Why couldn’t I get a good assignment like Herculaneum or Pompeii?
Herculaneum, he visualized the beautiful southern women, their hair black as sable with those curves like no other in the Republic. Their smiles…
The man above him groaned again, attempting to breathe, and the crowd stirred again.
Marcus leaned on his spear, the shod iron bottom raising a dust cloud.
His spear cast a long afternoon shadow. Dust motes invisible in the strong sunlight drifted to appear in the thin spear shadow and disappear again.
One of the men above him moaned.
Marcus looked out upon a land stripped of trees or had never been graced with trees by the gods.
Everything about this land was dust. Dust in the bread, in the wine, coating everything. Yet the people war over this country as if the dust was gold.
They could have it.
“This dust, I almost miss Britannia,” and he guffawed at such a stupid statement. There was no worse duty assignment than collecting tribute from Britannia. Endless rain, mud, and blue-tattooed savages from the north or across the channel. It was comforting to know that Rome would never seek to invade mud-rain-Britannia again.
The thought of Britannia reminded him of the disaster on the Britannia channel and the Scotti Pirates. Reminded him of the Pict slave, a witch or midwife with waist-long wheat-white braids who knew how to use the sling.
The Gauls and Britains operating the sail and oars had been terrified of her. Her woad tattoos called on blue Avatars of her people.
They called her Aileen-of-the-Picti and were bequeathing her as a gift to the Romans as if to say, “Here you deal with this wildfire.”
Aileen, the witch, had seen the sail on the horizon first, giving warning, and we turned for land only to ground on a tidal flat far from land.
“Scotti, ancient enemies of the Pict, Scotti who smell like swine,” said Aileen. “Scotti upstarts; no one likes upstarts, not kings, reivers, gods, or priests, upstarts like Vishnu or Osiris.”
Marcus ignored her witchy-shit rambling and prepared for battle.
Arrows from the Scotti pirates arched from the sky to strike a guard from Gaul, the man screamed, dropping to the decking and writhing at the arrow in his gut.
“Pull it out!” he begged in passable Latin.
“A liver shot,” said the Pict woman
Aileen picked up the Gaul’s sling and slipped the heavy leather bag full of lead balls over her shoulder. She held up the perfectly round lead ball designed for killing at a distance.
“Only two Roman things I approve of, lead slingshot and,” she apprised Marcus, who ducked a flight of arrows but stood ready to repel the pirates. No quarter was expected or asked.
The Gauls and Britains who had been pulling the oars jumped into chest-high water and struggled for the distance shoreline, providing easy targets for the Scotti pirates. A game of back shots for experienced archers.
The boat was stable, grounded on the flats, and Aileen swung the sling around her head and released it with a snap.
A Scotti archer on the pirate boat fell overboard with a caved forehead.
The Pict woman purred in satisfaction and loaded another lead shot. One by one, the Scoti fell with caved-in skulls. Excited cheers of cornering their quarry changed to growls of rage as brothers and fathers crumpled to the bottom of the boat.
When the two boats crashed together, only four Scotti remained to board the Roman ship. Marcus speared the first but was hard-pressed by the three.
The long Celtic swords gave them an advantage over Marcus’s shorter blade, and he was slowly pushed back.
The Scotti focused on killing Marcus; failed to notice Aileen, the Pict witch, get in behind them with a long silver-steel Britain knife. The Scotti fell from unknown stabs.
A blow crashed into his helmet, breaking the Celtic sword but felling Marcus, and he sank into darkness, darkness as black as the tunnel under the launch pad. Whatever the meaning of such a stupid statement, his wits fled the daytime.
He woke with a start, alone on a boat of dead people and with a pendant made from dented skull around his neck. Old skull, not the of the slain Scotti.
The Pict woman was gone.
The crowd stirred up dust on the hill of skulls.
Germanicus, his Contubernium, crunched over to Marcus, stirring up more dust.
“Well, Marcus, let’s hurry this along. The dying is taking too long; wine and hot bread are waiting at the tavern.” Germanicus looked up at the three men on the skinny crosses that cast thin shadows.
Marcus followed his gaze; only one of the criminals had any family or following. “Stab all three to hurry this along. I think the lesson about crime has been taught,” ordered Germanicus.
Marcus nodded his head, “Yes sir.”
He expertly stabbed the first criminal under the rib cage, an easy strike when standing below. The man was already dead.
Marcus stepped around the gathering at the central cross and stabbed the second criminal. The crowd stared pensively at the approaching soldier but moved out of the way without a word.
An older woman wept; the mother?
Marcus stabbed the remaining criminal. This man had been scourged and beaten. What had the Pict woman said? “The gods and priests did not like upstarts?”
Something crazy, from a crazy yellow-headed witch of the north.
“Shit,” hissed Marcus; his spear trapped between the man’s ribs.
He glanced around the crowd, who set up a keening wail. Now was not the time to be cruel and cause a small riot with family or followers. Usually, a savage twist and jerk would free the spear, but Marcus only displayed gentle tugging with furtive glances at the crowd.
Where was Germanicus?
He felt hot wetness on his fingers and realized the criminal was bleeding down the spear shaft—carmine patterns, fractal patterns intertwining, twisting, and blending, the twists resembling Aileen’s blue Celtic tattoos. Multiple decorations and stories twining and meeting again, only to flow into a new design.
A Marcus of somewhere, the past? Future or other whispered, “Taste the blood, the blood, just a taste.”
The spear came free, and Marcus wiped his forehead of sweat and grime, his fingers so very close to his mouth. Just a taste, using the motion of his hand to touch a red finger to his lips.
Ordinary iron and copper taste, and he felt stupid, and yet he felt other Marcus’s touching their mouths.
Me, other Marcus’s, On the Nile? A castle called the VAB? Flying in an aerial chariot? A blood drinker?
Fuck.
The mother of the criminal approached and dropped to both knees,
“Thank you for your mercy,” said the woman. Another woman fell to the ground on her knees, stirring a dust cloud.
“Roman, thank you for your mercy,”
The daughter? Sweaty red hair was plastered to her forehead under her cowl.
No, not a servant; the second woman was marked with the sign of a whore.
Marcus was surprised at their comment, shocked that he knew the whore’s red hair from somewhere other?
In somewhere, where a space shuttle was mounted to a pedestal, free from further ice damage and solid rocket boosters, the red-headed woman and Aileen-the-Pict witch kissed.
No matter that Marcus knew not what any of that meant, “You know Aileen!” he said to the whore.
She only returned a blank look.
Marcus stumbled away, trailing his bloody spear. I must be getting heat sickness.
She found him in the wharf tavern for western foreigners; his table, like all the others, was inlaid with semi-precious stones in the shape of the eye of Horus.
“I wanted to thank you again,” said the red-headed whore. “Thank you for ending his suffering.”
He shrugged.
“I do what I must to keep wine and cheese on the table,” said Marcus.
“You do not have to tell a whore that,” she said.
“Sit, share bread with me,” said Marcus.
“I am no longer a whore.”
“Whores are easy to find in the Republic. I am looking for someone to share bread with, talk with,” said Marcus. Tell me how you know the Pict woman.
“Tell me about the man on the cross,” said Marcus, filling two cups of wine from the jug.
She warmed to the subject and sat at his table, accepting the offered wine.
“He cured me,” she said. “He cured me of my falling sickness. The falling sickness was why I had to be a whore; no husband would take me, and I could never get taken on as a house servant when at any time I would fall to the ground dropping dishes or a child.”
The man had been a healer, thought Marcus.
“He forgave my sins and said I was worthy of redemption. No one else would utter such words. And he meant them.”
Marcus only nodded his head; what could he say?
“But he cured you of the falling sickness?” asked Marcus, passing the bread and cheese.
“He could cure and more, and the priests hated him for it. Hated and killed him for it.”
“The gods and priests do not like upstarts,” I said.
She nodded; he was more observant than most Romans.
“Your name?” asked Marcus.
They call me “Feel-You” or when wine drunk, they call me Oh-Feel-You-A.”
“Ophelia?” said Marcus, “Not a real name but familiar somehow.”
“I kept the name, my whore name; it is part of who I am.”
“Do you know Aileen the Pict?” asked Marcus.
Ophelia nodded her head, “No.”
“Ahh, how could you? No, I think I was having heat visions while standing guard on the hill. The kind of visions before you fall over senseless and sometimes die? Heat-induced dreams that make no sense?”
Somewhere, someplace else, Fred the computer hissed, “Your parents abused Lysergic acid diethylamide, and you tried to kill me.”
Somewhere, someplace else, another Marcus shared a chalice of blood with Ophelia and Aileen.
That Marcus purred, “You must share the spear with the woman.”
In the tavern, Marcus ran his hand over the inlaid Eye of Horus set in his table.
“I have an odd request,” said Marcus, not wishing to make eye contact.
“I was a whore,” said Ophelia, “Odd requests?” Not much is surprising.”
“Germanicus will have me whipped for not cleaning my spear,” and he gestured to the spear shaft with intertwined patterns of dried blood.
Marcus dropped his voice, clearly shamed at his admission, “I have been licking the blood.
Ophelia blanched; clearly, the admission took her by surprise, bordering on disgust. It was evident in her eyes. Romans professed to belong to civilized nations.
“With each taste of blood, there are new visions, stories as powerful as some Greek Oracle at Delphi.”
Ophelia made to get up from the table.
“A single request,” said Marcus, just one, please.”
In all of her life, no one had ever used the word please.
“Please do me just this one favor. Take a small lick of the dried blood.”
Only a lifetime of whoring and debased requests kept her in her seat.
“Only because you showed him mercy, I will grant you that request and leave. One lick.”
Marcus retrieved the spear, decorated in brown like Celtic ivy.
With a look around the tavern, Ophelia flicked her tongue on the brown ivy pattern. Grit, salt, dust.
Then suddenly, with a gasp, she saw herself and Marcus struggling through raging surf full of timber and bodies. Her hair plastered to her forehead, a fierce rain hit them from the side, a storm from hell, worse than any on the Sea of Galilee. They broke free of the surf, crawling onto a Florida beach, and looked back at their ship. Waves taller than a building were dismantling the wrecked treasure galleon before their eyes.
Ophelia realized she was smiling.
Marcus gasped.
“You saw we were shipwrecked somewhere?” said Marcus, “In the future? Somewhere other, this Florida?”
“I enjoyed the wrecking and almost drowning,” she said, amazed, and gulped her cup of wine.
They sat drinking in silence, not making eye contact.
At length, Marcus made an admission, “I have licked that brown ivy pattern four times. The visons only get stranger. You and Aileen are in many of the visions, as well as a man with green skin. In one such vision, I killed an angry furry elephant with a spear, a stone-tipped spear.”
“You seem to have an affinity to spears,” said Ophelia.“Have you ever seen an elephant up close? They are giant!”
Finally, Ophelia, shamed, said, “Another lick?”
The next lick shared dream-visons startled both; Ophelia was on a barge in the Nile, face down in silks as a falcon-headed god rutted with her. “Fledglings, breaking the double helix,” she whispered.
Marcus’s vision was in a cold cave where glacier melt dripped. He rested on furs, rutting with a blonde woman? Aileen? Blonde braids dropped below the mask she was wearing. A tanned skin mask, supple in texture and covering a weak chin and heavy brow ridges. A skin topped with red hair dropped across the forehead of the tanned mask.
The woman in the mask groaned and hissed, “I will follow you forever.”
When the visions ended and they sat slack-jawed at the table with the inlaid eye of Horus, they appraised each other anew. Both were shamed, puzzled, and excited by the personal nature of the visions. “The imperative of children,” said Eileen in some other place and time.
“Wine!” ordered Marcus to a Tavern servant.
“Another lick?” asked Marcus. “We have all night.”
“Yes another taste. We have three days,” said Ophelia.
