Chapter Fifty
CHAPTER FIFTY
They buried Calthrax as the leaves turned, in a copse of trees in the shadow of Noricum’s walls, along with all the bodies Alaric had hung on stakes. Alaric sang the paeon he’d denied before, in a clear, rich baritone; Thorismund joined him in a deep bass, the song raw and rich as deep earth.
Alaric did not see Calthrax again.
* * *
The days passed. Alaric and Julia marshalled their forces to repair the walls. By the time summer faded into fall, the walls were rebuilt and the aqueduct restored, cool water flowing in from the mountains. The city was now as ready for a siege as it would ever be. Alaric set guards on the newly repaired walls, and for a while, Julia was ready to wake to the sight of a new army on the horizon. Calthrax had promised Stilicho would come over the mountains before winter, and now summer had fully turned. Word would come from the hill tribes any moment that he was on his way, and even Alaric believed the hill tribes could hold him back for only so long.
But word did not come.
They had an explanation when Alaric’s spy in Ravenna rode into Noricum at a gallop.
Caius was a man of middling height and indeterminate age, the sort who easily passed unnoticed. He bowed before Alaric in his war tent, his cloak dusty from the road.
“I’m sorry, my King. Stilicho is dead.”
Julia thought immediately of Verina, alone in court without Stilicho’s power to shield her. Alaric’s blue eyes narrowed. “How?”
Caius told them. When Honorius heard the rumors of Julia’s marriage, he had fallen into a rage. Olympius had used the opportunity to resurrect old accusations of Stilicho plotting with Alaric, and Honorius had ordered Stilicho executed. Stilicho had taken refuge in a Christian church and Honorius’s men had told the bishop that they had come only to arrest Stilicho, not to execute him. As soon as the general crossed the sanctuary’s threshold, they cut him down.
Then, after Stilicho was executed, Honorius had ordered thirty thousand Gothic foederati and their families in Italy slaughtered.
* * *
After hearing this story, Alaric ordered everyone from his tent except Julia.
“This is war,” he told her flatly. She could feel his rage. The kind that burned down cities. Even leashed, it filled the tent, sucked up all the air in the room. “This deserves an answer.”
His eyes were on her, direct and level, and she bristled at the question he was asking. She was no longer the Roman princess, could he not see that? Julia thought of the great marble buildings of Rome, and where that marble came from. She wanted to tear it all down. She never wanted to look at marble again.
“This is my wedding gift to you.” She straightened her spine and met his level, determined gaze with her own. A sacred oath. Thorismund would be proud. “I will give you the keys to the kingdom. All my alliances, all my wealth, are yours. We’ll burn it down together.”
She laughed as Alaric lifted her by the waist, spun her in the smoke-scented cavern of the tent. She didn’t want to be empress. She just wanted to see it burn.
* * *
A week later—the day before her wedding—the princess received a visitor.
Alaric had been up for hours. But Julia had slept long into the morning, and jerked awake to find Horsa sitting by her bed. He was every inch the Bandit King, a gold hoop earring glinting in one ear. But he ruined the impression by pulling her close in a tight embrace.
“I had to see you before your wedding,” he said quietly. “I brought you this. Seeing as you keep losing them.”
It was a dagger. Small enough to fit in a boot or up a sleeve. The hilt glinted with emeralds. “It’s beautiful,” Julia breathed. Almost jewelry . “Where did you get it?”
“Stole it.” He shrugged, and grinned. “You can always come with me. Be Queen of the Bandits instead.”
“Horsa, you and I would never work out.” People were always offering her ways to run away from Alaric. Julia sighed. “Will you stay for the wedding?”
“No.”
She’d known this would be his answer and it still broke her heart. “He misses you,” she said quietly. “Will you ever come back?”
Horsa shook his head. “I cannot say.”
“Then, come to me sometimes. Rome is stirring against us and I need my own spies.” She took his hands in hers. “I’m sure you’ve heard the news about the Goths in Rome slaughtered.”
“Yes. And I hear you go to war.” He regarded her solemnly. “I wish I could go too.”
She put her arms around him and held him tight. For all the times she knew she wouldn’t be able to. “I will always be a safe haven, Horsa. Even if you cannot return to Alaric.”
She drew back to memorize his face. His eyes glinted in the fading light. Blue, paler than Alaric’s. Almost gray. Soft and steel. “I know.”
She could not hold him. He was gone between one breath and the next.
* * *
The wedding of Alaric of the Goths and Julia Augusta, daughter of Theodosius, took place in the fall. Tribal leaders came from far and wide, and Alaric and his men slaughtered wild sheep and goats. The feasting lasted for days.
It’s said that the couple was married by Thorismund, last scion of the Batavi, who joined the couple in the eyes of the gods. Alaric was a barbarian warlord, and she the only daughter of the emperor of Rome—natural enemies, but those who were there only saw how the bride and groom looked at each other, with such breathtaking tenderness that it was easy to forget this marriage was a kick in the Empire’s teeth.
It’s said that according to custom, at the height of the feasting, the King of the Goths gifted his wife with jewels and gold from plundering the richest cities in the west, carried in by a parade of handsome youths. It’s said that he set her on a throne above his own, and gazed up at her with an expression of love that outshone all those riches.
And when they went to war against the Empire, the whole earth shook at their coming.
* * * * *