Nicole was just putting the first loaves of the morning into the oven when the sound of horns throughout the city brought her bolt upright. The fierce brass bray put her in mind of the civil-defense sirens that had wailed on the last Friday of each month when she was a girl in Indiana. If this was a drill, it was awfully realistic. A commotion outside brought her running to the door. People were running up and down the street, shouting and screaming. She picked words out of the tumult: “Marcomanni! Quadi! Germans!” Then even those were lost in the general roar of alarm and dismay and fear.
A squad of legionaries streamed past, running east toward the nearest wall. The iron scales of their armor clattered against one another. They would have sounded much the same if they’d been wearing suits made of tin cans. Nicole wondered if any of them was carrying one of Brigomarus’ shields.
Julia tugged at Nicole’s tunic, urgent as a frightened child. “What can we do, Mistress? Where shall we go? How can we hide?”
Nicole took a deep breath. She’d have loved to cling to someone bigger and stronger, too, but there wasn’t anybody here to take on the job. “I can’t think of a thing to do that we aren’t doing already,” she said. “Let’s just sit tight.”
Julia was white around the edges, and her eyes were wild. She was coping better, at that, than anyone outside.
Julia, unfortunately, understood all too well. “If they get into the city, Mistress -“
She didn’t go on. Nor did she have to. Nicole had seen enough televised horror to have some idea of what could happen. She’d never in her wildest nightmares imagined that it might happen to her.
Suddenly, she began to laugh. Julia’s eyes opened even wider. Nicole took the freedwoman by the arm. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go across the street.” Julia plainly thought she was crazy, but equally plainly was not going to let Nicole out of her sight.
Gaius Calidius Severus was stropping a sword that must have belonged to his father. The edge had already taken on a sheen, striking against the dull gray-black of the blade. He looked up from his work in surprise. “Mistress Umma! Julia! What are you doing here?”
Julia didn’t have any answer for that. Nicole took a deep breath. As always, the fuller and dyer’s shop stank. This once, the ammoniacal reek was not only welcome, it was a blessed inspiration. “If the Germans get into Carnuntum, who knows what they’ll do?” she said. “Whatever it is, I don’t want them doing it to Julia and me.” She beckoned briskly. “Come here, Julia.”
Obedient as if she were still a slave, Julia followed Nicole to a wooden tub in which wool was soaking in stale piss. “Here, dip your arms in it up to the elbow. Splash yourself with it, too,” she said, matching action to words. “If any German wants something from us that we don’t feel like giving, he’ll need a strong stomach.”
Julia gaped. The laughter that burst out of her was half hysterical, but it was laughter. She kissed Nicole on the cheek; the corner of her mouth barely brushed the corner of Nicole’s. “Mistress, how did you ever think of anything so clever?” She plunged her arms into the vat with a good will, and with much less revulsion than Nicole had felt.
“That
“Do you know what to do with that thing?” Nicole asked him.
“As much as my father and his friends taught me,” he replied calmly. “Better to use it on the Quadi and Marcomanni than to sit around here till they use their swords on me, don’t you think?” He left off stropping, tested it this time on his arm. It shaved a neat patch of soft black hair. He nodded, satisfied. Before Nicole realized what he was up to, he sprang to his feet and loped out of the shop. “Shut the door behind you when you leave, will you?” he called back over his shoulder.
By the time Nicole pulled the door closed, Gaius Calidius Severus was around the corner and out of sight. “How much chance do you think he has?” she asked Julia.
It wasn’t quite a rhetorical question, and Julia didn’t treat it as such. She shrugged. “Who knows? It’s in the gods’ hands.” Nicole looked down at her own hands, which still stank of sour piss. Julia went on, “If we can keep the barbarians outside the wall, we’ll be all right. If we can’t -“ She shrugged again.
That about summed it up, Nicole thought. She led Julia back across the street.
Lucius was sitting on the stoop, playing with the dice from his Saturnalia gift. As they came within smelling distance, he wrinkled his nose and made as if to push them back into the street. “What have you been doing, swimming in Gaius’ amphorae? You stink!”
“That’s the idea,” Julia said.
