New Decameron Ninety-One: Alter S. Reiss (Patreon)

FOREIGN GODS

By Alter S. Reiss

When I was young, my grandfather told me that going to sea in ships was like leaving the world behind for a smaller one. One's horizons become constrained to a dozen paces of wood and tar, and everyone aboard grew so accustomed to seeing the same faces day after day that it was a shock to go ashore; even a village seemed more humanity than the mind could encompass.

Perhaps it is possible to go to sea in such a fashion. Or perhaps this was a fancy of my grandfather's, formed by reading of ships in books. When I put to sea, at no point did the ship seem a world in miniature, with nothing on our horizons but water and sky. Instead, we followed the coast, engaging in the sociable and leisurely trade of cabotage. Every day or two we would put in at a different village or town, haul up some goods, and bring back a cargo a hair more valuable, if we traded well.

It was not merely the captain who engaged in this trade. Each of us seamen was a magnate of his own, with a share of the space in the hold, and a vision of a fortune to be made in buying and selling. My share, when I boarded ship in Thrace, consisted of a few dozen plates of fine red pottery. It became, in stages, a small amphora of olive oil, then an amphora of fish paste, two bolts of linen cloth, a wheel of cheese, a larger amphora of olive oil, and so on.

I had put to sea because of another fancy of my grandfather's.

My name is Publius Cornellius Bassus. Which is a fine and aristocratic name. My grandfather thought that it ought to be Publius Cornellius Scipio Bassus, tracing our line of descent back to a son of the Publius Cornellius Scipio who served as consul during the reign of Augustus Caesar. That distinguished consul had been banished beyond the borders of Rome for treason, adultery, and incest with his half-sister, the Emperor's daughter Julia. Through him my grandfather connected us to the Publius Cornellius Scipio who had earned the sobriquet Scipio Africanus by achievements of a more respectable sort.

In happier times, a connection to the hundreds of notable Scipiones would have been a point of family pride, if the documents my grandfather had assembled had been verified. However, in the tenth century after the founding of the city of Rome, it was imprudent to claim the name of Scipio. There had been too many Emperors in too short a time, many who had claimed the throne and lost his life on the basis of a genealogy more tenuous than mine.

Indeed, it was sufficiently imprudent for that name to be associated with our family that my father had been forced to flee the capital to the hinterlands of Thrace. Unfortunately, that flight was insufficient to preserve his life; an assassin's knife found my father in the streets of Ainos. Perhaps it was merely some provincial cut-throat who found my father's purse inviting, or who was infuriated by his failure to support the appropriate faction at the hippodrome. Then again, perhaps it was not. After my father's death it seemed to me wise to put to sea, and not under my own name.

I was not so high above the common seamen that I labored with as all that, despite the dignity of my name. I had some money, sewn up into the lining of my woolen cloak, but it was far from a fortune. My patrimony in Thrace had not been sold at a great profit; after the taxes, it had certainly been a loss.

Should my cloak have been washed overboard in a sudden squall, it would not have been so great a tragedy; if the blood of the Scipios did flow in my veins, it had been mixed with enough Germanic liquor that I was a large man, built for heavy work, and one who preferred labor to ease. On the other hand, if it had been my person, rather than my cloak washed overboard, I should have regretted it more deeply. I had not been raised to be a sailor, and though I had paddled about in quiet pools, both at our estate in Rome and our farm in Thrace, I was no swimmer for distance.

My intention was to put as much distance as possible between myself and those who might have reason to seek me out. The ship I joined as crew was making the long voyage between the eastern provinces and Britain, which suited me admirably. During that year of the Consuls Flavius Antiochianus II and Virius Orfitus, the so-called Gallic Empire of Postumus still tottered on in the West, though he had been two winters in his grave; I had little fear that the intrigues of the court in Rome would find me in the wilderness of Britain.

Unfortunately, while my lack of swimming ability might not have caused problems on the gentle waters of the Inner Sea, once we passed the Pillars of Hercules and set our ship on the wild waters of the Ocean, my life was endangered by every tempest and swell. Twice I saw shipmates washed overboard; one lived, and the other did not. One evening, a sudden squall blew up, as hard as any I had seen before. We fought with all the strength we had to keep the winds from dashing us against rocks which we could not see in the darkness of the storm, but which we could hear scraping against our hull. During that storm, I promised a bull to Neptune if I found my destination in peace.

It was a gesture that would have surprised those who knew me in Rome or Thrace, but my grandfather was not the only one to have read too deeply. While the faith of my contemporaries might have cooled, I had spent too long as a companion of Odysseus and Jason to forget Neptune Earthshaker, Wild Bull of the Sea. Whether through the merit of my promise to Neptune or through the skill of our captain, we weathered that storm, and two others just as wild, and we passed from the sunny shores of Hispania, into the gloomy, forested recesses of Gaul and Britain.

I made my farewells to my traveling companions on the shores of Britain, skin and cloak intact, not far from the town of Causennae. This was not the first of the British cities that we visited, and it would not be the last, but it seemed a pleasant place, close to the sea and with an ample supply of fresh water. When we ascended for our trading, I judged it both prosperous and obscure enough to suit my purposes.

My modest successes at trading had left me with five sheepskins, and a small wooden barrel of butter, which the locals consumed in preference to olive oil. The farmland of Causennae extended down from the city to the shore, and some dickering at the first farmhouse I passed left me with an elderly black and white speckled bull and the smallest of the sheepskins I had with me, which was as good a trade as I could have hoped.

I also got directions to the local temple, which lay to the north of the town, and an offer of work as a farmhand, which I declined. I was a stranger, and it was wise to be cautious, but from the conversation, I gathered that my modest fortune would be sufficient to purchase enough land that I would be employing farmhands, rather than working as one. Provided I was not relieved of my funds, through accident or malice.

In truth, once I was firmly on dry land, the oath to Neptune seemed a more trivial and foolish thing than it had seemed that night, but a man in a strange country is facing enough real peril that he does not need to add the supernatural dangers of failing to pay what is due to the Gods. I did, however, heartily wish that I had promised something less cumbersome than a bull. The one I had purchased was not inclined towards following my urgings, and by the time I reached the temple, my joints were aching, and I felt a cordial dislike for the bull, for Neptune, and for myself.

The temple was set in a bowl-shaped valley. During my trip to Britain, I had seen the brush and dirt of Italy and Hispania give way to the shadowed forests of Gaul, and I had grown used to seeing a greener land than that in which I had been raised, but this valley was shockingly green--there were grasses and trees, and while there were some flowers, the whole impression that the valley gave was one of an absolutely pure and perfect green.

My bull, naturally, stopped walking and started grazing. I had been leading him by a rope tied to his halter, and tugs on that produced nothing more constructive than aggravated bellows.

As I have said, I am not a small man, and this was not a particularly large bull. When I put my back into it, I could not get it to move, but I could stop it from grazing. That inspired an enraged bellow, and a shake of its head that reminded me that it still retained its horns, and was more than twice my weight.

If I could not lead it, I could prod it; one of the trees provided a switch, and I did my best to drive it onward. That, eventually, got it moving again, though if I neglected the switch for a moment, its head was back down among the grasses. Were it not for my innate stubbornness, I would have given up the whole enterprise, and just let the beast guzzle down grass for the few remaining years it might have lived.

The temple itself was small, but finely built, with an inscribed archway over the entrance. "For the god Viridius," it read, "Trenico made this arch, donated from his own funds."

While my education had been eclectic, it had been a wide one, and I could not recall a Viridius in any of the genealogies of gods or godlets of Rome or of Greece, nor any mention of a Viridius in the mysteries of Egypt and the distant east. Some local god, perhaps. I was, after all, far from Rome, or Greece, or Egypt, and all the other places where my ancestors had made their names.

I was not the only one there. There was a woman returning from the spring beyond the temple, and in the courtyard, there was an elderly man, sweeping off the cobbles with a broom of wooden twigs. A few wisps of white hair still clung to his brow, and he walked with a pronounced limp, but he moved the broom with vigor.

"You are," he said, sounding half like a snake, and half like a man with pebbles in his mouth, and nothing at all like a man speaking his mother's tongue. "In need of assistance? I am the-" he paused, looking for a word. "Scythian male? of the temple."

"Slave?" I asked.

"Yes, thank you. The slave of the temple." He stopped his sweeping, and leaned against the broom. As I said, my education had been an eclectic one. One of my tutors had been a former gladiator, and he had taught me well enough that I could see that neither the flattened condition of this slave's ears nor the long scars on his arms were earned by domestic service. Perhaps he had been a gladiator himself, sent from the arena to the temple by some charitable soul. Or, perhaps he had earned his scars on some other field. In either case, he probably knew more about cows than I did.

"I have promised," I said, "a bull to Neptune, on the completion of a hazardous voyage. If you could assist. . . "

I trailed off, as the fellow grabbed hold of the bull's head, and turned it up and to the side. My attempt to get the thing to move had provoked obstinate outrage, but it made no objection to being put into these contortions by the temple slave.

This was, in fact, part of the training I had undergone from my tutor in the art of weapons. As he told it, during the early years of the Republic, men would learn to kill by slaughtering slaves. This was a stupid thing to believe, but then, turning to an illiterate gladiator for instruction on history would scarcely have been wiser. He had been hired to teach me how to kill, and I had learned. I drew my knife from the belt, found the artery, cut it, and stepped away from the stream of blood.

It was done, and there was a dead bull on the cobbles of the temple. "Thank you," I said, looking at the corpse. To be honest, I had not entirely thought through what I would do next. "You can have the meat," I said. It was a generous gift, but I had enough difficulty getting the bull to the temple when it was alive, and I had not brought a celebratory party with me. I was scarcely interested in making my tour of Causennae with more than my own weight in beef dripping blood down my shoulders.

The slave drew back. "I would not deprive the Earthshaker of his rightful prey," he said, and though his pronunciation was no better than it had been, there was a gravity to his words that I had not expected.

"No," I said. "It's not that. Wrap the long bones of the thigh in fat, and burn them--that is the god's share of a sacrifice. The meat is for people."

"For people," he said, with an odd sort of smile. "Well, if it does not belong to Poseidon, I shall take it, with many thanks."

That business being concluded, I went to wash the blood from my arms, and cast a few coins into the spring, for luck in my future ventures. I was mainly interested in washing off the blood--though I had avoided the majority of what I had spilled, I was still a stranger come to town, and I did not want to create the wrong impression. But once I was using the stream, it seemed impious not to leave something behind.

With that done, I passed the temple one more time, headed toward the town. The temple slave stopped me by the courtyard wall. "A blessing on you, for the meat," he said. The smoke was already curling up from within the temple--Neptune's portion had been paid with all possible dispatch. "May you have the life you desire."

"Thank you again," I said. "In that regard, could you tell me-"

While I had been conducting my ablutions in the stream beyond the temple, another man had come up to the sacred precincts. He wore white clothing, and though his hair showed gray here and there, it was still thick and tightly curled.

"Tell me," he cut in, looking to the slave. "Do you wish to be free?"

I was no more happy to be interrupted than any man would be, but I was a stranger, and this man's tunic had gold thread at its borders, and he carried himself like an important man. If I were to knock him down, I doubted I'd have the quiet retirement in Causennae for which I had been hoping. Beside, I had no desire to prevent the manumission of a slave.

"I serve," said the slave. "It is my . . . purpose, to serve the temple."

"We are all very grateful," said the man. "But that does not answer my question. I can free you, if you wish to be free."

The slave hesitated, longer than I would have expected. "It has been a long time," he said, finally. "Yes. If you would free me, I wish to be free."

While the slave had been talking, the man had drunk from a pitcher of water he had been carrying. "In that case," he said, and dipped his fingers in the water. "I baptize you in the name of Jesus Christ, king of all the world," and flicked the water from his fingertips to the slave's brow.

The slave staggered back, as though he had taken a blow.

"This is a freedom greater than that of the body," said the man. "And longer lasting. If you wish to-"

But the slave had turned away, shuffled back into the temple. The spring had gone from his step, the fire from his eyes. He had not looked young before, by any standard. Now, he looked old.

"And what of you," said the fellow. "Do you wish the freedom of the kingdom of God?"

"Perhaps at some point," I replied. I had my knife, and a good fifty pounds on him, but it's seldom wise to provoke a fanatic. "But not today."

He sighed. "You seem an educated man," he said. "Yet, you're as bound by foolishness as that unlettered slave." He gave a half shake of his head, took a closer look at me. "I do not believe that we have met," he said.

"I do not believe so, either," I replied. "I am but recently arrived from Thrace, and I was hoping to-"

"From Thrace!" he said. "What business does a Thracian have in Britain?"

"It seems as fine a place as any," I replied. That it seemed like a dismal and benighted cave into which I intended to crawl was closer to the truth, but not the sort of thing which would appeal to local pride.

"Well," said the man, and clapped me on the shoulder. "That it is. The finest place in all the world. And Causennae is the finest place within Britain, I should think, though it would be finer if more men here were to take up the keys to heaven that lie all around them. I am the magistrate of the city, Lucius Valerius Maximus Hosta." As I had thought, an aristocrat.

I had intended to leave my own name behind. "I am Publius Cornelius Bassus," I replied. Given his tone, and the way he had treated the temple slave, I had to count myself fortunate that I hadn't added Scipio, as well.

"Oh," he said. "I had not thought you so distinguished a guest."

I gave a half shrug. "My family has been distinguished," I said. "I myself-"

"Nonetheless," said Hosta. "You have come a long way, and you have found my town. Will you be my guest for the evening?"

I hesitated. The man was a religious crackpot, certainly. He was also the magistrate, and he had offered no physical violence to the temple slave; Hosta could have easily had the fellow thrashed until he accepted whatever faith the magistrate professed. And it had been a long time since I had eaten the sort of food that is served at a magistrate's table.

"Certainly," I said. "And thank you."

Since it was growing late, we headed up together from the valley in which the temple lay, and into the town of Causennae. As I had expected, the magistrate's villa was among the largest of the private residences of the town, and he set a good table.

If I had been a common sailor, invited for the first time into the home of an aristocrat, I should have been awed by the food--a whole swan, roasted and steaming, good cuts of wild boar, and fine pastries. As it was, though I scarcely lacked enthusiasm for the meal, I could also recognize that there were fewer delicacies than would have been expected in the Empire proper, and that the wine had a vinegary edge.

Perhaps I was inclined to find fault where I should not have been. Aside from the incident in the temple, Hosta made no effort to convert me to his faith, and was otherwise a gentlemanly host. He gave ready answer for all my questions about Causennae, and had a good deal of helpful advice as far as which farms might be for sale, and where I might profit by buying.

Which was advice I appreciated; as I said, my cloak had survived with its lining of silver intact. If I attempted to live on those funds, they would be gone before the end of too many years, but if I made a wise purchase of a farm, or perhaps of some business in the town, I would never again need to work for my bread.

Even more useful than his advice was the fact that I was taking a meal in his house, seated by his right hand. They other guests saw me talking with the magistrate, treated by him as . . . well, not an equal, obviously, but as someone worth hosting. It was never safe to be a wealthy stranger, but by sharing the magistrates table I made myself a hair less strange.

I went to the guest chamber that Hosta provided in good spirits, impressed with his generosity. Yet as I closed my eyes, I saw the eyes of that temple slave, when the water had been splashed on him.

#

My plans for the next morning were to take breakfast with Hosta, and then inspect the farms that he had recommended, and make my own evaluations. Then, perhaps, take lunch in a tavern--according to Hosta, there were three in town, and if I chose not to buy a farm, I might purchase of them instead.

This was not how my morning developed.

Instead, I was awakened at dawn by the noise of fighting outside. Astonished, I dashed out of my room half-dressed, with my knife in one hand, and my cloak wrapped around my other arm.

A naked man was standing in the courtyard beyond, belaboring one of Regulus's servants with a club. The naked man was as pale as chalk, and was taller than the tallest man I could recall seeing. The cook he was beating was badly bloodied, a cleaver on the floor beside him.

I stepped forward, cast my cloak out to entangle the giant's arm, and cut with my knife. It was a long knife, of the sort that sailors use; while I was not precisely armed as a retiarius with net and trident, the combination of cloak and knife was close enough to be familiar. By the time the giant had focused his red eyes on this new assailant, he could not easily bring his club to bear, and there was a deep gash in his side.

Another cut, and he fell, mortally wounded. The cook was not in good shape; I did what I could to bind up his wounds, then tucked his cleaver into my belt. The noises in the streets beyond had not ceased with my small victory.

Outside of Hosta's courtyard, it was madness. My giant was not the only one in the town, and the others seemed no more pacific. Some were armed with clubs, others with spears, and still others with curious leaf-bladed swords. Standing against them were baffled and frightened townsmen, most armed with whatever happened to come to their hands when they had been so suddenly awakened.

Fortunately, this was the Saxon coast, so there were enough men who slept near to weapons that it was not a complete rout. I liberated a sword from a fallen giant, and I did my part. The giants were strong, and they had an unnaturally long reach, but there were not that many of them; before the sun had been in the sky for two hours, the tide had turned.

Because my training in arms had been from gladiators, I was less discomfited than those who fought at my side when a great pale dog leapt from a side-street for my throat. I got my cloak up such that its fangs sank into it, rather than my arm, and then I killed it with my sword. Its red eyes closed, and I looked for another opponent, and found none.

For a moment, I wondered if I was not, perhaps, still dreaming; perhaps the boar and the wine had not been as acceptable to my digestion as they had been to my palette. But no dream would be so vivid, no dream would have so many sounds, so many smells.

I leaned over the dog that I had killed. Its blood steamed in the early morning chill, and its fur was as pale as the skins of the giants who had stormed the town. I pried open one of its eyelids. Red eyes, and not the redness of illness, or rage--there was something supernatural about it.

There was something supernatural about the whole business. There were men who were tending to the wounded, and others crying over their beloved dead, but I was far from the only one whose feet pulled him toward that temple whose arch was dedicated to the God Viridios.

I had been alive for a third of a century. I had seen my share of tragedies, and more--it was an age of tragedy. But I cannot remember a more stunned and solemn crowd as that which descended into the bowl of the valley, which poured out its libations on the holy ground and cast its valuables into the spring.

It is customary to break a brooch, and throw it into a holy spring, so that one's prayers might be heard, but those brooches are usually of copper, and many are in poor repair before they are broken. On that day, it was gold and silver that was given to the stream, and rare jewels, and the prayers to the gods were no mere mumbled formulas.

I made my prayers as well, but I was more interested in seeking out the temple slave. My motivations were little less superstitious than those which might have led me to making sacrifice, or tearing my body in supplication. I had felt a holiness in that slave, and hoped that he might have known what those giants were, and why they had attacked.

I sought him out, but could not find him. It was understandable. Given the crowd at the temple, the man would have had to do enough work to keep a dozen men busy, and nobody who lost a child or a wife would spare the blows if the slave was unwilling to jump. Perhaps he had been sent into town to fetch barley meal for an offering, or he was leading a bull for the same purpose as I had the day before.

It was, nonetheless, disappointing. I stood, for a few moments, outside the sanctuary, considering what I ought to do next, when an old woman came up to me, assisted by a youth at the lower end of military age. The youth muttered something in the woman's ear, and she nodded; the youth approached me.

"My mother would ask some questions of you, if he could," said the fellow. This was not a propitious time to spurn the requests of an aged stranger, not if we hoped for the mercy of the gods.

"I am Olwena," said the woman, when I approached. "This is my son, Diviacus, and he tells me that he saw you in the thick of the fighting this morning." One of the woman's eyes was clouded with a cataract, and his hand trembled upon her stick; perhaps it was the simple similarity of age, but there was something of the old temple slave in the woman's features.

I did not recognize Diviacus, but I could easily believe that he had been fighting beside me; I had seen very little, beyond my opponents, and their weapons. "I am Publius Bassus," I replied, dipping my head. "I did my share, I hope."

"Can you tell me--did you hear any cry from the men that you killed, any conversation amongst them at all?"

That was a peculiar and unexpected question. I reached about in my mind for an answer. "My heart was intent on the fighting," I said, slowly. "But I do not think I heard any of them say a word. There was a dog I killed, and . . . no, I am certain. It did not bark."

This did not seem to be news that pleased Olwena, but she did not give way to rage or tears. "My son reports the same. Thank you for your time," and she turned to walk away.

"Wait," I said. "Do you know something about what's happening? Could you tell me of--"

"Perhaps I do," she said. "But--"

"But perhaps we should be getting home," cut in Diviacus.

Olwena chuckled. "My son seeks to protect me," she said. "And I fear that he is right, and I am too old to stand for long. If you wish, we could go down to the stream, and converse there."

"Certainly," I said, and accompanied the pair to the stream below the spring, where we could see the postulants coming and going, leaving behind their tears and costly baubles, and bringing back thin helpings of hope.

"There was an old feud," said Olwena, when she was comfortably settled. "An old, old feud, ancient even in the times of my grandfather's grandfather. It was from before Rome came, from when Causennae was a circle of thatch huts in the forest. There was a man named . . . well, never mind his name and his lineage and his mother's lineage. There was a man who wanted a girl of the village. The headman of the village wanted the girl as well. The man was maimed and cast out, left to die."

She paused, cupped a handful of the waters of the stream, and drank. I did the same; the sun was well risen, and I had taken neither food nor drink since I had been awakened.

"He did not die," continued Olwena. "Instead, he cast this curse, that the dead would rise up and destroy the village. Every morning, they would rise up, as pale and silent as the grave, and slay until they were slain."

"Something then happened. I cannot say what it was; my grandfather did not know. 'The God Viridios saved us,' said some of the other old men, when I was young, but no more than that. Whatever it was, the dead were not laid permanently in their graves, but the attacks ceased, and the village was not destroyed. Now, they have returned. I fear that they shall return again, every morning at dawn, until the village is destroyed."

I watched a man pulling a bull in for a sacrifice, with the same difficulties I had experienced in attempting that same feat.

"There was a great deal of talk about Saxons," I said.

"My son had tried to convince me of the same thing," said Olwena. "But Saxons are not so pale, and they wag their tongues freely, in their native gabble."

She was right, though I did not want her to be right. "It's just this town?" I asked. "Further up, or down the coast, there-"

"It is just this town," said Olwena. "Other towns have their own difficulties, and there are the Saxons; there are the Saxons themselves, and there is the name 'Saxon', which has excused many a body found by the side of the road, stripped of its plunder." She paused, and sighed. "But I cannot dispute that you would be safer to leave than to stay."

I nodded. It would be the sensible thing to do. "Perhaps they will not return tomorrow," I said. "They stopped returning once, after all."

"Perhaps," said Olwena, in a tone that did not grant any great weight to that supposition. Her son offered me a portion of bread with fish-paste from their luncheon, and I took it, with gratitude.

"If you chose to stay," said Olwena, "you are welcome in my home, for as long as you wish." Then she stood, with the aid of her stick and her son, and made her tottering way back to the town.

I remained by the banks of that stream a while longer. If she had been right that the giants would return the next morning, I was in no danger until then. And there was something that was not entirely right about the valley. It was not the dying screams of pigs and cattle, or the clamor of prayer. Those had not been there the last time I had visited, but they were entirely to be expected. It took me some time before I realized what it was.

The grass was yet green, the boughs of the trees were still bent by the weight of their leaves, but the intensity of the previous day was lacking. I walked up the sloping curve of the valley, and confirmed my initial impression. In fact, despite the general good health of the vegetation, there were a few places where I nearly lost my step, when clumps of grass gave way under my feet, like fur falling from the hide of a dog with mange. There was not much dirt beneath that grass, either; the width of my hand, at most; beneath that, it was a single mass of unbroken stone.

And this wasn't the only oddity of the valley. I had thought the trees to be fruit trees of some sort that I did not recognize. On closer examination, there were no fruit. There were things hanging from the tree's branches. Lengths of colored cloth, straw dolls, copper rings on bits of string, the remains of small birds and animals, and so on. Nothing that would tempt a thief, and nothing I could put a purpose to.

None of it was fruit, but if it had been fruit, I should have thought that the crop was not a healthy one. The straw manikins were spotted with mold; streamers were unraveled and shredded, and for every item that still hung from the branches, there were two on the ground beneath, looking as though they had been trampled into the soft earth.

Perhaps this had been the charm that had kept the giants at bay. Or, perhaps, these were fetishes which had pulled the dead from their graves. I considered the problem. If the tree hangings served a malicious purpose, it would have made sense for the locals to tear them down. However, when I watched the people entering and leaving the valley, I could see none of them pulling things down from the trees. Furthermore, the damage that the objects had undergone seemed more a product of neglect than of active malice.

From this evidence, I concluded that if the fetishes served any purpose, it was not one that was recognized as malicious by the dwellers of Causennae. Furthermore, while I could not imagine a mechanism through which they would have done any good, they did mark a recent change; perhaps reversing the damage would be of some benefit.

As with the bull for Neptune, my interest in the project of refurbishing the decorations of the trees of the valley waned long before I completed it. And as with the bull for Neptune, my stubbornness was far more effective at keeping me to my task than any superstitious enthusiasm.

Reattaching those objects which had come unwound was simple enough, where the thread had not rotted through, but replacing the damaged objects was a more complicated affair. Wide-ranging though my education had been, it did not include any lessons on the rapid production of straw dolls.

After I had thoroughly frustrated myself in attempting to learn the skill in the field, I retreated to the shadows of the temple, where the sudden enthusiasm for religious observance had left a plentiful supply of dead birds. I did not find the caretaker slave there, which was a pity. He would not have been the only citizen of Causennae who had perished in the attack, if that was how he met his end, but he had seemed a pleasant enough fellow. More than that, he had seemed like someone who might have some answers about the giants, and about the decorations of the trees.

With my new and gruesome stock of baubles, I completed the decoration of as many trees as I could, stopping only when the sun dipped low in the horizon. It seemed that I had made the choice of remaining behind in Causennae for another day, irrational as such a course of action might have seemed. Well, perhaps my dead birds would do the trick. Or perhaps it had been some tribe of mute Saxons that had engaged in a morning raid. Who carried archaic weapons for some reason I could not guess at. And who were so thoroughly mute, they employed mute dogs.

I spotted one of Hosta's attendants among the crowd heading back from the temple, and returned the cleaver I had borrowed to him, without asking if he was there on his own initiative, or if Hosta had decided to hedge his bets, as far as the salvation of his town went. I also gave as good an apology as I could manage, though I was not sure how much of it the servant would convey, and headed down to the city.

Rather than spending another night in the tesselated halls of the magistrate, I went down to the earthen floored home of Olwena and her son, and enjoyed a more modest meal than that which Hosta had given me. This was not purely a matter of preferring the hospitality of the one to the other. When watching Olwena and Divicaus make their way back to the town, I had noticed a certain deference on the part of the other townsmen.

An association with Hosta might benefit me in my attempt to integrate with the aristocracy of Causennae, but it seemed that Olwena and Diviacus were better regarded by the mass of the population. If there was going to be a fight the next morning, a mass of population would be of greater benefit than all the silver and gold in the world.

#

The next morning, I awoke before the dawn, dressed, and borrowed a shield from Diviacus, who, it seemed, had been considering employment in the auxiliaries. Or at least that was the reason he gave for having with him a store of weapons, and why he carried them as one familiar with their employment. I did not question his account too deeply.

With the first fingers of dawn, the giants returned.  There were many more than there had been the previous dawn, and they poured into town from all directions at once, naked and armed. Perhaps it had been an error to decorate the trees. Or perhaps Causennae's cleverer citizens had left the town during the previous day, so the herd of giants was not as effectively thinned as it had been the first time it presented itself.

There was another advantage that the giants had, this time, which chilled me to the marrow. There were three of us fighting abreast, in a narrow street. The fellow to my left had brought one down with a well-placed thrust of his spear, and another giant stepped in to fill the gap. I moved to attack, and stumbled, nearly fell; this giant was the same one I had killed the morning before, in the courtyard of Hosta.

It was possible that I erred, but I was sure I did not; there was a mole on his left shoulder, and, more than that, there was the cast to his features. I have not killed so many men that I have forgotten the faces of any of them, and I hope that I never shall. This was a man that I had killed, standing up to fight me.

It was so disconcerting that it was purely reflex when my shield came up, intercepted the fall of his club, and my sword found him in the side where I had cut him before. He fell, as he had fallen the previous day, and we continued our retreat along that street.

Perhaps it was the additional numbers of the giants, or perhaps it was the reduced numbers of those defending Causennae, or perhaps there were others who were fatally distracted by the same realization as the one I had endured, but this time, we were losing. The mass of defenders in which I stood was gradually forced back to the neighborhood of Olwena's house. I had started the fight at Diviacus's side, but I could not say where he had gone, or even if he was still among the living. In either case, Olwena did not choose to remain safe behind doors. She stood at her lintel, a sling in her hands, and while her casts might have lacked force, they found their marks more often than not.

There were too few of us, and there were too many of them; I could not say if other bubbles of defense were likely to survive, but mine was not. Perhaps my flight from Thrace had been the act of a coward. If it was, I was close to a death that few cowards earned, surrounded by enemies, and with a sword in my hands.

Then the air was shattered with the calls of military trumpets, and the piercing notes of the legionary cornets. There was a great noise to the rear of where the giants stood, and the horns again blew the charge.

The giants looked in all directions in confusion. A wing of auxilliary cavalry swept down the street, darted their lances, and left dozens bleeding. They were gone before the giants could counter. Then came a regular and ominous tramping of feet, and a troop of legionaries crested a rise, terrible in their armor. The order was shouted, and the long javelins came up to the shoulder in perfect unison, another order and they were flung with a sound like the wind through trees.

I ducked into a doorway as that deadly rain fell, upon giants and defenders alike. Many giants fell, javelins in their throats or through their breasts, but more stood in their line, weapons turned towards this new foe.

The legion came ever forward, and they did not run in this charge; they came on with a fast marching pace more terrifying than any whooping dash. The legion hit the line of giants, and began their work. By the standards they carried, I could see that it was the sixth legion, the "victorious," that had come to Causennae.

They justified their epithet. Against townsmen, even armed townsmen, the giants had been able to do as they had pleased. They were so tall and so strong that it had been near impossible to get close enough to them to land blows on their naked hides. The legionaries did not have that difficulty. Their shields blunted the force of the blows, and they fought in such close order that every attack was met by three counters.

It was a glorious thing to see. Not that I stopped my fighting to stand as an observer. I did some slaughter by attacking the giants from the rear, and once that mass of giants was defeated, I fought alongside a group of lightly armored auxilliaries, helping to finish off other packs of mute giants that were roaming the streets.

When the last of the giants had given up his last breath, it became clear that the slaughter had not been so great as I had feared. Many of the citizens of the town had barricaded themselves within their homes, and the giants had only found the leisure to fire a small portion of those. Thanks to the eternal damp of Britain, those fires had not been vigorous ones, and they had not spread.

It had been the young men who had done most of the dying that morning, and for some time, I was greatly worried that my friend Diviacus had been among them. It turned out that he had not, but he was in no shape to continue the fight on the next morning, if it were necessary to do so. A barbarian's club had broken his leg below the knee, and he had been carried back to his mother's house while I had fought on. My focus on the fighting had been so complete that I had not even noticed him fall, though Diviacus credited me with saving his life.

Olwena had also not emerged from the combat unscathed. Her arm had been grazed by a spear that one of the giants had cast. By the time I had returned to their home, their neighbors were already there, doing their best to see to the wounds. I made my excuses, and left.

While I could not say why I had remained for a second morning of fighting, I was not so great a fool that I had any intention of staying for a third. I wrapped my cloak over my shoulders, and made my way to the road to Lindum. Causennae had seemed a pleasant enough place, but I imagined there were other, equally pleasant places, whose problems were not so violent.

The legionaries had made their camp along that road, and there were streams of townsmen heading to the camp and back from it; those returning had black looks on their faces; perhaps the legionaries were not as interested in the buying and selling of provisions as the locals had hoped.

When I reached the camp, there were a pair of crosses flanking the road, each bearing a crucified corpse. Perhaps thieves, though thieves were generally crucified alive. A squad of legionaries was assembling a third cross, and another squad was guarding the road. "Road's closed," said one of the soldiers, as I approached.

"But," I said, and the legionary sighed as his hand went to his sword. I stepped back, keeping my hands away from the sword that I had taken to wearing.

"Good," said the legionary. "Give the boys a chance to get a few empty crosses up before trying again. The road is closed."

If it was merely the case that the legionaries didn't want civilians to be wandering through their camp, I doubt that the legionaries would have been killing people for disobeying orders, and crucifying their remains; I confirmed my suspicions by heading in the opposite direction, and spotting another clutch of legionaries on the Durobrivae road, and another set of crosses, and another pair of crucified townsmen.

I headed back into Causennae, feeling somewhat less affection for the legion than I had felt when I first heard the trumpets, in the cold light of dawn.

Olwena had offered her hospitality for as long as I wanted, but I was not going to insist that a wounded and elderly widow host me. Certainly not when there was a chance that I might impose on the magistrate, instead.

When I arrived at the magistrate's villa, there were another two squads of legionaries there. It was well that they were using the legionaries for these tasks, and keeping the barbarian auxilliaries in their camp. The barbarians were not likely to be be as restrained as legionaries, when it came to the sort of rapine that always results when soldiers meet civilians.

The servants showed me into a room where the magistrate was standing, pacing in front of a man wearing a legionary's armor. The stranger's armor was cleaner than that of the legionaries who stood outside the villa, and it was decorated with gold.

"But surely," Hosta was saying, "you could allow the more prominent-" He cut off as I came in.

"Ah, Bassus," he said. "I have heard more reports of your valor today; this is Tiberius Artorius Castus, tribune of the Sixth Legion; Castus, this is Publius Cornellius Bassus."

"A pleasure, I'm certain," replied Castus. He was a small, neatly built man, and his eyes were a peculiarly colorless blue. "You fought alongside the auxiliaries this morning, did you not?"

That was a rather surprising thing for the tribune to know; for the moment I was speechless. "I too, have my reports," said Castus, to Hosta. "And it is to those reports that I must return."

"Please," said Hosta. "At least let the women and children leave. It is true that-"

"Tell me," said Castus, shifting his attention back to me. "Do you believe that this attack is supernatural in origin?"

"I killed a man yesterday morning," I replied. "And I killed him again today."

"So others have said," continued Castus, holding up a hand to forestall Hosta's objections. "Is there any possibility that you are mistaken?"

"No," I replied.

"You see," said Castus. "Where there is sorcery, there is usually a sorcerer. And if there is a sorcerer who has summoned up these giants, I cannot risk allowing him to escape to another city, and attempt the same trick."

"Well," said Hosta. "What of this man? Surely he might be allowed to leave--he's only been here a few days, from Thrace. He cannot-"

Castus gave me a sudden, sharp look. "Just arrived?" he asked. "Just before this trouble started?"

It was strange. I had fought monsters; literal monsters, giants with eyes so red they seemed to burn with an inner fire, and who had returned from the grave to fight again. I had thought that they would kill me. And yet, I had not felt afraid of them, or at least, nowhere near the sort of fear that I felt on hearing that. Perhaps it was vanity--I would rather have died in combat than killed as a witch. Or perhaps, it was a simple fear of physical pain--combat deaths are seldom pleasant, but the death reserved for witches is a less pleasant one than that. I did not think it was either of those.

Whatever the cause, I took a half step back, and said nothing. "No," said Castus. "A good try, but no. This is a local magic, and that man is no more a native of Britain than he is an Ethiopian."

Hosta, it seemed, had not entirely grasped what had gone through Castus's mind. "A good try?" he asked. "I don't-"

"No, I don't imagine you do," said Castus. "Perhaps you did not intend to shift the blame for these monsters onto this young man's shoulders. Perhaps the extent of your scheme was to get a message out to some allies, who might be able to put some pressure on the Legate to ease the restrictions on travel too and from this town."

"I was merely attempting to do a favor," said Hosta, truculently.

"No," said Castus. "You were not. You are not a very good liar. Not that it matters. I am here because there were reports of Saxons attacking one of the coastal towns. A town, it seems, that has entirely neglected even the basic precautions of building a wall, and organizing a watch. And a town, it seems, with enemies more problematic than the occasional Saxon raid."

Hosta shook his head. "We could leave," he said. "God forgive me, but I have listened to what the old men say about this. It is some ancient curse that has found this town. If we just leave, we'd be free of the curse."

"Perhaps you are right," said Castus. "But tell me this: If I allow the town of Causennae to be abandoned, how will this look on my military record? It is the policy of the government to defend this coast, and I will not allow for a hole of this size to be made in its defenses."

"Perhaps," I interjected, "some reason for this curse might be found, and some method of stopping it might be put into place."

"I have heard," said Castus, "that followers of Hosta's god have worked wonders of this sort."

"I have prayed," said Hosta. "But I am not . . . I do not-"

"Well," said Castus, "I have also heard that your god delights in martyrs; would you like for an altar to Jupiter to be brought out, and for me to demand that you burn upon it a sacrifice?"

Hosta paled. "I try," he said, quietly. "I try to be a good man, and a Christian. But I am not so good as . . . I don't-"

"Yes," said Castus. "It was a test that you have been given before, after all, and if the results were repeated, I doubt it would greatly please either Jupiter or whatever it is that you worship. But until this situation is resolved, the martyr's path is the only open road out of Causennae town."

"If you have no objections," I said, "I will see if there is anything that I might be able to find that would help."

"No objections at all," said Castus, giving me another of those strangely penetrating looks.

"Please," said Hosta, "I would be honored if you would return here for dinner."

"Certainly," I said, and I left. Hosta was not, as a general rule, a man who inspired much pity in me. He was wealthy, and he was influential, and if Castus was right, he had just tried to have me killed as the sorcerer responsible for all the recent deaths. Yet I did pity him; I would have pitied any man ground between the mortarium of the giants and the pestle of that tribune.

#

My attempt at redecorating the trees had not stopped the giants from returning, but I was curious to see what had befallen my decorations, if they had been torn down, or if they still stood. I also still held out a faint hope that I might see the temple slave again, and hear what he thought of the recent events, so I left Hosta's villa in the direction of the temple.

There was not such a crowd headed to the temple as there had been the previous day. It seemed that the revival of affection for the gods had been as fleeting as it had been intense. The gods had been invoked, and had failed to protect the village; why waste time asking a second time?

Had I been a religious enthusiast, I might have considered that a reason why the gods had not chosen to intervene on the behalf of Causennae. But, as it was, I was not headed up to the temple for any devotional purpose myself, so I could scarcely stand in judgment.

When I reached the valley in which the temple lay, there was no mistaking the changes that had occurred over the night. None of the grass was left alive; it was all brown and yellow. The dirt itself was coming off in clumps; in many places the smooth gray of the stone beneath could be seen.

All of the trees were dead as well. The leaves were gone, and much of the bark was gone, leaving twisting gray trunks, and bare branches. On one of them, the remains of a chicken that I had strung up the previous day remained, withered as dry as if it had been a year in the sun.

I knelt, and offered as heartfelt a prayer to Ceres as I could manage. Then another to Proserpina, and another to Pluto. The giants had been eerie, but, perhaps because of the physical danger they posed, I had not seen them as truly supernatural beings. While we had been retreating from them, along the streets of Causennae, a woman had dropped a heavy pot on one of them from a rooftop, and killed him; one ought not be able kill mythological creatures with crockery.

This was different. This untimely and sudden autumn was not of this world, and for the first time, I felt the supernatural awe that the events of the past few days ought to have inspired.

There was no hope of redecorating those blasted trees; there was no hope of restoring life to the grasses of the valley. I made my solemn way to the temple, intending to offer there a few more prayers, when I spotted the body of the old temple slave, lying behind the temple grounds.

There was no wound on him, and his face seemed peaceful. Thinking back, there had been a tussock of grass there the last time I had visited the temple; perhaps his body had been hidden by that grass since the first time the giants had attacked. Or, perhaps, before then. He had been an old man, and he had taken a terrible shock when Hosta had initiated him into the Christian mysteries.

My first thought was to bury him, but I quickly found that there was rock no more than a palmsbreath from the surface on the floor of the valley, just as there was on the slopes. And after seeing suspicion leap to Castus's face, I decided against carrying the corpse of the temple slave through town. The conjunction between my appearance in town and the appearance of the giants was coincidental, as far as I knew, but others might not see it that way. I did not wish to further excite their suspicions.

I made my prayers to the gods, and promised them sacrifices, should my life be spared. Then I headed back to the town, to the house of the widow Olwena, and her son Diviacus.

The news there was not so cheerful as I had hoped. Diviacus was no worse; there was some pain, but his leg was splinted up, and he was hobbling with the aid of a crutch. Olwena's wound had not cleaned itself, and there was the beginnings of a fever.

"It would be best if she slept," said the portly matron who was tending to Olwena. "Perhaps if she-"

"It would not be best if I slept," said Olwena. "Perhaps I am dying, and perhaps I am not. But I will die no slower with my eyes closed."

I hesitated. "Talk to her," said Diviacus. "All this talk of sickness--it does not help. Talk to her of something else."

With that invitation, I sat myself down. "Who is the god Viridius?" I asked.

"He is the god of Causennae," Olwena replied.

Which was not so helpful an answer as I had hoped. "What are his attributes?" I asked. "What does he look like?"

"There are times that he looks like a thrush, or a fox of the hedges," said Olwena. "There are times that he looks like a man. He is the green-eyed god, he is a god of spring."

There was an intensity in her voice that sounded feverish to me. "A god of growing things?" I asked.

"Yes," she replied. "That is why the grass around his temple is so green."

I hesitated, decided against telling her what had befallen. Perhaps she could have given some insight, but I was not there to worsen the condition of an old and frail woman.

"What is the meaning of the hangings on those trees?" I asked. "The dolls, and strings and so on--who puts them there, and to what purpose?"

"We all do, I suppose," said Olwene. "It is what one does, to the trees of a holy place."

Well, at least I had not been wrong to attempt to refurbish those decorations, though it had not achieved anything productive.

"What would the magic of this curse on the town require?" I asked. It seemed to me that if I could not reinstate the protection that the town had enjoyed, the next course would be to see if the curse could be evaded in some other way, or perhaps even voided.

"The man who cast it," said Olwene. "He would have made a cup of life--infused the power into a cauldron, or a chalice, or some other cup of stone. Or so the old men said when I was a girl; perhaps they did not know, and merely thought that to be a fine story."

"And then?" I asked.

"There is no then; so long as the cup remains whole, the dead who are bound to it will rise every dawn, and fight until they are killed."

She paused, gave a weak and hacking cough. "It would have been his life to cast such a spell, but I doubt if he is disappointed with the result."

We talked some more about Virideos, and of the monsters that attacked us, until Olwene grew tired, and I excused myself. Diviacus accompanied me to the door, which gave me a chance of telling him what had happened to the valley in which the temple lay.

"Thank you," he said, "for not speaking of that to my mother; she is not well, and it would not have done her any good to hear that."

"That was my thought," I said. "When she recovers some strength, I would ask you to talk to her about this, and see if she might suggest a course of action that the town might pursue."

"Certainly," said Diviacus. "When she recovers."

We had both avoided the word "if" in that conversation, but we both thought it. It was not good for a woman of Olwene's age to catch a fever from a wound. I had no doubt that the spear that had dealt her the blow had been retained, and used in the production of the poltices that the neighbor woman had prepared, and that every other treatment that might work would be employed. But a blood-fever is a serious thing, even for the young and strong.

One thing that the conversation had suggested was that there might be a cup or a bowl hidden somewhere nearby whose destruction would spare the town. It was a mad thing to believe, but this was the local magic, and I could not doubt the efficacy of the local magic, after what I had already seen.

I could scarcely hope to mobilize the populace of the town to look for an ancient stone cup, at least not on my own; I sought out Hosta, instead, and laid the case before him.

"I see," he said, when I was done. "Flavia Diviaca is a fine woman, and is well respected by the lower orders in the town. I have no doubt that her accounts of the superstitions of the locals are as accurate as any that you can find. But I will not use the power of my office to encourage beliefs such as these."

"Is it superstitions that have risen from the ground, and attacked your town?" I asked, astonished. "Is it a belief that there are dozens dead?"

"There is evil in the world," he said. "I know that you do not intend ill; that you want only good for Causennae, and for its citizens. But this evil is working in two ways; it is killing, and it is convincing people that the truth is not with God. I wish . . . I wish I were a righteous enough man that I could quell this deviltry through my prayers alone, or righteous enough to desire the crown of martyrdom, and redeem our sins in that way. But I am wicked and I am weak, and the more of the people who are convinced that it is the strength of pagan magic that is oppressing them, the stronger the devil's hand becomes."

"Very well," I said. "Perhaps it would be best if I were to seek other lodgings."

"No," said Hosta. "No, please no. I can scarcely claim mercy from God if I do not extend mercy to strangers and travelers. Stay with me, at least for this night, I beg you."

There was a pitiable earnestness in his voice. I gave a brief nod. "I shall return tonight," I said. "But before then, I shall seek out Castus. To . . . well, I shall seek out Castus."

"I would urge you to consider your salvation," said Hosta. "But I will not limit my hospitality to you for any reason."

With that, I left, to seek Castus. His methods of searching might cause somewhat more harm to the residents of Causennae than those which Hosta might have invoked, but it seemed to me that there was very little harm that he would cause worse than allowing the situation to persist.

My search for Castus was straightforward enough, as there were a great many of his men in the town, and they were demolishing Causennae. Or at least, they were demolishing large swaths of it,

bringing down houses with their sledges, so as to give their archers space in which to fire, and to limit the town to a more defensible area. The auxiliaries directed me to the legionaries, the legionaries to a centurion, and the centurion to the tribune.

He was back in the legionary camp, looking gloomily at a map. "Bassus, is it?" he asked, as I came in. "The recent arrival from Thrace."

"Indeed," I said. "I have been talking to a local woman about this . . . about these events, and she told me--"

"That it was a pagan magic," said Castus, wearily. "That there was a stone cauldron from which these monsters rise."

"Not precisely," I said. "But close enough. The magistrate has no interest in finding such a thing, but I thought--"

"There is too much to do before tomorrow's dawn for me to send any troops haring off in a search for something they don't believe in," he said. "Perhaps tomorrow. Thank you for your efforts on behalf of the town. Oh, and if I were you, I would find somewhere to stay within the defended area, before nightfall."

"Before--"

"Yes. There is a curfew, and I think you would be wise to follow it."

I swallowed. There was a finality to that admonition that told me that if I chose to disregard Castus's directives, I'd wind up in a shallow grave, if not decorating a cross.

I turned to leave, then stopped. "It occurs to me," I said, "that there is some benefit to the legions in . . . encouraging the populace to protect themselves from difficulties such as these."

"I suppose there is," said Castus. "Perhaps I should give some thought to providing some encouragements of that sort."

Rather than letting my mouth cause any further trouble, I left. In Rome and in Thrace, I had met officers from legions who had been corrupt, who had been aristocratic time servers, for whom the army was a tool that they hoped to use to serve their ambitions.

Castus did not seem to be any of these. Instead, he seemed the sort of soldier that Scipio Africanus would have recognized. A man of the sort to build empires, and a man who was free with the lash and the crucifixion nails.

When I returned to Hosta's villa, there was a crowd gathered in his courtyard, who were doing their best to follow Hosta's instructions in his cultic practices. I considered turning around and leaving, but it was clear that if I did that, I would have an enemy in Hosta. Besides, his table was as good as any I could hope to find, and dark was coming fast.

The room I had been given was just off the courtyard, and as I tried to sleep, I could not help but hear the prayers of the men and women who Hosta had gathered stumbling their way through his prayers. From what I gathered, they regretted their sins: their habitual lack of charity, their failure to respect the bonds of marriage, and so on, and they hoped that their God would forgive them for these sins, which had allowed a malignant spirit of some sort to raise up demons in such a way as to challenge their faith.

If one granted the belief that there was only one god--or, as I understood their petitions, somewhere between one and four gods, with an evil god who was not as strong as the benevolent gods--it was as reasonable an explanation as any. That I saw no reason to grant that belief meant that I had no inclination to join them in their services, but if the giants might be defeated by Hosta's prayers, I did not begrudge him the opportunity to attempt it.

My dreams that night were confused and unclear, roiled by the prayers in the courtyard, and by all the events of my brief and yet eventful stay on the isle of Britain. I do not pretend any great skill in the oneiomancer's art, and too little of the dream remained with me on waking to perform any divination. There was an eagle that scattered a flock of owls; there was a time when I was a small boy, and was casting rocks into a pool of water; I knew that they would cut my feet, when the pool was dry.

Through it all, there was the face of that temple slave, which seemed to me, in that dream, to be the face of one of the lesser statues in the temple of Jupiter Optimus, that stood on the Capitoline hill in Rome.

#

The next morning, I considered remaining safely within Hosta's walls, when the giants returned. The legion was entrenched, they knew what they were about to face, and they did not need amateur assistance. Yet when the dawn came, I was armed and amidst a throng of barbarian skirmishers. I am not a man who loves a fight, and I would sooner have a whole skin than a glorious grave, but I do not have the temperament to sleep while other men fight to protect me.

There were still more of the giants that morning, and their tactics were improved; they advanced in a mass, undissuaded by the charge of the cavalry, or by the darts of the auxiliary archers. But they were still no match for the battle hardened Victorious Sixth Legion, and once again, their long and pale limbs were contorted in death.

Some of the bolder auxiliaries attempted to catch some of the giants alive, with nets, and in one of those attempts a club caught me just above the shoulder, and left my right arm numb and nerveless. That I escaped with my life was a tribute to the skill of the men who fought by my side, and the strength of the shield that Diviacus had lent to me.

With the fighting done, I returned to the valley in which the temple lay. By this time, not only was the vegetation of the valley gone, the earth itself had fallen away, leaving the temple at the center of an almost perfectly clear bowl of stone; only the spring and the stream remained alive, the stream bubbling down a groove in the stone to the untainted lands below the temple. The body of the temple slave remained where it lay, with a small cloud of flies around it; I could not have been the only one to see it, and yet I still could not be the one to find a grave for him, without provoking suspicions about my role in his death.

The mass of ivy that had crowned the temple was all dead, and it was a work of moments to clear the cracking and blackened vines from the temple's face. This revealed another inscription, longer than that on the archway over the entrance to the temple grounds. "This temple is sacred to the holy god Viridios," it read, "great god of Causennae, green god of the fields and of the trees. May we always be worthy of his protection." Beneath the inscription was a carved figure of a god, with oak leaves in his hair, and a sheaf of wheat in the crook of his arm. At his feet curled a fox, and there was a thrush resting on the sheaf of wheat.

I stood for a long time, looking at the picture of the god. It was crude work, by the standards of Rome, or even by the standards of Thrace. At the same time, there was a power to it that more competent work by more famous artists lacked. Viridios looked the part of a god of green fields; though his features were strong, there was a merriness to them as well, a joy in his eyes.

In truth, when I had first come to Causennae, the grounds of the temple had been suited to a god of fields and trees; there had been little that could be seen that was not the most vivid of greens. Now, the temple sat in a bowl of unbroken stone.

I paused and considered that thought. The land around Causennae was largely flat, broken with rolling hills, some of which were thickly forested. From time to time, the bedrock broke through; there was an outcropping of chalk on the hill opposite. But this was a dead, grey stone, and with the grass and trees gone, it looked entirely unnatural. A stone cup or bowl. Which was not too far from the "cup of life" that Olwene had claimed was the source of the unnatural life of those giants.

Now, Olwene had said that if the bowl was destroyed, the attacks would cease, but I could scarcely encompass the destruction of an entire valley. If I was right, that this valley was the cup of life, there would have to be some other way of breaking the enchantment, or at least, of returning it into abeyance. So, I once again left the valley of the temple, and headed to the town, hoping to get some direction in how these goals might be accomplished.

I had left the town just after the fighting had finished, which was early enough that there were, at that time, few people in the streets. By the time I returned, the day had begun in earnest, and people were once again feeling sufficiently secure to leave the safety of their homes.

Not that the business of the town was anything like that one would expect of an ordinary day; there was a stunned look upon the faces of the denizens of Causennae, and a sort of aimlessness in the pace of the most purposeful of them. Unless the legions had made any additional examples, I doubted if many civilians had been killed during this morning's attacks; the defense had been orderly and well run. Yet if it were not for the roadblocks of the legions, I imagine that there were few who would have chosen to remain in that town. It is a difficult thing to face violence, even if one is inured to it.  A violence as inexplicable as that which afflicted Causennae was more difficult than most.

That none of the townsmen were likely to have fallen during the battle did not mean that none of the townsmen had died. There was a funereal look to the people I saw in the street as I approached Olwene's home, and I felt the dread growing within me as I came closer. She would not have been the only one injured, and doubtless there were others who had suffered . . . when I saw the dark boughs of some native tree over her door, I knew that my fears had been justified. Someone had died in that house, and Olwene had not been well.

I half considered turning away. I had come for advice, and it seemed that Olwene would only be able to give me advice if I followed her to the underworld. But she had been kind to a stranger, and her son had given me the shield to which I owed my life. I entered, I poured my libation, and drank my share of the thin and sour wine.

Olwene looked much as she had in life, though the sharpness of her features had been relaxed in death, and without her spirit to animate it, her body seemed smaller and more frail. Despite his grief, Diviacus looked to be recovering rapidly, and was as good a host as one could expect, under so trying a set of circumstances. We talked briefly about his mother's kindness, and about her bravery. Then I left him to the care of his neighbors, and returned to the streets.

Perhaps if I sought out the other elders amongst the men of the town, there would be one who might tell me of the cup of life, and how one as large as the one I had found might be counteracted. But I scarcely would expect them to volunteer knowledge of enchantments of that sort, given the danger that the town currently faced. And I am afraid that I was never temperamentally suited to banging on people's doors, and demanding that they bring out the elders of their house. Instead, I returned to the temple, to see what might be accomplished.

When the spell had been in abeyance, the bowl had been covered with a thick layer of greenery. Thus, if that layer was restored, the spell might once again be returned to an inactive state. So, as I approached, I uprooted a clump of grass, and took a handful of soil, which I deposited upon the bare rock of the valley.

My attempt at redecorating the tree had not succeeded, but it had taken some time for that to be clear. This attempt produced a far more dramatic effect. As soon as I put the grass into place, it yellowed, dried, and crumbled to dust. I stood back, with a startled oath, and watch the soil become ashes, and blow away.

Well. I had seen the dead walk, I had seen the plants of the valley wither and die in the space of days. Now, I had seen magic act while I watched. For all my faults, I am not a particularly fearful man, but this made me fear. I had spent the morning treading on the stone of the valley with a blithe disregard for any danger. Now, I hesitated to touch it.

Which was not rational. I had, after all, spent the morning there, and did not seem to be suffering from any premature wilting or rotting; besides, the body of the temple slave remained on the stone, and it seemed almost less effected by the passage of time than I would have expected of a corpse.

I forced myself to lean forward, and touch the stone, which felt cool and dry, and which did not make my fingers shrivel up and blow away. Then, I repeated my exercise with another clump of grass, which was consumed as rapidly and completely as the first. Then I sat myself down beyond the edge of the stone, and considered.

The grass and trees had kept the dead from rising. But the grass had not been a purely natural growth, or it would have dried up, as the grass I had planted had dried up. So, there must have been some virtue in the grasses that I had seen when I had first arrived in the town.

Perhaps . . . perhaps this was the work of the god Viridios. He was, after all, a god of spring, of green fields. If the spell was stronger than the husbandry of man, perhaps the virtue of a god would have been sufficient to overpower it. When the god had withdrawn his favor, the spell was once again allowed to work, and I could not overcome it. Even if I believed the wildest extrapolations of my grandfather's research into our ancestry, my abilities fell short of the divine in all fields, agriculture not excepted.

If the god had withdrawn his protection, I could see no better reason than the conversion and death of his servant. Leaving the corpse unburned would not be helping the cause of those pleading for the god's mercy; though it might raise questions in the minds of those who saw me, it was time for me to take up the burden of the corpse of the temple slave, and see if I could not send him properly across the river Lethe.

I strode across the stone to the temple as confidently as I could manage, and considered how I would arrange the slave's body, to carry him out to where the funeral pyres were already burning, at the other edge of town. It was strange, how familiar his face was, after having seen him only for a few brief moments, to which I had attached no particular significance. It was strange, very . . . I looked up at the facade of the temple, where the figure of the god Viridios was cut into the stone, and had another shock, as great as any that had come before.

The face in the stone was young and vibrant; the face of the slave was old, and smoothed by death. And yet, when I looked at them, there could be no mistake. This was not an accident of the sculptor, nor was it a mere family resemblance. I fell on my face, and made my prayers, though I know not to which god. Whatever I did, whatever anyone did, the god Viridios would not restore his protection of the town of Causennae, because the god Viridios was dead.

The right thing for me to do would be to see to the funeral arrangements of the corpse, even if it was no guarantee of the safety of the town and myself. But, while I do not count myself as either a fearful or a superstitious man, I had had my fill of eeriness. I stood, I bowed, and I fled the valley. I do not know if I took a single breath until my feet were once again on good, clean soil, and the crumpled and aged body of the god was well beyond my sight.

I returned to the town a less confident man than I had set out. I had not been raised any sort of atheist, nor had I considered myself as such, but to see a god was not a thing that I had ever anticipated, nor even believed possible. I have seen women tear their hair and cry for Adonis when he is dead. Their grief seemed as palpable as that of women who have lost their lovers, as real as the grief of fathers who have lost their sons. And yet, I do not think they would have been any more prepared that I was to see the rotting body of a god, in the shadow of his temple.

I needed a drink, and dancing girls, and other things to distract me from what I had seen. Yet there was work to be done, and it seemed that I was the only one who had any interest in doing it. I sought out Castus, and after several false starts, found him in Hosta's villa.

It seemed that I was not the only guest enjoying the magistrate's hospitality. A half dozen of the giants had been captured alive, and though some of them seemed unlikely to survive long, a few had no obvious wounds. They were enraged, but they were so closely confined they could do nothing harmful.

As I approached, Hosta and Castus were standing before the cage in which one of these pale giants was confined. "But they will not eat," said Hosta. "And some are unlikely to survive even if they would eat. It is unfair--"

"So, force them," said Castus. "I cannot believe that you have never had a recalcitrant slave before. I agree that it is unfair, and I do sympathize. But for every one of these creatures that dies in your care, you will pay a fine of three pounds of gold. Or you will pay in other ways."

"I do not keep slaves" said Hosta. "And--"

"Three of my men have died in the defense of your town," said Castus. "As well as some auxilliaries. We have seen what happens when the corpses of these things are burned; the monsters simply return. Some portions of the dead have been fettered, others buried deeply, and so on. If any of these measures prove sufficient, there will be no need to keep them alive. If not, this will be the fate of all those giants."

"Perhaps," I interrupted, "there is an approach that might end this threat while preserving the fortunes of the town," I said.

Castus looked across. He did not seem annoyed at the interruption, and I did not want to leave him a chance to reach that state. "I have found the 'cup of life'," I said.

"From what my sources have told me," said Castus, "if the cup of life is destroyed, these things would drop, deprived of their unnatural life."

"I've found it, but not destroyed it," I said.

"What an odd choice."

I winced. "It is too large to destroy. Are you familiar with the temple at the edge of town?"

Castus nodded. "I had heard that the ground around it was denuded; were there not more pressing events to attend to, I would have been interested in phenomena of the sort. But as things stand I have other--"

"The valley is nothing but stone," I said. "A single, unbroken, stone bowl."

Interrupting Castus had been a risk, but he did not seem to have minded. "Ah," he said. "Very clever. But still too speculative to waste time on, at the moment."

"It is not entirely speculative," I said. "When I put a clump of grass on the stone, it withered before my eyes. There is a potency in the-"

"Now that," he said, "That is interesting." He turned to Hosta, and gave a short bow. "If a solution can be found along these lines, perhaps you will be spared the trouble and expense that guests of this sort would doubtlessly occasion. However, were I you, I would not wager my life and fortune on that outcome."

Castus gave another short bow, and left. "It is a wicked thing," said Hosta, looking at the caged giant.

I rubbed my shoulder, which still pained me. "Wicked and ferocious," I said.

"Not this wretch; the . . . magic, if you like to call it that, that has befallen our town. Whatever this thing is, he has the form of a man, and I do not know if I am any more wicked than he. Even if it were not for the tribune's orders, I would have done what I could for it."

I was tempted to see what Castus would try with the valley of the temple, but I had also spent the day running from one place to the next, and I had eaten very little. The food that Hosta offered that evening was not so elaborate as it had been the first night, but there was plenty of it, and the number of guests had grown; in addition to those which Castus had installed directly, there were those whose homes lay beyond the line that the legions had drawn, and others whose supplies of food were strained by their enforced idleness.

Whatever else one might say about Hosta, he was generous to a fault; none who came to his door that evening were turned away, and I saw him slip away from his table to see to the needs of those wretches who were chained and caged in the rooms off of his courtyard.

Despite his best efforts, it was far from a merry gathering. As we ate, the smell of the funeral pyres mingled with those of the meats before us, and I knew, without knowing how I knew, that the best efforts of the legions had not achieved the destruction of that 'cup of life', which had brought so much death to Causennae.

#

The next morning, I rose again for the fighting, and fought again. It was more difficult than it had been on any day in the past, and I could see that difficulty on the faces of the professional soldiers whom I fought beside. Even the most wolf-like of men is not a wolf, and even the least superstitious of men cannot easily face a foe who does not fear death. If Castus had been a weaker officer, the rumor of mutiny would have already begun to fly. I did not think that even he could maintain control indefinitely.

When the fighting was done, I went to the valley of the temple. Castus was there, with a handful of men. Since the last time I had visited, several large haystacks had risen at the edge of the valley, and the men were busily engaged in spreading hay over the rocks. It withered almost as soon as it touched the stone, but the withering was slower than the spreading; gradually, the stone was being covered.

"Bassus," he said, as I approached. "It seems that you were right about this place."

"Thank you," I replied. I watched the men working, impressed by the thoroughness with which the operation had been planned. I had no doubt that there would soon be hay-ricks coming up from the village, and additional men coming out to spread the green hay.

It was not simple weariness that kept me from volunteering my own efforts to the cause. If I was correct about the previous growth having been the work of the god Viridios, I did not think that covering the valley with green grasses and living trees would stop the spell. The deadliness of the stone to the plants was a symptom of the magic, not the cause of the magic. Or at least, so it seemed to me.

And it further seemed that I was not the only one who doubted the efficacy of the tribune's attempt. Hosta was coming up the road to the temple, not far behind me. "Good morning," he said, as he approached.

Castus nodded, and I returned the greeting. "If you do not mind," said Hosta, "I was interested in the account that you gave, and thought that I would see this wonder for myself."

"Of course," said Castus. "By all means, attempt whatever ritual it is that you have planned. Will it just be yourself, or will there be others of your congregation joining you?"

Hosta hesitated. "It will just be myself," he said. "I do not think there are others . . . it would damage the faith of the others, if a miracle was not granted."

Castus shrugged, and turned back to supervising the men who were tossing the hay out over the stone.

Hosta strode forward, a few paces beyond the furthest point the hay had reached, knelt, and began to pray. There was a certain amount of his own unworthiness in his prayer, but there was also a bargaining there; making the case that if his god were to relent, and save the village, they would surely abandon their idols for his worship.

He pulled a small clay bottle of water from inside his tunic, and scattered it upon the stones in the course of his prayers, but the charm which had proved so effective on the temple slave did not have so convincing an effect on the rock. There was steam; at least, I thought I saw steam, but the stone did not crack, and the hay did not cease in its unnatural withering.

Hosta wept, tore at his clothes, tried again; again smoke rose from where the water struck the rock, but again, the stone did not break asunder, the hay continued to turn to ash and dust.

I thought back to my childhood reading of the classics of Greece, tried to pull some forgotten bit of lore from the tales of the gods. Then I thought again.

To attempt to cover the stones in vegetation was reacting to the effects the stone had on plant life; to have one's actions determined by the local magic. To attempt entreaties to Hosta's god was to turn to the superstitions of the East in hopes of finding salvation. Looking towards Greece was no more likely to work than any of these. We were Romans, and Romans did not find their victories by entreating greater powers to aid them, be they gods or be they men.

"Castus," I said, and he gave me a sharp look. "The cup of life must be broken, not covered. This is known."

"Perhaps," he said. "But there are acres of stone."

"And there are hundreds of soldiers," I said. "Given the method that you used to establish your lines, I know that there is no shortage of mauls and mallets in your camp."

"True," he said. "And yet, I will not have my men going into battle after the effort required to destroy this patch of stone; we would be slaughtered if it did not work."

I hesitated, but only for a moment. "Many of the young men of the town have died in recent days," I said. "But many have not. And the older men--"

That drew Hosta's attention away from his rituals. "You cannot!" he said. "We are--"

"Can I not?" asked Castus. "I think Bassus may have hit upon something here."

"It is wickedness," said Hosta. "It is treating this--"

"With a considerably greater degree of seriousness than you seem to be capable of mustering," said Castus. "Besides; surely you will rejoice in the opportunity to destroy a temple of the gods."

"Destroy?" I asked. "But-"

"Not you as well," said Castus. "It was a good idea that you had, but you can surely see that if the stone beneath the building must be destroyed, the temple cannot stand. Furthermore, even if it were possible to save the temple, I would not chance any stone from this valley remaining whole. But I wouldn't worry too seriously; despite the enthusiasms of their magistrate, the people of Causennae will doubtless rebuild a temple before too long."

"It is such a tremendous waste of effort," said Hosta. "If there would be but one man who would accept the gift of baptism on this stone, I am sure-"

There had been a man who had accepted the gift of baptism upon the stone; or at least, had the gift of baptism thrust upon him. I forbore mentioning what the results of that exchange had been.

Castus, however, had a different objection. "It is scarcely a waste of effort. It seems to me that the citizens of Causennae have a great need of stones, considering what will befall them if they do not have a city wall erected before winter."

Hosta gaped soundlessly. "You intend to improverish--"

"Will you be silent!" said Castus. I had not seen him truly angry before; now, he was. "You are a Roman magistrate, and you seem to have all but forgotten your duties in the pursuit of your fancies. Even aside from your constant attempts to delay a solution to this affair, your town is undefended. Few of your citizens have any skill in weapons; there is no wall and there is no watch. If it would not create confusion when I need order, I would have your head as a wine goblet."

Hosta was silent. "We had not needed a wall," he said quietly.

"Well," said Castus. "It is clear that you do. So do your duty as a magistrate, and organize its rapid construction."

Whether it was motivated by a desire to destroy the cup of life, the threats that Castus had made, or Hosta's natural abilities and inclinations, it was not long before gangs of villagers were at work with all the tools of a stonemason's trade.

Some time around mid-day, when the line of cut stone had reached perhaps a quarter of the way into the valley, the stone gave a groan, and then cracked, in all directions at once. I paused in my labor to fling a twist of grass onto the stone beside me. And there it sat, as green as it had been in the ground. It was not long before a servant came running up from Hosta's home, to tell us that the captives had all died, suddenly, as though their necks had all been snapped at once.

It had been a difficult thing to bring the townsmen out onto the strangely lifeless rock, and it was harder to keep them there once the enchantment was broken, but Hosta managed, by a combination of cajoling, threatening, and leading by example. He was not a young man, but he rolled back his sleeves and worked as hard as any of us. I could not fault his generosity, either. We were fed from Hosta's storehouses, and paid from his reserves.

There was one point of difference remaining; I wanted to see the temple slave cremated, but Hosta insisted that as the slave had died an adherent to the Christian faith, he was to be buried. This struck me as a somewhat broad definition of "adherent," but Hosta was the magistrate, and I was not. But while Hosta wanted to see him buried, he did not have the time to oversee it personally.

The wall followed the line that Castus had cut through the town, and it was rising rapidly. I carried the slave a bit beyond the line of that wall, and dug for him a pit. If I was correct in my deductions, I was burying a god. Perhaps if I had been a better student of the classics, I might have known what prayers to perform under these circumstances. As it was, one of the men assisting me was a Christian, and said his prayers, made certain that the grave was aligned towards the setting sun.

Perhaps that man was right; that Viridios had found peace because he had accepted the Christian faith, and died in the bosom of its mysteries. Or, perhaps, the god had been waiting for a village head-man to free him from his obligations to the people of Causennae. In either case, the Christian assisting in the burial did not see any reason to object to lining the grave with stones of the temple, whose demolition had been begun by that point. From what had been the facade, I found that fragment of the inscription which read, "the holy god Viridios", and laid that next to the head of the slave, if a slave he had been. Gods, as a rule, are seldom kind to man. It seems that the opposite was true as well.

And that was that. The next morning, we awoke, and went out to the street, armed, and ready to see hope fail yet again, and for the giants to once again come out of the fog of dawn, to kill and not die. But they did not come that morning, nor the next. Had I insisted on the credit for the discovery of the cup of life, and the solution to the riddle it posed, I should have been given it. However, I did not insist, and neither Castus nor Hosta imposed the privilege upon me; given the joy which one would naturally expect of a town forced into building a wall, rather than attending their own interests, I could scarcely complain.

When I had thought him a temple slave, the god Viridios had given me a blessing. "May you have the life you desire," he had said, and I had seen far too much since my arrival in Britain to discount its powers. Which lead me to consider the life that I wanted. Many of the men of the class into which I had been born would have taken that as a sign that they were destined for the Imperial purple.

Perhaps, if I desired it, I could achieve it. Castus had suggested I consider a career in the legions, which was one route to power. I had allies, of a sort, in Hosta and in Diviacus, if I preferred a different route. But no; the Imperial ornaments had lost too much of their luster since the years of the Claudian and the Antonine emperors. Even if the throne were delivered to me, the only way I could hold it would be through brutality and a constant wakeful suspicion of any man or woman who I held close.

What I wanted--the life that I wanted, was not so grand. To be "that good fellow Bassus," a man who enjoyed his drink a bit too much, and who the ladies liked a hair more than they ought. A man of property, but not so much property as to excite avarice. A proper funeral when I die, surrounded by sons and daughters.

 If I wanted obscurity, Causennae wasn't the place for it. I had done too much; sooner or later, people would learn what I had done in their service. But then, obscurity wasn't exactly was I was looking for; a bit of respect from those who I lived among would not go amiss.

I still had the money I had brought with me, and even contracted by the hasty construction of the wall, there would be houses in Causennae that would be looking for a man to buy them. And there was nothing wrong with working on the wall; it was necessary work, and suited to my abilities.

Beside, I had given too much to the town to leave it. It was not Rome; it was not even Thrace. But it was a home, and I had been some time without one. So, I remained. And while my life was never so simple as I might have hoped, I never felt that the god Viridios had stinted in his blessing.

*******************************************

"Best breakfast ever," he says, offering Maya a Samian plate with slices of wild boar, swan, and pastries.

She takes it. "Very interesting story too."

"Based on what was found in an actual archaeological site," he says.

"Really?" The cat meows and paws at her knees, so Maya gives him a piece of swan.

"Well, mostly," he says, and grins.

When they have finished eating, their hands are greasy and covered in crumbs, so they go to the bathroom to wash them. The cat contents himself with thorough licking.

"What next?" Maya asks, expectantly.

"How about if we read another chapter of my book," he says, looking at her sideways.

"Will that get me into your world?" she asks/

"Well, it might help," he says. 

And they read.