B007IIXYQY EBOK (82 page)

Two new granaries had been built to accommodate the incoming supplies. The camp hospital was readied to receive casualties, and military doctors were drawn from neighboring fortresses to aid those stationed here, bringing with them their antiseptic resins, their arsenal of tools for cauterizing wounds, extracting spearheads and removing gangrenous limbs. The common soldiers made wills and deposited them with the clerks at the fortress’s headquarters. The staff of clerks was increased to keep records of the payments and deposits in the soldiers’ compulsory savings bank and to dispose of the property of men slain in active service.

The war began unremarkably enough; for a month the legions encountered little resistance as they began claiming territory with a webwork of roads on the Taunus Mount. Army surveyors set out in the vanguard, protected by outriding cavalry; they determined the lay of the roads and selected sites for timber forts and fenced watchtowers. Along these roads at intervals of a third of a mile signal towers were constructed; the sentries stationed there used a torch signaling system whose code Domitian took pride in having devised himself. The regular legions, broken into cohorts of four hundred and eighty men each, then began cutting roughly parallel assault roads to gain access to the Chattian hill forts. In the event of an attack upon any work site, bonfires would be lit to summon reinforcements. To increase their mobility, these reinforcements were positioned on the Rhine fleet so they could be ferried quickly to districts where fighting erupted. The Chattian lands were vast, and Domitian knew the tribesmen would never march out to meet them in a body—a tactic that would favor the Romans—and so he saw no harm in spreading his forces out thinly over a hundred miles.

The Chattians had no great wealth or concentrated resources, as had other conquered lands, where wealth was generally hoarded in cities. Their principal resource was the people themselves. And so the order was given to slaughter without pity when the legions came upon the occasional small village where the inhabitants had not fled. It was an order normally repugnant to the average Roman soldier; nowhere in the civilized East could they have exterminated children without remorse. But the Germanic savage roused no such sympathies; many believed them not capable of true human speech. They did seem to show some affection for their children, but does not a bitch lick her pups?

The first earth-and-timber hill forts they overtook were abandoned. The steep pine-clad Taunus slopes lay in eerie, sun-dappled silence. The Romans systematically disabled these forts by forcing the gates by burning, draining the wells and pulling down sections of the timber walls. The whole of this vast engineering effort drew praise from Domitian’s military staff, if not from his critics at home; it was said of the Emperor he proved himself worthy of his patroness, Minerva, goddess of rational warfare, as opposed to Mars, that blind stirrer to battle. This was the one interlude in Domitian’s reign when he inspired respect without reserve, and he found the taste tauntingly bittersweet, for with cynical, certainty he knew it was not to last.

CHAPTER XXII

W
HILE
D
OMITIAN SACRIFICED, FAR TO THE
north the Chattian host gathered in the cleared land around the Village of the Boar. Massed on the fields between the cremation grounds and Baldemar’s hall were the hide tents of forty thousand warriors. Those camped in high places could see, far in the south, smudged columns of smoke trailing up into the sky, memorials of the native settlements in the path of the advancing legions where women, children and cattle were slain alike.

In this camp was none of the supreme confidence of the Roman forces. While Domitian with cold formality offered one goat, the Chattians dragged forth their most precious beasts—oxen or fine horses if they had wealth, sheep or fat hens if they were poor—and gave them to Wodan with wrung hands and forced back tears. While the Romans made bargains with their gods as if settling an account with a merchant, the Chattians offered pleas akin to that of child to parent—full of passionate desperation, dark with injured love. While eminent Roman strategists armed with book-learned theories predicted victory to the day, the Chattian holy women who told the future from the rustling of leaves heard the sacred elms rattle with death.

As dusk came and cookfires were lit, the warriors camped on the rise erupted in joyous yelps and the camp’s hounds began to bark.

A party of horsemen came from the west. As they thundered down the ragged avenue between the tents at an exuberant gallop, the throng recognized Witgern in the lead, holding a torch aloft. And when they saw a woman in their midst, gray cloak whipping free, loose hair flying, many leapt to their feet and shouted out in exultant relief.

“Daughter of the Ash! Lead us out!”

“Baldemar lives! Lead us to vengeance!”

Most had given up hope, assuming the party that set out to retrieve Auriane must have been ambushed by the enemy. As the thirty riders galloped up to the stone altar round which the priests were gathered, where the ground was reddened from sacrifice, Auriane’s horse slipped in bloody mud and she fell ungracefully onto his neck. She righted herself, feeling a jolt of humiliation, then pulled the dappled stallion to a halt and dropped to the ground. Auriane knew from the people’s eyes they did not see the frail humanness in that moment—they saw only a young Fate incarnate in a maid. It caused her to long sharply for Decius and his cold, rectifying eye.

Decius! The only man whose touch I know, and you are lost to me forever. One more sight of that mocking grin would be more precious than garnets and gold. At least Avenahar lives, as testimony we were once joined. Without her, I might lie down and die.

Auriane wanted only a washbasin and a quiet place to sleep, but Thrusnelda rushed to her, embraced her energetically, then blessed her, dipping a finger in ox blood and tracing the runic sign for strength on her forehead. As Thrusnelda aged, her face seemed to shrink away from her eyes, leaving them large and spectral; she had the look of a kindly owl. “Walk among them now,” she insisted.

Auriane forced down her reluctance.

How can they be so firm in their belief in my holiness when I can see my shame clinging tightly as a shadow? I am so defiled with blood the sacred mold was taken from me.

But Auriane knew she must do what gave comfort, and so she removed her shoes and set out barefoot among the throng. In silence the warriors extended their spears across her path so she could place a palm on them and lend them her battle-luck. Once she looked behind her and caught sight of Sigreda among the priests of Wodan just as the young priestess paused in the midst of a prayer to observe her with banked, smoldering hatred. Sigreda expected Auriane to seek her death, and Geisar’s, for had they not vigorously sought hers?

As Auriane trod through mud, she felt she had no more substance than a shaft of light; she was a husk, filled and moved by the energy of the throng. Only the pinched ache in her breasts reminded her she was a creature of flesh and blood. Avenahar had not been put to them in ten days and she imagined them shriveling and drying like some spider’s prey.

Avenahar! Am I mad to mourn as much for my dried milk as for the massacres in the south? Through you, Avenahar, I shall live this life over. You’ll not live with the dread I lived with.

Soon. I will see her soon. She is safe where she is. We’ll drive the Romans into the earth in one great ambush, and when the Wolf-Men are devoured with fire, I will go, fetch Avenahar and bring her home. Soon. Perhaps, even before summer is done.

Decius, why do I sense you shaking your head
no?
Fiend. How dare you shatter my peace. My aggravating beloved, will you ever see your child? Avenahar, your name is a noose, constricting my throat. I must not think of it or I will fill a lake with my tears.

As she moved from cookfire to cookfire, touching an axhead here, a swordblade there, she saw ghosts—that child with bright round eyes held tightly in a warrior’s wife’s arms was Arnwulf on the day of his death; the leering crone squatting beside her with fire dancing in her eyes was Hertha, hissing
“Accursed One!”
Ten faces beyond was Baldemar’s kingly ghost, tears of sorrow for her in his eyes while he commanded her to kill him. The need to avenge has become a roaring river, she realized—even Ramis had no power to subdue its mighty strength.

As she moved farther from the altar, the words of the priests’ distant droning chant over the sacrificial animals were distorted by her mind into Ramis’ warning of long ago—
“I see you now in a necklace of bones, a cloak of human skin. Go now, priestess of death….”

At midnight Geisar convened a war council before Baldemar’s hall. The five most celebrated war leaders sat round a bonfire kindled by Sigreda, arguing over the most effective way to halt the advance of Odberht. Sigwulf paced with swaggering step, huge fists clenched, round shoulders defensively hunched, kicking at a spotted hound that kept getting underfoot. Auriane sat still and alert, intent on the fire, half listening, half lost in flights of strategic calculations. Athelinda observed the council from a regal distance, wrapped in stillness, shrewd eyes keenly focused and patient. How many shifts in the world had she seen? Surely this was the last, and she met it less with terror than with detached curiosity.

Coniaric sat with arms crossed behind his straw-colored head, leaning his long ungainly body against a shield and post, more concerned over their bickering than by the truth or folly of the various plans put forth; he was a lover of peace, even if it was a mask. Thorgild lay on his back nearby, entreating answers from a gibbous moon while chewing on a strand of overgrown red mustache. Both had given up trying to dissuade Sigwulf from a plan that required splitting their forces in half. Witgern alone kept up the fight; he was restlessly on his feet, half the time following Sigwulf, half the time standing still in frustration, arms folded as he glared at the ground. He argued dispiritedly, for both alternatives—that of keeping their forces together, which meant trying to outrun Odberht as they moved south to settle into the Taunus hill forts and lie in wait for the Romans, and that of leaving half their warriors here to meet and destroy Odberht—seemed equally doomed to failure.

Sigwulf halted and spat into the oak fire.

“We
cannot
turn our backs on that god-cursed behemoth. We could leave the supply train behind to gain speed—but all of you say no to that. Your way, Witgern, he catches us in four or five days. It’s wiser, I say, to face him on ground of our
choosing.”

Witgern looked impatiently at Auriane, frustrated that she was not helping him. But still she sat in as silence, unmoving as if in a trance while that mind, he knew, ran swiftly as a deer through the dark. Witgern remembered suddenly how Baldemar had done the same at councils. He would withdraw into his thoughts until all were stamping with impatience, then finally speak his mind after they’d given up on him. But invariably he would put forward a plan that showed uncommon discernment.

Witgern spoke the words he guessed she was thinking. “What if the force that stays here meets defeat? Odberht moves on over our corpses and catches us after we’ve been halved.” Unconsciously Witgern comforted the young hound Sigwulf had kicked, and the spotted dog appreciatively licked his hand.

Sigwulf spun round. “How dare you speak that word.”

“Defeat,”
Witgern said, his one good eye glowing with melancholy fire. “Accustom yourself to the sound of it, Sigwulf, I wager you’ll hear it spoken again. Do you think Odberht will come without reserves? He’d never risk his hide if he did not think he brought more than enough men to destroy us.”

Sigwulf’s look of injured honor shifted to one of bleak resignation, a look Witgern had seen there only once before—when word came that Baldemar was dead. For long there was no sound but the fire, and Witgern was conscious of it crackling, patiently devouring what had once been a mighty living oak, leaving humble ash.

“I’m thinking of perishing honorably, then,” Sigwulf said finally, with a fierce sadness. “We may as well admit it, we’re caught in a raven’s claw. But I will not make Odberht a gift of the Village of the Boar. By the Fates, it is Baldemar’s own village. And I won’t be herded like kine into the Roman slaughtering pens.” Belligerence flared again in his black eyes. “That fiend will be stopped
here.
I volunteer myself
for the task if no one else has the mettle.”

Witgern looked at Auriane, surprised this did not provoke her to retort. But still she followed her own thoughts.

“It’s not a matter of
mettle
,” Witgern replied, becoming increasingly irritated with Auriane for leaving him to battle Sigwulf alone. “This is glory-lust talking.”

“I smell craven faint-heartedness here,” Sigwulf muttered, his back to Witgern.

“Sigwulf,” Sigreda interjected sharply. She rose from her oak chair, the wolf mask she had worn when she kindled the fire still in her hand. “Speak no unholy words.” Sigreda cast vervain on the fire to purify the air.

“I don’t need Wodan’s servants to tell me how to speak.”

“Sigwulf.”

This voice was Auriane’s. She looked up at Sigwulf from her place by the fire, eyes alight, face glowing from the heat; she appeared to have just awakened from a light sleep. All dropped into expectant silence.