seem to threaten not only Carce but the world. I—”

  He stopped. He didn’t know how to phrase what was a feeling and a memory rather than a considered opinion.

  “That is,” he said, “I trust your ladyship’s judgment, and I’m sure that you have the best interests of the Emperor and the Republic at heart.”

  “Thank you, Master Corylus,” Hedia said. Her smile was cool, but it quirked like a fishhook at one corner of her mouth. “Now I wonder, sir; would you mind walking partway back to the house with me? I know it’s out of your way, but you seem a healthy young man. I have some questions about perfume, you see.”

  “Why, of course,” said Corylus. He felt the way he had on the morning when the ice had broken and dumped him into the Rhine. Venus and Mars, what is she really asking? “Ah, though I don’t really, I mean I’m not an expert … though my father, I mean …”

  “I’m sure you’ll be able to enlighten me sufficiently,” said Hedia. There was laughter in her eyes, but it didn’t quite reach her tongue. “And it will be quite decorous, as you’ll be walking beside my chair through the public streets. You know the way, of course.”

  Alphena stared at her as though she’d walked in on her stepmother looting a temple. Anna had been bustling in the pantry, but now she stuck her head out and said, “Pulto, I have things to talk to you about. The boy can make his way to Senator Saxa’s house and back without you to hold his hand this time.”

  “Yes, I know the way,” Corylus said. “I, ah …”

  “Then we’ll be going,” Hedia said, nodding at the door to the stairs. “My daughter and I have business to attend to tonight, so we need to get back.”

  “I wonder, Mother,” said Alphena, her voice pitched higher than it had been when she spoke a moment before. “Why don’t you take our chair and I’ll ride back in the one you hired?”

  “Not at all, dear,” Hedia said, looking toward the girl with soft amusement. “I’m sure Master Corylus doesn’t mind that he’s walking beside a rented chair. It’s not as though he’s going to be talking to the bearers, after all, is it?”

  As he listened to the interplay, Corylus realized that the bearers would be total strangers, not members of the household staff who might gossip to their fellows. Had Hedia planned this all along?

  Alphena stood stiffly with her fists clenched at her sides. Then without a further word or a look backward, she marched out the door. Hedia, still with a faint smile that could have meant anything, drifted after her.

  Corylus glanced over his shoulder as he followed the women. Pulto met his eyes and shrugged. “Keep your shield up and your head down, boy,” the veteran muttered. “You’re on the east bank now, believe me.”

  The German side of the river. Corylus grinned as he trotted down the stairs. He intended to be a soldier, after all, and soldiers had to take risks.

  Outside somebody was shouting, “Bring the vehicles for the noble ladies Hedia and Alphena!” When Corylus got outside, he saw it was the oily-looking pretty boy who’d been standing in the stairway when he and Pulto came home.

  One of Saxa’s servants, he supposed, though not one he remembered seeing before. There were two sedan chairs, one of them Saxa’s own with the burl maple inlays. They’d been parked down the side street in the shade rather than at the front of the apartment block. Even so Corylus felt a fool not to have noticed them, especially with their coveys of servants.

  Pulto hadn’t noticed the chairs either, though. The business yesterday had made them both jumpy—and apparently in the worst possible way: they so focused on cloudy fears that they weren’t seeing things around them that might be important.

  Alphena pushed a servant out of the way and threw herself onto the household vehicle. She couldn’t make the bearers drop it—which seemed to have been what she intended—but she did make it sway to the side. The bearers were braced to take her weight, so she had shoved the chair from an angle.

  The smarmy servant placed himself beside the hired chair and offered Hedia his arm; the bearers watched the byplay with bored disinterest. Hedia flicked a finger and said, “Iberus, run back to the house and announce that Lady Alphena and I are on the way.”

 
She turned to Corylus and said, “Will you please hand me into the chair, Master Corylus?”

  The servant gaped transfixed for a moment, but judgment smothered his bruised ego in time. He spun and jogged down Long Street before Hedia took further notice of him.

  “Your ladyship,” Corylus muttered. He thrust his arm out for Hedia to grip. In fact her fingertips barely brushed his skin; Hedia didn’t work out the way her stepdaughter did, but she was obviously fit.

  The vehicles and attendants started toward the center of the city with Alphena’s chair leading. There were servants both in front and behind, but none of the household were close to Hedia and Corylus.

  Alphena seemed to be urging her bearers to speed up. That was a bad idea: trained pairs had a fixed pace. If they changed it they were likely to get out of step with one another, making for a rough ride; in the worst case they might even fall.

  “Ah, you wanted to know about perfume, your ladyship?” Corylus said.

  “Of course not, dear,” Hedia said with a throaty chuckle. “And I don’t want to know about Vergil’s poetry either, which I suspect would interest you a great deal more.”

  She turned to look at him. The hired bearers were keeping a good pace, but to the left Corylus matched it easily by lengthening his own stride by a thumb’s width from route march standard.

  “And I’d like you to call me Hedia,” she said. “In fact, I insist on it. You wouldn’t refuse a lady’s request, would you, Corylus?”

  “Ah …,” said Corylus. “I would comply as best I could within the bounds of propriety. Hedia.”

  Her laugh trilled. “You’re a diplomat,” she said. “And much more intelligently cautious than I would expect from someone your age.”

  She looked him up and down, leaning toward him slightly to watch his legs scissoring on the pavement. Just as glad for the silence, Corylus looked ahead and to his side of the street.

  Old two-and three-story buildings lined the boulevard. Though Carce was growing with the expansion of the empire, the need for taller structures hadn’t generally moved this far out from the Forum yet. Corylus’s own apartment block was an exception, a replacement for three smaller buildings destroyed by fire only a year and a half ago.