Chapter Twenty-Three
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Alaric stood atop the village wall and looked down upon a hundred men spread out on the slope below. Battle-hardened foederati under a Roman flag, lit by a fingernail moon.
At the head stood Calthrax. His face split into that blood-hungry grin. “Well. It looks like the traitor has found walls to hide behind.”
He was speaking high Latin, just to drive the point home. “I’m not the one with the slaver’s language in my mouth,” Alaric drawled, in Gothic. “What is it you want, Calthrax?”
“I didn’t come to talk to you. I come to parlay with the chieftains of these passes.” Calthrax switched to the same language, addressing the chieftains behind him. “Send out the princess Julia, living or dead, and I will pay two thousand pounds of gold. Double if you send out the traitor Alaric with her. Refuse, and my men and I will take this place apart.” He gathered his reins in one mailed fist. “You have an hour.”
* * *
The great hall was timber and stone, the only building in the village that could withstand attack. Now every man, woman, and child was packed in beneath its eaves like spears in a barrel. The chieftains were in an uproar, pounding tables and shouting over each other.
Alaric cut them silent. “They cannot win,” he said flatly. “The army is foederati , not Roman military. They have no siege engines and no supply chain. If they don’t break the walls tonight, they won’t at all.”
“I’ve seen what the Romans do to the vanquished.” Black Nathan cursed. “They’ll enslave everyone they do not kill. I’ll not see that happen to my kin. I say we send that woman out to her people.”
“Are you so craven, Nathan, that you would let your courage be bought?” Brisca answered. “These walls have stood for a hundred years and they will not fall today.”
“Not craven. Realistic ,” Nathan said. “I say we send out the girl and the girl alone. The three of us split the gold.” He turned to Alaric. “Was that not your plan to begin with? You planned to ransom her. You simply do it sooner than expected.”
Alaric gritted his teeth. “She goes out beyond the wall over my steaming corpse.”
He and Nathan were toe-to-toe now, Nathan’s hand on his battle-axe, Alaric’s drifting to the hilt of his seax .
“Please. Don’t tell me you believe those things the man in the silly helmet told you.”
Black Nathan scowled through the black tangle of his beard. “Who let the prisoner speak?”
Deliberately, Alaric beckoned Julia forward, made room for her at the table. “It is her fate we are debating.” He put a hand on her shoulder, wanted it very fucking clear that to threaten her was to threaten him. “Speak, Julia.”
Julia did not seem the least intimidated. She spoke in a ringing voice, her spine straight, her hands flat on the oaken table. “Let me tell you what I would do if I was outside the walls,” she said. “I would send gold. Perhaps a small amount as a gesture of goodwill, or perhaps the entire amount. It doesn’t matter. Then, when you send the prisoner out, I would raze this place to the ground, take back my gold, and sell all of you into slavery. I’d make a tidy profit.”
Nathan gave a pugnacious snort. “No general would risk his men like that.”
“The Roman army has men in spades. And the foederati are especially expendable, as Alaric knows.” She glanced at him. “Besides, it’s not much risk. I could walk in under the guise of friendship, clean out a troublesome nest of outlaws, and empty these passes of resistance. You’d barely put up a fight.”
Nathan looked scandalized. “None of you Romans have any honor at all.”
“That is correct. We do not. Honor is for worthy adversaries, not slaves, or those who will soon become slaves,” Julia said flatly. “That is why you must fight.”
“She is not wrong, Nathan,” Alaric said quietly.
“Whether the Romans turn on us after we send out our hostages, that is for the gods to know. And the gods let us know their minds this morning,” Nathan said grimly. “They are against you.”
“Is that true?” Julia asked. “As I recall, their answer was inconclusive.”
“ Enough. The pig doesn’t get a say in how we cook it,” Nathan roared.
“Actually, the pig has a point.” At the opposite end of the table, Thorismund rose to his feet. “The gods’ answer was inconclusive. That does not mean they hold no opinion. It just means they chose not to share it. A judicious man would ask again.”
Below the dais, the air had gone taut as an unstruck lutestring.
“I know what will solve this problem. A test that none may question. Let the gods speak through our blades.” Nathan turned to Alaric and grinned. “It has been long since the gods demonstrated their love of your kingship, has it not? Perhaps that is the question that needs asking.”
So Nathan would force him to defend his kingship by the sword. Good. Alaric’s lips curved like a kopis blade. “That sounds like a challenge. I accept.”
“Stop posturing, you cretins,” Brisca said. “If you think I’d let the two of you hack at each other in a holmgang within these walls—”
“Not a holmgang ,” Nathan said. “It won’t be that easy. Alaric, you’ve been bewitched by that girl and I’ll burn in hell before I join a war you started over your cock.” He turned to face the crowd. “That is the daughter of the emperor Theodosius,” he thundered, pointing to Julia with his axe. “Who wants to see what color she bleeds?”
A roar went up among the people, like wildfire through dead grass. Suddenly men were pounding sword against shield, loud enough to shake the rafters.
“There will be nine hatchets, and nine throws. A turn for each of us,” Nathan bellowed. “If the gods are behind King Alaric, the daughter of Theodosius will emerge unscathed. If they are not, we’ll send out her corpse for the ransom. Nine hatchets and nine throws. ”
The throng took up Nathan’s call— nine hatchets and nine throws —and Alaric knew in an instant what would happen if their will was thwarted. He’d seen people pulled limb from limb at the hands of crowds this ugly.
If anyone laid a hand on Julia he’d torch this place to ash.
“Enough.” He walked down the steps, into the seething quiet. “It is just, what Nathan has said. But the question is for me to put to the gods. If I harm a hair on the woman’s head, give me the honor of the threefold death. Do it here, and scatter my ashes at the feet of the Roman army. No king who fails you deserves to live.” Alaric let his gaze rake over the assembled hall. “If I succeed, then the gods are at our back and we fight .”
For an instant the hall was absolutely silent. Then the warriors roared their approval, raw and deafening in a hundred throats.
Nathan gave him a black glare and Alaric knew clear as day that he’d planned to miss, to send out Julia’s corpse with no further conversation. But the crowd was against Nathan now. There was nothing he could do except put one of the gilded axes in Alaric’s hand.
Alaric tested the weapon’s weight. It would be too easy for this to go wrong. If his hand slipped. If he failed to account for the shitty balance. If Julia flinched, even by a hair.
Across the table Julia’s blue-green eyes were fixed on him. Once again, that raging protective fury ripped through him. But he could not let any of it show.
“You,” he said impassively, his eyes falling to Horsa. “Tie her.”
* * *
Julia had expected another cow’s liver held up for inspection. But now she understood that she would be the sacrificial cow. And Alaric had just offered her up.
Horsa pushed Julia up against the wall with jarring force; fastened her arms with chains at a sudden cold-eyed glance from Alaric. “Horsa. Stop—don’t do this!”
“Relax. It’s a game.” He patted her cheek. “Don’t forget to act afraid.”
Then Alaric stood before her, resplendent in his scarlet tunic. He held a gilded, ornate hatchet in his hand, and spoke to her in the highest, purest Latin; the language of a prince. “Do you trust me, woman?”
“ Trust you!” She stared at him in open disbelief. “Are you insane ?”
“Now you must.” There was no mistaking the command in his voice. “Close your eyes and do not move an inch.”
Then he paced to the other end of the room amidst a tense silence. The hatchet rose in his hand, and Julia squeezed her eyes shut.
She felt the wind on her cheek from the first throw. The hatchet struck the wall beside her head with a shattering force, and there was no time even to flinch before the second splintered the wood on the other side, the cold steel kissing her cheek.
I will not go to my death pissing myself in fear. I won’t give him the satisfaction. Another axe slammed into the wall above her head and Julia choked back a scream.
More axes hit the wood in quick succession. Julia held herself rigidly still and waited for the one that would split her open. For an instant the silence was absolute.
She risked opening her eyes and saw she was framed with axes, head to knees, none of them farther than a finger’s length from her body. Pinning her skirts to the wall.
* * *
A cacophony shook the roof and all Alaric could see was Julia. Standing straight and tall, her body framed by his axes, looking like she would happily murder him.
He was so proud of her he couldn’t speak.
“Well, fuck !” Nathan’s voice boomed out over the crowd. “That girl has bigger testicles than my son!”
In an instant, Alaric whipped around, his own war hatchet leaving his hand in a single, fluid motion. The hatchets he’d used on Julia were ceremonial and too light for battle, but his own was a mean chunk of steel. Nathan’s cup exploded in a rain of beer as the axe embedded itself in the wall.
Silence reigned. Alaric sauntered over to rip his hatchet out of the wall. He leaned close to Nathan, smelling piss and stale beer. “Do not anger me again.” Then he turned to face the crowd. “The gods have spoken. We go to war.” He pointed toward Julia with his hatchet. “That woman belongs to our gods. If any lay a hand on her, I will bring their justice.”
The people crowded the dais in a kind of feverish, terrified excitement. He wanted to pull Julia down and kiss her until she couldn’t stand. But the crowd enclosed him. Someone handed him a full tankard of beer, foam spilling over the rim; a woman with dark, dancing eyes pulled him down for a kiss as if this was the last of her life.
By the time he managed to disentangle himself, he could not see her.
* * *
“You didn’t even flinch ! I wouldn’t have done so well.” A mad grin lit Ehre’s face as she undid the shackles. “They’ll be singing your name for a hundred years—! What’s wrong?”
Julia’s knees had turned to water, and now she was sliding inelegantly down the wall. “I think I am going to be sick.”
“None of that. Do you want them to see you weak?” Ehre yanked Julia to her feet. “Stride into that crowd with your head held high. That is how you cement your legend.”
Cement your legend. Was that her name the people were shouting?
In the next instant, Alaric was standing over her, and before she could speak, he’d hauled her into his arms and claimed her mouth in a deep, savage kiss.
She kissed him back with all the fury she felt. Then she pulled back and slapped him.
A roar of approval ripped through the great hall and a rueful grin flashed across his face. “I suppose you believe I deserve that.” He rubbed his jaw with the flat of his palm.
“A knife in your black heart is what you deserve.” And then her arms were around him again, fingers threading through his hair as his mouth opened over hers, kissing her again ferociously. The room erupted in a cheer that shook the floor, and a raw, guttural chant began, accompanied by fierce, rhythmic stamping.
“What are they saying?”
“They are saying we go to war.”
For a moment she and Alaric grinned at each other—wildly, perfectly matched in joyous disbelief. Then he was kissing her again, the scalding burn of his mouth on hers erasing everything she knew. It was only when he let her down—after endless time; Julia’s toes barely brushing the ground—that the embarrassment hit her. “Everyone is looking at us.”
“Do not worry yourself. There is no shame in being happy.”
She was happy, she realized, so full of bliss she might as well burst from it. Love. Was this how it felt? He was staring down at her now, his blue eyes alight with pride, and she would open her veins to keep him looking at her like this.
“Don’t you have a battle to fight?”
“Yes.”
Julia reached up, pushing his hair off his forehead as he had done so many times to her. “Go on, then. Don’t do anything stupid.”
That dangerous grin lifted his lips. He kissed her again and was gone, calling his warriors to him.