Night of the Wolf (10 page)

Injury was indeed a real possibility. The swords, though wood, could have doubled very well as clubs. A blow struck by an arm as powerful as Fulvia’s could inflict a painful bruise or even break a bone. Dryas sensed she must end this quickly.

Fulvia tossed her sword into the air above her head. It arched, spinning, then began to fall. She clapped her hands together. “Which one, little warrior?” she shouted. “Left or right?”

Dryas steadied the wooden shaft in her hand, thinking,
Yes, it’s about the size and weight of the light slashing sword I wear.

Fulvia caught the sword in her left and, in almost the same moment, swung the edge hard at Dryas’ left arm.

A beautiful maneuver and one that would have destroyed lesser opponents, Dryas thought. But even as she was being appreciative, Dryas was countering. She dropped to one knee. The sword passed harmlessly through the air above her head. At the same moment, she jabbed upward. Hard, but not too hard. Even if Fulvia was not concerned with the injuries she inflicted, Dryas was.

The sword point caught Fulvia in the abdomen just to one side of the floating ribs. The breath left her body in a loud huff. She’d overcommitted to her swing and her turning body drove Dryas’ sword even more deeply into her abdomen than Dryas had intended. Fulvia went down, the wind knocked out of her, completely incapacitated.

Mir’s face remained expressionless, but his lips twitched.

Firminius burst into shrieks of laughter. He stretched out his arm, fist closed, thumb down, and shouted, “She has had it. Cut her throat, little Amazon.”

Dryas wondered what he was talking about; she didn’t recognize the way a Roman mob dealt with a defeated gladiator. She lowered the wooden blade and backed away, eyeing Fulvia as she did so. She was too well trained to approach a fallen foe, however lightly the combat had been entered into, before ascertaining his or her emotional as well as physical condition.

For a few seconds all Fulvia was able to convey was distress. Then embarrassment, chagrin, anger but not rage, and, finally, a kind of admiration chased one another across her face.

Dryas wondered if she hadn’t made a mistake in overcoming the Roman woman. If she’d allowed herself to be bested, Fulvia would have brushed her aside as a creature of no consequence, but now . . .

Fulvia staggered to her feet. She directed a truly poisonous look at a still-chortling Firminius. “That was,” she said when she finally got her breathing under control, “beautifully done.”

“Thank you.” Dryas inclined her head respectfully, then tossed the wooden sword back on the table.

“You are very, very good,” she continued.

Again, Dryas inclined her head. “But then I’ve spent my life practicing. I began my training at six years of age.”

“Amazing, so young!” Firminius contributed. “I think you were wrong about the ludus, my dear. In fact, I should like to see her matched against your lanista.” He licked his lips with evident prurient enjoyment.

Dryas stood, quietly ready to make her escape. She had no idea that a ludus was, in fact, a school where slaves were trained to be gladiators, or that a lanista was the head of such a school and an instructor in swordsmanship. All she understood was the dark warning in Mir’s eyes.

“Have you something to write on?” Dryas asked. Mir rose and returned with a clean wax tablet and a stylus. She wrote her list on the tablet and handed it back to Mir. Then she turned and went to collect her horse, stabled in a bower under the trees.

“Wait,” Fulvia called. “Don’t go. Sit down, enjoy this fair mountain morning with us.”

“I’m sorry, my lady, but I must leave. I have pressing business.”

Dryas left Mir’s farm at a trot, down the rutted road.

Fulvia rubbed her side, gritted her teeth, and, under her breath, consigned Dryas to the Furies.

“Dryas is dangerous,” Mir said.

Fulvia nodded, and Mir saw her eyes were bright with lust.

In the cave, the wolf stirred. Outside, the sun was at its zenith. He’d slept away the morning. High above, clouds were massing over the pass. The wolf lifted his head. He felt slight confusion as he smelled rain on the wind the way he had when he’d first taken her near the avalanche track. He lifted his head, scenting her, sure she was just outside the cave and then realized the scent came from the rags of an old mantle she’d discarded long ago near the entrance. The wind stirred it, bringing about the change in the air.

Wolflike, he turned quickly ’round and ’round, remade his bed, and returned to sleep.

He’d searched for her that night, following the track of those who’d taken her away: across the mountain and down into territory strange to him. He’d stopped only to feed on an unwary brace of ducks he surprised sleeping at the edge of a valley lake. He took the first so quickly it never awakened; the second only just managed to get its eyes open and began to extend its wings when he broke its neck.

The rest of the flock rose in a whir of flashing wings and loud alarm calls. It was one of those situations when a wolf’s ability to eat quickly was a saving factor. He’d killed in another pack’s territory. He knew the behavior of the surviving ducks would alert the pack to his presence. But he’d gulped his meal and was on his way so quickly that all they found were paw prints when they arrived to investigate the ducks’ late-night alarm. He’d crossed the valley by moonset and had reached a thick, dark wood when the cries of his own pack called him home.

A crack of thunder woke the wolf. He raised his head. A gust of wind blew into the cave, creating a miniature whirlwind on the dusty floor. The wind was cold, and the wolf realized that the deceptively beautiful autumn weather was coming to an end.

He was tempted to warm himself by snuggling into the tatters of Imona’s mantle, but a dark, inchoate sorrow deep in his heart forbade it. So he withdrew toward the back of the cave, found a sheltered niche and curled up again, his bushy tail over his muzzle, and slept.

He’d known then, when he returned to the pack, that he might never find her. For the first time in his life, he’d felt war in his own soul as he struggled with ideas, concepts a wolf’s brain was never designed to understand.

He’d already broken one ancient taboo by calling the pack to feast on human remains. Not that there weren’t wolves who did it. They, and birds of prey, had been familiar scavengers on battlefields since the beginning of time, but not powerful, independent packs like his. They left such behavior to those garbage eaters who slunk and scavenged near human dwellings, those semidependent on human offal—the occasional unburied corpse or sick, unwary outcast who could be killed with impunity.

His kind usually encountered human aggression when confronted by young warriors seeking to prove their manhood in single combat with the strongest male wolf they could find. Sometimes the humans won and walked away from the battlefield wearing a wolf skin, upper jaw and face hooding their heads, forepaws dangling at their shoulders. Sometimes it was the wolves who walked away, maybe licking their wounds, maybe not.

He and his comrades learned about humans ages ago, when both hunted together across glacial plains: summer was a brief, halcyon season and winter a grim, ten-month ordeal. The fire people took their prey with wooden spears and butchered it with stone knives. They hunted in packs as the wolves did, and everything, even the giant bear, feared them.

Countless times, his gray people yielded up their kills to roving human bands when they attacked with stones and javelins. Humans were pitiless to all creatures, even each other.

A male not strong enough to hunt with the rest of the warriors was killed at his first testing. A woman not strong enough to bear a child, then rise and follow the band, was abandoned to the ubiquitous scavenging opportunists who haunted the bleak, freezing tundra. Yes, he and his kind learned to fear humans long ago, as had everything else.

The humans had changed only a little since then. They were smarter now and lazier, but just as darkly tainted with cruelty. He feared for Imona.

Pack law said he must not abandon his own. His inner voice told him Imona was as important to him as the pack, and deserved his regard just as much as they did.

He solved the problem by being faithful to both. It was autumn then, as now. The wild herds moved down in much the same way as the shepherds took the tame ones to the sheltered valleys for winter.

Countless animals were on the march. The wolf took only a brief nap when he returned to his fellows at dawn. By midmorning he was up, the rest following irritably along behind him.

At some time in the late afternoon, he saw his opportunity. The chamois were migrating. The small, antelopelike creatures of the highest and steepest slopes seldom fell to the wolves. They were fleet runners, traveling on ledges where only hawks could nest, where they left the surest-footed predators behind. But they, like their larger cousins, wild and tame, who felt the winter moving in, were searching for new feeding grounds in the high meadows.

The bachelor males were gathered away from the females and their young. There were about ten in this group, grazing on an intimidatingly steep slope covered with thick evergreen bushes that seemed to spring from the broken orange rock itself. Below them, rocky ledges covered with new snow projected out over the unstable surface left by one of last year’s avalanches. A death trap if the wolf ever saw one, but if he was to find Imona, he had to provide for the pack.

The chamois themselves were so sure of their own security that they ignored him as he walked several yards down the slope. A few lifted their heads, studied him, and then returned to their search for dried grass tufts and the occasional green shoot left on the winter-bare bushes.

When he leaped, even the wolves thought him mad. They were astounded by his loss of good sense, since madness is not usually a condition that affects wolves.

The chamois bolted, the most agile to shelter on the steepest part of the mountain face, but inevitably about a dozen landed on the snow pack overlooking the valley.

Enough,
the wolf thought.

The lower slope was not as steep as the upper, but it was still deeply inclined toward the cliff overlooking the valley. Had it been later in the winter, the snow would have been frozen hard and supported the hooves of the small, light animals. Had it been earlier in the year, these mountain gazelles would have been able to find purchase on the scree that formed the floor of the ledge. But it was just the right time of year for disaster.

The snow had drifted atop a layer of frozen slush. It let go, sweeping loose rock, chamois, and wolf up in a spray of white, sending them tumbling into the air over the hundred-foot drop into the valley.

The most primal terror, even for animals, is falling, but it is also fast. Fear wiped out all semblance of thought in the wolf’s mind, and then he hit the ground.

V

Fulvia returned to her villa with Firminius for the light collation that constituted the Roman lunch. She ate standing in the shade of an open colonnade that marked the division between the luxurious owner’s quarters on one side and the working farm on the other.

The colonnade had folding doors that could be closed along its outer edge. They could shut off the private world of affluence and comfort from that of drudgery and discomfort, but at the moment they were open. Fulvia watched her men butcher the deer.

Firminius sat with his back to the dusty courtyard, looking into a magnificent peristyle garden, the central court of the master’s residence. “I can’t see how you stand such sights while you’re eating. Close the doors, I implore you.”

Fulvia stripped a bunch of deep purple table grapes. Her lips were stained by the rich juices. “It doesn’t bother me.”

“It may not bother you, but it quite deprives me of my appetite,” Firminius moaned.

“A fine catch, sister mine, but why we’re watching this completely escapes me.” The speaker was a slender young man, seated apart from the other two in a heavily cushioned wooden chair equipped with carrying poles. He was pale and leaned crookedly against the heavy pillows around him. His face and body were in deep shade, but the early afternoon sunlight just touched one sandaled foot.

“I’m making sure they don’t spoil the meat,” Fulvia said. “And they won’t if they know what’s good for them. The buck was in wonderful condition—fat with autumn fruits. I’m sure he gorged on sloes, crab apples, and blackberries. He died with a minimum of fuss; no long chases for me when I want good eating. I took him with one throw of the javelin as he was feeding on a thick waterweed. I want to be sure he’s properly skinned and disjointed, and the meat is hung in a place well away from heat and damp. And, as long as my eye is on them, I know they’ll do a good job.”

“Naturally.” Firminius poured himself some chilled white wine from a glass pitcher. “It’s probably as much as their lives are worth if they don’t.”

“I don’t know about their lives, but their hides . . . certainly,” the young man in the chair sighed.

The men in the courtyard finished their bloody job. The stag had been a large one and they departed with the joints of meat over their shoulders toward the nearest of the thatched structures surrounding the cobbled court.

Firminius signaled a servant who came in and drew the big louvered doors shut. The room darkened. The servant went to Firminius and spoke to him in a low voice, then departed.

Fulvia sat down in a chair next to him and helped herself to some of the wine and a slice of bread and cheese. “I’m convinced,” she began, “that the cheese from cows pastured in these high alpine meadows is superior to meat. A meal of it is more satisfying than roast pork or—”

Two men entered the room. One was the dark-clad servant who’d shut the doors. He led a smaller man by the arm and by a short chain attached to an iron collar around his neck. He stopped in front of Firminius and said without preamble or explanation, “Here he is.”

“He doesn’t look like much.” Firminius squinted at both men. He and the rest were in deep shadow, and the two were backlit by the bright light in the peristyle beyond.

Fulvia stood and opened two sets of the small wooden slats in the doors. A pale light filled the room. “He still doesn’t look like much.”

He didn’t. He was short, not more than five feet, maybe a little less. He had dark curly hair, closely cropped; large brown eyes; an olive complexion, one that appeared as if he’d been out in the sun a lot; and a small, compact body not muscular enough to be that of an athlete or fit for manual labor of any kind. The expression on his face didn’t help matters much either. He looked distressed, very frightened, and a little lost.

“What am I looking at?” Fulvia asked Firminius. The man in the large wooden chair looked as if he’d settled down to try to catch a nap. His head was sunk on his breast, his eyes closed.

“Your brother’s new physician!”

“What! That?” She gestured violently at the small man with one very large arm. She was almost as tall as he was . . . sitting down.

The eyes of the man in the wooden chair flew open.

The object of their scrutiny looked, if possible, even more frightened.

“You told me—” Firminius jabbed his finger at the arm of his chair with every word as though to emphasize his irritation. “—to send an order to my agent at Cos to buy the best Greek physician. Spare no expense, mind you, the best that can possibly be had—everyone knows Greeks are the best physicians—and send him to you, because you were very dissatisfied with Hippos. He wasn’t curing your brother, and besides, his fees were exorbitant. And he was not attentive enough and ‘complain, complain, complain’ until the roof rafters rang. And now I’ve spent the mother of the gods knows how much money. He cost the earth, I’ll have you know!

“He’s said to have a wonderful reputation in the town where he apprenticed and practiced. And now you can’t even remember all the hell you gave me! I could weep. I will weep. It’s not enough that you drag me away to this repulsive barbarian place, filled with repulsive barbarians, where my delicate sensibilities are daily affronted by their wretched grossness, but you can’t even have the good sense to remember the orders you gave me in the first place.”

Fulvia threw up her hands. “All right, all right. Before all the gods, I do swear. I do apologize. I’m sorry. Now, please calm down.”

“The real reason you were displeased with Hippos is that he gave you very little hope that I would survive,” the man in the chair snapped.

Firminius blubbered. He pulled a lace-trimmed handkerchief from the sleeve of the tunic and began wiping his eyes.

Fulvia jumped to her feet, her color heightened, a murderous look in her eyes. She rounded on the man in the chair. “Shut up, Lucius. Hippos is a self-important, greedy moron. I wouldn’t want him caring for a dog I liked. At best, he’s incompetent. At worst, a practitioner of black magic and a procurer of abortions—”

“My, yes,” Lucius added, “and to the first families of Rome. I was wondering when you’d notice.”

“Very well. You’re agreed on the need for another doctor?” Fulvia asked. “The way you cling to your ridiculous popinjay made me afraid to search out a medicus of greater ability.”

“He clung to him,” Firminius snarled angrily, “because he could bribe the bastard to do anything he wanted.”

“Is that true?” Fulvia’s voice could have sawed through a marble column.

“More or less,” Lucius admitted, a bit shamefaced.

“Well,” she hissed, pointing to the man still standing in the servant’s grip, “you have a new physician now and you are his only responsibility. You hear that?” She glared at the slave. “You, skinny whatever-your-name-is. You better be as good as advertised because the day my brother dies, I’ll have you crucified.”

He blanched.

Lucius pulled himself upright in the chair “You’ll do no such thing,” he roared.

Fulvia drew back, staggered for a second by the tone of Lucius’ voice. It rang with the authority of the old-fashioned paterfamilias, the head of the household with the power of life and death over women, children, and slaves.

“Fulvia, I haven’t crossed you because I haven’t had the will or the energy, but I won’t sit here while you terrorize someone who might one day have my life in his hands. Do you hear me?”

Fulvia’s eyes blazed into his. “Then you’re willing to accept another physician.”

“Yes, if you’ll only calm down and behave like a rational woman, I will. I will do as you wish.”

Fulvia sniffed, then turned cold eyes on the slave. He quailed visibly. “Very well. Remove that collar from around his neck and, brother mine, I’ll leave you here with him to establish an understanding between you. Now, Firminius, as I was saying, I believe these cheeses to be superior in both flavor and keeping qualities. I hope they are because I’ve bought ten wagonloads of them.”

“Ten wagonloads!” Firminius shrieked. “Woman, are you mad? Taken leave of your senses? Possessed by some wandering evil spirit? Have you a buyer in Rome?”

“Certainly, I have a buyer.” Fulvia picked up a handful of spiced black olives and strolled toward the door. “I even have the money on deposit with a banker in the Forum. Now, how do we ship? By land or sea?”

“By sea, by sea. A long land journey would absorb most of the profit from the transaction. It’s rather late in the season, but . . .”

Their voices trailed off as they entered the peristyle and began a walk along the ornate pool in the center.

The chain came from the man’s neck with a clatter.

“Sit down,” Lucius said, pointing to the chair Firminius had just quitted.

The servant hustled the small man to the chair and seated him so forcibly that he gave a little squeak of distress.

Lucius sighed and waved his arm at the servant. “Leave us.”

The man hesitated.

Lucius said, “Go!” and the servant left. Then he turned his attention to his new physician.

He sat, watching Lucius alertly. His hands were on the table. They were shaking.

“Please,” Lucius said, “pour yourself a cup of wine. The silver pitcher contains a tolerable Falernian, the glass one a pleasant white from somewhere nearby. Either one will do for a bracer. Your hands are shaking.”

“No, my lord—” The small man spoke for the first time. “—my hands aren’t shaking. My whole body is shaking.”

Lucius grinned suddenly, looking much less forbidding. “My sister has that effect on people, but don’t worry. I’m used to frustrating her little plans when I want to. I’ll see she never gets to carry out that threat she made. Now tell me. Do you have a name you’d care to communicate to me?”

“Philo, my lord.” He poured himself a cup of wine.

“Very well, Philo. In the short conversation we had about your origins, before all the shouting started, I believe Firminius indicated you were freeborn.”

Philo nodded, his nose in the cup.

“Then what brought you to the biggest slave market in the world? I’ve found that one of three things is usually responsible—debt, capture in war, or politics.”

Philo thought this over. “Politics,” he replied. “Not mine, though. My father’s.”

“Ahhh,” Lucius said.

“Just so, my lord. My family was of only middling wealth and rank in my home city. At sixteen, I was apprenticed to a physician. And my sister went out at fourteen to a tapestry weaver. Unfortunately—I say unfortunately because that’s the way it turned out—we were both wildly successful. At twenty, my sister owned her own shop, and I was one of the most popular physicians in the city. As it was, the wealth gave my father leisure to dabble in politics.”

“He picked the wrong side?” Lucius asked.

“Oh my, yes, my lord. Like any fall, my family’s was quick and dizzying. The next thing I knew, I was standing in the slave market at Cos and Firminius’ agent was looking at my teeth. Though what they had to do with anything quite escapes me.”

“Well, of all the reasons that will bring a man down, I believe I like politics the best. It means you haven’t an excessive devotion to the more annoying vices: women, the dice box, or the wine cup. However, you might be given to intrigue.”

Philo shook his head. “No, I have no expertise in it at all. Had I any inkling of what was going on, I’d have kept my father on a shorter leash and I wouldn’t be in the extremely uncomfortable situation I’m in now.”

“Fine! Then be warned—stay away from my sister, Fulvia. She’s one of the few people I’ve known whose bite is far more dangerous than her bark. And when she runs out of cruel, underhanded, and devious ideas, that nasty little poison mushroom Firminius will soon supply her with fresh material to continue her career of crime.”

Philo looked taken aback. “She is your sister and I attributed her threatening behavior to anger at the physician’s consigning you so casually to the Shades at so young an age. After all, she loves you.”

Lucius chuckled. “I don’t know if she loves me or just wants an heir, a male one, to the family fortune. Roman law favors men. At present, she has so—intimidated, dominated, bribed, frightened, terrorized: take your pick—all of our father’s brothers that they jump to attention when she snaps her fingers. But who knows what will happen when they die off and are replaced by some less malleable individuals. A nice posthumous boy-child many years from maturity would suit her perfectly. He could easily be controlled by his pedagogues and tutors until she has to decide when he comes of age . . . or not.”

“Sounds ominous, my lord.” Philo’s reply was carefully couched.

“She keeps sending women to my room. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I can’t do anything about them.”

“Hmmm.” Philo searched the table, found a lump of cheese and some bread. He pared them and began to gnaw. “But, my lord, you know there is one’s duty to one’s family and ancestors.”

“Don’t start,” Lucius snarled. “I get a lecture every week about our family’s death masks.”

Philo gulped some wine to wash down the bread and cheese. “Would this avoidance of the female sex be a matter of inclination, my lord?” he asked delicately.

“No. I have plenty of inclination, but also a lot of pain and fatigue. And you don’t have to ‘my lord’ me every sentence. If you skip one, I’ll understand.”

Philo began to search around on the table. He found several clear wax tablets and a stylus. “Do you suppose I might use these?”

“If there’s nothing written on them, help yourself.”

“There isn’t.” Philo picked up the stylus and set a tablet in front of him. “Now, what seems to be the trouble?”

Lucius sighed deeply. “Little Greek, I think you might be a very good physician. About a year ago, I was an officer in the Fourth Augusta stationed near here. One fine day I led a foraging party . . .”

The wolf awoke lying among the rocks at the foot of a cliff. He knew he was badly hurt, perhaps dying.

The world grew dark around him. The fir and spruce pines clustered around. Man or wolf, he knew this had to be wrong. The trees that hemmed him in and frowned down on him so darkly didn’t grow at this altitude.