"Can we gain even that much if we forsake the gods?" he blurted.
"Or is it your hopes of power and fame that we may have to forgo?" she snapped.
He glared. "From none but you would I brook that."
She left the stool. Her voice went soft. "Heidhin, old friend, I am sorry. I meant no hurt. We should never lie at odds, we twain."
He rose too. "I did swear once . . . I would follow you."
She took both his hands in hers. "And well you have. How very well." When she threw her head back to look at him, the hood fell off and he saw her face lamplit. Shadows filled the furrows in it and underlined the cheekbones but masked the gray in the brown tresses. "We've fared far together."
"I did not swear I would blindly obey," he muttered. Nor had he done so. Sometimes he went dead against her wishes. Afterward he showed her he had been right.
"Far and far," she whispered as though she had not heard. Hazel eyes sought the murk behind him. "Did we end here, east of the great river, because the years and miles had worn us out? We should have wandered on, maybe to the Batavi. Their land opens onto the sea."
"The Bructeri made us wholly welcome. They did everything for you that you asked."
"Oh, yes. I was thankful. I am. But someday—a single kingdom of all the tribes—and I shall again watch the star of Niaerdh shine above the sea."
"No such kingdom can be unless first we bleed Rome dry."
"Do not talk of that. Later we shall have to. Now let us remember gentle things."
Sunrise reddened heaven when he bade her farewell. Dew sheened on the mud outside. Black above it, he passed the holy grove, bound for the lodge and his horse. Peace had been on her brow, she was ready for sleep, but his fingers drew taut around the hilt of his knife.
4
Castra Vetera, Old Camp, stood near the Rhine, about where Xanten in Germany did when Everard and Floris were born. But the whole of this land in this age was Germany—Germania, reaching across upper Europe from the North Sea to the Baltic, from the River Scheldt to the Vistula, and south to the Danube. Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the German state would arise out of it in the course of almost two thousand years. Today it was wilderness broken here and there by cultivation, grazing, villages, steadings, held by tribes that came and went in war, migration, eternal turbulence.
Westward, in what would be France, Belgium, Luxembourg, much of the Rhineland, the dwellers were Gauls, of Celtic language and Celtic ways. With a high culture and military capability, they had dominated the Germans with whom they were in contact—though the distinction was never absolute, and blurred in the border country—until Caesar conquered them. That was not so long ago, assimilation was not yet so far along, that memory of the old free days had died out of everyone.
It had seemed the same would befall their rivals to the east; but when Augustus lost three legions in the Teutoburg Forest, he decided to draw the frontier of the Empire at the Rhine rather than the Elbe, and only a few German tribes stayed under Roman rule. For the outermost of these, such as the Batavi and Frisii, it was not actual occupation. Like native states in India of the British Raj, they were required to pay tribute and, in general, behave as the nearest proconsul directed. They furnished a good many auxiliary troops, originally volunteers, lately conscripts. It was they that first rose in revolt; then they got allies from among their kindred to the east, while southwest of them Gauls took fire.
"Fire—I hear of a sibyl who prophesies that Rome itself shall burn," said Julius Classicus. "Tell me about her."
Burhmund's bulk shifted uneasily in the saddle. "With words like that, she brought the Bructeri, Tencteri, and Chamavi to our cause," he acknowledged, with somewhat less enthusiasm than might have been expected. "Her fame has overleaped the rivers to lay hold on us." He glanced at Everard. "You must have heard of her too as you fared. Your trail would have crossed hers, and yon tribes have not forgotten. Warriors of theirs have been coming to us because they learned she was here, calling for war."
"Certainly I heard," lied the Patrolman, "but I did not know what to make of those stories. Do tell more."
The three sat mounted under a gray sky, in a bleak breeze, near the road from Old Camp. It was a military road, paved and arrow-straight, running south along the Rhine to Colonia Agrippinensis. The Roman legions had been here that many years. Now those remnants of them that had held this fortress through fall and winter moved under guard toward Novesium, which had yielded much more quickly.
They were a sorry lot to behold, ragged, dirty, skeletally thin. Most shambled empty-eyed, making no attempt to form ranks. They were mainly Gauls, both regulars and auxiliaries, and it was to the Empire of Gaul that they had surrendered and pledged allegiance, according to the demands and cajolements of Classicus's spokesmen. Not that they could have stood off a determined attack, as they had done again and again early in the siege. The blockade had brought them down to eating grass and whatever cockroaches a man might catch.
Their escort was nominal, a handful of fellow Gauls, well fed and smartly outfitted, soldiers themselves before they became followers of Classicus and his colleagues. More men kept watch over the ox-drawn wagons that lumbered behind, laden with spoils. Those were Germans, a few legionary veterans officering backwoodsmen armed with spears, axes, and long swords. It was plain to see that Claudius Civilis—Burhmund the Batavian—had limited faith in his Celtic associates.
He frowned. He was a big man, blunt-featured, his left eye blind and milky from an infection in the past, the right coldly blue. Since disavowing Rome he had let his beard grow, brown shot with white, and had his hair, also unclipped, dyed red in barbarian wise. But ring mail rustled about his body, a Roman helmet shone on his head, and at his hip hung a legionary blade meant for stabbing, not hewing.
"It would take the whole day to speak of Wael-Edh—Veleda," he said. "Nor am I sure it would be lucky. That's a strange goddess she serves."
"Wael-Edh!" whispered in Everard's hearing. "Her proper name, then. Latin speakers would naturally change it a little—" The three men were using the language of the Romans, the one they had in common.
Startled in his tension, Everard involuntarily glanced up. He saw only cloud cover. Above it, Janne Floris hovered on a timecycle. A woman could not very well have ridden into the rebel camp. Though he could have explained her presence away, the risk of trouble was idiotic to assume, on a mission dicey enough. Besides, she was most useful where she was. Her instruments pierced the deck, ranged widely, magnified or amplified when she desired. Through the electronics in his ornamental-looking headband, she saw and heard what he did, while bone conduction brought her words to him. Should he get into serious difficulties, she might be able to rescue him. That depended on whether she could do it without creating a sensation. No telling how these people would react—even the most sophisticated Roman believed in omens, if nothing else—and the object of the game was to preserve history. If necessary, you let your partner die.
"Anyhow," Burhmund went on, obviously anxious to dismiss the subject, "her fierceness is lessening. Perhaps the goddess herself wants an end to the war. What gain in it, after we've won what we began it for?" His sigh gusted in to the wind. "I too, I've had my fill of strife."
Classicus bit his lip. He was a short man, which may have fueled the ambition that blazed in him, though an aquiline countenance betokened the royal descent he claimed. In Roman service he had commanded the Treverian cavalry, and it was in the city of that Gallic tribe, Trier to be, that he and others first conspired to take advantage of the German uprising. "We have dominion to win," he snapped, "greatness, wealth, glory."