Iron Rebirth: The Eagle Eternal

Three days after the boundary incident, Adalric asked him to come inside.

Not to the hall. To the southern fire — the one the older men gathered around in the evenings, which was a different kind of invitation from anything he'd received before. He told Corvus before he went. Corvus said: "Get the name of whatever land they're talking about. Maps. Sebastianus hates missing maps." Then he went back to his reading.

The encampment at evening gathered into itself. He walked through it without cataloguing. He was getting better at this — being inside a place without treating it like a document to be read.

Amalasuntha was at a small fire near the path, working a loom. It kept going wrong. She adjusted it twice, it went wrong again, and on the third failure she pulled the whole thing apart, held the pieces, and stared at them. Then she put it back together and started over.

He kept walking.

— ✦ —

The southern fire had six men around it. Adalric. Wulfgar, hands empty tonight. Two elders Abster knew by name. And two strangers — traveling gear still on them, arrived recently from somewhere east.

He sat. Nobody introduced the strangers. Nobody explained.

He listened for twenty minutes without speaking. His Gothic was good enough now to follow the shape of things. They were talking about land east of Adrianople — places some of them had passed through on the migration, remembered with the precision of people who'd needed to remember in order to survive it.

The heavier stranger — a scar along his jaw, badly healed — was describing a valley. Water source. Treeline. A south-facing slope that got enough sun for grain. He spoke in the future tense. Where the grain will grow. Where the children will be defensible. Not a memory. A plan.

Adalric looked at Abster eventually. "The terms name Thrace generally. Fritigern's people want specific land. The valley Hrodgar describes is one of three places we have identified."

"I can include specifics in the next communication," Abster said.

Hrodgar looked at him directly. "How long," he said. Latin, rough.

"Months. I can't give you a more precise number."

Hrodgar was quiet for a moment. Then: "Romans always answer in months." He said it without particular heat. Just noting. "Months is what you say when you don't know if you mean it."

Abster held his gaze. "Yes," he said. "Sometimes. Not this time."

"You cannot know that," Hrodgar said. "You are an optio."

Which was true. He was an optio. He had no authority over Constantinople's deliberations, no ability to guarantee what Sebastianus's report would produce, no mechanism for making the months he'd just said into a promise he could keep. Hrodgar knew this and was saying it plainly, not as an attack — as a statement of the situation they were both inside.

"No," Abster said. "I can't know that."

Hrodgar looked at him for another moment. Then he looked at Adalric, and something passed between them — the comparison happening, Abster's answer being placed in the long list — and Hrodgar turned back to the fire.

The conversation moved on. Someone told a story that made Wulfgar laugh, short and real. Hrodgar fell asleep sitting up, chin to chest, the traveler's sleep. Food appeared — thin stew, less than it should have had, hot. It was offered to Abster and he ate what he was given.

He sat at the fire for almost two hours. Nobody required anything of him. The elders talked about things he could follow and things he couldn't. He was, for those two hours, simply present in a place rather than managing it.

He wasn't sure the last time that had happened.

— ✦ —

Then, from the northern edge: voices on the cold air.

Ragnaris and Alatheus. The older men at the southern fire didn't move — the stillness of people who had decided this wasn't their business right now, which meant it happened often enough to have an etiquette around it.

Abster looked north without appearing to. The firelight didn't reach that far but the figures were visible. Ragnaris stood with his shoulders pulled in and his jaw set — holding ground not through confidence but through refusal to give it up. Alatheus was looser, taller, the ease of a man on familiar territory. Between them the air had the quality of an argument that had been going for a while before Abster heard it.

Fragments on the cold air.

Ragnaris first, lower, harder to catch. Then Alatheus — something about crossing to the Roman side, something about what crossing meant. A word close to fool. Then Ragnaris, sharply: and you were in the room.

Silence.

Then Alatheus, lower. Two sentences. The second had wait in it, and winter, and a word Abster didn't know. It landed on Ragnaris like weight. His shoulders changed — not conceding. Absorbing. He stopped talking.

Then he turned and walked away from Alatheus. Not storming. Just done.

Alatheus watched him go. His posture didn't change. He looked like a man who had said what he intended to say and was prepared to wait for it to work.

Adalric looked at Abster. "You caught some of it."

"Not all."

"Alatheus said crossing to ask questions is the action of a man who has already decided to trust Romans." He poked the fire's edge. "Ragnaris said Alatheus was in the room. Heard what the centurion said before the terms." He paused. "Alatheus said one true thing from a Roman is how every betrayal starts."

"He was believed once himself," Abster said. "Before the migration. Three weeks."

"Yes. He told you that."

"He's not wrong."

"No." Adalric set the stick down. "He is working from evidence. So is Ragnaris. The difference is which evidence each of them finds more compelling." He looked at Abster. "Ragnaris did not answer him. I don't know yet what that means."

Hrodgar snored once, resettled. The elder across the fire said something dry. Adalric made a sound that might have been a laugh.

— ✦ —

He was leaving when he heard the boys.

Four of them at the encampment's edge, sixteen or seventeen. One was talking and the others were listening with the complete attention that age gave to things that mattered. Abster caught the phrase the community used for the XII — not its Roman designation, but something that translated as the ones who stayed.

He slowed. Kept moving. Peripheral.

Fragments: the winter drills. A soldier learning Gothic words badly — a laugh. Something about grain, about windbreaks. The speaker was comparing the XII's sector to the northern sector during the revolt, working something out rather than concluding it.

One of the listeners said: they will leave anyway.

The speaker answered. Abster was past them, didn't catch it. He crossed the boundary and stood on the Roman side in the cold.

Those boys would be twenty-two when the terms either became land or proved Alatheus right.

He didn't know which way they were leaning. He had no way to find out without changing what he was measuring.

He went back to camp.

— ✦ —

Corvus was awake. The cup had something in it. He poured a second without being asked and said: "Tell me."

Abster told him. Hrodgar and the valley, the future tense, months is what you say when you don't know if you mean it. Ragnaris and Alatheus. The boys and they will leave anyway.

Corvus listened without interrupting. When Abster finished he was quiet for a moment. Then: "What's the valley called."

"I forgot to ask Adalric."

"Go tomorrow morning. Before drill." He drank. "Abstract land grants stall in Constantinople. Specific valleys require someone to find a map. Once they find the map the valley exists." He set the cup down. "That's different from a general request. Get the name."

"Yes."

"Alatheus's line," Corvus said. "One true thing is how every betrayal starts."

"Yes."

Corvus looked at the cup. Not at Abster — at the cup, as though it had the question in it. "We don't get to answer whether he's right about us. That accumulates on its own." He stood. "The boys at the fire."

"Yes."

"They will leave anyway." He looked at Abster. "Or they won't. That's the whole problem in four words." He moved to the tent entrance. "Get the valley name. Sleep."

He left.

Abster sat in the tent for a moment. The lamp was low. He refilled it, because sitting in the dark wasn't useful and the alternative was going to sleep, which he wasn't ready for yet.

He thought about Hrodgar describing a valley in the future tense. The specificity of it — not hope, something past hope, the planning that happened when a man had decided a thing was going to happen and was working backward from there. Water source. Treeline. South-facing slope. The grain will grow.

He opened the vellum.

The Vellum523 days.

Hrodgar described a valley as though he already lived there.

Ragnaris did not answer Alatheus. Walked away instead.

The boys at the fire said: they will leave anyway. The speaker answered. I didn't hear it.

I don't know which of those three things matters most.