Hadrian's wall

PART TWO
XXIV

The barbarians had taken the riderless Roman horses, and so, just a mile from the spring, Valeria and Savia were freed of their gags and seated on their own mounts to enable better speed. Their wrists were tied to the saddle horns, and the reins attached by rope to other riders. The dead soldiers' horses and Clodius's steed followed in train behind, the Celt who had died draped across one saddle. There were eight surviving warriors, Valeria counted, seven of them raffish-looking men and the eighth, shockingly, a woman. Her waist-long hair was braided and tucked into her baldric to tame it in the night wind, while a yew bow and quiver of feathered arrows was slung across her back. The female had the same arrogant ease as the men, riding with confident expertise.

It was frightening, this perversion of nature. But fascinating, too.

Their chieftain commanded with a quiet surety different from the stiff formality of Marcus or the sternness of Galba. The barbarian didn't demand obedience so much as expect respect, and his ragged warriors gave it to him, even while joking about his choice of route or his eye for pretty hostages. They followed no obvious course, trotting along a track here and leaving it there, cutting across moonlit field and moor and woodland with casual certainty, all of Caledonia the color of bleached bone. Savia was mute with fear and clinging miserably to her jouncing saddle, while Valeria grieved silently for poor Clodius and desperately tried to puzzle out what had happened. What was this chieftain doing at the sacred spring?

Why had poor Rufus ridden up, only to be killed? Above all, where were they going, and what would they do with her when they got there?

They descended at dawn into the dimness of a wooded hollow to rest and water the horses. A tether tied the captive women to a tree. The barbarians looked curiously at their prisoners in the light as the Romans looked at them. The one called Luca was a compact, strongly muscled man with long hair and mustache in the Celtic manner, wearing nothing but trousers and cloak and seemingly as impervious to weather as a greased legionary tent. The barbarian's chest was bare, his face and arms smeared with charcoal to help hide him in the night. The woman wore similar trousers but also chain mail over a leather jerkin, her breasts slight and bound flat and her limbs long and sinewy, like the toughness of young willow. Despite the mannishness of her garb, she was blond and rather pretty, but the men treated her with wary distance.

"Brisa, give them some food and water," their leader commanded in their native tongue.

The woman nodded and went to the stream. The decision that their female member would tend the captives, not a male, seemed somewhat reassuring.

Savia wrinkled her nose as she ate some of the sharp cheese offered, but Valeria refused, her appetite gone. Both women did drink from the offered skin of water. Then they waited, apprehensive and desperate for some opportunity to escape. The warriors made no move to molest or help or even watch them; their initial curiosity satisfied, they now paid no more attention to their captives than to dogs.

The barbarian leader squatted alone by the stream, carefully washing his face and arms and apparently lost in thought. Valeria viewed him speculatively. She'd escaped from him once and was determined to do so again. Arden, the men had called him. He wore a sleeveless tunic that left free the powerful arms that had gripped Valeria, yet he too seemed oblivious to the dawn chill. It was interesting that he cleaned himself, contradicting her image of the northern barbarians as little more than unkempt cattle thieves. Maybe he was trying to wash his blood from his hands. No doubt he felt satisfaction at killing Clodius and capturing Valeria after his earlier failure. But how had he known she'd be at the spring? How did he know Galba?

Eventually the leader stood and strode to his prisoners with the stride of a man accustomed to covering many miles, then dropped into a squat before them. The water's transformation of his appearance was surprising. Washed clean of dirt and paint, the barbarian was actually rather handsome: unexpectedly so, like a hero among jackals. He was beardless in the Roman manner, though stubbled this morning. His long hair was tied behind him, his nose straight, his expression firm, his eyes that bright, disconcerting blue, his gaze bold, his manner calm.

Valeria hated him.

"We're going to sleep here a few hours before moving on," he told them in Latin.

"Good," she replied with more confidence than she really felt. "It will give time for the Petriana to catch you, and flog you, and hang you from that tree."

Her abductor looked up mildly at the limbs. "There'll be no alarm yet, lady. We'll be on our way again before the Petriana is much out of bed."

So he was overconfident. "You've condemned yourself by seizing a commander's wife and senator's daughter," she insisted. "The entire Sixth Victrix will come looking for me. They'll burn Caledonia to ashes before they give up."

He pretended to consider this. "Then maybe I should chop off your pretty head now, send it in a basket, and save them the trouble."

Savia moaned, but there was nothing in his manner to make Valeria take this threat seriously. If he wanted to kill them, they'd already be dead. "I have influence," she tried. "Let us go now, and I'll stop the pursuit so you can get away."

He laughed and put a hand to his ear in mockery. "This pursuit you keep talking about? I don't hear it!" He bent close. "You're my guarantee there'll be no pursuit, daughter of Rome, because if there is one, it will be your death warrant, not mine. You're hostage for our safety, and if the cavalry finds us, then you and your slave here will be the first to die. Understand? Pray that your new husband forgets about you."

Valeria looked at him, trying to mask her disquiet with an expression of contempt. She didn't believe for a moment that no rescue would come. And she didn't believe he'd kill her when it did. He wanted something from her, or he wouldn't have come again. For just that reason she had to get away.

"Do you understand what I'm saying?" he persisted.

"You murdered my friend, Clodius."

"I killed a Roman soldier in fair combat that he didn't have to seek. He was a fool the first time I met him, and had his throat marked in warning. Men who are fools with me a second time don't live to regret it."

She had no answer for that.

"We can't sleep on the dirt!" Savia protested instead.

Arden looked at her with interest. "Now here's a practical objection. And where would you sleep, slave?"

"This is a Roman lady! In a proper bed! Under a proper roof!"

"Why? Grass is as fine a bed as there is, in summer, and the sky the best roof. Rest easy. We'll not disturb you."

"It's too chilly to sleep!"

He grinned. "Cold enough to keep down the insects and the snakes."

"Savia, be quiet," Valeria muttered. "We'll cuddle together with our cloaks in the mud where his kind prefers to live."

"What do you mean to do with us?" Savia persisted.

The barbarian considered them solemnly. Then he smiled, his teeth as bright and clean as his scrubbed skin. He didn't display any of the ignorant squalor Valeria expected, and in fact had a rather annoying sense of self-satisfaction and apparent pride. Perhaps he was vain. Primitive people often were, she'd heard.

"For the lady here, I intend to take her home and teach her to ride, in the Celtic manner."

His meaning was unclear. "If you touch me, my ransom will be less."

"As for you," he said to Savia, "I intend to free you."

"Free me?"

"I don't like slaves, Roman or Celt. They're unhappy, and I don't like unhappy people. They're unnatural, because all other creatures run free. So when you're in my hills you'll be a slave no longer, woman."

Savia sidled closer to Valeria. "I'll not leave my mistress."

"Perhaps not. But it will be your choice, not hers."

The slave couldn't help asking it. "When?"

"Now." He stood. "You're still captive, but not a slave. You're tied up as a free woman under Celtic law, and thus are the equal of your mistress." He walked away.

Valeria watched him angrily. "He's very arrogant. Pay him no mind."

"I certainly won't." Yet Savia watched Arden go with some regret, and felt guilty at her own longings. "Being free under him is more frightening than being slave under you," she finally offered. "It's an empty promise he made."

"He's a brute and an animal and an ambushing murderer, whatever he says about fair combat," Valeria said. "The cavalry will come, you'll see, and all these terrible brigands will hang. If they sleep, we might slip these bonds and reach the horses-"

"I can't outride these barbarians!"

"You will, or you'll stay here to mop out their pigsties. Or worse." She glanced around. "Those cavalry mounts are closest and… oh!" She gave a little cry, staring at the nearest picketed horse.

"What?" Savia said, turning.

"Don't look!"

So of course the slave did. What she saw were four Roman heads, gaping and sightless, tied with twine and suspended from the four horns of the saddle. Whenever the horse shifted its feet, the heads rocked in unison, as if to give a mournful shake of warning.

By late morning they were moving again, riding ever farther from the Wall. Valeria had been unable to sleep and felt increasingly exhausted. Her body was sore from the kick she'd received, the long ride, and the hard ground. Her refusal of food had been a mistake. Yet no one offered her anything more or even bothered to look at her. She wasn't used to being ignored, and that annoyed her as well.

In the daylight she began to get a better sense of the barbarians' country. They rode a few fragments of old Roman roads, long abandoned after the retreat from Caledonia and recognizable principally for their straightness. Yet their general direction was more circuitous, as if to confuse both hostages and any pursuers of direction, so for the most part they followed the meandering cattle tracks and game trails that doubled as human pathways. There were no towns and few fences, the farmsteads scattered so widely that livestock grazed free. All the homes were Celtic in style, the squat round huts topped by conical thatched roofs, but they seemed meaner and poorer than the habitations south of the Wall: lower to the ground, stained by the smoke of peat, and with more rubbish in the side yards. Chickens roamed, dogs barked, naked children played in the doorways, and each habitation stank of smoke, cooked meat, hay, manure, and leather. Yet a few paces away were fields of grain, meadows of high green grass, and flocks of sheep and prancing ponies.

Their abductors never stopped. Maybe this Arden was more frightened of pursuit than he pretended. They rode into a snarl of hills, the ridges cutting off distant vision and any sense of progress, their gallop occasionally setting off an avalanche of sheep as they breasted a flock. On and on they cantered, even the Celts beginning to slump, and just as Valeria felt so dizzy, sick, and weak with hunger that she feared she might tumble from her saddle, they finally paused for evening. She was in a daze. Her home and her Marcus already seemed impossibly far away, the Wall lost in a blur of hard riding. The stabbing of Clodius was like an unreal nightmare. The country ahead looked steadily higher and more rugged, its farmsteads degenerating into grubby hovels and its fields giving way to raw moor. She was being swallowed by the wilderness.

Their camping place was by a stream in a grove of pine, brown needles forming a cushioning carpet. The horses were picketed once more, a fire was built, and the smell of cooked meat and porridge made Valeria's stomach twist with anxious longing. Brisa brought them cheese again, and this time she accepted it eagerly, gobbling like a wolf. A skin of some kind of liquid was offered, and she squeezed it to release her first taste of acrid, foamy beer. It was awful but she drank anyway, sensing the nutrition in its dark grain. Thoughts of escape had been replaced with sheer exhaustion.

Then the Celtic woman strung her longbow, notched an arrow, motioned for Valeria and Savia to get up, and pointed to her crotch and some bushes.

"You don't have to be crude." Valeria spoke for the first time in Celtic. "I understand your tongue."

The woman was instantly wary. "How does a Roman know the language of the free tribes? You've never been in our country."

"I've been learning from the Celts at Petrianis."

"Why? Are you a spy?"

"I wanted to understand your people."

"You learned from your slaves, didn't you?"

"My helpmates."

"Your captive dogs, whipped and shorn of pride. They are Celts no more." Brisa glanced at Savia. "Does this woman know our tongue?"

"Enough to answer you," Savia said.

She considered them. "I admit that it's a novelty to meet Roman girls less stupid than the donkeys that pull them about. I've never seen one who cares for anything but her own comforts."

The savage pretended to superiority! "If you'd rather, we can try your Latin," Valeria said to put her in her place.

She motioned them to move. "You can piss," she allowed, "but if you run, I'll kill you."

The women did their business and then went to the stream to wash as the barbarian leader had. The water was shockingly cold but also restorative, jerking Valeria from weary fog to harsh, all-too-vivid life. How grubby she already felt, just a day removed from her daily bath, her combs, and her table of paints! She mourned her imagined appearance, her hair unfixed, her clothes stained, her jewelry left behind in her reckless thirst for adventure. It wasn't comfort she craved, but simple decency. She must look as rustic as the Celtic woman sitting silently behind her… except in truth the woman didn't look all that plain but was strangely compelling in her warrior garb, a bright necklace of silver at her throat and bracelets at her wrists. A baldric and belt held a short sword, her mail had a sheen like raindrops on a window, and the laced boots that reached to her calves were of doeskin. Her cloak was a deep green, and she displayed the same animal grace as the man Arden.

"What are you doing here?" Valeria asked her bluntly.

The woman understood what she meant. "I'm Brisa, daughter of Quint and a warrior of the Attacotti tribe. No man has yet won me, so I ride with the men."

"But you're a woman."

"What of it? I can shoot straighter than any man here, and outrun them too. They know it, and fear and respect me for it. When my brother was killed, I took his armor and sword. We Celtic women aren't soft and stupid like you. We go where we please and do what we wish and lie with who we want to."

"Like animals."

"Like free women of choice. We fulfill nature's demands by openly lying with the best men, while you Romans commit your adultery with the worst. You boast of how superior you are, and then chain yourself with fear and custom and hypocrisy. I wanted to see this wall of yours, and now I've seen it and am not impressed. I could scale it in a heartbeat."

"And be arrested just as quickly."

Brisa snorted. "I haven't seen you Romans catch one of us yet."

"It isn't natural for a woman to dress like a man," Valeria insisted doggedly.

The Celt laughed. "I'm dressed for war and riding! What isn't natural is to dress without sense, like you do. Maybe those men over there, the ones dressed like me, are dressed like women! Have you considered that?"

This Celt was turning everything around! "How did you learn to shoot?"

"My father taught me, as my mother taught me weaving. I could teach you, if we decide not to kill you." It was a matter-of-fact offer, as if the precariousness of her future was obvious enough. "To shoot, at least. We'll see if you can hit anything."

Valeria eyed the bow, secretly intrigued. "I don't even know if I could draw it."

"You pull each day, and each day you can pull it a little farther." Brisa sprang up, enjoying this opportunity to boast. "Here, I'll show you." She pulled off a bracelet. "Take this and walk twenty paces back toward the pine where you were tied."

Valeria hesitated.

"Go on, I won't hurt you. But I might hurt your companion here if you don't do what I say." She nodded toward Savia.

Valeria took the circular bracelet and began to walk back to the tree.

"There! Stop and turn!"

She did so.

"Now, hold the bracelet out at arm's length…"

Valeria lifted. Before her arm had steadied, the Celt pulled and shot. A puff of wind kissed the captive's fingertips, and the shaft sang through the bracelet and hit the pine beyond. It was so sudden that the Roman heard the arrow hit wood before realizing what had happened.

She dropped the ring as if it were hot. "You could have killed me!"

Brisa walked over and scooped up her bracelet. "I didn't touch you, but I can put my arrow through any Roman's eye, so don't quarrel with me until I've taught you to do the same. If Arden lets you live." She shouldered her bow. "Which I suspect he'll do, from the way he looks at you. Come, the food smells ready. You need meat on those bones of yours if you're going to stay warm in the north."

The food and the fire were restorative, and despite her apprehension, Valeria felt a drowsy relief. The barbarians gathered around the flames afterward to sing and boast. None bothered to post a watch. No rescuers appeared. Instead, the captives had to hear their enemies crow, each in turn, about their prowess in the ambush. To these ragged people the mere deed was not enough, it seemed, but only took on true importance in the retelling. They were as vain as children. "The Romans understand our tongue, brothers," the woman told them. "Let's remind them of what they have seen."

Brisa boasted that shooting through the neck of the Celtic spy had been "like threading a bone needle in a lightless room." Luca recounted how he'd tripped the Roman tribune with a stick shoved out from the bushes. The warriors guffawed at the memory of Clodius's awkward sprawl. A Celt named Hool bragged that his second arrow at the Roman soldiers was notched and drawn before the first had even hit home. The stripling named Gurn claimed to have stolen all the Roman horses before their riders were dead.

Only the chieftain Arden stayed quiet, declining to retell how he'd killed the Roman tribune with a bold and desperate thrust. Instead he studied Valeria across the fire, as if speculating what to do with her. As the eating ended and the warriors rolled themselves up in their cloaks, swords alongside, he came around to sit by her. She stiffened warily.

"I saw what Brisa did with her arrow," he said quietly. "Don't be afraid. We're warriors, not thieves. You're a prize of war and will be kept safe."

"But there's no war."

"There's been a war ever since your husband burned our sacred grove. He united the tribes as no druid could have."

"That was because you attacked me before! The ambush, in the forest!"

"The druids had nothing to do with that."

"That's not what our spy told my Marcus."

"Told Marcus? Or told Galba?"

"They wanted to burn me in a wicker cage."

He smiled. "You know nothing of what's going on. But there are men in your cavalry who know the truth."

"Which men?"

He wouldn't answer.

She studied him curiously. He'd killed Clodius, true, but his bearing and words suggested he wasn't a simple savage. His look was thoughtful, his manner almost courtly, his bearing slightly Roman. "You don't have the beard or the mustache or the manners of a Celt," she said. "Your Latin is fluent and your swordsmanship trained. Who are you?"

"I'm of my people."

"No. You're something more."

"You seem very confident in your judgment."

"You don't conceal yourself as well as you think."

He smiled. "Roman aristocrats judge and rank people as surely as a Briton hound trails a badger."

"There, you see? You know too much about Roman aristocrats!"

He laughed. "You're my prisoner! I should be asking questions of you!"

"But you act as if you know all about me. It's I who am in your power, and who doesn't know her fate. Why have you taken me, and what are you going to do with me?"

He thought before answering, studying her features in the fire like a trophy long sought. "I'm a Caledonian of the Attacotti tribe," he said finally, "with a long bloodline among the tribes of the north. But yes, I know something of Rome." He raised an arm, revealing a tattoo. "I enlisted in your army."

"You're a deserter!"

"I'm a free man, come back to help my people remain free. I enlisted to see this Roman world of yours and learn enough to beat you. I'm a patriot, lady, fighting against the suffocations of your world."

His conviction was maddening. "I was wrong in my guess," she said. "You know nothing of Rome."

"It's you, pampered and highborn, who knows nothing. How much do you know about the commoners who groan to feed your kind?"

"I know more than you think! My father is a senator with feeling for the poor."

"Who sent his own daughter to the edge of the empire for enough coin to maintain his office. And so now you sit captive and cold, with a deserter and murderer and traitor like me, while he gives speeches and takes bribes a thousand miles away."

"That's not fair!"

"It's the morality of a poisoned empire."

"We brought the world peace!"

"By leaving it a wasteland."

"Yet you don't fear my husband's revenge."

"My fear is why you're alive. Your safety is our own. Our doom is yours."

Valeria drew her cloak around herself, pondering. It was odd being outdoors at night, the fire's warm fingers caressing the front of her, the night's cold teeth biting at her back. With no roof overhead, the dark emptiness yawed above like a pool she could fall into. "There's something more," she said with sudden certainty. "Some other reason you hate Rome and have made me captive."

He stood up. "I need to sleep now."

"But you haven't even told me your name yet."

"It's Arden. As you know."

"Yes, but what other name do you go by? What's the name of your clan?"

His response was so quiet she almost missed it. "I go by Arden Caratacus. Caratacus the patriot." He gave her a quick look and then stepped away.

Valeria watched him disappear into the shadows. Arden Caratacus: Galba's spy.