The Wolf King by Alice Borchardt

Author:Alice Borchardt
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780345455543
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2002-03-04T16:00:00+00:00

Looks like nine miles of bad road, Lucilla thought. Rome was shadowed by its illustrious past, but here and there fragments of its former glory shone even among the ruins. Here, nothing remained. On their way into the city, they passed ruined villas and a decaying Roman town on the flatland below. Only a scattering of columns and tumbled stones remained of the forum and what once had been a large amphitheater. A few of the houses were inhabited by peasants who pastured flocks of sheep and goats on the rich grass that covered what once had been shops, streets, and dwellings. Beyond the city’s ruins, the open fields were being plowed up by peasants living on the rocky promontory that towered over the valley.

Dulcinia pointed out the remains of the city and several villas to Lucilla as they made the ride up from the deserted coastal plain. “The lord of this place,” she told Lucilla, “says the city was abandoned because it flooded during the spring rains. He said the villagers sometimes dig for treasure there, and even sometimes find it, but mostly they get pieces of broken glass, pottery, and from time to time a few fragments of marble. Shepherds pasture their flocks there because there is so much stone in the soil that it can’t be plowed.”

A nearby hill crowned by some sort of stonework was newly planted with a patchwork of olive trees and vines. Lucilla pointed to the tumbled stones. “I wonder what that was?”

Dulcinia shrugged. “Who can say, but it’s a village now.”

Lucilla looked more closely and saw the outline of huts and sheds grouped under the fire-blackened cupola of an ancient building. “Might have been baths or even a church,” she said.

Dulcinia shrugged again. “I suppose so. I can’t see that it matters. What will you do, my love, try to bring it all back? Not even you would want that.”

Lucilla sighed, then chuckled. “It floods indeed. A pleasant, polite way of saying take care, the countryside is not safe here.”

Dulcinia laughed softly, then looked back at their escort trailing along behind. The men rode negligently. Only a few wore their helmets and hauberks but most carried a businesslike assortment of weapons: swords, knives, and a powerful clubbed mace hung from every man’s saddle. Even the two women carried knives, a pair each, one long—the ugly and dangerous single-edged sax—and the shorter a double-edged utility blade. Lucilla also had a vicious half moon–shaped ax sheathed in leather under her saddle blanket.

The day was warm and clear, the sky blue; a cool breeze was blowing, and birdsong filled the air as they rode past a small copse of trees bordering the road. The two women rode astride wearing tunics, leggings, and divided skirts.

“I thought we might have had to fight at that last river crossing,” Dulcinia said. “I’m glad you’re along. I don’t know what I would have done alone.”

Lucilla’s face hardened. “Maybe we should have. He was one shifty-eyed bastard, and his threats may have been all a bluff.

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