Lady of the Light

by Donna Gillespie

  Auriane moved close to her daughter’s side. “I never stop being afraid,” she said then. “But my greatest fear is for my mother.” Avenahar knew Auriane referred to the ruthless tribe of invaders overrunning their Chattian people from the north, who pressed ever nearer the village of Auriane’s birth, where her aged mother, Athelinda, lived on in her family’s hall. Because of Rome’s law prohibiting the still-simmering Chattians from possessing weapons of iron, her people were ill-able to defend themselves from these northern marauders. “With that cruel ban, Rome left us like a declawed cat. Sometimes a wrong is perpetrated. And no one acts. Then we must. This is how we live, Avenahar. We aren’t separate from our kin. It’s a law that was old when Rome was a mud hut on a hill.”

  “Gods, you’ve escaped detection by Governor, Emperor, and all their spies for . . . how long?”

  “Seven years.”

  “Even Father is hunting you and doesn’t know it. This goes to . . . to the top of the world.”

  “Avenahar, you don’t need to stay. Go now, if you wish. And know I love you still.”

  “Pig feathers. Stand aside so I can get down from this beast and help you.”

  As Avenahar leaned forward to dismount, a flight of storks flared up behind the shrine, upsailing bodies all speeding grace. They were sentences written across the sky. Auriane studied their outstretched necks, their deeply beating wings, the pattern of their bodies opening out against the dusk like some unfurling fisherman’s net.

  They flew against their direction of migration. That was ill-omened enough. But Auriane stiffened in disbelief as their formation took the shape of the runic letter her people called hagalaz. It warned of a shattering of worlds, the swift destruction of all that is settled and known.

  “Avenahar,” she said darkly, “stay on your horse. Something evil’s about. And it’s close.”

  Sharp disappointment showed in Avenahar’s face, as if at an unforgivable betrayal. It caused Auriane to feel she’d failed her daughter in every way it was possible for a mother to fail her offspring.

  “I mean it, Avenahar. Stop twitching like a tethered hound. Stay ready to gallop home. I’ll just finish what I’m about; too many lives depend on this coin—then we’ll be off.”

  Auriane dragged the first of the unwieldy sacks behind the shrine. The sense of knowing oneself as prey is subtle; the moon’s eye raises an invisible brow, alert, interested, hungry for a soul. She counted herself that dire omen’s cause: For seven years she’d lain in a foreign enemy’s bed. By the unbreakable law of the Fates, she’d always known she would one day be called to account.

  As she struggled with the second sack, she heard Avenahar splash down to the muddy ground. Auriane gave a small smile and shrug of resignation. One time out of nine, she does as I say. The fault’s mine for trying to instill a natural devotion into her rather than a Roman readiness to obey.

  Avenahar threw her coltish energy into the effort, crow-black hair falling across her face as she leaned against the sack’s deadweight. When both pouches were behind the shrine, Auriane pulled aside a flat stone that concealed a hollowed-out place in the earth.

  Together, they pushed the sacks into the shallow pit. The money was Marcus Arrius Julianus’s, from the proceeds of an estate he’d entrusted to Auriane. For long, I’ve taken his wealth and broken his law with it—he who has only been relentlessly kind, came Auriane’s well-worn, shame-ridden thought as she pushed the stone back in place. But my own mother waits for slaughter while Cheruscan bandit packs overrun our Chattian forests.

  Auriane inclined her head, signaling for Avenahar to do the same.

  “Hear me, Old Ones,” Auriane intoned, “good givers of all . . . I call on you to watch and ward. Take these coins and speed them on their way—” I’ve become a double creature, Auriane thought, aware of the fineness of Avenahar’s hair as a thick ribbon of it loosened from her braid and blew across her face, the vulnerable line of her daughter’s throat, and the way fragility and strength were blended in her growing limbs. Auriane reflected on the myriad horrors that could take her child—any child—in an instant. One eggshell life. Would I thrive for a day without her? She’s air and sustenance, red mead and nurturing fire. I could go mad.

  “. . . and let no foreign eyes fall on this silver,” Auriane spoke on, “so it can shield my people from the devastation that comes.”

  Both mares were in constant motion, jingling their bits. Auriane would have been alarmed by their behavior in any place but this; a grove thick with spirits was likely to cause horses to caper and dance. She kneeled above the pit—this small grave cradling hope of life—and chanted the name of the runic sign that granted protection: “Algiz . . . algiz . . .” flattening the syllables into a bone-vibrating hum. As she traced its holy bird-foot shape in the air, her fingers left a trail of living silver in the shape of the rune—whether visible to others or only to her own eyes, she could not have said.

  From jarringly near came the crack of stone on stone.

  Auriane whipped about to face four men walking in a file, thrashing their way through the hawthorn bushes. All four stopped in place, as surprised to see her as she was to see them, eyes showing white, like frightened horses. A reek drifted from them—of old sweat, bilge water, and fish-stink. Their grimy tunics were tucked up into their belts for flight; they were plastered with mud to their knees. Their hair was cropped close, in the common style of sailors of the imperial fleet.

  Auriane saw alarm melt from the eyes of the man who led them, to be replaced by avarice as he recognized a fine opportunity—had he truly come upon two women left foolishly unguarded, wandering about at darkfall? It seemed just enough good fortune to make a man suspicious of ambush.

  And wasn’t the woman burying something?

  Deserters from the navy, Auriane realized. Their base camp was on the river Rhenus. Naval service wasn’t counted as glorious as service in the legions, and it was commonly claimed Rome inducted robbers and cutthroats to fill out the ranks.

  Auriane silently cursed. Her spear lay in front of the shrine, just out of reach. “Get on your horse and go!” she commanded Avenahar in their Germanic tongue.

  “Look, lads, two healthy, strong women!” spat out the man who seemed in authority over them; he had the bare beginnings of a muzzle, and his black beard was just starting to bristle from too many days without a razor.

  Auriane was relieved to hear Avenahar’s mare clattering off down the towpath, back toward Marcus Julianus’s villa, and home. But before the beast vanished in the night, Auriane just managed to see that the mare’s gallop was loose and erratic, and the reins were flapping free.

  Avenahar was not astride the horse.

  Auriane fought down the helpless anger she felt. Of course she won’t leave me. She’s in the grip of mythic tales. I raised not a girl but a wolf cub. Avenahar has her own fate. But that’s an agony to know.

  “This one’s of middle years,” the sailor said to his fellows, waving dismissively at Auriane, “but she looks hardly used—let’s enjoy her here and get rid of her. That tender Niobe, there—boni amici, we could get five thousand for her on the block at Treverorum!” Like many in the imperial fleet he was of Syrian birth and his Latin was corrupted by a curious lilt. Auriane didn’t understand all at once, so the horror of it stole over her slowly.

  “Leave this place or live ever under my curse.” Auriane’s voice surprised them; it was soft and low but it would carry across a field.

  “If you’d curse us,” spoke up the slit-eyed brute lumbering up behind the Syrian, his arms as thickly muscled as the men who loaded amphorae onto merchant ships, “you’ll have to take your place behind our captain, the whole of the cursed navy, and that stinking river that just tried to swallow us whole.”

  As he spoke, the bristly-bearded Syrian gestured covertly to his fellows—a signal to fan out and surround the women. Then he unsheathed a short sword, as casually as some bored, cynical priest of Juno raising the mallet to
sacrifice the day’s tenth lamb.

  A sword. All at once Auriane realized her life might end in this place.

  She wrestled off her cloak and threw it to the ground, to free her limbs for battle. The improbability of the moment made her feel starkly remote from day-to-day existence; she felt as if she were a masked actor in a drama played out on a stage. Seven years of settled life vanished like a backdrop whisked away between scenes.

  All four felt deep surprise at the sight of the tall, sturdily built woman who stood before them, her eyes gently ignited with excitement—as if battle were a song she longed to hear again. Her hair was pulled sleekly back from a high forehead, and she was clad in native male attire—long, belted tunic, leather riding breeches. She was a jarring sight for city-born eyes, for nothing decorative adorned her body, nor was there anything womanly in her manner: Here was grace serving ferocity, beauty married to strength—a marriage faintly appalling to their eyes.

  Auriane ebbed backward, moving with the infinite care of a thief easing a hand toward a silk purse, her purpose to retrieve her spear.

  But the Syrian moved with her.

  As she edged farther from the burial pit, one of their number, a squat creature with straw-colored hair like a dirty horsehair brush, ambled toward it and heaved aside the stone. This man’s morose eyes revealed a nature somewhat more reflective than that of his fellows. He dumped the sacks’ glittering contents onto the ground and began fondling the silver. “Minerva’s eyes!” he exclaimed softly. “What fine old coins!”

  “Leave it, Lurio.” The Syrian’s words came out as a gravelly, monosyllabic grunt. He never took his gaze from Auriane as he slowly crab-stepped around her, body bent forward like a race rider, sword angled toward her throat.

  Auriane had no leisure to become alarmed by any conclusions the inquisitive one might be drawing, for the fourth man—she saw only shoulders broad enough to take an ox-yoke—planted himself behind her, blocking her path to her spear. Three of them were ringed about her in a circle that was closed by the shrine. She was trapped.

  The one called Lurio ignored them, continuing to examine the coins.

  “—not those tinny new coins the navy robs us by paying us with; this is fine old silver, solid through and through . . .”

  Lurio then regarded Auriane, eyes alive with questions. He had seen her somewhere. All at once he remembered: The most wealthy aristocrat of the district, the noble Marcus Arrius Julianus, had gifted the Roman river-town of Confluentes with a theater; Lurio had been in the press of people in the town forum on the day of its dedication. And this woman had been standing beside Marcus Julianus during the ceremony. This was that Chattian savage who’d once warred like a man alongside her rude countrymen, now barely civilized into Julianus’s wife, a woman of vast resources—which made it powerfully intriguing she would be creeping out alone at darkfall, burying coins . . . old coins, at that, the sort trusted best by savage northern chiefs. . . .

  In his excitement Lurio shivered like a man struck with ague.

  The Syrian feinted at Auriane; she flashed aside so smoothly, his eyes widened in startlement.

  Behind her, Auriane heard a low whistle. She whipped about to see Avenahar standing ready to cast her the spear.

  Good sense had prevailed over Avenahar’s first impulse, which was to fall upon them herself in a Wodanic fury; she was wise enough to know she must yield the weapon to her mother. The man planted between them spun about, intending to wrestle the spear from her. But Avenahar was too quick for him; she threw it expertly to Auriane, who, for a lightning-swift instant, regarded her daughter with amazement and love.

  Auriane jumped to meet it, and caught it easily in mid-shaft.

  Then Auriane swung round to face the Syrian’s drawn sword; ghostlight cast by stars slid down the long blade. At the same time, the sailor behind her kicked Avenahar to the ground and began trussing the maid’s legs with sail line. This didn’t hold her very well, so he sat on her while she thrashed and bucked. The others greeted this with rapid-fire jests in a tapestry of tongues: bright threads of Syriac wound round Germanic dialect punctuated with cheerful obscenities in frontier Latin.

  “Fine work, Brico,” Auriane called to Avenahar. “For that you’ve escaped a whipping.”

  Avenahar was bewildered at first, then realized her mother’s intention—She wants them to think I’m a slave, not her daughter. Otherwise, the men might hold a blade to Avenahar’s throat and demand her mother’s compliance.

  Auriane felt heart and breath flow into the spear; she was a creature advancing with a retracted claw, a fierce beast poised to protect. While keenly attuned to the Syrian’s slightest lapse of attention, she began moving almost imperceptibly into his undefended left side. A direct blow from the Syrian’s blade could snap her ashwood spear like a reed.

  The Syrian laughed brutishly, dismissively, to conceal his annoyance—he had expected two cringing victims. Instead, he faced a quick-thinking slave girl and a woman who wielded a spear with the seamless ease of a skilled beast-fighter in the arena.

  “Put it down, woman.” The Syrian’s words were angry punches in the air. “I’ve got steel, you’ve got wood. There’s only one way this can end. So someone’s taught you how to hold a spear—it’s given you a fool’s confidence. You can rot in a ditch where no kin will find you for the pyre, or you can let us have our way.”

  He executed a diagonal cut that Auriane knew well; it was the first in order of a set all legionary soldiers were taught. He would have been dismayed to know how much he revealed to her by this single, undistinguished display of swordsmanship: The weight of the sword was wrong for him. He didn’t know his striking distance. He signaled every move with his eyes before he made it.

  Auriane whipped her spear away with what seemed to him more-than-human speed.

  “Wretched woman!”

  “Farnaces—” The one called Lurio had crept up behind the Syrian. “Don’t kill her.”

  “Shut your mouth or I string you up with sail line.”

  “Do you know who this is? She is gold.”

  Curses on all life, Auriane thought. It was too much to hope that none of them would recognize me.

  “You’ll be able to buy a riverside villa with four hundred slaves. That’s the woman of the wealthiest man in the province, Marcus Arrius Julianus, who—”

  “No time for ransom, we can’t tarry here,” the Syrian spat out between heaving breaths. “She dies and we take the maid. Give me some aid—you’re useless as pot scrapings!” He lunged at Auriane, executing a melodramatic downstroke that, to his amazement, missed her completely and left him looking faintly ridiculous, like some eager Cilician pirate ripping open a lady’s bedcurtain from ceiling to floor.

  Then he put his whole body into a low horizontal cut. He felt he was striking at smoke.

  “Listen, Farnaces, it’s not ransom I speak of,” Lurio persisted, “but something far grander.”

  The black-bearded Syrian continued to ignore him.

  “You bark after one scrap of meat,” Lurio scolded him in a fury, “while just beyond, a sheepfold awaits. For once during your miserable span, harken to a man of wit!”

  The Syrian spat at Lurio. His attention shifted from Auriane for but an instant—but it was enough to prove his undoing.

  To those who witnessed, it seemed only that she leapt a small distance off the ground and subtly writhed, once, in air—to land light as a lynx, body inclined forward, one knee bent, her movements rapid, fluid, sure as a dancer at a fire festival. Somehow this eyebat-swift maneuver produced two results: She struck the Syrian’s sword from his hand with such force it fractured a metacarpal bone. With near simultaneity her spear shot out, its trajectory brutal and short; the fire-hardened point sank deep into the hollow below his shoulder—a place she sought deliberately, her purpose to wound, not to kill. The Syrian had no notion what had happened; he might have been caught by the lashing tail of a dragon. He knew only that his sword was air
borne. It plopped in the mud at the feet of the man built thick as an oak stump, who eagerly snatched it up.

  In the stunned silence, Avenahar was softly laughing. The man astride her struck her across the face.

  “Maid and Medusa!” the Syrian cried out as he sank to the mud. Auriane was already straddling him, wrenching her spear free. He lay there gasping like a hooked fish, clutching his freely bleeding shoulder.

  Her new opponent faced her with thick legs planted stoutly apart, commanding the space between them like some restless bull. One side of his face was soot-blackened; as he grinned he seemed to wear a stage mask divided into comic and demonic halves. In his eyes was the crackling fire of a madman. He slashed at her with amateurish enthusiasm; he wasn’t the swordsman the Syrian was, and Lurio could see the woman knew it.

  “Don’t fight her, we need only tell the magistrate her name,” Lurio shouted as this man executed a flurry of clumsy crosscuts. “You know of the arms-smuggling case that’s thwarted every council from this pesthole of a province to the Palace in Rome? You’re looking on the woman that’s behind it! The bounty’s been doubled. It’ll keep us for years.”

  The words struck Auriane a blow that numbed every sense; all became dream-bright and void of meaning, as if she’d heard the pronouncement of a sentence of death. Only long years of training in the art of the sword enabled her to return her whole mind to the man before her.

  “We’re hunted men—who’d give an ear to our tale?” his sword-wielding confederate called over his shoulder as he sought unsuccessfully to back Auriane against the shrine.

  “To Hades with all of you, then.” With that, Lurio gave up the effort, and, working more nimbly than seemed possible for his squat, short-limbed frame, began gathering up as many coins as he could. When his bulging leather pouch began to protest and spit them out, he stuffed them into his boots, the leather sheath of his fire-steel, a loose fold of his tunic. The Syrian, fearful he would lose his part of the take, hurried to join in, pressing the cloth of his tunic to his wound while using one hand like a paddle to scoop up coins. Then both turned and fled in opposite directions into the night, Lurio crashing crazily through the hawthorn bushes, the Syrian moving with a shambling gait, making a strange music as each step shifted hundreds of coins.