The next thing I remember is someone pulling at my shoulders: my leg twisted and I lurched back into consciousness with a cry of pain. There was a pause, and then I was lifted again and turned over, and someone said, in Latin, “We’ve got to stop the bleeding.” I looked up and saw Facilis standing over me.
“You bastard!” he said vehemently. He was very red in the face. “You slippery bastard!”
I looked away. I knew vaguely that he wasn’t supposed to be there, but I didn’t want to think about it. I felt very faint and sick, and the pain in my leg was terrible.
“Do not stand there!” Facilis shouted, in his villainous Sarmatian. “Your lord is bleeding to death. We must get his armor off and stop it.” I realized he hadn’t been addressing me this time.
I fainted when they took my armored trousers off, and probably screamed as well; I don’t remember. They pulled my leg straight, stitched the big vein in the leg, which had been torn but fortunately not severed, put a compress on the wound to stop the bleeding, splinted the whole, and tied it up: I woke up again during the last part of this, and saw that it was Comittus who was tying the knots. I remembered he had said he knew some field surgery, but I was still too faint to wonder how he’d come there. I was relieved, though, when Leimanos brought a stretcher up: I’d known that he was there.
They moved me next to the fire, covered me with horse blankets, and gave me a drink of wine from a flask. I lay still for a while, listening without understanding to the voices, Latin and Sarmatian, speaking around me. After a time, Facilis appeared overhead again. He knelt down beside me.
“We’ve rigged a horse litter,” he told me, “and we’re going to take you to Corstopitum. Incidentally, you’re under arrest.”
I nodded weakly. “What are you doing here?” I asked him. My voice came out very faint and far away.
He snorted. “I could ask the same question of you, and with much more justification. You bastard! There was no reason for you to fight him. The whole thing was going to be over with tomorrow anyway.”
“Honor,” I said, and smiled.
“Vae me miserum!” he exclaimed in disgust. “Sarmatians!”
“If you are taking me to Corstopitum,” I said, “could someone ride to Cilurnum and tell Pervica and the others that I am still alive?”
“You don’t deserve to be!” he told me. “Lucius!” Comittus appeared again. “He wants someone to ride to Cilurnum to tell the lady Pervica that he’s alive, and the rest of his precious savages as well. You go, and take Leimanos with you to make sure the others know it’s true and behave themselves. Keep the bastards confined to camp.”
Leimanos himself appeared, with Banadaspos, both looking distressed. “Is he going to live?” they asked anxiously.
“Unless the wound takes the rot,” replied Facilis impatiently. “Though if we hadn’t come along, you lot would probably have stood about lamenting his injury and praising his courage while he bled to death. Sarmatians!”
“I will not leave my lord to be imprisoned by you,” Leimanos declared angrily.
“You think he’s going to be imprisoned, in the state he’s in?” asked Facilis. “He’ll be shoved straight into the fort hospital. They’ve got a proper doctor there, not just a couple of orderlies like at Cilurnum. He’ll be fine.”
“I will not leave him,” Leimanos insisted, glaring at Facilis as though he suspected the centurion of plotting to clap me in irons and rack me on the hospital bed.
“You will go back and reassure the men,” I ordered him. “You have sworn me an oath on fire, and you will keep it.” He looked at me in distress, and I added softly, “We will reach the Jade Gate yet.”
He caught my hand, kissed it, and went off. Banadaspos looked at Facilis silently.
“You can come,” the centurion told him. “You and ten of the bodyguard can keep him safe. The rest go back to Cilurnum with Leimanos.”
“What are you doing here?” I asked Comittus.
“Marcus thought you might try to do something like this,” he replied. “He asked Severus at Condercum to tell him if you’d sent any messages to Arshak, and we found out the time of the meeting. We were planning to stop you on the way. But Severus got the day wrong: he thought it was tomorrow, and nobody realized until this morning after you’d left the fort. We came pelting after you with all five squadrons of Asturians, but we missed you on the road, and only arrived in time to see the end. Severus still isn’t here.”
“The day was changed,” I said.
“You slippery bastard,” Facilis grunted. He picked up one end of the stretcher; Leimanos took the other. They carried me over to the horse litter they had rigged, put me down on it, very gently, and strapped me in so that the movement wouldn’t jar my leg. I looked back and saw my helmet sitting on a stake, as it had been in my dream. I guessed that the pack below it contained my armor. I turned my head and saw Arshak’s body lying at the other side of the clearing, still in its golden armor. His face was covered with blood, and his men sat in a circle about him, disarmed, watched by some of the Asturians. Leimanos followed my gaze.
“Do you want me to collect his scalp?” he asked.
“No,” I answered. “The customs are different here.”
XVII
I was in the hospital in Corstopitum for fourteen days. I didn’t need to stay there so long, but I was technically under arrest for the whole of that time, and no one wanted to put me in the prison. Pervica came down from Cilurnum with Eukairios, and they found a place to stay in the town and came to keep me company. Eukairios started to teach me to write, and read me letters about what was happening elsewhere.
The mutiny was strangled on the twenty-third of January, the day before it was scheduled to take place. The legate Julius Priscus ordered the arrest of a number of his officers, then resigned and allowed the spies of the grain commissary to arrest his wife. Bodica wrote a letter to Arshak, not knowing that he was already dead, and poisoned herself in the prison. A lot of people afterward who hadn’t seen the letter claimed they had, and cited it as scandalous and salacious, but it wasn’t; Facilis showed it to Eukairios, who repeated it to me. “Aurelia Bodica, to Arsacus, prince-commander of the second dragon, greetings,” it said. “My white heart, we have been betrayed. I would have made you a king, as you deserve, but the gods have decreed otherwise. The purposes of the Hooded Ones are hard to understand. They did not effect my curse and my prayers have gone unheard. Yet I beg them again to hear me, and to receive my spirit, and yours. Farewell.”
I still don’t know if she had, as Facilis thought, committed adultery, and it still doesn’t seem very important. She had undoubtedly betrayed her husband, but at least she genuinely loved the man she had chosen in his place. I did not forgive her for her pleasure in drowning me, let alone for Vilbia, but it was some relief to learn that she was, after all, a human being, and not the demon she had appeared.
Siyavak, who had indeed been arrested with his pretended allies, was released on Bodica’s death and publicly proclaimed the discoverer of the conspiracy, a hero of the Roman state-which cannot have pleased him-and the revenger of Gatalas, which I know did. He was given the kind of decorations Romans always give to award conspicuous courage-a silver spear, a golden crown, and an assortment of armbands, torques, and medals. He was also confirmed as commander of the Fourth Sarmatians, and his liaison officer, Victor, was recalled to the headquarters of the Sixth Legion. Siyavak sent me a letter announcing his satisfaction at revenging Gatalas’ death and at receiving honors from the Romans, which, he said, had greatly pleased his men. He also congratulated me for killing Arshak. “I’ve heard that the Romans revile you for fighting him when he would have been arrested anyway,” he wrote, “and the man who writes this letter deplores it. But it was honorably done, Prince, and I was glad to hear of it, for I would have been ashamed to see him, the descendant of kings, imprisoned and executed by the Romans. I look forward to seeing you again, and hearing of the combat, which I’ve been told was terrifying both for its skill and for its ferocity.”