Chapter Twenty-Five
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Brisca’s people had taken to the rooftops, quenching the great hall fire and then raining down projectiles on the invaders until they broke and fled.
Julia returned to the great hall at dawn, Alaric holding her up, to find the yard littered with broken tiles and rocks and corpses. Alaric said something laughing in Gothic, and Brisca’s answer was to hurl herself into his arms—and then pull Julia into their embrace, all of them blazing with triumph. They were alive.
Pain shot up her ankle, making her gasp.
Alaric steadied her, and he was smiling; the beauty of it made her lose her breath. “Come with me,” he said, taking her hand. “I’ll take you to the healer.”
* * *
The village healer was an old woman with a cloud of white hair floating over a sunburned scalp. She stood with her hands on her hips, giving Alaric a very thorough dressing-down.
Alaric stood with his arms crossed over his battered chain mail, his expression one of bemused respect. There he was, this man who had ridden the battle line at Milan with his horse stomping the severed heads of the enemy—standing in this yard with garden herbs growing up to his knees and an old woman giving him a tongue-lashing that would make the skies weep.
In that instant, Julia fell a thousand feet standing still.
“She says she’s too busy for the likes of us. She had very strong words for me causing this wreckage in the first place.” His blue eyes lifted to her. “But her hut is that way. We can make use of what she has. Can you walk?”
“Of course I can walk.” Julia took a step and her ankle gave immediately. In the next instant, she was swept up in his arms. “ Will you put me down?”
His answer was no.
* * *
The healer’s cottage was a cobwebby place out of an old tale about strigas and spells. Julia sat beneath clusters of dried herbs as Alaric searched through bottles and clay jars, unstopping them, staring fiercely down at the contents as if each one presented its own battle.
“Let me see those.” He handed her a blue jar and a green bottle. “This,” she said, holding up the blue. Tincture of comfrey. Bone-knit. “You’ll need to boil water.”
He lit a fire in the little hearth with brisk efficiency as Julia sat at the healer’s scarred table, preparing a simple poultice that the healers had shown her. She opened a waterskin and added a few drops of water to her mixture, then looked up to see him watching her intently.
“Brisca says you comported yourself well among the healers.”
“I know my way around poison. One has to in the courts of Ravenna.” Julia shrugged. “Most poisons can also heal, in the right doses.”
It was no great thing. But the glow of approval in his eyes made her dizzy.
“Let me see your ankle.” He sat next to her and pulled her injured foot into his lap. Suddenly Julia felt oddly shy. He slid off her boot and probed with long fingers, that cloud of intense concentration gathering around him.
Pain lanced up her leg. Julia hissed through her teeth. “Ah.”
“That hurt?” His fingers moved, and suddenly there was no pain. A tingly feeling swept up her calf. “What about here?” She shook her head. “You are lucky. It is not broken.”
Julia watched, transfixed. Calthrax had been the most terrifying man Julia had ever encountered, and Alaric had killed him. That would make Alaric the most terrifying man she had ever encountered. And yet he was endlessly gentle with her as he spread the poultice on her ankle, then wrapped it in a bandage.
He did not lift his eyes from what he was doing, but his tone changed.
“Where did you get the dagger, Julia?”
Deceptively casual. Yet it sent a chill up her spine. “Thorismund gave it to me.” It seemed impossible to lie.
“Let me see it.”
Reluctantly, she slid the blade out of her boot and handed it to him. He turned it in his hands, frowning, and then shoved it into his own belt. “You should not have this,” he said flatly.
“Why not? I need to protect myself—”
“I saw what you were doing. It was not protection.” He did not look up from his task, but she felt the sudden tension in him. “Is that your plan if I fall? To send yourself out the same way? I will not allow it.”
Julia hissed. “It isn’t your choice.”
“Yes, it is.” He was looking at her now with a fierce intensity that turned her insides into a trembling riot. “I will not fail you. You will never need that dagger.”
He was afraid , she realized. Afraid of failing her. Afraid of what she’d have to do if he did. “You cannot always protect me.”
“Can’t I?” He brushed a strand of hair from her eyes. “I’m beginning to think I must swaddle you like a babe and watch you every second.”
The sunlit affection in his eyes brought her up short. “ You’re one to talk. You’re the most reckless person I know.” There was a long slash down his cheekbone. It wasn’t the only one. He was cut and bruised all over, she realized. From defending her . She sat up, pulling her ankle off his lap. “Take off your tunic.”
She thought he might refuse her, but instead he only did as she bid, standing and pulling his tunic off, wincing as he raised his arm. Julia held in a gasp. His left side was one great bruise. He did not wince when she touched him; the muscles in his jaw tightened only imperceptibly. He was used to pain, used to carrying it, used to pushing on despite it. She hadn’t missed the rough edge of exhaustion in his voice; he wasn’t just tired. He was dead on his feet. And yet he would not sleep, not for days.
It was so like him, to put everyone else’s needs before his own, no matter how tired and battered he was.
“I don’t think it is broken,” she muttered. “Pass me your salve.” He held himself still, lashes lowered as she rubbed the ointment into his skin.
The air went quiet between them.
Eventually she looked up to see him staring down at her with a fierce tenderness that scorched her where she stood. She stopped with her ministrations, struck utterly silent.
She loved this man. Loved him.
Alaric’s huge hand curled around the back of her neck as he pulled her in to him. Julia pressed her cheek to the warm, breathing planes of his chest.
* * *
Alaric insisted on carrying Julia, despite her protestations, back to her guesthouse. He lowered her onto the bed as if she was breakable as glass.
She pulled him into bed and wound her limbs around him.
Alaric gritted his teeth. If she thought he could stay in this bed with her and do nothing but sleep, she was out of her mind . But Julia seemed to have no such problem. She dropped off immediately, her head on his chest, every warm, delicious inch of her pressed tight against him.
He felt himself stirring instantly, savagely to life.
But it was not the time or the place. Her breathing was even and deep, her dark lashes fanning her cheek, and he found himself transfixed, simply watching her sleep. The way the light set her skin aglow like a sunbeam in alabaster. She was so fucking fragile . And yet so brave.
He lay in her arms and categorized all the acts of bravery Julia had shown in the past hours. Facing down his axes without twitching an eyelash. Shoving reality down the throats of the chieftains. Lending her hands in the great hall with the healers.
That image of her pointing the knife at her own chest would not leave his mind.
Suddenly his heart was racing and his breath coming fast. He did not doubt for a moment that if he’d fallen, she would have died in that doorway by her own hand. He must never let her feel unsafe, never let her be unsafe. She had the resolve to do it. And if she did, it would be because he had failed her.
How long would it be until someone else tried to rip this woman from his arms?
The ransom is the same whether she’s alive or dead. So Calthrax had told him. Alaric tightened his arms around Julia and coolly considered what the dead man had said. The size of that ransom would have his chieftains warring among themselves to turn her over to Stilicho. The thought of the old man made Alaric curse beneath his breath. He had thought to buy time until next spring, but if Stilicho could marshal his forces to be over the mountains before winter—if he could make it through the passes despite the alliances—
It was early summer now. There was not enough time. And fear of Stilicho’s swift arrival would only motivate the chieftains further to make themselves rid of Julia. She would be in danger every minute she was in Noricum. Until he made the city safe, she must remain under strict, unceasing guard.
There was one thing he could do to keep her safe. His chieftains would assassinate a king quick as breathing. But the gods frowned on killing queens. He wasn’t certain how much weight the tradition would have against all that gold. But he was certain it wouldn’t be none. This was a layer of protection he could give her now .
If she would have him.
Julia’s hand drifted lazily across his chest and he caught it in his own, stilling it. He ought to give her the choice. He knew that. But what other choice did she have? Any other option would be a death sentence, and he would not— would not —stand by quietly and let her choose her own doom. Surely marriage to him was a better option than death.
He would sit her down and explain it. Very calmly and rationally. She was an intelligent woman; she’d see sense.
“Well. Isn’t this a heartwarming tableau.” It was Riga, leaning in the doorway, the sun pouring in behind him. “You’re wanted at the main gate. They’re burying the dead.”
“They don’t need me for that.”
“Calthrax does. We need you to sing his paeon .”
* * *
Brisca stood by the gate with Black Nathan; she gave Alaric a wry, tired grin as he approached. “Black Nathan was just pledging to lend us his strength in the passes.”
Alaric grinned. “I thank you, Black Nathan.”
Nathan inclined his head as far as his pride would let him. “The redheaded girl was right. Allying with the Romans is its own form of slavery. We will not be owned.”
“Nor will I be, Nathan,” Brisca said pointedly.
“That is another matter entirely.” Nathan frowned. “I never agreed for large swaths of our territory to be ruled by a woman. It’s against custom.”
Alaric interjected smoothly. “Brisca is a trusted ally in these hills. She is also well trusted by my chieftains. Any king who takes place beside her would have to start again in earning that trust. In periods of war, I cannot afford the time that takes. Besides,” he said quietly, “she showed more courage than a dozen hardened warriors last night. She needs no husband to rule her.”
Brisca seemed to grow taller at his words. “These are my people, Nathan, and I am their queen.” She turned to Alaric, slipping into the lilting mountain language of her people. “I shall endeavor to live up to your good opinion of me.”
He answered quietly, in the same language. “It will take no endeavor.”
“Well. Aren’t the two of you knives in the same scabbard?” Nathan looked between them, glowering. “I’m going to find my breakfast.”
And he stumped off, muttering to himself.
* * *
The paeons to the dead would be sung until sunset. To fail to sing the ancient songs would be to risk the spirits staying where they died, sickening the living and killing the crops.
Calthrax’s body lay atop a pyre among dozens of others. Alaric stared at his white-lipped corpse, the red mouth he’d opened in his throat, and thought of that rhomphaia raised to Julia. “Wait. Not him.”
Thorismund stood by the pyre, a torch aloft in his hand. “I wouldn’t do that,” he said quietly. “The gods are saying his spirit is still here.”
Alaric could see that well enough. Calthrax was standing among those gathered by the pyre, his neck still bleeding where Alaric had slit it with a broken-off sword.
“I don’t give a damn where his spirit is.”
“Do you wish his shade to wander the earth forever?” Thorismund frowned. “I hope this isn’t how you treat me when I fall in battle.”
An old memory surfaced. He and Calthrax at seventeen, on the roof of Stilicho’s officers’ school, looking at the stars. Do you suppose they’re watching us from up there? Calthrax had asked. Your parents and mine. Do they hate us for what they see?
Alaric knew what he meant. Their sons in the lap of Rome. Back in the days when he’d believed he could change things from the inside, because Stilicho had led him to believe so.
No , he’d said. They want us to live.
Calthrax’s shade was nothing but an outline now, the whole, bright living world shining through behind him.
Alaric didn’t know where the dead went. He told himself he didn’t care.
“Throw him over the cliff and let the birds have him,” he said. Quietly, for the dead to hear, if the dead could. “He chose.”