Back of the Envelope

The Rest of the Story: The whole of Fire can be found on my Writings page in PDF format, while the portion of the story that's been published on this blog so far is on this page.

Wondering what happened to Lucia? Well, you're about to find out.

---

Chapter 14
Runaway

She pushed the ragged blanket lower, trying to cover her overlong legs. That feeble effort only left her exposed elsewhere, and her tossing and turning only made her awkward body more miserable. The steady pattering of the rain nearby reminded her to be grateful for what she did have, a little shelter at the entrance to some Patrician’s townhouse. She considered the damp stone beneath a small enough price for a roof overhead. The household slaves would have chased her off by now if the rain had not made their vigil lax. It drove away other people, too, men with dark thoughts on their minds. She had chosen her shelter with more care since she had awoken to find that hairy man stroking her arm. His gap-toothed smile had vanished when he saw that she was awake, and he had fled as if from a demon. She hoped he was still running.

More than anything, she wanted to go home, but it was the one place she could not go. She did not think she could explain what had happened in a way that would convince anyone. Marjori would never believe such nonsense. Marcus Principius neither tolerated lies from his slaves nor trusted them to tell the truth. As for Avla... if the guards had spoken truly, then Avla wanted Jaelin returned, and as long as the slave girl could still talk, the guards would not be out-of-line if they made her a little more pliable. She thought she must have done something magical in order to escape, as the guards had strangely lost interest in her. They had not noticed when she fled.

Lucia remembered seeing Jaelin die, but somehow she was Jaelin now. When she tried to remember what had happened, she could recall nothing more than her momentary envy of Jaelin’s lost life. Lucia had wanted her anonymity, her life removed from concerns of politics and magic and Domini, her maturity and worldly knowledge, even her exotic beauty. Then, Lucia had changed. Her body had become Jaelin’s, stretching and shifting to be older, stronger, inconveniently taller. She had Jaelin’s features, her freckled face and red hair. Even her voice had changed, though it still didn’t sound like Jaelin’s to her ear. Inside, she was still Lucia.

Unless she really was Jaelin, and her belief that she had once been Lucia was mere fantasy. She shied away from the fearful thought of madness.

The envy seemed silly now. Jaelin was a slave; how could Lucia have forgotten what that meant? Slaves had no rights, and Lucia’s apparent death would fall on her slave girl’s head. Now they were searching for Jaelin, and since Lucia had no idea how to become Lucia again, that meant they were searching for her.

Her stomach growled, reminding her that she had not eaten anything since the apple she had stolen this morning. Even that had been a feast compared to the discarded scraps on which she had survived for the three days previous. She did her best to ignore the hollow pain in her belly, the cold and damp of this evening, and the aches that came from sleeping on hard ground for the last ten nights. She lacked even the single coin to pay for entry to the public baths, and her body itched with the resulting dirt. Drawing herself into a tight ball, she blinked the tears from her eyes and wished for sleep so she could forget these things for a few hours. Her fear of the dreams kept her aware for a long while, however.



Struggling to wake from a dream where she watched her own body, her real body, writhe as fire consumed it, Lucia opened her eyes. For a moment, only dim grey light filled her vision, and heaviness suffused her whole body so she couldn’t move. She opened her mouth to cry out, but only a small whimper came. Fighting, struggling, she managed to get her finger to move, then her hand, then her arm. She pushed herself to a sitting position, her heart racing and her breath coming in short gasps. Real, physical terror had replaced the dream terror of a moment ago. She searched for the source of her distress, and finding none, she realized that her body was behaving normally now. It ached, itched, felt cold and sore, but none of that differed from when she had fallen asleep. The groggy head and blurry vision completed her morning routine. Did what had just happened have something to do with magic? The thought that someone had placed a spell on her frightened her less than the idea that she had done it to herself by wearing someone else’s body. Maybe, no, surely, it had only come from being only half-awake.

Though the rain had stopped, dampness darkened every surface in the dim light of dawn. Lucia shivered in the chill of a morning even colder than the night. The rain had washed out the normal city smells of garbage and food and smoke, of men and animals and their waste, scents she would hardly have noticed had they not been diminished. She saw no one in the narrow street except for a slave boy on some early errand. Although he glanced at her as he jumped over a large puddle, he did not slow, in too much of a hurry to be bothered with the problems of some strange girl.

The unnerving experience of a few moments ago renewed her determination to find her quarry today. It could not be that difficult. Even though she still hesitated to approach him in some public place, Lucia had no intention of losing him again for fear of being caught. She draped the dirty blanket around her shoulders like a shawl as she got unsteadily to her bare feet. They hurt with cuts and bruises which marked her bare feet and legs all the way up to the knees her tunic failed to cover. It might have once fit Lucia perfectly, but it did not fit Jaelin well at all, who was not only taller but also older and more developed. She wished she could have found a tunic that fit better. The blanket shawl at least hid some of the places where it had ripped. For once, she did not want a mirror; she had a good enough idea of what she must look like. Once moving, Jaelin’s long legs carried her faster than Lucia’s would have. It suited her to walk quickly, since her legs didn’t feel as awkward when she hurried, but it exacerbated the pain in her feet and made it even more difficult to avoid the filth and shards which littered the road. Her cut and dirty feet demonstrated how not even the raised stepping stones made the streets of Novaro safe to travel barefoot. She felt exposed, even all alone in the early morning city. Especially when alone. She walked even more rapidly, certain that faster had to be safer.

She did not know where her quarry lived now, since the fire had scattered the entire household. Lucia knew that he had not joined her parents in the Imperial palace, and that he had an apartment somewhere which he had tried to keep secret from her parents. Whether he was now staying there all the time or not, he probably still went there on occasion. Lucia just had to find it. She had followed him the other day, almost to where she thought his apartment must be hidden. Lucia might have approached him publicly if the others hadn’t been following him too. The intentness which had radiated from them had told her that they were not just walking behind him. Though she didn’t know them, they might have recognized Jaelin, so she had kept her distance. Lucia had hoped that she could approach her quarry after his tail had grown tired of the chase, but when he had lost them, he had lost her as well.

Lucia reached the point where he had disappeared last time, then stopped since she had nothing else to go on. No people shared this narrow street with her this morning. She looked around, half-hoping he would appear, and when that failed, she searched for places into which he might have vanished. The whole area had an air of disrepute. Several ungainly tenement buildings supported one another, while a few warehouses clustered near a larger street at the end of the block. None of the buildings were short, and the protruding upper stories threatened to cave in. A fountain splashing tepid water into its basin was the sole public structure around here. Why would he choose this place in which to hide? He had a paranoid need for secrecy, but what could he be doing that would require a place on this street?

Lucia noticed the alley on her third pass across the same stretch of road. What she had taken for a recess between two adjoining tenements was a twisting alleyway, just wide enough for a person to walk through. She stepped inside, feeling like a rabbit going into a ferret’s hole. The alleyway made two sharp turns in quick succession before opening up into a wider stretch flanked by several doors. Lucia sighed in relief when she felt his presence, guiding her unerringly to the third door on her left, which looked no different from any of the others. Raising her hand to knock, she hesitated. He wouldn’t recognize her, likely wouldn’t believe her. What made her think he could help her when no one else could? She was on the verge of turning away when the door opened.

Lucia’s brother looked worse for the wear. Aulus had not bothered to straighten his twisted tunic, and his tousled dark hair and the bags under his eyes did nothing to help his already sickly appearance. Lucia wondered whether he might really be sick. At the sight of her, however, his eyes lit up and unabashed relief filled him. “Finally!” he said. He took hold of her arm and pulled her roughly into the apartment. After a brief look outside to make sure no one lurked in the alley, he shut the door.

Aulus had kept his bedroom at home spotless, everything in its proper place. The clutter of this apartment, while not excessive, did not fit him at all. Scattered papers shared a low-lying table with a single lamp, the only light in this windowless room. A toga draped over the couch, and a lone sandal lay on the open floor. The small stove must provide heat, and perhaps a place to cook. Lucia didn’t see a bed, but the curtained doorway indicated another room. Unless it was much larger than this sparsely-furnished room, the entire apartment could have fit in the atrium of the destroyed townhouse. Aulus didn’t give her much chance to explore. “Where have you been? I expected you days ago.” Rather than continue, he took her firmly in his arms and kissed her.

Alarmed and repulsed, she pushed him away. As his confused eyes met hers, she found herself looking straight into his brown irises rather than up at them as she once had. With the realization of what Aulus saw, Lucia began to understand.

“What’s wrong?” Aulus asked. Her brother and Jaelin? She had thought they didn’t even like one another. How had they managed to keep it from her?

“I’m not Jaelin,” she said.

Aulus just looked at her in confusion.

“I’m not Jaelin,” she repeated. “I’m Lucia.”

“What are you talking about?” Hurt and disbelief coursed through Aulus, barely noticeable beside the rising panic.

“The Dominus came for me. He killed Jaelin, and I... killed him. Then, somehow, I became Jaelin. I don’t know how, or how to change back. I couldn’t go home. Who’d believe me? And Mother is hunting for Jaelin, and the Domini are searching for Lucia, and you’re the only one I--”

“Hush,” Aulus said, hugging her gently. Lucia could sense real compassion in the midst of all the grief and fear, but it all gave way to the hard edge of his skepticism.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” she said into his ear.

Aulus pushed her back, his hands on her shoulders. His face had turned hard and unreadable; his mind had vanished entirely. Unlike the Dominus’s blank wall, which she could feel even when she could not read what it hid, this seemed more like Aulus wasn’t there at all, even though she could still see and hear and touch him. “How can I believe you? You look like Jaelin, you feel like her.” He pinched her arm, though not hard. “You even sound like her. But you’re not acting like Jaelin.” He frowned. “You could be lying, but I think you believe what you’re saying. That doesn’t make it true, though.”

“You think I’m Jaelin and I’ve gone mad.”

“Whoever you are, you’ve been through a terrifying experience, and you’re coping with it as well as you can.” He looked her up and down. “That’s the most reasonable explanation I can think of. As for what you believe happened--I don’t even know whether or not it’s possible. I can’t rule it out entirely.”

“You’re hoping I am Jaelin, aren’t you? You’d rather have her than me.”

For a moment, she could sense him again, grief and fear, hope and desire, and underneath it all a bitter amusement that was distinctly Aulus. All of it vanished in a moment. “I hope? What is there to hope? Either I lose a sister or a... friend. I had reconciled myself to losing Lucia, but Jaelin had vanished too and I was afraid I had lost her--you--as well. Now you’re telling me I had it backwards. Do you expect me to be happy? Madness or magic, which should I prefer?”

Lucia had not allowed herself to dwell on Jaelin’s death. She had avoided any thought of those awful moments of magic, fire, and death, though they came to haunt her dreams anyway. For the first time, the raw truths of what had happened caught up to her. Jaelin was gone. Her constant companion for most of her life had died because of her. Shuddering, heaving cries seized her. Aulus placed his arm around her awkwardly and led her to the couch, where he sat her down. He took a position on the disorderly table across from her and waited for her noisy sobs to subside. It took a long time, as memories of Jaelin flitted through her mind: The red-haired girl comforting her as she cried over some trifle. Jaelin’s panic when she had touched the fire. The two of them with their heads together, foreheads almost touching, conspiring to slip out of the house before Marjori could find them. Jaelin had often counseled caution, but when Lucia had insisted on doing something reckless, she had always come up with the how. Lucia would have to figure out the how for herself now. When she looked up, sniffling and wiping tears from her eyes, she found Aulus watching her. She thought she had seen him wipe his eyes earlier, but now he just watched her with a quizzical expression. “You don’t cry like Jaelin,” he said. “She rarely cries, and when she does, she fights the tears every moment.”

“You still don’t believe me, though.”

“No, I don’t,” Aulus said. “Although...” He shook his head. “We need to talk about what we should do.”

“What about it?”

“First, you should put on some decent clothes. There are some in the bedroom. You could use a bath, too, but that’ll have to wait. Why don’t you get changed?” The thought of changing out of the rags she wore now had never seemed more appealing. She hurried to the bedroom while Aulus stoked the stove.

The bedroom had the same dishevelled appearance as the rest of the apartment and Aulus himself. Bed coverings lay in a heap on the floor, leaving the scandalous bed, large enough for two people, bare. A few of Aulus’s clothes lay scattered about as well. A shuttered window probably looked out on a courtyard. She didn’t open the shutters, instead going to the cabinet against the wall. Inside, a partition divided it into two sides, one occupied by Aulus’s clothes and the other by a woman’s clothing. Stripping off her torn and dirty tunic, she put on the best of what lay in the cabinet. She had forgotten what clean, comfortable clothing felt like. The perfect fit seemed odd after wearing the undersized tunic for days. She could tell that these clothes must belong to her slave girl, and any doubts she still had about the relationship between Jaelin and Aulus vanished. Lucia shuddered to think what her father would think of it.

She fingered the fabric of the dress she had put on. Something seemed odd about it. While not as fine as what she had worn as an Imperial princess, she didn’t think it’s low quality was what bothered her. Without a mirror, she couldn’t see what she looked like, so she tried to picture herself in it. No, to picture Jaelin wearing this dress. Lucia realized the she had never seen her slave girl wear anything like this. Jaelin had more often than not worn a simple grey tunic, shorter than her mistress’s. Aside from being full length, this dress had a light blue color. No slave wore dyed clothing. What had Jaelin and Aulus been up to? Lucia longed to hear Jaelin’s explanation. Wiping her suddenly blurry eyes, she wondered whether she could ask Aulus. Would he give her an honest answer? Could she tell if he didn’t?

Lucia returned to the other room, more comfortable in body if less so in mind. Aside from straightening up some, Aulus had also heated water and laid out some food. He gave Lucia a warm, damp cloth. She accepted it gratefully and tried to wipe her hands and face clean, watching in alarm as the cloth went from white to gray. “At least now it’s dirtier than you are,” Aulus said, giving his usual smile at another’s embarrassment. Discarding the cloth, she tentatively began to eat the food in front of her. Bread, cheese, and fruit made up a typical Novar lunch, along with a cup of almost cool water. She sat down on the couch and began to eat, focusing on the fruit since she had found that bread and cheese upset her stomach if she had not eaten in a while.

“What now?” she mumbled to Aulus around an apple.

Aulus stood above her, watching her eat. She still could not sense him. “I had intended to take you with me. You—Jaelin—and I discussed this,” he said. “At length.” He had apparently convinced himself that she was Jaelin.

“With you? Where?” Jaelin had intended to leave? Why hadn’t she told her mistress? The hurt Lucia felt engendered guilt. How could she take offense at something her dead friend had done?

“If you can’t remember, I probably shouldn’t tell you. You might say something to someone you shouldn’t. After what’s happened, I can’t bring you with me anyway.” He paused, waiting for her to say something. Lucia was afraid to ask why she couldn’t go with him. She didn’t want to go with Aulus, not when he still believed that she was Jaelin. Would his doubt stop him from...? She pushed the thought from her mind while Aulus answered the unasked question. “The people who would have helped me to hide you before won’t now that Mother is hunting for you. They’d just hand you over to her. I think I can get you out of Novaro, but you can’t come with me.”

Lucia took a drink of water so she could speak. “Well, what about Grandad? I thought maybe I could stay with him. It’s a long way from Novaro, but that’s a good thing. It’s out of the way, so I don’t think the Domini or anyone else who’d be looking for me go there very often. And if anyone can face down a Dominus, it’s him.”

She still couldn’t sense Aulus, but she knew she had said something right when he smiled and said, “That’s brilliant! Mother would never think to look for you there.”

“Mom...” She had a sinking feeling. How could she forget that her grandfather would mistake her for Jaelin just like everyone else? “Grandad would tell her he had me, wouldn’t he?”

“No, no, no. He dotes on you, remember?” At Lucia’s confused look, he slowed down to explain. “Your parents belonged to him before they died in the Agnatius Rebellion. He raised you himself. We stayed with you and Grandfather for a year when you were six and I was seven. Lucia must have been two or three. You two took an instant liking to one another... You really don’t remember this?”

Of course she didn’t remember what had happened to her at that age. As far as Lucia could remember, Jaelin had always been there. Now that she thought about it, her grandfather had always welcomed Jaelin as warmly as Lucia when they visited. The two also spent considerable time alone together. They hadn’t visited him often, but Lucia should have paid more attention to Jaelin’s relationship to him. Only, why would anyone want to know about a slave’s life?

“Why did Jaelin leave?” Lucia asked.

Aulus looked at her for a moment, before saying, “You and Lucia both begged him not to separate you. He let you go with her, but he still owns you. You’ve told me before that he intends to free you when you’re twenty.” Aulus frowned. “I never understood why he let you leave, or why you wanted to go. You were both happier before. It always struck me as one of Lucia’s whims, when everyone went along for no sensible reason...” Aulus trailed off at her expression. “Sorry, I forgot.”

The words gave Lucia something to think about. She didn’t want to admit that Aulus was right, but Lucia realized now that she had almost always gotten her way. She had believed that her abilities were new, but maybe instead she had just become aware of what she had always done. With that realization came a depressing thought. When people were kind and accommodating to her, did they do it because they liked her or because she made them? Did people really like her at all, or had she somehow coerced them into acting as if they did? Even Aulus would hesitate to manipulate people the way she did without thinking.

Her brother didn’t seem to notice the sudden attack of self-doubt. “Would you like to visit the baths? I’d hate to say that you need one, but...” He gave another of his mocking smiles. “We can go to the small one close-by. While the regulars might remember us, none of them know who we really are.”

“Yeah,” Lucia said, her mind on more disturbing things. “That would be nice.”

The public bath turned out to be the more disturbing thing after all. Aulus hadn’t told her about the mixed bathing.



Over the next few days, Lucia actually missed living on the streets. The food, clean clothing, and warm bed did not make life with Aulus tolerable. He did not approach her, or even talk about his and Jaelin’s previous relationship, but when she could sense him she knew that what he felt for her was not brotherly affection. He had convinced himself that she was Jaelin, and nothing that Lucia said could change his mind. Only his knowledge of her “madness” stopped him from pressing her. Fortunately, Aulus spent much of the day elsewhere, working and, she believed, plotting. She pretended to sleep when he came home late.

Just hiding in the apartment from the Domini, the guards, and anyone else who might be looking for her quickly lost its appeal. It would have helped if Lucia had anywhere to go. She did not want to wander around in this sort of neighborhood, even to visit the small forum a few streets over. Without any money, she couldn’t do a great deal of shopping anyway. Aside from that small marketplace, only tenements and warehouses stood nearby. And the bath.

That place both appalled and fascinated her. She imagined what her mother would say about Lucia bathing with both men and women. Avla had a most unNovar dislike of public baths in general; she herself only bathed in the private bath which Lucia’s father had commissioned for her. At first, Lucia too had been mortified at the idea of mixed bathing. Gradually, the casualness of the nudity had caused her to relax. It was not the orgy some of the rumors made it out to be. Mostly, the customers came from the poorer citizenry, and they had larger concerns than shared bathing facilities. The stern proprietess forbade any physical contact between the sexes, and bouncers stood ready to enforce that rule. Lucia found it curious that the men felt more self-conscious than the women, though they hid it behind forced nonchalance. The baths offered scant refuge, however. Even though she started to recognize some of the regulars, she couldn’t carry on more than the most trivial conversation. Between her own embarrassment and her awareness of their self-consciousness, Lucia couldn’t manage to talk to the men at all. She took to going to the baths early in the day, when mostly women filled the various pools.

With no one to talk to and nothing to do, she spent much of her time alone with her thoughts. Lucia would have much preferred either to distract herself from these difficult ruminations or to talk with someone about them, but she had neither option available. She may not have had anyone with whom she could speak when she lived out in the streets, but at least she had something to do, namely surviving. Now she could only think. Jaelin’s death, the Domini, her abilities and her unconscious use of them, the relationship between her brother and her slave, Aulus’s conviction that she really was Jaelin, her mother’s hunt for the young slave girl, her grandfather’s connection to Jaelin--all these things haunted her thoughts. She spent many hours letting them chase each other around in her head until it ached. Then, exhausted, she’d lie down and sleep, only to awake in the night, the thoughts still there. Lucia spent a great deal of time sleeping, hoping to escape them, but usually they came back in her dreams.

Dreams of fire came the most often, the flames always hungry for someone. The Dominus, her father, her mother, Aulus--they all cried out in agony from within. When she saw a tall, red-haired girl in them, she didn’t know whether it was Jaelin or herself. Sometimes the blaze consumed Victor. His suffering was worse than all the others combined. He didn’t cry out, instead looking at her with pity and hurt. Lucia woke from that dream more quickly than any of the others, only to find that the memory of it faded more slowly.

When Aulus announced that he had come up with a way for her to slip out of the city, she couldn’t leave soon enough. She didn’t have to wait long, since his arrangements required her to flee that night. After a flurry of packing, she found herself wandering through dark and empty streets with Aulus drawing her almost at a run. Like Aulus, Lucia wore a dark cloak with the hood drawn up, sure to draw suspicion had anyone seen them, but her brother proved adept at avoiding notice. They hid in the doorway to a large townhouse as two watchmen passed within a few feet without spotting them. Then they were off again, through narrow streets and even narrower alleyways, following a winding route that covered twice the distance as a straight line. It took nearly an hour to reach a point near the city walls.

The sky had begun to lighten to the dull grey of false dawn. A sputtering street lamp provided enough real light for a fat merchant to hitch his wagon to two reluctant donkeys. He must have lit it himself, as no other lamps showed signs of life. The merchant smacked one donkey on the nose when it tried to bite him, muttering either to it or to himself.

“Raxtus!” Aulus hissed from the alleyway by which they had approached. He tossed his hood back to let the dim light fall on his face. The man spun around, his hand clamped around a short sword he had at his waist. Lucia couldn’t imagine a man that large being able to use one effectively. What sort of merchant wore a sword, anyway? His eyes looked much too small in that wide face, although his large nose fit it well.

“Oh, it’s you,” he grunted. He didn’t sound happy to see Aulus.

Aulus replied, “Be glad it’s me and not the guards. Besides, did you think you’d be able to leave without my help?”

“I thought I might give it a try,” he said, drawing closer. His worn traveling cloak draped over a stained tunic.

“You wouldn’t make it.” A slight smile touched Aulus’s lips. “You’re kind of hard to miss, you know.”

“Not all the guards can have a description of me, no matter how remarkable I look.”

“I was thinking more along the lines of remarkably large, but...” Her brother radiated confidence, enough that he could risk insulting the man like this. “All the captains have your description, and no junior guard would let you leave this early without waking his captain.” Lucia realized Aulus was enjoying manipulating this fat merchant, certain that he had full control of the situation. Fortunately, Aulus judged correctly. For all his bluster, the man reeked of resignation. Lucia wished that were all he reeked of. Sweat and sour wine made a poor perfume.

“If getting out is so hard, how do you intend to get me past the guard?”

“I’ll go with you to the Septimian Gate. I know the officer on duty there tonight, and he’ll let you through.”

“And they’ll stop hunting for me? You promised me that.”

“Tomorrow, the paperwork to renew your case will get lost. When descriptions get circulated next month, yours won’t be among them. I would wait another few months before coming into Novaro again, but after that...”

The man grinned, showing more holes than teeth. Lucia wondered whether he could even eat solid food. “Well, if you’re offering me that, I suppose it’s worth the price, boy.” He looked at Lucia for the first time, trying to see into her hood. “I suppose this is the cargo.”

“This is your passenger. Her name is Marcia, and that’s all you need to know.”

“What story should I tell? My young wife?”

“Say she’s your daughter. I expect you to treat her that way--if she doesn’t get word to me that she’s safely reached her destination within two and a half months, I’ll track you down again.”

“Can’t you trust me not to harm the young woman? You know I’m no highway bandit. Besides, you’re not giving me much time to get her there so she can send a message back.” As odd as it seemed, Lucia sensed the sincerity of his words.

“No, not a bandit, just a smuggler. Take good care of her.”

Raxtus retuned to the donkeys, who seemed none too happy for the attention. For a moment, Lucia thought she could sense what the animals felt, but she had other things on her mind. “You’re sending me with him?” she whispered to Aulus.

“Raxtus is harmless,” he assured her. “A small time smuggler who ran afoul of one of the Agnatii. Since he’s so concerned with someone spotting him, he’ll do his best to keep both of you away from places where you might run into trouble.”

“Or he might sacrifice me to save himself!” Lucia said. She didn’t really believe it, though. Smuggler caught in a tight place he might be, but she couldn’t read any betrayal or deceit in him.

“Sacrificing you will only bring something worse, and he knows it. I would make his life a waking nightmare,” Aulus said as if such words were comforting. How could he be so skeptical of everyone else, yet so confident in his own wild plans? Before she could stop him, he leaned close to give her a kiss on the cheek. “Let’s go,” he said, pulling her to the wagon. Lucia’s free hand twitched. If he had tried to kiss her lips, she would have slapped him.

The first part of Aulus’s plan worked without a hitch, and by dawn she and Raxtus had travelled a mile past the Septimian gate. The smuggler watched her out of the corner of his eye but remained silent. While she could feel his matter-of-fact lust, at least he thought her off limits. Lucia just hoped that her life was improving since the day she found Aulus. She feared that it was getting worse.

---

This chapter is a 5,559 word excerpt of a 90,110 word novel.

One thing that surprised me was Jaelin's and Aulus's relationship. It hadn't occured to me they might be lovers until after I killed her off. Once I found that out, I began to wish she was still around so I could develop that further. Alas, that was not to be, and I had to live with the consequences of my actions.

The Rest of the Story: The whole of Fire can be found on my Writings page in PDF format, while the portion of the story that's been published on this blog so far is on this page.

As you may have already realized, you're not reading the final version of Fire. If you go read the PDF, you'll seem some differences, mostly grammatical and stylistic corrections, but also the occasional changes in dialogue or character's thoughts as I sorted out difficulties both with characterization and with way the world is set up. The problem was when I went looking for Fire, the version I found was an old one, not the one on the PDF. I've now located the final revision, hiding in a backup directory, but since I've posted the old one so far, I'll continue to do so. The differences really are minor, and this way I think it's more internally consistent. If you want the final version, you'll have to read the PDF.

---

Chapter 13
Aftermath

“You should be glad that you’re not human.”

“That goes without saying,” Talnek told the witch as she dabbed her foul-smelling concoction on his face. He had no doubts about Mitveh’s abilities, but he also knew that his wife’s best friend had come more to keep an eye on him than to fix his hurts. Anyua had insisted that Mitveh accompany him when he had ordered her to stay behind to advise their son. Talnek frowned at his wife’s spy, and said, “Is there any particular reason you’re thinking of?”

“A human would probably scar from this wound,” she answered, her fingers working the salve into the cut. She had assured him that the painful burning sensation meant that it was working.

“Scar? What do you mean?”

“Sometimes injuries leave a permanent mark on a human’s body. They don’t seem to be able to heal completely.”

“Just one more reason why we’re superior to them,” Talnek grunted, wondering whether he meant it. He had never expected such a fierce battle. Despite being outnumbered ten-to-one, the humans had fought like... well, nothing natural. Like one of those machines the philosophers used when they studied the stars, complex collections of gears all working together perfectly. These Novari had fought like that: organized and disciplined. The king wished he had brought goblins with him to wear down that engine; as unreliable as they were in battle, he’d sooner depart with a hundred goblins than one Orc. The Novari had cut apart hordes of Orcs, holding formation even in the heat of battle with a calmness that had to come from intense training. He had not seen anything fancy about Novar swordsmanship, but their methodical use of swords and shields had proven effective. The whole thing had unnerved to Talnek, which probably explained his rashness.

“So what possessed you to battle that last human one-on-one, anyway? You nearly got yourself killed,” Mitveh said. Her words irritated him more than her salve.

“I wanted to see if these humans were as good as a fully-trained sul warrior. They weren’t.” Individually, their technique had surpassed that of a well-trained an-sul, but it did not measure up to the sul. That last human had been another matter. His armor had marked him a commander, perhaps even royalty among these humans, and his guard had fought hard to protect him though he himself hadn’t shied away from bloodshed. He had led his small contingent to the thickest part of the battle, where they fought from horseback until their steeds wore out, then jogged in full armor when the horses failed. Like the rest of the calvary, they had worn full breastplates rather than the banded armor of the other soldiers and used smaller shields. The commander had lost his shield along the way, instead holding his sword in both hands. Though it had almost twice the length of the short swords used by the footsoldiers, the blade had moved like lightning. Talnek had struggled to make contact with his scimitar, and his dirk had proven unsuitable to parry the human’s powerful blows. In the end, the human’s exhaustion rather than the king’s skill had done him in. He must have fought over a dozen skirmishes, while Talnek had been forced to use his sword only twice earlier.

With a groan, the king got to his feet, knocking over the stool on which he had been sitting. Mitveh tsked him, but let him let him go since he was as bandaged as she could get him. He wanted to look over his men at the tasks he had set for them. At least twice as many Orcs had died has humans, although they had slaughtered them all in the end. Perhaps they should have given the humans the opportunity to flee instead of walling them in with warlock magic. Talnek wanted to believe that these Novari would have run if given the chance. The southern barbarians always broke when the battle turned against him.

The afternoon sun shone in the king’s eyes as he headed in the direction of the ruined wall. Gar appeared at his side before he had gone twenty paces. The warlock’s red robes trailed through the blood-spattered slush as he limped along, leaning on a staff as tall as himself. He had waited for Talnek to leave the witch before approaching him. The king didn’t think that Gar really feared Mitveh, or anything else for that matter, but while he went out of his way to tweak the other witches--something his mere presence did with ease--he avoided her. The warlock didn’t say anything and Talnek refused to speak first, so they walked in silence until they came to the wall. A gaping hole stretched about two hundred feet on either side of the twisted, half-melted iron strips which had once barred the gate. Only blackened rubble remained of the wall’s massive stone blocks there, nothing larger than the size of an Orc’s fist. Beyond the area where the warlocks had brought devastation, the undamaged wall stretched in either direction. Only a few Orcs remained on the east side of the wall, where Talnek had ordered the camp set up. Not enough order had returned to the army to see the job done yet. Those troops he had managed to bully into submission now pitched the camp or dragged off bodies to the pyres burning in the west, but many still pawed over the empty Novar fort in hopes of loot. Picking their way over the rubble, the king and the warlock found a chaotic jumble of soldiers on the other side.

All around them, sul and an-sul shouted to their king, while only his fellow warlocks greeted Gar. Talnek waved back to his bloody troops. Gar acknowledged no one. The frenetic celebrating among the Orcs gave no hint of the heavy casualties they had suffered. Those not still searching for loot celebrated with drinking, singing, and those incessant drums which had begun to give Talnek a headache. The king couldn’t help smiling. Victory should be enjoyed, and anyone who minded should just keep his mouth shut, whether he be king or warlock. He gave his silent companion a sidelong look.

“What do you want?” he asked Gar finally.

Gar gave a slight smile, as if he had gained some advantage. “You know what I wanted. You should have let us destroy them.”

“We did destroy them.”

“No, you and your soldiers butchered the humans,” Gar hissed. “You wouldn’t let the warlocks do more than watch.”

“You neutralized the Domini, didn’t you? You blasted a hole in their wall, kept them from fleeing with a wall of fire.” The blackened ground where their burning wall had stood still smoked. “Isn’t that enough?”

“That was child’s play. With over three hundred warlocks fighting in this battle, we could have razed this place, burned every single human to ash without risking a single Orc. Instead you lost, what, thirty thousand Orcs? You threw away over a third of your vanguard to take this place.”

“Could you have done that? With the Domini?”

Gar shot him a sharp look. He obviously hadn’t realized how much Talnek knew about the trouble the Domini had given them. The king had his sources, even among the warlocks. “They were more trouble than we had expected, but we handled them. Just three times their number would have overwhelmed them. We had thirty times.” Talnek wished he could tell when Gar was lying, wished he knew what odds the warlocks needed to match the Domini. Even so, he didn’t say anything. He thought that Gar had told the truth as far as it went, but the Domini had inflicted heavy casualties among warlocks and soldiers both before Gar had rallied his peers. His actions during the battle gave him primacy of place among the warlocks now. His political health had returned quicker than his physical health, a mere ten days since the unfortunate encounter which had nearly ruined them both. Talnek had ambivalent feelings about that: though he respected Gar’s abilities, both magical and political, he didn’t trust him.

“Magic is no way for anyone to die, even a human,” Talnek said.

“And what is a good way for a human to die, a dirk through the belly?” Gar had apparently heard about Talnek’s duel. “A hacked-off head? More importantly, what’s a good way for an Orc to die?”

Talnek spun on him, glaring into those dark eyes, his hand wrapped around his sword’s hilt. “A victory by magic would have been an empty one. Every Orc in the army would have muttered about it.”

“So it’s better to have two happy Orcs than three unhappy ones, especially when the missing one is an-sul?”

Idly, Talnek wondered how Gar could get his math right in the middle of an argument. “So is that what this is all about? The an-sul versus the sul. Sul died in this battle as well, you know.”

“What, two hundred, three hundred, a thousand? What’s that compared to twenty-nine thousand an-sul?”

“There are more an-sul than sul in this army, damn you!”

“Not that many more. An an-sul is three times as likely to die.” Talnek didn’t bother to work through the math, which he knew Gar would have gotten right. “How do you justify feeding them to these Novari for the sake of sating a little bloodlust?”

“Have you ever seen unsatiated bloodlust, warlock? It is an ugly thing. For an Orc to stare at a detested human and be denied the chance to vent his rage... I’d love to watch your beloved an-sul turn on you when you tried to protect them from the nasty humans.” Talnek knew he should control his temper. He disliked throwing away the lives of the an-sul as much as Gar did. Maybe more, as Gar had never convinced the king that it was compassion that had motivated him to proclaim himself the defender of the an-sul. Talnek had to deal with harsh realities, however, of which the way of war was just one. Angry or not, he had spoken plain truth, and he suspected that Gar knew it just as well.

Fortunately for both Orcs, a commotion broke out among the pyres at that moment. The Orcs had been burning the human dead in a separate fire from their own, and the shouts came from the direction of the human pyre. Both Talnek and Gar spared another moment to glare at each other before turning together and hurrying in the direction of the fire to the south of the fort. Talnek quickly outpaced the warlock, who could only manage a limping trot.

He had neared the edge of the human fort, beyond which he should have a clear view of the pyre, when a sul rider came galloping around the corner. The king held up his hand, shouting “Halt!” The sul looked at Talnek, and then his eyes, already as round as wagon wheels, went wider as he kicked his horse even harder. Talnek stared stupidly at the rider until the dull pounding of the pony’s hooves caused his spine to shiver. He just had time and sense enough to leap out of the way, directly into the stone wall of the fort. He heard a shout over the ringing in his ears and saw a flash of yellowish light through the blurriness in his eyes. Dull pain roared through his entire skull, centered at the point of impact on his forehead. He knew the pain would sharpen as the initial numbness faded. When his vision cleared, he saw Gar holding the pony’s reins, the Orc who had been riding it lying on his back. Talnek’s first instinct was to strangle the warlock for attacking one of his soldiers. That the soldier had tried to run him down didn’t seem to matter. Then he heard again the shouts and screams and remembered why he had come. This time he could tell that Orcs were dying. He forgot about Gar and his would-be trampler, instead rounding the edge of the fort to face a myth come to life.

In the midst of the fire stood a beast of which Talnek had often heard but which he had never seen. The huge lizard-like creature had a long, sinewy neck topped by a narrow head more graceful than any lizard’s. Its equally long tail twitched about almost spasmodically, knocking several Orcs aside. Yellow eyes glared at the soldiers around it while its massive claws shifted, searching for firm footing among the burning bodies. Great scaled wings fluttered above its head, waving about awkwardly as it sought its balance. The beast stretched at least forty feet, though most of that length was in its neck and tail.

Those Orcs with the sense to run had already left the scene. As many as five or six lay torn and crushed on the ground, one still screaming weakly. Only an-sul remained here, their only sul supervisor lying supine behind Talnek. An an-sul commander was yelling at the other Orcs, trying to rally them to fight the beast, but the monster apparently took note of his shouting. A claw tipped with talons nearly a foot long lashed at him, tearing through his armor and transforming his commanding yells into pain-filled shrieks. At that, some of the other Orcs turned to flee, while the truly clever among them held absolutely still.

Gar came along beside him, dragging the pony which had nearly run him down and saying, “Your less than respectful horseman still lives. Until you decide to execute him, any--” He stopped short when he saw the beast. The pony whinnied in fright. Not taking his eyes from the dragon, Gar reached out to stroke the pony’s nose, somehow managing not to gouge the horse’s eyes out in his distraction.

“Do something, warlock!” Talnek yelled as Gar came beside him, still dragging the pony. He immediately regretted raising his voice as pain flared through his head.

“What?” Gar asked, his voice calm despite the look of amazement in his wide eyes. His usual perfect control, Talnek thought.

“Use your magic, of course. Surely you can drive this beast off.”

“Warlock magic is fire magic, Your Majesty.” Gar never used that address except sarcastically. Of course, Talnek didn’t know of many Orcs who did use that form of address with respect. “That, if you haven’t noticed, is a dragon. Fire is not particularly effective against dragons.”

“Then give me that horse!” Talnek snarled, snatching the reins from Gar’s hand. He pulled himself into the saddle and just sat there until the throbbing behind his eyes subsided; then he drew his sword, wondering what spirit had possessed him. The pony showed more sense and balked until Talnek’s kicks and curses forced it into a run. He hadn’t gotten far before smoke began billowing from the flames, not ordinary smoke, but an inky black substance which gathered around the dragon’s head. It shook its head, trying to get free, but the cloud of smoke clung to it, growing larger and thicker by the moment. The dragon roared in fear, leaping into the air with its powerful wings beating swiftly. It seemed almost as startled at this as the Orcs, and its flapping lost its rhythm as the beast crashed to the ground, crushing several an-sul. Having lost its hold on the dragon, the black mist swirled in the wind of its wings before dissipating.

Talnek had closed the distance, the heat from the fire warming his face and the stench of burning flesh filling his nostrils. He cut his horse across the dragon’s exposed tail, striking at it with his sword. The blade bit into the scaled flesh no more than a few inches, and Talnek didn’t wait around to make another slice. He twisted his horse to take him clear of the tail, ducking as its length whipped through the air, just inches above his aching head. The dragon’s head turned on its long neck so that it stared directly behind itself at the fleeing king. Talnek pulled his horse about, raising his sword with a shouted challenge that made his head ring so much he feared he would black out. The dragon twisted its body around with more speed than such a large creature should have possessed. It roared as it surged forward to meet its adversary. Talnek put his heels to his horse, knowing that he could not expect to outlive this charge. One of the an-sul, shaken from his amazement by this interplay, lifted his crossbow and fired. The bolt struck the beast’s neck and ricocheted harmlessly from its scales, but other Orcs also remembered their weapons now. They began pelting the dragon with a rain of crossbow bolts. A ball of flame joined the bolts to flash in the beast’s face, causing its head to snap back though it had not done any visible damage.

With a roar that sounded almost Orcish, the dragon lifted itself once more into the air. For a moment Talnek, feeling the driving wind from its unsteadily beating wings, thought it would topple from the sky as his unchecked charge passed underneath, crushing him. However, it banked a circle around its tormentors and then lofted higher. Even on the ground it had looked graceful. In the air, its beauty struck Talnek silent, fortunately cutting off his victory cry before it split his head open. The green scales refracted the light of the afternoon sun, nearly blinding the king. It beat its long wings, shaped somewhat like a bat’s but longer and more graceful, and wider than the dragon’s length, then struck out southward.

Gar caught up to him as he watched it. The king didn’t turn away until he saw only a shining dot, waiting for the warlock to say something. When Gar seemed unwilling to share his thoughts, Talnek spoke instead, “Well, what was that? Yes, I know it was a dragon, but I thought they dwelt in the East, not here.”

“It seems you were wrong,” Gar grimaced at him, then admitted, “I didn’t know they would be here either. I never thought I’d see a dragon. That one wasn’t full-grown, and it didn’t seem to know much magic.”

“Dragons know magic?”

“So I am told. The older ones do, anyway... much more than any mere warlock. I wonder how old he was? Not yet a century, certainly. Maybe less than half that.”

Not old, only a century? How long do dragons live? Talnek wondered. He said, “I don’t care how old he was. What I want to know is where he came from. What was he doing here?”

“Perhaps we should ask,” Gar said, gesturing to the an-sul milling about. Dead and injured Orcs intermixed with burning human bodies, while the uninjured looked around dazedly, showing little sign of mental activity. The king and the warlock accosted one of the few trying to assist the injured. He had a loaded crossbow in one hand, and his eyes kept looking skyward for the return of the dragon. Curiously, they flicked toward the fire almost as often.

He seemed ready to fire at the king and the warlock as well until Gar spoke, “Hail. What come here?”

“Big beast. Kill Orcs,” the crossbowman responded, lowering his weapon.

“Where from?” Gar asked.

“From fire,” the Orc said, gesturing at what remained of the blaze.

“But where before fire?” Gar asked, impatient.

“Be-fore? Come from fire,” he replied, waving his crossbow at the fire and accidentally loosing a bolt. Fortunately, it struck one of the burning humans, narrowly missing a writhing Orc close by.

“Did you see the dragon arrive?” Talnek asked. “Where did it come from?”

The an-sul gazed at him in bewilderment, then gestured again with his fortuitously emptied crossbow. “From fire. Beast come from fire.” He looked at the two of them shrewdly, then leaned forward to whisper, “Fire-lizard.”

Talnek sighed. “He’s not exactly a fount of information,” he said to Gar. “Let’s see if we can help some of the wounded.”

They did their best to aid the survivors until the witches arrived to take over. When they had the opportunity, they asked more questions, but none of the an-sul had seen the dragon before it landed in the midst of the pyre. The sul supervisor had not awoken, and the witches didn’t think he would any day soon. No other sul admitted to seeing anything.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say it came from the flames,” Talnek told Gar in frustration.

“Dragons are not spontaneously born from fire,” Gar responded. “No matter what some of the less reliable stories say. This wasn’t a newborn, anyway. Most likely it saw the fire and was curious: dragons are attracted to fires like moths.”

“Too bad it doesn’t burn them like it does moths.”

“Bite your tongue, Your Majesty.” Only Gar could lace that respectful phrase with so much venom. “Dragons are not our enemies. There are stories of cordial relations between Orcs and dragons.”

“This one wasn’t friendly. Most of the stories I remember don’t consist of cordial relations.”

“He was young, and probably confused and frightened. Relationships with dragons are as varied as the creatures themselves. They are fiercely independent, and will deal with Orcs, humans, Kawyr, and even stranger creatures as their own opinions dictate. They may enjoy the company, or they may decide we make better dinner than dinner guests. On the whole, though, they seem to prefer lower animals for food. They’d rather just avoid intelligent creatures.”

If you can call humans intelligent, Talnek thought. “Well, the next time we run into any dragons, I’ll let you do the negotiating. Hopefully he’ll find you a better conversationalist than I do.”

“Do you really think we’ll encounter more of them?”

Talnek snorted, “For all I know, these mountains are full of them. Curse those Kawyr for convincing me to do this.”

“On that, you and I are agreed,” Gar said, meeting Talnek’s eyes and holding them.

“Do you really think the Kawyr intend to betray us?” Talnek asked. He had heard this argument before.

“I think they are using us, as they have used us before,” Gar said. “And I think you are too much under their influence.”

“So you think they control me? I should kill you for making that accusation,” Talnek said, his voice low.

“I think that they may have access to the same geas as the druids, though to a lesser degree. I have spoken to some of the Muirthin who have met them.”

Talnek was smart enough to consider the possibility. It might explain why the Kawyr always seemed to win any argument he had with them. He was much too smart to admit his uncertainty to Gar, though. “I should like to see how you deal with them.”

“So would I, if they would deign to meet with anyone other than yourself.”

“I shall discuss that with them when we meet next,” the king said as he turned to go. They had promised to meet him the night after the battle. The Kawyr had odd opinions of when the meetings should occur, never appearing when he expected, but they had kept their word so far. Talnek knew he would see them in a couple of hours. He did not look forward to it.

---

This is a 3,943 word excerpt of a 90,110 word novel.

The Rest of the Story: The whole of Fire can be found on my Writings page in PDF format, while the portion of the story that's been published on this blog so far is on this page.

For this next chapter, we return to Gaius's point-of-view. Events are moving quickly now.

---

Chapter 12
Envoys

The Novar column cleared the forest just as the sun dipped behind the mountains. They had marched through the night and the following day since the Dominus’s sacrifice. His head bowed over his saddle, Gaius barely noticed the sudden brightness of open sky as he drifted in and out of consciousness. On top of the incredible weariness of days without proper rest, he had begun to feel ill yesterday, head aching and eyes burning. The setting sun cast long shadows from the mountains, though the army still had over a day’s march to reach the pass. Gaius shivered as they passed under one the shadows and reluctantly lifted his head to look around. He had noticed the ground rising steadily for the past several hours as they moved from the forested lowlands to the foothills of the Kainin. The rains which promoted such growth in the forests below simply washed away the good soil here, leaving myriad stones ranging from the size of his fist to the that of his horse. A few hardy grasses, greener than those found on the western side but otherwise identical, found root in the patches of earth around the exposed rocks. While Kawyr villages occupied the foothills elsewhere along the mountain range, none were this far south. A rough trail led from the pass to the forest, but Gaius quickly realized that they were not on it. The surrounding hills blocked out any sight of it until they topped a rise and he could make out the winding path miles to the south. He tried to call to Paulus, but his voice came out as a whisper, so he simply gestured to him. It took several minutes to get the new centurion’s attention, but he came over promptly once he noticed his tribune’s summons.

“We should make camp,” Gaius rasped. “Set guards as you can, but I doubt we could manage fortifications in this state.” In the past thirty-six hours, they had halted only three times, and at each stop they had rested no more than two hours. Even the most disciplined and healthy soldier would have trouble going further. Doing so might kill the wounded. The tribune’s training rebelled against not building a fortified encampment, but he didn’t think the men had the strength. “Tomorrow, we’ll strike southwest.”

“Should we allow fires?”

Gaius gave that as much thought as his fevered brain allowed. Regular Novar patrols traveled down the path to the forest, so a fire might bring help. On the other hand, if Orcs followed them into the foothills, they could see the fires as well as the humans. “Not tonight. Maybe tomorrow.”

“Yes, Commander.”

As soon as a few soldiers had set up his tent, Gaius staggered inside. He gave some thought to supervising the camp, but his raw throat, burning eyes, and pounding head precluded anything aside from sleep. He lay down hoping that he would feel better in the morning.

If anything, he felt worse. Still, he had to keep his men moving, so after eating and breaking camp, the column struck out to the southwest. To Gaius, the entire day seemed hazy, as he slept astride his horse and even his waking moments seemed dream-like. They had traveled for two hours when they met up with a Novar patrol of thirty riders. Seeing the condition of Gaius’s men, their commander, Marcellus, quickly formed up to escort them home. He tried asking questions to discover what had happened, but the tribune couldn’t seem to string words together well enough to make coherent sentences, and Paulus wouldn’t say more than five words without deferring to him. Marcellus didn’t manage to get much more than the barest of sketches about the events which had befallen them.

The one thing Gaius did remember about the trip was the rain. Even clear of the forest, the rain didn’t stop. The afternoon rain had ended by the time they departed the forest and entered the foothills the day before, but it caught them in the midst of their march to the pass. Odd, how he didn’t recall it raining as they traveled eastward to the forest, but then, he might not have noticed this one except that the downpour nearly knocked him off his horse. It drenched him and his men within moments, an icy rain with a touch of the mountain chill in it. Finding little dirt to turn to mud, it quickly found runnels through the rocks. Gushing streams formed before their eyes. Men fell in the running water, and horses slipped as well. They had to climb one of the rocky hills and wait out the storm. The streams vanished moments after the rain stopped, leaving tiny rivulets which gathered into small pools. The men moved on, miserable and wet. The tribune’s clothes did not fully dry out before they reached the Novar fortifications long after noon the next day.

Gaius thought he must be at the worst phase of his illness as Marcellus led him and Paulus to see Publius. He didn’t feel any worse than he had the day before, nor had his condition improved. He somehow managed to keep on his feet as he entered the proconsul’s office, where not only Publius, but also Marcus and a Dominus waited. Marcellus began his report to the three of them, while Gaius found a seat and poured himself some watered wine. He sipped at it, and when he decided that his stomach wouldn’t rebel, he took a long drink. The wine burned his parched throat, but he thought it dulled the ache in his head a little.

“What happened, Gaius?” Marcus asked as soon as Marcellus had gone. “From what he tells us, you’ve lost half your men, and Victrinus and the Dominus as well. Something hit you, and hit you hard. Was it the Kawyr?”

“No, not Kawyr. Orcs.”

Marcus frowned at him, while Publius stifled what might have been a giggle. “You can barely speak, Gaius, but do try harder,” the proconsul said. “It sounded as if you said orcs.”

“I did,” Gaius replied, barely hearing his own words. Shaking his head in frustration, he gestured to Paulus.

“The tribune did say Orcs, proconsul,” the young centurion said. He stood ramrod straight, eyes carefully following the Publius’s every move. The heavy man stood in front of his desk, leaning against it. Marcus stood at attention to one side. “Lots of them.”

“Are you certain?” Publius asked. When both Paulus and Gaius nodded, he said, “I don’t understand: I thought they were gone. Where’d they come from?” When the tribune and his centurion just looked at him blankly, he moved on to other questions, “Are they allied with the Kawyr? Are they both coming at us?”

“No Kawyr since we met the Orcs,” Gaius whispered. He gestured to Paulus to finish for him.

“We only had one Kawyr raid. Since then it’s been all Orcs, thousands of them.”

“We’ve only seen Kawyr,” Publius said.

“You’ve ha...” Gaius had to fight off a sudden fit of coughing. “A raid?”

“Yes, you could call it that. They killed all my pigeons.”

“Pigeons?” Gaius asked.

“It was ghastly,” Marcus said. “They killed the guards and the pigeonkeeper, then meticulously cut the throat of every bird there. We never saw them, never found any tracks. They could have just slipped away if they hadn’t attacked the Domini as well. The Kawyr didn’t fare so well against them.”

“They fared better than you think,” said the Dominus. He pulled a medallion from the neck of his robe, half of a glass ball inset in a steel circle. The glass had several cracks stemming from a single impact point.

“What is...?” asked Gaius.

“With this, I can talk to the person with the other half of the globe even if they’re on the other side of the world. The connection was delicate, though. The arrow which hit this severed the connection and nearly killed me as well.”

“I still think the Kawyr was aiming at you, not the medallion,” said Marcus. “How could he hit that if it was hidden beneath your robes?”

“You still don’t understand. Kawyr are conscious of things in a way which humans are not. He was aiming for this, otherwise you’d have one or two less Domini.”

“The point is that they’ve cut our communications,” Publius said. “You’re probably wondering how they got here without us seeing them?” That’s exactly what Gaius would have wondered if the pounding in his head would let him think straight. “There are apparently other ways through the mountains, passes and caves which we hadn’t located before.” Publius shook his head. “We’ve held this pass for two hundred years without realizing how easily they could circumvent it.” He gave one of his little laughs. “Well, no matter. The Domini have been helping us locate and seal any way around us. What I really want to know is whether the Kawyr and the orcs are working together. Was their raid supposed to help the Orcs? Did you see anything which points one way or the other?”

“The cache.” Gaius waved a finger at Paulus.

“Oh, yes. There was a store of weapons and food in the Kawyr village, apparently for the Orcs.”

“So they are working together. Do you have any idea how large this Orcish army is?”

“At least two thousand chased us,” Gaius said.

“There were lots of them just looking for us, to keep us from bringing you warning,” Paulus said. “I saw the cache, too. I don’t know exactly how many it was for, but Victrinus thought it was big enough for four legions. He thought there might be other caches, too.”

“Four legions,” Marcus whispered. “Maybe more. That’s twice what we have.” Publius was grimacing. The Dominus didn’t react at all.

“We have a strong position. With the help of the Domini, I don’t think we’re in for too great of a storm,” Publius said.

“Warlocks. There are...” Gaius started hacking again. He drew a breath, “There are also the warlocks.”

“How many?” asked the Dominus, suddenly interested.

Gaius gestured to Paulus, who answered while keeping his eyes on Publius, “We saw ten, with the two or three thousand we fought.”

Publius muttered, “If you only saw a sixth of their force, and the warlocks are evenly spread, there are at least fifty more.”

This time the Dominus did react, the shiver running through his body was visible even underneath the robes. “I believe that we will need reinforcements.”



Marcus and Publius helped Gaius to a comfortable bed inside the proconsul’s apartments. One of the Philosopher physicians arrived soon after. He spent a few minutes looking at his eyes, feeling his face and neck, and listening to his heart before feeding the tribune a drug that made him feel lightheaded. He began to drift even while his brother and cousin consulted with the Philosopher.

“Will he be all right?”

“Give him a week’s rest, and he will recover fully. I am not sure what he contracted over there, but I think he has already persevered through direst part of it.”

“I’m not sure he’ll get a chance to rest. How soon will he be able to travel?” Gaius distantly recognized Marcus’s voice. What travel?

“I would prefer it if he rested for a week, but if absolutely necessary, he may be capable of riding in two days.”

“That’ll have to do.”

Some time later Gaius became aware of his cousin and brother talking again.

“Are you sure about this?”

“We shouldn’t both be here when the Orcs come. I don’t intend to deprive the Empire of two princes in one blow.”

“We might survive, you know. Two-to-one odds won’t get them past the wall.”

“You saw how the Dominus reacted. He didn’t like the odds of eleven Domini against fifty warlocks. From Paulus’s description of that battle where the Dominus fought three warlocks, I don’t think the walls are enough. Unless we get reinforcements, Domini reinforcements, we won’t survive this.”

“So you want to send Gaius?”

“Gaius, and anyone the Domini want to send. Gaius can speak to the Emperor directly, make sure he hears. If the Empire sends a few legions...”

“You don’t think we can hold this pass until help arrives, do you?”

“No, I suppose I don’t. When the legions come, they won’t be holding the Orcs back. They’ll be driving them out, if they can.”

The voices faded to a buzz, leaving Gaius with the fleeting question of whether he’d remember this conversation when he awoke again.



Sunlight was streaming through the window of the small cell Gaius occupied the next time he came fully awake. He had only a vague recollection of coming to this room, and vaguer memories since then. He didn’t know whether they were of dreams, or moments of wakefulness. Where were Marcus and Publius? He started to sit up only to feel a firm hand on his shoulder. His blurry eyes made out dark robes on the odd man sitting on the wooden stool outside of the sunlight. A Dominus? “Who are you?” he asked.

“I am your physician; my name is Quinn. Your cousin Publius asked me to make sure you recover, which I have been doing,” he replied.

Now that he had spoken, Gaius could see that he wore a brown, unhooded robe, not the black, all-encompassing shroud of the Domini. He looked trim and fit, with a friendly face and an odd mustache. Novari did not care for mustaches, but the tribune had met a few Manuelites who favored them. Grey peppered both his dark hair and his mustache. Gaius could see the three black stripes at the cuffs of his sleeves, marking a fully trained Philosopher of the Body. Two more stripes, one blue and one green, marked specializations that Gaius could not identify. They ensured the man was competent, at least. A small table beside the bed held a few vials, a mortar and pestle, and a cup filled with water.

“How long have I been... unconscious?” he asked, pleased when he realized that his voice had returned.

“I have kept you more or less asleep for a full day and two nights,” he said as if he had every right to keep Gaius senseless. Maybe he did. “Publius asked me to make you well as quickly as possible, and that meant some drugs that do not encourage alertness. The light sleep you have been in for most of the past couple of days has sped your recuperation along nicely.”

“So why wake me up now?” he asked, looking around his room as well as he could while lying down. He thought it must have belonged to Publius’s personal slave. “Am I better?”

“Somewhat. You had already experienced the worst vicissitudes of the disease when you arrived here. I am sure you will be your usual vivacious self soon. For now, though, you are still feverish and I suspect your head pounds and your stomach hurts.”

Now that the Philosopher physician brought it up, Gaius realized all those things were true. “I don’t remember my stomach hurting before,” he complained.

“That part is a side effect of the medicine I’ve given you.” At Gaius’s glare, he shrugged, “It will keep the dizziness at bay and make the headaches tolerable. That should be worth a little distress in your stomach. In any case, you wanted to know why I ended your semiconscious state. It seems that, against my professional judgement, you are hale enough to travel, and the proconsul wants you to carry messages. I have already sent word to him that you are awake.”

Gaius resigned himself to patience and tried to make chitchat. While polite enough, the physician seemed more interested in probing his face and chest and asking him rude questions, all the things that marked a man either a pervert or a physician, if not both. His professional manner reassured Gaius somewhat. What was keeping Publius?

Marcus and Publius arrived together. “How are you doing, my boy?” his cousin asked. “Feeling any better?”

“Some. What’s going on? Quinn said something about travel.”

“Yes. Quinn’s a marvelous physician, isn’t he?”

“I don’t remember much of his treatment,” Gaius said sourly.

“No, I suppose you wouldn’t. Quinn, if you’ll give us some privacy.”

The physician cleared the table of everything aside from the cup and placed them in a small leather satchel. Aside from the medicine, the bag contained bandages and some odd-looking instruments that Gaius was thankful he couldn’t identify. Publius sat on the small stool the Philosopher had vacated. Marcus remained standing.

Publius spoke, his tone cheery considering the subject matter, “From what you’ve said, we’re in a pretty bad situation here. We’re lucky you made it back to give warning. Your testimony can convince the Empire to send reinforcements.”

“Will another legion or two help against warlocks?” Gaius asked.

“Well, the Domini want to bring help, too. Their leader here says that they’ll fight on our side.”

If Domini reinforcements came quickly, they might be able to hold off the Orcs after all. “So you want to send me as a messenger?”

“I’m giving you command of a small mounted force, some of the survivors of your expedition plus a few others.”

“Command? Me?” His bitter laugh broke into hacking. He held up his hand to keep them from speaking before the fit passed. “After what I did to the last command you gave me?”

“Gaius--” Publius began.

“You brought them back, didn’t you?” Marcus broke in. “The Orcs tried to stop you, but they couldn’t. You managed to bring your soldiers home in good order despite all odds. That is nothing to be ashamed of, Brother.”

“Thank Victrinus, or the Dominus, not me, Marcus. Better men than me died in my first eastern patrol.”

“Do you know how many men I lost in my first trip out there, Gaius? Over two hundred, more than a third of my cohort. I didn’t face anything close to the opposition you were up against. Just standard Kawyr raids, and I couldn’t protect them. You did well, little Brother.”

Gaius knew his older brother meant well, but he couldn’t make himself feel good about his mission. It seemed an insult to those who had died out there. Now they were sending him out of harm’s way while others stayed to fight. “So what do you want me to do?”

“The Kawyr raid severed our communications with the rest of the Empire,” Publius said. “We need someone to take our messages to the nearest relay station.”

“You mean the South Kainin Fort?”

“No. You’ll be traveling to the port of New Jovium. From there, you’ll send messages by pigeon, and continue by ship on to Novaro itself.”

“If you’re already sending pigeons, why do you need me to travel to the capital?”

“I can request reinforcements from the provinces, but it takes the Emperor to command them.” Publius shrugged apologetically. “Someone needs to convince your uncle in a way that can’t be done by letters, someone who’s a believable eyewitness, who has access to the Emperor. That’s you, Gaius.”

“All right, I’ll go.”

“Good. You leave in two hours. I’ll have Paulus make sure everything is ready.” Publius stood to leave. “Good luck, and the gods be with you.”

Marcus remained, leaning against the doorpost with his arms crossed. The fingers of his right hand drummed against his upper arm.

“What is it, Marcus? I know you want to say something.”

“Publius didn’t tell you about the omen we saw today.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in omens,” Gaius said.

“Usually I don’t any more than you do, but this... You know the sacred hens the priests keep? They trot them out every couple of days, watch them peck around a bit, and then declare a favorable omen? Well, today, one of them started heading westward. Maybe it was just wandering off, but it was doing so in a hurry. A bird, the biggest falcon I’d ever seen, swooped down and plucked it away. The hen was still twisting and turning in its talons as it flew over the wall and eastward. Not even the priests could find anything favorable in that.”

“You think I’m the chicken that got stolen? You’re sitting here with a great wave of Orcs about to crash down on you, and you’re worried about me? Is that why you’re sending me away? To protect me?”

“If it were, would you refuse to go?” Marcus didn’t wait for his brother to respond. “The proconsul has given you an order, and if you have any respect for him you’ll obey it. Every word he said was true. In any case, I don’t know whether you’ll be any safer than us. Like you said, I don’t believe in omens, but that seemed a bit too close for coincidence. Be careful, Gaius. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Neither do I,” Gaius said as Marcus turned to leave. “Be careful yourself!” he called to his brother’s back. He leaned back on his bed, wondering what had Marcus so worried over a bunch of birds. He considered closing his eyes and resting some, but two hours didn’t give him much time. Groaning, he got out of bed, wavering a bit as he tried to remember how to walk.

Gaius still felt groggy an hour later, while he sat astride his horse at the head of a hundred mounted soldiers. Despite the bright sunlight, the mid-morning kept much of the chill of the previous night. He could see the breath of both men and horses as they milled about churning up the mud inside the fort. The feet of slaves and soldiers sank into the mud as they hurried to load the remaining supplies onto the packhorses. Only about thirty of the men who had returned with Gaius from his last expedition joined this force. Gaius suspected that some of them had never ridden a horse before. Paulus, in particular, fidgeted uncomfortably in his saddle, sawing at the reins and greatly aggravating his horse.

“Calm down, Paulus,” Gaius advised. “Your horse is well trained. She’ll do what you want as long as you don’t upset her.”

Paulus smiled nervously at the advice, but his attitude toward the docile bay mare did not change. Quinn did not seem much more at ease on his grey gelding. Gaius had thought that all Manuelites knew how to ride. By contrast, the Dominus who had joined them had a natural grace that not even his bulky robes seemed to hinder. Gaius knew himself to be a good rider, but he still did not feel entirely well, so he looked on the Dominus with envy.

After the priest had given a blessing which seemed more earnest than usual, the company exited through the gates, heading west with the sun at their backs. Gaius wondered how much further he would have to run before he could turn and fight.



The four day ride south bored Gaius. Even though he wanted a peaceful journey, the tedium of it wore at his patience. The plains were fully as dusty and hot as he remembered, and before long he found himself wishing for the shade and frequent rain of the Kawyr forests. No proper road connected the pass and New Jovium, just a vaguely defined dirt track marked out by previous military columns and a few other travelers. They passed a few signs of human life, here and there a farm struggling to grow some sickly wheat, and once a village which seemed to have more dogs than people. Gaius’s command paused there for a bit of barter. The only useful commodity they found was some fresh water from the village’s wells. His traveling companions did little to make the journey more bearable. The Dominus was just as uncommunicative as his colleague had been. Gaius didn’t much want to talk to him in any case. Paulus had finally gotten over his awe of the prince to speak to him normally, but he still didn’t see it as his place to make small talk with his tribune. Every time Gaius attempted a conversation, he would turn it to the professional matters with which he felt comfortable. Quinn, at least, had no difficulty talking, though he left Gaius hard pressed to get a word in edge-wise. Even when he understood the physician’s stories, the tribune found them more gruesome than entertaining. The remaining travellers regarded the prince either with awe or, even worse, a hopeful confidence which he found unnerving. At the time of the mad flight from the Orcs, he had thought that the men must hold him responsible for their hardship. Only now did he realize that his small success of bringing half his patrol home alive had grown into a tale of defeating half the Orcish army. That might explain why the newcomers might regard him as a hero, but why did those who had actually run from the Orcs with him think he had accomplished some great deed? What did they think he would accomplish now, when he ran away from the true battle? Unable to face their expectations, Gaius rode as silently as the Dominus, staring at the rough road as if he could see something besides dirt. The hills of waving dead grass hid nothing but arid, empty land.

The destination held only a little more promise. New Jovium was a walled fishing village with a harbor deep enough for a deep sea vessel and a pier long enough to accommodate two of them. One ship moored to the dock now. Gaius sent Paulus immediately to secure it, not wanting the only ship in harbor to slip away before they got to it. The busier port of Martia had been full of ships when Gaius and Marcus had come through on the way to the South Kainin Fort. The old Jovium had once been a busy sea port, too, serving the needs of the army and the citizens of this province. It had burned to the ground in the last Kawyr war, and this village had grown up on its site. A few pieces of the old city remained. The villagers had scavenged most of its bricks to build their huts, but here and there a stone wall stood, made of blocks too big to be of much use in any structure smaller than a palace. One building remained fully intact, a long, narrow spike of a tower. Like much of the old city, it remained outside the wooden wall that surrounded the village. The wall curved awkwardly to keep its distance from the tower. The Dominus broke off from the main column without a word and headed toward this building. Apparently the Domini still had a presence here.

Few other people did. A handful of women carrying baskets filled with fish returned to their small homes with children in tow. They kept a wary eye on the soldiers. Gaius wondered that he saw mostly women and a few dirty children in the streets until he realized that the men would be out in their fishing boats this early in the afternoon. The smell of fish permeated the entire village, emanating from an open market close to the shore. An even stronger smell drifted from a large building nearby. Garum, a powerful fish sauce used in many Novar dishes, must be a main export of this town. As seldom as merchant vessels came here, Gaius doubted they could sell fresh fish. The village needed no proper streets, as the haphazard placement of the houses left plenty of open space to traverse the town, though it required nearly as much weaving around obstacles as the Kawyr forest had. It took the tribune and his followers some time to find the pigeon house, though he could follow the sound of cooing pigeons. An old man with poor hearing owned the deteriorating brick building. It took Gaius a long while to convinced the caretaker that he was a legitimate representative of the government and had the legal authority to appropriate pigeons. After seeing the few bedraggled birds, Gaius made copies of his messages and used half the birds in the cage marked Novaro. He sent other birds to the capitals of nearby provinces, including Transolympia and Anorum, but he could find no birds for Cisolympia. The closest of the provinces, Cisolympia would have had some small chance of sending troops in time. Gaius didn’t want to think on what chance Publius and his brother had without them. He did encounter some good luck when he found pigeons for the northern garrisons of this province. He did not know how much help they could send without stripping the northern reaches of the Kainin bare, but he sent word to them as well. After providing the old pigeonkeeper with papers which should, barring any unforeseen problems with the labyrinthine Novar bureaucracy, gain him recompense for the commandeered birds, Gaius also left him with a few coins for his trouble, knowing that the old man would not see any further payment for a while.

When Gaius stepped out of the foul-smelling place, he was confronted by an odd man. Although his toga had a thin purple stripe signifying some rank, its brilliant white had gone dingy from years without a good fuller. The toga fit the man, who also looked worn, with gray hair and a creased face, though he could not have been far past middle-age. He looked as much like a peasant as the villagers who had congregated behind him, more watching the interchange than in a show of support. He stood without stoop, however, and his sharp eyes took in Gaius in one pass. “Welcome to New Jovium, young tribune,” he said in a rough voice that yet held some dignity. “My name is Marcus Castor Tullius, the praetor of this town. I was wondering what brought you and your men here.”

Gaius berated himself for his impropriety. He should have presented himself to the praetor as soon as he arrived. Instead the praetor, the elected official who served as the sole government of this village, had come to him. That either showed a obeisance that did not fit the dignity this Tullius showed, or a willingness to set aside honor for the sake of his town. Gaius shot his centurion a glance, but Paulus simply shrugged. He was still getting used to the idea of leading his peers and elders, he couldn't be expected to know what courtesies were due the local ruler. The tribune couldn’t think of a way to save his own face, so he simply answered, “Greetings, Tullius. I am Gaius Julius Principius, a tribune under Publius Aurelius's command. I must apologize for not coming to see you right away--I was in such a hurry to send my messages that I forgot.”

If Tullius recognized Gaius as an Imperial prince, he gave no indication. “They must be important messages, then,” Tullius said mildly.

“They are. An army is attacking from the East, an army of Orcs,” Gaius said. “I've been sent to inform the Emperor.”

“Orcs? Are you serious?” His eyes locked with Gaius's for a moment. “I believe you are. Should we evacuate?”

“I-I'm not sure,” Gaius said. Publius hadn't given him any orders concerning New Jovium: he couldn't just tell the entire town to pack up and leave.

“Will the Legions be able to stop them, do you think?” Tullius prodded.

“They'll try,” Gaius said. “If the reinforcements arrive quickly enough, they should be able to. If they can't, I'm sure the proconsul will send word.”

“In that case, we will prepare to leave, but wait for word from the Legions, one way or the other, before doing so,” Tullius said.

“That sounds like a wise plan, Praetor Tullius,” Gaius said, glad the praetor had come up with it without his help.

“In that case, I will leave you to your journey. I wish you well in bringing reinforcements.”

The Dominus found him moments later. “Any luck?” the man asked.

“Well, I’ve sent what pigeons I could. How about you?”

“I sent word to the Domini. Unfortunately, the tower here is missing the most important part of any such tower, so I will be traveling with you to Martia.”

“I’m supposed to go directly to Novaro,” Gaius said. “I did not intend to stop in Martia.”

The Dominus met his glare with the blankness of his unseen face. “Reaching Martia would quicken my journey by several days. It would not slow you down much, and this way I can bring help to the pass quicker than you can even if you sprout wings and fly.”

The tribune gritted his teeth. Did every Dominus see it as his duty to get under Gaius’s skin? At least going through Martia would give him a chance to pass on Publius’s request for help to Cisolympia. “All right, we’ll see whether the ship in the harbor can take us to either Martia or Novaro.”

Paulus stood on the ship’s deck with Captain Tracillo when they arrived. The trade ship Mercury had only a single bank of oars and a large sail. The shipwright had built for capacity, not speed, whatever the name. Its large cargo hold could carry most of Gaius’s men, though horses would have to be corralled on the deck. Since Tracillo sailed under military contract, he sought to accommodate as many of the steeds as possible, but Gaius decided to split his men in half. He took Paulus, Quinn, and the Dominus, along with ten others of the men who had fought the Orcs with him, two of them centurions. He ordered Manulus, who led the turma which had escorted them, to take the rest of the soldiers westward as fast as they could travel. Putting all of them in one boat risked too much on an unreliable sea. Gaius didn’t bother trying to load all of the horses on the ship, whatever the captain’s willingness, bringing only Zephyrus and the Dominus’s mount, since the man would hear no word of leaving his black stallion behind. The ship was underway before sunset.

---

This chapter is a 5,727 word excerpt from a 90,110 word novel.