The Bones of the Earth (The Dark Age) Page 14

  His hands closed on a stick, a fallen branch, and he swung it up and out with all his might and felt it connect with something that yielded. The thing in front of him was still hidden by bushes and it roared again but moved back. Javor dropped the stick and scrambled as fast as he could up the slope.

  Ahead, he could see Photius in the sunlight, naked, looking alarmed. Behind, he heard crashing in the bushes, branches breaking and a bellowing that seemed to rise from hell itself.

  Javor reached Photius’ side, grabbed his dagger and whirled without bothering to take it from its scabbard. He looked down the slope, but all he could see was the bushes at the bottom waving as if shaken by mighty arms. Whatever it was seemed to be moving away.

  “What kind of fiend is that?” he yelped.

  Then he heard another strange noise. He turned to see Photius laughing heartily. His belly shook, his hair and beard shook, and his laughter echoed off the trees.

  “What’s so funny?”

  Photius was laughing so hard he couldn’t answer. Tears streamed down his face. He bent over, holding his sides, then fell to one knee, shaking with laughter.

  Javor’s shock and fear turned to anger directed at Photius. “What are you laughing at?”

  “Fiend!” Photius shouted, then fell helplessly into further peals of laughter. Startled birds flew out of the nearby trees.

  Javor put down his dagger and sat down to wait out Photius’ laughing fit. He began to wonder, again, about the old man’s sanity.

  Eventually, Photius regained control of himself. “Oh, Javor,” he said. “Fiend, indeed. That was no fiend—you bumped into a bear.”

  Javor was stupefied. “What?” It seemed too commonplace, yet at the same time, terrifying. He had been raised to believe a bear was the most fearsome beast he was ever likely to encounter.

  “Oh, Javor, forgive me, but you should have seen your face!” He started laughing again, but it didn’t last as long this time. “Oh, don’t worry about it now. I think you scared her as much as she scared you. But we need to be careful. There are many bears in these parts, and she may have had cubs to protect, too. You don’t want to make her angry.”

  He began to pull on clothes, and Javor did, too. “I dropped all my blueberries,” he complained.

  “Ah, yes, the price of berries is often a bear,” Photius smiled, buckling his sword. “It is the way of the world: nothing is free.”

  They walked only until they found a comfortable place to camp that night. Just as the sun was getting low and shining in their eyes, they found a spot sheltered by low-hanging willow trees. Javor collected dry brush and grass to make two little beds. Then he looked at the setting sun, where the slope fell away to a broad, open land covered with forests and meadows. A stream wandered out of the higher lands behind him and gathered momentarily in a little pond before finding a way between the low hills ahead. The land climbed to slightly higher, rounded peaks in front of him, while on the left, the tall, grim mountains marched to the south, their peaks lost in clouds. The rain had left behind a rinsed, fresh feeling to the sky and the earth. Somewhere, a nightingale hooted gently, and from behind him, Javor could smell Photius’ small cooking fire.

  The bear and the demon of the night before already seemed distant to Javor, in a world different from the one that held the hills, the trees, the grass and the tiny wild flowers. The world is a beautiful place, he thought. It truly is beautiful.

  The next morning, Javor woke feeling truly rested and refreshed for the first time since his last night with Lalya. The sun was already shining brightly, and Photius was again beside his little fire, almost as if he hadn’t moved since the night before.

  “You didn’t wake me for a watch!” Javor said, pulling on his clothes.

  “You looked so in need of a good rest, I didn’t have the heart to,” Photius replied. He stretched and yawned. “In truth, I found it a very peaceful night, and I did nod off a time or two. But this seems a very well favoured place. I felt safe here, for the first time in years. There are such places, you know,” and his voice fell into that instructing tone that Photius liked to use, the one that drove Javor’s attention to other things. “Places in the world that are protected against danger, places where strife cannot enter. I believe that this is such a place.”

  “Then why don’t we stay here?” Javor broke off a piece of bread and chewed it. It was the last loaf from Bilavod and was getting stale, but it was the only thing they had for breakfast. Javor resolved to find more berries or fruit, but to be more watchful for bears this time.

  “That is not our fate, Javor,” was Photius’ answer. “We must return to the Empire with your great-grandfather’s legacy.”

  Javor scowled at that. The mention of his great-grandfather’s dagger and amulet soured the mood he had felt, and brought back the memories of his father and mother and the horrors of Ghastog.

  The peace he felt was erased. A bubble formed in his belly, rising up until it burst out of his mouth, uncontrollable and terrible.

  “Why me?” he roared, and his voice silenced the chirping birds.

  Photius didn’t say anything. “Why are these—these things after me?” Javor continued. “Why did it have to be my great-grandfather who found that medal and that knife? Why did they have to come down to me? Why did it have to be my parents who were butchered?” He stopped, his breath ragged and his heart racing. He saw his fists raised high, his arms extended, challenging the sky. He lowered them, feeling embarrassed.

  Photius’ face was grave but kind. “We cannot choose our fate, Javor. And we cannot escape it. These things have come to you. You can no more escape them than the night can escape the dawn.”

  “I don’t want them, I tell you!” Javor wrenched the amulet from around his neck, snapping its chain, and pulled the dagger from his side. He hoisted them together to throw them into the peaceful pond, when the knife’s edge caught the sunlight the reflected off the surface of the water. A gust broke up the smooth surface into millions of tiny mirrors, and Javor felt his mood suddenly change.

  He hesitated, then found himself tucking the dagger into his boot-cuff. He looked at the amulet in his hand. He looked at the strange, illegible, inscrutable design on its face. What does it mean? He looked for a long time.

  “How does this protect me, Photius?” he asked, his voice small again.

  “You saw its power when you faced Ghastog. With the amulet in your hand, you were impervious to the monster’s claws. And only with the dagger were you able to kill it.

  “They have power partly due to their shapes, which symbolize their functions. The amulet is your shield, Javor, and it is yours alone. No one else can wield it, not even Ghastog. The amulet left the monster in favour of you.

  “The amulet shields you, and more importantly, it hides you. And that is just as much protection as a great bronze shield that a warrior carries, for knowledge is a far more potent form of power than anything else. The amulet shields you from the eyes of your enemies, Javor.”

  Chapter 12: On the road

  For two days after the storm, they walked through rolling hills covered with thick forests. Javor found himself enjoying the walk. He studied the sky, which, after the storm, stayed high and deep blue.

  Until the moment he found himself looking, not at ranks of fluffy white clouds, but into the eyes of a man whose chest was punctured by Javor’s sword. The eyes were dark brown, he had a black beard under a round helmet ...

  Javor stopped walking. He could not breathe. The first man I killed. He remembered how the man had toppled from his horse, remembered how, without thinking, he had thrust his sword downward to finish the raider off. To make sure he was dead. He remembered the eyes looking up at him for only a moment. I did not watch him die, he realized. I turned away.

  It was him or me. And the people of Bilavod. But the raider’s eyes still stared at him, with an expression Javor could not understand.

  “Javor? Javor!” It was Photius’ voice. He
sounded exasperated. The vision faded, but Javor saw his hands shaking. “Did you get stuck?” Javor realized that Photius was some distance ahead.

  Javor caught up with Photius in the strangest clearing he had ever seen: long and narrow, only a few paces across in the direction they were walking, but stretching east and west until it curved out of sight.

  “This is the highway the Romans built when they conquered Dacia centuries ago,” he said, somehow both distracted and intense at the same time. He looked back and forth before deciding to turn right, and walking west, assuming that Javor was following. Annoyed, Javor followed—what choice did he have?

  If this road is what made the Romans famous, then people are more easily impressed than me.

  The road was little more than a wide track through the trees. Flat grey stones here and there were all that was left of the smooth surface the Romans had driven their chariots on. A long groove ran along each side of the vague line of stones. Photius said they were ditches that kept the road from being flooded during heavy rains or spring thaws. Javor still wasn’t impressed.

  “The Romans held this land for more than a century, exploiting its rich mines and building cities, fortifications, and of course roads.” He spoke as if answering a question, but Javor was silent, as usual. “The roads form almost a loop in Dacia, coming north from the great bridge of Trajan over the Danuvius River, the true northern frontier, up to the northern mountains, then back south again along the west side of the Mountains Sarmatici. Here, we are close to the northernmost reach of the roads. We will take the road westward until it bends to the south, past the ancient mines and the former Roman cities of Napoca, Potaissa and Apulum, and so to the old capital of this land, which the barbarians called Sarmizegetusa.”

  “What?” Javor needed to hear that name again, twice.

  “The Romans named it, in their Latin tongue, Ulpia Traiana, in honour of the Emperor Trajan who conquered Dacia four hundred years ago. It was that brutal fool Commodus who lost it again.” The names meant nothing to Javor.

  Javor realized they were again walking toward hills that rose before them. “Is this country surrounded by mountains?”

  “Almost,” said Photius. “We are on the Dacian plateau, a roughly triangular region bounded on the south by the Montes Serrorum, on the east by the Sarmatian mountains, and on the north by the Carpates—that is the range in whose foothills your home nestled. To get to the Imperial border, we will have to travel even farther south, across this plateau, and then through the Serrorum, which are much higher and more rugged than these.”

  Javor noticed a white stone beside the road. It had an oddly regular shape: straight sides and a flat spot. Markings were carved into its face. “A mile marker,” said Photius. “The Roman engineers marked every mile with a white stone so they knew how far they were from each settlement or strong point. Many now are lost, though.”

  Javor looked ahead, and realized that the cliff they were getting nearer was not a natural formation at all, but a man-made wall running between two steep hillsides. “What is that?”

  Photius looked briefly where Javor pointed. “Rome conquered all this land for its rich supplies of gold and silver and iron. Many Romans settled here. But they enslaved the original inhabitants of the country, and built fortifications against rebellions.”

  Javor shivered as they got closer to the wall. “Why did the Romans leave?”

  “Barbarians from the east wrested the province from Emperor Commodus, a weak, sadistic and stupid brute. The barbarians shattered civilization here, and dark things crept into their hiding places. The bright light of civilization is abhorrent to the creatures of darkness, and when it retreated behind the Danuvius, darkness filled the land again.”

  Photius rambled on. As they drew nearer the ancient structure, Javor could see it had aged and crumbled. Trees and grasses grew in cracks on the wall and on the top; stones and sections had fallen, leaving random, gaping holes.

  “Now, the most barbaric of all people are invading this land. The people who attacked your little village: the Avars. They are the ultimate cause of all the invasions that sacked the eternal city of Rome and destroyed the Western Empire—”

  “The Western Empire? There’s an Eastern Empire, too?”

  “Yes, Javor, the mighty Diocletian divided the Empire into Eastern and Western halves three centuries ago. But under lesser emperors, the West fell under the barbarian onslaught because it tried in its folly to adopt the barbaric ways, even to use the barbarians as its army. Utter folly! Can you imagine, Javor: the rulers of the West sought to recruit their enemies into their ranks!

  “The East has maintained its traditions and its institutions. Even as the West fell, the East was growing in strength. Under a powerful general, Belisarius, it began to re-take the territory of the west and reclaim civilization from the barbarians. But the dark powers work insidiously, and Belisarius fell from favour with the emperor. Soon, all the reclaimed land, or nearly all of it, was back in the shadowed hands of the barbarians.”

  Am I not a barbarian? What is so wrong with someone other than Rome ruling this land?

  He thought suddenly of his father, of a talk they had had the day before his birthday—before Hell had attacked him. They had gone into the forest to gather firewood.

  Javor could actually hear his father’s voice—the memory was so much clearer than Photius’ rambling lecture. “You’re bigger than me, so you can carry the firewood,” Swat had said. Javor had hauled firewood as the sun had climbed until he was sweaty, scratched and aching. He remembered thinking about his older brother, also named Swat, and how, years earlier, Swat had gathered the firewood while Javor had trotted behind, picking up kindling.

  When his father was satisfied with the amount wood stacked beside the wattle wall, he told Javor to start cutting it and went on to repair his pride, the chicken coop. “Twelve chickens. I’m rich!” he had said.

  “Not as rich as Grat’s father,” Javor had said. Livo, Grat’s father, owned a boar and two sows and always had at least a litter of piglets. He liked to show off his wealth by roasting a pig for every harvest celebration.

  “Don’t begrudge Livo his pigs,” Swat said, working a branch into the wood fence. “He has only one daughter left.”

  “Just like you—I mean, you have just one child left, too.”

  Swat suddenly put down his tools and hugged his son. He held him for a long time.

  With his chin against his father’s temple, Javor remembered the younger Swat. Remembered how his skin glistened with sweat as he chopped and stacked firewood. He thought of his brother’s wide smile, his deep brown eyes, his laugh. Javor had adored Swat, and never resented that he was his father’s favourite. He had been Javor’s favorite, too.

  Until he had died.

  “Let’s get back to work,” Swat had said.

  Javor had taken a good look at his father at that moment—a rare look. Javor paid more attention to trees and the sky than to people. Swat looked like his older son: wiry, not short but not tall, with thick, wavy dark-brown hair. Their skin was darker than Javor’s, and they tanned dark in the summer months; Javor’s skin burned every year until he turned a more golden colour. Why can’t I be more like you, Dad? Why couldn’t I be you, Swat?

  They rested in the shade. “You’ll be a man tomorrow,” Swat had said. “After the solstice celebration is over, we’ll have a big dinner.” Javor nodded, but said nothing. He was looking at the trees.

  “It’s a big step,” Swat continued. “Tell me, do you think about girls, much?”

  “Huh?” Where is this going?

  “Well, is there any girl that you like?” He reached over and tousled Javor’s blonde hair. “Come on, I know that Vorona leads the moonlight dances. We had them, too, when I was your age. It’s so that the young men and women can get to know each other, pick out a mate.” He looked intently at his son.

  Did he dance naked with Mama when he was sixteen? Papa! It was not believa
ble. Maybe they danced under the full moon, but not naked, and they definitely did not … do what he and Elli had … and the other young people, too. Boleslaw, the old shaman, was not Vorona, after all.

  “So, who do you like?” Swat asked again, smiling.

  Javor picked his words carefully. “Well, I like Elli.”

  “Mladen and Lyuba’s daughter?” Swat was impressed. “She’s very pretty. Very slim, though.” Swat seemed to be cheered and troubled at the same time. “Yes, pretty. Tell me, does she … like you?”

  How much can I tell him? “Well, sometimes I think she does. She’s much nicer than her friends like Grat.”

  “Yes, I’ve always thought that Grat is a little bitch.” That surprised Javor. He had never heard his father speak ill of a child.

  “But the last time we … spoke, well, the last time I tried to talk to her, she wouldn’t talk to me. She ran off with her girlfriends. I don’t know how she feels about me now.”

  “Did something happen?” Swat had asked. “Did you do something you hadn’t done before? Something that might have changed the way she thinks or feels about you?”

  How does he know?

  “Did you … kiss her?”

  Javor nodded. Don’t ask any more questions. Please, Papa, don’t ask any more questions.

  “Was it at the moon dance?” Javor nodded again. “Ah. Did others see you? Yes? Well, that was it! She feels embarrassed, self-conscious now. Her girlfriends saw you kiss her, and she kissed you, no? So she is afraid of what her girlfriends will say to her, or what they might say to her mother and then what her mother will do.”

  “Papa?” Javor asked as another idea suddenly occurred to him. “You won’t say anything to her mother, will you?”