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Authors: Morgan Llywelyn

BOOK: Etruscans
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Vesi had sat cross-legged beside him, fingers idly pleating the threadbare fabric of her gown, staring eyes fixed on the flames. She did not think, did not feel, did not care. From the moment her head struck the stone quern in Wulv's compound she had been little more than
an empty vessel, a woman's body with no functioning intelligence inside. The bright, brave girl was gone. But on some level deeper than thought the mother had responded to the son's anxiety. A prayer was formulated in her blood and bones. And into her emptiness, something came, using her …
Her disused throat worked convulsively.
Forget about the Rasne,
said a voice.
Horatrim jumped. The voice was not Vesi's, was hardly even human. He dropped the sticks to crouch before his mother, taking her cold hands in his. “What did you say? Mother, did you speak?”
She sat unresponsive. He was beginning to think he'd imagined it when he saw the flesh of her throat working.
Forget about finding the Rasne. You have a different future. In Latium. Among the Romans.
Horatrim had seized his mother's hands. They were icy cold. Her eyes did not meet his; she seemed as stupefied as ever. Yet though her lips barely moved, she was undeniably speaking. The voice was thin, strained, without gender or emotion. Yet curiously it reminded him of the voices that had spoken to him the day Wulv's island was raided, the same voices he sometimes thought he heard whispering to him at the very edges of his consciousness.
Desperately trying to establish some conscious contact, Horatrim had squeezed her hands hard enough to cause pain. She never flinched. “Are you talking about the Romax, the ones who hurt you?”
In Latium they are known as Romans.
“You want vengeance, is that it?”
Listen
.
Speaking directly is difficult, though we find it easier through this woman because she does not resist us. You must go to Rome. Your future is there
.
“Mine? How can that be? And what about you, Mother, what am I to do with you? I do not understand what you want.”
A silence had followed while Horatrim waited patiently, eyes fixed on his mother's throat and lips, waiting for them to move.
You must
. For the first time there was emotion in the voice, an imperative command.
And take me with you
.
There was no further sound but the crackle of the fire, the calls of the night birds, the distant yapping of a fox.
Horatrim did not hear them. He sat with his elbows propped on his knees and stared at his mother.
She did not speak again.
The next morning they resumed their travels. Eventually they emerged from the Great Forest to find themselves on a deeply rutted dirt road that bore signs of frequent cart travel. Horatrim had looked both ways, up and down, but saw no one, no indication of habitation in either direction. Yet this was a road; it must lead somewhere. But in which direction? Stooping, he examined the ground, sensitive fingers tracing the cracked lines in the earth.
Knowledge came unbidden: cart wheels generally turned outward, so they were deeper on that side, and laden carts would usually be heading toward a town. With a boyish grin, Horatrim caught his mother by the hand and set off down the road. After the first time Vesi stepped in a rut and almost turned her ankle, he was careful to keep her to the center of the track, which provided a relatively level surface.
Before long they had begun encountering other travelers, as many as three or four in a day. Instead of asking for the city of the Rasne, Horatrim had sought directions to a place called Rome. To his own astonishment, he found himself speaking to each traveler in that person's own language. The courtesy earned him a friendly response and occasionally a cart ride or a meal as well.
“Rome! You don't want to go to Rome. The Romans
are the most aggressive of all the Italic tribes,” he was informed by a Picene merchant making his way west with a train of oxcarts driven by whip-scarred slaves. “They've subdued most of their neighbors already. They claim to be descended from twins who were suckled by a wolf, if you can believe it. One of the twins was known as Romulus so they call their stronghold Rome after him. Their current king is Tarquin the Superb.”
“Superbius,” corrected a Campanian merchant heading east the following day. “He styles himself Lucius Tarquinius Superbius, a name meant to impress the
plebeians
, the commoners. He boasts of having royal Etruscan blood but he's really just the latest in a long line of opportunists. Kings come and go. Romans are difficult to govern; the place is always a nettlepatch of intrigue. Look for a better destination, young man, unless you're interested in trade. Rome loves doing business.” He had glanced sidelong at the silent Vesi. “Maybe you want to sell this woman in the slave market. If you do, Rome is where you'll get the best price.”
Horatrim had listened to this advice without comment, but after they left the merchant he said to Vesi, “Are you certain you want to go to Rome?”
She did not answer. Her mouth hung ajar like the door to an abandoned house.
“We can turn back,” her son suggested, wiping a trail of spittle from her chin.
In response the woman had shuddered as if a cold wind blew through her. She straightened until she stood perceptibly taller. Her chin came up, her shoulders went back. From somewhere deep inside had issued one of the voices he was coming to know.
We never turn back
He did not question the voice. Command was implicit in every syllable.
“We never turn back,” he had repeated. On his lips the words became a vow.
Thirty days after leaving Wulv's ruined fort, Horatrim and Vesi were skirting a garrisoned hill; a garrison on the frontier of Rome. The man-boy paused to listen to the voices of the guards carrying on the still air. Peering through the screening willows, he watched the captain appear and wondered yet again at the wisdom of traveling into the city.
Then he glanced down at his mother. Vesi was sitting contentedly on the earth beside him, picking at the countless tiny flowers that had sprung up around his sandaled feet.
He crouched beside the woman and lifted her chin to look into her empty eyes.
“Rome lies ahead. Are you still sure?” he asked.
Vesi ignored him and concentrated on weaving the flowers into an intricate garland.
Horatrim looked back over his shoulder. But that way lay the past, with its bitter memories of pain and death. Rome was waiting. Whatever it contained could not be worse than what they had already experienced.
“We never turn back,” he whispered, lifting Vesi gently to her feet. As his head was bent, she slipped the garland of flowers around his neck. For an instant he thought he saw a ghost of a smile on her lips.
I
n the beginning Pepan's
hia
had been content merely to follow them. As long as there was no actual danger to the woman or her son he remained a passive observer. But when the Teumetian chieftain openly lusted after Vesi, Pepan had responded.
With an effort of will, he had concentrated all his thought on a summoning. A sound like a trumpet rang through the Otherworld. From the mist shapes had appeared, dim shapes that had no faces, but faces were not needed. Form was important, and these had the form of an army.
As Horatrim spoke with the Teumetian an invisible army of ghosts had materialized at Vesi's back. Gray, wraithlike shapes had raised their arms in silent menace and a cold wind had blown out of nowhere, lifting the hair on their heads so it writhed like snakes.
The startled chieftain forgot all about Vesi's round hips.
When Horatrim led his mother safely away, a peal of
laughter had reverberated through the Otherworld.
I am still involved with life!
Pepan had crowed with delight.
The nearer Horatrim drew to the borders of Latium, the more closely his invisible watcher followed. He wondered if Horatrim was thinking of revenge. If he were still a living man, Pepan would have desired revenge himself.
Repana—his Repana—had lost her life to the Romans, and though her spirit continued to exist, the path of her destiny was forever altered. Wulv was part of her future now. Having died together, they were linked in a way Pepan and Repana were not. He knew that once they got used to the changed condition of being dead, they would have gone off together to the next stage of being. Wistfully, Pepan wondered if he would ever have that luxury. But he had chosen his own path. Now he must follow it wherever it might lead.
We never turn back
.
That had been his credo in life—the credo of the Rasne—and he had carried it with him into death. Now Horatrim had taken the oath as his own.
Life,
Pepan mused,
is strange, and afterlife is stranger still. Death is the true meaning of life.
In addition to Pepan, other beings were following Horatrim. After the death of one of their number, the surviving minions of Pythia had retired from the pursuit of the
siu's
child—for a time—to recover themselves. One of their own had been slain. The loss was almost incomprehensible.
Returning to the long oval hall with the moon pool, they performed the summoning ritual and awaited their goddess. When the surface of the water stirred they prudently turned their backs.
From the depths of the milky pool an obsidian image rose. Droplets of opalescent water clung to the ruby nipples of her multiple breasts like obscene milk. Her
mouth was an angry slash from which a voice hissed in anger.
“So you have not succeeded?”
“We were thwarted, O Great Pythia, by—”
The dark goddess interrupted, “Out of cowardice you abandoned your mission, that is all there is to say. You were to find the
siu
and kill its spawn and you have not done so.”
“We did find the
siu,
O Noble Queen,” began the leader of the five. “But he …”
The statue's voice had dropped to a liquid purr more frightening than its former sibilance. “Perhaps you should die instead,” murmured Pythia. “I could take my pleasure from your torment.”
“That will not be necessary, Divine Goddess! We will resume our quest at once!” Flinging themselves to their knees, they had groveled in the dirt, being careful to keep their backs turned at all times toward the fearsome figure in the pool. To gaze upon her was to court destruction.
“I am merciful—foolish with my mercy perhaps—it has always been my greatest failing. I will allow you to return to your quest because I know you will not fail me again.” The goddess paused. “Now that you know how vulnerable you are, you will be more careful. Remember, everything that walks the Earthworld can be slain in the Earthworld. Including you.”
As the goddess began to sink back into the pool, she added, “Usually creatures in the Earthworld die only once. But fail me again, and I will take pleasure in killing you a thousand times. I can promise you an eternity of the most exquisite agony.”
With these chilling words ringing in their ears, the five set out again upon their quest. The trail had grown cold, however, and they dared not call upon the goddess for help.
There followed a frustrating time of trial and error, questions asked and bribes paid. The seasons raced by.
The five were painfully aware of the goddess watching. But the quarry they sought seemed to have disappeared from the earth.
Then at last, on the far edge of the Great Forest, they picked up the trail again. In that remote region they learned of Wulv's compound and succeeding in tracing the fugitive Vesi to the islet in the marsh. But they arrived too late. The ashes had been cold for a long time.
They fell upon the nearest Teumetian village instead and destroyed it in a blind rage, torturing the inhabitants for the slightest scrap of information. In an effort to save his own life, the last survivor told the five of a muscular youth and a mute, mindless woman who had fled the territory after the Romax raid. The woman was reputedly Rasne, he said, and they were last seen heading south.
In payment for this information the Teumetian was ritually slaughtered as a sacrifice to the dark goddess. The five then feasted upon his liver.
“We have them!” the leader of the five exulted. “That is surely the youngster we seek, for he has grown more quickly than any human offspring could. When we find him we can be certain his sire will not be far behind. Demons follow their own.”
Eyes glinting with a fanatic light, the five then made their way south. Toward Latium and Rome.
Horatrim and Vesi were still within sight of the Roman garrison on the hilltop when she gave a hollow groan. At once he put his arm around her. “What is it, Mother?”
Danger,
said one of the voices he believed to be gods.
You are being pursued
.
“Pursued by who?”
Five
.
“I can fight five,” he confidently declared.
These are not ordinary warriors. You could not hope to stop them all.
“Then what am I to do?” It did not occur to Horatrim that it was foolish to ask advice from a madwoman. By now he understood he was not talking to Vesi, but to something else.
Five cannot stand against two score
, came the cryptic reply.
“What are you saying?”
Leave me here and double back. Go up the side of yonder hill, but do not follow one of the obvious approaches. Drag your feet, scuffle dirt. Then halfway up, stop leaving a trail and return to me.
Obediently, Horatrim worked his way up the southeast face of the hill toward a blank garrison wall, dislodging stones and crushing small clumps of cedar with deliberate clumsiness. Before he reached the top he veered off sharply and made his way down again as light footed as a deer, using the techniques Wulv had taught him. He ran silently to the willows where he had secreted Vesi. Finding her mute and unresponsive once more, he took her hand and led her away.
It was almost twilight before the five cloaked figures came within sight of the Roman garrison. They searched the surrounding area until the one with sharpest eyes discovered Horatrim's trail going up the hill to the fort. “This way, we have him now.”
Paulus and Sextus were still on guard at the gates, though the day was almost over. The enervating heat lingered however. The ground seethed; the horizon shimmered. Sticky inside their clothes and with pounding headaches, both men were in bad humor. Twice more Antoninus had emerged from the fort to bawl orders at them, finding fault with everything they did, from the way they stood to the angle of their spears.
Once the sun extinguished itself in a sea of flame beyond the western hills, the guard would change. Already the two men were anticipating their daily ration of beer and meat. “I could drink goat piss, I'm that thirsty,” Paulus remarked.
“The beer they give us is goat piss, do you think frontier guards rate barley brew? I tell you, it wouldn't take much to induce me to throw down my weapons and go back to … Ho! What's that?”
“I don't see anything, Sextus.”
“Some fool's trying to sneak up on us. Off there to the side, down below that outcropping. Look where I'm pointing, will you?”
Taking a step forward, Paulus peered down to discover several cloaked figures crawling up the hillside on hands and knees and bellies. Delighted with something to do, something to relieve the boredom, he promptly whipped his sword from its scabbard, hammered it against his shield, shouting, “Attack! Attack!”
Gate guards were chosen for their carrying voices. A moment later his cry was taken up inside, followed by a clashing of weapons and a thunder of feet as the entire garrison came pouring through the gates. There were only forty of them, but they were tough, aggressive veterans bored with inactivity. The intention to kill was stamped on every sunburned face. They could successfully have fought a number half again as large as their own.
At the first sight of them, the five cloaked figures halfway up the hill realized they stood no chance. With a wail of “Pythia protect us!” their leader jumped up and turned to run. His companions followed. But their talents did not include fleetness of foot. The first Roman caught up with the last of them and delivered a savage swordblow through the cloak to the flesh beneath. A scream rang across the hillside.
The angle had been calculated to chop off his leg at the knee, yet the wounded figure continued to run although
something flopped on the ground behind him. When the Roman paused in midstride to pick up the severed limb, he gave a gasp of revulsion and flung it from him.
What he had amputated was no leg, but a muscular, scaly tail as long as his arm.
By that time Horatrim was a considerable distance away, but the sound of the scream was borne to him on a rising wind. He stopped and turned to his mother. “Did you hear that?”
She did not answer. She stood beside him with head bowed and hands hanging.
“There's fighting back there,” he told her as he listened intently. “Whoever was chasing us must have met the Romans instead. Like running into a nest of hornets, I would say from the sound of it.” He smiled, thinly. “That was a clever plan, Mother.”
He knew the plan was not Vesi's, but how else was he to address her? And where, he found himself wondering, did she go when someone else was speaking through her?
Suddenly the little boy inside him wanted to weep. Vesi might still walk and breathe, but his mother was irrevocably lost to him.
Stumbling and slithering, the mutilated creature fled down the hill with his four companions. Behind him he left a trail of thick, brownish ichor smeared across the sunbaked earth.
The Romans pursued halfheartedly. The horror of the severed tail demoralized even such hard-bitten warriors; no one really wanted to catch up with the cloaked figures. They shouted threats and beat their swords against their shields, but when the order came to turn back they responded with enthusiasm. They had been raised on stories of the creatures of myth that inhabited the dark northern forests.
“What in the name of Great Mars was that thing, do you suppose?” Paulus asked Sextus as they trudged back up the hill.
Wiping his sword blade again and again on every stunted cedar they passed, Sextus replied, “I don't know and I don't want to know. I never saw anything so awful in my life.” Lifting his sword, he examined the blade ruefully. The metal was pitted as if it had been dipped in acid.
Antoninus, who was hardly less shaken than his men, said in an unsteady voice, “It was a demon. They were all demons, that's why I gave the order to turn back. You can't kill demons.”
Paulus gazed down at an ugly smear on the ground before him, the viscous, stinking ooze from the wounded creature. “Perhaps they were demons and perhaps not. Look there, Sextus.”
His friend kept his eyes fixed on the garrison ahead of them. “I don't want to.”
“You certainly did the thing great damage; you should be proud.”
“I'm scared, that's what I am. What if it comes after me seeking revenge?”
Paulus's own courage was seeping back. He managed a lopsided grin as he punched his friend on the arm. “At least you can't say you've been bored today.”
Sextus glared at him. “I don't think that's funny.”
Emboldened, Paulus teased, “Where did you throw that tail? We should keep it as a trophy.”
“Leave it alone, will you!”
“A demon's tail? I think not. I want it if you don't. We can hang it on the wall of the barracks along with the captured trophies.” Paulus made a great show of searching among the rocks and bushes while some of the other Romans sniggered at Sextus's discomfort. But just as Paulus found what he sought half-concealed in a clump of cedar, Antoninus barked, “Get on, you lot, I want us all back inside the walls before the dark catches us.
Those things might come back … with reinforcements,” he added for emphasis.

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