Page 63 of Firebird
He chuckled again, the sound warm and lovely, melting sweetly at my center. “Would you be willing to live in a real palace, Malina?”
“What do you mean?”
Then he went silent for a moment.
“Nothing. Let’s get some sleep.”
I heard him turn over, the bed creaking some more, his body rubbingagainst the coarse sheets. I rolled to my side as well, trying to make him out in the dark, but I didn’t have the heightened senses of a dragon.
His question kept me awake for some time, the one he didn’t want to clarify. Because I believe it meant he intended to be the new Caesar, and he wanted me there with him.
The loveliness of the night dampened under the thought of him ruling Rome. I believed him when he admitted that he intended to overthrow the current Caesar and all the corrupt men beneath him. But one thing history had taught us about the Roman throne: it corrupts absolutely. I wasn’t sure that would be a path I could take, to join him there. Not if I had the choice. The idea was hard to imagine in my current status.
There was no guarantee he would even survive the coup he was planning with his allies. That thought cut me the deepest.
He couldn’t die. I wouldn’t allow it. I’d do whatever I had to do to keep Julian on his path to overthrow Caesar. I simply wasn’t sure I would be able to walk with him the entire way.
XVII
JULIAN
We’d been encamped near Singidium, the Roman town that had been burned to the ground, for two weeks. During the day, I joined my men in learning our surroundings and trying to track down the marauders. At night, I told stories of my childhood to Malina. I told her of how I’d broken my arm the first time my father put me on a horse and how my mother would scold me for stealing sweet-cakes from the kitchen. And with every story, she seemed to soften further toward me.
I’d managed to keep my hands to myself, though that was a feat all its own. She’d pushed me away once when I’d tried to calm her inthe street that day when we heard the Dacian singer, and the rejection had cut deeply. I wouldn’t risk that again. So I spent the days with my men, and my quiet nights closed in my tent with Malina. It had been peaceful and perfect, until the last week when my attention became focused on these barbarians we couldn’t seem to capture.
They were a strange enemy. The first week, we’d thought they’d fled the territory altogether. They’d done their damage and left the moment Romans were sighted in the area. That had been wrong. My men had discovered signs of them camping in glens and woods nearby.
Frustrated, I joined Trajan and some of my men in half-skin to seek their whereabouts. While it was almost unheard-of for me to scout with them, my men didn’t argue, knowing my frustration at our lack of progress was mounting.
We flew over a nearby gorge, and I smelled them, a foreign scent of human sweat where there was no village or town. We flew down into the ravine, finding nothing more than an abandoned fire, still smoldering, near a cave entrance. There was no sign of them in the cave either, which we spent a full day searching.
Two mornings ago, we spotted three of them running below us near a misty riverbed that ran down from the hills. We swooped down only to have them vanish in the foggy foothills of the mountain. Even my own heightened senses as the strongest dragon among them couldn’t find and capture these damned barbarians. Their constant evasion was maddening.
Whatever means they were using to elude us was extraordinary. And then, last night, a party of warriors whooped and bellowed in the dead of night, waking the entire camp. I led a troop of us into the woods toward the sounds. We found only recently warm fire pits in the ground and no barbarian warriors at all.
We’d had enemies that fled when Roman soldiers moved in to attack before. But this was different. There were signs of large partiescamping in the vicinity. Never in the same place twice and never maneuvering farther away. Rather, they seemed to be simply circling our perimeter, but refused to face us. To compound it all, they escaped us like ghosts.
We were accustomed to victory. Easy victory, for the most part. Or at least an enemy we could see and fight. The longer these barbarians eluded us, the more desperate we all began to feel. It was like they were toying with us.
But then, early this afternoon, the barbarians had finally shown themselves andnotfled. One of my deathriders flying above had spotted a horde of them in the woodlands north of the burned town, Singidium. Our encampment was only a few leagues south.
I hadn’t ordered the deathriders to do their usual job of corralling them with fire because we couldn’t even see the entirety of our enemy. I didn’t want to divide them. I wanted to be sure we had all of them surrounded so that we could be done with them all at once. There weren’t that many of them. A thousand, maybe two. We could easily surround them all and end this little rebellion quickly enough.
“This is unusual.” Trajan stopped beside me in half-skin, lashing his tail and staring down into the dense woodlands where part of a legion had gone in to circle around our enemy.
They hadn’t fled. We could hear them moving around and see shadows flitting just out of reach. But our heightened senses told us they were still there, at the center of the woods. We simply had to completely surround them, then attack.
I’d marched down the hill, needing a closer look when my men entered the woods without any resistance at all. Not even an arrow shot from the cover of shadows. Yet, we knew they were in there.
The other half of the legion had divided and were moving in flank formations from the sides of the woodland. The slate-gray sky promised a storm, darkening the landscape. But that was no matter for my soldiers in half-skin.
“What kind of enemy runs from their opponent?” Trajan’s speech was thick and deep, but easily understood. “Cowards.”
“Their boldness in attacking the villages doesn’t speak of cowardice.” I walked down the small incline that led into the woods, Trajan alongside me. “And yet, why are they hiding?”
“Perhaps they were only bold when there were no Roman soldiers to defend the towns.”
“Perhaps.” I stopped at the mouth of the woodland, listening to my men move stealthily through the trees, no sounds of swords clashing or the snarling battle cries. “Something is off here.”
