Night of the Wolf (31 page)

Cut Ear picked up Firminius by the back of his nightgown and plunked him down on the bed. Then he patted Firminius’ cheek and asked Lucius, “You want I come right now?”

“I could give you a few minutes. How long do you think it would—”

Firminius dove over the high back of the bed with a shrill scream and hid.

“You don’t think it’s unmanly?” Lucius asked.

“No!” Cut Ear said. “Same like woman, but hole tighter. Good! Fun!”

Firminius screamed again, this time at the top of his lungs.

“Apparently not as far as he’s concerned,” Lucius said.

Cut Ear laughed.

Someone was pounding on the door and shouting. Firminius’ screams had roused the household.

“Too bad,” Lucius said. “I think we’d best leave now, not that they’ll do anything. This is my house. As the eldest male of the Basilian family, I rule here. Hear that, Firminius?”

The pounding on the door stopped. “Master Lucius?” a tentative voice outside asked.

“Yes,” Lucius said. “Don’t bother me right now. I’m talking to Firminius!”

There was a moan from behind the bed.

Cut Ear pulled the clothes chest out of the way. Fulvia’s other secretary stood in the doorway. He was a freedman of Lucius’ father, his steward or dispensator. He fixed Lucius with a disapproving eye. “My lord, I could hardly believe you capable of disturbing the peace of this household at such an hour.”

“I apologize for awakening you, Aristo.” The heavenly twin on the floor was still slumbering. Lucius pointed to him. “I don’t want to see this pair again.”

“Yes,” Aristo replied. “Do you want them sold?”

“No,” Lucius said. “It appears they’re more devoted to my sister than they are to me. Enroll them among her servants. Prepare a chamber for Philo near mine.”

Aristo’s face remained impassive. “Your sister said he wouldn’t be back.”

“She was wrong. This—” He indicated Cut Ear. “—is Cut Ear and he will need a room prepared for him also, because he will be part of the household from now on.”

Lucius left with Cut Ear following. They led the horses into the street.

“Alone?” Cut Ear asked.

“Yes,” Lucius said, then they rode out into the night

The wolf had thought living among humans would be difficult and perhaps painful. In Cynewolf’s stronghold, it wasn’t It was merely occasionally unpleasant and often puzzling.

Blaze’s insistence that he bathe in the icy river every morning was both. Wolves didn’t bathe. Why should they? The wolf pelt was water repellent, the dense undercoat self-renewing and clean. The outer hairs were shed in the summer and grew back in the fall. The wolf’s tongue was adapted for grooming.

This idiotic compulsion to wash their skins in water might be understandable, but in cold water, in winter? As far as he was concerned, he’d just as soon not be included in this particular mad ritual, and Blaze’s choleric insistence that he do so was equally puzzling.

When persuasion wouldn’t move Maeniel, Blaze resorted to threats. They were equally ineffective. Blaze tried a whip. After two blows, Maeniel took it away from him, letting him know, in no uncertain terms, that the sensations it caused were unpleasant.

Blaze sat on his unmade bed, sucking a thumb Maeniel had inadvertently bent back too far during the struggle, and cursing him in not one, but three languages.

Dryas and Mir arrived, drawn by the uproar.

Mir took Blaze’s side, but Dryas entered into negotiations, explaining why a daily bath in the freezing river water was good for him. He did have to break the ice to get to the water.

He said, “I don’t believe a word of it.” He then found out, when Mir and Blaze attacked him verbally, that humans are sensitive about accusations that they are fudging the truth, even though he knew from direct observation that they were guilty of this particular activity much—if not most—of the time.

But Dryas settled the matter by marching down to the river, finding a secluded spot, removing her clothes, and jumping in. She washed briefly, then donned her clothing with great speed.

He went ahead and followed suit, coming to the personal and private conclusion that they were fond of doing unpleasant things to themselves, for the purpose of proving unguessable things to themselves about themselves.

He imparted this to Dryas as they walked up the slope together back to the oppidum. Having seen her naked at the river bank, be again tried to persuade her to run away with him.

Dryas refused. He’d been certain she would, but thought it worth a try anyway. Sadly, she was now as a woman carved of snow to him.

Together they sat down on the log outside the gate. “Please try to humor Blaze more,” she told him. “There are many things he knows and can teach you. I can’t take you to Rome with me now. Neither of us knows enough. You must learn to ride, dress, to understand money—”

“You still want to go to Rome and kill this Caesar? What did he do to you?”

“He killed my son,” Dryas said.

“How?” Maeniel asked. “You want me to help you and this journey may cost me my life. Give me your reasons.”

“It’s morning,” Dryas said.

And it was a cold one. The river wasn’t locked in ice, but the trees along its banks were bare and hoarfrost covered the remnants of vegetation remaining after the last cold spell. Beyond the mountains, the sun was just clearing the peaks. Though a striated gray cloud mass dominated the sky, there was just enough sky rim around the clouds for the sun to shed its vast golden light over the desolate winter landscape.

“It seems an obscenity that the sun rises on a world where my son no longer lives,” Dryas said. “For this long time, I have felt the cruelty of his loss.”

“Wolves do not grieve so,” Maeniel said. “You pay a high price for your powers. How long has it been?”

“As humans reckon time, ten years,” she answered.

“Longer than most wolves live. If pain is similarly lengthened, what of joy?”

“I cannot say,” Dryas said. “I cannot remember any. I suppose there was some long ago while he lived, but I can’t summon its image to mind. Odd, at first he was my duty. I only learned to love him when I put him to the breast. And, as he grew, he became a delight to me. But, as he was my son, he was doomed to be a candidate for kingship among my people.

“His hair was red and, when he smiled, my heart melted.” Something almost like a smile appeared on Dryas’ features, but then swiftly departed. “My heart misgave me to lay such a heavy burden on one so young, but from the first, he must be taught to rule. And before his hand touched my breast, before his lips gave suck, he must touch steel. I know I rose from the birthing stool among my women and, with blood streaming down my legs, I walked with the wailing babe in my arms to the walls where the weapons hung. I placed his hand on a sword hilt and pressed his lips to the cold blade. So he was consecrated to his people while yet wet with the fluids of my womb.

“He was happy, though, as he grew. Mischievous as red-haired children are and with beautiful, sparkling green eyes and a winning smile. I had to be stern. I tried to be. Perhaps too often . . . There were some harsh words, a time or two when he went supperless to bed . . . Oh . . . oh, but I loved him. My women spoiled him. From them, anything he asked for, he got. And I fancied, I fancy still, that it would have been so with women when he was a man. Not a good trait in a king, but that . . . turned out not to matter . . . I tried not to be too susceptible to his charm. He must, I told myself, learn discipline. So he quickly found he couldn’t get round his mother . . . at least most of the time.

“But he had no difficulties with his studies. In many ways, he was naturally good. But all children must be taught to share, not to pick on the weak, and never to tamper with the property of others. He learned this well and, as he grew, I was proud but pained to know how popular he was among his age mates.

“Proud because he was shaping himself to be a leader among the men, but pained because each step a child takes away from his mother drags at the love she has rooted in her heart. But they must go. That is the way of it.

“So, when a sister of mine who lived among the Briganties asked that he be allowed to come and stay for a year, I agreed. I rode out with him, and a long journey it was. She and her chieftain husband entertained us royally, though. I saw many things that were only rumors in our mountains.

“I drank wine for the first time, saw war chariots and iron horse trappings, listened to bards sing long, incredibly complicated tales of wealthy kings and queens, their courage, ferocity in war, wealth, vanity, and cruelty.

“You see, my people live among the clouds, amidst the rain. It’s always cool there. We pasture our flocks on the long green grass. We have four assemblies a year. At those assemblies, the queens, kings, and law speakers settle all quarrels, arrange marriages, buy, sell, and trade. At the assemblies anyone may speak. Man, woman, poor, rich, wise, foolish, free, and unfree. And if they have a dispute with anyone, we are bound to adjudicate it and to enforce our judgment.

“We sing beautiful songs, but they are old. About how our ships once plied the cold northern waterways and sailed beyond the pillars of the sky skimming the warm blue sea the way the white-winged seabirds do. We sing the song of the stars, their changes; write the tale of summer with its flowers and fruit, and winter’s struggle to fish the cold gray ocean. The lights of heaven that, properly read, point the way to the farthest corners of the earth.

“Our weavings are also very beautiful, but like the songs, the patterns are old, some so old we have forgotten the meaning of them. But their bright colors burn against the brown walls and gray sky. And, in them, we can trace the borders of our land and, for six times a thousand years, trace the lineage of our kings and queens. All have a meaning—the comb, the fish, the bird, the wolf, and the dragon. Woven in cloth and picked out in more colors than the rainbow. Each tribe has one. Each family, each man or woman has their own, and it lives and dies with them and no other will ever bear it. They are hung in my hall, mine among them. I will never return. Never return to see my son’s tapestry with the events he lived woven into it.

“I shall not see the one representing my life, either. Another hand will complete it, cut the threads, and sew the border. I can only hope it will be the hand of a friend. I finished my son’s before I left, and closed the border. Let those who can read the ending in the cloth. I cannot bear to describe it.”

She was silent.

The wolf studied the river. The brief sun turned it into a glowing pathway sheathed in gold. The lacework of hoarfrost sparkled on the grass and trees like the jeweled coronet of a princess. Then the sunlight faded, as did the illusion of beauty, and the river lay gray as a polished sword taking its path between the icy glow of a metallic earth and sky.

“You left him with your friend,” Maeniel prompted.

“Yes. And then Caesar came. We were late receiving word of the trouble in the lowlands. We rode at once. Though my people fight among themselves at times, we had many friends, allies, and blood relatives among the tribes Caesar preyed on.

“As I said, we are well versed in war, but this wasn’t war. It was . . . extermination. Farms with the crops still standing in the fields were ashes, and the people who cultivated them corpses abandoned to the wolves and kites. The cows in the pastures, the sheep in the fields had their throats cut. The dogs and cats in the dooryards were clubbed down, trampled, and kicked to death. Where the wheat would burn, it was fired, and even in the orchards, the trees were girdled, wilting and dying in the autumn sun.

“Oh, yes, sometimes we caught up to these Romans. They had taken some things—gold and silver, for instance, and boys and girls not too young or too old to match the speed of their retreat. But everyone and everything else they murdered, spoiled, or destroyed.

“So I still had hope when we came to the place where my sister had lived. There were no children among the dead. Once sure, we vaulted into our saddles again, knowing they must have sent the children away, trying to hide them in the woods. And yes, so they had. We found them only a few miles away, within sight of the trees.”

She was silent again for a time. At length she asked, “Do you know that what we call love can be perverted into an insupportable vileness? A horror so ghastly that the mind turns from it and gazes with longing into the abyss of death, and finds a kind of hope in the contemplation of eternal nothingness. A kind of comfort in everlasting sleep without dreams or fear of ever waking.”

For a moment he didn’t understand, and then did, but his mind turned from the grisly puzzle. “Wolves don’t do such things. They don’t even think such thoughts. I cannot imagine it.”

“The children were guarded,” Dryas said. “The guardians fought back, but were no match for the legionnaires. Before they were ridden down, they even managed to kill some of the children. Those were the lucky ones. My son was not among them.”

“Did you and your friends manage to catch the soldiers who did this?”

“I am told we did,” Dryas said. “I was effective as a commander. I was tried in battle as a young woman, but the last thing that I remember is looking down into my son’s dead face. After that, my memories are as those of one who walks in darkness, under a sky veined by lightning, and sees the world around only for brief seconds when the clouds are lit from within by the storm’s wrath.

“We caught them in the flat. We were wary of those long spears they carry, the pilum. They can use them to disable our footmen very quickly. The long shaft sticks in the shield, then bends or breaks so that the warrior can’t use it any longer, and must throw the shield aside and fight without it. Fully a third of my force were women. Among us they are expert slingers and can bring down a bird on the wing. Indeed, many have to when the men are gone fishing for the big fish, deep swimmers of the bottomless ocean, or on long trade voyages where the winter sun doesn’t shine and the gods do battle with each other in the sky, drawing fabrics of colored lights against the backdrop of countless stars.