“You saw no bodies?”
“None, sir. Nor signs of bloodshed.”
“Let’s be grateful for that much, I suppose,” Drusus said.
But it was a miserable situation. Two days on shore and he had already lost half a dozen men, his best friend among them. At this moment the natives might be putting them to the torture, or worse. And also he had inadvertently sent word to the folk of this land that an invading army had once again landed on their shores. They would have found that out sooner or later anyway, of course. But Drusus had wanted to have some sense of where he was located in relation to the enemy, first. Not to mention having his camp fully walled in, his siege engines and other war machinery set up and ready, the horses of the cavalry properly accustomed to being on land once again, and all the rest.
Instead it was possible now that they might find themselves under attack at any moment, and not in any real way prepared for it. How splendid, that Titus Livius Drusus would be remembered down the ages for having so swiftly placed the second New World expedition on the path to the same sort of catastrophe that had overwhelmed the first!
It was appropriate, Drusus knew, to send word of what had happened down the beach to Lucius Aemilius Capito’s camp. One was supposed to keep one’s superior officer informed of things like this. He hated the idea of confessing such stupidity, even if the stupidity had been Marcus Junianus’s, not his own. But the responsibility ultimately was his, he knew. He scribbled a note to the effect that he had sent a scouting party out and it appeared to have been captured by enemies. Nothing more than that. No apology for having let scouts go out before the camp was completely defended. Bad enough that the thing had happened; there was no need to point out to Capito how serious a breach of standard tactics it had been.
From Capito, toward nightfall, came back a frosty memorandum asking to be kept up to date on developments. The implication was there, more in what Capito did not say than in what he did, that if the natives did happen to strike at Drusus’s camp in the next day or two, Drusus would be on his own in dealing with it.
No attack came. All the next day Drusus moved restlessly about the camp, urging his engineers onward with the job of finishing the palisade. When new foraging parties went out to hunt for deer and pigs and those great birds, he saw to it that they were accompanied by three times as many soldiers as would ordinarily be deemed necessary, and he worried frantically until they returned. He sent another party of scouts out under Rufus Trogus, too, to investigate the zone just beyond the place where Marcus and his men had been taken and look for clues to their disappearance. But Trogus came back once more with no useful information.
Drusus slept badly that night, plagued by mosquitoes and the unending shrieks and boomings of the jungle beasts and the moist heat that wrapped itself about him with almost tangible density. A bird in a tree that could not have been very far from his tent began to sing in a deep, throbbing voice, a tune so mournful it sounded to Drusus like a funeral dirge. He speculated endlessly about the fate of Marcus. They have not killed him, he told himself earnestly, because if they had wanted to do that, they would have done it in the original ambush in the forest. No, they’ve taken him in for interrogation. They are trying to get information from him about our numbers, our intentions, our weapons. Then he reflected once more that they were unlikely to get such information out of Marcus without torturing him. And then—
Morning came, eventually. Drusus emerged from his tent and saw sentries of the watch coming down the beach in his direction.
Marcus Junianus was with them, looking weary and tattered, and trailing along behind were half a dozen equally ragged Romans who must have been the scouts he took with him on his venture into the forest.
Drusus suppressed his anger. There would be time enough for scolding Junianus later. The flood of relief that surged through him took precedence over such things, anyway.
He embraced Junianus warmly, and stepped back to study him for signs of injury—he saw none—and said, finally, “Well, Marcus? I didn’t expect you to stay away overnight, you know.”
“Nor I, Titus. A few hours, a little sniffing around, and then we’d turn back, that was what I thought. But we had hardly gone anywhere when they fell upon us from the treetops. We fought, but there must have been a hundred of them. It was all over in moments. They tied us with silken cord—it felt like silk, anyway, but perhaps it was some other kind of smooth rope—and carried us away on their shoulders through the forest. Their city is less than an hour’s march away.”
“Their city, you say? In the midst of this wilderness, a city?”
“A city, yes. That is the only word for it. I couldn’t tell you how big it is, but it would be a city by anyone’s reckoning, a very great one. It is the size of Neapolis, at the least. Perhaps even the size of Roma.” The forest had been cleared away over an enormous area, he said, gesturing with both arms. He told of broad plazas surrounding gleaming temples and palaces of white stone that were greater in their dimensions than the Capitol in Roma, of towering pyramids with hundreds of steps leading to the shrines at their summits, of terraced avenues of the same finely chiseled white stone stretching off into the jungled distance, with mighty statues of fearsome gods and monstrous beasts lining them for their entire lengths. The population of the city, Junianus said, was incalculably huge, and its wealth had to be extraordinary. Even the common folk, though they wore little more than simple cotton tunics, looked prosperous. The majestic priests and nobles who moved freely among them were magnificent beyond belief. Junianus struggled for words to describe them. Garbed in the skins of tigers, they were, with green and red capes of bright feathers on their shoulders, and brilliant feather headdresses that rose to extravagant, incredible heights. Pendants of smooth green stone hung from their earlobes, and great necklaces of that same stone were draped about their necks, and around their waists and wrists and ankles they had bangles of shining gold. Gold was everywhere, said Junianus. It was to these people as copper or tin was to Romans. You could not escape the sight of it: gold, gold, gold.
“We were fed, and then we were taken before their king,” Junianus told Drusus. “With his own hands he poured out drink for us, using polished bowls of the same smooth green stone that they employ for their jewelry. It was a strong sweet liquor, brewed of honey, I think, with the herbs of this land in it, strange to the taste, but pleasing—and when we had refreshed ourselves he asked us our names, and the purpose for which we had come, and—”
“He asked you, Marcus? And you understood what he was saying? But how was that possible?”
“He was speaking Latin,” Junianus replied, as though that should have been self-evident. “Not very good Latin, of course, but one can expect nothing better from a Norseman, is that not so? In fact it was very poor Latin indeed. But he spoke it well enough for us to comprehend what he was saying, after a fashion. Naturally I didn’t tell him outright that I was a scout for an invading army, but it was clear enough that he—”
“Wait a moment,” Drusus said. His head was beginning to spin. “Surely I’m not hearing this right. The king of these people is a Norseman?”
“Did I not tell you, Titus?” Junianus laughed. “A Norseman, yes! He’s been here for years and years. His name is Olaus Danus, one of those who came down from Vinilandius with Haraldus the Svean on that first voyage long ago, when the Norse discovered this place, and he’s lived here ever since. They treat him almost like a god. There he sits on a glistening throne, with a scepter of green stone in his hand and a bunch of golden necklaces around his throat, and wearing a crown of feathers half as tall as I am, and they strew flower petals before him whenever he gets up and walks, and crouch before him and cover their eyes with their hands so he won’t blind them with his splendor, and—”