Back | Next
Contents

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Villa Lunae,

Province of Pannonia Superior

October 10th, 165 CE

People with swords . . . don’t look odd to me anymore, Artorius thought. Which is passing odd.

Josephus and his big German bodyguard—the man was six feet two, and outweighed Artorius as well, with not an ounce of fat—were joined by the five Americans and Sarukê for the . . . 

Ceremony, I suppose, he thought, inhaling the damp, almost-ocean smell of the nearby lake and the once-more familiar scent of warm horse. An open spot like this is the right setting for it.

There wasn’t much problem getting privacy, because at the end of the first week in October the vintage was at its peak or just a little past it. In the late afternoon most of the estate was hard at work, even some of the mansion’s domestic staff out cutting bunches of grapes with little curve-bladed knives or doing the dance-like crushing as they trod out the juice. Not to mention every set of hands . . . and feet . . . they could hire.

It wasn’t quite as intense as the grain harvest, but everyone was working hard and even Sextus Hirrius was out watching over things. Most of the Americans’ special projects were suspended until the grapes were in, except the plowing and sowing. And that took less labor this year, with the new plows and harrows and seed drills. Which let the vilicus throw more hands at the vines and cut the time needed, and that reduced the risk of damage from bad weather and meant they could plant all the grain at the optimum time.

Vines were a much smaller part of the villa’s operation than grain, but a much higher proportion of it was sold, rather than being consumed on-site.

They’d picked an out-of-the way spot, on the far end of the paddocks below the stables. That put them fairly near the lake. Trees rustled, their leaves turning dry, but the damp breeze was still comfortable; the endless whisper of wind in the reedbeds was a constant. Bees murmured, and overhead a wedge of geese were heading south, their honking cries a faint lonely sound. Not far away was the field where Jeremey had sown the corn in late June; it stood in neat rows more than man high, and the leaves and the tassels atop the stalks and at the tops of the ears were starting to turn dry, making a papery rustle as they moved. It looked like their gamble on that would pay off, since they could probably expect another thirty days of frost-free weather.

Six acres this year, maybe three, four hundred next time ’round, with four times the yield. And now Sextus wants to plant corn and sunflowers and the rest on all his estates. So will the neighbors, when they hear he’s on board and see the results.

Josephus stepped forward, put a hand on Sarukê’s shoulder and said:

“I release you to a new patron, Sarukê dhugatêr Arsaliôn, one who is friend, partner and ally to me as well. You have served me well and bravely; let no blame at this parting attach to you, as all present may witness. As recognition, I give you this gift in farewell.”

This gift was a bridle and bit in the new style, done with dark tooled leather and a few silver studs.

“I thank for gracious leave, lord,” Sarukê said in her turn as she took it and then hung it from the fence to one side. “You good lord, honorable. Save my life, free me from slavery. I no forget.”

That ended his part of the formalities; he and Kunjamunduz stepped back. Sarukê turned and faced Artorius; she was in her native dress, but the fanciest version of it she had, crimson jacket embroidered with running wolves and stooping hawks, baggy blue pants, polished soft boots secured with silver-buckled straps. And every trinket she’d managed to acquire, including gold bracelets with garnets and sapphires and a necklace of coral beads; that was a way of saving as much as swank, compact wealth that could be turned into coin at need.

Her strong-boned beaky face was grave as she drew her long, ring-hilted sword and knelt, offering the burnished, pattern-welded steel across her palms.

“Lord Artorius, take this sword mine. With steel and blood I serve you, to death. You enemies, mine, you friends, mine. For you and yours I kill, I die.”

This part of the ceremony was a mix of Roman and her people’s.

“I accept your sword, Sarukê daughter of Arsaliôn. Carry it in my service. As you keep faith with me, so I shall with you, unto death, yours or mine. I will stand by you in any fight”—under Roman custom, that included a patron seeing to a client’s needs in a lawsuit, but he didn’t think that was exactly what she had in mind—“and avenge your blood if you fall.”

She rose, and he slid the long straight blade into the scabbard at her side and clapped both hands on her shoulders for a moment; they were springy-resilient under his fingers.

“Take then these gifts of me.”

That was a dagger of fine Noric steel in a tooled sheath with golden studs, a knee-high stoppered amphora of the Villa Lunae’s finest sweet wine, and a halter—attached to a leading rein, and on the muzzle of a fifteen-hand black mare with a white star and fetlock. Sarukê smiled as she bent and touched the handles of the amphora, more broadly as she slid the dagger out of its sheath for a second and tested the edge with a thumb before she tucked it in her sword belt, and most of all for the horse, stroking its neck and breathing into its nostrils and feeding it dried apricots from a newly installed pocket.

The last part was wholly Sarmatian, and involved thrusting her long sword into the earth and then making a libation to it, a small fire made smokey with hemp, passing hands and steel through it, salt and a little blood from both of them mingled in a cup of milk before they drank from it.

Sarukê said something in her own liquid, archaic North Iranian tongue, repeating it as she faced the four quarters with hands and arms upraised, then clapped her hands together and bowed to Artorius with palms pressed together and fingers under her chin in a gesture that looked oddly Hindu.

No, Artorius thought, with an eerie thrill.

It’s Aryan, original vintage, and survived in India all those thousands of years. And on the steppes where they came from in the first place, evidently; she’s descended from the ones who stayed there when the others went south and ended up in the Punjab and became something different.

Then she grinned, as she shook hands with the four younger Americans.

“Now we serve same lord,” she said. “Josephus good man. Brave, honest, clever yet no cheat. But I better serve warrior.”

Seriously, she added to him: “But you need more bodyguards, for you and yours. One not enough, you travel outside cities, carry wealth.”

He nodded back at her. They hadn’t had any blood trouble yet . . . but that was probably because they hadn’t traveled without enough people visibly ready for it.

“I will think seriously of that, Sarukê.”

Hmmm. And she probably has the connections to get them for us.

* * *

Filipa Chang watched the ring of dancers around the fire from a distance, herself leaning against trussed hay in the darkness. The light of the flames caught the vine leaves woven in the dancers’ hair, accenting the autumnal colors of red and gold. A statue of Venus with gilt hair and pale skin and opal eyes presided over the merriment from a plinth, and flowers and grapes lay before it in offering.

The noise was getting louder and louder. At the Vinalia, you drank your wine neat, and dozens were already lying in various nooks and crannies around the pars rustica and within it, not necessarily alone but often unconscious or nearly. This wasn’t quite the Saturnalia, but it did allow a degree of license—it was watched over by wild Bacchus and by Venus Obsequens, Venus the Indulgent.

The smell of roast meat—sheep, pigs, and two large oxen—lingered on the air with the tang of the fire. The feast had had the workers loudly blessing the generosity of Sextus Hirrius Trogus, even when they were drunk enough to be careless of what they said about their master. It was one of the rare occasions at which they could eat their fill of meat, and have plenty of other provender too, and drink to repletion, with the two main harvests of the year safely in and the plowing going fast.

Though since they raised the beasts themselves, how generous is it to let them eat some of what they produced?

The last of the vines had given up their fruit to the feet of the treaders yesterday, though after they’d stomped there was a lever press to get the rest of the juice out and that was not an innovation of the newcomers.

Filipa chuckled a little to herself; the Prof and Paula and Mark and even small-town Jeremey had thought the last bunches were spoiled. In a sense they were, but it was noble rot—Botrytis cinerea. That required just the right combination of rain and sun, humidity and timing on the picking, but if you got it just right the fungus concentrated the sugars to make the wine strong and sweet . . . and as far as her nonexpert but Californian-from-a-family-of-wine-fanciers Bay Area eye could see, they had.

“Some of this you would like?”

Filipa looked up, smiling; Sarukê had the jug she’d gotten as part of the . . . 

Weird ceremony, Filipa thought, nodding with a smile.

 . . . in the crook of her arm.

The Sarmatian sank down beside her, sitting cross-legged, took it in an expert grip with one finger through the handle and the body over her forearm, and drank deeply. Filipa took it next and let a mouthful trickle between her lips. This was a Botrytised wine, sure enough, probably last year’s vintage.

“Do your people have festivals like this?” she asked.

“Not for pick grapes—though we drink Roman wine, yes, much, when can get it! Or fermented mare’s milk, or millet beer, and we sit in a tent around fire and drink smoke of sacred hemp. But festivals yes, dance, drink, feast. At four turnings of the year, and for victories, or birthdays, or coming of chief or birth of heir. And we wail at funerals, but then dance and drink to help spirit make way for to—”

She pointed up at the stars and bright moon, then took the jug back, and sipped this time.

“Or before raid. I that see in here, in head, the last. My—”

She used a word in her own language, then frowned for a moment and translated it into Latin:

“Sister of sword? Lover, friend, comrade. She with me. We pledge on swords then to marry—”

“Each other?” Filipa said, slightly surprised; that sounded more than a bit modern for the year 165 CE.

Of course, Sarmatians may be completely different. Nobody knows . . . knew, uptime . . . all that much about them. Our only written sources were from people who hated and feared and despised them.

Sarukê looked at her, puzzled too.

“No, how so? To marry same man, so we together always, our children sisters, brothers. We raid for dowry first; need many horses for marriage of worth, other things.”

A sigh and another drink, and she leaned back against the truss and stared upward too.

“But she die by my side, I hit on head with sling-bullet, dead too if not helmet. Now exile, here. Never home more, no see sea of grass, no ride forever beneath high holy heaven.”

“I’m an exile too,” Filipa said. “I also left a friend, a lover—she died. I can never return.”

It seemed very natural when they kissed. After a few moments more, Filipa chuckled and said, holding the other’s wrist:

“That would be nice, but not here. I have a perfectly good bedroom.”

Sarukê rose on an elbow and looked at her. “You invite me to your bed, beneath tent . . . that is, say you, roof?”

Evidently that meant more than a—literal—roll in the hay to a Sarmatian. Filipa decided she didn’t care about that, rose, and extended a hand. Sarukê came to her feet with a lithe movement that didn’t use her hands . . . though she hooked her finger back through one of the handles of the jug, first.

The festival went on into the night. Filipa bowed before the smile of Venus as they passed with fingers entwined.

* * *

“That was quite a blowout,” Artorius said.

Mark belched slightly and patted his stomach. “Serious puppy-fed python syndrome,” he said, smiling a little foolishly.

The strong sweet wine that was the Villa Lunae’s specialty was to his taste; he said it reminded him of Manischewitz, but much better. He went on:

“Man, the Romans take to your Texan BBQ sauce like Russians getting their first taste of vodka, though, don’t they?”

“Weeping as they munched, but that didn’t stop them,” Paula noted.

“We’ve got enough tomatoes and chilies once we extract the seeds,” Artorius said. “I’m just glad they yielded so well. Good work, Jeremey.”

He looked around the lamplit second-story corridor overlooking the peristyle. They’d put all the Americans along this stretch here: it was guest rooms, and probably not used much before they arrived. He’d gotten the distinct impression that Lady Julia was a bit infra dig by the local gentry’s standards because of her husband’s rackety life and sordid dead-broke death, though her brother was invited around ceaselessly.

Not that we have anything to complain about.

The plastered walls were painted in Pompeiian-red upright rectangles bordered in black, with gold-colored wreaths beneath the ceiling and trompe d’oeil engaged columns with occasional painted putti peering out from behind them. The floor was a type of white-and-pink marble he recognized from visits to Vienna back when he was stationed in Europe and Mary and he felt a need to take in some culture.

They each had a suite—his was four rooms—and the house staff put up with their eccentricities, including their reluctance to use chamber pots even when it was a long chilly walk late at night to the continuous-flow latrines. Oddly, the Romans had different and gender-specific shapes and names for the ceramic utensils.

The air was slightly fruity from the alcohol lamps, with woodsmoke and cooking smells from the big bash outside. And . . . 

“Where’s Fil?” he said, concerned. “The party was getting a bit wild went we left.”

Like, with naked guys playing Bacchus surrounded by naked nymphs in masks and more guys with goat hair on their legs pretending to be satyrs playing flutes and things getting very NSFW. Naked except for vine wreaths and bunches of grapes. And the free tenants were just as enthusiastic as the field hands. I think this is a real let-your-hair-down occasion, no questions asked afterward. Including nine months afterward for most people. I noticed the ladies Claudia and Julia only made a brief appearance at the beginning to offer to Venus.

Jeremey chuckled—almost snickered.

“I’m not the only one locally hooked up anymore,” he said, and pointed a finger down the hall toward the stairs, where Filipa’s rooms were first on the right. “She retired early—holding hands with a certain Sarmatian. Who she told us awhile ago reminded her of Sandahl Bergman in Conan the Barbarian, by the way.”

Ah, I saw that once on Amazon Prime, back in the early ’20s, before I left the service, Artorius thought, after searching his memory.

It had been one of those evenings you spent in a warehouse on an air base, the whole company waiting to deploy and nothing better to do than watch old movies on a laptop if you couldn’t sleep, after you’d field-stripped and cleaned everything one last time.

Quite a fox . . . back in Dad’s salad days . . . and come to think of it Sarukê does look a lot like her. Not quite so tall and willowy, though.

“No accounting for tastes,” the young man from Wisconsin said.

“Like you’d turn her down if it was on offer, Jem,” Mark said. “Envy, much, do I.”

“I wouldn’t dare turn her down! Have you seen her shooting geese on the wing with that bow?”

“I bet Fil doesn’t have to hand out any jewelry to get some,” Paula said snidely. “And on that note, goodnight all.”

Artorius laughed with the rest, saw that everyone was safely ensconced for the night—there were a pair of slurred giggles and a call of: Hello, man-bull! and Have some of this, O stallion! from Jeremey’s rooms when he opened the door—and turned to his suite.

It was all a little like being in an undergrad dorm.

Except that I’m the dorm monitor.

He reached out a hand toward the door to his rooms. That portal was a handsome slab of worked beechwood with inlays, like most Roman doors turning on a pivot pole set into sockets above and below rather than on hinges . . . they had hinges, they usually just didn’t use them for doors inside houses, for some reason.

And it was slightly ajar.

And I left strict instructions the door’s to be kept shut and nobody’s to enter unless I’m there . . . and the ordinary staff here think I’m a magician and they wouldn’t dare disobey.

According to Paula they thought he was a good magician, come to bless and protect them, but it was still major mojo.

A chill cut through the glow of the BBQ and wine. He’d taken to wearing the sword Fuchs had sent back with them, to get accustomed to it. Now he let the cloak slide off his shoulders, wound the dense wool length around his left arm and drew the twenty-inch blade—which was good twenty-first-century steel. Then, very carefully, he raised one foot and nudged the portal open.

A figure in a plain brown tunic dropped down into it—obviously he’d been braced between the stone lintel and the ceiling. Equally obviously expecting to land on Artorius heels-first as he came through.

Artorius lunged; there was a knife in the man’s hand. He was cursing the meal and the wine all the way, and felt as if he was wading through glue.

The . . . the word assassin flashed through his mind . . . didn’t waste any time going huh? and wondering where his target was. Definitely a fighting man’s reflexes.

He let the fall drive him into a squat, and dove forward into the room, rolling three times, turning and bouncing back at the man he wanted to kill like a rubber ball.

Artorius had just enough time to draw back into his own defensive crouch; it had been years since anyone made an up-close and personal attempt to kill him, and it was just as unpleasant as he remembered. He skipped back and cut at the man’s knife arm at the same time, the honed edge just kissing the skin above the wrist, as the seven-inch dagger came uncomfortably close to his stomach.

Keep him at a distance, I’ve got the longer blade, drifted through his mind; not really a conscious thought, since he was already doing that.

Glad it’s a short sword. Too cramped here for anything longer. And the winner of a knife fight goes to hospital . . . 

The lunge-and-twist left them both in the corridor, with the assassin’s back to the staircase a good distance behind him. Artorius raised his voice and shouted, only remembering to use Latin at the last instant:

Bandit! Armed bandit, bring weapons, quickly!

Another lunge. The man was young, beard still patchy, but nearly as tall as he was, long armed, and rattlesnake quick. A flurry, a twist and the knife went past him—slicing into his tunic and scoring his left side with what felt like a line of ice. He wasn’t in position to stab or cut back, but he clamped his left arm down to hold the assassin’s right immobilized for a moment. In the same instant he hammered the beech-and-brass ball pommel of the short sword down on the other man’s shoulder with vicious strength and tried for a knee to the crotch at the same time.

The man was used to dirty fighting, youth or not, and blocked with a twist so that the knee hit the inside of his thigh instead of its target. But he grunted with pain at the downward strike despite the muscle that cushioned his bones. Roman infantry swords were short, but they weren’t light at all. He hadn’t been able to make the stroke very long, but there was weight behind it, and desperate strength.

The young man backed rapidly as Artorius shouted again and went back into stance, ignoring the hot trickle of blood down his side.

If he doesn’t kill me right away, I win when help arrives.

The young man hesitated, snarled anger, spat a curse in a language Artorius didn’t recognize, something like skitiz, whipped around and ran full tilt with his injured arm clutched against his side.

Didn’t drop the knife, though, dammit!

“He runs! Be careful! Take him alive!” he yelled aloud.

Because I want to ask him some questions, went though his mind, more than half a snarl as he put his hand against the cut. Not too deep . . . 

The last door before the stairs opened before the assassin reached them. They opened inward; what shot out was a long white leg, at shin height. The man yelled, slashed desperately, and went flying forward as he tripped, tumbling downward into the stairwell in a half-controlled fall.

Sarukê burst out of the door with her shield in one hand, her long double-edged sword in the other. And nothing else on her athletic frame but a sheen of sweat, some scars, curvilinear tattoos, and a pair of strategically placed hickies. She lunged after the fleeing man, and Artorius shouted again as he followed:

“Alive! I want him alive!”

He was on her heels as she went down the stairs, vaguely conscious of some of the others following him—Filipa, wrapped in a blanket and with a reversed candlestick in her hand as an improvised mace, and Jeremey behind her, in his ragged Fruit of the Loom underwear and a plausible replica Louisville Slugger baseball bat in one hand. He’d been teaching some of the villa folk the game in his spare time, being an ex-Little Leaguer and Red Sox fan.

A shouting brabble came from the courtyard below. When they ran out, a crowd of servants and field hands were struggling with what couldn’t be seen well by torchlight but was probably the fugitive. A shout, a man staggering back clutching a cut arm, and half a dozen of them had him, one holding him by his long, braided hair, a pair on each arm, and one with commendable presence of mind kneeling and hugging the man’s knees. The sixth was punching the man enthusiastically.

“Good,” Artorius panted, looking at the ones who’d thrown themselves on an armed killer because he told them to do it and memorizing faces. “Thanks, I won’t forget this. All right, enough, don’t kill him!”

Sarukê had a light cut on her left leg that was dripping, more slowly than his side. She grinned at him:

“We shed blood together, fight against same foe, lord,” she said, which apparently meant something special to her. “And I tell you twice, need more guards.”

“You’re right,” Artorius replied shortly. “You’re in charge of that. Get five, good ones.”

“Tomorrow, we talk it.”

The young captive’s face was contorting, as if in a rictus of agony. Then he opened his mouth . . . 

And his severed tongue fell out, bitten through at the base. A gush of blood followed as the slaves dropped him in swearing amazement and disgust. He choked out something unintelligible—probably to anyone who knew his language, too—and went to his knees, then his face, coughed in spasm a few times, and went limp.

Sarukê bent over him for an instant, then nodded.

“German,” she said. “Marcomanni or Quadi—” Her sword tip prodded the knot of hair on the side of his head. “This new, but real. And I know some words—he say bad-bad thing about our mothers. And last word, that their god. Wōdinaz. God of . . . ”

She paused for thought, frowning.

“God of fighters. God of good warrior death, leads warrior dead to halls of Gods. Man dumb-dung-head, but brave. No talk now!”

More people were arriving; a shocked-looking Sextus Trogus still carrying a wine cup with a wreath askew on his head, Josephus and his German bodyguard, a growing crowd.

Artorius sat on a bench, incongruously conscious of the scent of the last roses from the bushes around it, mingled with blood and his own sweat. That prompted an order of his own.

The results arrived at the same time as Sextus’ plump Greek doctor, who examined the cut in Artorius side.

“This needs stitches, Domine,” he said briskly.

A glance at the slave nursing a cut arm. “So does that.”

And at Sarukê: “She doesn’t, just a bandage.”

He began to extract things from a bag he’d obviously snatched up, kept ready for emergencies. One of the slaves had fetched what Artorius called for, in the form of a large jug. The doctor looked at it and sniffed.

“You may have a drink, Domine, but I have poppy syrup for the pain.”

“This isn’t for the pain,” Artorius said, as the man produced a pair of tweezers to pluck fragments of cloth out of the wound on his side.

“It causes pain,” he said, putting a hand on the doctor’s wrist.

In fact, it would be like having the raw flesh bathed in fire.

“But it also prevents infection. Pour some into a bowl, wash your hands, instruments and the catgut for the stiches in it, soak some cloth in it and use that to wipe out the wounds first. Then apply more when you bandage.”

He looked at Sarukê and the injured man. “For you, too. It makes cuts heal cleanly. Don’t argue, Doctor, just do it—I’m not in the mood. Yes, the tweezers too!”

* * *

Next morning, Artorius could tell the vilicus was both angry and frightened as he talked to the master’s mysterious . . . and now injured . . . guest. He also found the presence of the armed and mailed Sarukê standing behind the stranger’s chair a bit intimidating, from the glances he cast that way.

He’s made a good thing out of our being here and he’s afraid of losing that, too, Artorius thought. Let’s put him at ease, a bit. It really isn’t his fault.

You got angry after a fright and fight like that, no way around it, especially if you got hurt—and no amount of superwine would have prevented an agonizing death if the blade had been a few inches further right and gone into his gut. The antibiotics might have.

But it was important not to take the anger out on anyone who didn’t deserve it. People who did that got bad reputations and less honesty and cooperation from everyone around them, often at times they badly needed both.

One of the cases of virtue being its own reward, literally.

“My apologies—” the estate manager began.

Artorius waved a hand. He didn’t particularly like the man, he was a bit more free with the whip than was necessary, but he was intelligent and observant.

“No need. Sit. There’s wine and water in the jug, have some if you want. Just tell me the facts.”

The small shrewd eyes blinked a little, and the man sat on the stool on the other side of the stone-topped table; they were in a medium-sized room off the ground floor of the pars urbana’s outer court. Artorius had been using it as an office and there were bookshelves, and diagrams pinned up on boards attached to the walls. Out of the window Artorius could see housemaids on their knees scrubbing at the place the young Marcomanni had died, trying to get the bloodstains out, and a couple of gardeners gossiping animatedly as they raked up leaves at the steady but slow pace most nonurgent work here went by.

The room was warm on a chilly day, and only a slight haze gathered under the ceiling from the brazier glowing with fine charcoal in a corner, and a faint indefinable smell of scorched bronze from it. That was one reason they made a lot of charcoal here; an open wood fire would have turned this into a gas chamber.

Sarukê’s scent of oiled mail, leather and horse sweat was considerably stronger than the smell of the charcoal burning, though she’d adopted Roman habits on bathing. What Sarmatians probably smelled like on their native ground was best left to the imagination. Especially when it was too cold to jump into streams and rivers.

The coals weren’t why the vilicus was sweating, though.

Blame runs downhill, and he’s worried.

“I hired them both, lord,” the man said in a neutral tone. “They claimed to be poor countrymen looking for work, by the names of Tinkomāros and Katurīx. Grand names for vagabonds, and they looked better fed than most, but they were strong and willing to work and we don’t ask questions at harvest times. They did talk Gaulish—I can follow it myself, and speak it for simple things. How was I to know they were Germanii?”

“There were Gauls across the Danube before the Germanii came there,” Artorius said. “As there were here on the southern shore before Rome came.”

Gauls who conquered the previous inhabitants, and so it goes. As the old saying runs, all title deeds are written in blood; the sole difference between one place and another is how long it’s had to dry.

The Marcomanni leader making trouble there was called Ballomar, which was a Gallic name too—meaning Mighty Arm. They and the Quadi had invaded and settled in the lands of the Celtic-speaking Boii up north a long time ago. That was the tribal name which was the source for “Bohemia”; the Germanic conquerors had mostly though not completely absorbed the Celts by now, but obviously the influence hadn’t been all one way.

“They kept close to themselves, brothers they said, and from their looks they were, but they worked well enough. The older one was gone by the time I was told of the attack last night. And he stole a good horse, and one of the new saddles!”

“Nothing you could have done,” Artorius said, with a shrug . . . and a wince at the way that pulled at the stitched wound.

So far, no complications, which spares our supply of antibiotics.

There wasn’t much more the man could tell. When he was gone, Artorius looked at Sarukê.

“How long?” he said.

“Day, night and quarter day to Carnuntum, lord,” she said cheerfully, walking around to his front. “Then I go to ludus, find out things, ask around who needs work. Have friends there.”

A ludus was a gladiatorial school, sort of an instructional academy-cum-spa-prison-camp for the damned; Carnuntum was the provincial capital, southeast of Vindobona on the great river and more than twice its size. It had a ludus, and an arena that could seat fifteen thousand, most of the free adults in town. Fights were a regular feature there, usually the home team against those touring the provinces.

Not every gladiatorial combat ended in a death, since that added to the price, but enough did or left men maimed that it wasn’t a healthy profession. Most but oddly enough not all were slaves, though he wouldn’t have wanted to meet the volunteers in a dark alley. Their oath of initiation included:

I agree to be burned, to be bound, to be beaten, and to be killed by the sword.

“Still know some there.”

He wasn’t surprised that she did; there were certain trades that you could only really talk over with people who’d been through the same mill. He’d have thought fighting in the arena was one. Even more than soldiering, in a way.

“Get five men?” she said. “Take, oh, four days, maybe six. Then ride back here, not so fast as I go. Take horses and food, but for gear, weapons, should buy all stuff there. More and better, cheaper.”

Then she added in a warning tone: “Get good men, need pay good.”

Artorius nodded again. “Filipa will go with you. I will not part . . . sword-sisters, is that your word? Not without real need.”

The Sarmatian smiled at that; for itself, and because it was a respectful acknowledgment of their relationship, which pleased her even more.

It wasn’t that out of line here. Romans had their own prejudices about sex and what people of various types did in bed. In spades, and unlike his native century the majority were utterly unbothered about who they offended with them. They were just weirdly, wildly different prejudices than those a Westerner from the 2030s would be personally acquainted with.

For example, here and now pederasty was OK, between grown man and adolescent youth, but sex between men who were the same age and social equals was a degrading perversion for at least half of those involved. You had to be careful about your unconscious assumptions and think about things if you hadn’t been raised here.

The past is another country, and they do things differently here. Think lest things rise up and bite you on the ass, he thought. For example part deux, most Romans wouldn’t be strongly morally disapproving of her and Filipa being lovers. Some would find it funny, others repulsive. Mostly they just wouldn’t take it seriously or give it much respect, because it’s two women so it can’t be important. She’s glad I do.

“Our banker there knows Filipa’s name and she’ll have a letter authorizing her to draw on our account, so you won’t be short on funds. Get it done fast, but done well—you understand? Good fighters, but reliable ones, that’s just as important.”

“Yes, lord. Not many gladiator like arena. Them do are—”

She made a brief gesture that involved tapping the knuckles of both hands on her temples rapidly and rolling her eyes upward and sticking her tongue out of the corner of her mouth; it self-evidently meant complete loons or barking mad.

“Get rudus, become rudiarii”—a rudus was a wooden sword given as a symbol of freedom to those who survived the arena—“what do, get food? Some sit down, drink until they dead ones, maybe cut wrists, jump in river from bad dream. But guard work, yes, for others not—”

She made that gesture again.

“I lucky—Lord Josephus give me home. We treat well, give honor, pay well, kick ass sometimes, work pretty good. They know me. Victories I have, some trust, some . . . respect. Tell I you is good lord, strong man who made knife stabber to run, worth respect, they believe I.”

“They won’t have jobs already?” he asked.

Carnuntum was bigger than Vindobona, but it wasn’t large enough to have all that many ex-professional gladiators. On the other hand, any gladiator who lived uncrippled long enough to get the wooden sword was going to be tough for certain and probably smart and assuredly very good with weapons and most certainly have steady nerves.

She gestured out the window at the turning leaves. “Winter, bad time—few merchant travel. Not so many need guard, all things slllllooooww,” she said, drawing the word out dolorously. “Some hungry by spring. Get work through winter, they want it. How much I say?”

“Six sestertii a day, plus food, gear and a place to sleep, for good service and obedience,” Artorius said.

That was about what a worker in a migrant harvest gang got, very good wages indeed for steady long-term employment.

“Guaranteed until . . . hmmm. Until at least a year and six months. Then we’ll see. In any case, they may keep the gear they get when they leave, and a month’s bonus if I’m satisfied.”

Her teeth showed white in her tanned face. “With that, no trouble, lord! Get four certain, five maybe.”

She departed in a clink of mail, looking cheerful; this was a promotion for her, too.

And until she and Fil get back with the hired blades, we’re all going to be very, very careful, and I’m going to step up the combatives training no matter how much Mark and Paula bitch and moan. I don’t know where the brother of that youngster with the knife has gone. Whatever he’s doing, it won’t be with love toward us in his heart.


Back | Next
Framed