Raptor (79 page)

Then Strabo led the way—his men supporting me as I deliberately did some feminine tottering over the rough ground—back toward where the encampment had been. It was being remade there, for others of his men were rekindling the fires, righting the overturned cooking kettles and other equipment, eating and drinking from the dropped bowls and wineskins. As we went thither, we came upon the bodies of several of my late company. One was quite near the carruca, others lay at intervals farther on. Every man had been facing up the road, in the direction from which the onslaught had come, and every man’s wounds were all in his front. They had obviously fought to the last step, as they backed toward where their princess was, gallantly striving to keep the assailants from her.

At each corpse we came to, Strabo made me stop and look closely at each dead face. I recognized them all, of course. The one closest to the carruca had been the one of my personal bowmen who had remained loyal; among the many bodies strewn about our former encampment, one was that of the optio Daila. Though I wondered why I was being bidden to look at every face, I had a more pressing concern. My two guardians, in their furtive fondling of me, had not encountered the parchment package inside my blouse. So I was again doing some quick thinking. Should I try to keep the false document hidden? Try to destroy it? Try some other ruse before it was found and opened?

As it happened, I was worrying needlessly. When we came into the firelight, Strabo—and all his soldiers nearby—looked me appraisingly up and down. Then he asked, in his stone-grating voice:

“Which of those dead men, niu, was the Saio Thorn of whom I have heard?”

“None of them,” I said truthfully, and added, with some show of spirit, “Perhaps he got away alive. I hope he did.”

“Indeed. It was he who carried Zeno’s pactum?”

I could also say truthfully, “The last time I saw him, it was, ja.”

The optio Ocer spoke up. “Triarius,
no one
escaped alive. We know that none slipped up the road past us, and I have had men in disguise following this train ever since it left Pautalia. They have reported to me, and they report that no one fled past them down the road. However, some of the foemen did die at the riverside, and their bodies washed on downstream.”

“Very well,” said Strabo. “As soon as all of us have scavenged a few bites to eat, and the others have returned from rounding up the scattered horses, lead them and find every last man that was slain. Go all the way to the Aegean mouth of the Strymon, if necessary. Strip and search every one. Find me the pactum. But before that”—he jutted his beard at me—“start with this one.”

I wriggled loose of the two grinning guards and cried, “Would you dare to humiliate an Amaling princess so?”

“Vái! Do you suppose I am being merely sportive? I want that document. If you wish to preserve your modesty, all you have to do is point to the man Thorn.”

In a sense I did. I said through my teeth, “I have the pactum,” and withdrew it from my blouse and tried to tear it with both my hands, but parchment is not easy to tear.

The optio and the other man instantly pinioned me again. Strabo uttered his rasping laugh, stepped close and took the package from my grasp. Then he only glanced at the folded document, nodded on seeing the purple wax seals indented with the Z monogram… and, to my astonishment, tossed the thing almost casually into the nearest fire. It was not until later that I learned that Strabo was unable to read. Of course, if he had simply opened the parchment and found it blank, all my planning would have gone for naught. But he forebore to open it, because it would have shamed him to have to
pretend
to read it, or to have to ask someone else to do so, and have me laugh at him for an ignorant barbarian.

I laughed anyway, scornfully, and said, “You have destroyed only a piece of parchment, not its significance. My brother still holds the strategic city of Singidunum. That was what persuaded the emperor to grant this pactum and all its endowments. My brother has only to ask, and you may be sure Zeno will write and sign and seal another such parchment.”

Strabo grunted uncaringly. “Your brother holds Singidunum. I hold his sister. We shall see which weighs more in the balances.” He turned from me to the optio and said:

“Very well, Ocer. Now we need not linger here overlong. Send two men to hitch draft horses again to the carruca, and to drag that dead wench out of it. Have two others take this
princess
back there, put her in the carriage and see that she stays in it.” To me he said, “I regret having disturbed your night’s rest,
Princess.
But I want us all to be on the road by daybreak. We will be riding hard and we will not make camp again until tomorrow night. So if you can snatch any sleep before we depart, I suggest that you do so.”

I only gave him a look of disdain, so he turned once more to the optio, saying, “Meanwhile, Ocer…”

I should have liked to hear what other instructions Strabo gave, but I was hustled away into the darkness and, after the horses were harnessed to the carriage, my two guards rather roughly tossed me up into it. Amalamena’s body was already gone, and there was nothing remaining of her except one small dried bloodstain where she had lain. I demanded of my guards to know what disposition had been made of her remains. I feared that such a lovely young corpse, still soft and pliable and penetrable, might have tempted brute soldiers to use it for all manner of depraved entertainment.

“We are Ostrogoths, like yourself,” one of the men haughtily reminded me. “We do not defile the dead. Your maidservant will be treated just as is every warrior fallen in this fray.”

The two guards were not, however, so punctiliously considerate toward a still-living young woman. When I started to close the carruca’s curtains, they made me leave them wide open on both sides. Then they tried, with loutish japes and vulgar gestures, to persuade me to prepare myself for sleep—meaning for me to strip naked—while they watched me in the lamplight. I ignored them, and simply lay down on Amalamena’s traveling couch, fully garbed, and closed my eyes and tried to rest while I pondered the recent rapid succession of events.

I wish I could say that I thought only of my poor dead princess, and mourned her deeply, and still felt her dear presence near me in the carruca. Her perfume was there, because I was wearing it. But the only other trace of her was the lingering brómos musarós, still discernible even overlaid with the heady scent of roses, and I did not care to be reminded of Amalamena moribund. I wanted to remember her as I had last seen her, vivacious and merry and looking forward to life. I hoped that I would soon have an opportunity to put on fresh clothing and to change every furnishing in the carriage impregnated with that ugly odor.

Meanwhile, I fingered the bangles on the chain about my neck, and prayed silently—though not to any particular deity—
“Please
let Swanilda have got safely to Theodoric!” Since my leaving Constantinople, things had not all gone precisely according to plan, but I was still alive and in a very advantageous position, especially if Theodoric
had
received his pactum and Strabo went on believing that he had not.

Still, there were some worrisome aspects. Lying there in the carruca, I could hear the noises from the encampment, and could divine what was going on. Strabo was having his men strip all of my men’s corpses. The victors would plunder any weapons or armor or money purses or anything else they might find useful, and then would pitch the residue and all the naked cadavers into the river. I supposed that they had already done the same with Amalamena’s body. Hardly the most honorable and dignified exequies for the departed, but I doubt that the dead really care for pomp. And that way, as old Wyrd had once asserted, they would live on, as fish, as waterfowl, as otters, as fish hawks, as fisherfolk…

What mattered most to me was that all those dead would not soon be missed. Floating corpses are common enough in any river so that the local streamside dwellers and boatmen would not make much fuss over encountering a few more. Since all of these would be floating naked, probably nobody would even haul one ashore to see what might be pilfered from him. Certainly nobody would take any trouble about identifying any of them. Meanwhile, Strabo’s column would continue along this same road that mine had been following. Though the train would consist of many more men, horses, spare mounts and pack animals, it would have the same carruca traveling with it.

Far away in Singidunum, Theodoric would not waste a great deal of time in fretting about what had become of his marshal Thorn and his sister Amalamena and his optio Daila and all the other warriors. Before long, he would send scouts galloping to backtrack our trail. But what would they discover? No scene of battle and no rumor of any. They would hear in Pautalia that
ja,
our column had left that place and had taken this road in doing so. And then, from travelers or residents or innkeepers along this road, they would hear that
ja,
a train of Ostrogoth horsemen did pass this way, and
ja,
it was escorting a handsome carriage with a pretty woman riding in it…

To Theodoric’s scouts, it would seem that the Saio Thorn had simply, suddenly, incomprehensibly—perhaps traitorously—diverted his entire column away from its intended destination, and had led it off into Strabo’s lands, or to the other side of the earth, or into oblivion. I had no idea where Strabo might now be taking me, and since I had deliberately arranged for him to do this, I did not much care where. However, I would have preferred that anyone who
did
care could follow me there.

At some point I drifted off to sleep, not to wake until the carriage abruptly jerked into motion. The darkness about was now dark indeed, for the carruca’s one lamp had burned dry. The curtains were still open, and I could dimly make out my guardians riding close on either side. So I merely lay where I was, and listened to the hoofbeats and clinks and creaks and jangles of the whole train, continuing on up the road through the gorge, which gradually began to lighten as the sun rose. Strabo had warned me that we would set a good pace, and we did. The carruca was rumbling along faster and more joltingly than I had ever known its draft horses to haul it.

The column rode well strung out—so no rank had to eat too much road dust from the rank ahead—and my carriage was at about the middle of the train’s considerable length. But the road sometimes curved enough so that I could glimpse the front and the rear of the column. I was pleased to see, among the spare mounts being herded along, my own fine Kehailan steed Velox. No one was riding him, even when the men traded wearied horses for fresh ones, and I decided they must be avoiding him because they were puzzled by the foot-rope he wore spliced around his chest. Perhaps they thought it some sort of check-rein, indicating that he was vicious or skittish of temperament. I smiled at that. Assuming that Velox and I arrived to be held captive at the same place, I would eventually—I devoutly hoped—have the opportunity to show our captors what Velox and his accustomed rider could do in the way of admirable riding.

We kept on traveling all that day, pausing only occasionally for the men to change their horses and to water all of them. At two or three of those stopping places, my guardians brought me food and drink from the column’s traveling rations: cold smoked meat or salted fish, a hard manchet of bread, a leather cup of wine or beer. At those times also, I was allowed to descend briefly from the carruca, to stretch my legs and empty my bladder. Of course I did that in the female manner, and of course there was always one or another warrior standing guard nearby—and leering at being able to watch a royal princess have to relieve herself not a whit more royally than would the lowest peasant wench.

We continued northeastward, evidently heading directly for Serdica. I knew it to be a sizable city, but I did not know if it was counted among Strabo’s dominions or if he simply deemed it a convenient place to hold me while he negotiated with Theodoric. Well, I thought, I would find out in time. However, even riding hard, we did not reach Serdica that day, and when we made camp by the roadside that night, I found out that Strabo had other and baser plans for the princess Amalamena than merely holding her to ransom.

The carruca, though still guarded by two men, was positioned well apart from the mass of soldiers, and I supposed it was to accord me some small privacy for my eating, sleeping and other functions. True, my food and wine were again brought over to me—hot food, this time—so I was spared having to jostle among the others at the cooking fires. But after I had eaten and had made a necessary trip into the bushes and had done what sketchy washing of myself was possible under the circumstances and was composing myself for sleep, Strabo himself suddenly loomed at the side of the carriage. Without any greeting to me, without asking my leave—with only a cavernous belch, indicating that he too had eaten well—he climbed into the carruca and lay down beside me.

“What does this mean?” I demanded frostily.

“Akh, girl, you could have slept only poorly last night.” He belched again. “I shall graciously see to it that this night you slumber well. You will sleep with me, and you will sleep the sleep of the sated. Now you may snuff the lamp and close the curtains. Unless you want the two guardsmen to watch.”

Not fearfully, but in genuine surprise—because I had congratulated myself that I
was
protected against molestation—I said, “You told me that you would respect my holy relic. That you would not rape me.”

“I do not intend to. You are going to yield to me willingly.”

“I shall most certainly do no such thing.”

He shrugged his beefy shoulders. “Take your choice. Theodoric Triarius or the whole camp. Either I or all of them will have you this very night, and I will not wait long for you to decide. I should imagine that a presumptive princess would rather yield to one cousin of her own Amaling line than to a hundred and fifteen men of dubious lineage and gentility.”

“Do not be too sure,” I said boldly, but not feeling very bold. “Louts and vulgarians they may be, but I have seen none of them so abhorrently ugly as you are.”