I woke in the dark, smelling fire. I could not feel my own limbs, but the cold was like knives in my chest and stomach. I coughed and someone lifted me; I remember their skin seemed red-hot against my side. I tasted the river in my mouth and felt it, heavy in my chest. I struggled to toss it off, coughing, gasping, and vomiting, and the water gurgled in my lungs and ran from my nose. The other held me up, put a basin under my mouth, spoke soothingly, and at last, when the spasms stopped, set me down and drew blankets over me. I lay still, drifting numbly; slept; woke again feeling warmer. The fire-scented darkness still surrounded me. My hands and feet felt as though they were burning, my head ached, and I still felt sick. I struggled to move, and a woman’s voice said something, softly and gently, and a hand smoothed my hair away from my face. I relaxed.
“Tirgatao,” I said, feeling as though I were fitting back into life, like a sword into its sheath or a latch onto a door. I opened my eyes, trying to find her.
But it was not her. The reddish light of a fire showed me a woman beside me, but a strange woman with a long, oval face, hair indeterminately dark in the faint light, a gentle mouth, long hands. I stared at her for a while in bewilderment. “Where is Tirgatao?” I asked at last.
I spoke in Sarmatian, but the woman replied in another language. I looked at her blankly, and she said something else. I felt that I ought to understand the second time she spoke, but I could not, and I wept because I could not. The woman stroked my hair again, and said “shhh, shhh,” which at least I could understand. I lay still; after a while I went back to sleep.
When I woke again, it was lighter, and I felt less ill. There was still the smell of fire. I lay on my side, staring out at a wall. After a time, I put my hand against it, and felt that it was made of stone. Then I knew that I was dead and in my grave. I lay for a while, considering this without distress. It didn’t surprise me, but I couldn’t remember how I had died.
It suddenly occurred to me that if I were dead, I might find Tirgatao. I pulled myself up onto my hands and knees, looking around. The stone walls enclosed me, but there was a hearth on my left, with embers glowing redly under a gridiron. The packed earth floor was covered with dried bracken, and herbs and dried meat hung from the ceiling. I sat back onto my heels. I was on a kind of bed, with a blanket over me, and all my clothes were missing. I pulled the blanket around my shoulders and stood up. My knees were weak, and my bad leg almost gave under me; I staggered and put a hand against the wall to balance myself. There was a door in the far wall, and I started toward it.
A woman came suddenly through another door, on the other side of the hearth, and ran over to me, saying something in an unknown language. I remembered her as the one who’d been beside me in the dark. She caught my elbow, speaking to me and trying to lead me back to the bed.
“I must find Tirgatao,” I told her.
“You shouldn’t be up,” she said, in her second language-only now my mind understood it as Latin. “Do you understand me? You shouldn’t be up; you’re much too ill.”
“But Tirgatao…” I said, in Latin now. “I must find her. She was burned, not buried, but perhaps she is wandering the air, and will come in when I call her. Perhaps she is outside. Please, I must find her.”
“There’s no one outside,” said the woman.
I pushed her off and staggered to the door. I scrabbled with the latch a moment, then pushed it open. Beyond it was a farmyard, with chickens scratching in the fresh snow, and beyond that, white hills and dark leafless trees under a gray sky. I leaned against the doorframe, staring at it. It was all wrong. It was not my country at all. They’d buried me in the wrong place. “Tirgatao!” I called desperately, hoping somehow she could still hear me, “Artanisca! Tirgatao!”
“Please come back in and let me close the door,” said the woman. “You should not stand half-naked in the cold. You were chilled and very nearly dead when we found you.”
I let her close the door and lead me back to the bed. My strength barely got me back to it, and I collapsed on the floor beside it and wept bitterly, then coughed up some more water. “They burned her body,” I told the woman, when I could speak again. “That is why she is not here. And they have buried me in the wrong place, and now I cannot find her.”
The mouth lifted in a gentle, ironic smile. “It isn’t because you’re in the wrong place: none of the living can find the dead. You are alive.”
I stared at her incomprehendingly. She took my hand, turned it in hers, and ran her thumb up my wrist: the blue line of blood went white, then leapt forward again with the force of life. “You are alive,” she repeated softly.
I looked at her doubtfully. “If I am alive, why am I in a tomb?”
“Why do you think you are?”
I put my hand to the wall again. “It is stone.”
“Do they only use stone for tombs where you come from? This is a house. You are at River End Farm, five miles from Corstopitum in the region of Brigantia. My name is Pervica, Saenus’ widow, and the house and farm are mine.”
I touched the wall again, frowning. My mind was still not clear. I felt that I’d heard of Corstopitum before, but I couldn’t remember anything about it.
Pervica knelt and put my arm over her shoulders. “You should get back into bed,” she said, and helped me into it. “Now, do you still feel sick, or could you eat some barley broth?”
I let her fetch the broth, and drank it when she brought it. When I handed her the empty bowl, I suddenly realized that I was still wearing nothing but the blanket around my shoulders, and I hurried to cover myself. “How did I come here?” I asked.
“We took you from the river yesterday afternoon,” she answered.
“I do not remember,” I said, frowning again.
“You wouldn’t remember,” she said soothingly. “You were very nearly dead.”
I shook my head. “I do not remember going to this river at all.” It troubled me.
She noticed, and continued gently. “Probably you’ll remember in a little while. Where are your family, or your friends? In Corstopitum?”
“I do not remember,” I repeated. “Sometimes… I have been there, I think.”
“What is your name?”
“Ariantes.”
“You remember the important things, then. Don’t worry, the rest will come. I’ll send Cluim into Corstopitum this afternoon to ask if anyone there has missed you. Cluim looks after my sheep; he was the one who found you. He saw your red coat against the green of the riverbank when he went to gather the sheep yesterday, and he went and pulled you out. He thought at first you were dead, but you coughed, so he covered you with his cloak and ran shivering back to the house to fetch help. We put you in the cart and brought you in by the fire, and the warmth recovered you.”
I nodded, helplessly, and tried to sit up again. “Where are my clothes?” I asked.
“There.” She pointed to a rack by the foot of the bed: there they all hung neatly, the hilt of the dagger gleaming in the dim light. “They’re still a little damp, so I wouldn’t try to put them on yet. Try and rest.”
“You took them off me?”
“You needed to get warm,” she said reprovingly.
It was warm in the bed by the fire. “Yes,” I said, drowsily. “I thank you.”
When I next woke, it was dark again and my strength was returning. I sat up and looked at the embers on the hearth. After a minute, I rose and put some fresh wood on, and watched the flames burn up, bright and yellow. Image of Marha, the holy one, the pure lord. I stretched my hand out to him, and suddenly the sight of it made me shiver. There my fingers, so cunningly articulated, moved at my will to honor the god: I was alive. For a long time I had regretted that life. In my heart I believed I should have died on that day of thunder, and never seen defeat or heard of the end of those I loved most. And now, all at once and without thinking, I was glad to be alive, to see the fire burning and smell the thick sweet smoke; to feel my strength rising in me again. The world of the dead is one we cannot share. However long we stand, gazing at the tomb, in the end we must turn and ride home. We are wonderfully and mysteriously suspended in a web of bone and blood, able to think and move, love and believe. Alive. Thank the gods!
I couldn’t go back to the bed. Though I now knew I was in a house and not a tomb, I still found the close stone walls deathly. I fumbled my clothes on by the light of the fire, pulled on my coat, slung the blanket over my shoulders, and went to the door.
A full moon was shining on the snow in the farmyard, and the stars were white and high in a clear cold sky, scattered so thick that the night was radiant with them. The hills glimmered in the moonlight, and everything was still, frozen in an impossible beauty. My breath steamed. I stepped out, closing the door behind me, and limped along the side of the house. By the time I’d reached the corner, I was shivering, and I turned for shelter to a wooden barn just beyond it. I slipped into this and stood still, smelling the scent of cows, and the closer, more familiar home-smell of horses. At once I was tired again. I found a pile of clean straw in a corner, lay down in that, rolled up in the blanket, and went back to sleep.
When the cocks crowed I woke feeling hungry and myself again. I stretched and stood up, then shook the straw off the blanket and hung it over the wall of a stall. Outside the barn, dawn was breaking pink and radiant over the snow-covered land. Six cows watched me peacefully from the other end of the barn, chewing their cuds as they waited for someone to come and milk them. Two horses were loose-tethered opposite them, and a third horse was in the box stall I’d hung the blanket on, tethered with its head to the entrance. This last was looking at me with its ears back.
“Good morning,” I told it.
It rolled its eyes and shifted nervously.
I walked round to the door of the stall and looked at the animal more closely. It was a stallion, chestnut with white socks and a blaze on its forehead, and it was a fine horse, round-hooved, heavy-hocked, and big enough to carry armor-though, like most British horses, a little light in the forequarters. But it had whip scars across its withers, and more scars on its nose and at the corners of its mouth: it was nervous because it had been mistreated.
It never occurred to me that Pervica could have been responsible. I had come back to life at the touch of her hand, and I could not associate any cruelty with that gentle face and ironic smile. I at once assumed that this was some beast she’d taken pity on, as she’d taken pity on me, and I looked at the animal with fellow feeling. I spoke to him soothingly, but the stallion still rolled his eyes, keeping his ears back as though to say, “Keep your distance. I won’t let you hit me.” There was no real hatred there, though, just fear.
I looked about and found a rag that had been used to clean harness. I picked it up and went over to the other horses. One was a mare, and I rubbed the rag against her rump, then went back to the stallion and let him smell it. His ears came forward again as he sniffed-an old trick, but a good one. I stroked his neck, talking to him quietly, and ducked under the door, which was the high kind with two bars at waist level. The ears flicked back and forth, the stallion snorted, but couldn’t make up his mind to attack, and I went on patting him and crooning to him until he began to think he liked it. I went out, fetched a handful of grain, came back and fed it to him, murmuring all the time to keep him calm. I noticed as he ate that at some point his tongue had been torn so badly that it needed stitches. I judged that the scars on his nose had been caused by a psalion, the metal hackamore that closes when it is pulled, which the Romans sometimes use for recalcitrant carriage horses.
The barn door opened and a man came in. He was dressed in the common gray-brown woollens of the Britons, but with a sheepskin cloak instead of a check one. He stared at me and gabbled something in his own language.
“Shh,” I said, since the stallion was putting his ears back again.
The man ran out. A few minutes later, he came back, with Pervica. She stopped in the doorway, so suddenly that her companion bumped into her. The rising sun lanced around her shape, framing it black against the white winter light-a tall woman, wide-hipped, deep-breasted, extraordinarily graceful. She had drawn me back into life the way my heart had drawn the blood back into my hand. Desire is, some think, a simple thing, like thirst or hunger. But all I could feel of desire had been clenched upon the dead until that moment, when it opened all at once to Pervica’s grace. The happiness I felt was like another sunrise, immense and shining.
“Very many greetings, Lady Pervica,” I said, giving the horse a final pat and ducking back under the door.
“Greetings,” she returned, coming forward slowly, looking at me in amazement. “Cluim told me you were in here, with Wildfire eating out of your hand. I’d just found your bed empty, and I had no idea where you’d gone.” Seen in daylight, her hair was brown, and her eyes a light blue-gray. She was dressed just as most of the British women I’d met, in a gray-brown dress and checked cloak. She was attractive rather than strikingly beautiful. I might not have noticed her in the marketplace at Dubris, but if I had noticed her, I’d have looked at her again: she had a grace and dignity that set her apart. I guessed already that her face was the kind that can grow on a man, becoming more beautiful as he comes to know it well.
“I am sorry,” I said. “I am not used to sleeping in houses.” I looked back at her companion, then asked, “You are the Cluim who took me from the river and saved my life?”
Cluim shuffled his feet and said, “Non loquor Latine.”
“He is,” Perdica supplied, and interpreted my question for him.
He grinned and bobbed his head at me. He was a small, dark man in his twenties, very dirty. “
Tell him I am grateful,” I said.
Pervica interpreted, and Cluim bobbed his head again, shyly.
I unfastened my dagger from my belt and held it out to him, hilt first. “This is no repayment for a life, but it has some value. Perhaps he would accept it, in token of my thanks?”
“He is unlikely to refuse it,” Pervica said dryly, and indeed, Cluim’s face had lit up at the sight of it. He took it and ran his fingers over the jewels in the hilt, exclaiming; drew it and ran his thumb along the blade and exclaimed again as it cut him, then grabbed my hand and shook it wildly, beaming at me.
“And I am grateful to you as well, Lady,” I told Pervica. “It is clear to me that I would have died even after I was taken from the river, if it had not been for your care. Such a debt I cannot repay but with thanks, and the prayer that one day the gods grant me the power to return your goodness.”
Her cheeks flushed a little. “You are very courteous. I could hardly do anything else but try to help you, and you have repaid my efforts already, by living. I certainly didn’t expect to see you looking so well this morning. But will you at least come into the house for breakfast?”
“If you wish it, Lady.”
“I do.” She said something dry to Cluim, who grinned, fastened the dagger to his belt, and went off toward the cows. The lady started back toward the house, and I limped after her. “So, you work with horses, Ariantes,” she said, after a few steps.
It was a reasonable assumption, given that her stallion was so easily alarmed. “Yes,” I agreed. “And that is a fine horse. Where did you get him?”
“My husband bought him at Corstopitum market-a great bargain at four hundred and thirty denarii. He was full of plans to use it for stud, and to start the business of horse-rearing here at River End. Nothing came of it except that he was four hundred and thirty denarii out of pocket: nobody wants his mares serviced by such a vicious animal. I’m astonished that the horse let you near him. He barely tolerates me, and we haven’t been able to do a thing with him since we got him.”
“He is not vicious, but frightened.” We reached the door of the house and stamped the snow off our shoes. “He has been ridden too long …”-I hesitated, searching for the right words, then continued-“with the curb bit and the iron bridle.”
“The iron bridle?” she repeated blankly.
“The psalion, I think it is called. The curb bit and the iron bridle: it is a saying my people have, but here it is true.”
“Do you use this iron thing?” she asked uneasily.
I liked that unease. I shook my head. “If a horse needs that much force to control it, it is not a good horse, and I would not keep it. That chestnut is a good horse. He was punished too much, when he was willing to please as well as when he was not, and it is that that has ruined him.”
“How can you tell?”
“He was afraid when he saw me first, but not angry. He enjoyed attention.”
“Is he ruined forever?”
“I could handle him for you,” I told her. “I have a mare I might breed to him.” I was surprised that I mentioned her, then reconsidered. The stallion was tall enough, and I was unlikely to find a better one here in Britain.
She smiled at me rather crookedly. “Have you? Do you trade horses, or just raise them?”
“At the moment, neither. I used to raise some, but now… Still, I would not mind breeding Farna to him. I have a stallion, but he is a courser, and a bit light; I need an animal with some height to it.”
She opened the door and went in, and I followed, ducking my head under the low threshhold.
There were two other women in the kitchen, one a lean redhead of about forty, and the other a dark girl of about sixteen who by her looks was Cluim’s sister: they were both standing by the bed and talking animatedly. Pervica clapped her hands to get their attention and spoke in British; she gestured at me. The other two laughed; the girl clutched her hands together and looked at me admiringly. The older woman went to the fire and took a pot off a hook, calling to the girl, who brought some bowls. She spooned a kind of oat gruel out of the pot, and the girl set two bowls on the table, then took two more through the door on the other side of the hearth. “The dining room’s this way,” said Pervica, following her.
The dining room seemed to belong to a different house. The walls were plaster, the floor red and white tile, and there was a glass window. A couch with feet carved in the shape of eagle claws stood by a low rosewood table, and on the wall there was a painting of the three Graces dancing together under an apple tree, all lurid pink flesh and swirling draperies. The girl set the gruel down on the table, bobbed her head to her mistress, and went back to eat her own breakfast in the kitchen.
“It’s not as warm in here,” said Pervica, “but it’s not as smoky, either.” She sat down on one end of the couch and picked up her spoon.
I sat on the other end and stirred the porridge. I did not share the Roman taste for grains and pulses, but I was hungry, and did not want to offend the lady. “This is a large farm?” I asked.
“Neither large nor small,” she said matter-of-factly. “Two hundred sheep, a dozen cattle, three horses, twelve acres of arable land, and an apple orchard. I have three families to help me with it. Elen and her two children live here, and the others are in their own houses nearby.”
“You said you were a widow.”
“I did, didn’t I?”
I stopped stirring the porridge and sampled it. It wasn’t actually unpleasant, so I ate another spoonful. “How long have you had the horse?”
She laughed. She had a pleasant laugh, low and soft. “You are tactful not to ask directly when my husband died. Autumn before last-a few months after buying the horse. I suppose I should have done more with the animal. He’ll tolerate me, and I could show Cluim how to manage him, too. But it takes time.”
“Yes,” I said. “They learn fear quickly, but trust takes longer.” And I thought of my men, and Gatalas’.
“I don’t have the time to teach the horse trust. I’d sell him if I could, but he has a bad reputation in the area now, and no one would buy him.”
“I would.”
She smiled. “Now, should I take advantage of that? Friend, you don’t have to buy my horse because I saved your life.”
“That is nothing to do with it.”
“I forgot-you can handle him, and you want a big stallion to breed to your mare. Well, perhaps…” She smiled crookedly again. “Talk to me about it in a few days, when you’ve recovered from the shock of finding yourself alive again. I confess, I’d like to sell him to a kind owner. He gulps food and is good for nothing-but I haven’t felt able to dispose of him to the few who’d take him, given how much he’s suffered already.”
“Why could you not use him for stud? You have land here.”
She shook her head. “We have land-but nobody on it is skilled with horses. Cluim’s the only one who can ride at all, and he can’t ride well. I can drive a cart, but that’s it. My husband should never have bought the horse-but he was full of enthusiasms and ambitious projects”-the crooked smile-“mostly misguided ones.” She waved a hand at the room around us. “This was another project. A fine Roman dining room, and an extra wing to the house. And the painting, another great bargain-hideous, isn’t it? We couldn’t afford that either. But I shouldn’t complain. He was a good man; I pray the earth is light on him. And I was another one of his misguided enthusiasms. I’m a soldier’s daughter whose father had been posted to the Danube, and I lost him all the dowry I never had, so everyone said he was a fool to marry me. Now you know all about me.”
I didn’t know what to say to this. Soldiers of Rome below the rank of centurion, in the infantry, and decurion, in the cavalry, are not legally allowed to marry. Most of them do anyway, but the army does not recognize the marriages, and if a soldier is posted far away, his family will be left behind impoverished unless he can scrape together enough money for their passage. I finished the porridge. “My wife died last spring,” I replied at last, a confidence in exchange for a confidence.
Her look of amusement vanished. “The one you were calling for.”
I nodded. “You have children?”
“No.” After a moment she smiled a nervous acknowledgment of the curiosity that I could not quite conceal, and went on. “My mother was another soldier’s daughter, and lived in the fort village at Hunnum: she made a living by weaving and selling vegetables after my father left. She died when I was fifteen. My sister died in childbirth three years ago, and my brother is also with the army on the Danube. I am entirely on my own, and quite independent. You?”
“I have two sisters who live in my own country, whom I can never see again. I had a little son, who died with my wife.”
“I’m sorry.” She paused, then asked, “Where are you from?”
“The Romans call the land Sarmatia.”
“Oh! Oh, Deae Matres! You’re one of the notorious Sarmatians?”
“Notorious?” I asked, amused.
She smiled back, with an air of surprise, but her reply was serious. “In the marketplace in Corstopitum they say you drink blood out of skulls and wear cloaks of human skin. People who used to go to Condercum or Cilurnum to trade started coming to Corstopitum instead. They were just thinking of going back again when there was that mutiny, and the battle against the Picts. We were glad, very glad, that the Selgovae and Votadini didn’t have the chance to steal our cattle and carry us off as slaves-but we were frightened, too, to hear how completely they’d been crushed. And when the Sarmatians at Condercum mutinied, just thirty killed over a hundred…” She stopped. I could see the awful possibility running through her mind, that I was a mutineer who had escaped and was fleeing justice. “You’re not from Condercum, are you?” she asked anxiously.
“No,” I replied, “Cilurnum.”
But I remembered now, going to Condercum and starting back with Arshak. At the bottom of my mind the memory of what had happened on the road heaved, like a serpent hidden in the dust. I was silent, the white morning dimmed.
“So you’re a soldier,” Pervica said, after a silence, in a flat voice. “I didn’t realize that. You weren’t armed, except for the dagger. You said you worked with horses-but of course, you’re a cavalryman.” After another silence, she said, “When Cluim went in to Corstopitum yesterday, he told the town authorities, not the military ones. That explains why they’d never heard of you.”
“Lend me a horse and I will ride in myself,” I said, trying to shake off a sense of horror at the shadow of memory. “I remember now, I was at Corstopitum on fort business. I think my friends will still be there. Lend me the stallion Wildfire, if you like; I think I can persuade him to carry me to the gates.”
She looked at me with the crooked smile, but her eyes were sad. “Lend you Wildfire? Oh, he was never broken to the saddle; he’s a carriage horse. And you certainly shouldn’t try to ride all the way to Corstopitum. You were almost dead, night before last. When we brought you into the house, you were gray and cold as ice, and I thought we were carrying a corpse. I’ll take you in in the cart this afternoon.”
“I thank you. My men will be concerned for me.”
Her face changed again, the faint regret shifting to wariness. “Your men? You’re an officer?”
I nodded.
She dropped her eyes. “Oh, I’m a fool!” she exclaimed. She didn’t explain why, and I had no chance to ask her, because she went on immediately, “It seems so strange that you’re a Sarmatian. All my life I’ve seen troops leaving Britain for the Danube. My father went when I was seven, and my elder brother was recruited for the war six years ago. And now your people are being sent here to defend us!”
“Where were your father and brother posted?” I asked.
“My father was with the Second Aelian Cohort, at a place called Cibalae, in Lower Pannonia. We had one letter from him after he left, with some money, and then nothing more. My brother was further west, at Vindobona, with the Second Brittones. Do you know of them?”
I knew the places. Vindobona was well to the west of my own country, and Pervica’s brother probably had to fight Quadi, not Sarmatians. But Cibalae was closer to home. The fort there had been at the western edge of the territory I used to raid, and I had an unpleasant feeling that I’d once scalped one of the Second Aelian Cohort. I struggled to clear the memory, and came up with the image of an auxiliary kneeling to brace his spear as I rode at him, a round-faced man in a long mail shirt. Yes. The scalp was brown, with no white in it, and the man had been about thirty. That had been three years ago-he couldn’t have been Pervica’s father, who would have had to be in his late forties. That was a relief.
“You fought them?” asked Pervica, who was still watching me.
“The Second Aelians, yes,” I admitted, “but not your father.”
“It must be very strange for you, after fighting Romans, to come here as soldiers of Rome.”
That summary of our twisted place in the world was so simple and straightforward I could almost have laughed. “It is,” I agreed. “It is very strange.”
There was a moment of silence, and then she said, “Well, I can send Cluim in to town today, and tell him to go to the military authorities this time. Or, if you like, I can drive you in, in the cart. I need to buy some things in Corstopitum anyway.”
At that moment there was a shriek of terror, shrill and piercing, from outside the house. Pervica leapt to her feet and pelted out the door. I followed her more slowly, still stiff-legged and clumsy.
The scream had come from the front of the house, and I hurried out into a columned courtyard to find the red-haired servant screaming again, Pervica running across the snow, and my own bodyguard, glittering in their scales, milling about the farm gate. In another instant I realized that one of the armored figures was Leimanos, and that he was leaning down from the saddle and clutching Cluim by the arm, shouting at the shepherd and hitting him in the face; and that Comittus was beside him, trying to restrain him.
“Leimanos!” I shouted. “What are you doing?”
He spun round in the saddle. “My prince!” he yelled joyfully.
“Ariantes!” shouted Comittus.
And the whole squadron galloped over. Leimanos swept Cluim up over the saddle and took him along, then reined in sharply in front of me and dismounted, leaving the shepherd to slip off dazedly on his own. Pervica, halfway across the yard, turned and began walking slowly back. The horses steamed and glittered, and I noticed Farna, tied behind Leimanos’horse.
“My prince!” said Leimanos, and he dropped to both knees in the snow in front of me and kissed my hand. “Thank the gods you’re alive!”
“I thank the gods indeed,” I answered, and pulled him to his feet. The rest of the bodyguard crowded round, shouting, slapping me and each other on the back, thanking the gods. Comittus, grinning and bouncing, pushed through them and shook my hand.
“But what were you doing to this shepherd here?” I asked, when they’d calmed down enough to let me speak. Cluim had picked himself up, and Pervica was wiping his face with a handful of snow. His face was blotched from the blows, his nose was bleeding, and he looked terrified.
“We found him outside the gate, and stopped him to ask the way,” said Leimanos, glaring at Cluim. “Then we saw that he had your dagger. We feared the worst, my lord.”
I shook my head. “I gave him the dagger. He found me lying nearly drowned in the river, and pulled me out. It is to him, and to this lady here whom he serves, that I owe my life.”
Leimanos gave an exclamation of dismay and went over to Cluim. The shepherd backed away hastily, but Leimanos knelt to him. “Forgive me,” he said, in Latin, in which he now had some fluency. “I did not understand. I thought you had killed my prince.”
Cluim still looked terrified. Comittus interpreted for him, and the shepherd nodded, but did not seem inclined to come any nearer. Leimanos took the dagger, which he’d thrust in his own belt, and offered it back. After a nervous glance around, Cluim snatched it hastily.
“My lord gave you that,” said Leimanos, “in gratitude for his life. And for his life, which I value above my own, let me add this.” He laid his own dagger at Cluim’s feet.
“And this,” said Banadaspos, taking the gold pin from his coat and putting it beside the dagger.
And the others in the bodyguard, all thirty of them, copied them, each adding something-a ring, a purse full of money, a gold torque taken from a Pictish chieftain-until poor Cluim was shaking his bruised head in bewilderment. He exclaimed loudly in British and pointed to Pervica.
“He says these should belong to his lady,” Comittus translated, then at once abandoned translation and gratitude together. “Deae Matres! Ariantes, I’ve never been so pleased to see anyone in all my life. As soon as you disappeared we realized you were the last man in Britain we could afford to lose. We’ve been going out of our minds with anxiety, and the men back in Cilurnum are ready to riot. We didn’t dare tell the fourth dragon you were missing, and Siyavak has been asking to see you: we had to tell him you’d gone back to the fort. If you’d died so soon after Gatalas, gods help us all! Priscus wanted to sack Gaius Valerius for letting you and Arshak leave Condercum without an escort, and he was cursing your soul to Hades for deciding to go hunting. Don’t worry, he’ll forgive you anything when he sees you alive. But I felt sorry for that poor miserable magistrate.”
“What magistrate?” I asked.
“The one who told the prefect of the First Thracians yesterday evening that a shepherd had reported finding a man in the river the day before, and was he possibly anything to do with us! We’d been turning the road between here and Condercum upside down all day, looking for you. The magistrate couldn’t remember anything about the report, and Priscus practically had him flogged. Fortunately, his clerk had made a record of it. We all set off at full gallop at first light to find you. The men wanted to set out last night, but we weren’t sure of finding the place in the dark. Thank the gods you’re well! The report said you were too weak to stand and very confused in mind.”
I nodded impatiently; I had just remembered that Leimanos should have been at Cilurnum. “Who is in charge at the fort?” I asked.
“Longus and Facilis,” replied Comittus promptly. “I hope there hasn’t been trouble!”
I groaned. “Leimanos!” I exclaimed, switching back to Sarmatian, “Who did you leave in charge?”
“Kasagos, my lord.”
“Kasagos! You know perfectly well that half the men won’t obey him because he’s Roxalanic! What were you thinking of?”
“I’m sorry,” said Leimanos, wretchedly. “I couldn’t endure waiting there, with you perhaps lying dead or injured in the forest, and neither could anyone else in the bodyguard. Our duty is to defend your life or die beside you. We’d rather die than live in the disgrace of having abandoned our lord.”
“We’ll all be disgraced if the dragon has been killing Asturians in the absence of anyone to control them! Give me my horse!”
I went over to Farna and began tightening the girth on her saddle.
“What are you doing?” asked Pervica, speaking for the first time since my men arrived. She turned anxiously to Comittus. “You don’t mean for him to ride to Corstopitum today?”
“Why not?” asked Comittus in surprise.
“Because it’s perfectly true that yesterday afternoon he was too weak to stand and believed that he was lying dead in his tomb. And he had good reason to believe himself dead: when I first saw him, I thought the same. I didn’t pull him back from the grave to see him catapulted into it from a horse’s back.”
I left Farna and came over to her. “Lady Pervica,” I said, “you need not fear that your efforts have been wasted. I can rest on horseback as comfortably as in a bed. And I must return to Cilurnum at once. My men need me.”
“To Cilurnum!” she said, frowning at me. “That’s even worse! It’s farther!” Then she caught her breath. “You’re the prefect at Cilurnum, aren’t you?”
“Not exactly. I am commander of the Sarmatian numerus there. My friend Lucius Javolenus Comittus here ought to be prefect, but is called a liaison officer instead. The titles have been changed because of our… notoriety.”
She didn’t smile. “And… they said you’re a prince? All these men are your subjects?”
“That was how it was when we were in our own country. Here it is different. I ask you to understand, though, why I must leave at once. My brother prince at Condercum died at Roman hands only a few days ago, and my men will have been very alarmed at the news that I was missing. I left Leimanos here, who is commander of my bodyguard, in charge of the rest of my company at the fort. But he believed his first duty was to find me, and has left the rest of the dragon under the command of those whose authority will not master them. I must return at once to reassure them.”
She caught her breath again, angry, astonished, and bewildered. “We can’t possibly accept all the gold your… your men have given us. It’s far too much, and I couldn’t justify keeping it. I don’t want money from you.”
“My bodyguard paid Cluim, and you, the debt they owed to their own honor,” I told her. “They were ashamed because they had been unable to defend me themselves and because they had attacked the one who had done it in their place. I could never correct them in something that concerns their honor: you must keep what they gave you. But for my own part, I know only too well that I have given you nothing but thanks.” I took her hand. “And those I give you again, with the promise that my life is at your service.” I kissed the hand, pressed it to my forehead, let go of it, and stepped back. She stared at me with wide eyes and flushed cheeks. “May I come back in a few days to talk about the horse?” I asked her.
“Y-yes,” she said. “Yes, if you like-but you shouldn’t ride today!”
I went back to my horse. I slid the stirrups down the leathers and mounted. “Tell Cluim I regret it that Leimanos struck him,” I said, unfastening the lead rein from Farna’s bridle. “I will see you in a few days. Lady, good health!”
“You obstinate, arrogant man!” she replied. “I pray the gods give you good health!”
I looked back at her and smiled. Tirgatao used to talk to me like that. I gave the signal for the bodyguard to mount, bowed to Pervica from the saddle, and trotted away from the farm, leaving her standing on the porch and staring after us, a slim gray figure against the whiteness of the snow.
Pervica had been right to doubt whether I was fit to ride any distance. I could rest comfortably on horseback, as I’d said, but I was shivering with the cold before we’d gone a mile. It didn’t help that I’d lost my hat. Comittus noticed and suggested that we go to Corstopitum after all, and said that we were expected there, but I was concerned about the situation at Cilurnum and anxious to return at once. I sent a Latin-speaking bodyguard to Corstopitum instead, to announce that I was safe and would go there the following day as soon as I’d reassured my men. I borrowed the messenger’s helmet to keep my ears warm.
Comittus asked me several times on that ride whether I was really all right, whether I was chilled, whether we shouldn’t stop and rest a bit. I found it exasperating and answered only by asking him questions about other things. In this way I learned that the Sarmatians in Cilurnum were confined to our camp, very sensibly, and the Asturians to the fort; that my weapons and armor, except for my bow case, were in Corstopitum; that Eukairios was still in Corstopitum; that the legate was also still there; that the fourth dragon was also there; that Farna had been found on the road the evening I disappeared, with my spear in its holder, my sword hung from the saddle, and my armor in its pack behind. My bow case was missing. “Arshak told us that you’d both seen a wild boar,” Comittus said, “and had decided to hunt it. He said he lost you and the boar both in the chase. Why didn’t you bring the spear? Those bows of yours are powerful, but I wouldn’t have thought they’re the gear to use on boars. We’d been imagining you lying wounded, gored by the beast, or perhaps eaten by wolves. How did you end up in the river?”
“I do not remember,” I replied.
But even without remembering, I knew that Arshak was lying. I did remember how we’d argued in Corstopitum, and how we’d set out from Condercum, with Arshak glowering at the road before us: we had not gone hunting. I struggled to remember the missing hours, but they were fogged, and I was left only with the sense of horror at something forgotten. I knew, though, that what had happened was somehow bound up with the legate’s wife, and I hadn’t forgotten that she was Comittus’ kinswoman and that he admired her. I said nothing to him about my doubts. I said nothing to my men, either: if they knew that someone had tried to murder me, they would be out for revenge, and that would only cause trouble. So I let Arshak’s story stand.
The precautions taken by the officers at Cilurnum proved to have been sufficient, and my fears unfounded: though things had been tense, my men had not yet begun killing Asturians. When I appeared, somewhat the worse for the ride, the Asturians came running out of their barracks and the Sarmatians galloped up from the camp, and there was a great deal of shouting. Even Facilis seemed pleased to see me.
I was by this time feeling very chilled and utterly exhausted, so after letting my men see that I had not been murdered by the Romans and giving a few orders to my officers, I went to my wagon to rest. When I got off my horse, my bad leg gave under me and I fell, then, to my disgust, found I couldn’t get up again. Everyone crowded about exclaiming and explaining to one another that I’d been practically dead of drowning two days before, and arguing with each other over how I should be looked after. The Romans would have whisked me off to the fort hospital at once, but I refused to allow it, and managed to pull myself back onto my feet, though I had to lean against the side of a wagon to stay there. We had by this time built shelters of wattle and mud daub out from the front of the wagons, put awnings over them, and covered the ground beneath them with straw to give ourselves somewhere warm to sit in the evenings. My men built a roaring fire in front of my own shelter, covered its floor with extra straw and several thicknesses of rugs, and there I sat to get warm. The bodyguard fussed over me like a pack of old women at a childbed, bringing hot compresses for my feet, fetching blankets and pillows, offering cups of warm milk and bowls of beef stew. It was some time before I could persuade them to go away and let me rest. Then I drank the milk and ate the stew, and lay still, looking at the fire and thinking about Pervica. I forgot Arshak, Bodica, and the nagging uncertainty about the Brigantes and the Picts. I realized now why she’d called herself a fool. When she learned I was an officer, she realized that I would be free to marry her, which I couldn’t have done as a common soldier-and she’d at once told herself that it was far too early to worry about such matters and she was a fool to think of it. But she had needed to tell herself that: she was not indifferent to me. I saw her again, standing flushed and angry on the porch of her house, telling me I was obstinate and arrogant, and I was happy.