She found the killing place. A new sound came from it—an unnaturally shrill, bleating cry, an earth-born creature’s protest against the sky. It rotated like a mill pole, crushing grass.
In its dying it made a final try for vengeance, bursting toward the last three hunters still astride their mounts. As these scattered in three directions, Auriane gave chase, then galloped alongside the bull, bringing her mount so close that horse and aurochs nearly touched at the shoulder.
What they witnessed next, the game-beaters would still be speaking of when they reached trembling old age. While her wild-eyed, frightened horse fought the reins, Auriane reached out and grasped the rank beast’s hair, at the withers. Then she drew herself onto the monster’s back.
The aurochs halted all at once. Raising its shaggy head, it lowed to the sky, in what appeared to all like outraged disbelief.
She was impossibly astride, riding an eruption of nature, whirled about on a wind demon, seeming small and lost as she clung to the massive humped back of the great bull. She moved with its madness, never struggling against it as the drunkenly lurching beast slung her from side to side.
Now she was safe from the horns.
Some saw the flash of a bronze dagger in her hand as she dropped down along one muscled shoulder, clinging to coarse fur until she was able to reach the wheezing throat and strike out with her blade. The aurochs’s forelegs buckled. The powerful hind legs straightened, then shuddered violently in a way that spoke of dying. The mammoth body quaked as a final river of rage gushed through it.
Marcus Julianus ran toward the dying animal, fearful Auriane would be crushed when it fell. But as the aurochs began to heave downward, Auriane threw herself free, and landed on her feet in the deep grass. Soon after, the beast crashed to the ground, heavily as a toppled pillar. It rolled once and flopped still, a great white bloody ruin, its mighty flanks heaving like a bellows, the motion fainter and fainter as the earth drank its heated blood.
All about was a dread silence, such as might come after a violent windstorm scatters a village. Though the sun still flared in the western sky, clotted thunderclouds thickened directly above, bringing an unholy darkness, as though Wodan pulled a shroud over his meadow. The mangled and the dead were everywhere. The slave had perished, as had Sabinus, along with two game-beaters the beast brought down earlier in the day. The man they knew as Attius Ferox, horribly trampled beneath the cloak, was nearer death than life. The moaning Camillus had frightful wounds, but the field physicians thought he had a chance of life. Four slain horses lay scattered about in the grass.
In this bright, strange quiet, Auriane moved toward the lifeless hill of flesh, and began softly uttering words over the aurochs, to appease its spirit.
The silence was finally broken by the Libyan slaves, who burst all at once into raucous cheers, and blew blasts on their hunt trumpets. In the wilderness, the slaves were more exuberant than they might have been within the formal precincts of the fortress. “She is clothed with the sun!” Auriane heard one man cry. A party of them surged forward, laughing, flowing round the bull’s corpse. Several produced knives and began rapidly skinning the beast.
Auriane was uncomfortably aware, then, of everyone’s attention fixed upon her, and saw the varied shades of feeling her intervention had inspired. She’d blundered into a society not her own, ripped the threads of its invisible web. In the eyes of the Libyan beast-fighters were only raw amazement and joy. And the several Chattian hunters among them studied her with great intensity, eyes fired with a pride that brought her a strengthening gladness—after two barren days of helplessness, she’d roused proud spirits, she’d won a victory. She believed this would, in turn, lend strength and luck to Avenahar.
But among the Roman hunters, she saw guarded relief soured with sharp annoyance—and even shame among some, powerful enough that they would not meet her gaze. In the face of one man was brittle hatred undisguised.
And then she looked at Marcus Julianus, and forgot every one of them.
He swiftly made his way toward her, fear for her melting off to leave only joy-filled relief, a drunken love of Providence, and a vaulting pride in her, all his own. Of his countrymen, he alone would have given her an Olympic crown. She loved him fiercely in that moment, for that great generosity of spirit.
Then she saw how his tunic was reddened so that he wore a mantle of blood. “Marcus, it struck you. Turn about, let me see.”
“Not the bull,” Marcus said softly. “There, on the litter. Casperius Aelianus the avenger, in the flesh. Yes, that’s him. Don’t look. I’ll be well, he missed his mark. And from the looks of him, he won’t get a chance to try again. Say nothing of it, now.”
“But how did he—”
“Not now.”
Maximus was shouting hoarsely for more litters, and bandages. The noble hunters were ebbing back toward the camp with the dazed steps of walking dead men. One man of the party, face chalk-white with rage, vented his wrath on the Libyan beast-fighters, promising to see every man of them flogged to death, for their slowness in coming to the noble hunters’ aid. Several fell to their knees before him, begging for their lives.
Auriane and Marcus closed in an embrace, then, that was a marvel to them both, and full of fevered reverence; she basked in a holy moment between them that was a balm to the world’s indifference.
“How come you to be here?” Marcus whispered finally, still holding tightly to her, stroking her mangled braid, then gently sorting the loosened strands of her hair. To his embarrassment, he found he was struggling against tears.
“Avenahar is gone. I had to find you at once, to—”
“Gone?”
“She fled off from the womanhood ceremony. I’ve hunted her for two days. She left in the most frightful fit of melancholic wrath I’ve ever seen.”
“Madness! It was when she heard Decius named as her father?”
“It was.” Auriane looked away, fighting shame, her throat tightening. “My babe is out there alone. I don’t know if she lives.”
“Domina, the hooves and the horns are yours!” interrupted the tanned, grinning beast-fighter with gold rings in his ears, who was chief over them.
Numbly, Auriane nodded to thank him.
“Domina, you made fools of us!” These words were spoken by Maximus, who strode up beside them just then. Mockery and praise were mingled in his voice in a way that was confusing to Auriane. She turned to look at him, and saw he said it with a broad smile, as if he handed her a small gift.
She gave him a grave, cautious smile of acknowledgment.
“I must know the lineage of that horse!” called out another of the hunters as he rode past them at a trot, gesturing toward Auriane’s mount, which was being led off by one of the grooms. “It leaps like a hare and flies like a falcon!” Auriane realized he couldn’t acknowledge her greater skill in the hunt, so he behaved as though the honor belonged to the horse.
Marcus Julianus put an arm about Auriane’s shoulders and with Maximus beside them, they moved slowly toward the hunt camp. As the tribune Camillus was carried past them on a wickerwork litter, he lifted a blackened hand, ordering the slaves who bore him to halt. Addressing Maximus, the tribune whispered through a crushed throat, “Who brought down the bull?”
When Maximus silently indicated Auriane, Camillus wrenched his head about to look at the tall woman standing close by Marcus Julianus; she regarded him with earnest gray eyes, face flushed from wind and exertion. He squinted. Where had she come from, this comely native woman in a bloodied leather tunic, her long hair matted with mud, and that faintly barbarous mien of calm strength? He concluded that he must have been misunderstood.
“No, I mean—who among our party delivered the fatal blow? Who wins their wager?”
“No one,” Maximus patiently explained, “for no one wagered on her. This Diana you see before you is your victorious hunter, and the slayer of the bull. She killed it with a native spear.”
“That’s an
odd jest, my Lord. That’s impossible.”
Auriane felt a hot rush of rage, but kept silent. Marcus tightened his grip on her shoulder to underscore his alliance with her.
“That, before all the gods, is the truth, Camillus,” Maximus said quietly.
Camillus stared at Maximus, then at Marcus Julianus, as if the two had conspired in some crude joke. Then, abruptly, he seemed to lose all interest in the matter.
“The aurochs got away from us then,” Camillus said finally. “No one slew it.”
“Did that war-loving Chattian Amazon really steal our kill?” came a grand exclamation from another man of the hunt party, walking behind them.
Marcus angrily whipped about to face this man; Auriane saw, to her dismay, the sudden movement caused his wound to bleed more.
“If she were as base and ignoble as you,” Julianus said, “she would have let the bull have its way with you. I would that she had—the world would be cleansed of one blind, complacent strutting cock.”
Maximus burst out laughing. “Today’s sad play was well worth it, to finally see you angry, Julianus!”
The Governor turned, then, to Auriane. “Domina Aurinia, you did, indeed, aid us greatly.” Auriane felt quiet amazement. It was one matter to hear a servant call her domina. But a man such as Maximus would only use that form of address for Julianus’s legitimate wife. She knew this was the highest praise he knew how to give her.
“You have done us a great service on this day. You do credit to your native people, who understand these great beasts where we do not. You saved my life, and his, as well,” he said, indicating the man Julianus just chastised, “though he’s not wise enough to admit it. As the son of illustrious fathers, it’s my duty to do a great service for you in return. It happens to be my fondest wish, as well. I don’t know what I could give you that so generous a husband as this could not, but think on it, Aurinia—you need not answer me today.”
Auriane was faintly uncomfortable through this stilted tribute, but collected herself enough to say, “I can answer you now.”
Marcus Julianus braced himself, hoping she wouldn’t ask for something Maximus couldn’t give.
“I would like two things,” she said, watching him him gently, solemnly, while the wind blew long chestnut strands across her face.
The Governor smiled, encouraging her.
“Have mercy on the slaves who failed you today,” she said. “I want no more blood shed because of this day.”
Maximus considered this and nodded slowly, finding it reasonable.
“And,” she continued, “I would like a company of men to command—mixed cavalry and foot soldiers, your very best from the Fortress—so that I might ride at their head—”
Julianus winced; it was too soon after that harrowing hunt for such a severe test of the resilience of Maximus’s sense of humor.
“—and lead them in a hunt for my daughter. She’s run off. I’ve got to find her before the forest slays her.”
“Consider the first request fulfilled, Aurinia,” Maximus said graciously; a quick flash of amusement in his eyes softened the formal precision in his manner. “But before I turn over the Roman Army to you, can we discuss this matter over a fine meal?”
Chapter 17
The Fortress of Mogontiacum
On the following day Marcus Julianus insisted upon interrogating the dying Aelianus himself, with no recorders present. Maximus greeted this with grave doubts; this was a man who’d tried to murder Julianus twice, inspired by purest hatred—what did he hope learn from this madman?
The Mogontiacum Fortress’s hospital was a timber-and-stonework structure built in a rectangular shape about a vast courtyard. A slave-assistant to the First Physician greeted Julianus at its casualty reception center, and he was led over white marble tiles that glowed orange in the light of the four arched brick hearths along one wall, in which physicians purified their wound probes and surgeons’ tools. Beyond was a skylit operating room, empty now. They passed preparation rooms, where battalions of slaves were making ointments from animal fat, lead salts, and resins. The brisk, muffled staccato produced by a row of assistants pounding herbs was the sole sound as they entered the corridor opening to the hospital’s sixty wards, which flanked the whole of the circulating passageway. Each of these consisted of two private rooms and a latrine. Any cries that might have issued from the patients’ rooms were muted by double-timbered walls built between corridor and wards. Long ago, army physicians had learned that illnesses did not spread so quickly if the patients were put into separate chambers. Julianus’s eyes watered in the smoke of fumigants. The air was pleasantly oppressive with the insistent pungency of myrrh, but a faint stench of blood, tainted humors, and corruption hovered darkly beneath.
Casperius Aelianus had been taken to the row of wards reserved for officers. His sickroom was twice the size of a common soldier’s room, its walls gaudily abloom with paintings rendered in red and blue encaustic. The chamber was bare but for the bed on which Aelianus lay and a bench for a physician. The smell of wound medicines was thick and sweet on the air—pine resin, oils of cinnamon, and cassia. Aelianus’s half-opened eyes sought nothing more from the world; they put Julianus in mind of scummy pools at the bottom of a trench. His mouth was slack, his breathing staggered.
“I sewed him well, even the muscles inside,” the physician’s assistant, a prim Greek, said blandly as he made to depart, “but the blood has stagnated. He has the perforation that kills in a day and a night.”
Julianus knew enough of medical science to know this meant the stomach or colon was pierced. “Wait. He suffers,” Julianus said. “Is that the balm?” He indicated a squat jar of thick green glass on the floor by the bed. “Give him more of that.”
“You’ll not get any answers out of him if I do,” the young assistant objected. It contained a decoction of henbane and poppy juice. “The hyoscyamus ”—he used the physician’s name for henbane—“brings forgetfulness.”
“Do it anyway,” Julianus replied, too dismayed by the dire scene to say it diplomatically. His own recently dressed wound was pulsing viciously. The physician tilted the young man’s head to aid swallowing, and spooned some of the liquid into his mouth. Then Julianus waved him off, and sat next to the dying man.
“I am Marcus Arrius Julianus.”
The scummed-over eyes opened a fraction wider. Along the length of his body, Julianus saw a tightening of muscles.
Somehow he managed to lift his head. Then he spat out the mixture the physician’s assistant had given him. Much of it splattered onto Julianus’s tunic.
“That was a balm, not poison,” Julianus said. “Why would I hasten your end now? To what purpose?”
The young man made no reply.
“I’ve come because I’m greatly curious about you.”
“I’ll tell you nothing,” Casperius Aelianus breathed, easing his eyes closed. The words issued from him like poison fumes. “Murderer . . . of my Lord.”
“I am not your enemy. For that matter, I was not his enemy,” Julianus said, referring to the assassinated Emperor this man so loved. “Not truly. I want the truth, and I’m prepared to be generous in exchange for it.”
Aelianus turned his head defiantly to the wall.
“You are resourceful and possessed of much courage. My agents could not keep up with you. A pity, I could have used a man like you in my service.” He paused, then pressed on with quiet persistence. “You are the man who set fire to my carriage.”
Long moments passed in which he sensed a struggle within the young man: Talk to this enemy and be known a little, for something, before he perished? Or stay proud to the end and die in dignified silence? Julianus had time to study the frightful painting of the goddess Hygeia on the wall, her eyes huge and staring, her form so primitively rendered it appeared her arms were not attached to her torso. Had the military architect used native painters, who copied works of—
“I might be that man.”
&nb
sp; “You gave a false name and false record of your past to Maximus.”
“It . . . was . . . necessary.” Each word seemed to require a separate effort.
“You are Casperius Aelianus, son of the Praetorian Guards’ praefect, who remained loyal to Domitian.”
“I have the great honor . . . to be his son. He . . . alone . . . understood the import of a sacred oath of loyalty . . .”
“Yes, well, I question if loyalty’s such a fine quality in and of itself, divorced from the reality of what or whom one is loyal to.”
“My Lord Domitian held . . . order in his hands. He loved us . . . He knew us . . .”
“He was a monster. But there’s nothing to be gained by batting about the finer points of his character now.”
“. . . He gave us . . . donatives and gifts . . .”
“He gave the Praetorian Guard and army donatives and gifts.”
“. . . and if he was cruel . . . men like you forced him to it . . . by belittling his divine authority with twisted philosopher’s babble. You’ve no faith . . . You hate what the gods love. He was kind . . . he helped the families . . . of men fallen on hard times . . .”
“He helped only those who held swords in their hands, Aelianus. The rest fell to the sword. Or to wild dogs in the arena.”
“Serpent-tongue, your words are filth! For you, I was paraded in the Great Amphitheater like an animal. For you, I have no patrons and friends. For you, I was towed out in a boat to drown. Marcus Arrius Julianus . . . I lived through that shipwreck only so I could stand on your grave.” He fell silent, then seemed to speak to someone else in the chamber, visible only to him. “I am sorry . . . What the sea storm couldn’t do, a wild bull did . . .”
“I must disagree with one thing you said—it seems you do have patrons and friends. Wealthy, powerful ones. Someone got you from place to place, secured you a good post. Someone wanted you to succeed. I know you’ve no reason to tell me these things, but consider, there’s one thing I can offer a dying man—generous aid to those you leave behind. Ask for someone of your family, if you wish, or a freedman, or a friend. I care not for the cost. Just tell me who paid your fares and set you in place.”
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