...for none there looks on vice with a smile, or calls mutual seduction the way of the world. (Tacitus)
Haustblot carried with it an energy I hadn’t ever experienced. I could reach out and touch the excitement, the seething fury waiting for any excuse to unleash on the contingent of Romans present this year. With the weapons, the taxes, the slaves, the terror of starvation, the flagrant disregard for our justice, our people had reached their limit.
Varus hadn’t arrived, though Arminius assured us all he would be here before the month was out. To Arminius’ delight, Varus, in his distaste for performing administrative tasks, had delegated several cohorts to spread across the region and do his work for him. Not only did this mean his fighting force was reduced, but the way Romans resolved local disputes inflamed tensions rather than doused them.
No matter how long they made war against us, how many tribes they conquered, Romans didn’t understand the Germani ways. They saw themselves as the ultimate authority in a land that had never known any authority. Chiefs and clan chieftains presided over disputes, but no one man decided anything for another. All parties had to agree. To make matters worse, Romans reveled in any and every opportunity to execute a person. I didn’t want to hear of more Germani tribesmen unjustly killed, yet I couldn’t deny that regular executions benefited our cause.
Any tribesman unsure of supporting rebellion had their mind made up for them when one of their own hung from a cross. Scalcs and freedmen alike spent whatever leisure time they had huddled together working the bare, raw pieces of wood into clubs and spears, all carefully hidden away. Each tribesman and scalc did their part to rebuild our armory.
We waited until the dead of night to sneak off with groups of scalcs and tribesmen, always in different directions under the guise of making merry, which Ermin’s ala soldiers aided us by holding small parties of their own around our secret meetings.
To my delight, Levin returned with the ala. Seeing him hearty and hale was an unexpected balm. Also unexpected was his excitement for the opportunity to keep Segestes and our brothers too busy to spy on our nightly training sessions. I wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. Levin took Ualter under his wing and together the pair of them spent their days inventing reasons to keep my family on “guard duty” around the festival site. If it wasn’t “guard duty,” it was late night inventories and emergencies with recruiting for the alae. Since each “order” came from Varus, Segestes couldn’t bring himself to argue. When that wasn’t enough, Levin kept a constant watch on them.
Though my sleep suffered, I spent each night at Arminius’ training sessions. I’d grown accustomed to Arminius’ speeches by rote.
“Now,” he said, demonstrating with a shield made of branches and leaves and a stick sword, “you cannot forget that the shield may seem cowardly, but they’re trained to stab you here.” He patted his ribcage, right where a killing blow would land. “And push on. You cannot assume their armor and shields mean they’re ineffective killers.”
Next, he explained how long the legionaries trained in swordsmanship and the necessity of expecting their abilities in that regard, as well. After all his talk about how useless they became without their precious, impenetrable formations, his words came as a shock to most. None of it surprised me beyond the subtle way he introduced the idea to tribesmen. Each group we guided into these woods then spread the word among their own.
He’d held that information back, waiting until our most likely allies had fully invested themselves in the rebellion before revealing the combat promised to be far more difficult than the average Germani expected. It was an awe-inspiring deception.
The scalcs were especially eager for battle. They knew the taste of bondage better than free Germani; the hard reality of selling their labor to a master in trade for the necessities of life. Of the tribesmen most keen to participate, many were once scalcs themselves.
Jotapa joined me nightly, as did Konrada as often as she could sneak away from her family. Wielding a club or spear didn’t come naturally to either of them, but I tracked their steady progress with pride. For Jotapa, mastering new weapons was more a last resort should her arrows—sharpened sticks— fail. Few compared to her marksmanship, and when she took up the sling and stone, her innate skill translated there, too. Konrada grumbled about that weapon, having no natural talent for it and missing her targets by wide margins more often than not.
She cursed foully as she loosed a missile that sailed into the blackness beyond our torches.
“How am I supposed to do this in the dark?” She snarled her question mostly to the night and to anyone near enough to listen. Of everyone I’d seen over the past two weeks, she was the youngest and struggled to find her place among seasoned warriors and scalcs alike.
I crossed my arms over my chest at her frustration, at her naïveté.
“The ambush will take place in an especially dense forest,” I said. “Light will be limited, if there’s any at all. We might have storms. It goes without mentioning that battle itself is a sea of chaos. Even with their uniforms, it will be difficult to tell friend from foe.”
While she mused over that, I turned my attention to where Arminius showed the evening’s group the various weaknesses on Roman armor. His gaze found mine and for a moment, his lips quirked and his speech slowed. Heat flared between us, enough to chase away the cool night breeze. A simple look across a clearing had the power to make my pulse throb and thought flee in favor of animalistic need. After this meeting, like all the others, we’d linger in the woods to properly enjoy each other, to feed that inferno. Our connection was too powerful, something I’d never have the capacity to rein in and break.
He cleared his throat and continued his lecture. Our clubs were heavy enough to fracture a Roman shield or smash a helmet, and thus the skull beneath it, to bits. Our spears were heavier than theirs, despite having varying types, which was both good and bad. They could fling their javelins a greater distance, while ours inflicted more damage. Or they would, if we still had a wealth of iron spearheads. Their double-edged swords were short yet lethal. Ours were longer and heavier, capable of cleaving a limb in one blow, though few warriors carried them, and fewer still wielded them with anything resembling finesse. More warriors than I expected had managed to save their swords, including Ingomar, who loaned me his. I kept it tucked safely away.
“Ualter doesn’t want me to fight.”
I jerked, startled as Konrada broke through my reverie.
“He and I have that in common,” I said. We sent children as young as twelve into combat. I was younger than Konrada when I first fought. Now that I was grown and seasoned, responsible for training youths like her, the practice left a foul taste in my mouth.
She was so young.
“I have to. I’m not going to be like Mama.”
For the second time in a matter of seconds, she surprised me. “You think you need to be a warrior to be strong?”
“Don’t you?” Her big brown eyes blinked owlishly up at me. “She’s still abed, you know? She’d rather lay down and die than deal with Ualter’s absence. And my Papa is so weak, he’s letting her.”
Since I knew just about everything that went on in our village, of course I knew her mother remained bedridden and useless, even after Ualter’s visit. I was the one who’d arranged to have a recently freed scalc move in with them. I paid the woman enough for a year of service to ensure their household always had clean clothing, swept floors, and regular meals. Konrada never asked for the help, and she didn’t need to.
“Not everyone can handle a large shock,” I said, knowing it wasn’t true. Konrada’s parents were weak, always had been. Ualter and Konrada were aberrations.
Konrada snorted. “You don’t have to lie to me. I’ve known what they are for a long time. That’s why I have to be a warrior.”
I grimaced, knowing I was possibly the worst mentor she could have. We were too similar. Of course I’d wanted to follow in my Mama’s footsteps, but I couldn’t deny my disdain for my father’s weaknesses. He was a middling warrior at best and far too quick to kneel to our oppressors. I had to wonder how much my feelings toward Segestes, my innate belief that he couldn’t be trusted to look after our family or our tribe, drove me to be the warrior I was.
There were other ways to be strong, though.
“Ingunn lost a foot and she’s our best midwife. Romilda has buried every child she ever birthed, and every day she wakes with the sun, and she and her husband go about their duties. Half of the thread in our village was spun by her.”
Konrada chewed my words over with a little furrow in her brow I wanted to smooth away. She was too young to have these worries.
“No,” she shook her head. “That’s just surviving. That’s not strength.”
I slung an arm around her shoulders and pulled her to my side. “Sometimes, more often than you might realize, surviving is the hardest thing a person can do.”
* * *
Jotapa presented my wedding gown with flourish and an impish smile.
“I know you don’t want this marriage,” she conceded, “but I’ve worked very hard on the dress in secret for months, so can you please at least appreciate it?”
That wasn’t a hard request. She had meticulously woven brightly colored stripes into a visual feast unlike anything I’d seen before. Around the hem, she’d embroidered a repeating pattern of wolf heads to match our tribal sigil. Absent was any hint of my Chatti husband-to-be. That wasn’t uncommon, though in this case it seemed intentional.
“It’s beautiful,” I said, fingering the buttery soft fabric. It must have taken months to spin the fleece into thread so fine, to dye it these brilliant colors, then weave it all together in the straight, even stripes. “I don’t know what to say.”
She took my hand. “Your face says enough. You will be a stunning bride in this.”
I’d certainly draw the eye in all those colors, a rainbow walking among mortals. My mind conjured an image of swearing the vows with Reimar and my fingers tightened on the dress, ready to rip it to shreds. It took a conscious effort to loosen my grip.
“You’re still going through with it, aren’t you?” she asked.
Someone shouted outside the tent, then laughed uproariously and continued on his way. I pulled at the neckline of my tunic, suddenly too warm to remain inside, yet certain if I walked out, every person who laid eyes on me would line up to tell me I was being a fool.
“I’m not wrong,” I spat. “You grew up with us. You know how seriously we take matters of honor. What tribesman would stand with us after we dishonor Reimar? No one will trust us.”
“I think...” she trailed off, folding the dress back into a neat square and stowing it in my trunk. She straightened and tipped her chin up, a mirror of my posture whenever I prepared to launch a verbal battle. “I think you underestimate how much more your allies hate Rome than they value Chatti honor.”
At that, I snarled and strode into the bright afternoon sunlight.
A pack of children swerved around my sudden appearance, laughing at the boy who stumbled at my feet. Sunna and Donar trotted up to me with wagging tails and expectant faces I knew too well: They wanted a wander. Since that suited me, I took off between the tents and vendors with my dogs at my side.
The air was dusty and dry here. In a matter of weeks, the fall storms would roll in, preceding months of snow and biting cold. No matter what happened in the coming weeks, that wouldn’t change. People still needed food and warmth to survive. We still had to prepare for the return of Roman soldiers in the spring, and a rebellion, successful or otherwise, meant a vicious Roman return.
I had almost made it past the last of the tents when Wiltrud’s familiar voice called out.
“Thusnelda! There you are.” Amid vendors aggressively hawking wares available for trade—which now included coin, to pay off the Empire—and tribespeople milling about, bartering, arguing, drinking all throughout the day and night, Wiltrud was a serene pool in her crisp white gown with its intricate blue embroidery.
I swallowed the flash of annoyance for the interruption of my grand design to lose myself in the plains.
“Queen.” I dipped my head in a respectful bow, knowing she’d wave off such formality.
“Please.” She slid an arm around my shoulders and guided me back on the path away from the festival grounds. “You should already be calling me mother.”
Brown grasses started low and small, then grew taller the further we walked.
“Will you?” she asked.
“Will I what?” The sun beat down on us, warming an otherwise cool day. The dogs disappeared in the fields so that only the movement of dead grasses and peaks of tails revealed their positions. The sky was a cloudless, clear blue, offering no hint of the storms to come.
“Will you call me mother?” Her arm fell away and she clutched her hands together in a nervous gesture I never imagined her making.
“Of course I will,” I answered quickly. How could she think otherwise? Since my mother’s death, I’d yearned for a maternal bond more than I cared to admit. Wiltrud’s appearance in my life meant more to me than whatever marriage Reimar and I might have.
She let her fingers skim over the grasses and came up with a handful of seeds, pinching a few between her thumb and forefinger before letting them fall back to the earth.
“Raginmar was not my choice of husband,” she said. “I was in love with a blacksmith from a small village that was as much Tencteri as it was Chatti. As you know, I married Raginmar, and he gave me a fine son and two daughters.”
At my questioning look, she smiled sadly.
“My girls have long been married off to noblemen, a Tencteri and a Marsi. They have their own households and children I’ve met only a few times. I had hoped, I do hope, that I will have grandchildren at home to spoil.”
Sunna barked and initiated a chase with Donar. He always let her win these, rolling to his back and presenting his vulnerable belly and throat for her playful bites. He was bigger and stronger, yet he only felt the need to assert his dominance when she got carried away and bit too hard.
I didn’t know if I was Sunna or Donar in this scenario, but I knew there was an element of farce to this talk. Was I to roll over and let her win, or was I the fool, unaware that she’d already won? Wiltrud danced her way around what she truly meant to say and, as usual, I found myself lost in the game. Arminius would know precisely what she meant and what she wanted from me. I’d thought these verbal sports unique to Romans, but that clearly wasn’t true. I simply didn’t know how to play along.
“It took me a long time to appreciate what I had with Raginmar. Even though he made me a queen, I still longed for my smith and the quiet life we might have shared.” She stopped our leisurely stroll and faced me. “I know how you spend your nights here.”
Panic froze every muscle in my body. How did she know? Who else knew? How soon until Reimar found out, because if he already knew, then I’d already be shaved bald and on the march.
“I… it’s not…” My mind refused to form words.
She took my hand in hers. “I’m not angry, and don’t worry, Reimar has no idea. I’ve been where you are, and I don’t expect you to love my son simply because you’re betrothed.”
“No, no.” I shook my head, ready with the same denials I’d repeated to myself ad nauseam, to borrow a phrase from our conquerors. “I am happy with my match—”
“I know. I also know that being happy and being in love are two different things. I know that like me, you are possessed of both duty and honor, and you have avoided both me and my son since Haustblot began. What will you choose?”
Facing her was impossible, so I watched my dogs as they dove and tumbled through the grass. Donar caught sight of a grouse and together they raced after the frightened creature. I didn’t smile at their clumsy attempts to catch it.
“I will choose what is right,” I said. “I will not dishonor you or your son.”
She followed my gaze and allowed herself a low, warm chuckle at their antics.
“You remember when I threw bones for you?” I nodded. “I haven’t stopped and the answer remains the same. I wish I could tell you from experience and soothsaying that I knew the right choice. I don’t have that sort of advice for you. What I can tell you is that what lies ahead is beyond our mortal knowing and far beyond our petty mortal honor.”
I frowned, unable or unwilling to understand her vague meaning.
“What is more important than how we conduct ourselves?” I asked. “Our honor dictates our afterlife.”
She hummed, then said, “What we think is honorable and what is actually honorable are often two different things. We once thought sacrificing people was honoring the gods. Men used to reclaim their honor by killing faithless wives until the wives fought back. I know the choice I made and I don’t regret it. That doesn’t mean you won’t regret your own choices.”
She gave my hand a firm squeeze, then turned and started back toward the festival grounds. I had no choice but to follow in silence while I mulled over all she’d chosen to say and everything she hadn’t.
The wedding feast was coming. No matter what I chose, that event had to proceed. With our allies present, it was our last opportunity to remind them why standing aside and waiting to see how the battle turned out wasn’t an option. They needed to fight.
* * *
The day before my wedding arrived with little fanfare. For the Germani, the pre-wedding feast held equal importance as the wedding itself. That was when the two families, or, in our case, the two tribes, joined as one. For smaller unions, families worked out the sharing of assets and labor. For a joining such as ours, the feast provided the opportunity to negotiate trade and protection.
That is why Arminius seized the event for his own ends. Varus wouldn’t question the gathering of so many tribal leaders, and with Arminius, Ermin, Berut, and a selection of auxiliary officers present, he didn’t feel the need to send other legionaries to supervise.
Arminius avoided me. Our nights together turned to arguing as the wedding drew closer, then ceased altogether. When we saw each other, he stopped whatever he was doing, puffed himself up to say something, and never did. His jaw clenched. If I was close enough, I caught the corner of his eye twitching. I wanted to smooth away all those hard, angry edges. That would only make things worse.
I let him avoid me in the days leading up to the feast, and it felt like slowly sawing off a limb gone rotten. It had to happen in order to live, but the removal burned worse than dying. The sky remained bright and cloudless—a good omen, everyone reminded me—and I saw it all through a gray haze.
Like the days before this one, Segestes watched me at all times. If it wasn’t Segestes, one of my brothers lurked about, always a safe distance away, still close enough to hear my every word. I didn’t worry about any of them, because I wasn’t up to anything beyond the boundaries of my mind. In my head, I ran to Arminius every day with no regard for caution. In my mind, we shook off the bonds of honor and duty and rode away together, somewhere north and east, where it rained ice all year and the Romans had no interest in invading. It would be so easy to disappear together.
Abandoning our cause, our people, wasn’t easy. The cause was bigger than whatever Arminius and I felt for each other, bigger than my fear that any future with Reimar was inextricably linked to the loss of Arminius.
Like every Haustblot, these last days were rife with slaughtering and slow roasting animals, preparing breads and cheeses and myriad culinary delights before settling in for the winter. Now it was all for my wedding. Our makeshift festival village swam in the various scents of cooking foods, each more savory than the last. Women laughed and called out their best wedding night advice, advice I didn’t need or want. The impulse to run as far and fast as my legs could take me was powerful.
The weighted expectations of people from tribes with no investment whatsoever in my wedding constricted around me. Chatti and Cherusci hopes sat heavier upon my shoulders. The union of our two tribes marked something significant: the two most powerful tribes in the region aligning themselves for the common good.
In my dazed wander around the camp, I nearly bumped directly into my father before he caught me by the shoulders. His face pulled tight with concern, and he kept steadying hands around my biceps as he leaned closer to inspect me.
“Are you well? I called your name and waved at you, and you still almost walked through me. That’s not like you.” He pressed the back of his hand to my forehead and his frown deepened. “No fever. Are you drunk? Did you hit your head?”
With a grumble, I pushed away from his grasp. “I’m fine, only tired.”
His concern transformed to annoyance. “You better wake up, because I will not have you falling asleep in the middle of the feast.”
For a brief moment, he’d beheld me with fatherly concern. Naturally, it came right back to hostility.
“You have nothing to worry about.” I tried to shoulder past him, but he blocked me.
“Don’t you dare act like I’m being unreasonable here. You have given me more than enough reason to believe you will make things difficult. For once in your damned life, please promise me you’ll do your duty.”
“My duty.” I huffed. Our understanding of duty differed in fairly significant ways. Luckily for him, I agreed that duty compelled me to marry Reimar. “I swear to you, I will do my duty.”
This time when I stepped around him, he let me go.
For the first time in recent memory, Ingomar joined the festivals with his small tent and store of delicious ales. My feet found him long before I made the conscious decision to seek him out.
His weathered face brightened at my arrival. He sat behind a makeshift stall that had seen far better days with his jugs all around and an ancient copper cup for tasting.
“My niece, so good to see you.” There was no censure or sarcasm in calling me his niece, even as he knew I was to marry far outside his family the following morning.
I opened my mouth to call him uncle, then shut it.
“No matter what,” he said with paternal patience, “you have been a dutiful niece to me. Now, may I interest you in my newest concoction? I used your favorite wild berries, honey, and a dash of mint.”
Without waiting for my response, he poured a generous portion into a cup hidden beneath his stall and offered it to me. I hesitated over the mix of sweet berries and mint, but disappointing him was out of the question. The flavors burst on my tongue, cool and sweet and perfectly balanced.
“This is wonderful,” I said. “Are you having any success?”
He shrugged. “Some. The Cherusci won’t deal with me, but others are less discerning.”
My nose scrunched and I reached for the sword I wasn’t wearing, prepared to unleash vengeance on any who didn’t properly appreciate Ingomar and his brews. “Less discerning” was hardly the appropriate response to his labors.
“I’m glad you’re here,” I said, for lack of a satisfactory way of expressing my appreciation.
“As am I.” He hefted the jug over the rickety shelf of his stall and set it before me. “A wedding gift, for you.”
I froze. It was wrong to accept it, not when I should have been marrying his nephew.
“Take it,” he said. “I brought something else for you. Well, it’s for Arminius, but I think he’d like to get it from you.”
“Why?” I shook my head. “He’s your nephew and he loves you. Whatever it is, I know he’ll be grateful.”
“This is more...” he trailed off in a sigh. “It’s not something an uncle traditionally gives his nephew.”
When I didn’t reply, he stood slowly and beckoned me toward his tent with a cock of his head. I waited a beat until curiosity got the better of me.
It took a few blinks in the darkness to make out the shapes at the back of his tent, and when I did, my lungs seized.
Segimer’s shield and spear rested along the back canvas wall, cleaned, the shield boss polished, and all repainted.
“You gave him his mother’s pelt. Soon, it will be time for him to carry his ancestral gifts into war. It should be his wife to pass these along.” His hand found my shoulder. “He’s told me how he feels, what he wants. If there is anyone left to perform this rite, it is you.”
It was the bride’s duty to present these weapons to her groom at the wedding. The constriction that had tightened for days became a noose wrapped around my whole body. I fled from Ingomar’s tent on unsteady feet.