Recap |
The Story So Far:
The Gauls have invaded Italy. Only Tarchuna---the jewel of Etruria and birthplace of the Roman kings---stands in their way. Arnth Velcha, commander of Tarchuna's armed forces, has led an army to turn the Gallic invasion back---only to find himself both outnumbered and out of communication. His foster brother Avle Spurinna, having raised reinforcements, now races against the oncoming winter to rendezvous with his brother in time and face the Gauls as one...
Characters Featured:
Avle Spurinna: Main protagonist. Half-Roman Zilath (head of government) of Tarchuna. Descendent of the Roman kings on his mother's side and inheritor of the Kingsblood Quadriga. When we first meet him, he's an undisciplined drinker, gambler and chariot racer.
Arnth Velcha: Brother-in-law and life-long friend of Avle. The Purthsvana or military leader of Tarchuna. Traditional, pious, dutiful, the model of an Etruscan statesman and the polar opposite of Avle. He longs for the halcyon days of the monarchy.
Marce Velcha: Son of Arnth and heir to the Velchae. Poet and young idealist.
Velthur the Stammerer: Uncle of Arnth. Patriarch of the Velchae. Honorable and irritable. A recent stroke has robbed him of his ability to speak. Now aide-de-camp to Avle Spurinna.
Cneve Tetnies: Spy and assassin for the Spurinnae. Swore himself to Avle's service after Brennus took his home city of Sarsina.
Terms Used:
Zilath mexl rasnal: Military dictator of all Etruscans in wartime, what the Romans call a Praetor Etruriae.
Fatel: League.
cicenda: An herb. Today called gentian.
Naper: Etruscan unit of measurement.
Tuba: Trumpet of Etruscan origin.
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Chapter Four – The Amber Road (Part Five)
Continued from Chapter Four, Part Four...
Yesterday we finally reached The Amber Road, the fastest route to the frozen edge of the world. It reaches up to the northern lands where the blonde and red-haired giants of Hyperborea are said to dwell, a region too cold even for Gauls. Papa Larth once showed me a prize he'd brought back from the wars against the Boii and other Gauls that migrated in the previous century.
It was a beautiful sun wagon figure, intricately sculpted out of bronze. Did you know, Ramtha, that they call their pantheon the Aisar, just as we do? It makes sense that they would worship them too. After all, the far north belongs to the Aisar, just as the gods of nature rule in the south and the gods of the dead rule in the west. I surmised that these Hyperboreans must be far more civilized and rational than we, being so close to the highest of the gods. Papa Larth laughed. Not many trinkets find their way down from Hyperborea anymore, and those that do are carelessly cleaved out of primitive bog iron and depicting strange new gods. After the Gauls took the Amber Road north of the Po, trade was cut off. Papa Larth said they always needed tin from us too make bronze. I was in a market place yesterday, and found a rough iron cauldron with a crude figure on it that resembled Hercle, but seemed to possess a hammer instead of a club. This is what the Hyperboreans were reduced to.
But I ramble. I mention it because I was just awakened from a dream of that cauldron. I sat down at my desk and began to continue this letter to you, only to have my timorous linen page blown away by the wind. Even my stationary wants to desert, Ramtha. We had lost roughly fifty more men since passing Siena. And this morning...well, let me start with what happened yesterday.
Now that we are on the Amber Road, from here on out we will be noticed. We march on the most well-trod road in the north, but there is no other way to reach Viesul and rendezvous with Arnth before the winter makes all roads impassable. Many of the men had begun coming down with a strange ailment that our physicians could not identify, overcome by cramps and vomiting of blood. Cneve said the symptoms were similar to poisoning, but that was a bit of a reach. It's just as likely they picked some queer mountain berries or mushrooms. One of our physicians suggested that cicenda could be used to treat it. It can be found in a small purple wildflower that grows in these parts. Unfortunately, it is no longer in bloom this late in the season.
We stopped by a small village to resupply and hoped some apothecary might have cicenda. The inhabitants eyed us with the usual suspicion bordering on outright hostility. In the market place, I noticed that hammer I mentioned earlier. I also saw some of the torcs being sold, those ropes of gold that the Gauls wear about their necks. It's the fashion here for Etrusci women to wear them and so I purchased one for a certain woman with the wisdom of an Etrusci, but the fierceness of a Gaul. It was then I saw someone approach our caravan. It was a druid.
My satelles intercepted him, but I motioned for them to stand down. The druid began speaking to me. I asked Cneve to translate. He introduced himself as one of the Insubres, here arranging the purchase of a flock of sheep to be sacrificed for an upcoming festival. He asked if we were that lot that was to beat back those savage Senones who had taken Viesul. The Senones had raided Insubre territory years before but were sent packing, he stated proudly. Cneve said he could not place the man's accent, but he did not dress like an Insubre. I told the druid I was unaware of any Senone army. We were headed to the border to guard against the Ligures. The druid then said he overheard our inquiry for cicenda...which I thought was strange since we were not speaking in his tongue, but our own. But perhaps he merely recognized our name for the drug. He said we wouldn't find any there, but he had some in his possession. I heard that druids were remarkable physicians.
Velthur now appeared beside me and wrote in his tablet, "How do we know he's not the source of the men's sickness?" Cneve read it too and nodded at me. I declined the druid's offer. The druid then asked if we had any sheep to sell. Such a large army surely had plenty to spare. He eyed the army for quite a while. Velthur wrote again in his tablet, "He's counting our numbers." I said that we had no sheep to spare, but I thanked him and wished him a safe journey. As if he didn't hear, the druid then proceeded to our baggage train and loudly said that he would offer five times what each sheep is worth. He pulled coins from sacks he carried with him. I've long heard of coinage and have even seen Greek merchants using them in Rome and Campania. Father once tried to have Tarchuna begin minting our own currency, but the Velchae objected, saying that money would only lead us to decadence and acquisitiveness. I certainly never expected to see them in the hands of a barbarian. One of the coins fell on the ground, and I examined it: a bronze tetras minted in Syracuse, with a nymph on one side and an octopus on the other. It's said that since so many Syracusan trading ships are the target of piracy, their coins are the calling card of raiders and bandits.
The men did not understand the druid's speech, but they did understand the coins. He then dropped his sack, and more coins spilled out. He did this again. Soon men began to surround him, eyeing the loot. He then pointed to one of the mercenaries and offered to purchase his bronze greaves, and to another their tripod. Velthur and Cneve both shot me a look. "More armies are brought down by avarice than bloodlust." Velthur moved in. That's when we heard him speaking Etrusci. "I buy." He pointed at another mercenary's mirror he carried in his rucksack. I told the druid that it was time he left. Now. He ignored me. "I buy." He pointed at another. "I buy. You come see me. Pay much bronze. Pay amber and incense too. Fair price. Pay for sword, pay for sword arm. Come see me tonight. Fair price." Now I personally did not hear this at the time, but Velthur and Cneve both told me later. I wish I had heard it. I would have never let him leave. Velthur grabbed him by his robe and tossed him into the muddy ditch. He then swatted the druid on his backside with the flat of his sword, as the druid staggered down the road. I should have had him followed. I do not know why I did not.
I knew what the news would be when I was awakened by my page this morning. There was a strange smell in the air. Smoke. Smoke from campfires that had been allowed to burn brightly all night, rather than reduced to embers or quenched as we usually do. Someone lit their fires and then snuck out during the night. All our mercenaries, save one unit, had deserted. The only bit of news that surprised me was that the sole unit that stayed was the one Marce had delivered his rousing speech to. I was right: poets can make the most unlikely leaders, but inspiring ones. This boy had kept his men. The rest of us had not. We'd even lost our mercenary cavalry. Then Cneve gave even worse news: Cneve had spoken to merchants in the market place. Besides sheep, the druid was also seen purchasing dozens of shovels and picks, several napers of tent rope, enough wood to heat a small village and enough leather to cover one, and several wagon-loads of horse oats. There was no other conclusion: The druid must have been traveling with a Gallic army, and that army must be nearby. Cneve wanted to take some men, only those I could trust, and scout ahead. In the meantime, we should fortify our camp and not travel unless necessary or we'd risk an ambush.
I thought again of the hammer, and of the dream. I often dreamed of hammers as a boy, ever since my vision in Tarquin the Proud's tomb during my divination of the specularri. Always the same dream: a barbarian woman with ginger hair, hammering at a chariot wheel. For us, the hammer and nail represent the power of fate. Those that are proud, fate will hammer down. Father first explained this to me all those years ago at the youth games. We walked past the temple of Nortia, where every year the high priest marks the passing of the year by hammering a nail into the threshold of the sanctuary door. One could see the freshly forged iron nails gave way to rusted ones, which gave way to bronze and then copper. The threshold was large enough to hold ten saecula worth of nails: the appointed lifetime of our people. There was not much room left now. Father pointed to the door as we headed to the Fanum Voltumnae sanctuary. I did not know what was going on, only that there was some scandal and that Arnth was at the center of it. I also knew that my father was implicated. He pointed to the door and told me that fate must humble us every now and again lest we succumb to our own ambition. Perhaps he had grown too proud, too entitled in all those years he was zilath. Perhaps that's why today we would suffer the hammer blow.
We reached the sanctuary. Gathered before us were the zilaths of the Twelve Cities. It was here, a century before, that in this very grove the twelve cities gathered to elect the last Zilath mexl rasna: Larth Porsenna. Porsenna was elected to lead a united Etruria to Rome to smash the newly declared Res Publica and put Tarquin the Proud back on the curule throne. Instead, he tried to take the chair and scepter for himself. They say it was Porsenna's betrayal of King Tarquin and final defeat that ensured they would never elect another leader of all Etruria.
They yielded the rostrum to father. He thanked them for this assembly and said there was a matter he wanted out in the open. Though the crime he had been accused of was against the constitution of Tarchuna, it had ramifications beyond his own city. If the charge was true, he was a threat to them as well. Father brought Arnth forward and he repeated what he had said: that instead of giving up the zilch, the zilathship, which father had held in perpetuity since the beginning of the war between the houses...that Metru should instead use his popularity to have himself elected king. A clamor came over the delegations of the twelve peoples, and a man shouted a call for order.
You see Ramtha, after Porsenna's failed war to restore the monarchy in Rome, one by one the monarchist factions fell from power in the twelve Etruscan cities, until all except Veii were republics like Rome. This league of Etrusci, though you couldn't call it a league as the kind the Greeks have, had over the past century gradually evolved into a gathering of Etruscan republics. All treaties were between kin groups and governments, and thus all of Tarchuna's treaties would be null and void if a king came to power. Besides, if the wave shifted again, and monarchies sprouted in Etruria once more, that would be a threat to their own hold on power in their own cities. So father asked for the methlum of Tarchuna to hold their hearing of this charge before the Fatel as well, that nothing remain hidden. They agreed.
They questioned Arnth. He assured them he had not plotted against his city. He had only said that Metru Spurinna had finally brought peace to the city, and without him perhaps the wounds of fratricidal war could reopen. As the state of emergency that allowed Metru to serve beyond his one year term would come to an end with the reconciliation of the houses, no one could say if the peace would hold. That is all he said. The magistrates murmured for a moment, asked a few more questions, and then Arnth was dismissed. They then asked if the next witness was present. Metru said he was.
“Avle Spurinna. Step forward.” I froze.
I'd gone to the Fanum hoping to outrace my brother. I wonder to this day if I would have gone if I'd known I would be asked to publicly denounce him.
But I'm afraid I will have to stop there. I've just heard the tuba blow, which means that the scouting party has returned. I fear there's only one reason why they would be back so soon: They've found the enemy army, and it is close by...