Bachiyr Omnibus

by David McAfee

  Her one hope was that no one would ever try to use her son to break Gareth’s spirit, but that hope was dashed the day she came home and found Filo missing. There had been blood on the floor. Not much, but a little, and she knew then that she would be hearing from one of Gareth’s enemies, demanding something in exchange for her son. Whatever they asked, she would pay it.

  But that contact never came.

  Gareth had scoured the city for weeks looking for Filo, but eventually he was forced to stop using the city guard as his personal search retinue. So Caelina had taken up the search where he left off. After over a year of searching, she was no closer to finding out what happened to Filo than Gareth had been.

  She looked up to the one piece of ornamentation that Gareth had allowed her to put on the wall, a portrait of the three of them together. At ten years old, Filo was so handsome. He had his father’s square jaw and muscular build, but Caelina saw herself in his eyes and the shape of his nose. The girls who saw him giggled and flirted, much to their parents’ dismay. The boy had such a bright life ahead of him.

  “Where are you, Filo?” she asked the portrait, but of course it did not reply.

  She rose from the chair and made her way into the kitchen. Gareth had worked the night shift—being Captain did not excuse a man from sharing equal responsibility, Gareth often said—and would be home soon. She would need to make sure there was a meal waiting for him when he arrived. Something heavy to fall asleep on. Lamb or beef, perhaps.

  Anything to keep her from having to talk to him when he got home.

  ***

  Gareth sat, chewing on his dinner in silence, while Caelina watched from across the table. She knew her husband well. He had something on his mind, but he hadn’t been able to say it yet. She had a pretty good idea what it was anyway. The clerk at the guardhouse had stammered and stumbled over his own tongue at the sight of the blood on her clothes. Doubtless he would have told Gareth about it at his first opportunity.

  “Your expression could crack a statue,” she said, trying to sound light and humorous.

  “Yours is completely blank,” he replied. “I’ve no idea what thoughts are running through that mind of yours anymore.”

  “That’s probably a good thing,” she said quietly.

  “Yes, most of the time. But not when I get word from Weilus that you came in, covered in blood and bearing the sword of a guard who disappeared two weeks ago.”

  Caelina said nothing. Merely stared at her plate.

  “Would you like to tell me what happened?”

  “I—”

  “You were out looking for Filo again, weren’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  “And you ran into trouble?”

  “It was nothing I could not handle.”

  Gareth’s face darkened. He stood up and swept his plate, still laden with his dinner, off the table. The dishes fell to the floor with a crash. The ceramic plate shattered, sending fragments across their meager dining area. “Damn it all, Caelina, that’s not the point!”

  She shot to her feet and leaned over the table, putting her face less than a foot from his. “What is the point, Gareth?” she shot back. “Why did you teach me to use a sword if you do not expect me to use it?”

  “The point is that you could have been killed,” he shouted. “Gods take me, Caelina, but I don’t want to lose you. You know the streets of Pompeii can be treacherous, yet you continue to put yourself in danger, and for what? Nothing! You could have died, and left me with no one, and all for nothing!”

  “It wasn’t for nothing! I was looking for Filo!”

  “Filo is dead, Caelina!”

  Caelina opened her mouth to reply, but she could not find the words. Gareth had never said that about Filo before. This argument about her search was nothing new, but always before he’d at least entertained the possibility that she might succeed. But now…

  His own words seemed to push all his anger out of his body, and Gareth slumped back into his chair. His face sagged, and his eyes lost some of their fire. Caelina had never seem him look so old.

  “He’s dead,” Caelina,” Gareth repeated. “No amount of searching will change that.”

  “You don’t believe that,” she said, her voice just above a whisper. “You can’t.”

  “I do,” he replied. “And so do you, you just can’t admit it.”

  “No!” Caelina leaned over the table, and before she realized what she was doing, slapped Gareth across the face. “No!”

  Gareth stared back at her from across the table, his eyes wide with shock. He raised his hand to his cheek, slowly rubbing the spot on his face where a red handprint was already beginning to show. Caelina gasped, and pulled her stinging hand back. Neither of them had ever struck the other before.

  “I’m sorry,” she began.

  Gareth’s face transitioned from surprise to anger. He rose to his full height, which was better than a foot taller than Caelina, and walked around the table. She had never seen his face so livid. But she supposed he had a right to be angry. All the same, she readied herself to fight back. Gareth was a head and shoulders taller than she was, he outweighed her by a great deal, and had devoted his life to the art of combat. Still, if he meant to beat her, she wasn’t going to meekly allow him to do it. Slap or no slap.

  The shift in her posture did not go unnoticed, it seemed. Gareth’s frown softened, and the tension melted from his shoulders like water from a block of ice.

  “I’m not going to hurt you, wife,” he said. He rarely called her ‘wife,’ and never in that sneering tone. Gods, he was very angry, indeed. “You are already in far more pain than I could give you, but you give this pain to yourself. And you wallow in it like a sow in the muck.”

  He turned his back to her and walked toward their bedchamber. “Filo is dead,” he said over his shoulder. “Until you accept that, you will continue to hurt yourself. And you will continue to hurt me. It is not a great way to honor our son’s memory.”

  “There is no memory to honor!” The bastard. She wished he would lash out. Hit her. Slap her. Call her a whore. Something! Anything! Just something to prove to her that he felt anything at all. But instead, he just walked into their bedchamber and closed the door behind him, leaving her standing, red and furious, amidst the spilled food and pieces of his broken plate.

  “I will prove it to you!” she shouted as she stomped to the front door. “I will find our son. And when I do, you will know you were wrong.”

  “So go,” he said through the door. “Go on another fruitless search. Go fight an entire band of rapists and thieves this time. Fight the moon, if it pleases you. Or a dragon. Or draw your weapon against the gods themselves. It will have the same effect. Maybe you’ll find something, but it won’t be Filo.”

  “Maybe I’ll just stay gone then,” she said from the doorway. “Maybe I’ll take Filo to Rome or Hispania or somewhere equally far away and leave you here, by yourself, in Pompeii.”

  “How would I know the difference?” he replied.

  “You…I…” She tried to think of something to say, but she couldn’t. In part because she knew he was right. She was almost never home these days. She spent so much time out looking for Filo. But she had a good reason, and he knew it. Still…

  “Gods damn you!” She stomped through the doorway and slammed the heavy wooden door behind her. “Gods damn you, Gareth!”

  ***

  Gareth heard the slam of the door and Caelina’s curse, and a heavy sigh escaped his lips. He hadn’t meant to say that to her, but in the heat of his anger the words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. The look on his wife’s face crushed what was left of his ire and sapped the strength from his legs. Caelina’s hope and joy rested upon her belief that Filo was alive, somewhere, just waiting for her to rescue him. But Gareth knew the truth. Filo was dead. He’d been dead over a year now. Gareth had come to accept the fact, even if she could not.

  He sat on the empty bed, which
served as a reminder that he and Caelina rarely shared it anymore. Between the demands of his position and her late night forays into the city, they were almost never home together for more than a couple of hours. Dinner was the only regular thing they had left. The only time of day that both of them were usually in the same room at the same time, and even then they rarely spoke. They might as well have been in different cities.

  And tonight’s dinner went as bad as a dinner between husband and wife could possibly go, he thought.

  Gareth looked around at the bedchamber he used to share with his wife, and felt the pain of unwanted tears in his eyes. She was here, in this room. Her presence could be seen in the choice of furnishings, in the blankets, and in the decorations that adorned the walls. He’d let her have her way with the place, and she had chosen every item in the room. Gods, her scent was still on her side of the bed. He could smell it from where he sat.

  She was here, but she wasn’t. It seemed like eons ago that she had chosen this bed. A thousand years or more since she had laughed as he and Weilus grunted and swore at each other as they moved the heavy wooden pieces into the bedchamber. When Weilus dropped a post on Gareth’s foot, he’d cursed loudly and swore to turn the entire bed into firewood. Caelina had laughed and kissed him, and the pain in his foot seemed to fade in an instant.

  But that was a long time ago. Ten years could change many, many things between husband and wife. Time could steal a person’s face and replace it with a wrinkled one, or it could replace a strong heart with one far too weak to keep a steady beat. Time could take firm breasts and make them sag, or it could turn strong, firm muscles into soft, doughy flesh. Time could steal happiness, if people let it.

  But time had nothing to do with his marital strife. Time was not to blame for the sting of her hand on his cheek, or the food he’d swept onto the floor. Time did not steal his beloved son. Someone, somewhere in his city had done that. In the process, they’d managed to do more than steal his child, they’d also stolen his marriage.

  He knew his wife hurt a great deal, and she had little enough to distract her from her pain. Gareth had his duties with the guard, and they kept him quite busy. But Caelina had only Gareth and Filo, and if the truth were told, she mostly just had Filo. Gareth was often out late performing some task or another for the city. So when Filo disappeared, it was like her entire world went with him. He could hardly blame her for her inability to let their son go.

  He reached up and touched the side of his face, which still stung. Caelina had never struck him before, but he couldn’t find it in his heart to be angry with her. The pain in her heart outweighed his own tenfold. And the worst part about it was there was nothing he could do to ease it. Nothing he could think of, at any rate. Everything he’d tried had failed. Weilus had suggested that they try and have another child, but Gareth knew better than to broach the subject with her. Caelina would think he meant to replace Filo, and she would probably be right.

  He sighed again. If only there was something he could do to help her. If he could just find a way to break her cycle of grief, even for a few minutes, he might get his wife back. Then maybe they could move on. He could retire from service and they could leave Pompeii and its memories far behind. Maybe they could go to Rome, or Athens. Anywhere would be preferable to the city that held so much pain. If only he could think of a way to help her…

  The floor trembled beneath his feet. Another tremor. Nothing serious, but it was enough to pull him from his reverie. There were things that needed to be done. Men had been murdered in the streets of his city, and he needed to find the killers and see justice done. The people of Pompeii depended on him.

  Gareth rubbed his cheek, willing the sting to fade. He sucked in a breath, wiped the moisture from his eyes, and left the bedroom. The mess on the floor would have to wait. He buckled on his sword belt, adjusted his shirt, and walked out the front door. The guard would probably need his help tonight.

  ***

  Taras arrived in Pompeii with Baella close behind, and that made him nervous. Baella had proven in Londinium that she could not be trusted when she abandoned him to face Ramah alone. Was she planning something similar here? He’d best be on his guard.

  In the years following the mess of Londinium, Taras had made a few attempts to research the mysterious Bachiyr woman. Information was scattered and unreliable at best, with several conflicting sources placing her at the head of the Bachiyr line or as the stray progeny of some low level vampire. Some of those with whom Taras had spoken even thought she was a human sorceress. Still others believed she was the Father in disguise.

  Taras doubted that, but the sheer scope of different theories made it impossible to research her effectively, especially given his inability to converse with other knowledgeable Bachiyr on the subject, since almost every Bachiyr he met tried to kill him.

  One common thread in all the stories about Baella was that she was obsessed with the Bachiyr Council and made every attempt to harass them and flaunt the fact that she existed outside their sphere of influence. No one knew why, but everyone seemed to have their own ideas, none of which were very helpful. In fact, the only thing any of the Bachiyr he interviewed did agree on was that Baella could not be trusted. Ever.

  So why was he following her to Pompeii? He’d long ago made an uneasy peace with his creator, vowing to stay away from Theron altogether. It had worked well for the better part of two decades. Theron no longer hunted him, and Taras had one less enemy to fear. So what had changed?

  He has been taking small children and feeding them to his thralls.

  Baella’s words haunted him. Children. If her words were true, and Theron had truly begun hunting children, their blood was on Taras’s hands. In Londinium, Taras had very nearly killed his old nemesis, but honor had prevented him from finishing the job. Out of fear for his own worthless skin, Theron had saved an Iceni woman from death by healing her, a deal he made in exchange for a place to hide from the sun. Because Taras had given his word, he’d left Theron alive, never considering how much harm the former Enforcer might inflict on others after leaving Londinium.

  And now Theron was murdering children.

  In retrospect, perhaps he should have simply allowed the woman to die.

  He shook his head. He could not have let that happen. Saving her had been the right decision, but still…

  Children! By all the gods. Harmless, fragile children.

  Taras’s face tightened. He still didn’t trust Baella, but he had to know if she was telling the truth. If so, he would kill Theron, bargain or no bargain. His honor was forever tarnished, anyway, and in this case, the price of keeping what was left of it was far too high.

  “You look like you could bite through steel,” Baella said beside him, startling Taras from his dark thoughts. “Thinking about Theron?”

  Taras grunted, not wanting her to know how right she was.

  “We will get more accomplished if we go in two directions,” she said. “We’ll each take one half of the city and look for signs of…Theron’s work.”

  “Bodies,” Taras said. “We should look for bodies with little or no blood left in them. Is that what you meant to say?”

  “I doubt someone as crafty as Theron would simply leave bodies lying around for people to find.” Baella smiled. “He is quite good at avoiding detection when he wants to be.”

  “Then how did you find him?”

  “I did not say he was good enough to fool me,” Baella noted.

  “So what should we look for?” Taras asked.

  “Stories,” she said. “Stories of missing people, especially children. Listen as you walk through the city, learn what you can about the number of people who have gone missing. Find out where they were going when they vanished. That will give us a place to start looking.”

  “Very well,” Taras said, eager to be away from Baella. “I’ll take the northern half. I’ll start with the taverns and brothels, if any are still open.”

  “I w
ill do likewise, but on the southern side. Meet me back here an hour before sunrise.”

  “Will that leave us enough time to find shelter?”

  “I already have a sanctuary waiting,” Baella said. She winked, then turned her back on Taras and walked down the street, heading south.

  Taras was left to wonder how many times Baella had been to Pompeii, and what other secrets she might have.

  “That is probably a very long list,” he mused.

  No use speculating about it, however. Baella was not likely to share any of her secrets with him. Although she did tell him where to find Theron. Not that Taras had been looking for him. In fact, Taras was doing the opposite. He’d almost forgotten about Theron. In the forty years since Jerusalem, the memories of Mary had become less painful, as had the knowledge that he’d helped put an innocent man on the cross. In Londinium, those memories had surfaced again when he saw Theron, but he’d been able to push them to the back of his mind because the Iceni woman needed his help. How was he supposed to know the woman was Boudica’s daughter?

  Not that it mattered. He would have helped her no matter who she was. But he couldn’t save her himself. He lacked the ability.

  Theron could. So he’d made a deal. Her life for Theron’s. Theron kept his part of the bargain, and Taras had kept his. Instead of killing Theron as he wanted, he only injured him. It was partly revenge, and partly because he wanted to make sure Theron would not go and kill the young Iceni woman when he regained his strength. The plan worked, and in the eighteen years since, Taras had managed to push memories of Jerusalem to the back of his mind again.