by Неизвестный
When he spoke, the man’s voice was high, nasal—his accent not local. He said, “Come over here, boy.”
It was hardly the way to address a Roman officer, and it would have earned another speaker a blow to the face. The young officer opened his mouth to correct the man but could not find the words to do so. His legs raised him from his chair and walked him to the corner. There was an empty chair across the table from the man. He nodded at it and the young officer lowered himself onto it. Though his back was now to the rest of the room, the young officer was not concerned. What worried him was this figure whose merest words could compel his obedience. He debated attacking the man—shoving the table into him, following with a thrust of his sword—but all the man would need to do was shout, “Stop!” and he would be left at his mercy. For the moment, it was better to remain still and to allow the situation to unfold. No doubt, old Lucian would have an applicable farm reference for him—something to do with letting the crops come up or watching to see what the fox does.
The man nodded at him again. “Your emblem.”
“This?” The young officer touched the small image of the bull that fastened the ends of his cloak.
“What legion?” the man asked.
“The Ninth,” the young officer said. “The Hispana.”
To his surprise, the man’s face split into a grin. “I wondered,” he said, almost to himself. “It seems every last soldier in the empire’s been sent to this place.” There was a jug of wine and a pair of cups on the table. The man filled one of the cups and placed it in front of the young officer. As he did so, his sleeve slid up, uncovering the SPQR tattooed on his forearm. His single eye met one of the young officer’s eyes. Its center was black—not dark brown surrounding black, but entirely black. The young officer had the impression he was peering through an opening to an immense darkness. He swallowed and said, “What are you?”
The man tugged his sleeve down. “One who has been counted among the ranks of the Ninth,” he said. He lifted his cup. “Join me in drinking to it.”
The wine was thick, almost cloyingly sweet. The young officer took a mouthful and returned his cup to the table. “You served in the Ninth,” he said.
“I did.” The man refilled his own drink.
“It cannot have been that many years ago.”
“Nor was it.”
“You do not appear to have been too grievously wounded.”
“You mean, aside from this?” The man pointed to the eye patch. Before the young officer could stammer a reply, he said, “You’re correct. Even missing an eye, I could best any man in this room.”
Ignoring the taunt, the young officer licked his lips and said, “But you have refused the emperor’s summons to aid in the defeat of his enemy.”
“I have,” the man said. “I have done Rome a mighty service already. Indeed, it has not ended. Hadrian can spare me for this adventure.”
The young officer’s hand had found the hilt of his sword. “What service,” he said, “is it that allows a legionnaire to speak so casually of his emperor?”
“The same,” the man said, “that allows him to keep that handsome blade safely in its scabbard. And that allows him to ask you to place your hands flat on the table.”
There was no change in the man’s voice, yet for a second time, the young officer found himself following its instruction, as if it had only described an action he was about to perform anyway. “That’s better,” the man said.
“There are half a dozen men stationed outside this place,” the young officer said. “If I raise the alarm, they will answer.”
“By all means,” the man said, “invite them to join us.” When the young officer did not, he continued. “Never travel alone. Has no one told you that?”
“In the name of your oath as a soldier,” the young officer said, “I command you to release me.”
He might as well not have spoken. The man said, “You came here in search of trouble, didn’t you?”
Face flushed, the young officer did not reply.
“And instead,” the man said, “you found me.” Leaning back in his chair, he slid his right hand in among the folds of his robe. The young officer tensed, anticipating the appearance of a knife. He weighed calling for assistance from the other patrons, but could he reasonably expect them to help him? His hands stubbornly refused to leave their places on the table. Perhaps he could kick the man, break whatever hold he’d established over him.
Instead of a blade, however, the man withdrew a short, black horn, such as might have ornamented the skull of a not especially large goat. He set it on the table, and the young officer saw that it had been hollowed, carved into a horn of another sort. Its surface had been polished to a fine sheen so that the figures incised up and down it appeared to float beneath its surface. The young officer did not recognize any of the symbols. A few of them suggested Greek characters, a few more Latin, but they were mixed in with other arrangements of lines and circles to form a code alien to his experience. The writing seemed to shift as he studied it. Whatever his gaze fixed on held steady, but he had the overwhelming impression that the symbols at the edges of his vision were moving, turning like carvings to show themselves from a slightly different angle.
“This…” the young officer said.
“This came into my possession in Britannia,” the man said. “The man who had it before me swore it was a relic of lost Atlantis, which I judged so much horseshit the first time I heard it. Later…my views on the subject became more flexible, you might say.
“Could be there’s lesson in it for you. Listen, this is what happened.”
II
He called himself Bulinas. Said he was from some Greek island or another. Old enough for his hair and beard to be white, but young enough for his back to be straight. A philosopher was how he was presented to me, a man of learning. The story was he’d had trouble with Domitian, which had led to him putting a good distance between himself and Rome. That ended with the emperor’s assassination. Rumor had it Bulinas had foreseen the death, though you didn’t need to be much of a seer to know that it was only a matter of time before the emperor’s rivals struck at him. Anyway, the man himself never made such claims. He’d found his way into Trajan’s favor, which was how he’d come to us in Britannia.
That’s where we were, at Eboracum, rebuilding its wooden fort in stone. Hard work but it was a dangerous land. The Brigantes were forever on the verge of being attacked, and the Votadini were happy to sweep in for a quick raid if the mood took them. A couple of the older men had been with Agricola when he’d taken his trip up into Caledonia, and they told stories of the northern tribes that would freeze your blood and have you shitting your pants, as they were no doubt intended to. It was no secret that Agricola’s invasion hadn’t defeated the Caledonians in any kind of lasting way. Already, some of the forts that had been put up in the southern part of the place were being abandoned. It was our luck that the Caledonians and the Votadini—not to mention, the Brigantes—were as happy to slaughter one another as they were us. Had they been able to unite under a strong leader—well, you see how well the Judaeans have done, and they don’t have a tenth the men those tribes did.
What it all means is, the prospect of a stone fort appealed to us, so we labored as fast as we could and prayed the locals would hold off attacking us for one more day. At first, when Bulinas rode in at the center of a sizable guard, we assumed he was some official or another, up from the south or maybe from further away to inspect our work. A great one for building was Trajan, and there appeared to be no shortage of functionaries available to assess our construction’s progress. Most were trying to elicit bribes. If they were of consequence, they received a decent meal at the general’s table and a modest token of our esteem for their service to the emperor. If they were not of consequence, their hints earned them a bowl of whatever the men were eating and a blank stare.
Within a day of this man’s arrival, though, my centurion had summoned
me to his tent and told me to name the eight best men in the century. I did. Could each of them handle a horse? At least as well as could I, I said. That was good, the centurion said, because I was going to be riding out with them in another hour. We’d be accompanying our new visitor north, into Caledonia, with all due speed, until we’d delivered him to the fort at Loucovium. There, we were to wait with the man until he was ready to return.
It was not the first time a group of us had been assigned to guard a dignitary on his travels. But such a small group for so hazardous a destination seemed ill advised. A token force was stationed at Loucovium. Its name was at or near the top of the list of forts to be left to the Caledonians. The locals had to be aware of this. The chances were high we’d find ourselves riding into an attack on the place. At the very least, the area around the fort was bound to be thick with Caledonian warriors, unafraid to show themselves. I said as much. I said all of this to the centurion, who agreed that the mission was likely to be very dangerous. “Best make sure you choose a fast horse,” he said.
I did. So did we all, including the man who introduced himself to me as Bulinas. His speech was plain, but not in the way of some of the visitors I’d had words with. Those men had talked to me as if I were their servant or an idiot child. This man said what he had to say to me as if he were one man and I another. He asked me how long our journey would take. I told him the rest of today and maybe half of tomorrow. Where would we shelter for the night? That depended on where we were, I said, but I hoped he prepared to bed down outside. He was no stranger to sleeping under the stars, Bulinas said. Was I sure that I could bear to leave the comfort of my quarters here? His question was mostly jest, though there was a challenge in it. It made me smile. “I expect we’ll see,” I said.
We rode out in the early afternoon. The best of the summer was past us, but the days were still long enough for us to cover a good part of the distance to Loucovium before nightfall. We kept a brisk pace, but not so much as to exhaust the horses. We followed the Roman roads, which were in poorer repair the further north we went. Soon, we were through the lands of the Brigantes and into the territory of the Votadini. They were supposed to be our allies, but most of the time it was more a case of they didn’t fight us. There were Roman forts along the road, and we might have stopped at any one of them, but our orders were to cross as much ground as we could, so we kept on until the light had left the sky completely. We could have tried our luck at one of the Votadini towns, but none of us, including our charge, felt inclined to test our luck. We located a decent clearing to one side of the road, next to a small stream, and struck camp.
That was where I had my first look at this horn, at the fireside. The nine of us had our weapons out and were tending to them. The swords and lances didn’t really need any attention—had we been attacked, I would have counted on my blade to cut a man’s arm from his body—but running the sharpening stone along the edge of your sword helped you feel a little less worried about whoever might be moving in the trees beyond the firelight. We should have outrun any report of our coming—no one had passed us on the road—but who knew who was there already? There were rumors of Caledonian warriors stationed along the main routes into their land. The Votadini might decide to take offence at our presence and deal with us. Hell, an ambitious gang of bandits might judge our number small enough to overcome. Not to mention, the things that were supposed to prowl the woods. Men would could trade their shapes for those of wolves and bears—beasts that looked like dogs but laughed like men, a monster that was said to drop out of the sky and drain the blood from you before you knew it was gone. Yes, most of it was so much horseshit, but at night, surrounded by a strange forest in a dangerous place, the most outrageous tales slide that much closer to truth.
Bulinas had withdrawn a wide, flat box from one of his saddlebags. He sat with it on his lap, as if it were a small table. It was made of dark wood that smelled of spices. The lid bore a mark that I had not seen: a circle broken about two-thirds of the way around. A simple catch held the box shut. Bulinas unfastened it and raised the lid. The campfire seemed to dim. I was seated close enough to him to have a peek inside the box. It was divided into a number of compartments, no two of them, as far as I could tell, the same size. Each held a different object. I saw a thick coin whose copper had greened with age. Below it was a curved fang, long as a man’s finger; above it was a round stone like an eye. From the lowest slot, Bulinas lifted the horn. He cradled it in both hands and nodded over it three times, his lips moving silently. When he finished, he turned to me, as if waiting for me to speak. I pointed to the horn and asked him what it was.
A relic was what he called it. He said it had come from Atlantis, from the time when its peaks still rose above the waves. In its last days, the kingdom had been besieged by a force of monsters—men with the heads of serpents. Those Atlantean troops who didn’t run screaming at the sight of them were overwhelmed by the creatures. Soon, the serpent-men were within a day’s ride of the capital. The Atlantean king wasn’t much of a warrior; he was pale, sickly, in need of special medicines to give him strength. But he was a learned man and something of a sorcerer. He spent his days and nights frantically searching through scrolls and tablets that had been old when Atlantis herself had been young. At last, in a scroll that spoke of the darker gods, the king found what he was after. He called his palace guards to his chambers and began directing them to move all the furniture to the walls, clearing the center of the room. There, he drew symbols and secret marks on the floor. When he was finished, he ordered the guards out of his room and closed the doors behind them, forbidding them from opening the doors until he had summoned them.
The guards kept watch there all night, as the serpent-men drew up to the city walls. At one point, the entire palace shook, as if struck by an earthquake. Then the smell of charred flesh filled the air. Late the next morning, the king threw open the door to his chambers. The guards were amazed at the sight of him. He seemed to have become an old man overnight—his hair gone, his flesh loose and wrinkled. In the room with him, in the center of the figures he’d chalked on the floor, was a black goat. The king ordered the guards to kill it, which they did straightaway. Its blood was black too. Only when the goat was lying dead did one of the men notice that its eyes were those of a man and that its features resembled those of a human more so than those of a goat. But the king did not give them time to study the thing. He held out his hand for the nearest guard’s sword, and with more strength than any of them would have guessed, he cut one of the goat’s horns from its head. He dropped the sword and demanded a knife. With this, he scratched symbols onto the horn then sliced off its tips. He let the knife fall beside the sword and hurried to the palace’s front door.
Already, the serpent-men had pierced the city’s defenses and were swarming up its streets, fighting their way to the palace steps. What Atlantean soldiers were left had withdrawn to the palace, where the surviving commanders were trying to organize some form of counterattack. The king walked down the steps and strode through the ranks of his soldiers until he was standing in front of them, in the path of the oncoming serpent-men. As the officers realized what was happening and shouted for the troops to protect the king, he brought the goat’s horn to his lips and blew. “He sounded the horn,” Bulinas said, “and the serpent-men were routed.”
I waited for him to explain exactly how the monsters had been defeated. He didn’t. So I asked him. The children of the gods, he said, had come to the king’s aid. Which children? I asked. Of which gods? The offspring of the black goat, he said. Did he mean Pan? He shook his head. There were other gods besides those who called Mount Olympus their home, he said. These were darker powers, ones whose very names it was ill advised to speak. Among these was the black goat, sire of a thousand young. Those who knew how might call on him, and if it suited the god’s purpose, he would dispatch his brood to them.
It would have been outright rude to pronounce the man’s story horseshit to
his face, but my heart sank in my breast as I realized what the purpose of our journey was. We were going to convey him to Loucovium, where he would produce his horn, blow it a couple of times, and declare that the Caledonians had been defeated by the divine forces he’d sent to them. If we were fortunate, no actual Caledonians would put in an appearance while we were at the fort. I couldn’t make up my mind whether the man sharing the warmth of the fire with me was a charlatan who’d found that horn at a market and invented a story to go along with it, or a fanatic whose belief was so thorough as to be compelling. Neither prospect was appealing, although I guessed a fraud might wish to depart the fort as soon as he could, before his deception became apparent. It was disappointing because I had liked the man, though it was not as unsettling as the thought that the officers and officials above me—up to and including the emperor himself, it seemed—had been swayed by Bulinas’s words. I knew that the empire under Trajan was as big as it had ever been and that the emperor was desirous that it should remain so. The Caledonians were and had been an ongoing problem—one that taxed the empire’s resources to their limit, if not beyond. To resort to what was so obviously a fairy story to solve that problem, however, showed a kind of mania at work in my superiors that was not pleasant to contemplate.
My opinion of Bulinas and his horn changed the next morning. The attack came just before dawn, in a shower of arrows that missed the man standing watch but killed two of the men rising from their bedding and wounded another three. There were twenty-five or thirty of them, and they had surrounded us. I woke to an arrow burying itself in the ground beside my ear. I scrambled to my feet as a second flight of arrows filled the air and then a third. Another man went down, an arrow through his throat. The numbers were too large for bandits, but whether our attackers were Votadini or Caledonians wasn’t the most pressing concern. Howling at the tops of their lungs, our foes burst from the trees, our ranks sufficiently thinned for them to deem the odds in their favor, which I guess they were.