The Capital – Three Months Following the Attack on Eric's Camp

"That'll be three asses."

"That'll be inflation," Gunnar muttered as Eric turned away from the fruit lady's stall; three copper coins had been exchanged for three pomegranates. He tossed a pomegranate each to Hrolf and Gunnar and began halving his own with a small bronze knife as they continued inching along the crowded streets. The once-white plaster coating the outer walls of the surrounding apartment buildings and shops bloomed a deep orange-red in the light of the late-afternoon sun.

The wind coaxed blossoms of varying sizes and shapes down from windowsills and stall counters; the petals were crushed beneath the travelers' sandaled feet, releasing a cloud of sweet smells and adding color to an already multihued city. Young women with long, coarse tunics caressing their full curves stood in the arched doorway of a floral shop, selling wreaths of violets and yellow narcissi that could be worn like crowns on the head; an older matron stood behind them, hands on her hips, to prevent them from being carried off by some rebellious soldier desperate for a quick lay. The spring festival honoring the goddess of flowers had coincided this year with the homecoming of the second auxiliary cavalry regiment to the thirteenth legion, and after so many years of near-celibacy, worshipping Flora by indulging in one of his basest instincts was sounding like a better and better idea to Eric by the second.

The sexual graffiti chalked over the apartments' walls—some partially hidden by the wood-and-cloth vendor's stalls in front of them—wasn't helping either. Men with women, women with women, men with adolescent boys... Eric had grown up with licentious symbols all around him—reaching up to touch the phallic wind chimes that hung over the doorway of his parents' house for luck was a treasured memory—and their presence often increased during the spring. But now there seemed to be even more lustful designs than usual...

Eric paused in his fruit-carving and reached out to a drawing of Priapus that was situated to the right of a doorway, running his thumb along the god's enlarged erection as he passed him by, and smiled when he felt his own groin stir. He had prayed urgently to Priapus, Bacchus and even Venus over the past few days, asking that his skill in the bedchamber not be diminished because of a general lack of practice. He was a good soldier; surely the gods would reward him for that?

"Ceres' teeth, I've missed these." Gunnar, his pomegranate successfully opened, sank his teeth amid the seeds. Juice ran down his chin in minute scarlet streams as the sound of the arils breaking between his molars was drowned out by the chatter of the crowd around them, and by the occasional street player with an aulos or a hand-drum. "Even if they are ridiculously overpriced."

"I daresay we've all missed just about anything that isn't bread," Hrolf agreed. Eric barely noticed how the man copied him exactly as they paused simultaneously in popping the seeds into their mouths to sidestep a beautiful chestnut mare being led over the stone slabs by a slave boy. (This boy was young, but then, all male slaves were boys, really, no matter their age or potency.) Imitating your superiors, as Hrolf had done just now, was merely a part of the severe discipline which made the Empire's military so successful. Eric, Hrolf and Gunnar had been servants of this discipline for over fourteen years now, ever since they had become men at the age of sixteen, and discipline had long ago become instinct.

Discipline had also, unfortunately, decreed that Eric's sexual appetites be nearly starved to death, but it was best not to think about that at the moment. He would go home now, see his family. There would be plenty of time to play later.

Eric turned his head to watch the animal pass. Her elegant head drooped, as though the humidity was so thick in the air that she could raise it no higher, and her flanks were soaked with sweat. Eric's and his companions' mounts had already been stabled closer to an outer section of the city; there was little room for them here among the narrow alleys and the constant press of foot traffic.

Gunnar rolled his eyes toward the heavens, mouth still half-full. "The ever-merciful gods so help me, I am never eating bread again."

"You'll be wolfing down honeyed rolls again in a week, and you know it," grinned Eric, ducking away from the drippings of the laundry strung from building to building high above their heads.

Gunnar spat tiny flakes of pulp, tinged pink from the seeds' juices, onto the ground in response.

Seeing this, Hrolf smirked. "You know, I'm seriously beginning to think red was chosen as the color of the cloaks and tunics of our uniforms because of you and your messy eating habits." He easily ducked Gunnar's half-hearted punch before continuing, "It's a wonder you were allowed to be a soldier at all. You're a great fighter, but sometimes that discipline problem of yours is almost worse than Eric's—and that's saying something. What did you do—fuck Mars to get in?"

"That's good!" laughed Eric, clapping Hrolf on the shoulder. "Make that one into a story and tell it to Mother."

Gunnar, having taken another mouthful of seeds, made a muffled sound of protest as he shook his head; Eric decided to wait patiently until he could speak, and Hrolf evidently decided the same. "From what you've told us of her, I don't think she'd like it if you mocked the gods. I don't like it either. They might turn their backs on us, and then Trajan would be left in Parthia with no hope of winning the war."

"No, I suppose she wouldn't." Eric's lips pressed together into a thin line. "And then Father would say the three of us together murdered the emperor."

Hrolf snorted. "We're good, but not that good." His eyes took on a familiar, distant look as he said quietly, "Make a great tale though."

One pale brow lifted as Eric stepped over a bundle of sticks and rags curled up against the corner of a building. He didn't pause to see if the beggar was still alive. Destitute creatures like that had always existed, and as a young boy Eric had often wondered whether society could go on without them. It certainly couldn't without slaves. "I thought you liked the emperor."

"I do. Everybody does. This country's rarely been better than it is under him. The point is the story itself."

"Somehow I don't think he'd agree," Gunnar muttered, tossing the remains of his pomegranate in the direction of the beggar before turning to Eric, his face brightening. "You said Astrid had a girl?"

Eric felt his stomach quiver, suddenly finding himself unable to help smiling too. "Floriana—first in my family to be given a proper Roman name. Two months old now, by the date of yesterday's letter." He had bragged about her so many times already that the little addition to his family was old news to his brothers-in-arms, but Gunnar would do anything to divert the conversation from politics. Eric was glad he'd chosen this topic: he was in no way finished talking about the baby sister he would see for the first time today. "An early spring baby, just like her brother."

"I hope for her sake she doesn't look like you," Hrolf smirked.

"There's nothing wrong with a handsome woman—you make a very fine one." Eric dropped the husk of his pomegranate in the street—out of the corner of his eye, he saw Hrolf follow suit—before hefting the eighty-pound pack of standard gear higher up onto his shoulders, and quickened his pace.

Several shops owned by men and women of several races were left behind and several increasingly-narrow streets were traversed before they came to the house belonging to Eric's parents. Built in the old style, the house was tall and, with its red terra-cotta roof and cream-colored siding, resembled the apartment buildings situated to either side of it so much that only the double doors with bronze doorknobs and wolf's-head knockers indicated that Eric and his companions were not about to enter a first-floor shop.

A thickset slave with a receding hairline was guarding the doors to the house. His eyes widened for a moment at their approach, but soon relaxed as a look just shy of recognition filled his visage. "May I say that the war has been kind to you."

"Send for someone to tell my parents of my return." Eric dropped his gear at the entrance without another word, slipped through the door the slave held open for him, and continued on through the short entrance hall to the atrium. Eric had not recognized the man's face, but he must have been the replacement doorman another of Mother's letters had mentioned.

Eric had barely passed the floor mosaic in the hall—depicting a large, snarling black canine, with the words "Beware of Dog" beneath it, though to Eric's knowledge his family had never kept animals—before he was forced to suppress a smile: after fourteen years, he was finally home.

"Eric!"

The services of the small slave boy the doorman had sent hurrying toward Ulfrik's office were apparently unnecessary: the sound of Eric's voice had brought Mother rushing out of one of the many rooms branching off the brightly-frescoed walls of the house's central chamber. It was, of course, she who had called his name.

Pale yellow fluttered in the loose, light folds of her tunic and shawl as she walked quickly past the rectangular pool set in the center of the atrium—a collector of rainwater from the similar hole in the roof above—to embrace her son. Common women, like most men and slaves, were hung with cheap linen or wool to clothe them. But Astrid was draped in the finest silks, brought here all the way from China in caravans following trade routes hundreds of years old. Like her husband and son, her hair—pulled back into a coiled bun—was light, and the blue of her eyes was theirs also. There were small creases at the outer edges of those eyes now—Eric felt a jolting sensation in the pit of his stomach as he noticed them—but she was still beautiful.

She smiled when she drew back to look up into his face. "You're even taller than when you left, the gods be praised."

"I'll thank them later for the bump on the head I got ducking under the doorway," he smirked.

"It's thanks to Mars resting his hand on your father that we have a doorway here to duck under," she reminded him; her voice was always gentle, no matter the words that came from her mouth.

But how could Eric forget his father's accomplishments, which had been reiterated to him from the time he himself was first learning to speak? Ulfrik's service in an auxiliary regiment equal to Eric's had won citizenship both for himself and for his family upon his retirement. (Hrolf's and Gunnar's fathers had achieved citizenship for themselves and their families in similar manners.) This service was also one reason why Eric had wished to join the military when he came of age: such a career had a greater chance of bringing Eric himself glory than apprenticing himself to a man of common trade, or—the thought produced a slow burn in Eric's belly—following in his father's political footsteps.

"I praise Mars every day," Eric assured Mother dutifully. He never lied when he could help it, particularly on matters of faith. Both of these traits of his had long been encouraged by his mother.

But then Eric could not subdue the sudden grin that widened on his face as he asked her the question he had been waiting to vocalize for months: "Where is my sister?"

Mother's smile widened. "Nursing. The daughter of my body slave gave birth a few months before I did," she added, turning from his arms to call out, "Anthousa? Come show my son his new sister, please."

"Yes, my lady." A pretty slave with auburn hair, and who was perhaps ten years younger than Eric, followed the obeisance out from the same chamber Astrid had just left, cradling a bundle of richly-embroidered cloth. One sleeve of her tunic was slipping off her shoulder, as if she had hastily readjusted it to cover a breast swollen with milk. Eric found himself holding his breath against his will as she approached with that tiny collection of blankets—

And then Floriana was in his arms. She was a bit bigger than he'd expected, and her head was already covered with a sparse layer of fluffy, fair hair. Her large blue eyes were open, gazing at him as though she already knew him, and beneath her tiny nose a toothless grin stretched wide in response to his own.

"She's beautiful." Eric noticed an impossibly small hand poking out from her blankets, and placed his finger against the little palm on instinct. Her tiny digits curled around it as a quiet squeal emerged from her smiling mouth, and Eric chuckled.

Suddenly recalling Hrolf's teasing, Eric smirked over his shoulder at his companions. "And she does look like me."

Appearing to take this as an invitation, his fellow soldiers moved closer to the miraculous little being in his arms.

Astrid, appearing to notice Hrolf and Gunnar for the first time, stepped forward at the same time they did—but her arms were half-raised, and Eric received the bizarre impression that she longed to reach out and snatch Floriana out from under their adoring gazes. "Who are they?"

"Friends, Mother," Eric soothed, smoothly hiding his own racing heartbeat with a calm tone. "They're fierce fighters, but they are loyal to me, and they would never hurt a child."

"Too afraid of Juno—most protective mother in the world," Hrolf laughed.

"Remember what I said about mocking the gods?" Gunnar muttered to him, before turning to Astrid with a slight smile. "Pardon our companion's coarseness, lady. We are merely men of the cavalry; we have not seen true society for some time, rendering some of us a bit uncouth."

"Mm." Astrid folded her arms across her chest, appearing pacified. But her eyes never left Eric's companions, and as a result their glances at the baby were brief. Eric found himself almost glad of her instincts: he wanted his sister all to himself. Wanted to enjoy the sensation of her soft, tiny fist curled around his finger without someone gawking just over his shoulder. Wanted to watch her smile at him again and again—

"What are you doing home?"

Although he knew the question could have been uttered much more harshly, Eric's spine stiffened automatically as he lifted his head to regard his father. Ulfrik's smooth chin was held high above a tunic and toga that were chalked white and bordered with a red stripe: the marks of a senator. Eric saw that age had weathered his father's face as well, but this time suppressed a smirk, remembering an old argument between them: I still have time to find a way to never grow old; you do not.

But right now the man standing before Eric was Ulfrik the senator, not Father—just as Mother could more rarely be Astrid the senator's wife—and so Eric must address him as such. If Floriana had still not been in Eric's arms, he might have given the man a mocking salute; he instead lifted his chin to match the senator's. "My company was given leave. We've filled the general coffers with half again as much gold in one shipment than Rome has seen from the spoils of war in awhile."

"You couldn't have given them twice as much?" Ulfrik was smiling slightly now—either Eric's answer or Astrid's disapproving cluck of her tongue at the roughness of his first question appeared to have relaxed him—but long years of training wouldn't permit Eric to rest at ease. He was generally good at reading people's faces, but in this moment he had no idea exactly what that relaxed smile meant. He was so used to seeing expressions of aggression, and fear... and he had never responded well to threats.

"Perhaps next time," Eric answered finally, forcing a smile on his face for Mother's sake.

Floriana began to squirm in his arms, her little face twisting as though in preparation to utter some cry of discomfort, and Eric remembered that she had been called away from her meal. Still, he hesitated a moment before handing her back to the slave girl, who gave the child her finger to suck. His eyes didn't leave the crooning woman's back until she disappeared into the chamber whence they came.

"You must be hungry." The rigidity appeared to have fled Mother's body now that Floriana was out of the soldiers' sights; her naturally fluid movements were back as she turned to Hrolf and Gunnar and gestured grandly toward the kitchen. "I'll have the cook prepare a small platter of meat and bread for you—"

"They served with me, Mother," Eric interrupted quietly, suddenly resisting the urge to intimidate her with his height, as he might have done with an enemy. He was, he reminded himself, no longer in a place where he could be attacked at any moment. "They have each saved my life many times over, and have as much right to eat with us as any man who's ridden but an hour under the Eagle."

She searched his companion's eyes for a moment before returning her gaze to her son's, but said only, "If your father permits it."

Eric did not grind his teeth only by force of will. He had long enjoyed the life of a soldier, and recognized that obeying orders in that life often led to personal victories, but Ulfrik's permission was still not something for which he cared to ask. He looked to his father and waited, silent.

Ulfrik gazed around at them all, back straight, chin lifted, left arm clasping the drape of his toga to his abdomen. Eric might have called that posture aristocratic in another man—even in himself—but in Ulfrik the stance spoke merely of the head of his household.

Ulfrik looked from Hrolf to Eric to Gunnar and back once more; it was a moment before Eric realized his gaze had softened slightly, turning him into Father again. But, by that time, he had already turned away.

"Ariston has already begun preparing the fish bought this morning," Ulfrik said at last. "Flora's presence is all around us; we will honor her in our feast tonight."

Honeyed wine was poured by the assistants to the cook (also slaves) in the hour before the first course was brought out—slices of fire-toasted bread spread with ricotta cheese and garlic—and Eric had begun to find relaxation much easier than anticipated as he reclined on his white dining couch. Like the others, he lay on his side, with his left elbow resting on a pillow. He was dressed in a clean beige tunic; his feet had been washed and were now bare. Slaves, male and female, stood just outside the circle of couches, ready to come forward with a small bowl of water and a cloth should any of the diners need to clean their fingers or wipe their faces. Another slave sat apart from them on a stool in a corner, her fingertips dancing softly around the strings of a lyre.

Few of the house's rooms possessed windows, but the bright paintings of songbirds perched in lemon and fig trees on the walls helped to reflect the light flickering in the cylindrical bronze lanterns that hung from the ceiling, and the dim glow also helped to increase Eric's sense of homecoming. He and his family had passed by the several bedchambers branching off the atrium and walked through the house's large, columnaded garden to reach this room, and the sight of each had been pleasing to Eric.

He was home now, and in this moment his past quarrels with his father were of no concern to him. He had no reason to prove anything to Ulfrik.

"Did you see any of the Fair Ones during your travels?"

Eric swallowed a smile as the question brought him out of his reverie; he had known the inquiry would be coming. If one of Mother's acquaintances was said to have seen the consorts of the gods dancing in her garden, then she would talk of nothing else for a month. "I'm afraid we saw no nymphs, Mother."

But then the image of a dusty road slicing through a dark field rose in his mind, and he struggled to keep his tone light as he asked, "Are there any... Evil Ones?"

"I wouldn't think so." Her eyes, formerly gleaming with devout hope, were now intently searching his face. "But you think you saw one."

If Eric had still been the boy that had joined the Roman military those long years ago, there might have been a very small part of him that was unable to return her gaze. But that boy had grown up.

Eric nodded. "We were perhaps half a dozen weeks away from home—"

"Wow," Gunnar muttered to Hrolf, "story time from Eric? He must be worried."

Eric turned a half-hearted glare on Gunnar from across the circle. Only the friends and family dining in this room—and, perhaps someday, Floriana too—could get away with interrupting him. "Do we carry on conversations when Hrolf is spinning tales?"

"Yes," Hrolf muttered darkly, and everyone laughed.

"As I was saying," Eric continued with another glare at his friends, "Hrolf and I had recently estimated we would have only about six weeks or so left before we would reach the Capital. We were traveling down a wide, dusty road that cut through some sort of... farming community. The moon was already rising, but I wanted to go another hour or two before stopping for the night, as long as our torches held out.

"I was riding at the head of the company, of course, on that bay stallion named Arion, who I believe I mentioned in a letter after I bought him four years ago. Yes," Eric said, smiling when Astrid opened her mouth, "I'll take you to see him soon, I promise. He's a good horse." She settled back onto her couch, appearing satisfied, reaching over to take her husband's hand as Eric went on with his explanation.

"We had stopped by one of the villages occupied by our military during the day, to replenish our supplies. I no longer remember what I had been thinking about that evening, but it must have had something to do with that place, because when Gunnar pointed out that there was something in the middle of the road ahead of us, I couldn't see what he was talking about.

"Arion, more sensible than I was, had already come to a halt. His ears were moving in that way that horses' ears do when they're nervous, and the sound of his snorting made me realize how quiet it suddenly was. Soldiers make a lot of noise on the road: even when we aren't talking, our animals are. But Arion, one of the only mounts close enough to see what was in the road clearly, was the only one with a voice.

"I patted his neck, striving to calm him so I could lean forward to get a better look at the thing in the road without having to worry about him spooking and throwing me off.

"When I did identify what Gunnar had been trying to alert me to," Eric felt his jaw tighten, "I immediately wished I hadn't.

"An old man in a traveling cloak lay sprawled on the earth just inside the circle of our torchlight, his face obscured by a sheet of very long, dark hair. A woman dressed in rags was lying nearly on her belly on his far side, her face buried in his throat—" Eric looked quickly to his mother, wondering if he should persist in telling the tale. Her knuckles were very white, she was gripping Father's hand so hard, but she nodded at Eric all the same.

"My decision was made in seconds. I knew nothing of what this woman was doing, but I also knew that no elderly Roman citizen deserved to be the victim of such obvious brutality. I dismounted as quietly and slowly as I could, and Gunnar handed me his spear.

"The woman's head jerked up without warning, and she stared at us. I'll never forget how bestial she looked. It wasn't just the blood on her face, it was her expression—as though any humanity she once possessed had long been lost. What was even stranger was that she possessed fangs, one on either side of her two foremost teeth on the top, which made her look even more like some sort of predatory animal.

"Arion reared next to me, screaming in the way horses can scream, his eyes rolling. I heard the donkeys and the rest of the horses screaming too. I sent my spear to flight almost without looking at my target before hurrying to try to calm Arion, fearing he would bolt. It was a difficult thing to do, because I needed to be certain I could leap safely out of the way if he did decide to run off.

"We eventually did calm all our animals. Luckily, no one of us had been hurt. Hrolf, Gunnar and I approached the old man, but he was obviously dead. I found my spear just outside the glow of our torches. There was no blood on it at all. And that strange woman was long gone."

Eric sighed as he finished his tale, closing his eyes for a brief moment. His head—every muscle in his body—was tired.

"Did anyone else see the teeth that woman had?" Ulfrik's tone made him open his eyes: it was almost gentle, curious now, not skeptical, as it might once have been.

Eric looked to his companions and lifted an eyebrow.

"... I... might have," Hrolf said after a moment, sounding unsure of his answer.

"It was very dark," Gunnar agreed. Was the look he gave apologetic? In this moment, Eric was hard-pressed to tell.

Eric leaned forward slightly, heat building in the pit of his stomach to reinvigorate his mind and body. "I know what I saw."

"Perhaps my son has had too much to drink, and this has affected his memory." Ulfrik was smiling slightly now—but the look Astrid gave him before she said, "I believe you," to her son in her quiet way straightened out her husband's expression. He squeezed her hand as if in apology.

It was difficult to return Father's smile, but Eric, thinking of his mother's answer, did so as he settled back onto his couch. "If I am to be accused of drunkenness, I might as well justify it. I was thinking of going into town tonight anyway. It's been a long time since the three of us have gotten the chance to enjoy such, ah... boisterous festivities.

"However," he continued at another thought, "there is one matter I would like you to look into tomorrow. That boy you have at the door is the most incompetent guard I've ever seen—he didn't even ask our names before admitting us into the house! Hrolf and Gunnar could do much better," Eric finished offhandedly.

He bore his father's gaze with a practiced expression of patience for several seconds before Ulfrik finally sighed. "They can display their skills for me tomorrow morning. But keep in mind while you're enjoying yourselves tonight that I want the three of you to be conscious enough to fight tomorrow, really fight, understand?" He gave the three of them his severe senator's expression.

"Yes, sir," Hrolf and Gunnar said in unison, and Eric couldn't keep the grin off his face.