David Drake - Out of the waters

Here weed floats in the water and great beasts swim, bringing terror to mariners…

Corylus mouthed the words as he remembered them. Then he climbed over the railing to get food.

Varus heard the music of pipes and sistrums, wishbone-shaped rattles whose bronze disks clinked together on the double arms. He might be imagining the Egyptian instruments because the book from which he had read the phrase was Egyptian also.

He thought he heard the wind sighing also; but down where he walked on a stone pavement, the air was dead still. The light was like that of the moon above a thin overcast, enough to see the path but not to make out distant shapes.

I wish the Sibyl were here to tell me what all this means.

Varus laughed. He said aloud, "I even more wish Corylus were here. There probably won't be anybody to attack with a sword, but I'd feel better if I knew I had a friend who could do that if needed."

His words didn't echo, but they had a fullness which suggested he was in an enclosure rather than in the middle of a barren wilderness. That made him feel better, though as a philosopher he knew that the grave was an enclosure also.

He could just as easily wish for a cohort of the Praetorian Guard. Though from comments he remembered, Corylus would probably protest that the Batavian auxiliaries were better combat troops.

Varus walked on, his sandals busking against the flagstones. He grinned.

A group of men stood to the right of the path. They wore togas and were arguing. He paused, but the men didn't seem to notice him. Beyond them he could see the forms of buildings, softened as though by thick fog. The men talked on the steps of the Aemilian Hall, but the Julian Forum which Caesar had built more than seventy years ago wasn't beside it.

One of them turned from the group, hesitated, and stared at Varus. His features could have been the original of an ancestral death mask on the walls of Saxa's office, but it was hard to compare flesh with age-blackened wax.

The man shrugged and stepped away. He and his companions vanished into the grayness. Varus nodded and kept on walking.

He had learned that to keep on going was often the only choice. Well, the only choice besides lying down and waiting to die. Resignation to fate was a proper quality for a philosopher, but giving up most certainly was not. Not for a philosopher who was also a citizen of Carce, at any rate.

The road had become a rural path. Varus walked beside a single track which had been worn by animal hooves. Not even a country cart with solid wooden wheels could navigate this hillside.

A vista opened, this time to the left. A man struggled behind a crude plow being drawn by a single ox. The animal was small and shaggy, with a blotchy red-and-white hide and forward-curving horns. The farmer wore a simple woolen tunic and a broad leather hat with a low crown; he was barefoot. Between the field and the path was a wall piled from stones plowed out of the field in past years.

The man looked up as Varus passed, then dropped his plow handles and lifted the brim of his hat. "Varus?" he called in accented Latin. "Gaius Varus?"

His voice had become thin by the last syllable; the grayness was returning. Varus waved, but the fog grew thicker yet and there was nothing more to wave to.

He trudged on. That was the only acceptable choice.

Varus no longer had even a path to follow, so he kept to the center of the terrain that opened before him. For a time he walked through woodland, even crossing a narrow brook, but very shortly he found himself skirting the edge of a dry lake. A yellow-gray dog, scraggly and thin, ran off with its tail between its legs. It glanced back over its shoulder.

There was a tree ahead. Someone sat at the base of it, apparently waiting. The trunk and branches curved, and the leaves dangled in long double rows from central stems. Corylus would know what it was…

Varus continued straight. The ground was a thin layer of leaves and yellow clay over limestone, with frequent outcrops and spreading roots.

The seated figure was the corpse of a woman with a heavy jaw, prominent brow ridges, and black hair over all her exposed skin. The right half of her body was skeletal; it had been picked as clean as if it had been boiled. Ants might have been responsible; no beak nor jaws bigger than an insect's could have done so neat a job without disarranging the bones.

The woman's arms and torso had been tied-wrapped-to the tree with vines. Her legs, one of flesh and the other bare bones, splayed out in front of her. Between them were a few fist-sized rocks which had been broken to a crude point on one end.

"Greeting, child from the children of my womb," the dead woman said. She chuckled.

Her jaws worked normally though only half of them were clothed with flesh; Varus could see her black tongue moving; it had been sectioned lengthwise as neatly as a razor could have done. Her voice was low-pitched and rough, but not really exceptional.

Varus swallowed. "Greetings, mistress," he said. His mouth was dry. "Should I, that is, may I release you?"

She laughed again. "Release me from death?" she said. "Do my descendents have such power, then? I think not, though I see that you are a great wizard. You are my worthy progeny, child."

"Mistress," said Varus, "why have you brought me here? I will do whatever you wish, if I'm able to. But I don't understand."

"Take a piece of my jawbone, child," the corpse said. She couldn't move either arm because of the way she was bound with vines, but the tip of her half-tongue thrust to the side and licked the bare mandible. "Take the bone, for the time will come when you will need it."

Varus had been standing at arm's length. The dead woman wasn't threatening, but the situation was too uncanny for him to approach unbidden. He stepped forward and squatted, putting his face more or less on a level with hers; he didn't know what to do next.

"Crack it, child," she said in a testy voice. "Use the hand axe at your feet."

"But…," Varus said.

"Do it, boy!" the woman said. "End this business for both of us. Crack my jaw and take the splinter!"

"Yes, mistress," Varus said; meekly, as he would have responded to Pandareus when he was being called down for an error in class.

There were several stones, all of a size to fit in the cup of his hand. He picked one that seemed to have started as a stream-washed pebble, dense and black. It had been egg-shaped, but the small end had been flaked to a point which was irregular but surprisingly sharp.

The dead woman opened her jaws wide. "Forgive me, mistress," Varus muttered as he moved to the side to get a better angle on the task. She chuckled.

He struck. The axe clocked loudly, but it didn't break the heavy bone.

"Harder, child!" the corpse said. "End this!"

Varus struck again with the full strength of his arm. The jaw cracked and a splinter flew away. Varus dropped the hand-axe to catch the spinning bone. He held much of the right mandible including the teeth. It had split from front to back across the jaw hinge, forming a long spike beyond the massive final molar.

"Well done, my child!" the dead woman cried. "You are worthy of me indeed!"

She began to laugh again. The sound echoed as Varus felt himself spinning into gray fog.

"Mistress?" he cried, but he could no longer hear her. He lurched bolt upright.

He was on a couch in the library. The book he had been reading was on the floor; the lamps were lighted. His father was looking at him in concern while the servants kept to the background.

"Son?" Saxa said. "What's that in your hand? It looks like a bone."

Varus stared at the fragment of jaw, just as he remembered it from his dream. "Yes," he said, "it is. But-"