Enemy of My Dreams

Chapter Thirty-Eight

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

A full-on brawl had erupted in the market square. Horsa stood at the top of the stairs that led into the mercantile building where the grain was stored, looking flat-out terrified.

Alaric waded into the churning mass. There was a bare-fisted battle roiling, and Alaric shoved through, reached an arm in and yanked one of the brawlers out by the scruff of his neck.

Her neck. It was a woman, heavily pregnant. She landed a punch directly on Alaric’s jaw. His head snapped back. He saw stars.

Fuck. He couldn’t punch a pregnant woman. Alaric restrained her with his grip on the back of her tunic and caught hold of her opponent, a boy no older than ten. They both fought like alley cats; the woman landed another blow to the side of his face and the boy scored a sharp, painful kick to his shin. Alaric gritted his teeth. He couldn’t punch a ten-year-old boy either.

“Enough,” he roared. He gave the boy and the woman a hard shake for emphasis. “What the hell is this about?”

“It was the last sack of grain.” The boy pointed. “And she cut ahead of me in the line.”

Alaric caught sight of the sack they’d been fighting over, ripped and spilled across the cobblestones, and he felt a bolt of recognition.

He’d been this boy once, skinny and starving, fighting for his life over grain kernels spilled on the ground. And this woman could have been his mother. “I have three starving children to feed—”

“I have nine brothers and sisters !” the boy hollered, and Alaric had to yank him off his feet to keep him from attacking the woman again. “I was ahead in the line!”

“All of you be calm .” That silenced them. “Is this what we’ve come to? Everyone is hungry. We did not come this far to kill one another over grain.”

“The grain ran out,” someone shouted from the back. “We have nothing to eat.”

That was impossible. He’d brought enough to see the city through a month. The angry muttering grew louder as he made his way up the steps.

“There will be no starving time. I ask you to go to your homes—” the anger of the crowd intensified “—and come back tomorrow. I will be here at dawn, passing out provisions with my own hands. I promise you, on my life, that you will not be hungry tomorrow.”

It wasn’t what the crowd wanted to hear. But after a string of promises, they dispersed, hungry and shivering. Alaric thought of a hundred bellies going empty tonight because he hadn’t kept the supply safe.

He turned to Horsa, who looked visibly pale. “Where is the rest of the grain?”

“There is no more grain. It’s all gone.”

“What the fuck do you mean, it’s all gone?” He knew down to the ounce exactly how much he’d brought. “That much provision doesn’t simply disappear into the air.”

“See for yourself.”

The mercantile building had once been where they auctioned slaves. Now it stood vast and empty. Alaric threw the doors open, stirring dust in the broad shafts of light that slanted down from the high, grated windows. The place was empty of grain.

“You just told a murderous crowd they wouldn’t go hungry,” Riga drawled, leaning against the doorframe behind him. “What do you plan on feeding them?”

“We can raid,” Horsa said. “There must be something out there.”

“You’ll need the chieftains for that.” Sigeric strolled in behind. “You’re late for the war council. Wallia is hosting it.”

Wallia. Suddenly Alaric had a strong suspicion of where the grain was.

* * *

On his way to the merchants’ quarter, Alaric could see the bodies on the wall.

There were ten. The city’s richest merchants, and the governor and magistrates who’d enriched themselves from the slave trade. Noricum had specialized in selling his people, war captives from north of the Danube, valiant, strong-backed Goths preferred for the brutal Roman mines. The sight of the bodies calmed him. This was justice . Alaric normally did not sanction indiscriminate slaughter, but when he’d taken Noricum, he’d slipped his army’s leash—and for once, the slavers had gotten exactly what they deserved.

It was an ugly irony that some of his chieftains had chosen to live here, in gleaming mansions paid for in his people’s misery.

“Alaric, think .” Sigeric was at his ear. “ If Wallia took the grain, you cannot simply take it back in front of his warriors. You must allow him to save his honor.”

“If this was my army,” Riga said in a bored drawl, “I’d haul them out of their fancy houses and hang them on the wall with the slavers. Among my people, we deal with dissent severely. Otherwise you’re cleaning up a rebellion every other week, and you never get anything done.”

“Don’t listen to the honorless mercenary, King Alaric—”

“Better than listening to fools who follow their honor to the grave.”

“Enough,” Alaric snarled. Riga’s strategy tempted him. But he needed the warriors badly. He’d already lost many who’d followed Ataulf and Sarus. Stilicho was coming in scant months, and the Huns would be here sooner than that. If he lost Wallia, he lost everything.

They’d arrived at the finest of the marble houses now.

“You cannot simply walk in there like a lit torch and start setting things on fire,” Sigeric said. “What is your plan ?”

“They’ve forgotten who they are,” he answered, setting his shoulder to the great brass doors. “I’m going to remind them.”

* * *

The doors swung open and the man guarding them fell off his chair, wine jug smashing on the marble floor. “Hey!” he slurred. “You can’t go in there!”

Alaric ignored him. He stepped over the amphora fragments and the spreading stain of wine, and the others followed.

Inside was chaos. Drunken warriors sprawled on every piece of furniture. Belligerent Gauls with their hair limed straight up, tattooed Huns blowing smoke rings in the soaring atrium, a Gepid and a Thracian fighting shin-deep in the impluvium . They were staggeringly drunk, but that didn’t stop them from waving spatha and seax at each other while a wild crowd took bets and roared encouragement.

Here, a group of Hunnic warrior women tried to outdo each other with knife tricks. There, a couple fucked furiously against a wall. Alaric stepped over broken furniture and snoring bodies, past a lush formal garden where goats roamed untended, ripping up the expensive flowers. Goats. The refugees were starving and these people had goats in the gardens.

By the time he reached the inner sanctum, he could barely breathe through his fury.

The columned dining room was packed to the gills. The chieftains and their retinues lounged on Roman couches inlaid in pearl and ivory. Along one wall, a low table groaned with food, and Wallia presided over everything like a king out of legend.

The din cut off abruptly at Alaric’s entrance; a hundred heads swiveled in his direction. Laughter died in a hundred throats.

Alaric spoke into the sudden silence. “Hello, Wallia.”

“King Alaric! Where have you been? We’ve been expecting you for hours!” His smile was half grimace. “Drink and be merry. Tomorrow may be our last on earth, eh?”

There was much laughing and raising of goblets. Alaric thought of the boy in the square. The pregnant woman, desperate enough to punch through anything. “Would you like to hear why I’m late?” he asked mildly. “I was breaking up a brawl between Wulfric’s wife and a ten-year-old boy over grain.” The man named Wulfric was sprawled on the stairs. There was a woman in his lap, not his wife—blonde with her tits half-out, a string of rubies hanging between them. “Your wife throws a mean punch, Wulfric.”

“Aye, that she does!” Wulfric answered merrily, raising a cup of wine and spilling a good portion down his front. “I shall beat her for her disrespect.”

Rage made his vision go red. “The hell you will!” Alaric roared, and a room full of hardened warriors flinched. “She was justified . Eight months pregnant and going to battle for the last sack of grain in the city, while you sit on your arse with your hero’s portion and your concubine .”

Wulfric was drunk enough to answer back. “I’ll wager your Roman wife eats well in her fine mansion,” he sneered.

“Aye, she does. And it’s her rubies hanging around your woman’s neck, Wulfric.” Suddenly Wulfric looked like he’d swallowed a turd. “Her money paid, by the way, for the grain that will keep our people alive over the winter. The way I see it, she’s done more for our people in a week than any of you have done in months.” His gaze turned to Wallia, and his voice went dangerously soft. “Speaking of grain. Where is it, Wallia?”

“I took a measure for my warriors. I didn’t want to bother you with such dull administrative matters,” Wallia said, in the unctuous tone of a drunk man arguing law. “The fighting class needs to keep their strength up. Supposing we were attacked?”

“Supposing we are .” Alaric thought of the Huns sweeping down from the eastern plains. “The walls are disintegrating, and this city makes an easy target. I’m surprised you all aren’t dead already.”

“You insult my honor,” Wallia growled. “A homeland is a fool’s errand. We will never have anything in this world we don’t simply take . You can talk until you grow hoarse, but the truth is you are hanging by a thread.” He quaffed his drink. “Let us be done with all this talk. I challenge you. Man to man. Winner takes the kingship.”

The crowd’s laughter grew to a roar, and suddenly it was Wallia’s name they were shouting. They just wanted to see blood; they didn’t care about the consequences.

Alaric smiled, razor-sharp. “No.”

Wallia frowned. “You refuse to fight me?”

“I refuse to gut you like a fish in front of your own kin.” The crowd laughed as Wallia fumbled his sword out of his scabbard. “Sit down before you cut yourself with that. You’re drunk.”

Wallia’s face reddened furiously as his warriors roared with laughter, at him this time, pounding the tables. Alaric walked up to the dais and poured himself wine, sitting down in an ivory-inlaid chair with his feet on Wallia’s table as if this was his own war tent. “I have just received news of Huns coming down from the north,” he said, letting his voice carry. “They’ve ravaged Pannonia, and they carry all its riches with them. I say we go and take it.”

Wallia stared. “The Huns are coming and you want to ride out to meet them? Insanity.”

“Insanity would be hiding behind these crumbling walls that will do nothing to shelter us. Better to meet them long before they arrive. If we ride fast enough, we could pick our ground.” Nothing united his people like a common enemy. And whatever battle came with the Huns, he could keep Julia out of a siege. “Drink as if tonight is your last, men,” he said, voice booming over the heads of the cheering crowd. “For tomorrow, we ride.”

* * *

Julia pulled herself over the windowsill with Bromios’s help and without alerting the guards. She was still shaken by what she had seen that day—the starving children, the ravaged city. The violent riot over the grain. She’d heard of such riots in Rome, in the days of the grain dole, but had never seen one up close. And Alaric had plunged right into the center of it.

She thought of the food that had been brought to her in the days since she’d come here. Beef and wine and bread. Simple food, but filling. Where had it come from? Who was going hungry while she ate well?

She felt even more determined now to help Alaric fix the city’s problems.

The guards were willing enough to bring her maps of the aqueduct from the library. Hours later, she sat on the marble floor, maps and scrolls scattered around her.

The maps showed miles of siphons and catchment tanks and high arching bridges. She could trace the path the water took from the mountain lake at its source, flying over valleys and beneath the ground until it reached the city. There were maps of the pipes and passages beneath the city streets too; at her fingertips was the plan for how every city cistern and fountain was fed. Apparently there were tunnels in the rock beneath the fortress that led to underground cisterns and passageways. Julia laid everything out on the marbled floor and poured herself wine, considering where the breaks in the aqueduct might be.

She’d seen water dripping from the structure when she’d climbed it. That meant the water was still running, although not at full strength. She suspected the damage had been done close by, during the siege. But it would take an engineering team to know for sure.

Julia was still poring over the plans when Alaric stepped into the room.

He looked— exhausted . He wore a dusty tunic and trousers, and his bronze hair was pulled back from his face, leaving his features in sharp relief. Julia rose, forgetting the plans at her feet. She ran to him, and he pulled her roughly into his arms. “I missed you, wife.”

“I thought you’d be days .” Her arms tightened until she felt his ribs creak.

“I like this greeting better than the last one.” He tilted her face up and kissed her. “I suppose I should ask why the floor is strewn with scrolls.”

Julia felt a slash of unease as she pulled him over to look at the maps. She expected him to glance cursorily at the scrolls, and then take her in his arms and end the conversation in bed. It wasn’t that she minded —but she did. She thought of her father, patting her head and calling her beautiful.

But instead he sat on the floor and listened, one elbow up on a knee, fiercely quiet.

Julia explained how the aqueduct worked. The infrastructure beneath the ground, reaching forty miles east to a lake in the hills. The damage taken in the siege, where it likely was, and what it would take to repair. Alaric’s gaze was intent, following her fingers as she showed him the lines on the map that represented siphons and water bridges and settling tanks. How many and where they were.

“I saw things when I rode through your city.” He didn’t need to know about her outing to the aqueduct. “Bad sanitation is one of your problems. It makes you vulnerable to plague. Your people are surviving on water in stagnant fountains. If we don’t repair the aqueduct soon, it’s only a matter of time before sickness comes within these walls. And if we’re ever under siege, we won’t last a week without fresh water.”

He was silent for what seemed an interminable time as she came to the end of her words. What if he laughed at her? What if he hated her idea? What if— oh gods —what if he patted her on the head as her father had and told her how beautiful she was?

He was looking at her thoughtfully. “There’s ink on your cheek,” he murmured, his thumb skating gently over her cheekbone. “What do you need to accomplish these repairs?”

“Building materials to make the concrete, and stone for the facings. And manpower, of course. A team of engineers. Armed guards to protect them when they go out into the hills. It will take a week, maybe two, once we have the stone.” She drew a breath. “It will be worth it, Alaric. The benefit to our people—”

He leaned over and kissed her. Slow and achingly gentle.

“ Our people. I like when you say that.” Julia’s breath hitched. “You can have your aqueduct,” he said, smiling. “Meet with Sigeric tomorrow. He’ll be leading the reconstruction of the walls in my absence.”

Julia frowned. “Where are you going?”

“I have to lead a raid. I’ll be gone for a week, maybe two. It’s nothing to concern you.”

Nothing to concern her? “ Alaric. What if there’s an insurrection? I cannot believe you’d leave the city in this state when you barely entered in one piece last time.”

“Thorismund and Sigeric will be here. You can trust them. In the meantime, I’ll keep a battle far away from you, and you won’t have to live through a siege.” He pulled her closer, scrolls crumpling beneath them. “If anything happened to you—”

Julia felt a strange sense of foreboding as she gave herself to the kiss. She told herself she had gotten what she wanted. And when he returned, it would be to a new, gleaming aqueduct. He would see what an effective queen she was.

The kiss deepened. Became hot and demanding. “The bed would be more comfortable—” Julia murmured.

He rose to his feet, lifting her easily in his arms. They didn’t make it to the bed—only to the couch, mere steps away. Julia didn’t mind in the slightest.

* * *

Alaric took his time with Julia, lingering over her.

She’d called his people ours .

Someday, when he had brought the chieftains to heel, he would have endless time to listen to his brilliant wife tell him everything she knew about aqueducts, or road engineering, or the economics of piracy. Anything, really. He didn’t care what she told him about, as long as it was in exhaustive detail. He loved listening to her, loved watching the passion flash across her face as she spoke.

He left before she woke. Better not to draw out a long goodbye. Better to leave her with a project to occupy her restless mind.

He’d promised to hand out food to the refugees himself, at dawn. But dawn was almost risen, and he was late. It would be no small feat to marshal the warriors after.

Horsa was waiting for him on the mansion steps, sharpening his seax .

“Horsa. I’m very glad to see you.” Alaric drew an arm over the boy’s shoulders and led him down the stairs. “I need you to lead the grain distribution for me. The sun is almost risen, and the crowd will be fractious if—”

“I thought we were going raiding. Hengist is going raiding.”

Alaric sighed. This conversation was unavoidable. Even so, he’d been dreading it.

“Yes. Hengist is going with me,” he said, as gently as he could. “You will stay here, Horsa. I need someone I trust at my back.”

Horsa halted on the stairs. “But—why?”

“Both of you must lead in battle and rule a city if you’re to become chieftains. Hengist must strengthen his leadership on the battlefield. He’s levelheaded in a fight, but isn’t a leader of men. You, Horsa—you must strengthen your skills here. Help Julia build her aqueduct. Watch her back.”

Horsa’s face scrunched, hurt clouding his features. “It isn’t fair.”

“Nothing is fair,” Alaric said. “You should have learned that by now.”

* * *

Julia woke to the sound of voices at her door. Alaric was gone, without even a goodbye. She scrambled out of bed, snatching up a robe, with every intention of catching him and upbraiding him for daring to leave her so abruptly. Outside she heard impassioned arguing, and then the thud of the door swinging against the marble doorframe.

Julia halted in the bedroom doorway to see Horsa burst into her atrium. She watched him pace a tight circle on the marble, and winced when he kicked a couch across the room. He put a hand on a rather large iron candelabra next, clearly itching to do something violent with it.

“Horsa.” His eyes snapped to her, radiating fury. “What on earth did the furniture do to you?” The boy gave a vicious scowl. Julia regarded him impassively, arms crossed over her chest. “Well?”

“Alaric took Hengist raiding and left me here behind.”

“That makes two of us,” Julia said drily, and for a moment the two of them stood in silence, both stewing in their own hurt. “You might as well sit down,” she said, waving at the couch he had kicked.

Horsa’s idea of sitting seemed to be the one thing he had in common with her younger brother. He threw himself on the couch, adopting a loose-limbed lounge, his eyes half-closed. Julia lowered herself onto a chair, trailing one toe on the marble.

“I cannot be angry with him. But I am angry.”

“Hengist said something similar once.” Julia rolled her eyes. “I don’t understand the difficulty of being angry with Alaric. The man can be absolutely insufferable sometimes. All the more so because people are afraid to be angry with him.”

“Alaric is my chieftain. If he died on the battlefield and I walked away alive, I would never live down the shame.” Horsa gave an exaggerated sigh, as if to express his frustration that she did not understand something so painfully obvious. “Now if he does die on the battlefield, I won’t be there. Hengist will get to die with him, and I won’t .”

“And so you feel—jealous for not having the opportunity to die with him.” Suddenly she was outraged. “You’re fifteen, Horsa. Dying on the battlefield indeed . What a load of—” She paused, her outrage suddenly eclipsed by her curiosity. Alaric hardly ever told her anything about his past, including his relationship with the twins. “He saved your lives, you said? How?”

It was a long story, and Horsa was feeling talkative. He lay on his back on the couch, one leg dangling over the back, and recounted the story of two children who’d grown up following in the path of an army, playing amidst the detritus of war. Or perhaps playing was the wrong word. The only play the twins had known was the deadly kind.

Horsa had been fighting battles since he was ten, and trailing after armies his whole life. He’d been bringing trouble down on his head for just as long. He told her of the time Alaric had sent the boys out to forage for supplies and Horsa had found a group of bandits to pick a fight with—Alaric had had to ransom him back in the midst of a siege.

“I can see how Alaric would be driven to distraction, trying to keep you alive,” Julia said.

“I remind the great lady that she also got herself kidnapped,” Horsa drawled, mimicking her palace Latin. “Although Alaric didn’t bother with ransom then.”

Julia laughed. “I suppose he got sick of paying ransoms for hooligans such as us.”

“He thinks I’m stupid,” Horsa said bitterly, sitting up and sliding to the floor, long legs spread out on the marble, his back to the couch. “Hengist doesn’t even want to raid. He wants to be a farmer. Have you ever heard something so foolish? Alaric thinks I’m impulsive.”

“Well. That’s not exactly untrue.” Horsa glared at her. “But you’ve been quite heroic, Horsa. Do you remember how you fought in the cave when I was kidnapped? You were first into the gap behind Alaric, if I recall.”

Horsa had taken his knife out of his belt and was now tossing it from hand to hand in an intricate pattern. The knife flashed in the sunlight. “You should have seen me fight at the ruined temple,” he said contemplatively. “I filled a ravine with the dead.”

“If you hadn’t, I might be dead myself. You saved my life!”

“I did, didn’t I?” His smile was like a sunrise.

“You are only as reckless as he is. Surely he can understand that.” Julia couldn’t stop staring at the knife. Sharp enough to slice a finger off, if he got it wrong. “Where did you learn to do that?”

“Alaric taught me.” Horsa caught the knife with a little flourish and a showman’s grin. “Want to learn?”

“No.” Julia shuddered. “Alaric would be angry if you did. Thorismund gave me a knife and he took it away because he thought I would hurt myself.” Suddenly she felt a bit forlorn. “You’re not the only one he believes to be incompetent.”

Horsa was staring at her, the knife gone still in his hand. “He took your knife away?” He looked outraged. “But what if you have to defend yourself?”

“That’s what I said. He insisted he would defend me himself, but as you can see, he is currently nowhere to be seen and I rather think we’d kill each other if we were always together anyway.”

Horsa rose to his feet. “This is insanity,” he muttered, as he stalked over and yanked Julia abruptly to her feet. “Go change into your trousers. I’m going to show you how to use this.” He held the knife out to her, hilt-first. “I’m in a mood to make him mad.”

* * *

Horsa started by looking Julia’s body up and down, criticism written all over his face. “You stand all wrong.” He turned her so that her right shoulder and foot came forward. “Stand on the front of your feet. Light. Like this.” He demonstrated. “Make yourself as small a target as you can. The less for your enemy to catch with his blade.” He adjusted her again, stepped back to judge his work. “There.”

“Now what?”

Horsa looked up at her, a flat, feral grin on his face. “Now we try to kill each other.”

In the next hours, Julia got an education in the many ways to put a man in the ground. Horsa taught her how to hold a knife, how to move quickly, and where to aim. He howled with laughter at her grip and told her that if Alaric had seen him hold a knife like that, he’d be beaten senseless.

“You’ll never win in combat with a full-grown man who’s battle trained,” Horsa told her. “You must rely on surprise. If he knows you have the knife before you use it, it’s too late.”

He showed her several places to hide a knife on her body. In her trouser leg, in her boot, up a sleeve. “This one is designed to hide in a boot,” he told her, showing her how to draw it quickly, how to strike with deadly accuracy. “Right here, just beneath the rib cage.” He demonstrated the angle on his own rib cage with his two thumbs. “Or the neck, here, where the pulse is.” He tapped the side of his throat. “You cut this place, and you will be rewarded with a river of blood. But don’t hesitate. If you fail, you’ll only make him mad.”

More than mad. Julia understood Alaric’s hesitation. If she failed to kill a man when she needed to, she could end up dead herself. Or raped, or maimed. She could not slip up, even once.

But she needed this knowledge. Alaric couldn’t be by her side all the time, couldn’t protect her every moment. She knew that, even if he refused to admit it.

Julia practiced all day. Practiced until she was exhausted, and reasonably sure she could slice a man’s throat from sheer muscle memory. Horsa was a demanding teacher, exacting and precise, refusing to let mistakes pass. She had a feeling he’d learned it from Alaric.

That night, she didn’t need wine to fall asleep.