by Nhys Glover
I went to Grissa’s head and placed a hand on her brow. She was boiling up, sweat pouring down her face and soaking into her hair.
“I can help you, Grissa. I have done this before. You do not have to fear for your life or that of your babe. I will help. Now I am going to lessen your pain,” I said.
“I have given her willow bark but it is doing no good,” Maleka said.
“Willow bark can be problematic. It thins the blood.... I have another way.”
I sat on a stool beside the frantic, exhausted girl. While the other women looked on in desperate hope, I placed my hands on Grissa’s belly. Closing my eyes I slipped into the quiet place in my mind where I could see the Light that surrounds and infuses everything. I saw it clearly in the body of Grissa and in her babe. Though the babe’s Light was fading. If I was going to do this, it had to be quickly.
I let the Light flow through me and into my patient and her babe. I could see how the lines of light were misplaced. But I could also sense that Grissa was now much calmer and her pain was reducing. Her tight muscular control was relaxing, giving the babe room to manoeuvre.
Still with my hands channelling Light, I used it to aid me as I gently urged the babe to shift positions. The child was frightened too, and had become lost. How I knew this, I didn’t quite know. All I knew for sure was that my job was to show it the way.
And I did.
Sometime later, I felt the babe shift fully into position. I removed my hands. For a few more moments I felt disconnected from the physical world as I tried to regroup. When I opened my eyes, I saw a woman in the throes of a normal birth. Another contraction had claimed her, and this time Grissa was pushing confidently.
It felt like only a few moments more, but I was sure it was much longer, before the babe was finally being pushed from the womb that had become its prison. The bloody, squalling infant was a boy, and Maleka held him up in triumph for her daughter to see.
Exhausted and still a little dazed, I left Grissa and her new son to the capable hands of her midwives. I barely registered the hasty words of thanks before I shut the door and made my way back to my room.
Orion was awake and reclining on the bed, muscular arms behind his blonde head. His blue eyes asked the question. I nodded and smiled the reply.
“You’re remarkable. Do you know that?” he said, shifting over so I could lie at his side.
“It is not me. It is the Light. I have no idea why I was gifted with the ability to see and work with it, but I was.”
Orion shook his head and made a disgusted noise in his throat. “No, it’s more than that. If you hadn’t been so determined to learn to be a healer, that ability might never have shown itself. How often does a noblewoman find herself faced with life-or-death situations that require the kind of healing you do best? Learning from Ariaratus gave you access to that ability and the confidence to use it.”
I closed my eyes and rested against his warm, bare chest. “I remember when it first happened. Ariaratus had such gnarled and twisted hands. They gave him so much pain sometimes. I was rubbing unguent into them when it started happening. At the time, I didn’t even realise what was happening. All I knew was that all my concern for my teacher and friend was being channelled into him as I rubbed in the balm.
“Over several months his hands seemed to change, become straighter and less swollen, and he was bothered less and less with the pain. He said that was why he let me continue, because he knew a real healer when he saw one. It was one of the proudest moments of my life having him say that to me.”
“Why?” Orion asked softly, his interest plain.
“Why was I so proud? Because I had done it. As you say, the ability was always there but it was me who activated it. I came into this world with wealth and station handed to me, but being a healer, that I had to work for. And Ariaratus really made me work.”
I laughed softly at the memory of how exhausted I had been in the early days, especially having to carry his heavy medical pouch around.
“I doubt there are many women of your class like you.”
I shrugged. “I suppose so. It is a pity. Women of my station are little more than slaves, the way their freedom is constrained. I sometimes wonder what my life would have been like if Mater had lived. I think her gentle determination would have forced me into a more acceptable mould.”
“And you might have been happier that way,” Orion said, his voice suddenly stiff and emotionless.
I now knew that when it got like that it was a sign he was feeling too much emotion, not too little.
“I have lived my own life. How could I have been happier than that? Yes, I would have had my mother and maybe a brother, but I would only have been living someone else’s life. Not mine. Mater’s death, as terrible as it was, opened a door for me. A fated door, I now realise. And I am not only happier for having walked through it, but I am complete. You did that for me, Orion. Your talk of fate and the rightness of all of us. It was what I needed to hear.
“That babe tonight had lived ten moon cycles in a perfect, right place that in the blink of an eye became the wrong place. He knew it instinctively and tried to escape. But he got lost and turned around, quite literally. I felt his confusion and terror. When I got him headed the right way... he knew it. After that, things just happened as they were meant to. As nature ordained.
“That’s how I felt. When Mater died, my perfect life no longer felt right for me, especially when Pater prepared to leave me too. I felt all turned around like that babe, and then I found you and the rest of the pack, and I was suddenly headed in the right direction again. My direction. I think it is always easiest when you are following your fated path.”
Orion nodded. “That man I told you about. He taught me how love can be a weakness. He raped me and made sure I couldn’t say anything. If I did, he said he’d kill my mother and sister. He used my love for them against me. He said he did it as a lesson, so I’d learn what it took to be a strong warrior. And I learned what he taught me.”
My heart was in my throat during every word. I had known on some level that the evil man he had spoken of had done something far worse than just say cruel things. Now I knew. And what was worse than the rape was the lesson that went with it. He’d stolen all the goodness and love out of Orion’s life. He made the boy he had been afraid to love and be loved.
And yet, for all that, Orion had let himself become part of a pack of boys like himself and then let in a patrician’s daughter. Knowing we could be used against him, he had still chosen to forge bonds that went far deeper than friendship. Knowing what he thought he knew, he had chosen to love, even so.
And because he had, that bastard had lost his control over Orion.
“Letting yourself love us took incredible strength. Until this moment I did not realise just how much,” I told him.
“It didn’t feel like strength. It felt too easy. But that bastard turned me around as surely as that babe was turned around, so I was left confused and lost. But then I found my pack and you, and I was right way round again. I saw it as a sign of my weakness, depending on them, on you. Now I see it as my destiny. That bastard tried to turn my life into a prison of my own making, but luckily I found people to show me the way out. I never saw that before.”
I kissed him. “Talos thinks we’ll find a way to be together. He thinks that we have done harder things, impossible things, already, so we can find a way to do this.”
He grinned, a real grin that I was getting to see more often these days. “You have a way of changing us. You know? A way of making us better men. Never in a million years would I have imagined a Talos who was anything but accepting of his lot in life. Now he talks about ways we might be with you. He’s always hatching one plan after another. None of them can work, but that doesn’t stop him. I thought him a fool. Now... Now I don’t.”
“His optimism is infectious. I want us to find a way.”
“What if we never went back? When the others catch up with u
s, what if we just keep going? Follow the Silk Road until we find a place where we can all be together.”
I sighed, imagining what that might be like. But I had seen what happened to Pater when he thought he had lost me. I could not do that to him again. It would kill him.
I shook my head. “If it was just me, then I would agree. But it would devastate Pater. I am all he has left.”
Orion’s brows came down. “So his happiness is more important than ours? Is that it?”
I sighed heavily. “We are not talking about happiness, we are talking about life and death. He will die if I do not go home. He almost died when they kidnapped me. I would never forgive myself if my happiness cost him his life.”
It was Orion’s turn to sigh. “I understand. You’re right. It was just an idea.”
“Ideas are good. We need to keep coming up with ideas. If Talos is right, sooner or later one of them will work.”
Chapter Ten
ORION
Returning from another day of scouting, I felt the first real sense of hope I’d known since rescuing Accalia during the raid. The Parthians had gone. They were following one of the caravans heading back to Emisa. The false trail I’d planted had worked.
One of the many lessons we’d been taught in the barracks was how to lay down false trails, both physically and informationally. Drop a hint here or there in the ears of gossiping stallholders and soon enough the lies you wanted heard would soon spread to become truths.
“Did you hear about that couple who ran away from the raid on the caravan? Someone saw them hiding in a wagon heading west yesterday morning. They must have been running away from more than just bandits,” he said matter-of-factly here and there.
Now the carefully placed misinformation had paid off. The bastards had taken off back the way we’d come.
I’d also heard on the same grapevine that a caravan was heading out in the morning. This one heading east. The Parthians wouldn’t believe we would head east, closer to Parthia. They would always be looking west, further back into the empire. Though I hated to journey closer to the lion’s den, in this instance, trapped as we were, it was the only way we were going to successfully elude the predators.
It was odd to think of myself as prey and the Parthians as predators. I had been raised to see myself as anything but prey. If you thought like that in the arena you were dead. But in this situation, when we were so completely outnumbered and in unfamiliar territory, I would be a fool to imagine I could be anything but fleeing prey.
And prey in the wild could be very good at avoiding death. Their natural defences gave them a chance of survival. Just as ours would. Hide, run, leave false trails, go in one direction and then another, and change your appearance like a chameleon lizard. These were all tried and true methods of keeping the upper hand.
So while the enemy went one way, we would go another, hiding as we ran.
“We leave tomorrow,” I told Accalia as soon as I found her.
She was just leaving Grissa’s room after spending time with the newborn. It hurt my heart to see her with the child, watching how she cooed and doted on the babe. If she never married she would never have a child. What woman wanted to live her life that way? And yet, as Accalia had said, and Grissa had proven, bearing children was a dangerous activity. More dangerous than fighting in the arena. I would never want her to be put in such danger.
But Accalia was no coward. She would never turn away from something she wanted out of fear.
“Are you sure?” she asked, her reluctance plain to see.
Accalia had been happy here, playing her role as wife and surrounded by her new friends. She wasn’t alone. This time, this oasis... it had healed my soul in ways I couldn’t fully understand. But I knew Accalia was the cause of it. Her love and acceptance was as effective in healing my inner wounds as her hands were at healing outer ones. And I had been happy. Happier than I ever thought possible.
“Yes. The hounds are following the false trail. We have to make the most of the opportunity to run. There is a caravan heading to Dura-Europa leaving at first light. We will be joining it.”
Her alarm set my heart aching. I rushed to explain.
“They won’t be expecting us to go closer to Parthia. Once we are free of them we can make our way home. While ever we stay here we are trapped. Sooner or later they will find us.”
She nodded her understanding, but I could still see the uneasiness my idea had aroused in her.
“Accalia, we have to go home. We have to find the others and go home to your father.”
I had said what I knew would strengthen her resolve. Relieving her father’s fears for her safety, making sure he was all right, and finding the rest of our pack were all more important than her fears, or her reluctance to give up a life she enjoyed. With me.
As expected, my little she-wolf lifted her chin and looked me in the eye, her storm-cloud eyes filled with resolute fire now. “Yes. You are right. It is a sensible plan. We must get home as soon as we can.”
Over dinner, we told Maleka and her family of our departure the next day.
“So, you will join one of the caravans going north from Dura-Europa?” Maleka asked with interest. Any distrust the woman had still harboured had vanished since Accalia had saved her granddaughter and great-grandson.
“Possibly. I don’t know enough about the area to know the routes,” I admitted. I had been trying to glean such information on my daily wanderings, but it was still a patchwork of disconnected information in my mind rather than a plan.
“Those who choose not to brave the desert and prefer the longer but safer way, go east from Antiochia to Zeugma and down the Euphrates to Dura.”
I frowned as the name Zeugma rang a bell of recognition in my mind. In Greek it meant bridge, but I didn’t think that was why I knew the name.
Accalia seemed to recognise the name as well. Her recall was faster than mine. “Is that not where the Fourth Legion of Scythians were recalled to after their humiliating defeat at the hands of the Parthians during the recent war over Armenia? Talos told us about it.”
Now I remembered. Talos had been very talkative about his adventures in this part of the country, especially about the battles that had taken place there and the final ceremony he’d witnessed. At that ceremony, Corbulo had accepted the king’s obeisance to the emperor in a memorable performance that would have appealed to Nero himself had he been present.
“That’s it. Of course. Didn’t Talos pass through Zeugma on his way home? He joined a caravan for the journey back to Antiochia from there.”
Accalia smiled fondly. “He made it sound so romantic. I had envied him that adventure. Not quite the caravan journey I experienced.” She shuddered and pulled a face.
I gave a little chuckle and noticed Maleka eyeing us speculatively.
“Talos is my brother. He undertook a challenge that found him in that area,” I told her.
“Brother? Are you talking about the final initiation Corvus’ gladiators undertake?”
I had forgotten that she had known Accalia’s grandfather and that he’d been initiating his gladiator graduates in the same way for decades.
“Yes. As I told you, I was trained in the barracks. Some of the boys I trained with became as brothers to me. More like my pack. We were jokingly called the Wolf Pack,” I said, preferring to stay as close to the truth as possible with Maleka. She was too astute for anything else.
“Wolf Pack? The same Wolf Pack that became the toast of all Rome before it burned last year?”
This was Grissa, who had finally recovered enough to join us for meals. Until now she’d sat quietly in the background nibbling food she obviously didn’t feel up to eating. Exhaustion still claimed her, but a new glow also surrounded her. Love for her new babe, I assumed. And relief to have him safely in the world. Thanks to Accalia.
Gods, I hadn’t expected the Wolf Pack’s fame to have spread this far. Now how did I get myself out of this? I couldn’t be a g
ladiator fighting in the arena and married to Corvus’ daughter.
“Yes, four of the Wolf Pack went on to do very well in Rome. Pater was very proud of them,” Accalia said.
“I was proud of them too,” I threw in hastily.
“I heard they were a group made up of different races. One black, one oriental, one Greek and one... Northman. Blonde and blue-eyed, so the story goes,” Maleka said, her face very still.
My heart sank like a stone in a pond. I’d given us away. Maleka now saw right through the thin veneer of lies we wove.
“I was kidnapped by Parthians, just as I told you,” Accalia began hastily, realising as I did that our lies had undone us. “Pater sent the Wolf Pack after me, as we had all been childhood friends, and Pater knew their loyalty to me.”
“How came this one to be separated from the rest?” Maleka asked.
Accalia looked at me, pleading for support. But I could give her none. My mind was blank. This mistake was mine. I had no idea how to repair it.
“He was washed overboard and continued on alone, expecting his pack to catch up with him along the way. He found me, and we escaped here.”
“And then passed yourself off as a patrician married to your adopted father’s daughter?” Maleka asked me carefully with narrowed eyes. “And then became her lover?”
Accalia lifted her chin in a gesture that I was all too familiar with. “Yes. We had to pass ourselves off as married. It was the safest way. And yes, we are lovers. Orion has had my heart since we were children. I would marry him if I could. But it is illegal. I would become a slave myself if I were to do so.”
Maleka looked at her granddaughter and then her daughter, gauging their reactions. All looked shocked, though I hoped not horrified.
“Your father knows of your bond?” Maleka asked again, still probing.
Accalia sighed heavily. “Pater knows of our friendship and the devotion all the pack have for me. He does not know about my love for Orion. Orion’s life would be sacrificed if he did.”
“Most definitely. A male slave cannot share the bed of his mistress. Especially not an innocent, dutiful noblewoman. You lost your innocence here, did you not? I saw the change in you both, though I did not understand it at the time. This is very bad, Accalia. Very bad. You court the worst kind of danger by allowing this passion free rein.” The old woman sounded concerned rather than affronted.