The Divining (9 page)

     She was dreading spending another night in this hostile terrain. Although the summer solstice lay just two weeks away and the days were warming up, the nights were cold. Ulrika had slept in hollows stuffed with leaves, against logs, and in the protection of boulders, wrapped in her
palla
and praying that tomorrow she would find her father. Her food was gone. Her dress was torn, her sandals falling apart. And now she trekked wearily through a forest that looked the same as the forest the day before, and the day before that.

     With each gnarled root that caused her to trip, each thorny bush that snagged her skirt, each owl that screeched and each shadow that menaced, Ulrika felt herself drawing closer to tears. She had thought that the land of her ancestors would feel like home. After years of not knowing where she belonged, of feeling like an outsider, even in the house she shared with her mother in Rome, Ulrika had been so certain that Germania would feel safe and familiar and comfortable. Instead, this wild, unpredictable forest frightened her.

     She was appalled at her naïveté. How could she have thought it would be so simple to find her father, when all the experienced spies and agents that made up Caesar's intelligence network could not?

     She paused to lean against a tree and catch her breath. The sun was directly overhead. How many hours of daylight were left before she had to find a safe place to spend the night? Should I turn back? Do I even know the way back?

     The map, purchased from a cartographer in Lugdunum who had hawked his wares from a booth in the marketplace, guaranteeing "the latest precise geographic details," had proven useless. Rivers and streams indicated on the map did not exist, while those Ulrika had drunk from were not drawn at all. As for the valley between two half-moon rivers—she could have already passed through it without knowing it.

     She wished belatedly that she had not snuck out of the caravan camp, that she had at least told Timonides where she was going. Instead, when she had packed her bags and was ready to travel, she had made sure no one saw her as she made her way down to the riverbank. Were Sebastianus Gallus and the Greek astrologer worried about her at this moment? Or did Gallus assume she had gone in search of her family? Was Sebastianus Gallus at that moment in Colonia, resting up for the return trip to Rome?

     
Is he even thinking about me?

     Ulrika was not surprised that the Galician should appear in her thoughts, in this place and at this time, because she had dreamed about him every night since leaving the camp.

     Reminding herself of her mission, and that time was growing dangerously short, she paused to listen to the forest and imagined the thousands of troops wheeling war machines into place, officers riding to and fro shouting commands, foot soldiers and cavalry being positioned into columns and lines. She knew that the battle would begin with the release of missile weapons—javelins, crossbows, and spears.

     She resumed her trek. A chilly wind blew through the forest. A sandal strap broke and suddenly Ulrika was barefoot. Pain shot through the sole of her right foot, causing her to cry out. Her travel packs grew heavy on her shoulders, and her legs became sluggish. She had never known such hunger. A voice from the past, Aunt Paulina's, whispered, "A young lady never cleans her plate. It is always ladylike to leave food."

     Aunt Paulina was like a second mother to Ulrika because her own mother, Selene, was so busy with her healing practice and her many patients. "A well brought up Roman girl," Paulina would say, "never exposes her hair in public. She never fidgets. She never speaks out of turn. She works quietly at her loom every afternoon. She is always nice and polite and looks forward to the day she will marry and have children."

     As Ulrika stumbled over the uneven forest floor, sharp twigs and rocks cutting into her foot, she thought: Is this my punishment for breaking the rules?

     The wind shifted, rustling overhead leaves and branches, but this time bringing into the forest the smell of smoke. Ulrika stopped and lifted her
face. Yes! There were campfires nearby! Perhaps a hearth with food in a pot, meat turning on a spit. But most of all—people ...

     As she stumbled through the trees, she heard voices. She came through the pines and into a vast, green meadow. Ulrika scanned for huts, signs of life, and saw a man lying in the tall grass. She approached him with caution. The man was sprawled in a strange position.

     She slowly reached down and touched him. He was stiff and cold.

     Ulrika snatched her hand back. She looked around the meadow.

     And then she saw—

     Another body.

     And then another ...

     Ulrika lifted her eyes to the edge of the meadow, where she saw the beginning of blackened earth—a shocking landscape of misshapen trees, many still giving off wisps of smoke. The earth had been set afire, a trademark of victorious Romans, whose policy was slash and burn after a battle.

     Numbness creeping through her body, she continued into the meadow, where she found more corpses, until soon she came into a valley that was strewn with hundreds of dead, perhaps thousands.

     She continued through the stench, the flies, the mutilations and bloated bodies, disembodied heads among decapitated corpses, a grotesque scattering of limbs and internal organs. She saw bulging eyes and tongues gaping up at her as if angry that she should see them in this condition. Ravens were pecking at faces, flying up, startled, with swollen tongues in their talons. Squawking and fighting over exposed testicles, ripping and devouring the tender flesh. Wolves chewing on bones.

     Nausea swept over her as she staggered among the dead. She sobbed to find men impaled on trees, their arms hacked off, blood that had run in rivers now congealed black. She heard groaning. Some were still alive!

     She followed the soft groans and came upon a German warrior lying in an unnatural position. His legs were twisted in an impossible way, as if his torso had snapped. The upper half of his body lay supine while his legs were almost prone. His eyes were open. Ulrika couldn't move. She stood over the dying warrior, frozen, not breathing, her eyes wide with shock and horror.

     His lips parted. Bearded chin moved. He whispered something. He wanted her to kill him, to end his misery.

     Unsheathing her dagger and clasping it tightly in both hands, Ulrika raised the weapon above her head and, with a strangled cry, drove the blade into his breast. His eyes remained open, but she saw the light fade and he stopped breathing.

     Sobbing, blinded by tears, Ulrika fell back and looked around the battlefield. At the
thousands
of dead. Was her father among them?

     She desperately searched for the hero named Wulf. But she saw only decomposing bodies nailed to trees. The remains of women who had been raped—women who had joined their husbands and sons in battle and suffered terrible fates.

     Ulrika stood frozen to the spot. She had misunderstood the boatman who had carried her across the Rhine. He had not warned of a battle about to be fought, but one that had already been fought. Vatinius had not just arrived in Colonia with his legions! He had already marched into battle—and won.

     I could have saved them! I came too late!

     She sobbed, tears rolling down her cheeks as she staggered among the butchered dead. "I am sorry," she whispered to the slain warriors. "I am so sorry. Please forgive me."

     The sun dipped behind the tall pines, casting the battlefield in gloomy shadow. Ulrika was suddenly engulfed in an eerie silence. She turned in a slow circle, her eyes sweeping over the corpses, and felt a strange chill invade her bones. It was death, she thought, coming to steal her soul.

     The silence was suddenly broken by a loud snap. Ulrika spun around. Her eyes widened as she saw movement in the forest. She could not move as shapes shifted among the pines. Cold sweat sprouted between her shoulder blades. The ghosts of the dead!

     Finally, white apparitions came voicelessly through the trees—tall figures with long, flowing hair. Ulrika felt her heart rise to her throat. Terror gripped her. When the figures emerged from the trees and into the clearing, Ulrika's eyes widened. Not ghosts—women. Stepping silently among the corpses, bending, retrieving, gesturing to the sky. What were they doing?

     Ulrika watched as two stunningly beautiful women paused in their queer posturing, looked at Ulrika, and then, straightening, walked toward her—tall women, long-limbed and robust in full skirts and colorful blouses,
thick blond tresses draped over generous bosoms. Ulrika knew who they were: "victory women," or "shield maidens." In the local dialect, they were Valkyries, handmaidens of Odin who singled out those heroes slain in battle to take them to sit in the great Val Hall and drink mead for eternity.

     As the two approached, stepping over severed limbs, bending to touch cold foreheads, murmuring, chanting softly, moving among the fallen dead to whisper—what?—their images shifted and changed until Ulrika realized they were not young and robust at all, but old women, their heads crowned with white braids, their aged bodies draped in belted tunics and long skirts, coarse shawls around bony shoulders. Despite advanced years, however, they walked with erect spines, straight shoulders. Years had aged them, she thought, but pride had kept them strong.

     When the first came near, Ulrika saw that around the crown of her head lay a handsome circlet of twisted silver, twined and curled with silver leaves and stems, coming together on the old woman's forehead to support a tiny silver owl resting on two silver oak leaves, a pale moonstone between the leaves, like an egg, as if the owl were waiting to hatch it.

     The two women paused to give her close scrutiny. When the second of the two saw the Cross of Odin on Ulrika's breast, she pointed and murmured, while the other pursed her wrinkled lips. Milky blue eyes peered at Ulrika from beneath white brows. "Are you lost, daughter?"

     It was a dialect Ulrika understood. "I am looking for—" Ulrika could barely breathe.

     "You should not be here," the woman said gently, "among the dead."

     "I need to find—"

     The old woman had sharply chiseled cheekbones and jaw, a thin aquiline nose, making Ulrika think that in her youth she must have been a very striking woman. But now the young flesh was gone, leaving her with bone and sinew, but an air of strength all the same. She reached out and laid a hand on Ulrika's arm. "You are weary. Come, daughter. Away from all this death."

     "I am looking for my father. He is Wulf, the son of Arminius."

     The old woman shook her head in sadness. "Wulf is dead. His family all perished. Come now, you must eat and rest."

     "Dead! No, you are mistaken. I am searching for him. He cannot be dead."

     But the women turned to lead the way, lifting their skirts as they stepped over corpses, allowing Ulrika a glimpse of leather boots lined with fur. She fell wordlessly into step behind them, carrying her travel packs, her burdens, her pain as she walked with one sandaled foot and one bare foot over ground that was soaked with blood.

     At the edge of the meadow they approached an area of blackened earth where the Romans had set fire as they had retreated with captives and weapons looted from the dead. Nearby, Ulrika knew, the legionaries would have given their own slain a decent burial, in mass graves with prayers and offerings to the gods.

     As she followed the two old women over scorched ground where not a blade of grass had survived, she realized that they had entered what was left of a village. All that remained after the Roman fires were the charred foundations of what had once been sturdy log halls. Ulrika's eyes stung with smoke as she passed places where embers still glowed, and straw and wood smoldered. Trees that had once been magnificent pines and oaks were now stunted and black, twisted and grotesque. The stench was overwhelming.

     The old woman with the silver circlet around her head stopped in front of what appeared to be a pile of grass and twigs but which turned out to be a crude shelter. "Inside is food and drink."

     Ulrika bent to enter the hut, finding darkness inside. But when her eyes adjusted, she saw a bare, earthen floor with fur pelts, waterskins, woven baskets holding vegetables and fruit.

     She gratefully accepted what she suspected was the last of their food, and so although she was ravenous, she ate sparingly, and then drank from the proffered waterskin.

     "Who are you?" she asked of the two women who sat watching her.

     "We are the caretakers of a sacred grove. We have been so for countless generations, ever since the Goddess Freya wept her red-gold tears among the ancient oaks. You must sleep now," the old woman said, "while we return to the task of burying our sons and husbands."

     "Yes," Ulrika said wearily, laying back on a blanket made of thick bear skin. "I am so very tired ..."

     She did not know how long she slept, but when she awoke it was dark and the two caretakers of the sacred grove were lighting torches and stirring something in a hot cooking pot. As Ulrika struggled to sit up—every bone and muscle ached—the one with the owl and moonstone circlet came to her side. "Here," she said with a smile. "Mushroom broth. It will give you strength."

     Ulrika rubbed her eyes as, once again, the two elderly women seemed to grow young. In the flickering torchlight, their wrinkled skin became smooth, their milky eyes turned luminous, their white hair was miraculously black.

     "Why did you come here?" the one with the moonstone asked. So far, her companion had yet to speak.

     Ulrika blinked. They were old again. "I came to warn my father's people of the coming invasion. But I was too late."

     Ancient eyes filled with wisdom settled on Ulrika's face and stayed there for a long moment while outside, night birds called and the wind whistled. Finally, the caretaker of the grove said, "That is not why you came here. That was not your purpose. You were brought here for a different destiny, daughter." She pointed to the wooden cross that hung about Ulrika's neck. "You wear the sacred symbol of Odin. You are the servant of the gods, you are doing their bidding."