Come Twilight (48 page)

“No, not far. It is a bit to the south of us, and, as I reckon it, Usca is directly west. The forest around Mont Calcius must be gone by now; I can think of no reason to go there. Once we reach Usca, we will have a direct road to Asturica. If there is no fighting between Usca and Asturica.” Ragoczy Germainus glanced up at the men laboring high above them. “They are determined to clear out the trees.”

“You do not approve,” said Rotiger, recognizing the neutrality of his master’s tone for condemnation.

“Not as they are doing it, no, I do not.” He pointed to where a section of slope had slid. “Mountains need their trees, or they crumble. The Moors should have left the younger trees to grow, so that there will be more in fifty years, and they may build more ships. If they cut down much of the brush, they could graze their flocks in the forests as well as on the hillsides. But they will not do this, for they want the land cleared. So as it is, when those trees they are logging are gone, they will have no more generations, and the mountains will fall away. Remember what happened around that Byzantine outpost after the Huns came through. That was four hundred years ago and the forest is only starting to grow again.”

Rotiger could think of nothing to say in response, nor did Ragoczy Germainus appear to expect anything, so he nodded once and turned away from the activity on the ridge, and a little while later was glad to move on.

By the time they made camp that evening, it was dark, and the place they found was a remount station where horses were kept saddled in the courtyard for the couriers and officers who used the road. For a piece of silver and two of copper, the Moorish landlord gave them room in the field behind the stables, and a paddock for their animals for the night.

“Will you hunt?” Rotiger asked his master, growing uneasy on his behalf for his long fast; he had just finished eating a haunch of lamb he had bought from a shepherd who had brought some of his stock to the remount station for the kitchen there.

“No. We are too close to the station for that, and there is not one within I can safely visit in sleep.” He was lying back on his bed-roll, laid atop his largest chest of earth. “A night on this will restore me.”

“How long can you continue this way? And do not remind me that you have gone much longer without sustenance of any kind.” He held up his hand to show he had not yet finished. “I have seen you in those times, and I know what they do to you.”

“Well and good,” said Ragoczy Germainus. “I will hunt once we reach the forest. It will be safer there.”

“With only Chimenae’s minions to trouble you,” Rotiger said, his sarcasm more worried than angry.

“I know what to do about vampires,” said Ragoczy Germainus. “Little as I may know Chimenae herself, she is of my blood, and to that I am no stranger.”

“I am sure this will serve to make allies of them all,” said Rotiger.

Ragoczy Germainus chuckled sadly. “I doubt it, though it would please me to think so.” He smiled up at the brilliant sky. “If only the nights were not so short, I would take the chance and hunt, but—” He lifted a hand in resignation.

“Speaking of hunting,” said Rotiger in a different voice, “I have not sensed that we are being followed any longer.”

“No,” said Ragoczy Germainus. “We are not.”

“Perhaps Olutiz has grown tired of the chase and gone back to his inn,” Rotiger suggested, spreading out his bed-roll.

“No,” said Ragoczy Germainus.

“Then what has become of him?” asked Rotiger as he settled himself down to rest.

Ragoczy Germainus’ answer robbed him of his equanimity. “He and Dorioz are hunting the Moorish soldiers now,” he said, continuing to study the night sky.

Text of a letter from Atta Olivia Clemens in Roma to Ragoczy Germainus in Touloza, written in Imperial Latin and never delivered.

To my most dear and oldest friend, Ragoczy Germainus—as you now call yourself—my affectionate greetings from Roma at the beginning of what promises to be a miserable summer here at Sine Pare.

I can but hope that this will reach you before you go on to another country with another name, for then I would have to wait until you have the inclination to write to me, and hope that I will still be here to receive it. You have been unusually peripatetic, even for you, since your escape from slavery in Hispania. You would think that the forces of the Emir’s son could pursue you even now, and that if you remain anywhere for more than five years, you will be taken again. Yes, I am chiding you, for you know you could come here and have nothing to fear but the whims of the Pope, or from the soldiers who claim to garrison the city. Not that the Pope and the soldiers cannot be dangerous in their way, but I have found that a sack of gold is most salutary in its effect, and these days the Pope has other things to worry about than those raising horses on the outskirts of the city, and the soldiers are willing to accept money so they can gamble and whore.

Yes, I am truly now on the outskirts of the city. I have, in the last ten years, purchased land from the old limits of Sine Pare to that first line of villas, three thousand paces beyond the north gate of Roma itself. I have more than trebled my holdings, and I am about to purchase more. Or rather, my absent-but-very-wealthy-husband is about to purchase more, and to leave it to my care while he travels the world for the purpose of enriching our household. Niklos has twice gone to fetch the gold necessary for this expansion, and twice has managed to return with the whole sum intact. I am most pleased with him. Not simply for his skill at preserving treasure, but he has proven apt in keeping alive the myth of Servius of the Orsinus gens, my supposed husband. Even now, so many centuries later, I cannot bring myself to use the name of Cornelius Justus Sillius, though he was truly my husband, for fear that in so doing I might once again find myself hostage to a man. So Servius Secundus Orsinus is my spouse, far-traveled that he is, and Niklos is
able to convince everyone in Roma that he has seen and talked to the man a year ago. How else, he says, can anyone account for my increase in wealth? No one here knows of the three stud farms I have, or the mills I have built in the Frankish territories. So now as no more wars ransack my holdings, I should have a good period of prosperity, which I am more than eager to share with you.

Very well, I admit it. I am lonely. I am lonely and I hate it. I have had lovers who have pleased me, but it is not the same as having you, for you know the demands of long life, as well as its delights, and with you, I may speak of the past without fear that I may reveal too much, and thereby bring myself and all I have worked for into danger. Niklos is a help, for he, too, is familiar with this gulf that yawns between us and the living, and he is willing to speak of it with me, but it is not the same. I know you have learned to accept the separation from the living, and to accommodate in a way I have not mastered. If you were here, you might be able to teach me how I might achieve the acquiescence you have acquired; as it is, I cannot keep myself from railing at the loss of rights that have forced me to invent husbands and fathers to enable me to have what is mine. When I was young and living, I would not have required such a ruse. No one here can comprehend my feeling of disadvantage that continues to thwart my ambitions, for they have never known another way; I am left to fret on my own, without the comfort of shared indignation. I do not mean to cark at you. It is good that you are willing to bear with me when I do, for you understand how one can miss what has been lost so many, many years ago: bear with me now.

Roma is not as you remember it, of course. It is not as I remember it, either. The walls are broken in several places, the baths are used for very little bathing, and those that are still standing are more brothels than anything else. The farmers raise pigs and sheep and cattle inside the walls, and where many great houses stood there are now only ruins half-buried in the earth. There are days when I wander the streets—with Niklos to escort me—and try to recall how it looked when I was growing up. It is at those times that I can comprehend why you return to your native earth, no matter who lives on it now, or what has become of your own people, for I know what was here seven centuries ago, and I know I am still part of that.

How maudlin of me. How can you bear to read this? Well, if I have
not succeeded in putting you off entirely, let me say again how much I would enjoy your company at Sine Pare for as long as you care to remain. I am aware that two of our kind cannot stay in close proximity for many years, for it draws attentions to our habits and alerts the living to our presence, which is never useful. Still a year or two would not put either of us in danger, and it might be worth the chances we would have to take. I cannot promise you much better conditions than you have in Toulosa, but I can make sure you and Rotiger are protected from all but the forces of nature.

This by my own hand on the 6
^th
day of June, according to the Pope’s calendar, at Sine Pare.

Olivia

They crossed the river on a rough bridge of logs, and entered the trees two thousand paces beyond, into the welcome shade that blocked the relentless summer sun. Gradually the light dimmed as they moved deeper into the forest; now the sunlight came only in dappled flecks where the leaves gave enough opening for it to reach the floor of the woods. Here the heat was less, and a welcome breeze strummed the leaves.

“It’s quiet,” said Rotiger when they had followed the narrow road for some distance. “Just the wind.” He was in his linen gunna over Persian leggings but he was still warm.

“The loggers are driving the game away,” said Ragoczy Germainus, “and the hunters follow the game.” He was alert as he listened to the sounds in the woods, paying attention to every shift and change that came through the branches. His clothing was lightweight: a gonel of black, loose-weave wool with deep-pleated sleeves over Frankish tibialia, with thick-soled brodequins of soft black leather laced to the knees.

“The road isn’t much,” Rotiger observed. “Hardly wide enough for deer.”

“It is still the only road to Usca in this part of the mountains,” said Ragoczy Germainus. “The Moors want travelers to go toward the coast, to Terrago, and Valenzia, not west to Usca; they have no inclination to maintain this road. The western Goths still hold much of that north-western territory: why would the Moors keep this access route in good repair?” He raised his arm to push aside a low-growing branch. “Watch out. It will snap back when I release it,” he warned Rotiger.

“I’m prepared,” said Rotiger, holding back his horse and the mules he led as the branch thrashed toward him. “Not bad for a trap,” he remarked as he held the branch as he went by, seeing it whip back behind him. “It could knock a man out of the saddle if he were inattentive.”

“I was thinking much the same thing,” Ragoczy Germainus said, turning in his saddle to be sure Rotiger was unharmed.

“Do you think anyone would try such a trick?” Rotiger wondered aloud.

“If you mean Chimenae and her tribe, I think it may be possible,” said Ragoczy Germainus, looking around with care.

“Then you think they have expanded into this area,” said Rotiger. “We are well beyond Mont Calcius.”

“They have not remained in the open; I suspect they have followed the forests, back into the mountains, where they are hard to find.” He made a gesture, taking in the tangled undergrowth and the narrow path they followed. “This is safer for them, particularly if Olutiz was right, and there have been more added to their numbers.”

Rotiger said nothing more for a good stretch of their travels until they came to one of the old shrines. “Cups,” he said, pointing to the offerings in the ancient niches.

“Filled with blood; some of it has not fully coagulated yet,” Ragoczy Germainus remarked. “There have been men here not half a day ago.”

“And vampires?” Rotiger asked, sitting more upright in his saddle.

“If these offerings are fresh, the vampires cannot be far away.” He studied the shrine, counting the cups and making note of the empty niches. “Most of the blood comes from goats, but one of the cups has horse’s blood in it.”

“Chimenae would like that,” said Rotiger ironically.

“No doubt the reason they left it,” said Ragoczy Germainus somberly, his dark eyes fixed on the middle distance. “I must suppose she still believes in the magical powers of horses’ blood.” He glanced around the old shrine one last time. “It would be ill for us if we are discovered here.”

“By men or vampires?” Rotiger inquired, not quite amused.

“Either. Or both.” Ragoczy Germainus tapped his grey with his heels and they moved on along the road, into the deepest part of the forest.

That evening they found a glen with a spring making one end marshy, and grassy enough to give their animals a chance to graze. They made camp at the dry end, in the widest part of the meadow so that they had a little distance between themselves and the cover of the trees. Ragoczy Germainus made a point of building up enough of a fire to keep them in its glare all night. “I do not want to have any uninvited visitors to contend with unless we are ready for them.”

“But you see well in the dark,” Rotiger reminded him.

“And so do they,” Ragoczy Germainus declared as he laid another branch on the blaze. “I will not sleep, so that they will have no opportunity to stalk us without detection.”

“Are you expecting them to do that?” Rotiger asked as he set their tack up for the night.

“Not particularly, but I am not going to assume they will not. If they can get nothing from you and me, they can drain our horses and mules, and I must suppose they will try.” He rubbed his face. “When we reach Usca, I will need you to trim my beard again. And probably my hair as well.”

“Of course. I could tend to that now,” Rotiger offered, wanting something to do other than wait for an attack that might never come.

Ragoczy Germainus considered it. “Why not?” he said at last. “It is not as if you need a mirror, and I—” He stopped with a one-sided smile.