“Ow,” said a male voice, and someone fell over her in the dark.
Sabina scrambled to her feet, tripping over a fallen spear haft. Someone else tripped over her foot, and nearly went down again. A large male someone, just an armored shape in the dark.
“Who goes there?” a voice demanded, finally straightening.
“The legate’s wife,” Sabina said, tugging the black palla off her hair. “Hello, Vix.”
There was a long pause. “Oh, hell,” he said finally.
“I thought I might run into you here,” Sabina smiled into the dark. Clearly this was to be a night full of surprises. “Just not quite so literally.”
“Lady.” His voice was flat as he gave a jerk of a bow. “The Emperor’s banquet is that way.”
“Good, then you can take me back.” She managed to find his arm in the dark, tucking her hand neatly into his elbow. “Trajan and his legates are busy refighting the Republic’s wars, so I came out here to catch my breath from those smoky lamps—why does German lamp oil smoke so much? Now I’m not sure I know the way back.”
“Straight left and up.” Vix tugged his arm loose from her hand. “The legate’s quarters are always on the far side of the principia. Every fort in the Empire, they’re all laid out the same.”
“Really?” Sabina said, interested. “I didn’t know that. Tell me more.”
“No.”
But her hand had found his elbow again, and he was towing her resignedly back up the path between the barracks toward the Emperor’s quarters. A yellow flash of torchlight cut across the path as they turned the corner, and he turned from an anonymous armored shape into—Vix. But a very different Vix from the tall boy who had shared her bed at eighteen. He’d finally filled into his height, all those long bones knitted together with a man’s muscle. He looked brown and lithe and watchful, and he wore his breastplate and sword as naturally as a dragon wore its scales. She tilted her head up at him in frank admiration. “You look well, Vix.”
“You don’t,” he said rudely. “You look haggard.”
“I still read too much at night.”
“Not much else to do at night, I reckon. Not with a husband like you’ve got.” His eyes went over her as they passed another torch, and Sabina was glad she’d managed to unearth her black stola from the chaos of unpacking. She knew she looked well in it—the cloth woven so fine it shimmered and ran under the torchlight like dark water, and a single massive gold cuff shaped like a lion covering one wrist. Somehow she found herself still wanting to look well for Vix, even if he didn’t care either way.
He lengthened his stride as if he were trying to leave her behind, but Sabina kept up, swinging the black palla over one arm. “Have you got a woman now, Vix?”
“Plenty of them,” he shot back. “Lots of high-born ladies like a bit of rough.”
She laughed. “Gods, I’d forgotten how you can glower. You’re in the Tenth, aren’t you? My father wrote your letter of recommendation.”
“The Tenth’s the best in Germania. We’ll be the vanguard, when Trajan takes us into Dacia.”
“I hear the Fourth wants the vanguard.”
“The Fourth can bugger themselves on their own javelins.”
“I’ll tell them so for you, if I meet any.”
“Don’t care what you tell anybody. Here you are, Lady.” They’d reached the legate’s quarters that Trajan had made into his temporary home. The doors had been thrown open, slaves clustered with cloaks for their masters, and inside Sabina could see the tipsy guests saying their languid farewells in the atrium. “I guess they finished refighting Alesia,” she said. “Or maybe they just ran out of chicken bones to build diagrams. You know the Emperor’s declared a march? He announced it tonight at dinner.”
“A march?” Vix halted in the act of turning away. “When?”
“Next week, if he can—how did he put it?” She cast her eyes up to the black, diamonded dome of sky. “‘Put a boot to every legion’s arse in time.’”
“He’ll find the Tenth ready.” The corner of Vix’s mouth tugged upward, no matter how much he tried to stamp it down.
“I wish I could see it,” Sabina confessed. “The legions on the move. I’m sure it will be a sight.”
“Lots of swearing. Lots of mud.”
“Other things too, I’m sure.” She tossed the bundle of palla over one shoulder. “But there’s no room for wives on the march; Hadrian’s made that clear. Even legates’ wives. I’d go back to Rome, but then I’ll have to deal with Empress Plotina. I think on the whole I’d prefer the king of Dacia with his horns and tail.” Sabina looked up at Vix. “Don’t keep safe.”
“What?”
“Don’t bother keeping safe when you finally march off to war.” She clasped her hands in front of her waist, the gold lion cuff catching a gleam from the yellow torchlight. “Safe soldiers don’t win glory. If it’s glory you still want?”
“Yes,” Vix said at once. “And a laurel wreath, and a promotion to centurion, and then—” He caught himself, scowling. “None of your business. Good night, Lady.”
“Good night, Vercingetorix.” She grinned as she turned away, toward the triclinium where Hadrian and Titus still stood debating poets. “It is good to see you.”
“Can’t say the same for you,” he shot back, and took off into the dark.
CHAPTER 12
VIX
I like route marches. Provided the sun is shining and there isn’t too much mud, they’re downright pleasant. My shoulders usually protested the heavy pack for the first hour or so, but after a while everything loosened up and I’d be swinging along in good humor, roaring out the marching songs that helped keep the legion in step. Marching songs varied—if you got a particularly pious or priggish centurion, then the songs all tended to be grim invocations to Mars, or leaden patriotic verses about the glory of Rome. But Emperor Trajan was a legionary at heart, and he liked his marching songs the dirtier the better, so we all had free rein.
We marched fast out of Mog. Half of us were leaving bad debts and pregnant women behind, and all of us were happy to be marching toward action. Slaves, loot, plunder—plenty of rewards, once we mashed down that Dacian king. Even the lowly soldiers like me could come out rich.
“I don’t care about rich,” Boil confided between marching songs as we proceeded arm to arm. “I just want me one of those Dacian women. Wildcats, they are. I’ll bring her back to Germania with me—”
“And then she’ll leave you for a tavernkeeper like the last one did,” Simon teased.
“That was a long time ago.”
“Four months! And the one before that left you for a lute player—”
“Slaves for me,” Philip was saying on my other side. “A dozen big muscular warriors. Send them to my woman, she can feed ’em up and train ‘em—”
“If they don’t up and kill her.”
“You ever seen my woman?” Philip shuddered. “She’ll have ’em heeling like dogs. A fat profit on the market, that is. Gladiator schools pay well for barbarians—”
“Enough to stake your dice for a month at least,” I agreed, and Philip whacked me over the head with his javelin. I shoved back.
“Order in the ranks!” Our centurion rode by, shouting, and we straightened hastily. “Step lively, now.”
“Bastard has something to prove,” Simon muttered.
“Don’t we all?” Julius peered up the road through the dust, where the Fourth were trotting double-quick. “You want to see the Fourth get into Dacia first? As my ancestor the noble Julius Caesar was first across the Rubicon, we shall be first into the east.”
We shifted our packs and quickened our steps. The Tenth Fidelis could easily make eighteen miles in a day—twenty-two if we hurried. Not bad at all for a fort-based legion that only did one or two route marches a month.
Though if I’d been commander of the Tenth, I’d have made it twenty-four miles a day.
I hadn’t seen anything of Legate Publius
Aelius Hadrian since the start of the march, when he’d sallied out on horseback, very noble in a red cloak. He rode far ahead with the Emperor and the rest of the legates, and as far as I was concerned he could stay there. A legion was a big place—more than five thousand men when we were up to full complement. Big enough to avoid even the man in charge if you were bent on it, and I was bent on it. That bearded bastard wasn’t going to lay eyes on me for the entire campaign if I could help it… had I really made a point of pushing my legate into the mud in front of a cluster of snickering centurions?
Never mind. I had a legate who hated me, but I also had a war to fight and a ladder to climb. More than enough to deal with without borrowing trouble.
A long day’s march. We cycled through most of our marching songs, and at the midday rest I learned a few new ones from a friendly clerk in the Sixth. Very dirty ones. “We were posted out in Syria for years,” the clerk confided. “Nothing to screw up there but the cows. You think Dacia has any pretty girls?”
“Pretty,” I said, “but they’ll leave scratches down your back a mile long.”
“Better than mooing,” he leered. “You’ve got a woman?”
“One, and that’s one too many.” I’d patched things up with Demetra, mostly because Titus had gotten very stern with me. “She’s carrying your child,” he said, exasperated. “In plenty of traditions that makes her your wife, whether or not you stood before an altar and recited any vows—”
“Don’t say it,” I winced.
“—and a husband at least owes his wife a farewell before he marches off to war.” For such a skinny self-effacing young sprig, Titus had a surprisingly flinty stare. “Do right by her, Vercingetorix.”
In truth I cared more about keeping Titus for my friend than keeping Demetra for my woman, but the result was the same. I gulped under his gaze, fortified myself with a fair amount of unmixed wine and a good-bye cuddle from my redhead, and went to see Demetra the night before we marched. It was about as bad as I’d feared—she cried a lot, and I tried to be soothing, and she cried some more, and I made noises about having to be up in time for the dawn march, and that set her crying the hardest of all. “You’ll be dead,” she sobbed into my chest. “You’ll be k-killed in Dacia by that king with the lion skin and the horns—you’ll never come back!”
“None of that, now,” I cajoled. “Takes more than a king with horns to kill me. I’ll be back soon with a sack full of gold, you’ll see.”
“Really? You’ll come back to me?”
“Really.” Maybe. Maybe not. By that time I’d have promised anything to stop the weeping. Her little boy watched me from the corner with big brown eyes just like hers, only less red and blotchy.
“I’ll have your son,” she said, hands sliding to her still-flat stomach. “I know you’ll want him when you see him, Vix. All men want sons.”
“You could still, you know…” I hedged. “Before it gets dangerous. Then maybe we could get married when I come back. It would make everything easier.”
Her answering smile was wan, and I smothered the spark of anger in my chest. Wasn’t I doing my best here? Wasn’t I trying? “We’ll have a proper wedding,” I said, watching the moon drift past the window carrying my last hours of rest with it. “With a feast and a red veil and everything.”
“But my people don’t wear red veils at weddings.”
“Whatever you like.” I leaned down and kissed her, edging her back toward the bed—it would be a long time marching, after all, and I would miss her smooth slim form in my bed, and maybe that would stop her crying—but there was another fuss and apparently the women of Bithynia didn’t make love while carrying children, and all in all I spent the night before my march east holding Demetra on the bed, fully clothed, making soothing noises whenever she stopped crying, which wasn’t often.
No wonder I was enjoying the march.
I thanked the clerk from the Sixth and headed back toward the rest of my contubernium with a water skin. Demetra had been very dignified when bidding me good-bye—the night’s worth of tears had just made her eyes enormous and hollow and appealing. Maybe I could marry her when I got back. Titus was right; I wasn’t going to find better than Demetra. If I married her, maybe she’d quit crying all the time. And there was no denying she was beautiful, docile, uncomplicated: all the things I liked. All the things Sabina wasn’t.
It hadn’t been hard to avoid my legate’s wife, after that odd night stumbling into her outside the principia. Officers’ wives didn’t cross paths with common soldiers in the ordinary scheme of things… damn her, she’d looked well. I’d have liked to see her pasty and unhappy, but she just swung along beside me in her gold sandals, sinuous and unconcerned as ever. I couldn’t help but wonder briefly if I might be able to bed her again—that would put a spike up Hadrian’s arse and no mistake. But if my legate already loathed me, then bedding his wife wasn’t the wisest move to make, and besides I’d already been burned once by that girl and I was damned if I’d do it again. Far better to just marry my Bithynian goddess and have done with it.
Another half-day’s march. Emperor Trajan rode past the column, splendid in a red cloak, his face cheerful and boyish under the plumed helmet, bawling out the bawdiest marching songs with relish. His singing checked when we marched past a burned garrison just like the one Titus and I had reported at the end of… could it be just last fall? The Dacian king had sent raiders deep into Germania, thumbing his nose to show us how close he could get, and the garrison was hardly more than a heap of blackened timbers and scorched tiles. There was a skull set up in the ruined gate, a skull in a carved niche with sprigs of something stuffed in its eye sockets and rags below it tied in queer knots. Simon muttered a prayer in Hebrew as we passed, and I touched the amulet around my neck. The marching songs stilled of their own accord as we marched by, and in turn every aquilifer in his standard-bearer’s insignia dipped the pole bearing the legion’s eagle. From down the line the word passed that the Emperor had stared for long moments at the skull in the gate of his ruined fort, then speared it out of its niche with his javelin and crushed it under his horse’s hooves. My heart nearly burst with pride. That was an emperor. That was my Emperor.
Nightfall saw us well past the ruins, out of reach of the ghosts, and there was a certain jockeying to see which legion could set up their camp the fastest. In my training days we’d done long aimless route marches through the hills to set up practice camps, tearing them down and setting them up again as many as three times before our time was satisfactory, but the Tenth had been in a fort too long and we were out of practice. Simon retrieved our tent from the wagons that came lumbering behind, Philip was herded off to start digging the camp’s protective ditch, I squatted to lay a fire, and Boil went trotting away with an armload of long stakes to help lay the tall surrounding fence. He came back huge, perspiring, and disgusted. “Fourth got theirs up already.”
“We’ll get it tomorrow.” I blew on the little flame I’d coaxed on the kindling. “Anyone got a wineskin?”
“Not so fast; they need more men for the fence. You want to be the last camp up? Better second than last.”
Boil and I loped off, and we heaved stakes into holes as fast as they were dug, and cursed under our breaths at the surveyors who would rather stand and point at their maps than get their hands dirty. A mule kicked me, and by the time I was done hopping and cursing, I looked up and saw a bloom of campfires. Every contubernium had its tent and fire; every wagon had its dock; every mule had its picket. Legionaries trotted with their weapons, clerks with their scrolls, centurions with their tablets. A small and orderly city had gone up in less time than it took to seduce a reluctant woman—and it would fold back up into our packs and wagons tomorrow with no sign it had ever been there but a few fence holes and a scattering of manure.
Julius had a pot over the fire before the tent as I got back, and the others had hunkered down around it. I smelled mutton and hard wheat biscuits. “Want some?”
/> “Not if you’re cooking.” I ducked the ladle Julius threw at me. “I’ll take a biscuit and turn in. I was up all night last night with a weeping woman. God help me.”
“Maybe He’ll have to.” Simon gave me an odd look. “Cutting it close, aren’t you?”
“What?”
The others were snickering. “Never thought you had two,” Julius chortled.
“Two what?”
“No, three. You’re forgetting his redhead…”
More snickering.
“Go get bent,” I instructed them, and ducked inside the tent. And froze.
“Surprise,” said Sabina.
SABINA
When Sabina had perched herself on Vix’s rolled-up bedroll to wait for him, she’d resolved not to laugh. But one look at Vix’s expression as he ducked into the tent and she was lost. “Oh, Vix,” she giggled. “Your face.” She threw her head back and kept laughing.
“Wait here,” he said, and ducked out of the tent. Sabina saw his shadow looming against the fire outside over the other shadows that were his comrades. “You’re all dead,” she heard Vix snarl, and that sent her off again. She put her head down on her knee and laughed till tears came to her eyes, joining the torrent of snickers and hoots from outside.
“Dead,” Vix repeated, and banged back into the tent, his face now a dusky maroon. Sabina had gotten herself more or less under control, but as he glared down at her, she could feel her shoulders start to shake again.
Vix folded his arms across his chest. “How did you get in here?”