my own men.
The legate, however, insisted that all the senior officers first come with him to the house at Durovernum where he would be staying-and then the local nobleman who owned the house obliged us to come in and have a drink with him. Arshak and Gatalas seemed pleased, but I did not want to stand about sipping wine and making small talk, leaving my horse untended in her armor and my men unsupervised in their camp, and as soon as I could, I made excuses and left. The local nobleman was some relation of the legate’s wife, and Lady Aurelia Bodica offered to show me where her kinsman’s servants had put my horse.
She picked her way carefully across the stable yard to where Farna was tethered, holding the skirts of her long cloak and gown high out of the mud. She had long straight legs and delicate ankles, and she stepped very proudly, so that it was a pleasure to watch her.
“What a beautiful animal,” she commented when we reached Farna.
I nodded, warming to the woman. Farna was worth all the other horses I’d brought put together, and they were all exceptional. She was seven years old, a golden chestnut with black points; she had a fine head, broad neck, deep, powerful chest and hindquarters, a round barrel, and straight legs. In conformation and in temperament, in strength and in endurance, in patience and in courage, she was altogether without fault. She was of the breed called Parthian or Nisaean, the largest and noblest of all breeds of horse, and she carried her blanket of gilded armor easily. I’d slipped the bit out of her mouth and loosened the saddle girths when I’d dismounted, to make her comfortable, and I slapped her side and began adjusting them again.
“What is he called?” asked Aurelia Bodica, coming over to pat Farna’s neck in the gap above the armor. The horse was so heavily armored she couldn’t tell its sex.
“She is called Farna,” I said.
Bodica smiled and patted Farna again. “What does that mean?”
“ ‘Glory.’ ”
“Glory,” repeated Aurelia Bodica softly. “Glory! Is that what you hoped for when you named her?”
The question, like many of her questions, was perceptive. “It is what I hoped for,” I admitted. “Then.”
“Not anymore?” She was watching me closely, her head a little on one side. I suddenly suspected that she’d shown me to my horse simply to have the opportunity of testing me in private, to see if I were indeed the sort of tool she and her husband were searching for. The warmth I’d started to feel cooled abruptly.
“No,” I said carefully. “I am not so ambitious now.”
She reached over and touched the back of my hand, her eyes still fixed on me intently. “Why not? Glory, surely, is the noblest ambition of free men.”
“I won glory in Pannonia,” I said, telling her the bitter truth. “I and my followers and others like me. And our people have paid for it with war, defeat, and… this.”
“You think I’m asking this for my husband, don’t you?” she said, with that unsettling secretive smile I’d disliked before. “He thinks so, too. But I am a noble-woman, and I can speak on my own account. My ancestors were kings. My family was offered the citizenship of Rome many times, but refused it-until my father inherited, a few years ago. I’m no more a Roman than you are. My people used to love glory too, and I can’t believe that it always comes at so high a price. War can bring victory as well as defeat, after all.” Her fingers curled around my own. “Though I am grateful to your defeat for bringing you here. My husband values you above the other two commanders. So do I.”
I turned away from the horse and looked at her in surprise. Her face, turned upward toward mine, was flower-like, disturbingly beautiful, and her hand now clasped my own firmly. “Lady,” I said, far less sure of myself than I had been a moment before, “Arshak is my superior in honor.”
“But not in experience,” she replied. “Nor, I think, in ability. You’ve achieved a great deal more for your men than he has. You might achieve more still.”
“I hope that I will,” I said, uncertainly. I wished I knew whether the way she held my hand was mere courtesy or something more. Roman customs in such matters are very different from those of my own people. “I wish them to have honor among the Romans and be content.”
“And that is all? No glory? No… revenge?”
I shook my head.
“Because it brought you war, defeat, and this,” she said, smiling again. “Is ‘this’so terrible, Lord Ariantes?” She touched the side of my face lightly, leaning forward.
I knew that if I matched that movement, she would come directly into my arms and let me kiss that unsettling smile away. A part of me burned to do just that, but I stood as if I had been turned to stone. I didn’t trust the place and the moment, in the stable yard of an unfamiliar house-and I didn’t trust her.
“By ‘this’ I meant servitude to Rome,” I told her harshly.
“So. Then it is terrible. What if someone offered you freedom? Do you want to become my husband’s man and Rome’s loyal servant?”
I couldn’t answer. Even if this were a test her husband had suggested to her, I couldn’t bring myself to say, “Yes,” and “No” was a road that led only to death.
Bodica laid her palm against my cheek. “You hate Rome,” she observed. “Ariantes, you don’t need to worry about saying so, not to me. My own people have suffered too.”
A door creaked open behind us, and Bodica instantly shifted her hand from me to Farna. “Such a beautiful mare,” she cooed. She glanced round and smiled warmly. “Tiberius, I’m over here! Don’t you think this is a beautiful horse?”
Her husband came out of the house and crossed the stable yard toward us. Arshak and Gatalas were behind him, together with the local nobleman, our host. “I thought Ariantes would be gone by now,” Priscus told his wife. “Have you been discussing horses with him all this time?”
She laughed. “Haven’t you noticed that all the Sarmatians can talk horses for hours? Seriously, Tiberius, don’t you think a foal by my stallion Blizzard out of this mare would be the best horse in the world?”
When I returned to my wagon, I tended my horses and sat by the evening fire in silence, going over the scene in the stable yard again and again and trying to understand it. I couldn’t. I couldn’t even tell whether the way Bodica had touched me was a sign of serious interest or meaningless flirtation, let alone guess what she’d meant by her talk of freedom and glory. I felt as though I were riding in a mist across a battlefield mined with pitfalls and scattered with caltrops that would lame my horse. Everywhere I turned there might be danger, but I could neither stand still nor go back.
The only thing I felt with any certainty was that I wanted nothing more to do with Lady Aurelia Bodica. I was bitterly ashamed of what I’d felt when she touched my cheek. I had not touched any woman since I last said good- bye to Tirgatao, and I was disgusted to find myself stirred by Bodica, however lovely she was and however noble. I had enough to worry about, too, without dangers from feuds between Roman factions or the threat of punishment for adultery with my commander’s wife.
The only other man in the dragon who seemed gloomy was Eukairios. He sat silent by the fire while the rest talked and laughed in a language that he, of course, did not understand. After a while, he asked me where he could sleep, and I took him back into the wagon and cleared a space for him.
I woke in the middle of the night to the sound of sobbing. It pulled me from deep sleep, and for a moment I could not remember when or where I was. “Artanisca?” I said, sitting up. “Artanisca, love, I’m here. Don’t cry.”
The sobbing stopped abruptly, and as it did I realized that it had not been a child’s sobbing, but the hard, painful gasping of a man. I remembered Eukairios.
“I’m sorry, my lord,” came the slave’s voice out of the darkness, still rough with grief. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
I dropped onto my back again and stared up blindly into the blackness. “No,” I said. “I am sorry that you grieve so for Bononia.”
“I didn’t mean to complain,” he told me. “You have been very kind. It was a great consolation to me to be able to say good-bye, and to have my friends’ prayers supporting me as I set out. I do thank you. But it’s… foreign to me. It will get better in time. I’ll learn the language.”
He was speaking to encourage himself. “Yes,” I said. I closed my eyes, willing myself to be still.
“What does ‘artanisca’ mean? It is what you said just now, isn’t it?”
