Raptor (19 page)

When I returned to our camping place, I realized why Wyrd had taken so much care in flaying the ibex. He had left the hoofs and a pocket of skin at the four corners of the hide. Then he had stuck four sticks into the ground around the fire, and used the hide’s corner pockets to hang it over the blaze, its fur side down. Once the fur was singed away, he had filled the sagging hide with water. While that came to a boil, he had brittled the carcass into wieldy chunks—brisket, ribs, flank and so on—and put those into the water. The remaining meat scraps and the numbles he had tossed aside for my juika-bloth, and it was obviously enjoying its feast.

Wyrd and I had to wait a while for ours to cook, and our mouths watered as the delectable aroma wafted from the skin pot and the bubbling water darkened and the bobbing chunks of meat turned from red to brown. At last, when I was about to swoon from either famishment or the delight of anticipation, Wyrd produced his Goth knife and prodded a piece of the meat and pronounced it “done.” It was done to perfection—so tender that we did not have to gnaw at all, and hardly had to chew; we had only to lip it off the bones—and so delicious that we gorged on it. We could not, of course, eat all there was. Wyrd set some by for the morning, and hung other bits over the fire to smoke and cure for carrying with us. Then, well and fully fed, we rolled into our furs for the night.

That same night, but far away to the east, in the “New Rome” of Constantinople, a boy of about my own age had presumably also been amply fed before he retired to bed. However, he was the boy Theodoric, son and prince and heir of Thiudamer the Amaling, King of the Ostrogoths, so he slept as an honored guest in the magnificent Purple Palace of Leo, Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire. And young Theodoric doubtless slept on silken sheets in a warm and downy bed, and before he slept he doubtless had dined on the most exotic and costly of dishes.

Well, so have I, in the years since that night. I have savored many a choice viand at many a festal board in many an elegant hall. In fact, I would dine often and often with Theodoric himself, in the several palaces he eventually won for his own, where we ate of the finest delicacies, in the company of patrician lords and ladies, and were attended by many stewards and servants. But I swear, I cannot remember relishing any meal in all my life so much as I enjoyed that simple repast that Wyrd so primitively prepared, that night in the cold and bleak and inhospitable Hrau Albos.

The next morning, though I again woke at first light, Wyrd was already absent from our camping place. I found him up where the bear had fallen, and well along in the labor of skinning the carcass. I gave him a murmured “gods dags” and then, unbidden, brought up from the campfire some warmed-over ibex meat, and from the rill some water, with which he could break his fast. He grunted acknowledgment, and snatched bites of the meat and gulps of the water while carrying on with his bloody and greasy work.

Then I busied myself with rolling up our bedding furs, and tucking inside them our other separate belongings, including the smoked meat. I also, as always, made sure that my phial of the Virgin’s milk had not been lost or broken during the previous day’s journey. Those chores did not take me long, so I picked up the discarded head of the ibex. My juika-bloth had made its own morning meal by pecking out the eyes and most of the tongue of it, but what I wanted was to remove the splendid horns. I found a suitable rock and used that as a hammer to crush the skull. When I was done, I laid one horn on each of our bundles and lashed them there.

Wyrd and I both finished our tasks at about the same time, and it was nearly midday. I regarded with dismay the great skin he brought wadded in his arms, and waited with resignation for him to add it to the bale I had borne the day before. But he nodded approval of my having separated the ibex’s horns, and said:

“You already have enough to carry, urchin. Anyway, you could scarcely tolerate the smell this skin will soon develop, for I have not fleshed it as well as might be, and of course I will not take the time and trouble to stretch and dry it. I am accustomed to rank odors, so I will add this to my own load.”

“Thags izvis,” I said feelingly. “And will you be killing still others, fráuja Wyrd?”

“Ne, we
both
have enough to carry. And I know of no other favored hibernating dens between here and Basilea, so we might as well bend our best steps toward that garrison. Ja, we will get out of this raw weather and into a luxuriously hot Roman bath.”

“Ought I go and carve some meat off the bear, in case we should need it on the way?”

“Ne. Once a cadaver has stiffened in death, the flesh is forever tough, however long one cooks it. Let it lie.”

“It seems a shame to waste it.”

“Nothing in nature ever goes to waste, urchin. That carcass will nourish a myriad of other animals, birds, insects. And if a pack of wolves should come upon it first, it will divert them from trailing us by the scent of this fresh skin. Better yet, if the bear is found by a scavenging band of Huns, it will keep them here for a good long while.”

“I once saw a wolf,” I said, “and it looked capable of killing a man with ease. I have never seen a Hun. But I take it, fráuja, that you had rather be the prey of wolves than of Huns?”

“By the infernal Styx, anyone would! Wolves might ravage our belongings, or our horses, if we had any. They would not attack us. I will never understand how the intelligent and respectable and resourceful wolves got their reputation of man-eating savagery. But I know how the Huns got
theirs.
Now, urchin—atgadjats!”

I forget how many, many days we were on the march after leaving that place. But almost every day, now, we were tending downhill, and with almost every day the weather got slightly more clement, and with almost every day—impossible though I would have thought it—my burden of baled bearskins seemed to lighten. As Wyrd had predicted, the skin and muscles of my shoulders and back gradually got accustomed to the hard usage, and all my other muscles and sinews were likewise getting stronger. I no longer lurched and lumbered along, but kept pace with the tireless old Forest-Stalker.

He also instructed me in the ways of walking quietly—and he often did that with a snarl, when I erred—so I learned always to place each foot before putting weight on it, lest I snap a dead stick or crunch dry leaves concealed beneath the snow, and I learned never to let branches whip free after I had parted them for my passage, and I learned various other tricks of woodcraft. Sometimes, when Wyrd and I had traversed a wind-bared stretch of rock and then found snow again on the other side, he would have us both walk
backward
until we came to bare rock again. That, he said, would confuse no forest beast, but might confuse any Huns who came upon our tracks.

Wyrd sometimes cut short our day’s march in midafternoon, or extended it until after dark, so that we unfailingly made camp near an iced-over pool or streamlet. Often, too, as we went along, he would abruptly halt—and stop me with a gesture—silently set down his bundles, unsling his bow and shoot a snow hare or stoat that, standing immobile against the equally white landscape, had completely escaped my notice. It seemed to me that Wyrd must have two or three more senses than other people do, and I admiringly told him so.

“Skeit,” he grunted, picking up his latest kill. “It was your eagle that spotted this one, and I was watching the
bird.
It may prefer to dine on reptiles, but it sees everything. And, watching it, so do I. A very useful companion, that eagle. Your own eyesight is merely lazy, urchin. You must sharpen it as you would any other skill. As for your sense of smell, you have simply lived too long between walls and under a roof. Spend enough time in the outdoors and you will learn to discern the different smells of snow, ice and water.”

Well, I never did develop Wyrd’s facility for sniffing out water. But I did try to use my eyes better, and, rather to my surprise, found that one
can,
with practice, see things previously unseeable. For instance, I learned that movement is best perceived by looking directly
at
a place where movement might be expected (or feared). But small or still or dim objects, and difference in color, are best perceived at the edges of one’s vision. Eventually I could, like Wyrd, “see from the sides of my eyes,” so to speak, and distinguish a winter-white small animal from the only slightly different white of the snow in which it stood stone-still, waiting for us to pass it by.

When I had become able to espy those little beasts, and when we were not desperate for some game to cook that night, Wyrd would let me take first try at bringing one down, using my sling. But he usually had an arrow already nocked to let fly in case I missed—which, early on, I did oftener than not.

“That is because you wield the sling in David’s biblical style,” Wyrd said sourly. “A result, no doubt, of your having been reared in a monastery. Twirling it over your head like that, before loosing the stone, indeed throws far and hard, but not with much precision. Your intent should not be to heave a stone clear across the Albos, and indiscriminately. It should be to
hit
something, and something that is fairly nearby, such as a small animal—or a Goliath, for that matter. You will get better accuracy, urchin, if you twirl the sling perpendicular to your side.”

Obediently, I tried. And naturally, unused to that mode of throwing, I did it with atrocious awkwardness.

“Ne, ne!” Wyrd said disgustedly. “You need not spin it like a teetotum. Two or three spins are ample. Anyway, you are twirling it the wrong way, so you fling the stone underhand. Take note of this, urchin. The arm muscles work in such a way that you can
raise
your arm much more rapidly and forcefully than you can
lower
it. So twirl the sling the other way, and let fly with a strong overhand throw.” I tried again and, though I was still awkward at it, Wyrd’s method did give me a feeling of more assurance with the sling. So I practiced at it, every chance I got, and before that journey was over I was bringing down most of our small venison.

At last we emerged from under the perpetual gray overcast sky of the Albos, and the days were intermittently, then frequently bright with sunlight. Fortunately, in those lower lands, we were in forests so dense that, even leafless, they afforded some shade from that sunshine; otherwise, the glare off the snow would have been blinding. Here, in the Roman province known as Rhaetia Prima, we came to the river Birsus, a stream so narrow that it was frozen all the way across, just like any of the mountain brooks and rills.

We followed the Birsus downstream and, where it joins the great river Rhenus, came in sight of Basilea—first seeing from afar the wall garrison built on a terrace that towers high above the rivers’ junction. Wyrd explained to me that here the westward-flowing, narrow and rapid Rhenus makes an abrupt bend to flow northward, and also widens into a broad and easy-running water. So here is the upstream limit of navigation on that much traveled river that stretches all the way north across Europe to the Germanic Ocean.

Now, Basilea is only a small and minor Roman garrison town, compared to others I have visited since. But all are alike in the way they have grown and developed over time. The walled camp or fort occupies the most prominent and easily defensible place, and is usually immense in extent. It is encircled by ramparts, revetments, sentry towers, ditches, moats, thorny hedges and other such barriers against invasion. Immediately outside those barricades, and all around the fort, are clustered the cabanae. Although that word means only “the booths,” they are actually quite substantial buildings, divided by streets into blocks, market squares and every other aspect of a real town. No doubt they
were
at first only the shanty booths of camp followers peddling commodities that the Roman army does not always supply to its troops—rich foods, good wines, cheap women and lusty entertainments—but in every long-settled garrison town, the cabanae now constitute the civic community, busy with commerce, activity and conviviality.

Beyond the cabanae, the outskirts of the town contain those industries necessary to supply both the troops and the citizens—timber yards, tileries, stockyards, potteries, smithies and such—most of those belonging to the descendants of discharged Roman veterans who long ago married into the local population. In addition to all those appurtenances of any garrison town, Basilea also had a fringe of docks, repair shops, chandleries and warehouses along the Rhenus riverfront.

Because the Rhenus is the water highway for so much traffic of travelers and traders, there are only two narrow and ill-kept roads leading into Basilea, and on one of those Wyrd and I entered the town. It was to be expected that the roads would be little used, but we had this one
entirely
to ourselves. There were no carts, wagons, riders or pedestrians to be seen at all, and Wyrd muttered wonderingly about that. In the town’s outskirts, we still saw no people, no one working or moving about or even sitting idle. All the gates we passed were shut and barred, no forge or kiln fires were burning, there was none of the usual hive noise of a populated community. We could not even hear a dog barking anywhere.

“By the oven-baked body of St. Polycarp,” growled Wyrd, “but this is most peculiar.”

“But look up ahead, fráuja,” I said. “There are at least smokes rising from the cabanae.”

“Ja. Come, urchin, and I will introduce you to my favorite taberna. It belongs to an old friend of mine, and he does not water his wine. We shall ask him if a plague has afflicted Basilea.”

But when we arrived at the taberna, although its smoke indicated a hearth fire within, its door was shut fast, like every other in town. Wyrd hammered angrily on the panel and shouted some hideous obscenities and demanded, “Open this door, Dylas! May all the gods damn you, I know you are in there!”

Not until after Wyrd had done much more hammering and invoking of curses did a window shutter open, just a crack, and a bleary red eye peered out and a gruff voice said, speaking the Old Language as did Wyrd, with an unidentifiable accent, “Wyrd, old kinsman, is that you?”