The Phantom Queen Awakes (16 page)

****

Biography

Katharine Kerr spent her childhood in a Great
Lakes industrial city and her adolescence in Southern California,
from whence she fled to the San Francisco Bay Area just in time to
join a number of the Revolutions then in progress. After fleeing
those in turn, she became a professional story-teller and an
amateur skeptic, who regards all True Believers with a jaundiced
eye, even those who true-believe in Science. An inveterate loafer,
baseball addict, and rock and roll fan, she begrudgingly spares
time to write novels, including the
Deverry
series of
historical fantasies or fantastical histories, depending on your
point of view. She lives near San Francisco with her husband of
many years and some cats.

****

Peter Bell

The Trinket

They burned Gederus in the yard outside the
barracks. Dawn had brought the first break in rain for ten days and
the men, still cold and filthy from the construction work, cast
anxious glances at the black weight of cloud that threatened to
stamp out and drown the struggling flames. Those closest to the
pyre stole a guilty pleasure from its warmth.

All except Rufinius, who stood to attention at
the head of the bonfire, his nostrils thick with the smell of pitch
and roasting meat.

“This man was the best of us!” His voice
cracked open the still air. “A leader of men and a soldier of Rome!
Today, we honor him.”

He nodded to the priests, who stepped forward
and began reciting the prayers for the dead. Rufinius did not
listen. Instead, he narrowed his eyes against the smoke and
surveyed the army standing ready around him. A full century of men,
their plate armor dull and glassy in the pale sunlight, the
auxiliary soldiers and craftsmen standing in a looser huddle
farther out. Surrounding them all, the fledgling town of Isca
Augusta rose black and skeletal from the churned clay of the
earth.

He tried to ease some circulation back into
his toes and felt the pendant shift beneath his tunic. He could be
rid of it in an instant, he realized. Just throw it on the fire
with the other offerings and never mind what the woman might say.
But even before he saw her, watching him from the crowd, he
realized it was nothing more than a lazy idea. He had come too far
and done too much to just throw the thing away.

She stood at the rear of the crowd, one face
among hundreds, but her unwavering stare stood out like a beacon,
fixing him with an intensity that made him look away.

With a slight start, he realized the priests
had finished their ministrations and the men were waiting for him
to continue. He cleared his throat.

****

“You won’t get far.”

It was a winter’s day in Londinium, the snow
still thick on the ground, but if she felt the cold at all, she did
not show it. Instead, she picked her way down the temple steps, her
raven hair dusted with gray, watching him with a steady, almost
bored eye that nevertheless made him pull himself up, as though he
were being studied.

“Rome is a long way, and the emperor’s justice
travels more quickly than a deserter. You’ll never reach the
coast.”

An incriminating flash of shame took hold of
him. “You’re mad, old woman! I’m not going anywhere except to my
bunk. Away with you!”

She laughed, and it was a sound like knives
being drawn. He turned hurriedly away.

“You think you’re the first?”

She followed a few steps behind him, speaking
loud enough for one or two passersby to turn their heads in her
direction. He quickened his pace.

“I must have seen a legion’s worth of young
men pay their offerings to your gods, all of them crying for their
homelands.” She laughed again. “Your gods aren’t much use here, I’m
afraid.”

Her words had the bite of truth to them. He
had made landfall in Britannia two days ago, one of a boatload of
raw recruits sent to bolster the Second Augustan Legion before its
westward march to face the Celts, and already he hated the place.
It wore the stamp of the empire badly, like an ugly child playing
in a beautiful woman’s clothes.

The march from the coast had been a miserable
affair shrouded in a freezing fog through which the bare trees,
frozen marshlands and craven daylight that seemed to make up this
wretched island, could just be discerned.

The natives were little better. Like the land
that supported them, they were drained of color and vivacity, their
ghostly complexions criss-crossed with tattoos, like swollen veins.
He imagined them eating its food and drinking its water, digging
the very essence of the place out of the frozen soil and consuming
it, contaminating themselves until even their blood ran
gray.

He began pining for the sweep and plunge of
the hill country where he had spent his life working the baked
russet soil in the shade of the ash trees. And by the time the
gates of Londinium came into view, he had made up his mind ― he had
to get out.

The woman approached him, swinging her hips in
a mockery of a flirtatious swagger. Her accent and dress were
Celtic, although her clothes were the finest he had seen in months,
and her Latin was flawless.

“You’ve made up your mind to
leave.”

“I haven’t.”

She began circling him closely, her bare
shoulder rubbing his sleeve.

“You have. And I can help you. But I need you
to do something for me in return.”

Her eyes were fierce and unblinking, the faint
smile still in place beneath them. They had found whatever they had
been looking for in him, he realized, and she was awaiting his
response.

“I don’t want your help,” he said, resuming
his course. He would have to leave before the night watch began and
they barred the gates.

“Warm clothes, food and safe passage as far as
Rome,” she called after him. “To the very gates of Caesar’s palace,
if that’s what you want.”

He walked on, slow and deliberate, the town
holding its breath in the crisp air.

“In exchange for what?” he asked, finally
turning back.

Her smile broadened. “I’ll show
you.”

****

The sun was failing and the snow reflected the
purple taint of the sky as they approached the edge of the woods.
Firelight burned strongly from within, painting blocks of shadow
across the ground and a hum of voices could be heard, broken by an
incongruous series of grunts and slaps. A cheer went up. Something
moved against the flames.

Following the woman, Rufinius emerged in a
circular clearing lit by a trio of bonfires. A crowd of people
stood in a loose ring around its fringes, watching two naked,
glistening figures as they grappled in the centre.

The woman did not wait for him, but found a
space from which to observe the contest. A little awkwardly, he
took up a position at her shoulder.

The two fighters pulled apart and, in the
second before they slammed back together, he was able to make out
their features. One of them was a Celt, his face flowing with blood
and tattoos, his hair spiked in the style of a warrior.

The other man was Gederus.

Despite his brief spell in the settlement, he
had already acquired the faintest trace of the awe in which the
other legionaries held the man.

“He’s afraid of nothing,” they all whispered.
“Throttled a Vandal chieftain with his bare hands. Going to be a
Centurion before another year’s out.”

It was easy to believe. He was like a bear,
standing a head taller than anyone else in the legion and even now
had his opponent backing in unsteady circles around the clearing. A
feint, a quick step, and he seized his prey, locking the man’s arms
within his own. The crowd babbled excitedly, money and tokens
changing hands.

“Stop him.”

The woman was at his ear, watching the Celt
strain against Gederus as she might a stage play or a feat of
acrobatics. He recognized it as the seasoned gaze of an expert
critic.

“Why? He’s winning a fair fight.”

“Not the Roman. The Celt. He will become
desperate, take up a rock and kill your legionary.”

He tried to laugh, but her tone was
businesslike.

“How can you possibly know that?”

“I know battle. The nature of it drives me;
its quality sustains me and ― there!” She thrust a pointing finger
towards Gederus. “See what he wears!”

True enough, he saw that Gederus was not
entirely naked after all; something gold winked in the hollow
between his pectoral muscles.

“That pendant was mine once,” she said, her
voice betraying the first traces of emotion. “I gave it to the man
I loved, on the eve of a great war. He never returned. Now your
legionary wears it for luck.” She sneered. “It’s nothing but a
bauble to him. A trinket.” And with astonishing strength she
gripped Rufinius’ forearm and trained her fierce eyes on his.
“Steal it for me.”

He tried to pull free but her fingers bit
deeper.

“I have come a long way in search of this,”
she hissed. “If the legionary dies now, they will burn him with it,
or use it to pay for the cremation. If I lose my prize, you will
lose my favor.”

Her words sent a cold prickle of doubt
crawling through him. “You really are mad,” was all he could
manage.

The Celt was weakening, his hands planted on
the ground as he tried to throw Gederus off. His arms trembled and
gobs of saliva dropped freely from his mouth.

Rufinius looked around wildly, unable to pull
free of her grasp, hoping desperately that none of the others had
recognized him.

“Do this for me,” she intoned, “and you will
never have to beg for work from those ignorant farmers
again.”

He flinched. “How do you―?”

There was a gasp from the crowd and he looked
up in time to see Gederus fall backwards, clutching his face. The
Celt sprang up, a shard of rock raised to strike, but Rufinius was
moving, suddenly free of the woman, his feet leaving the ground as
he caught the man by the waist and drove him to the dirt. The stone
clattered to a stop between them.

There was an instant of shocked
incomprehension. Then the warrior lunged for the stone.

Neither man saw Gederus coming; there was just
the flash of steel and a wet
smack
as the short sword
punctured the Celt’s neck, locking his body in a single, agonizing
convulsion. A gush of blood escaped the man’s nose and a short,
sharp exclamation ― almost a laugh ― burst from his lips. Then,
with a grinding of bone, Gederus twisted the blade and he was
dead.

“Put this thing on the fire,” he commanded the
crowd, now watching in silence. Then, reaching out a hand, he
hauled Rufinius to his feet. “Thank you, friend. You’ve got a sharp
eye.”

Rufinius could not muster a reply, but looked
back to the woman, fear and questions in his eyes. The firelight
poured shadows into the lines and hollows of her face and, smiling,
her mouth became a toothless burrow, gouged in festering soil. She
nodded, the gesture loaded with complicity, before drifting away
into the wooded shadows.

****

Now, in the damp and sludge of Isca, he
stooped and clawed up a handful of mud.

“This,” he announced, raising the rank pile
for the crowd to see, “is Roman soil!”

The words were met with a roar of
approval.

“We do not fight to claim it from uncivilized
hands. We fight to protect it from those who have no place here!
Imagine building a fine house only to find, as soon as it was
completed, that it was overrun with thieves and savages. What would
you do?” He surveyed them. “You would take up your sword and drive
them out!”

A murmur of assent from the crowd, but a wry
smile from the woman.

“Gederus understood this.” He pointed to the
flames as they continued the hungry work of lifting skin and hair
and clothes from the body. “He fought and died that we might keep
this land pure. Keep it Roman.” He lifted the clod still higher,
thick black ribbons of liquid dirt streaming down his wrist. “Tell
me, legionaries, what greater claim can we hold to the land than
this? That the blood that ran in his veins now runs through this
soil!”

They erupted, to a man, and he felt the glow
of pride start to kindle in him.

“He fought for you,” he urged them. “Will you
fight for him?”

With a sound like a rainstorm, every sword was
drawn and held aloft.

“Will you fight with me?”

“Yes!” they roared.

“Then we will drive our enemies out of this
land and into the seas!” he cried. “And let every Celt understand
that if they are not Roman, they are dead!”

The applause, the cheers, the stamping of feet
and bellowing of voices rose like a solid thing, prickling the
hairs on his arms and rising on clattering wings towards the
clouds.