B007IIXYQY EBOK (132 page)

“Greetings to Auriane,” he said grandly as a herald, “daughter of Baldemar of noblest rank, flower of numerous illustrious kin—numerous, that is, if she has not murdered them all by now!” His flatterers laughed dutifully.

Auriane was surprised to discover this spear thrust had no sting.
Where is the shame of all my life?
Perhaps I truly have
left it behind?

“Is she not beautiful?” Aristos went on, grinning. “The ravens of Wodan got tired of pursuing her and decided to nest in her hair!” He broke into a sharp, barking laugh that was ever a weapon. “And that is a fetching cloak. Bloodstains become you, Auriane. Except for the ones on your hands, that cannot be washed off.”

Furious that she did not respond to his taunts, his rage rose like a rash. “Daughter of trolls! Get your skulking shadow out of my path before I twist your neck like a chicken’s!”

Many in the crowd visibly shrank back, but Auriane felt her capacity for terror had been drained off with the last of her strength. She held his gaze steadily, evenly. Then she spoke, her voice flat with exhaustion.

“Odberht, son of Wido, I greet you. Twice now you tried to murder me in the dark—once by poison, and today by trickery. I give you a chance to try in the light, with honorable weapons of war. In the name of our whole tribe whom you betrayed, before Wodan I challenge you to single battle. Choose a day.”

“How about today,” the Acrobat called out merrily.

The boxer gave a braying laugh, and all Aristos’ companions joined in. Yet their laughter died quickly for lack of support; the crowd stood in taut silence. But most importantly to his entourage, Aristos did not laugh. They were mystified by this. He stood with head lowered like a beast at bay, looking less like a man confronted with a silly woman who was half dead and more like a man who has been ambushed.

Aristos could not cease being a man of his tribe; he had too much fearful respect for the rite of vengeance to simply ignore her declaration. But he knew also that he could not fight her. He might have cheerfully hacked her to pieces in their own country if that was what she really wanted, but he would not do it here. He noticed at once that in this place women were not counted so holy as among his own people; they did not speak the law here or dispense justice, nor was their counsel sought in grave matters. Incredibly, these people even went to war without listening first to the prophetic utterings of the women—and he knew as well these people saw something faintly ridiculous in women carrying a sword. Disposing of her by the light of day would bring him no honor in this country; it would be as though he accepted the challenge of a thrall.

But
he
knew, if these ignorant Romans did not, that all women possessed uncanny powers, and this one in particular had walked with Ramis, whose name was like a chilly hand on the back of his neck. No matter what the customs here, a sorceress was still a sorceress and Auriane was Auriane. He was pinned between the ancient ways, alive in him still, and this glorious present that he dared not risk. It was confusing and unsettling.

This crazed spawn of Baldemar pursues me to the ends of the earth. She should be buried alive along with that Hel-hag Ramis, safely out of the sight of men.

He made a sweeping gesture with a hairy hand. “Stand aside. I’ve no time for silly women.”

He started forward, then stopped again, scowling. What was the wretched woman doing now? Walking stick in hand, she was tracing signs in the sand and dirt of the travertine floor.

Vile witch-woman! She was drawing rune signs across the passage—those sinister glyphs that could disorder a man’s fate, lift the veil of the future or throw the natural world out of joint. He recognized the sign for Tiwaz, spirit of battle; the rest was a mystery—the mastery of runes was for sorceresses and priests of Wodan, not honest warriors. He guessed it was a cursing formula, doubtless promising his bones would melt and his blood turn to dust if he did not answer her challenge before the next dark of the moon.

When Auriane had finished, she moved aside, making way for him. Pernicious woman, he thought. She was forcing him to step over the runes.

Aristos’ entourage cast curious glances at him. Why did he hesitate? Aristos wanted with all his mind not to step over those dread signs; he was certain that if he did, they would be activated and would begin to work their will on him—or else why had she written them where she had? Now even the greater crowd seemed puzzled by his hesitation. Witless fools,
he thought. You know nothing of the baneful powers of runes.

When Aristos heard someone whisper loudly, “What is the matter with him?” he gathered up all his courage and swaggered forth, sarcasm in his step. As he passed, Auriane saw that his lips moved in a silent incantation and he gripped the preserved wolf’s muzzle.

The crowd gave Aristos ample room to pass. Auriane sank slowly to her knees; the two physician’s assistants caught her up just as her eyes became sightless. Two more hospital servants entered the passage with a rude litter and they hastily laid Auriane upon it. Then all four trotted briskly off with her. She was worth considerably more now than she had been this morning and they would be punished if they lost her.

Already Aristos’ flatterers were busy telling tales of this encounter with an eye to pleasing their master. “I was there—I saw it all,” they would proclaim to all who would listen. “You’ve never seen such low cunning married to such presumption. This barbarian wench manages to run poor Perseus through because the wretched fellow slips and falls—and then she comes out and barks at Aristos. This morning I saw a bitch-dog yapping at an elephant; do you suppose it was an omen?” This, among followers of Aristos, became the accepted version of the bout with Perseus.

Auriane was taken to the school’s hospital rooms with their penetrating smells of resins and herbal powders, and laid in one of the chambers reserved for the dressing of wounds. While she was still unconscious, one of the school’s first physicians quickly cut away the leather tunic and began applying strips of wool soaked in deer’s rennet and vinegar to halt the bleeding. Auriane awakened and cried out when the stinging vinegar was pressed into the wound, for it was more painful than Perseus’ blade.

After a short time Erato entered and sent the school’s physician from the chamber. Erato then ushered in Anaxagoras of Cos, followed by five of his highly skilled slaves—that same Anaxagoras who was author of a hundred books on the medical arts, whose name had become legendary among physicians when he saved the life of the King of Parthia after all the court physicians had failed. He happened to be in Rome because Domitian had summoned him to minister to a favorite concubine.

“What in the name of Venus is
he
doing here?” one of the school’s physicians muttered to another. “Only emperors and kings can afford his fees.” Erato alone knew Anaxagoras had been hastily sent for by Julianus, and he was sworn to strictest silence. It was not a situation likely to arouse too much comment, for everyone knew traveling physicians were drawn to gladiatorial schools after days of games. They came to study anatomy if they were young—for nowhere but in Alexandria was dissection of the human body permitted—or to experiment with new techniques of suturing and wound-dressing if they were famous and established.

Anaxagoras first ordered the school’s pots of powders and resins removed. He would use nothing from the stores; he brought his own medicines. A physician could never be sure of the purity of his potions and drugs; a good measure of the secret of Anaxagoras’ effectiveness was the excellence of his suppliers, who, along with his herbal formulae, were close-kept secrets. He allowed no one but his own slaves to come near Auriane.

The two subordinate physicians watched raptly from a safe distance as Anaxagoras took a wound probe from his instrument kit and examined the long cut to make certain no foreign matter had entered. To their surprise Anaxagoras used no prayers or charms; he seemed to rely solely upon his superior knowledge. When he was assured no vital place had been struck, he called for iris oil in which he dissolved terebinth resin pure as Attic honey; with this he cleansed the wound. Then he applied a sponge soaked in the juice of the poppy to dull the pain, and ordered his slaves to boil bark of elm for a decoction to close the wound. When Anaxagoras began to stitch the wound with human hair, the spying physicians were seen and driven out; they nearly stumbled over Sunia, who stood vigil outside the door.

Sunia tried to steal inside then, but was roughly driven back by Anaxagoras’ slaves. All that day and the next, whenever Sunia could evade the sharp eyes of the chief cook, she returned to that door, imagining her spirit somehow enfolded and protected Auriane’s. At first she thought with confidence:
Auriane is a chieftain’s daughter and so of course she will heal quickly.
But Sunia’s hopes began to wane on the second day, when the grim expressions on the faces of Anaxagoras’ slaves did not change.

You who protected me so well—for you I can do nothing. You are all our country. You are the sunward slope, the spring stars, the hearth of hearths. If your life is taken, I’ll not survive you long. I am of no importance. Still I must pray on and hope some hawk or butterfly will carry my words to Fria. Live, great and good friend.

Sunia was greatly pleased when she realized crowds of curious people had begun to gather outside the main entrance of the school, anxious to know if “their Aurinia” would recover. They were a mix of poor artisans, young aristocratic matrons, Palace officials, and overdressed young men reeking of perfumes. Many silently deposited palm branches at the door, in quiet protest of Domitian’s refusal to award her the palm. The young men left rolled love messages and scattered wildflowers across the entrance. Sunia was not surprised that Auriane had become a celebrated woman in this odd country, for her fate could be expected to reassert itself in any new place.

On the third day, when the door was thrown open but a moment, Sunia heard Anaxagoras saying with sharp annoyance, “I ordered this given five times a day.”

“For what purpose?” a slave-assistant replied. “You said by evening, she would be gone.”

Then Sunia heard no more; she collapsed to the stone floor as consciousness gently left her.

CHAPTER XLIX

A
URIANE CRIED OUT IN HER OWN
tongue, frightening Anaxagoras’ assistants, whom she imagined were Hel’s black dogs rending her flesh because she had slain a man with whom she had no blood debt. She despised sleep, for she dreamed of a bloody sun at World’s End and the jaws of the Great Wolf gaped wide as he swallowed molten rivers in which her people were thrashing and drowning. In her brief moments of wakefulness she realized she had lost forever a thing she never knew she possessed—a pure trust that she could never be grievously wounded.

I can be drawn like kine. I am a pitiful, graceless sack of sinew. My body is a membrane precariously full of blood. I am naked flesh quivering at the first touch of the sacrificial knife. I am not swift—death is swifter. I no longer have the heart for this. The arena is a rogue stallion that threw me hard to the ground and battered me with iron hooves—all love, all striving cannot make me climb onto that broad back again.

What was more terrifying still was that she wondered if it mattered.

It must matter.
To deny Baldemar vengeance is to deny him meat and mead. I owe him Odberht’s death or…or
what?
she thought as Odberht’s form dissolved into a multitude of ills: Storm, pestilence, starving times—he was a force, faceless as nature, a process, not a man, killing randomly, innocently, like winter snow—and does one challenge the drifts to single battle?

She felt a surge of anxiety.
These are ignoble thoughts. This must be how men weaken themselves before they turn from honor.

She smelled the steam of Anaxagoras’ acrid preparations, heard the soft flow of his assistants’ voices, felt ministering hands—and wondered why they struggled to keep her alive, for she was no one. If she peered into a looking glass she would find it empty. Certainties were clouds pulling apart and randomly re-forming. What
was
honor? Was it not a sort of blindness?

Ramis, look on your victory…. You have won. I
do
question that which I desire. What is becoming of me? I am falling into stars.

It is far simpler to let this wound carry me off than to find the horizon line again. Fria, let me die.

But she dreamed then of her daughter Avenahar, grown to womanhood, bent and shivering over her mother’s cairn. Her mother did not lie beneath the rude heap of stones for she had died in a foreign land. Snow flurries came and Auriane knew her daughter was alone, bereft of kin, and would die of the cold.

Then she saw herself at a venerable age, dressed in the heavy, amber-studded gray robes of a seeress, her hair proudly white. In her hand was a knotted staff of elmwood. Many roads streamed from the pathway she walked, all leading upward; on one summit was the sentinel form of the tower of the Veleda, a specter in the fog. She moved through a throng to speak a judgment at the Assembly of the Full Moon. Avenahar was there, in the midst of her many children. Proudly Avenahar pointed out her mother to the people.