Chapter Fifteen
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The mare was mad with terror. She galloped down the mountain, no check on her speed. Behind, a fire came roaring, whipped to a frenzy by a sudden, all-devouring wind.
Julia clung to the mare’s back, smoke filling her lungs. Certain she would die.
After endless time, the ground flattened and the mare slowed, moving through a blasted landscape of undifferentiated gray. The wind switched direction, driving the fire east. It was this that saved her life. That and the mare, who was limping now. Shreds of poultice still clung to her hoof. “Good girl,” Julia muttered, stroking the mare’s neck. The dawn was just breaking and Julia slumped over the horse’s neck, waves of dizziness overcoming her. It had been hours.
Suddenly she canted to the side, sliding with hideous slowness off the horse. She lay gasping on the dusty earth, an iron band tightening around her lungs.
The world slid to black.
* * *
Julia opened her eyes to a blue sky and the mare’s long, dour head, reins looped and hanging, nuzzling at her face. The smoke had cleared and the sky was a hard, uncompromising blue. Julia sat up and rubbed the mare’s ears. “Good girl.”
“I thought you were dead. You looked dead.”
A man stood a few paces away. Bald, with a goatish little beard. “Hello,” Julia said warily.
“You’ve nothing to fear from me.” Avuncular as an uncle. “Are you alone?”
A bolt of unease shot through her. No princesses in these woods. Only predators and prey. “My friends will be searching for me.”
“You must be from the city. I doubt a girl like you would be from the countryside.”
A girl like you. She wore a boy’s Gothic tunic and her hair was one long snarl; how on earth did he know—oh.
She’d been using high Latin and he’d been replying in kind.
“My name is Origenes. I once tutored the governor’s son in Aquileia. Are you from there?” His eyes crinkled at the corners. “Come. You can shelter with me and my wife until your friends catch up.”
Julia eyed the man, trying to discern any threat. The tutor to a governor’s son would have been an educated slave, probably Greek. His Latin was fluent, and his clothes were fine, though worn. And he had a wife. You’ve been traveling with the worst of the Goths for weeks , she told herself. Surely you aren’t afraid of a little Greek tutor.
Even so. This man could not protect her from Stilicho’s mercenaries. Julia had a feeling that if he aided her, he would suffer for it.
“I thank you for your kind offer of hospitality,” she said. “But—”
His smile turned wolfish. “It was not a request.”
* * *
He hit her twice. Open-handed slaps, hard enough to snap her head back. Julia tasted blood as he led her and the horse across the smoky plain.
She would have fought, if she was brave. She’d never been brave.
They came to a cave in the slope of a hill. A dozen hard-looking men lounged around firepits, dicing and drinking and gnawing on stringy chicken legs. Eyes turned to her, hot with resentment and lust.
Suddenly she couldn’t breathe around her fear.
A bald, bearded man came swaggering toward them, wearing a ragged red cloak with several long rents in it. Stab-holes. “Well, Origenes. What did you drag in?”
“A woman. Highborn.” Origenes gave an ingratiating smile. “I was hoping you would accept her as payment for my debts.”
The bandit’s eyes narrowed. “Where is your family, girl?”
“Dead.” The lie came readily enough. “You’ll get no ransom for me. You might as well let me go.”
“Someone taught you to talk nice, at least. Perhaps you’ll be worth something at the slave markets.” He smelled of stale beer and sweat. “You may call me King of the Goths.”
Julia stared in astonishment. This man with his bulging belly and hair thinning over a sunburned scalp—she heard a high-pitched laugh and realized it was coming from her.
His eyes narrowed viciously. “What are you laughing at?”
He was looking at her like he might kill her and she couldn’t stop . “I’m sorry. It’s just that—I know him.” Julia let out a panicked cackle. “You are not the King of the Goths.”
The false Alaric gave her an ugly smile. Then he drove his fist into her stomach.
The force of it folded her in half. He watched with clinical detachment as she sank to the ground, gasping for breath. “That’ll teach you to laugh at me,” he muttered. “Haughty bitch.” A chaos of laughter rose up behind him, his men cheering him on. “We took care of the aristocracy in Aquileia, and she isn’t one of them. You ought to know better,” he growled at Origenes. “Probably just some high-paid whore.”
Then he was stalking back into the cave and Julia pressed her scraped hands into the earth, wracked with pain. A violent sob rose up in her throat and she put every ounce of strength into holding it back.
If Alaric was dead, he was watching. She refused to let him see her cry.
* * *
The fire had done its work, sweeping through the enemy line, sending it into chaos. Now dawn cut across the mountain, illuminating a landscape transformed. Down the slope, corpses lay blackened and twisted. Alaric and his men found their horses at the bottom of the hill, milling about beyond the tree line. Calthrax had been lucky. He was not among the dead.
Neither was Julia.
She wasn’t supposed to be here. The fire had spread downhill, carried by the furious wind; Julia and Thorismund had been ordered to run farther up into the mountains. They should have been safe. Alaric had hoped they had escaped the fire, until Thorismund rose from the smoking earth, eyebrows singed but otherwise unhurt. He had last seen Julia galloping down the mountainside. Back into Italy.
Now they were combing the hillside, turning over burned corpses, searching for Julia’s. A sick desperation rose in
Alaric’s chest. He put no hope in prayer, but he prayed anyway, low between his teeth. If he’d killed her, with his own lack of vigilance—
He turned over yet another charred corpse with his boot. Not Julia. An infantryman, face scorched beyond recognition. He thought of her last night—the upturned tilt of her mouth; her brilliance by the fire—and cursed. If he saw her again—if she had managed, beyond all likelihood, to survive—he would do it all differently. He hoped he got the chance.
Up on the slope above, Riga gave a shout. Kneeling on the ground, he pointed to a line of tracks leading off to the southeast. “Galloping. Favoring its left front foreleg.” He held up a shred of cloth he had used as a poultice. “She was riding Bura.”
* * *
The outlaw leader declared he would have her first. But one of the others challenged him, and now they were fighting over her.
Julia curled up at the back of the cave, near out of her mind with fear.
Was Alaric dead? Impossible. This was Alaric . The man who starved cities into submission, who’d flashed a reckless grin with a dozen swords pointed at his neck and strolled out of her brother’s banquet with her in his back pocket. A man like that couldn’t just be killed.
Yes he can. It was her father’s voice, corpse-pale in the basilica. The voice of Cornelius, a wolf’s muzzle buried in his belly.
And if he was dead, she was lost.
Alaric had never laid a hand on her. Even when she’d provoked him. She hadn’t realized how much worse it could be. Soon the false King of the Goths would come strutting over to fulfill his promise. If he touched her, she’d rip out his throat with her teeth.
“You must be hungry.” Origenes stood over her, holding a plate of stew.
“Thank you,” she managed. “Now, do me the mercy of going away.”
“I’ve been too long among these brutes. I’ve been dying for decent conversation.”
“I’d rather converse with the rats.”
His face hardened and he glanced at the outlaw leader, still drinking and wrestling. “Treat him nice. Maybe he’ll keep you for himself instead of passing you around.”
“Yes, and wouldn’t that be a happy ending.” The words dropped like acid from her lips; she could practically hear them hissing on the floor. “Aren’t you going to join this asinine fight?” Perhaps he would get himself killed.
“Oh no. I am no warrior.” Origenes smiled. “Besides, I don’t mind going last.”
Julia’s hands curled into angry fists. She’d chew out his throat too.
A watchman shouted a stranger’s approach. The bandit leader strode to the cave opening, and there was a tense, interminable exchange. And then he came into the firelight shouting for drink, arm slung around the newcomer’s shoulders as if they were old friends. Julia nearly fainted with relief. Because there, face smudged with dirt but gloriously, miraculously unhurt, lips curved in an easy smile and firelight glinting in the burnished bronze of his hair, was Alaric.
* * *
Someone had hit her. The side of her face had gone red darkening into purple, and there was a sharp cut across her left cheekbone.
Alaric hid his murderous rage behind a genial smile.
“So tell me, kinsman. What brings you to this side of the mountains?”
The man’s breath smelled of rank ale. Alaric answered in Sicambri, with its distinctive Celtic rhythms and suffixes. The other man’s home language. It had been a lucky guess. “Thought I’d make my fortune robbing aristocrats in the lawless north.”
As he spoke, he cast a deceptively casual eye around the cave. A cave he knew; they had used it to store supplies during the siege of Milan. There were twisty back passages that opened on a nearby slope. Hengist had sworn he remembered the way, even in the dark.
No sign of them in the back tunnel yet. That worried him.
In a single glance, he’d sized up every man present; those useless from drink and those alert enough to be suspicious. Saw the path he’d cut through them, clear as an Imperial road. His eyes strayed to Julia again, the fear in her face beneath the mask of contemptuous stoicism, the purpling bruise. He had half a mind to start now.
“You’re in luck, brother.” The outlaw leader’s lips stretched over gleaming teeth. “You’ve fallen in with the King of the Goths.”
Suddenly Alaric was engaged in a very difficult struggle not to laugh. “It is an honor.” He sketched an amused bow. “You fought like a lion at the battle of Pollentia.”
“Not that King of the Goths. Although many tell me there is a resemblance.” He laughed. “Soon as I can dry out this group of sorry knaves, I’ll take them over the mountains and challenge Alaric myself. Two invasions and he never made it past the Po.” He snickered.
You fucking try it. Alaric felt a spike of impatience. Where the hell were they? His eyes fell on Julia again, and the rage he felt nearly choked him.
He would fill this place with the dead in answer for that bruise on her cheek.
The outlaw leader followed his gaze, a pugnacious look on his face. “Don’t get any ideas. I expect a good price for her on the slave market, after we’ve had our fun.” He smirked. “She won’t be so high-and-mighty once we’ve had her on her back.”
And there, at the rear of the cave, the signal. Weak sunlight flickering off a mirror, quick as a witch-light. It was about fucking time. Alaric tightened his arm on the man’s shoulder, the two of them closer than brothers. “You’ll never touch her.”
Then he pulled the man’s knife out of his belt and stabbed him with it.
* * *
Afterward Julia would remember everything in disjointed scraps.
The long knife sliding into the outlaw’s belly. Blood spurting between fingers as he clapped his hands to the wound. The unholy light in Alaric’s eyes as he tossed the man aside like a sack of rags and strode into a mob that wanted him dead.
Then the rest came roaring out of the dark. The twins, their faces dark with campfire-black. Riga’s sharp Hunnic sword opening bellies and throats. Even Thorismund, who’d have gone to his death for her, now miraculously alive, swinging his two-handed axe with one hand.
But Julia couldn’t rip her eyes from Alaric. He killed like he’d been born to it, brutally graceful and lit with savage joy.
“Are these your friends?” Origenes spoke with a kind of horrified awe.
Then Alaric came striding out of the carnage, blood dripping from the tip of his blade. Julia sank to the floor and he knelt in front of her, eyes burning blue hellfire and his chain mail covered in gore. He caught her chin and tilted her face to examine her cheek, his thumb lightly brushing the bruise. A little jolt shot through her.
“Who did this?” His voice was chillingly quiet.
Julia’s eyes slid to Origenes, who was begging now, swearing he’d been her protector. Alaric hauled him to his feet, pinned him to the wall with one hand. With the other, he took his long knife and opened a bloody grin in the man’s throat.
Blood gushed hot and red. Origenes made a gurgling, drowning sound and was dead before he hit the ground. Then Alaric turned to her, blue eyes blazing out of a mask of blood.
Julia turned her face to the cave floor and retched.
* * *
There was a spring in the back of the cave. Alaric pulled off his chain mail and washed the blood off his face. Then he stood, stretching a kink out of his shoulder.
Julia had gotten over the worst of her sick and now sat slumped against the wall, her hair sticking to her forehead in damp curls, staring into some middle distance only she could see. He’d seen that look before, on the faces of women far gone in shock. His fault.
Then her blue-green gaze fell to him, and the world forgot to breathe. In two long strides, Alaric crossed the space and helped her to her feet, his hands on her bruised face, almost frantic with the need to touch her. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine.” The tense line of her shoulders said that she was emphatically not .
He tilted her face to look at the swelling. Another burst of rage and he was fucking delighted that vile little shit who’d hurt her was dead and he’d done the job himself. “You’re safe, Julia.” He produced the salve and tended to her bruises. “Softly now. Hold still.”
“I’m sorry.” She was staring at him with a luminous fragility that stole his breath.
He slid his thumb across her cheekbone, and the air went hot and thick between them. “For what?”
“I didn’t mean to run. Thorismund told me to, but—” A shudder passed through her, for all he tried to be gentle. “He would’ve died for me. Please don’t be angry at him.”
Alaric’s hand stilled on the curve of her cheek. No love lost between her and Thorismund, and here she was defending him. A raw, bruising ache rose up in his chest that had nothing to do with lust. “I’m not angry.” He slid his hand into her hair; couldn’t stop himself. Fingers curling tight into damp silk. “I’m just glad you’re alive.”
Then he pulled her close and kissed her.
He felt the sudden tremor that shot through her at his touch, felt the hitch of her indrawn breath against his mouth and knew he didn’t have it in him to be gentle. Her lips were all soft, silken heat, and he kissed her fiercely, all his careful control dissolving in a fury of teeth and tongue. In an instant, he had her crushed hard against the wall with his hand anchored in her messy braid, exactly as he’d wanted her from the instant he’d first laid eyes on her.
At first she stood rigid and astonished in his arms. Then suddenly she was kissing him back like she was starving for him, her mouth opening with a breathy little moan that had him instantly, savagely hard. Alaric lost himself completely to the hot glide of her tongue against his, the soft sounds she made in the back of her throat as her nails dug little half-moons into his biceps. Julia alive and safe and his from the tips of her toes to the ends of her long red hair. This was the only possible way it could end.
He was so lost in her he didn’t even realize when it turned.
She shuddered in his arms and it was only when she gave a loud sob against his mouth that he knew it wasn’t from pleasure. Her hands braced against his forearms and he tasted tears on his tongue. It took a monumental act of will to break the kiss, his breath coming harsh and ragged, lust raging through him like a flooding river. Barely held in check by its banks.
“Woman,” he muttered, “I think you are going to kill me.”
It almost killed him to drop his arms and step back, but he forced himself to do it. She was shaking. He wanted to comfort her any way he could—and he reached for her again. Didn’t know what else to do. She flinched back. Not even a word of thanks. Fuck if he wasn’t as bad in her eyes as that pasty little man whose throat had so badly needed cutting.
Alaric couldn’t stand being this close to her, wanting her this much. He took a composing breath and tossed her the salve. “Use that on your bruises and be quick. We leave as soon as the men are ready.”
He didn’t spare her another glance as he strode out of the cave.