Raptor (87 page)

“And… she died bravely,” said Theodoric, not quite making either a statement or a question of it.

Skirting the truth only a little, I said, “Ja, she bravely awaited the coming of her death, knowing it to be inevitable. But at the end she really had no need of bravery. The very last time I saw her alive, Amalamena was in seeming good health, good cheer, even good appetite. Most merrily she bade me go and fetch her evening meal. When I returned with it, she was gone. That quickly, that easily, that peacefully.”

Theodoric sighed and said, “I am glad of that. And I am glad that you survived to tell me. It helps to lessen the heartache of bereavement. But who, then, was the captive woman that Strabo pretended was my sister? The woman for whom Optio Ocer demanded ransom?”

“Strabo was not pretending. He believed she
was
your princess sister. In truth, she was one of the Khazar servants who had attended us at the Purple Palace. Amalamena engaged the woman as her cosmeta after we sent Swanilda riding hither with Zeno’s pactum. I presumed that when Augis later arrived here with the word that Strabo held not Amalamena but a substitute, the
genuine
Swanilda”—I gestured at her—“would have divined who that woman must be.”

“And Swanilda did hazard that conjecture,” said Theodoric. “But I found it hard to credit. How could Strabo have mistaken a dark-haired, olive-skinned Khazar maidservant for an
Amaling princess?”

“Well, the woman was wonderfully adept as a cosmeta,” I said, piling lie upon lie. “She bleached her hair and skin most skillfully. She even deluded all of our own men—from a distance. Did she not, Augis?” The lancer nodded, his eyes wide. “Later, when she was being held captive by Strabo, I managed to stay in communication with her. Like Augis and Odwulf, another of our stalwarts, I had mingled unnoticed with Strabo’s own warriors.”

Augis’s eyes got even wider, and he did not nod to confirm that remark. He was clearly wondering how
he
could have failed to notice my lurking about. So I rather desperately went on, “I wished to bring here with me that transformed Khazar maid, for your amazement, Theodoric. And for your commendation, because she played her part with valor. Unfortunately, she was among the innocents who died during the bloodbath at Constantiana, when—”

“Hold, hold!” Theodoric interrupted, shaking his head and laughing. “I think it best that you commence your account from the beginning. Here, men, let us all draw couches close together. And Swanilda, would you go and ask the kitcheners to supply some refreshment? This will surely be a long story, and Thorn’s throat is bound to get parched.”

So I told of everything, or almost everything, that had happened from the day our company left Novae until this day of my return. I had barely begun when Swanilda and another woman came from the kitchens, bearing between them an immense, fluted, silver-gilt bowl full of fresh golden mead, in which stood a gracefully bird-shaped golden ladle. They set the bowl in the center of our circle and then departed, not presuming to sit in on men’s talk. I did not interrupt my account, but I had recognized the second woman. She was much more richly garbed than I had last seen her, and she was tremendously pregnant, and from her manner she seemed to be the new mistress of Swanilda the cosmeta.

I was bemused, but I postponed making any query about the woman. When they were gone, and as I continued speaking, one or another of us men would at intervals dip from the bowl a drink of sweet mead. As is customarily served when several men are conferring, this was a “fraternal bowl,” requiring all of us amicably to take turns drinking from the single ladle.

I told my story very much as I have told it here, only more concisely, omitting details like the ugly manifestations of Amalamena’s illness. To account for my being alive at this moment, I had to make myself out to have been something less than a heroic warrior-to-the-death. I declared that Amalamena’s death took place in Pautalia, and that Optio Daila and I secretly buried her there—not letting even our own men know of it—and that thereafter the Khazar-Swanilda rode alone in the carruca. I told how our discovery of the one bowman’s treachery made me and Daila decide to deviate from our course and follow the river Strymon—eventually into the deep defile where, one dark night, Strabo’s force swooped down upon us. There I fought alongside my men, I said (knowing that Augis could not denounce that as a lie, he having been high atop the cliff at the time).

Then, I said, I simultaneously realized that ours was a losing battle and saw Strabo’s men drag the Khazar-Swanilda from the carruca—and thereupon conceived my notion of substitution. I doffed my own armor, because it proclaimed my rank and identity, and donned that of another smallish man who had fallen in the fray. I made my way to the Khazar-Swanilda’s side, where I had time to whisper urgent instructions to her and to give her the princess’s necklace to wear. Thus, when Strabo himself confronted her, she haughtily announced herself to be Princess Amalamena—and Strabo believed her.

“He never doubted her, from that day to her last,” I said. “But that did not prevent his using her most foully, and in violation of all the conventions of honorable warfare. Rejoice, Theodoric, that she was not our Amalamena. Only two nights after capturing her, long before he sent Ocer to demand ransom of you, Strabo took the maidenhead of the woman he believed to be a princess—the woman who, by the code of all warriors, should have been under his protection during her captivity.”

Theodoric growled and, though he was wearing no sword, his hand reached involuntarily toward his belt.

I went on to tell how I maintained my own disguise, unrecognized as an interloper by any of Strabo’s men and even by those two of my own turma who had likewise insinuated themselves into the enemy company.

“It was at Serdica that Odwulf and I at last recognized one another. We sent Augis galloping hither to tell you that Strabo’s ransom demand could be ignored. From then on, Odwulf and I alternated, whenever we could, as the guard assigned to the substitute Amalamena. We told her what to say and how to behave in Strabo’s presence, to keep him beguiled and lulled and unwary, while we tried to think of what to do next.”

I briefly recounted the rest of our journey, from Serdica to Constantiana, with Strabo getting increasingly restive about the disappearance of Ocer, and increasingly abusive of the Khazar woman.

“He continued to ravish her—every two or three nights, she told me. He said he was but anticipating his taking her to wife, and that he intended to beget upon her an heir more to his liking than his worthless son Rekitakh. Further, he asserted that you, Theodoric, would cowardly overlook that gross insult—because you would welcome being bound to the mighty Strabo by ties of marriage.”

Theodoric uttered a horrendous obscenity and snarled, “Thags Guth it was not my sister. No matter. I will make that overweening reptile rue those words.”

“Perhaps he already has,” I said, and went on to tell how, when Strabo became so choleric that he was ready to mutilate the substitute princess, I had her persuade him to arrange the contest of the captured Heruli, and how Odwulf and I coerced those prisoners into making it quite a different kind of entertainment. I told how the outraged Strabo stabbed the Khazar woman before Odwulf or I could intervene, and how we two then punished Strabo by performing our syrurgery on him, and how the intrepid Odwulf was so unexpectedly slain during our run for freedom.

“So,” I concluded humbly, “like the messenger of Job, I alone have escaped to tell these things.”

Theodoric, calm again, said, “Nevertheless, you did most admirably accomplish the mission I sent you. I and all my people are indebted to you. I will of course have a splendid cenotaph raised to my beloved sister. And another, only slightly less splendid, to Odwulf and Daila and all their fellows who also perished. As for Augis here, I had some while ago promoted him to signifer of lancers. In gratitude to that Khazar woman who so nobly served, I will have our palace priest say a mass for her soul. Have I overlooked anyone, Saio Thorn?”

“Ne,” I said. “And I have little else to tell, except some overheard tidings and tattle pertaining to matters of state. They would probably interest no one but yourself, Theodoric.”

He took my meaning; he stood up, stretched, yawned and declared the meeting adjourned. As we all ambled toward the throne room’s outer doors, Frithila took my arm to make us lag behind the other three.

“A very interesting story,” he said. “I never before heard of any victim of the kreps having died so quickly, so peacefully. Perhaps I should invite you to visit the bedsides of my other patients being gnawed by the carrion worm.”

I protested, “The princess did not die by my hand.”

“No matter. From the tales you have told, I gather that mere proximity to Thorn is sufficient to kill.”

“Please, Lekeis. I am already enduring enough regret for all those—”

“Indeed? I too can quote from the Book of Job. ‘Will the eagle mount up at your command? From her nest in high places she seeks her prey, and she sees afar off. Wheresoever the carcass shall be, she is immediately there.’ “

Frithila gave me a bleak smile, and went out the door. Why, I wondered, had he chosen to recite those particular words? And why, for that matter, does the Bible itself refer to that raptor as “she”?

The lekeis and the lancer took their leave. Theodoric and I and my fellow marshal, Soas, remained. While we strolled back to our couches, I said to Theodoric under my breath:

“That fine-looking and finely dressed young lady who helped bring in the mead bowl—is not that the Singidunum girl you used to call Aurora?”

“Ja,” said Theodoric, without lowering his voice at all. “And I still call her Aurora. I never can remember her real name. It transpired that she was carrying my child, so…” He grinned, a little proudly, a little foolishly, and shrugged his shoulders.

“My felicitations to you both,” I said. “But… you married her and you do not even recollect her
name?”

“Married her? Gudisks Himins, ne, I could not do that. So she can of course be accorded no official title. But she now occupies what were Amalamena’s chambers, and she fulfills all the duties of a royal consort. She will continue to do so until someday I find a woman of status enough to be my wife.”

“And if you do not?”

He shrugged again. “My father never had a legitimate queen. The mother of myself and Amalamena and my other sister, Amalafrida, was but his concubine. That imparted no blemish or impediment to us. So long as I recognize Aurora’s child or children as my own, that is all that matters in regard to the royal succession.” As he and I and Soas reclined again on our couches, I was reflecting that Theodoric’s victory at Singidunum really had resulted in two additional and quite unlooked-for victories. Both I and Aurora-or-Whoever had vaulted from obscurity and nonentity to high places indeed: I becoming a marshal and herizogo, she a de facto queen. Probably I was the only person on earth, now, who knew how hurt Amalamena would have been to find her adored brother joined by paternity to another woman—and a woman much inferior in status to herself. Ja, Amalamena would probably have been heartbroken. And I? Was it possible that I felt some twinge of jealousy?

As we dipped up fresh drinks of mead, I said, “I have been talking for a long time. My other fragments of rumor and gossip and eavesdropped indiscretions can wait for a while. I should like to learn what has been happening here in the west while I was away.”

Theodoric gestured to Soas, and that man of few words told, in very few words, of his own mission to an imperial court. As I already knew, the Saio Soas had arrived in Ravenna to find not Julius Nepos the emperor there, but the boy Little Augustus about to assume the purple. What with the delays attendant on the change—the coronation ceremonies, the appointment of new councillors and so on—Soas had had to stand about, waiting to deliver Theodoric’s message and the smoked head of the legatus Camundus. Even after the commotion had subsided, and the new young emperor was beginning to grant audiences, there were many other emissaries waiting in line ahead of Soas. Then, when his appointed time was finally approaching, there came the other convulsive overthrow—not just of the reign of Romulus Augustulus, but of the entire Western Roman Empire, and the very concept of an empire ruled by two equal emperors. Aúdawakrs, known as Odoacer, took the rule as king and subordinate of Zeno, Emperor of the East.

Soas concluded, “I knew better than to petition Odoacer in the name of the Theodoric who had slain the man’s father. So I came away hoping mightily”—he inclined his head toward me—“that my young colleague had enjoyed better luck.” Then Soas made a mild jape, the only attempt at humor I ever heard from him. “I still possess a fine smoked head, if anyone wants it.”

Theodoric laughed and said to me, “Even if Soas
had
negotiated a treaty with Odoacer, it would have no validity without Zeno’s approval. Now that I possess Zeno’s own pactum, I care not an iota what Odoacer may think of it. These Moesian lands are ours, the consueta dona is again being paid, the military magistracy is mine.”

I said, “But, as I told you, Zeno never really intended for you to receive that parchment. When it
was
delivered, did he not try to disavow it?”

“No doubt he wished that he could, but how could he? On Swanilda’s arrival with it, I immediately dispatched a messenger, riding at full tilt, conveying to Zeno my hearty thanks and my auths of loyalty, and asking him to send legionaries to relieve me of my stewardship of Singidunum. In his reply, Zeno could scarce conceal his surprise—even displeasure—but
akh!
his toe was caught fast and pinched hard in the crack of his own making. Also he was much occupied with the dizzy round of affairs at Rome, rather more pressing than the rivalry between Theodoric Amaling and Theodoric Strabo.”

“Also,” I suggested, “he may perhaps by then have had some hint that Strabo was not quite the loyal and pliable adherent he pretended to be.”

I went on to relate some of the confidences Strabo had revealed to “Amalamena”—that his son Rekitakh’s being held hostage at Constantinople gave Zeno no real hold over him, and that he expected eventually to be incited by Zeno to evict the Scyrrian Odoacer from his Roman kingship. I recited Strabo’s own words pertaining to Odoacer: