A Necessary Deception

There weren't always dragons in the valley. They had arrived through the mist and forest some five anni ago. The people had fought them off, won many victories but for every warrior that fell beneath the bloodred flag of the dragon, a dozen more seemed to take his or her place. And their magic was powerful.

The bitter almost metallic tang of foreign magic hung in the air, mingling with the smell of smoke, burnt bodies and death. A figure scurried from shadow to shadow. Someone who looked closely might notice the tendrils of fog that seemed to hang in the air around her. But then, someone would have to look closely and most were too busy celebrating or mourning.

Someone who was listening closely might have heard the tenebrous whimper that made her freeze, melt into the shadows until she was sure no one had in fact been listening. Obscured by a gathering fog she edged her way closer to the half-collapsed building. Slowly, painfully slowly she sifted through the rubbish and wreckage until she found what she sought. It was Tember. He looked up at her with liquid pain-filled eyes as she removed the remains of the beam that had crushed him, fear, pain, hope and recognition lit his eyes. She leaned back for a moment, nursing bloodied and blistered hands as she looked down on the child. He would be five years old in a matter of weeks, born midwinter’s eve. Her hands had caught him as he slithered from his mother’s womb and blinking into the world. An experienced glance told her that both legs were crushed; bones protruded from one. Blackening bruises showed blood trapped inside his frail chest. One arm hung uselessly beside him, the other battered and bruised but the hand was still opening and closing weakly. She reached out and clasped it in her own.

He whimpered again, softly and she made a shushing gesture, putting her other hand over his mouth and pressing it up against his nose. His hand tightened in her and his eyes widened. She did not release him until his lashes flickered and his hand fell limp in her own. When it was done she pressed a kiss into his damp bloodied curls, gently gathered him up into her arms and carried him back into the shadows.

* * *

Vora’s eyes opened wide when she slipped back into the half-collapsed, still smoking pigpen, the pigs long gone. She saw the limp form in the other woman’s arms.

‘Who is it?’

‘Tember.’

Vora made a soft sound in the back of her throat and pulled the newborn she was clutching closer to her chest. The sleeping boy in her lap did not move, though the rise and fall in his chest revealed life.

Hefting the limp body slightly she pulled at a thong on her neck until the leather gave. She tossed it across the dark space and saw the slender hand snatch out from beneath the robes to grab it. It was a simple stone sphere, warm to the touch from where it had been nestled between the other woman’s breasts. A hole pierced it through the centre and though she could not see them in the dark Vora could feel the carvings etched into its entire surface. She tucked it away in her robes.

‘Keep it until he is older… if you can keep him alive.’ The tone was sorrow tinged with the barest whisper of hope.

‘Are you sure about this? Perhaps you could escape, the pair of you?

‘With the Dragoncloaks surrounding the entire village? Even I cannot turn invisible.’

She looked at the boy sleeping in Vora’s lap. He was smiling in his sleep, the deep dimple visible on his left cheek made her heart ache. Turning her attention to the dead boy in her arms she waved a hand across his still form. Vora, watching in the dark saw the boy’s hair lighten and lengthen, the round face narrow almost imperceptibly and the dark, open staring eyes face from black-brown to clouded blue. A slight imperfection in the left cheek suggested what might have been a dimple had the dead child been able to smile.

Somewhere in the distance, a horn blew, long and deep. The woman looked at Vora, infant tucked in her arms, boy asleep on her lap.

‘I have to go.’

Vora’s lips twitched as she tried to suppress a frown, twin rivulets of tears trickled down her cheeks and off her chin to land in the infant’s swaddling.

‘Try to save him.’

It was the dying wish of a woman about to sacrifice herself, a woman she owed her loyalty and love, so Vora nodded.

The woman pulled her hood back over her face and without a backward glance, slipped out into the frozen night air.

* * *

Casca and Drusus had drawn the short straw. While the rest of the legion ate and drank and sang, taking turns to enjoy the women they had captured and taunting the men, they were on sentry duty. Just in case there were some left alive. Both men were talented, Casca with sight, Drusus with hearing and with the standard behind them both senses were enhanced by the subtle shift of power that emanated from the golden emblem, an eagle, wings outstretched, pinions reaching almost the length of Casca’s arms on each side. Its very nearness was exhilarating but did little to cut the bitter cold that was trying to reach his very bones.

Drusus froze, turning his body subtly to the left. Casca peered out into the darkness. There was nothing to see.

‘Relax, Drusus. I very much doubt anything was left alive out there. Unless of course,’ he dropped his voice to a deep sibilant whisper, ‘unlessss you believe in ghossstsss.’

Drusus shot him a reproving glare but did not shift his stance. ‘There’s something out there.’

Casca sniffed disparagingly. He peered into the darkness, it was thick as ink. Dark as his mistress’ hair. All he could make out was a drift of fog, spreading tendrils across the ground.

‘There’s nothing out there.’

‘I’m telling you there is.’

He didn't need to repeat himself for as he looked again a figure emerged from the fog, slipping silently, or so it seemed to him, across the ground, nearing the trees to the left of them.

Drusus set off the flare that instantly whistled into the sky and saturated the area in bluish-white light. The shadow froze. It was carrying something in its arms.

‘Halt by order of the Empire!’ he called out, deepening his voice as much as he could to hide the fear he suspected was hiding below as he noticed the way the fog clung to the figure, shrouding it.

The figure remained still.

Rustling in the bushes and a dozen or more footfalls could be heard behind them and fireballs winked into existence in the hands of ten legionnaires, hands pulled back and prepared to throw. Another dozen flickering flames came from the tips of arrows already drawn and aimed in the direction of the shadow.

‘Who are you and why are you here?’

Like velvet wrapped around steel, a voice called out from Casca’s left. He breathed a sigh of relief. Marcus Vitelius was one of the General’s strongest mages and most capable Dragoncloaks.

‘Speak or I will give the order to release.’

One slender hand slipped from the cloak and moved to draw back the hood, allowing the light of the flickering globes to illuminate her features. Her skin was like milk, perfect pale eyebrows framed what appeared to be pale eyes, widened now with confusion. Silver blond hair framed the face. The fog that had appeared like a cloak around her now drifted at her feet, dispersing with the light breeze.

‘I am Anya.’ The voice replied, as melodic as Casca half expected it. Drusus beside him shook his head uncomfortably, as though clearing his ears.

‘Something’s not right,’ he hissed.

Marcus spoke. ‘Put down what you are carrying Anya and step into the light.’

She shook her head, ‘No.’

Eyes flicked to Marcus, bowstrings strained. He shook his head.

‘Put it down and step closer.’

Again she shook her head.

At this range, Casca could make out the angle and lumps of the burden and spoke softly. Knowing Vitelius would hear him.

‘It’s a child. Looks to be dead.’

Vitelius gave no outward sign of hearing. ‘Whose child?’

She lifted her head and held the burden tighter. ‘My son.’

Vitelius’ magefire flared brighter. ‘Don’t lie to me Lady, I can read your aura. I know what you are. Now tell me who you are. The truth this time.’

A frozen wind, cutting with ice, swirled through them, dousing half of the burning arrows but having little impact on the mage fire. The wind caught up the snow as it passed, swirling and churning it as it ringed its way around her plucking at her clothes and combing through her long hair.

‘I am Titanya, wife of Arminaz, King of the Zeruszki and I do not acknowledge your authority over me.’ She lifted her burden to reposition it, closed her eyes briefly and took a striding step forward.

Before her foot had touched the ground a full dozen arrows shot across the space between them, a few were knocked off course by the wind but most sailed true, sinking with sickening accuracy into the woman before them who crumpled without so much as a whimper, still holding the child, into the snow. The wind disappeared as quickly as it had arrived. Casca shivered, he had not even heard Vitellius give the order.

A pair of Vitelius men crossed the distance and one used a foot to push the form over, leaving it slumped across the snow, child still held closely, her blood, blending with his. The other leaned in and pushed the blanket off the boy’s face. Long blond hair, clouded blue eyes, about four years of age.

‘Tell the Legatus. We have them both. They’re dead.’

* * *

Unsteady on her feet, her stomach still aching with the aftermath of contractions Livia stepped into the space, a trickle of warm blood ran its way slowly down her inner thigh, to the back of her knee and down her calf. It hovered there, a little above her ankle, threatening the rich weave of the rug beneath her feet.

Her husband stood, still dressed in his armour, a new scratch and dent could be seen amongst the mud and blood that splattered his cuirass, baltea and greaves. His sword was sheathed at his side and he was grinning from beneath his bronze helm. With bloodied hands, he pulled the helm from his head and passed it to a waiting slave, not looking or waiting to see if it was held safely he let it go. A second slave held a silver bowl in which he dipped his hands, rubbing them together until the water was as red as his military cloak. A third slave held a soft skin out for him to wipe his hands on.

All this he did without taking his eyes off her.

She pulled the warm, damp burden from where it had stuck on her chest, it wriggled unhappily at the loss of the warmth, cloud-coloured eyes opening as she laid it on the bare earth at his feet.

It was little longer than his hobnailed boots, splattered with white vernix and drying blood and exposed to the cold air and hard ground it threw back its arms, scrunched its face and let out a piercing howl.

For a moment, he did nothing, peering at the yowling, flailing creature lying on the floor between them. A female, he noted, from the absence of external plumbing. The severed cord coming from its navel, tied with a red-dyed piece of string still oozed a little red-blue blood. He looked up at his wife. Livia looked exhausted, her legs were shaking and dark rings smudged the bottoms of her blue eyes. She waited. Until now they had all been boys. Three strong healthy ones, one weak sluggish creature that had died within the weak.

He studied the small flailing body, perfectly formed, if smaller than the boys. Her face scrunched up in a furore or rage, clenched fists waving as its open mouth gave off a sound that would frighten all but the most fearsome of warriors. He smiled, stooped down and scooped her up in one hand, cradling her against his battered and bloody breastplate. With his left hand, he teased out her fist, counting the fingers to five and then ten before doing the same with her tiny toes with their moon-shaped pearlescent nails, tiny and perfect.

He cupped her head in his palm. ‘Welcome and be accepted, my daughter.’ He waved his hand in a gesture and a gleaming ghostly sigil wavered over the infant's head before settling on her and seeping into her skin. ‘Octavia Livilla.’ He raised her near-weightless form higher and pressed warm lips against her quickly chilling skin before holding her out towards his wife. She took her hand off one of the solid oak beams that held up the tent to reach out for the child and as she did so her knees crumpled. He caught her with his left arm, pulling her against him to support her, the infant pressed between them.

‘Asa. Polia,' he barked the names as a command for attention. The two slaves darted forward, having absented themselves to give their mistress some privacy. ‘Take the infant.’ The General thrust the child at them and was relieved when the scarce weight was lifted. He dropped a hand behind her knees and lifted. She batted at him weakly.

‘Don’t touch me. I’m impure.’

He snorted, ‘As if I care less.’ He dropped a kiss on her hot damp forehead and carried her into the dark recess, stepping around the birthing mat that would now be tied up and offered to the flames, without the child in it as it might have been, had he refused to pick it up. He lay his wife on the shaggy soft pelts and drew a warm woven blanket up over her.

‘I’m sorry. I was sure it was another boy.’

The voice was whispered, so soft he barely caught it.

‘Don’t be foolish, my heart, she is beautiful. What man doesn’t want a daughter.’

She didn’t answer though they both knew that many did not and those female infants were often cast out on the whim of a father who desired only sons. Her eyes were closed and she shivered still so he pulled another blanket, this one even thicker to cover her. He hovered.

‘Away with you, Alamannius. You should not be here.’

He looked up at the voice, the old lady, more skin than hair on her head, pulled a woolen cloak tighter about her bony frame. He had been his own nurse as a child, though even then she had been old.

‘She was not like this with the boys,’ his voice was tinged with worry.

The old woman tutted. ‘Her fifth birth in eight years.’ Her eyes silently scolded him for the crime of desiring his wife. ‘She is not as young as she once was. They each take more out of you. And it was a long hard labour. But the child is fine and healthy and so is she. Now out.’ She made shooing motions with her hands and he obeyed, allowing her to push him from the annex.

The child was whimpering and hiccuping, warm by the fire and wrapped now in swaddling but still protesting the change of world.

‘Where is the wetnurse?’

Both slaves stared at him. One pursed her lips tightly. The other spoke. ‘She came down with the pox. Avia sent her away.’

Alamannius turned to look at the old woman, who simply shrugged. ‘I have sent the praetorians out to find another. Surely somewhere in this cursed place there will be a suitable woman.’

On cue, there was a rustle at the opening of the tent and a trio of women were pushed unceremoniously through the door. Like the three fates, the three women could not have been more different. One, clearly a camp follower from her scanty attire, had a hand protectively about her burgeoning belly. Another, an older woman, whose finer though still worn and stained clothes suggested she was the unofficial wife of one of his older soldiers, had more grey hair than brown with tits that sagged somewhere near her navel, but was carrying a toddler on her hip. The third reeked of mud, blood and what seemed to be pig shit. A buxom shape, her blond hair revealed her as one of the captured Zeruszku, a slave now. She had a tiny infant pressed up hard against her and a small boy wide-eyed and clinging to her side.

He looked distastefully at the camp whore. ‘When are you due?’

The woman shrugged, hand still over her belly.

‘When did you last bleed?’ Avia demanded.

The girl hesitated, sucking the inside of her left cheek as she mentally tallied an answer. ‘Some six or seven months, I’d reckon.’

Avia gestured at the praetorian, who obeyed her gesture as though it was his generals and flung the whore out of the tent. She turned to the older woman.

‘How old is the child?’

‘Nearing two anni…’ the woman was clearly scraping for an appropriate title and falling short.

‘Still suckling?’

‘A little, but not often.’

‘Enough to feed another?’

The older woman shook her head reluctantly. Employment as a wetnurse to the General’s child may have proven a lucrative endeavour, she was disappointed to miss out. Avia gave another gesture and the praetorian held open the tent flap for her to slip through. Both the old woman and the warrior turned their gaze onto the captive who quailed at the attention. Avia wrinkled her old nose at the smell.

‘How old is the infant?’

The girl stared at him puzzled.

He gestured at the child, ‘How old?’

No reply.

‘Asa. Pollia.’ he barked, they were watching from the fireside. ‘Which of you speaks the barbarian tongue?’

Asa nodded, ‘Only a little, Dominus.’ She turned to the dirty girl and rattled off what sounded, from the raised intonation at the end of the gruff growls, like a question. The girl held the infant tighter but muttered something back in a deep guttural tone.

‘Four dais.’ The slave reported.

‘That’s good,’ murmured Avia, ‘She’ll still have some colostrum.’

‘Tell her of our need. Tell her she can nurse the child and keep her life, or refuse and be given to the soldiers and have both her children given to the dogs.’

His old hunting hound on the floor near the fire groaned a little, raising its head in a timely fashion to look over at the girl.

He knew the message was relayed because the girl's eyes widened and she pulled the children closer, stepping further from the grey muzzled hound. The boy squirmed. She looked straight at the General and then back at the children before nodding.

‘She will do it.’

He didn’t need the interpretation but nodded. ‘Have her bathed first. He turned his back. One of the praetorians snatched the infant, another the boy, setting all three screaming. The praetorian casually backhanded the woman who fell to the ground.

The slave who had interpreted previously spoke rapidly gesturing at the infant, the boy and the fireside, then at the praetorians. The woman bit her lip, already blooded from the blow and reluctantly allowed herself to be led from the tent to be bathed, scrubbed thoroughly to remove the filth and lingering smell. She caught the boy’s eye as she disappeared and issued what sounded like a stern warning before being tugged out of sight. The General turned back for a moment, looking at the soldiers and the children.

‘Get rid of the infant, I won’t have my child sharing milk with a savage.

The Praetorian glanced at the silent boy, standing still as one of the statues in the forum in faraway Latium, watching with wide dark eyes.

‘And the boy?’

The General didn’t even spare the child a glance, ‘She can keep the boy — if she behaves.’

The nameless boy sat silently on the floor by the canvas wall, half his narrow buttocks rested on a plush wolfskin the other half on the woven carpet that covered the dirt floor. The fireplace in the centre of the room flickered hungrily and the grey muzzled dog twitched in its sleep beside it. Despite his distance from the fire, he was warm and though his close shorn hair was still damp from the bathtub and the drubbing he had been given by the twin blond slaves whose duty it had been to ensure he was clean and louse free, he was otherwise dry. A clean but not new tunic fell over his shoulders and down his body but did not cover his legs and they felt bare and spindly without his usual woolen pants. He wriggled bare toes idly as he watched the woman.

Vora's eyes were rimmed with red and puffy, one was blackened from the blow of one of the soldiers when she had flown at him, nails leaving deep runnels down his face when returned to learn the baby was gone. A silver trickle gleamed in the firelight and dripped her chin onto the swaddling clothes the General’s child had been wrapped in. Every so often her shoulders shuddered with an involuntary suppressed sob. She stared into the fire, refusing to look at the child whose tiny lips were attached to her nipple and whose sucking had subsided into intermittent movements which seemed to correspond to the shudders that ran through the woman’s shoulders.

She did not look at him either and he feared to draw her eye lest she turn away from him and reject him. Hers was the only face he recognised. His mother was gone, something deep and frightening inside him whispered that he would not see her again, it was a feeling he did not want to trust but it felt true. He had not seen his father in months, not since the giant of a man had left with most of the village's warriors to fight the Romans.

A rustle in the doorway saw the heady drapes thrust to one side and a dark figure stooped into view, he wore Zeruszki trousers and a long woolen tunic, belted at the waist with plaited leather. One arm was bandaged roughly though even from the distance the boy could make out the seep of blood. As he stepped clear of the opening the man stood to full towering height, shaking the thick pelt of his hard hair. The breadth of the shoulders gave his identity away.

The boy was about to leap forward and cry out to his uncle, who had clearly come to rescue him, when the door flap moved once more and two red-cloaked soldiers holding their pilam in front of them stepped through the door.

They came to a halt behind the big warrior, the shafts of their pilam tilted forward towards him. Was his uncle a captive? How had they managed to capture him, was that why he was injured?

The boy became aware of a tingling sensation around his tongue and lips.

His uncle’s eye traced the open space, slipping over the fireplace, the boy half on and half off the mat without even a flicker of recognition alighting on his features even though their eyes met. Not so when he noticed the woman nursing the babe. His eyes widened perceptibly then and a grunt escaped his lips.

The sound somehow woke Vora from her fire-watching trance and she reeled back, hissing as she did so, eyes narrowed and lips drawn back into a snarl that perplexed the boy until he recognised the words that had left her lips. Even then he was puzzled.

‘Gods cursed Traitor!’

The boy might still have uttered a sound, attempted to get his uncle’s attention, but the tingle on his lips seemed to numb them somehow and the words he formed in his mind did not manage to transfer themselves to his lips.

‘Ah, Titanaz. Come to gloat? Alamannius’ voice preempted his appearance from one of the curtained-off alae of the tent.

‘Come to report, General.’

The giant spoke Latvium fluently despite his harsh Zeruszki accent and well might he, for both he and his brother, the boy’s father had been raised in the Capital as hostages and spoke, dressed, were educated and had learnt to fight there. The boy had some inkling that this was why his father had been so successful in his rebellion against the Empire. So successful in fact that he had been able to slaughter three full legions of the Empire’s soldiers in the forests. So successful that the Emperor had sent his best General, his adopted son, Alamannius to crush them and retrieve the lost eagles, standards of the legion.

Alamannius stood in front of the man, forced to tilt his head to look up at him.

‘Report.’

‘The village and outlying farms have been neutralised.’

‘And Arminaz?’

‘No sign. Neither he nor his warband joined the fighting.’

‘So we were successful in slaughtering a village full of old men, women and children? The General’s voice was dry but the ridicule clear.

‘Unlike the Latvii our old men, our women, even our children are warriors, General.’

The General’s expression did not change, he shifted his gaze pointedly to the man’s arm.

‘It seems that one of them at least took a slice of you.’

‘A scratch.’

‘If you have nothing else to report?’ The General had already turned away and had raised the leather curtain.

‘Your men found Titania.’

The boy sat bolt upright at the name of his mother though fortunately, the motion went unnoticed though Vora’s red eyes shot him a warning glare. He froze, listening intently.

The General paused and turned slowly. ‘Our losses?’

‘None. Tribune Marcus Vitelius encountered her attempting to broach the perimeter. She was slain.

‘No loss of life.’

Titanaz shrugged, ‘Just one, two really.’

‘Your sister and…?’

The giant could not restrain the grin that crossed his face and were it not for the tingling that stopped his voice and Vora's stare that pinned him to the mat he would not have been able to resist throwing himself across the room.

‘The child, Arminestus. Their son.’

Frozen, the boy shuddered soundlessly at the news of his own death, and that of his mother. Tears made near invisible tracks along the line of his nose, dropping from his top lip to leave noiseless dark patterns on the filthy pants he wore.

‘Are you certain?’

‘Saw the bodies myself. She was riddled with arrows, the child half-crushed, but both dead.’

‘You saw to their burial?’

Titanaz snorted. ‘I had their bodies burned. Their ghosts will never haunt this land.’

Vora groaned, the boy understood. Without their return to the earth his mother’s soul and whosoever the child had been was lost. It was a great dishonour. Crouched on the floor in the semi-dark his fists were clenched so tightly that blood began to well in his right palm, where his fingernails had sliced the flesh.

Alamannius considered the man and the boy was surprised to see disgust not appreciation in the man’s eyes. If the giant noticed he did not respond, still grinning.

‘Arminaz is sure to come for us now.’

The General nodded. ‘Leave us. And take off that filth you are wearing and put on some decent clothing.’

The giant paused. ‘I would General, but it seemed my chests were… misplaced on the march.’

A hint of a smile cracked Alamannius’ expression. He shrugged the massive bearskin cloak off his shoulders and tossed the heavyweight at the man.

‘Take mine, you have earned it.’

He watched as the giant strung the heavy cloak over his own shoulders, it did not quite reach the floor but was generous enough that no one would notice.

‘Balbus, Laelius. Secure some red cloth from my personal stores for the Tribune.

The praetorians behind nodded, pressing their fists to their hearts. Titanaz too made the gesture but the General had already gone.

‘Come then, let's see if the good General also has any wine in those personal stores along with red cloth.’

He turned, cloak on his shoulder and pushed his way out of the tent, the men followed their expressions matching; black.

Near the fire, Vora sobbed quietly, the newborn infant asleep on her lap.

The silent boy in the shadows considered the blood in his fist and used it to make an oath.