Night of the wolf, p.17
Night of the Wolf, page 17
Drusus drove and privately thought the men with him today were fools. He himself was uneasy and was sure they were being shadowed. By what, he couldn’t be sure, but he’d seen furtive movements from the corners of his eyes.
Hirax, a German from the allied tribes, was pretty much the ringleader among these men when any mischief was in the offing, and obviously today he had decided to use a short trip after firewood as an excuse to get stinking drunk. The other three—Marcus, Statilius, and Scorpus—would likely follow blindly because they hadn’t one good brain between them. Once impaired by drink, the average bush was smarter.
Drusus checked his sword. This much remained of an honored warrior. He always kept it sharp and clean.
Another bend in the road passed and Drusus pulled the cart to a stop at the edge of a clearing. Here, during good weather, a large party of men had felled a dozen trees and cut them into sections ready to be loaded on carts and taken to the fortress.
Drusus shivered. The soldiers stood up, lowered the tailgate, got down, and started toward the house-sized pile of logs.
“Build a fire,” Drusus said.
They ignored him.
“You sons of whores! I told you to build a fire. Do it and do it now! If you don’t—” His sword cleared its sheath. “—I won’t bother with a tribunal. I’ll kill the four of you myself.” His eyes locked with his men’s. Theirs strayed away first.
The clearing was filled with deadfalls under its thin skin of snow. It took only a few moments to build a fair-sized fire near the cart. Then the soldiers attacked the woodpile. Each log had to be snaked from the top of the pile, then placed on crib supports and sawed into lengths small enough to be loaded into the wagon.
Drusus climbed back up and sat down on the driver’s perch. He knew what was shadowing them now and felt better. One of the wolves had entered the clearing and left tracks in the snow—big tracks. He’d had them follow him before and knew they probably wouldn’t attack unless they saw an opening that favored them . . . greatly favored them.
He’d met them on battlefields as a young man. The Romans had their own medical units, but they didn’t extend this courtesy to their enemies.
Sometimes the screams from the battlefield lasted almost all night. Horses fell, too, and it was sometimes very difficult to tell if the cries of agony were animal or human.
Drusus wore a heavy mantle, but not the red, uniform cloak of the Roman officer. His was a heavy brown wool mantle edged with embroidered green willow leaves that he’d bought from a Gallic woman a few years ago. It was very warm. He wrapped it around himself more tightly.
His mind kept presenting him with images he’d seen as a young man. He thought then that he would grow harder with age, but he hadn’t. Instead, the horrors he’d experienced over the years—and he had a large collection by now—seemed to disturb him more profoundly than they had in his youth.
He sighed and turned his mind away from the past. His service would be over in a few months, finally and forever. He’d re-enlisted twice and was due a large sum in pay and bonus money. He’d already used some of his gains to buy a small farm in the hills near Terracina.
There were ten acres in vines and olive trees. Enough to give him a good living if he remained frugal. His cousin, Festus, would do the actual work of cultivating and harvesting the trees and vines. Festus and his sons would be more than willing to do this in return for being made his heirs.
Once, Drusus had had a woman, but she and her two children—he was none too sure they were both his—had died while Caesar was campaigning in Britain. He had thought he would learn to stop regretting her as time passed, but he found this wasn’t so. As he aged, he wished more and more for her company. She’d been shrewish, but funny and oddly solicitous about his health and comfort. He missed her constant joking and sharp remarks about his fellow soldiers.
And oddly enough, he missed the child, a little girl, the one he’d been pretty sure wasn’t his. She was the one he missed most. Like her mother, she was always chattering and laughing. She’d been fluent in gobbledygook even before she knew how to form words.
The little boy had been less interesting: quiet, persistent, hardworking even as a very young child. He was olive skinned with the thick, curly hair of a true Latin and he showed signs of being stocky and muscular, as his father was.
But since they were gone, the only family that remained to him was Festus and his two sons. He didn’t care much about the farm now, but he did want to sit in the sun on his own hillside and look down at the lapis and emerald sea swirling around the rocks. The foam was white, white as the snow drifting down . . .
Drusus was suddenly jerked fully awake by the realization that the sound of sawing had stopped. He opened his eyes and saw rotund little Scorpus moving away toward the trees.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he snarled.
Hirax leaned on the saw. “He has to take a dump and pee.”
“Well, go behind a tree. Don’t stray off. There are wolves about.”
“Wolves.” Hirax snorted. “Are they a good reason for letting him stink us all out with his gas and turds? Besides, I don’t see any wolves.”
“No, and you won’t. Not until they want you to, and then it will be too late.”
Scorpus studied the centurion and Hirax with a rather foggy-eyed stare. His nose was large and red and he rubbed it vigorously with one hand, making it look still larger and redder.
Hirax watched Drusus narrowly. The old man’s eyes closed and his chin dipped toward his chest. “Worn out old fart,” Hirax said under his breath. “Go where you want to, Scorpus.”
Scorpus sniffed and started walking toward a denuded group of oaks on the edge of the clearing. He didn’t really want to relieve himself. He had another flask hidden in his mantle and was looking for a quiet place to finish it: someplace where the rest wouldn’t see him and demand their share.
Holly and large bunches of mistletoe grew among the oaks. The forest was like a big room in some unearthly house. The mist was so low, the treetops were lost in it. The light was bright, a diffuse glow reflected from the snowy surface of the ground and the clumps of white covering bare limbs and the few evergreens that remained.
The holly leaves and red berries glowed against the omnipresent paleness. The mistletoe branches nesting higher with their delicate green boughs and gray-white berries seemed ghosts of summer fruitfulness caught in the tracery of small, slender trees.
To Scorpus, they were an added inconvenience. They grew so close together, it was difficult for him to push his way past them. The sharp spines on the holly leaves drew the occasional drop of blood from his arms and hands. It was as if they were trying almost consciously to bar his way. But, at length, he got through them.
A few yards ahead, a finger of the mountain stretched out, just a jumbled pile of gray rocks, wet with the fine snow and crowned with a tangle of white birches, their paper-white bark only a little darker than the almost glowing snow around them. There were several sheltered spots where he could sit and finish his wine without being interrupted.
Of course, the wolves had seen him. They watched from their holly coverts as he left the rest and struggled through the trees. To them, an animal that quit the protection of the herd must be sick or seriously disabled in some way.
Scorpus hadn’t an inkling that White Shoulder was only a few feet behind. Maeniel flanked White Shoulder on the right, the mother of the pack on his left.
Maeniel still had misgivings. Was this the sort of hunting White Shoulder envisioned? And, if so, did the new pack leader understand the possible consequences of killing a man? The rest of the pack apparently felt the same because they dropped well back of the three leaders.
Scorpus paused.
So did the wolves. White Shoulder drew his lips back from his teeth in a silent snarl. The mother of the pack bumped White Shoulder as if urging him forward, but he didn’t respond, only stood frozen with a look of murderous ferocity on his face.
Scorpus lifted his tunic and with a shiver—the air reaching his bare skin was cold—took his penis in hand and began to pee. The stream arching away from him created a yellow-rimmed hole in the snow.
You didn’t kill them, Maeniel remembered. Oh no, you didn’t kill them, not even if they took your kill. After all, you could always kill again. But if your skin formed a parka, the fur surrounding a man’s face to keep off the chill, you were not going to be doing any killing then.
When they came to rob you, the first thing their women did was make a fire out of whatever was available. Then the whole band advanced with flaming brands in one hand and fire-hardened spears in the other. Occasionally, a wolf pack would stand its ground. It always lost. It was a disaster for a winter pack if its strongest members ended by coughing out their lives when their lungs were pierced by those wooden javelins or dying slowly in agony, infected and unable to eat when they were disembowled.
No, these creatures were not legitimate prey. Standing against them was simply too costly. In victory or defeat, the pack that did faced ruin.
Scorpus finished, shook his organ and tucked it carefully away, then pulled the clay flask from under his mantle and lifted it to his lips.
The she-wolf whined.
Scorpus went ice-cold with fear. He turned, flask still in his hand, and saw the three wolves only a few paces behind him.
White Shoulder lunged toward him. Maeniel dropped back. So did the mother of the pack. She’d given the game away and they both knew it.
Maeniel’s shoulder slammed into her, sending the bitch flying head over heels.
Scorpus smashed the clay jug down on White Shoulder’s head. In and of itself, it wasn’t enough to do permanent damage or even stun a wolf the size of White Shoulder. But when it connected with the wolf’s skull, it broke and the wine splashed all over White Shoulder’s eyes and nose.
For a few seconds, he was blind and in terrible pain as an involuntary reflex caused him to sniff the acidic wine into his very sensitive nose.
Scorpus ran. He ran as he had when he joined the legions fifteen years ago as a young man. He ran as he didn’t think he could still run, like an eighteen-year-old.
Just ahead, he saw a fissure in the broken rock. He thought— no, hoped—it was narrow enough and deep enough so that the wolves couldn’t reach him after he squeezed himself in. He didn’t scream, almost instinctively knowing it would be a waste of breath.
White Shoulder was down, ineffectively pawing his eyes and nose. The she-wolf slunk back to the rest in terror of what they had almost done.
Maeniel plunged after Scorpus, but the delay had been enough. Scorpus squeezed into the crack sideways as deep as he could get.
Maeniel was right behind him. He drove forward, almost reaching Scorpus’ right hand. The man did scream then, but the groping fingers found a stick, a thick heavy branch fallen from the trees above. He transferred it to his right hand and, on the gray wolf’s second attack, he got him across the skull with it.
Maeniel staggered back, dizzy. Scorpus pushed himself deep into the fissure and clung to his shelter the way a drowning man clings to a plank.
By then it was clear to Maeniel and the rest of the wolves that Scorpus was not to be dislodged. In fact, from the expression of stark terror on Scorpus’ face, it appeared he might not relinquish his cover until sometime in the spring.
Maeniel wasn’t disposed to waste any more time with him, not at present.
White Shoulder had shaken off the worst effects of the wine, though from time to time he still whimpered and pawed at his muzzle.
Maeniel melted into the holly and oaks and vanished with the rest. He had to think and by now he was much better at it than most wolves.
He felt they should leave at once and head back for the mountains. With luck, the officers in the Roman garrison might not believe the tale told by that idiot who remained crouching in that crack in the rock, especially if the still-falling snow filled in their tracks. But White Shoulder and his bitch weren’t having any, and the gray realized they intended to stay until they killed.
Drusus remained dozing on the high seat of the cart. He hadn’t noticed that Scorpus had wandered off. Drusus finally fully awakened when the other three legionnaires began loading lengths of logs into the cart. He yawned and counted his men. “Where’s Scorpus?” he snapped to Hirax and Statilius.
The two legionnaires dropped the log they were carrying and looked around. “He said he was going to take a leak,” Statilius said.
“Do any of you dimwits know which direction he went in or how far?” the centurion asked.
They didn’t know. Even Hirax hadn’t noticed where Scorpus had gone.
Alarmed, Drusus climbed down from the wagon seat and threw some more kindling on the fire. He checked his sword to be sure it was loose in the sheath and would draw easily. Then he began circling the clearing, looking for tracks.
At length, he found a few shallow depressions he felt sure were left by Scorpus’ feet. The problem was the humidity was low and the snow was so dry it didn’t take tracks well. The powdery stuff that was falling quickly filled in any mark made on it.
Drusus briefly considered the footprints. He looked up. The overcast was so low the treetops were hidden in the hazy whiteness. He himself could not see far into the increasing snow fog. He loosened his sword in the sheath again, a nervous gesture.
“I’ll go find him,” Hirax said in his thick, accented Latin.
“No, no, you won’t!” Drusus snapped. “If something out there picked him off, it’ll get you, too.”
Hirax made an obscene reference to Drusus’ ancestry, then accused him of being a coward.
Drusus didn’t reply, not at first. The only sign of emotion he showed was that his eyes narrowed slightly, at least in part because he noticed Marcus and Statilius were watching both of them intently. He sensed this was the final assault on his waning authority over the cohort. If he allowed Hirax to get away with this, his men could make his life so miserable he might end it by falling on his sword before the expected bonus and discharge came through. This would certainly happen if he allowed Hirax to draw him into swordplay here and now. He was no match for the younger man and was certain to go down in humiliating defeat.
“Very well.” Drusus nodded. “It isn’t a test of courage, Hirax, but if you want to make it one, go ahead. Suit yourself.” Then he turned away, an expression of complete indifference on his face. “Shape up,” he shouted to the two other soldiers. “Get the cart loaded. It’s late and I believe this three-times-accursed snow is coming down harder every minute.”
Grumbling, the two legionnaires complied.
Drusus ignored their complaints, walked over, and stood near the horses at the front of the cart.
Hirax vanished into the forest.
Drusus remembered again how the blue, deep water turned to emerald as the combers approached the shallows near the coast. The last time he’d been able to visit, he climbed the steep slopes, walking among the trellised grapevines until he reached the abandoned stone farmhouse like the one where he’d been born and brought up. Day or night, winter or summer, the air was cool and clear here. The wine, laid down in a limestone cave near the house, yielded a drinkable beverage in a few months.
He could almost taste and smell it, even now. It reminded him of salt air, sweet marjoram, and the wild oregano and thyme growing on the hillsides.
He’d wrapped himself in his toga and spent the night alone there, his only company the sigh of wind in the stone pines. The silver-clad full moon floated among the long-needled branches as the distant sound of the sea lulled him to sleep.
How and why, in the name of all the forgotten Tuscan gods, did he end up in this miserable frozen forest, freezing his backside off and worrying about wolves?
He mentally cursed Hirax. Fortuna, send the pushy, barbarian, fatherless offspring of a pig to Hades and let him whine and moan among the unburied ghosts along the Styx.
Next to him, one of the horses threw up her head, whickered, and stamped a foot. For these horses, short cobby drays trained to behave calmly even in battle where they drew siege engines, such behavior almost amounted to hysteria.
Yes, Drusus thought, the wolves are on the prowl, but it remains to be seen if the elusive gray predators are dangerous.
Hirax followed Scorpus’ trail into the thickets of holly and holum oaks, cursing him all the way. “Where did that bone-headed louse go?” he whispered, then shouted. “Scorpus, where are you?” His voice echoed in the snowy silence. It seemed to bounce around directionless among the surrounding trees.
“Scorpus!” he shouted, then added, “You bastard,” in a whisper between his teeth. Twice he thought he heard answering cries, but the sounds were too muffled and distant for him to be sure what he heard wasn’t his own voice thrown back by the frozen forest around him.
Then he noticed something dark, half-buried in a snowdrift on the windward side of a fallen tree. He turned and walked toward it. Yes, Scorpus’ clay flask. He bent down to pick it up. As his fingers closed around the neck of the flask, he tried to straighten up so he could see it in a better light. How odd, he thought as he realized there seemed to be a huge weight on his back . . . then he knew or thought nothing more.
Maeniel watched as the rest cleaned Hirax’s bones. They were furtive, swift, and uncharacteristically silent. But then they shared the same drift of memories he did and understood as well as he that they were doing something forbidden.
In the clearing, Drusus and the two remaining legionnaires built up the fire. He noticed with some satisfaction that they were becoming more and more nervous about Hirax’s failure to appear with the errant Scorpus.
The cart was loaded now with big logs destined to be sawed and chopped into more usable lengths at the fortress.
“Likely they’re somewhere arming themselves against the cold,” Marcus said.
Statilius glanced up at the sky. If anything, the overcast seemed to have increased. The clouds moved lower; the formerly bright light was growing dimmer. They all knew the short winter day was drawing to an end. It went without saying that none of them wanted to be caught in the forest after dark.
