10

 

Anatolia

 

Jurian and Mari headed west and a little south after leaving Eugenius’ house, walking until the sun rose in a haze of late autumn glory. If they kept on in that direction, Jurian knew they would eventually cross the Roman road that led to Ancyra. He had some memories of poring over his father’s Legion maps of Anatolia, and though he’d never gotten a good sense of how to measure distance, he knew this much: they were in for a long walk.

They had been walking for a few hours when Mari stumbled beside him.

“Are we far enough from Satala yet?” she mumbled. “We’ve walked for forever.”

Jurian stopped and turned. There was nothing but rolling hills around them now, dusted in browns and drab greens to the southwest, brilliant emerald to the north where the land buckled in massive hills. Satala and the walls of the Legion castra had long since disappeared from view, but Jurian feared that at any moment, Casca and his horsemen would appear over the ridge just behind them.

“I think so,” he said, and Mari promptly collapsed on the ground where she stood.

Jurian smiled and dropped down beside her, stretching out full length with his hands behind his head.

“You know, you should have picked a spot that wasn’t facing straight at the sun before you sat down,” he remarked, plucking a long strand of sweet grass to chew. "And we can't stay long. Just a bit of a rest, all right?”

“Whatever you say,” Mari said, her voice muffled in her arms.

She was asleep a moment later, sprawled on her stomach in the grass, her hands wrapped over her head to block out the light. Jurian threw an arm over his eyes and tried to follow her example. But even though his legs ached and exhaustion soaked every muscle in his body, his restless mind kept him from sleep.

Over and over again he saw his mother’s face, heard the echo of her last words. The Legionaries with their blood-stained swords, Varro’s grief and fury. The burning house. The singing. Casca’s vow to hunt them down and break them.

His throat tightened and a clawing ache gripped his heart. But he drove the grief back, swallowing the numbness and all the pain. There would be time to mourn later, when they were safely away from Anatolia. Casca would make good on his threat if he could, especially if he caught them in the wild. He would have to be vigilant.

It was almost midday before he drifted into restless, dreamless sleep.

He woke with a start a few hours later, heart pounding, his throat thick with dust and thirst. Mari was sitting up beside him, nibbling a handful of walnuts they had found in Eugenius’ house. She looked better for having slept, but her hair had fallen out of its knot into a dark tangle and she had a streak of dirt smudging one cheek.

“Feeling better?” Jurian asked her.

She gave him a smile that tried too hard to be enthusiastic. “I wish that nice eques had given me his horse, though,” she said.

“Right,” he said. “Can you imagine? Us with a horse?”

Her eyes got a dreamy faraway look and she said, “Oh, I can imagine it.”

Jurian rolled his eyes and sat up, brushing grass and dust from his tunic. “Well, keep imagining it, because that’s as close as you’ll get. Where are the nuts?”

She tossed him a small linen bag and he scooped out some almonds still in their shells. Mari watched him use the hilt of his seax and a smooth rock to crack the shells, then held out her hand expectantly when he finished.

“Smash your own,” he said, pitching the bag back at her.

She jutted her lower lip and didn’t move her hands, but couldn’t hide the mischievous gleam in her eyes. Finally Jurian heaved a long-suffering sigh and deposited three almonds into her waiting palm. She grinned triumphantly and ate them all in one mouthful.

“We should reach the road by late afternoon,” she said when she had swallowed.

“How do you even know that?”

She shrugged, combing her fingers through her tangled hair and tying it back at the nape of her neck. “I used to look at father’s maps, too.”

“You did?”

“I was bored. They were interesting. So?”

He smiled and gestured to the walnuts in her hand. “Finish those. We need to keep going.”

Mari nodded and shoved them into her mouth. As he waited for her, Jurian checked his quiver—only ten arrows left. He would need to make more once they got out of the hills and into the woods, and he’d need to start watching for game. Mari coughed suddenly, startling him out of his thoughts, but for his concern she just pointed at the nuts in her other hand. He tossed her their waterskin and got to his feet, Mari joining him a moment later.

It was late afternoon when they finally spotted the Roman road. The slanting light glanced off the road’s paving stones, so bright that Jurian had to shield his eyes.

He stopped some thirty feet away to contemplate it. “Well, there it is.”

“Yes,” Mari said, folding her arms with mock seriousness. “Should we cross it?”

“Well…” His voice trailed off, and he turned a slow circle. “The land is gentler on the north side, at least for now. But there are more trees for cover to the south.” He shaded his eyes and looked along the road in both directions. “We’ll stay off the road itself. It’s too exposed.”

“So which side will it be, then?” Mari asked, a wicked twinkle in her eye. When he hesitated she said gravely, “It’s quite obvious. Once we pick a side…we can never go back.”

Jurian had to laugh. “I’m not that bad,” he said, and she smirked. “Let’s go. I think I’ll have better luck hunting on the other side.”

He led Mari across the road and they continued west, walking until the sun set in a blaze of rose and amber. As the shadows deepened, Jurian tracked south into the trees where the ground would be softer. But it was already getting dark under the canopy of leaves, so he found a spot that seemed fairly level and dry and spread his cloak on the ground.

“I’m going to hunt,” he said, unslinging his bow and leaning his weight against the lower limb to string it.

Mari paused in the middle of sitting down. “I’ll get some wood.”

Jurian waved over his shoulder. “And look for a spring if you can. We’re going to need more water.”

He roved into the woods, trying to quiet his steps over the dry leaves and needles. The stand of trees wasn’t particularly large, but he could hear movement in the undergrowth. Small movements, so, probably a rabbit or a fox. His mouth watered—they had eaten nothing but dried figs and nuts since they’d left Eugenius’ house. He picked his spot and didn’t move again, even when the sounds seemed to retreat further into the trees. Better to be patient than risk scaring his prey with a misplaced step.

It didn’t take long for the rustling to return. Jurian’s eyes, now adjusted to the shadows and moonlight, caught the occasional red gleam of the animal’s eyes as it foraged. He’d already nocked an arrow on his bowstring, and as soon as the creature turned its head, he drew and released. Silence. He let out a breath. Silence meant he had killed it with one blow.

When he returned to the camp, he was already holding up the skinned rabbit for Mari’s admiration, but his sister was sound asleep next to a small pile of wood. Jurian studied her anxiously, but he wasn’t really surprised at her exhaustion. He dragged the wood away from her and got a fire going. Once he had coaxed it into a low flame, he spitted the rabbit and set it to roast.

The warm aroma of cooking meat woke Mari, and she blinked at him across the fire, bleary-eyed and disoriented.

“Did you happen to find any water?” Jurian asked gently.

She nodded and pointed to the low tree branch where she’d hung the water skin. “I didn’t quite fill it up. I thought we could fill it again in the morning.”

Jurian frowned but said nothing. Mari wasn’t a hunter, and she wasn’t a fighter. She was barely fifteen, and though she’d had strength enough for both of them in Satala, out here in the wilderness she seemed so young. So lost.

He returned his attention to the roasting rabbit. The silence was unnerving. He had never minded the quiet before, but usually he couldn’t even bribe Mari to stop talking. Studying her across the firelight, he didn’t know if it was sorrow or exhaustion that stole her voice. He wished he knew what to say.

In the end, he just said, “The rabbit’s done.”

Mari gave him a smile that pretended enthusiasm. “You should eat it,” she said. “You need the meat most of all.”

“We both need it,” Jurian protested. “With all this walking, you’ll need it too to keep up your energy.”

“Really,” she said, and wrinkled her nose. “Rabbit’s not…my favorite.”

“You don’t have to pretend for my sake. There’s more than enough for both of us.”

“I’m not hungry, Jurian,” she said finally. “All right? I don’t want food. I just want to sleep.”

With that she curled up in her cloak, facing away from him. Jurian stared at her, the skewer of rabbit meat dribbling hot grease on the leaves at his feet.

Oh God, why am I such a failure? he thought. I should never have dragged her out into the wilderness. I’m sure this isn’t what Mother or Eugenius had in mind when they told us to leave.

The thought of Eugenius quieted his inner voice. How could a man knowingly walk into the place of his execution? Eugenius had known. Jurian didn’t understand how, but he was convinced the man had seen his own death approaching. And yet he had gone anyway. Why hadn’t he turned them away at his door? He would still be alive and safe if he had.

Or, maybe…

Jurian’s mind shifted against his will toward the thought he’d been desperately trying to avoid since they’d left Satala.

Maybe Eugenius and Mother would still be alive if I hadn’t been such a coward.

“What if I could have saved them?” he whispered out loud, challenging the night to answer him.

Part of him hoped that Mari would still be awake, that she would hear him and comfort him, telling him there was nothing he could have done. She didn’t.

And even if she had, Jurian wasn’t sure he would have believed her.

The chill sunrise brought brighter spirits to their little camp. Mari finally accepted a few pieces of rabbit meat left from the night before, and once they had both eaten, they headed on.

Mari had trouble maintaining a brisk pace for more than a few hours at a time, so Jurian tried to keep a steadier, slower pace that she could manage. Still, he knew that the nights would quickly turn a brutal cold, and the last thing he wanted was to be stranded on the plateau when the snows came.

And then there was Casca. Always, Jurian thought he could hear hoofbeats pursuing them. He kept turning to look over his shoulder, scanning the empty landscape rolling away behind them while the crawling dread in his gut only grew stronger.

Mari hummed as they walked to keep herself occupied. After a while she started singing in earnest and goaded Jurian to join her, insisting it made the walking more bearable. He had never felt comfortable singing, though; he had a decent enough voice, low and a bit husky, but he never knew if he was singing exactly the right pitches. For a while he listened to her, but it wasn’t a song he recognized. To amuse her he tried to join in anyway, but he kept guessing the wrong word to sing and finally she dissolved into laughter. The laughter turned to coughing and it took her a few minutes to get her breath back.

“Saints, it’s no use,” she said.

That night when they camped, Jurian watched Mari across the dancing flames of their tiny campfire. She seemed thinner than he remembered.

It’s just the walking, he told himself. The walking and little food to make up for it.

It made perfect sense, but when he closed his eyes to sleep, all he could see was his mother’s wasting, and how fast it had all happened at the end.

In the middle of the night, a sudden sound startled him awake. As he lay there, heart pounding, trying to figure out what he’d heard, the sound came again.

Mari was coughing.

They walked for five more days before they saw sign of anyone else. The first thing they noticed was the smell of a cooking fire, then a massive plume of smoke appeared around a bend in their path. Jurian stopped short when he saw it, hurrying Mari farther from the road and into a stand of trees.

“That’s a lot of smoke for one or two people,” he whispered.

In the occasional gusts of wind from the northwest, he caught the sharp noises of clashing metal and—more than that—he could smell the thick odor of animals. A lot of animals.

“Legion camp,” he said. Could Casca have missed us somewhere?

Mari’s eyes widened. “Out here?”

“Maybe it’s a different cohort,” Jurian said. “Maybe there’s another battle with the Persians coming.” He waved a hand at Mari. “Wait here. I’m going to sneak ahead and see if I can make out their signum.”

He slipped away from the trees, drawing the hood of his cloak up to cover his unusual—and all too visible—red hair. He edged across the road, then crept up the low hill that had blocked their view of the smoke.

Once he’d gotten high enough for a good view, he eased forward until he could see down into the valley below. To his left, the road bridged a broad river, and, as he expected, a Legion camp spread on its opposite bank, north of the road. A few Legionaries stood posted at either end of the bridge. The camp was too far away for him to identify the emblem embroidered on their red vexillum, but this wasn’t a large troop, and no military expedition either. The men milled about, with no semblance of the strict order he expected from a well-drilled Legion.

Just as he was about to turn away and head back to Mari, movement at the marquee tent in the center of camp caught his attention. The tent flap was slapped back, and out stepped Casca.

Even at this distance, Jurian knew it was him. There could be no mistake. He stood a head shorter than the officer who attended him, and only Casca gestured that way as he spoke—hand dancing like a hooked fish on a line. A moment later, another soldier brought around two horses, holding them steady for Casca and his attendant to mount.

Jurian pushed himself into motion, half-sliding, half-running down the hill. He had to get Mari out of here…but how?

Casca’s troop barred the only bridge over the river that they’d likely find for miles, and if he found them, he’d kill them. Jurian hesitated in the shallow gully next to the road, staring towards the bridge, waiting for the inevitable sound of hoofbeats.

None came. Casca must have gone the other way.

Jurian darted across the road and back to the copse where he’d left Mari concealed in the shadowy underbrush.

His heart stopped.

Mari lay curled up under a tree, still and pale as snow, and over her stood the largest man he had ever seen.