Spring, and the trees along the Rhenus budded into green bloom. It was pretty country in the spring, Correus thought, but he wasn’t terribly surprised to find that he would be leaving it. There was trouble on the Danuvius now, and he couldn’t sorrow over much, because trouble always meant promotions, and his had taken the form of the command of a Danuvius fort. Not a legionary fort, but a fort all his own, and a good step up. If there was a good war, he might have his legion before a year was out.
He wasn’t going to put it that way to Ygerna, he thought, with his orders tucked into the palm of his hand. Ygerna was pregnant again and was going to have to go back to Rome. He would miss her desperately, but he wasn’t going to let her have a baby on the frontier, not after the hard time she had had with Eilenn. At that, he was happier than Flavius, who had lost his last babe, and been told by his wife’s physician that if he fathered more children on her, he would run the risk of losing her too.
The house in the Moguntiacum civil quarter seemed to be very full of people when he got there. He was not surprised to see Lucius Paulinus, who had kept his promise and stayed in Germany to make his peace with Domitian; but judging by the amount of baggage heaped on a mule cart outside, and in the green-tiled atrium, Julia had arrived, as well.
She threw herself at Correus, and he grinned and kissed her, and then looked quickly at Ygerna to see how the land lay. Ygerna had a grim look in her eye, and Julia’s face was flushed and rebellious. The air between them crackled.
“Mama! I have found three frogs in the garden!” Felix hurtled through the door, and the frogs, which he appeared to have brought with him, bounced wildly across the tiles.
Ygerna caught him by the wrist. “Frogs are not for the house. And the cat will catch them and eat them. Very likely on my bed.”
“Yes, Mama.”
She looked at him sternly. Then they both giggled.
Julia stiffened. She looked at Felix unhappily. He was bigger. And he loved Ygerna. He hadn’t even seen her.
Ygerna took a deep breath. She shoved Felix gently away from her. “Your aunt Julia is here.”
He swung around, and his green eyes lit up like the sun on seawater. In a moment Julia was staggering back against the atrium wall with Felix in her arms. Her eyes met Ygerna’s over his head.
“He does not forget you,” Ygerna said. “Must it be one or the other?”
Correus and Lucius looked jumpily from one wife to the next, but after a long moment, Julia shook her head. “No. It would seem not.” A frog hopped onto her big toe, and hopped off again, startled. She began to laugh.
“I can travel with Lucius and Julia,” Ygerna said chattily, “so you can take Eumenes with you.” She perched on the end of the bed and watched him pack. Correus decided that if he lived to be as old as his father, he would probably never understand women, so he would give up trying now. “But I am coming to the Danuvius when the baby is born,” Ygerna said. She looked interested. “Julia says it is wild country, wilder than the Rhenus.”
“Getting that way,” Correus said.
“Why are they sending you there?”
“The Dacians are looking too busy across the Danuvius.” Correus slung a tattered copy of Julius Caesar’s memoirs into the trunk, with the head and broken-off shaft of a German spear. A bedraggled collar of feathers hung around its neck. “We are being sent to look back at them.”
Ygerna eyed the spear. “What is that?”
“Souvenir,” Correus said shortly. “A reminder not to underestimate the enemy. I took it away from one of Marbod’s men.”
“Did you underestimate Marbod?”
“No, he underestimated Ranvig. And so did we.”
Ygerna yawned. “You can explain that to me when I get to the Danuvius.” She curled herself up on the end of the bed. She seemed to want to sleep all the time. It must be the child. “If you stay long enough for me to catch up to you.”
“Oh, I shouldn’t worry about that,” Correus said. “This is going to take a while.” And it wouldn’t be long before half the legions in Germany were following him, he thought. Dacia was just the place Ranvig would pick if he could order up a new war for Rome. Far enough away to take the emperor’s mind off Germany and just in the right spot to make the German legions the most likely reinforcements.
“I should like to see Dacia. That will be nice,” Ygerna said comfortably.
The chieftain of the Semnones sat by the hearth of the great hall of Ranvigshold and polished a hunting spear. There were children playing outside, shrieking like fiends in the spring sun. A ball bounced past the open door as he watched. His son tumbled after it, head over feet, brushed himself off, and scampered on, with a smaller child behind him. Ranvig found it pleasant to watch the children. These would have time to grow now, and Signy had another babe at the breast, a girl this time, with Signy’s rose-gold hair.
The chieftain and his young wife had found matters somewhat easier between them of late, with no older women in the hall to overshadow her. Morgian had gone away home to Steinvarshold, and Fiorgyn was married as well, and with child. Ranvig had his own ideas about that, but he would keep them to himself. She had picked a brown-haired man for her husband. Arni had done his best to get himself killed in the fighting, but he hadn’t, and he had just ridden in to say that the spies in Moguntiacum said that the Romans were posting men to the Dacian frontier. Ranvig grinned silently and held the hunting spear sideways to the light to see if the rust was gone.