War at the Edge of the World by Ian James Ross

Author:Ian James Ross [ROSS, IAN JAMES]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC014000
ISBN: 9781468312270
Publisher: ABRAMS, Inc. (Ignition)
Published: 2015-06-02T00:00:00+00:00

That evening he sat alone, staring into the bright heart of the embers and trying not to think. His body was still bruised and aching from the fight. He was not waiting for her, he told himself that. His only desire was to escape this place. But later, after several hours lying sleepless on the bare mattress, he sat up at the sound of the opening door.

She came to him, as she had before, but they did not speak. That previous time he had been worried about the noise, fearful that someone outside would hear them – he had even put his hand over her mouth to try and quieten her, but she had shoved him away laughing, as if he were childish to care about such things. This time, he knew that it did not matter who heard them. The sex was fast and fierce, and she matched him in angry passion. Only afterwards did she lie still, almost tender in her contentment. He ran his palms over her body, the cold hardness of the barbaric ornaments and the coarse curling lines scored into her flesh with a blade. He was fascinated and repulsed, and filled with a strange warmth beyond simple desire.

‘Thanks for saving me from your friends outside,’ he said. ‘I think they’d rather have killed me.’

‘They would not dare,’ she said. ‘They are afraid of me. Drustagnus is their master, but I am of the royal house, and they would not deny me.’

‘Even so. I’m still an enemy to them. How long will they keep on following your orders?’

‘Orders?’ she said, smiling. ‘You talk so much like a Roman. Here there are no orders. My people do as their rulers direct from love, and respect.’

Castus stifled his laugh. There had been little of love or respect in the way the guards had looked at her earlier. Just a cowed temporary deference. He wondered what sort of game Cunomagla was playing: setting her own authority against Drustagnus, perhaps? Demonstrating that she too could rule men? Either way it was dangerous, and he was the one who would pay the price if she lost.

‘What will you do,’ he asked her, ‘if the Roman army comes here?’

‘Fight them,’ she told him. He felt her body tighten, muscles hardening. ‘I will never be a slave, or run like a dog.’

She raised herself on one elbow, and her hair fell across his chest. ‘And what would you do?’ she said. In her voice Castus thought he could hear a softness, even a sadness, that he had never heard before.

‘If the gods allowed,’ he said, ‘I would be marching in their ranks.’

For three more nights she visited him, coming after dark when the fort was silent and leaving again before dawn. Castus never knew whether she had guards or attendants of her own, who waited outside while she was with him. With every passing day the idea of escape, like the idea of home, the memory of the legion, seemed more distant.

On the fourth night she seemed changed.

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