Raptor (86 page)

The city’s streets were full of people. Most of them were clearly fugitives from the turmoil, for their fine holiday raiment was bloodstained or torn to rags. Some of those were running homeward, and others simply stood about, dazed and silent or weeping and keening. There were also many armed soldiers running, not away from the amphitheater but toward it, to reinforce their comrades inside. In all the confusion, one additional disheveled and bloodied female was unremarkable. Not entirely having to
pretend
weariness, I stumbled and staggered around the outside walls of the amphitheater until I came to the doorway that Strabo and I and my guard had earlier entered.

Across the street was a fine mansion, obviously that of some family of status. I pushed open its unfastened street door and found, in the well-furnished hallway just inside, my dear and long-missing Velox, still wearing my foot-rope and even—I had no idea how Odwulf had found them—my own saddle and bridle. Velox whickered in surprise and pleasure at seeing me again. There was another horse, too, but since Odwulf would have no use for it, I decided simply to leave it where it was, as one more astonishment that day for the persons who lived in this house, when and if they ever got back to it. On a corner table was neatly piled my helmet, my corselet and a bearskin cloak. I was considering how best to combine those with the feminine garb I already wore when I espied a face peering fearfully at me from around the inner door of the hall.

I beckoned as imperiously as if I owned the place, and he came shuffling—an aged house servant, left behind as a watchman while the family went to be entertained. He must have been baffled when Odwulf came to quarter two horses in his house, but he had to be much more dumbstruck now when an Amazonian young woman commanded him to doff his tunic, hose and leather shoes. Since I was holding a bare sword still clotted with blood, he made no demur, but hastened to obey. Then he stood shivering with either fright or cold when I took the garments from him.

Not to shock the old fellow any further, I concealed myself between the horses while I stripped off my own outer wear. My jeweled fibulae, my gold neck chain and the blessed bronze breast guard I stowed in Velox’s saddlebags. The old man’s tunic and hose fit me well enough; the shoes were far too large for me, but I would not have to do much walking; they would serve for riding. When I was decently covered, I ordered the watchman to help me buckle on my corselet. Then I clapped on my helmet and slung the bearskin about my shoulders. Having no sword belt, I tied a thong about the hilt of my substitute blade and hung it from my saddle horn. My red-sodden gown I tossed to the old servant, in case he had nothing else with which to clothe his skinny, quivering legs. I led Velox to the outer door, opened it a crack and waited until there were no soldiers visible in the street. I turned and said, “The other horse, old man—tell your masters that it was a gift to you from Thiudareikhs Triarius.” Then I led Velox outside, mounted and set off at a canter—westward, inland from the seaside.

With the city still in utter confusion, one hurrying rider in Ostrogothic military costume was no more remarkable than one weary woman had been. Whenever I passed another soldier, or an outpost of soldiers, I merely shouted, “Gaírns bokos! Urgent message!” and none of them dared to wave me down. When I had thus got safely past the last guardhouse on the city’s outskirts, I let Velox slow to an easier pace.

I had escaped.

So here I was, journeying again, as much alone and almost as devoid of resources as I had been when I left the Balsan Hrinkhen as a child. My only weapon was a purloined sword not very suitable to my size. Wyrd’s fine Hunnish bow and arrows were gone; so were practically all of my other goods and belongings, except what I had left in Novae. However, I did have Amalamena’s gold chain to use for money. I could barter its separate links and its one remaining ornament, the gold hammer-cross, for any necessities that I could not provide for myself. I had a long winter journey ahead of me, but I had endured others before. I anticipated no insuperable problems in making my way back to Theodoric.

“And what a wondrous tale I will have the pleasure of telling him!”

I could not help exclaiming that aloud. There was no one to hear me except Velox, but the horse turned his ears back toward me as if he were paying rapt attention. So I went on:

“Why, I have killed a king, just as Theodoric killed Babai of the Sarmatae. Or at least I have killed a rival and pretender to the kingship of the Ostrogoths. More than that, perhaps. I may have saved more than the Gothic people from being overwhelmed by that tyrant.”

There I fell silent, because I had to admit that that deed and my escape had been of considerable cost to others. Only the gods knew how many Constantiana citizens I had sacrificed in the furtherance of my aims—not to mention the six hundred wretched Heruli. I had lost a good and faithful comrade, too, when Odwulf fell. But I could even find reason not to feel
overwhelmingly
sorry about that. It meant that I no longer had to live in disguise—or in varying disguises to suit varying situations—now that Odwulf was not accompanying me. And when I rejoined Theodoric, my arriving alone would certainly make for less complicated explanations of who I was.

Oh vái, and who
are
you?

That was not said aloud, and it was not said of my conscious volition. It was some inner part of my mind demanding to know.

Or
what
are you, it went on—so readily to justify all of today’s bloodshed as simply necessary to your own ends? Have you truly become as uncaring of all other earthly creatures as is the juika-bloth? Remember, you boastfully told Strabo that a raptor is what you are. Nor was that the first time in your life that you have arrogantly described yourself as a raptor.

Impatiently, angrily, I shook those thoughts away. I would not have my sentimental and susceptible feminine nature intruding, to dim or diminish my pride in my masculine accomplishments. For now, I was still Thorn. Thorn!
Thorn!

“And, by all the gods,” I shouted to the world at large, “if a raptor I am, I am a
live
raptor, and a raptor uncaged!”

I said no more. I pressed on westward, to find the river Danuvius and follow it upstream.

All the way from Constantiana westward to the Danuvius, I was crossing a tediously flat, treeless grassland, where the only movement was that of myself and Velox, and that of the dry brown grass, rippled by a constant chill wind. But even had I lacked the aid of the daytime sun and the night’s star Phoenice, I could have made the crossing without straying, because I was following the tumbled remains of an incredibly long and once high stone wall constructed on orders from the Emperor Trajan, after he had pushed the Dacians north of here, nearly four hundred years ago.

When at last I came to the banks of the Danuvius, the river was flowing at an angle across my westerly course. So, to go upstream, I now turned southwest. Since I did not journey along any roads, I did not meet or get passed by any messengers, though I was sure that they must be galloping in all directions, to spread the news of the holocaust in Constantiana and the death of Strabo. I should have liked to hear what messages they carried abroad, and what messages they brought in return—from Zeno, from Rekitakh, from anybody else concerned. However, I was satisfied
not
to be on any much traveled routes, because, for all I knew, there were also patrols out vengefully seeking the vanished “Princess Amalamena.”

Now that I was following the river, though I still encountered no other land travelers, I was no longer the
only
traveler in evidence. The Danuvius was seldom empty of some kind of vessel—a sailing merchant ship, a drifting barge, a fishing boat or one of the swift-moving dromo craft of the Moesian Fleet—and those various travelers were going placidly or busily upstream and down, as if oblivious of the civic and military convulsions occurring among the “land-lobbes” in the nations bordering their river.

The Danuvius gradually bent until it was taking me more and more directly westward, and in time I came to Durostorum, a Roman fortress town that is also a river port for the merchant craft and a supply base of the Moesian Fleet. I had crossed from the province of Scythia into Theodoric’s at least titular domain of Moesia Secunda again. The riverside fortress was manned by the Legio I Italica, which, despite its name, was a legion of Zeno’s Eastern Empire. Also it was composed mostly of outlanders—Ostrogoths, Alamanni, Franks, Burgunds, other Germanic tribesmen. All those men considered themselves “Roman legionaries” and nothing else, and the Ostrogoths among them professed no partisanship for either Strabo or Theodoric.

They took me to be a messenger from Scythia—obviously no other had preceded me here from the north—and escorted me at once to the praetorium of their very capable-looking commander, Celerinus, who was a real Roman, meaning Italia-born. He likewise assumed that I was a messenger-at-large, and received me most cordially, so I gave him the one message I could: that Thiudareikhs Triarius was dead and his Black Sea port of Constantiana was a shambles. Celerinus, as a longtime soldier, either was well inured to astounding news or had schooled himself to show little emotion on such occasions. He only raised his eyebrows and wagged his head. But then, in return, he graciously told me the latest news he had had from the west. It was gratifying news indeed.

Thiudareikhs Amaling,
my
Theodoric, had successfully concluded a treaty with the Emperor Zeno. (I gave silent but fervent thanks to the gods; Swanilda
had
got safely to Theodoric with the pactum and Zeno could not abrogate it.) Thereupon, Celerinus had sent a sizable detachment of his own Italica Legion upriver to Singidunum. Theodoric had formally relinquished that city to them—hence to the Emperor Zeno, who would quickly be sending many more troops, to fortify it against future assaults by any barbarians.

Right now, said Celerinus, Theodoric was at his home city of Novae, regrouping and disposing his various Ostrogoth forces to defend what were now unequivocally
their
lands in Moesia. It was expected that Theodoric would next assume the command that Zeno had accorded him: magister militum praesentalis of every military force, including this Legio I Italica, guarding the Danuvius frontier of the empire. Celerinus looked forward, he said—and he said it sincerely—to swearing the auths to his new commander-in-chief.

I stayed that night, two days and two more nights in Durostorum, to take refreshing advantage of its fine thermae, to rest myself and Velox in comfortable quarters and to feed us both on nutriments superior to what we had so far been foraging. There was only one other sizable community on my way up the Danuvius—Prista, all tanneries, dye works, brick kilns, tileries and potteries—and I did not linger there.

And eventually I arrived again at Theodoric’s Novae. In the considerable span of time since I had left the city, so very, very much had happened—little of it pleasant to recall, except for the too brief, bittersweet and ill-fated intimacy of Amalamena and myself—that it seemed I had been away for years, decades, ages beyond counting.

“Thorn lives! The rumor was true!”

Those were Theodoric’s glad words as I entered the throne room where I had first met Amalamena. Evidently I had been recognized as I rode through the city, and the news had been relayed to the Novae palace. Besides the king, there were four other people waiting to welcome me.

When I snapped up my arm in the stiff Gothic salute, Theodoric laughingly slapped it down. We clasped right wrists in the more comradely Roman manner, then embraced like long-parted brothers, and both of us exclaimed, almost in unison, “It is good to see you again, old friend!” Two of the men in the room did give me the raised-arm salute, one other man nodded gravely and a young woman shyly smiled at me. All of them echoed Theodoric in warmly greeting me, “Waíla-gamotjands!”

“Well,” I said to the king, “you seem to have convened almost everyone connected with that mission.”

The middle-aged man who had saluted was my fellow marshal, Saio Soas. The much older man who had only nodded was Lekeis Frithila. The pretty young woman was Swanilda. The young man who had saluted was a stranger to me, but I assumed him to be my messenger Augis, fellow lancer to the late Odwulf. He had to be, because he was staring at me as if I were the risen gáis of Thorn or a skohl taking the semblance of Thorn—and it was Augis whom I had sent here to report Thorn’s death.

“There is only one person you have not summoned, Theodoric,” I said. “Strabo’s optio Ocer. I am most anxious to have my own sword again.”

“The sword is already hanging in your quarters. The optio is beyond anyone’s summons. Augis delivered your suggestion as to what disposition I ought to make of Ocer and his attendants. Did you think I would fail to comply?”

I said approvingly, “Thags izvis.”

“We will have you fully caparisoned again in no time. But first, let me congratulate you—let me praise you—on the surpassing success of your mission. You have proven yourself a true Ostrogoth, an exemplary marshal, a worthy herizogo. However, the accounts of that mission have come only in bits and pieces. You must tell the whole story, fill in the gaps. You might start by telling us—particularly the bewildered Augis yonder—how it is that you are not dead.”

I spread my arms in a gesture of woeful resignation and said, “Ne, let me express my grief for those who
are.
Optio Daila and all the rest of my turma, except for gallant Augis there. I hope the mission’s success was worth its lamentable cost. And, of all the lost, I grieve most deeply for your dear sister, Theodoric. I had become more fond of Amalamena than even you could be.”

“I should not have laid that responsibility on you,” he said contritely. “But I had no idea that she was suffering the least illness. Frithila has, of course, told me all about it—and that there was no way any mortal could have helped her.”

“As best I could,” I said, “I did what the lekeis commanded. I tried to keep up her spirits.”