Raptor (84 page)

“Of course. Nauths indicates the ‘n’ sound. And by itself, nauths stands for misery.”

“Just so, and a nauthing is a man worse than worthless. He is wretched, paltry, cowardly, vile, beneath contempt. It is the basest insult that one Goth can speak to another. And if a man
is
called a nauthing by another, he must fight the insulter—fight him to the death. If he does not, he is banished from the society of all other human beings, shunned by everyone of his nation, his tribe, his gau, his sibja, even his nearest family. He is scarce regarded as human himself. He is such a—well, such a nauthing—that if anyone else for any reason chances to kill him, the Gothic law traditionally does not bother to bring the killer to account.”

“And have you called my brother a nauthing to his face?”

“Not yet. Distant cousins though we are, we have never met. But we will. When we do, I promise I shall look him squarely in the eye—what are you snickering at, wench?—and loudly and publicly declare Theodoric to be a nauthing. At the same time, I will plant a nauthing-stake.”

“What is a nauthing-stake?”

“Simply two twigs crossed at an angle to resemble the nauths rune. On uttering the insult, you stick that in the ground at the place of the encounter. It will go on working its evil bane, whether the man fights you right then, or later, or not at all, or even if he bests you in the fight. It is very much the same as an insandjis, a Sending by a malevolent haliuruns.”

“Indeed? Then… if I call you a nauthing at this moment… and go and find sticks with which to make a nauthing-stake…”

It was Strabo’s turn to laugh. “Do not trouble yourself, wench. Do not even try to spoil my mellow mood by threatening me. I told you: the nauthing challenge is a matter for
men.
For the sake of your own continued good health, wench, I suggest that you cease such impudent remarks, unless you can grow a svans to match your unwomanly disrespect of masculine superiority.”

I made my voice meek and said, “You are right, ja. I must do that.”

“Good… good…” he murmured, drowsy again, not seeing my grin of wickedly gleeful anticipation.

For two or three days afterward, I devoted myself to acting as serving maid to my own servant. The poor ill-favored creature had apparently been unnerved and devastated and totally crushed; she stayed supine on her pallet in her room and did nothing but weep. So I sat with her and spoke words of comfort and condolence, and fetched tidbits for her to eat whenever she had appetite for them.

However, she and I contrived a rudimentary sort of communication by gestures and grimaces, and eventually Camilla made me understand that she was not prostrated by pain or enfeeblement or even unhappiness. On the contrary, she was weeping with joy, because she had briefly been “wife” to King Thiudareikhs Triarius himself. And she was lying idle and immobile only so that she should not jostle Strabo’s slimy bdélugma out of her koilía, because she hoped mightily that some of his virile spérmata would make their way into her hystéra, and that she, though only a menial drab, would thereby become the mother of a bastard prince.

When Strabo next visited my chambers, he was too nearly in a state of apoplexy to indulge in molesting me, let alone Camilla. He came only to froth at the mouth and to bobble his boiled-looking eyes at me and to rant:

“My patience is well-nigh at an end! The trustworthy optio Ocer would not have dared to keep me waiting in perplexity. It
has
to be your nauthing brother’s equivocation that is delaying Ocer’s return hither. By all the gods, and by your cross and your hammer and your Virgin Mary’s excretions, I will wait but two more days! Tonight those Herulian prisoners arrive. I am in a mood to make them dearly wish tomorrow that they had perished tidily on the battlefield. But when I have dealt with them, if there is still no word from Singidunum by the day after, I swear that I am going to—”

“I have an idea about those prisoners,” I interrupted, before he could threaten again to remove my private parts.

“Eh?”

“Or have you decided yet on their fate? The wild beasts? The tunica? The patibulum?”

“Ne, ne,” he said impatiently. “All those measures are too tame to slake my present ravening thirst for blood.”

“Then let me recommend something really gory,” I said, feigning eagerness. “Did I not see an amphitheater here in Constantiana when we rode in?”

“Ja, a fine big one, of white Parian marble. But if you are going to suggest gladiatorial contests, do not. Hand-to-hand contests are even more tame and tedious and boring than—”

“One
tremendous
contest,” I said exuberantly. “Those tribesmen angered you because they tried to slaughter each other, niu? Then let them do so. All at once.
Make
them do so. Arm every man of those six centuries with a sword but no shield. Turn them all into the arena. Three hundred of the one tribe against the three hundred of the other. For added incentive, you might promise to let the one last survivor of each tribe live and go free. Why, a contest of that magnitude ought to equal anything ever devised by Caligula or Nero. The arena will probably be ankle-deep in blood.”

Strabo shook his head admiringly, which made his eyeballs almost capsize, and said in a hushed voice:

“I devoutly hope that Ocer
does
get here in time to avert my having to mutilate you, Amalamena. It would be a pity to destroy the one woman I have ever met who shares so many of my own tastes. A predator, a haliuruns, I called you, and so you are. Caligula and Nero—in Walis-Halla or Avalonnis, or wherever they now reside—must be dying all over again from envy of my having found you.”

“Then show your gratitude,” I said. “Let me sit beside you and watch the spectacle.”

He scowled and muttered, “Well, now…”

“I have not once been out of these quarters since you put me here. And no one has been allowed inside except the garrison chaplain one Sunday. He told me that, soiled and sullied as I am, I have no hope of the Christian heaven. So let me damn myself irretrievably to hell. Come, Triarius. Would you deny to a predator the opportunity to be in at the kill? Would you deny a haliuruns the chance to gloat at the consummation of her Sending?”

Strabo snorted a short laugh. “Fair enough. But you will be manacled to a guard. And I hope you enjoy the spectacle, woman. I do not speak idly when I swear that the next blood spilled will be yours.”

When the watch changed that evening, the relief guard who brought me and Camilla our trays of nahtamats was, as I had expected, the lancer Odwulf. He told me that the captive Heruli had indeed arrived in the city, some three hundred men of each tribe, and that they had been immediately herded into the dens beneath the floor of the Constantiana amphitheater. There were also several hundreds of their wives and children, he said, most of whom had already been distributed among the city’s Syrian slave dealers.

“That is, except for the handsomer women and the girl-children old enough to be used as women. As you can imagine, the garrison soldiers are holding high revel.”

“Are they getting thoroughly drunk?”

“Akh, exceedingly. I am regarded somewhat askance because I am not reeling and puking.”

“And the male captives, are they wrathful at the treatment being dealt their wives and children?”

Odwulf shrugged. “Probably no more than I would be if I had lost a battle and then been captured. It is the expected thing.”

“Ja, I suppose so,” I had to agree. “Still, I should like those Herulian men stirred up as much as possible. Can you get in among them?”

“This night I can likely do anything you require, Swanilda, with all the rest of the garrison so drunk and, er, otherwise occupied.”

“Then do that. Spread the word among the prisoners that Strabo’s men are using their women and girl-children in—say—in the so-called Frankish manner. And the Greek.”

Odwulf looked shocked. “They would not believe that! No one would believe any Ostrogoth capable of such perversions.”

“Make
them believe it. After all, these are Ostrogoths deep in drink, lost to inhibition and decency.”

“You talk worse than any soldier,” he growled, then shrugged again. “I will do my best. But why?”

I began to tell him of the mass gladiatorial contest that would be waged on the morrow, thanks to my having conceived it and having got Strabo to agree to it. Odwulf several times erupted with wondering exclamations—and again suggested that I
was
Amazonially inclined to atrocity. But he subsided and nodded approvingly when I went on to tell him what else I wanted him to say to the Heruli in the dens under the arena.

“By the hammer of Thor,” he murmured, “but you do have an ingenious turn of mind. Whether or not it avails you and me in any way, it ought to be something to see.”

“After you have properly agitated and provoked and instructed the prisoners—and well after dark, but while all the others of the garrison are still raddled—I want you to fetch the marshal Thorn’s armor and his horse. Strabo and I will be seated tomorrow in the central podium on the arena-level tier of the amphitheater. So tether the horse and hide the armor somewhere convenient to that podium’s private entrance.”

“I thought we were keeping the armor merely as a memento. You wish to wear it?”

I said offhandedly, “The Saio Thorn was not much bigger than I am. It ought to fit me well enough. And he showed me how to ride his horse with that foot-rope around it. Remember, Odwulf, in times not too long past, the Ostrogoth women were no mean warriors themselves.”

“Still… a female servant to a princess…”

“I hope I have not been domesticated to abject softness. Simply do as I say. And one other thing. Strabo tomorrow will surely select some well-trusted guard to be manacled to me. But
you
contrive to be as near me as you can.”

“No fear,” he said. “Everyone else will have a heavy head tomorrow. I will have no trouble in posting myself nearby. And, Swanilda, let us both be praying that your plan succeeds. If we do not escape, we most certainly will not outlive the day.”

Next morning, I got dressed and adorned in the very finest of my Veleda garments and cosmetics and jewelry that I had brought from Novae, including even the bosom-enhancing breast guard of coiled bronze that I had bought years ago and far away in the Place of Echoes. I wanted Strabo to see me—this last time that he would ever see me—as wholly, genuinely, undeniably feminine, in no way threatening, so that he should not change his mind about letting me join him at the amphitheater.

Camilla did not help me with my dressing. As she had been doing for some mornings past, she was wistfully attending to her own bosom—baring and squeezing and stripping down one, then the other of her pillowy breasts—obviously seeking for the first appearance of maternal milk. Of course, she succeeded in squeezing out only the thin, pale areolar lymph that almost any corpulent woman or even a fat eunuch can express from her or his breast. Nevertheless, I was inspired to a malicious notion. I took off my golden neck chain, took off the brass cap of my reliquary phial and—to Camilla’s dumb astonishment—myself milked some of that trickle of hers into the crystal and capped it again.

Strabo arrived then, also resplendently dressed, wearing instead of heavy armor a chlamys and tunic of fine, light fabrics, and a sword belt and scabbard richly jeweled. He was well groomed, too, with even his usually quilly beard neatly trimmed and combed to smoothness. He cocked his head to look me up and down with each eye separately, clasped and rubbed his hands, grinned and said warmly:

“Amalamena, I am truly glad that I do not have to amputate any part of you until tomorrow. You look more beautiful and enticing than I have yet seen you. After the contest in the arena has heated our mutual blood-lust, we ought both to enjoy our frolic tonight. I know I will. Too bad, really, that it must be the last time.”

“Unless,” I said, “Freya or Tykhe or some other goddess of fortune should choose to smile upon me before then.”

“Akh, ja, if the overdue Ocer does suddenly materialize. But I fear that your time of reprieve is dwindling rapidly. Come, shall we go now to watch the slaughter you craved to see?”

He gestured to the armored soldier he had brought with him, and that man clasped a slave’s iron bracelet about my right wrist and bolted it shut, the chain of it already attached to the identical bracelet that he wore on his left wrist. It was, in fact, fairly embedded in the man’s arm, because he was even bigger than Strabo, being grossly fat. I suppose the intent was that, even if my guard should suddenly drop dead, I could not possibly drag such a weight and effect an escape.

With only a few other soldiers in attendance, the three of us went afoot to the amphitheater, it being no great distance from the palace. There we went through the entrance reserved for the city’s notables, our attendant soldiers remaining outside. We ascended a short flight of stairs to the podium, and I found that a comfortable chair had been set there for me, and a high couch on which Strabo would recline. Before he did so, though, he slipped off his sandals and put on a pair of elegant slippers, densely and intricately embroidered with beads, even on the soles. The high couch made him visible, full length, to all his subjects in the amphitheater, and those slippers were to indicate to them that their King Thiudareikhs Triarius was so exalted, illustrious and indolent that he need never even
walk
unless it pleased him to do so.

It seemed that every single one of his Constantiana subjects was present to admire him. They filled every cuneus and maenianum of the amphitheater, from the best seats up to the hard ledges of the highest tier. Only our podium was not elbow to elbow with people; it contained none but myself, my attached guard standing slouched beside my chair, Strabo recumbent on his couch and a single other guard—it was Odwulf, thags Guth—standing armed and armored and at rigid attention behind Strabo’s back.

That my chain was manacled to my right arm and to my guard’s left was the customary way of fettering prisoners, because in most people (myself included) the right arm is the stronger. However, I had already noticed that my fat guard wore his sword sheathed on the right side of his belt, and his arm gave mine a yank now and then, when he picked his nose or scratched his crotch. So he was left-handed. Fortune, I decided, was indeed smiling on me this day.