David Drake: To Bring the Light

Herosilla wore her festival garb. The predawn halflight didn’t show her to best effect, but the glinting, shimmering adornment still provided a more-than-regal effect in this drab age.

“Oh cursed man!” Herosilla said. She pointed her left arm toward one of the guards: limb and index finger made a single threatening line. “Open the gates that I may warn your master of the doom that awaits him!”

“The king will hear petitions after midday,” the other guard said. His shield was a heavy concave round of wood with a bronze facing. He twitched it forward slightly as if he were about to meet the shock of an enemy charge.

Herosilla lowered her left arm. Her right hand continued to grip the hanging end of her shawl. “Fool!” she said. “Do the gods wait on man’s convenience to voice their warnings? Will you send your master screaming to the Underworld because you didn’t choose to break his sleep? The death you bring him will be a sleep never broken, you blasphemous yokels!”

The guards looked at one another; neither found an answer in his fellow’s face. “Mistress,” said the one who’d spoken before, “we can’t let you in. If Amulius didn’t flay us, his chamberlain Oscus would. Please, mistress.”

“Then send for Oscus,” Herosilla said flatly. She put her left hand on her hipbone and flared the elbow out akimbo.

“Right,” said the other guard in relief. “Let him sort it out. Boy!”

“Sir?” peeped a small voice from the other side of the gate.

“Get Oscus here right now,” the guard snarled. “I don’t care if you have to drag him by his pecker!.”

“Yes sir,” the boy said. The words faded slightly as he sprinted across the compound.

Herosilla waited, as still as a statue. She faced the closed gate with a grim scowl. The guards fidgeted to either side of her glare.

Nothing happened for several minutes. Stars faded in the eastern sky. There were sounds within the compound: footsteps, a querulous objection, and finally the crossbar rasping through the shackles that held it.

The gate leaves swung inward. A man in his tunic stepped into the opening. He was the attendant who’d carried Amulius’ staff during the audience. He held a crimson sash in his hand, but he hadn’t managed to tie it around his waist.

“What in the name of Jupiter is this—” he said.

Herosilla swung her right arm. There was a rock the size of her fist in the tip of her shawl. It struck the chamberlain in the middle of the forehead, felling him in the gateway like a sacrificed lamb.

“Hell and Death!” a guard shouted. He seized Herosilla with his right hand; the shield bound his left. She elbowed him reflexively. The blow clanged on his bronze breastplate and her arm went numb.

“Attack!” the other guard cried. “We’re being attacked!”

Herosilla bit the hand of the guard holding her. He batted her against the stockade, once and again as she continued to struggle. Her sight dimmed. The other guard was trying to close the gate, but the chamberlain’s body lay in the opening the way Herosilla had planned. The guard bent to drag Oscus clear, still bellowing a warning.

Herosilla heard a loud clang. The man holding her grunted and let go. She fell into a sitting position, her back against the stockade.

Romulus rammed his spear with both hands into the remaining guard’s back. His bronze armor made the spearhead chirp, but it couldn’t stop a thrust with the shepherd’s full strength behind it. Remus, his spear already bloody, jumped the body and led dozens of bellowing herdsmen into the royal compound.

Herosilla tried to get up. The guard who’d held her lay across the hem of her tunic. He’d knocked off his helmet when he fell against the stockade wall, showing his bald patch.

She tugged the tunic free. The man made a faint gurgling sound. Only his fingers moved, clasping and unclasping on nothing. Blood oozed from the hole in his backplate.

Shepherds milled in the forum. Those nearer the front of the attack blocked the gateway to Amulius’ compound. Numitor and his own six guards, fully armed with breastplates and shields, came from their stockade in close formation. Citizens appeared, then vanished into their houses to arm themselves and wait nervously.

“Let me through,” Herosilla said to the back of a shepherd in the gateway. She gripped his shoulder to steady herself. His forearm was splinted.

The man turned; he was Roscio. “Lady!” he said. “Here, make way for the goddess!”

Using the butt of the spear in his good hand, Roscio forced a path for both of them through the confusion. A shepherd trying to hold in his intestines lurched against Herosilla as he plodded toward the gate. A woman was screaming.

The crowd parted. Celer came from the king’s house, ducking under the low doorway. He wore a looted helmet.

“Where’s Amulius?” Herosilla demanded. “Is he dead yet?”

Remus, then Romulus, came out of the dwelling. They dragged Amulius between them. Romulus held a straight-bladed sword that he’d taken from a guard.

Amulius was naked. His eyes were wild, and there was a fresh gash on his left cheek.

“Why isn’t he dead?” Herosilla said shrilly. “Even a cowardly worm like that is too dangerous to let live now! Do I have to do everything for you?”

For a moment she viewed the scene from high above her body. The spell of dizziness passed.

The brothers stared at her. “No,” Romulus said. “You don’t.”

He stabbed Amulius in the chest. The king screamed and gripped the blade with both hands in a vain attempt to prevent the iron from grating deeper through his ribs. The edges cut his hands, but he didn’t let go until blood gushed from his mouth and his body collapsed in spasms.

Herosilla was above her body again. She sneered at the clumsy blow. Romulus was a herdsman, unfamiliar with swords. Flavia Herosilla had hundreds of times watched experts in the arena.

“Now I’ll go outside and tell the people that justice has been done,” she heard her mouth say. “The heaven-born twins have removed the usurper Amulius and set the real elder brother, Numitor, in his rightful place as King of Alba.”

And by the end of the month, even the folk who’d grown up with the Numitor and Amulius would believe the story…

The moon in its first quarter rode in and out of the clouds. If Herosilla squinted she could imagine that the sheen of the boggy pasture was marble rather than standing water and that the shadowy trees were the columns of the great public buildings that would someday surround the Forum.

This time she recognized the firm steps coming down the track behind her. “Tonight I ate before I came,” she called without turning her head.

“I know,” Remus said. “There’s wolves here occasionally, and you’re not really familiar with the path in darkness. Although—”

She heard the smile in his voice; not quite a chuckle.

“—I suppose you will be before long.”

“Come sit,” she said, patting the smooth stone beside her.

“I was planning to wait up by the cypress,” Remus said. “I just wanted to tell you I was here so that you didn’t think I was spying.”

“Sit,” Herosilla repeated. “It’s a good place to think. I’ve been wondering if Aeneas was real too.”

Remus lowered himself onto the seat with the careful grace of a cat relaxing. “Aeneas?” he said.

She smiled wryly. She said, “Nobody you’ve heard of, then. He was a Trojan hero who was supposed to have founded a colony here after the fail of Troy four hundred years ago. Four tens of tens of years.”

Remus shook his head. “Four tens of tens,” he said. “It’s hard to believe anybody knows what happened so long ago.”