The Centurions

by The Centurions (retail) (epub)

  * * *

  He wouldn’t have been surprised if she had run, but in the morning she was still there, sleeping the exhausted sleep of someone pushed past endurance, her golden hair tangled with straw. Correus looked at her despairingly. He had bought her to save her from this, because he once had been a slave. And then he had thrown her slavery in her face and put his hands on her. He left again, without waking her, ashamed of himself.

  XIII The Road Home

  It was two days before Correus could bring himself to go back, and then he went only because he hadn’t left Verus enough money to feed Freita any longer, and Aeshma had to be moved to fresh grass.

  He left his men at their noon meal amid the new ditch and rampart that were rising on the burned hold, and made his way reluctantly up the grassy rise to the marching camp. The grass was worn and trampled between the new camp and the old, but around it the river valley was green in the sunlight. And just as well, because Aeshma needed it. Correus couldn’t afford to keep Freita and stable an extra horse just now, not after the price the legate had demanded. Antaeus, as an officer’s mount, was quartered with the cavalry horses, but centurions were only allowed one each on the army’s denarius.

  Correus picked his way through the hodgepodge between the camp and the outer ditch. He never ceased to be amazed at the number of hangers-on that an army on the march attracted. Every so often, when the legate felt that things were getting out of hand, he would order them out of camp, and they would disappear for a few days. Then, slowly, they would trickle back in again. But mostly the commanders ignored them, as long as they didn’t get in the way. It helped keep their troops from running riot among the locals. Now that the Nicer River line was secured, the camp followers would arrive in droves, and a ragtag village, a “vicus,” would grow up beside each new fort almost as fast as the fort itself. On a frontier with closely spaced outposts, the vicus behind it was an almost continuous narrow settlement of tradesmen, artisans, and merchants running the length of the frontier road. In the interior of a province the vicus might grow large enough to obtain colonial status, forming the nucleus of a new city when the army moved on. Veterans might be settled there as well, another step in the Romanization of new lands.

  At the moment, however, the Eighth Legion’s followers were a motley herd of whores and peddlers, and the encampment behind the baggage wagons was a jumble of carts and ragged tents, an instant slum beside the orderly barracks rows of the legionary camp. Between it and the camp were the tents of the legion’s servants, privately owned slaves with their masters’ horses and hunting dogs. The army servants looked down on the camp followers, patronizing their establishments as their masters did but otherwise keeping themselves snootily aloof, even when the army was under attack and they were forced to huddle with them in the center of the camp proper.

  Correus had tethered Aeshma in the grassy stretch that divided the two areas, with few worries that the foot traffic would trample his feed. Passersby gave the gray stallion a wide berth. Now, Correus was much surprised to find that the horse had already been moved from the grazed-over ground to a fresh stretch of grass. Aeshma was cropping contentedly, and beside him stood a slim figure with a fall of gold hair.

  Freita looked up as he approached and gave the gray shoulder a pat. Aeshma’s hide shone like a sword blade in the sun and Correus saw that she had been brushing him.

  “Are you out of your mind?” he snapped, and then changed to German as she looked at him uncomprehendingly. “That horse has nearly killed three people!”

  “As you can see, he has not killed me,” Freita said practically. “He is a war-horse of my own people, isn’t he? I used to train them.”

  Correus stared.

  “It was not thought proper for a woman,” she explained, “but the horses like me, and the priest said I had the horse magic, so it was allowed.”

  Aeshma whickered when he saw him, and Correus rubbed the horse’s nose absently. “You must have had more than magic to get near this one. He almost killed me at first.”

  Freita shrugged. “I spoke German to him. And also I am not afraid of him. It was… something to do.” She put a hand on the horse’s mane as if she would cling to him.

  The horse was her last link with her own people, Correus thought. “I’m not going to take him away from you,” he said more gently, and the girl relaxed. “Since he likes you, you can exercise him for me. I don’t have enough time to keep two horses ridden.” She could have ridden the gray stallion out of the camp and been gone by now, if she were going to.

  Freita’s eyes lit up at that. “Truly? If you will let me, I will take him and cut grass for him. This is almost gone.”

  She was still guarded, but the horse had opened up something in her that he could not. She seemed to bear him no grudge for his treatment of her, but watched him with a stiff resignation when he came near. It must have been no more than she had expected, he thought unhappily.

  “Come. He will do well enough for now.” He walked back to the tent with her, keeping a careful distance. “You will need money for food and such, and I have brought that.”

  “Do you trust me?” She gave him a sideways look.

  “You gave me your oath. Would you break it?”

  “No. I cannot,” she added. An oath was magic. A broken one followed the breaker like a curse.

  “Then I trust you.” He wouldn’t have trusted a Roman’s oath, but a Roman didn’t regard his word in such a serious light.

  They ducked in under the tent flap and she looked at him warily. He stood on the rug as far away from the bed as he could get. “I only have a few moments,” he said. “I have to get back to my men.”

  The girl seemed to relax again at that, and Correus thought wistfully that when she came out of hiding her face had a fierce, alive sort of beauty that filled the tent, even more compelling than the statue in the shadows had been, and more unreachable; an elf-gold that faded as you touched it.

  “Is there… anything else that you need?” he asked.

  Freita hesitated. “Earrings,” she said after a moment.

  Correus looked surprised.

  “I… the holes, you see,” she tried to explain. “They close up again if you do not keep earrings in them, and I was not wearing mine when… when—”

  Correus winced. When her world fell down around her. “Yes, I do see, and you shall have them.” He thought that she was embarrassed to ask, as if he might think she had given up and would use that bright beauty now to wheedle favors. Or that he might demand favors himself in exchange. A bugle call drifted up from the river. “I must go now,” he said, before his instincts could prove her right.

  The girl stood at the tent flap to watch him go, a long-legged figure in an iron helmet, and plated like a tortoise with the iron rings of his lorica. He was left-handed. That might be evil; she wasn’t sure. Everything about him, from his dark eyes and short-cropped hair to his bare legs, was alien. But of all the people in this place, he was the only one who could understand her speech. That made him the center of her life. Without him she was deaf and mute – abandoned. She turned to look out over the river valley, and the woods and wild berry stands beyond. Familiar lands, but different now, unwelcoming, as if she belonged to them no more. Her own world was gone from her as quickly as a sword point under her chin and a hard hand on her wrist. She had never felt so alone, even when she had thought she was going to die in Jorunn’s burning hold.

  Freita lay down on the bed and willed herself to sleep.

  * * *

  A hundred riders, and half again as many men on foot, paused on a rise of land, looking backward to where the Moenus lay in a blue loop behind them. A Roman patrol had been on their heels for five days, and their horses were nearly done. The mounts stood with heads low, flanks heaving, and tails matted with thorns and burrs.

  “There’s no sign of them,” Geir said.

  Ranvig nodded. “I am thinking they turned back when we crossed the river.”
His eyes were sunken and his blond braids were almost as matted as his horse’s tail. They had neither washed nor eaten a full meal since the battle at Jorunn’s holding, sleeping only when they had to, and then only the half of them, while the rest stood guard.

  Nyall passed his hand across a five-day growth of beard that itched in the heat. He narrowed his eyes, still looking backward across the river. “No,” he said. “They will not come farther.” He smiled grimly, a bone-weary smile with little humor in it. “We are not worth the chasing just now.”

  A rider behind him muttered something, and Ranvig spun his horse around with a snarl, his crooked teeth bared like a dog’s. “It was you, Ingald, who urged the priests on to keep us chained in Jorunnshold for a Dead-Sacrifice, because you thought it would give trouble and turn the war band to your own hand! Keep your viper’s tongue between your teeth or I’ll cut it out!”

  Ingald slapped his hand to his knife, and Nyall pulled his own mount around.

  “Stop it! Do we ride on, or shall we all go and fight a blood feud on the riverbank until Rome catches up to us?” They backed away from each other reluctantly. “Ranvig, go and tell the others that we will ride another half-day, until we have some cover. And Ingald, I know well whose voice it was that whispered in the priest-kind’s ear, and I am not needing Ranvig to fight my battles for me. Best that you remember that.”

  Nyall turned his horse away to the head of the little band. So many dead, he thought. So many gone to keep those other dead company. Lyting, he thought, clenching his hands on the saddle. Lyting, whom he had refused to order home. And now Arngunn… Arngunn, who had wavered one time too many and at last listened to the priests. Gudrun, dead beside him, and small, freckled Saeunn drowned in the river. Of the allied chiefs, Egil and Sigvat were gone, and Jorunn, too, he thought. Also, the chief of the Hermanduri had been killed in the first battle, and his people had gone back to Rome afterward.

  So few left…

  Fiorgyn rode at the head of the band with a handful of women and children, and that was a bright spot in his heart. Mord was there also, tied to his horse because he was unconscious. He was badly wounded and they didn’t think he would live. There was no priest to tell them for sure.

  There might be more in flight. He didn’t know. They had split when they crossed the river, to give the Romans more roads to chase down. They would be taking their own trails, with the Semnones among them for guides, riding for Nyallshold. There was nowhere else to go.

  And Kari… What road had he taken? Before the Roman attack Nyall had sent him with four of the allied chiefs and their warriors to make a diversion that would keep the soldiers from Moguntiacum busy to the north. Had Kari seen the smoke from Jorunnshold? If he had, he would have turned back – but for where? For Jorunnshold, with the Romans waiting for him? Wuotan Father, not for Jorunnshold!

  Nyall took a drink from one of the water flasks that they had filled as they crossed the river, and tried to think. If Kari had gone to Jorunnshold… Gunnar and Runolf would have dived back in their holes at the first sign of a Roman victory. Thrain and Sigurd? Sigurd would probably stay. Of Thrain he wasn’t sure, especially if he learned that Arngunn was dead. Thrain was sister’s-son to Arngunn, and that was a strong bond – maybe the only one that had bound him to Nyall. And Lyting… Nyall pushed Lyting’s face back from his mind, but a ghost rode at the empty space on his right hand as it had done since the first battle, when the boy fell. Without the priests and Ingald, Nyall could have bought a better vengeance than this for Lyting. Valgerd could have beaten Jorunn’s priests, but Valgerd was an old man, and ill, and he had stayed at Arngunnshold. Now the Romans would catch him as well, and they had no liking for the Free People’s priests. Nyall lifted his hands from the saddle and saw that they were shaking.

  Fiorgyn, her pale hair dirty with sweat and ashes, came up beside him and laid her own hands on his. “It is time to walk again,” she said, and Nyall nodded.

  He got down and gave his weary horse to another man. Fiorgyn did the same, and walked beside him through the hot grass, northeastward.

  * * *

  The hand of Rome passed along the Nicer Valley and the forts sprang up behind it – full forts, turf- and timber-built, that would be garrisoned by auxiliary troops when the legions pulled back to winter quarters. This year’s cold-weather headquarters would be their home bases on the Rhenus – Argentoratum, Vindonissa, and Moguntiacum.

  Correus, knowing that it might be the last time Freita would see this valley, took her riding with him on a day’s leave. He rode Antaeus, who needed it – they had been building the new fort for so long that his gold hide was full of frisk and bounce and he curvetted like a chariot pony in the Circus. Freita looked as if she had been born on the gray, he thought, as he watched them fly along the steep uphill track into the forest. The girl’s gold hair made a cloud around her face, and she was laughing with pleasure as he caught up with her.

  Correus hadn’t laid a hand on her since that first disastrous night, and slowly, over the space of a long, touchy month, she had lost some of her stiffness and her wildcat look. Her eyes still had that gone-away look when she thought he wasn’t watching, but she had learned a little Latin and seen Tribune Crassus’s other woman, and her judgment of Correus was softened as a result. He no longer seemed evil, but was familiar and safe beside the others. She hated him, but he was there, inevitable, a known enemy among the unknown.

  They rode on into the stillness of the cool woods, skirting around a grove that Freita told him was sacred and forbidden to men. It had the look of the grove they had stopped in the day he had carried Flavius back to the hospital, and Correus was glad that he had laid that crust of bread on the rock then. He had enough to worry him without a German curse snapping at his heels. At home, he had never believed in curses, but the German forest seemed to bring out the Gaul in him. The Gauls cursed each other regularly, and their gods had a reputation for making it stick. A Gaulish bard could raise hives on a man’s face with a mere satire song. Or so they said.

  They halted where a little stream bubbled along through a bank of ferns and fat orange slugs came out to air themselves in the damp shade. Freita pulled a canvas sack from her saddlebag and began to pick berries from the bushes that grew above the stream. Correus recognized it with amusement – an army courier pouch. Freita had proved as admirable a scrounger as Tullius once she got her bearings. He laughed and told her so, and she gave him a rare smile. She smiled often enough at Aeshma, or at Silvanus’s jokes, or at the cat she had acquired from somewhere – and which Correus had named Baucis before she could give it some name no one could pronounce – but she smiled seldom at him.

  There were minnows darting in the clear, cool water, and water bugs skated lazily on the surface; Correus sat down to watch them while Freita picked her berries. When the pouch was full, she brought it to him, and they made a lunch from berries and the barley cake and dried fish he had brought. The German waters were thick with fish, and the legion spread its nets in the rivers with abandon. In overpopulated Rome, fish was a luxury.

  When they had finished, she wiped her mouth with berry-stained fingers and stretched out on the loamy stream bank, hands behind her head. She was wearing a rough riding gown of cheap cloth that she had sewn herself. She picked a piece of thorned berry vine from the skirt and flicked it into the water. “When do we leave?” she asked quietly, lying back again to watch the leafy canopy above her.

  “In a few days,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  She shook her head. “There is nothing here now for me. My father is dead, and my mother with him. Or gone to Nyall maybe, but I am thinking not. They were too old to swim that water.”

  “Freita—”

  “Yes, Centurion?”

  “I would have sent you to Nyall if I could have. If the legate thought we wouldn’t meet you again on a battlefield…”

  She sat up to face him, suspicious, as if there might be a trap somewhere.

  �
�I didn’t want a slave,” Correus said gently. The green gaze remained skeptical, and he tried to explain. “I was born one.”

  “All things change, Centurion,” she said. “I was born a warrior’s daughter.” She seemed to find the reversal grimly amusing.

  “My mother,” he went on, not looking at her now, but digging with a twig at the damp lichen on a rock, “was bought by my father on a campaign in Gaul. She was younger than you are, but maybe not so different. She doesn’t have a bad life now, I suppose. Lots of pretty things, and my father is a kind enough man. She cajoles him well.”

  He had taken off his helmet, and she thought that the sharp angles of his face were shadowed by more than the dappled pattern of sunlight falling through the trees.

  “Now you follow in his footsteps,” she commented.

  “No!” The vehemence in his voice startled her.

  “Then why?” Freita sat stiffly, head up. Correus was still digging at the lichen, cutting little roads in it, and he didn’t see her.

  “It was… me, or some other man. I don’t think I thought first.” He looked at her now, his eyes unhappy. “But I didn’t mean to… to—”

  To lie with me, she thought. Well, she hadn’t wanted him to, although the fact that he had stopped himself remained a puzzle to her. But to be bought for pity, like a stray… Her eyes flashed. “My thanks for your… care for me, Centurion!” She spun around and stood up.

  “Freita—”

  She stumbled up the slope to the berry vines and began picking again, so he wouldn’t see her face. “It was not necessary. Best that you sell me again.”