Iron Rebirth: The Eagle Eternal

The settlement had its rhythms now, which was the thing Abster noticed first the morning he came to find Wallia — not the individual people but the shape of the day, the way a real place had a shape that a camp didn't. The forge fire was up before dawn, the woman who ran it — a compact, serious person named Ingrid whom everyone called the smith even though she was primarily a knife-sharpener, the settlement having no smith yet — working with the patient concentration of someone who'd decided that the work expanded to fit the time available and the answer was to control how much time you gave it.

Near the central path, a man named Geberic was repairing a roof, talking to someone below him through the thatch in a running argument that had clearly been in progress since at least yesterday. The woman below — his wife, Abster had learned; her name was Thordis — handed up materials with the air of someone long accustomed to arguments that were more companionship than conflict. Their daughter, maybe nine, was bringing water and not hurrying about it, stopping twice to look at something in the path that Abster couldn't see from this angle.

A week ago Abster wouldn't have been able to name any of them. Corvus had said, back in the first winter: history becomes people when you know their names. He'd written it in the vellum and then not thought about it again for months. He was thinking about it now, standing in a settlement with a smith who wasn't a smith and a man on a roof having yesterday's argument and a girl looking at something in the path.

He found Wallia at the granary.

— ✦ —

They worked for a while before talking — hauling cut timber, the kind of work that didn't require language, just hands and rope. Vidimer arrived partway through, which Abster hadn't expected but had stopped being surprised by, Vidimer appearing mid-motion being simply how Vidimer operated in the world.

"Are you telling him about the dog," Vidimer said to Wallia. "Don't. I come off badly."

"He wasn't asking about the dog."

"Good." He dropped onto the timber pile. "What were you asking about?"

"The ridge," Abster said. "Why he went with your group. When they split."

"Oh." Something passed between Vidimer and Wallia — the quick look of people who'd been friends long enough to have a language of their own. "That's easy. Storm was coming. He was standing next to me. You don't check council records when the sky's doing that." He looked at Abster. "Was there something specific you were hoping it meant?"

Abster sat with that for a moment. There was, he realized — he had been carrying an assumption about Wallia's choice, a tidy interpretation, the kind that made the situation legible and meant something useful for the channel. He had been wrong to be carrying it. Carrying conclusions before you'd heard the actual answer was the same mistake as reaching for Greuthungi before you'd found the wheel.

"I think I was," he said. "Tell me what it actually was."

— ✦ —

Wallia was quiet for a moment before starting.

"My brother was Hunwulf," he said. "He was four years older. He ran with Ulf and Sigmar and Ragnaris when they were boys — they grew up together, all of them, in the same winter camp. I was too young to be part of it yet." He looked at the timber he was holding. "When Hunwulf first started letting me come along on things, Sigmar was the one who made room for me. Not Ragnaris, not Alatheus. Sigmar. He just — shifted over. Made space. Didn't explain it, didn't make anything of it. Just moved so there was room for one more."

He set down the timber.

"Hunwulf didn't come back from the pass. Ulf didn't either. Sigmar didn't. And what I keep — " he stopped, started again. "What I keep thinking about is that Sigmar made room for me and never knew I remembered it. He probably forgot about it the same day. And now I remember it and he doesn't, and that's — " His jaw did something. "I don't have a word for what that is."

"There probably isn't one," Abster said. Carefully.

"Probably not." He picked up the rope again, didn't do anything with it. "After the pass, I couldn't — I couldn't be where things were being decided. Ragnaris was arguing for the channel in the council and he was right and I knew he was right, and I also couldn't watch him say Hunwulf's death meant something when I didn't know yet if it did." He looked up. "Alatheus doesn't make you say anything. He doesn't ask you to commit to what the deaths meant yet. I needed to not commit to that yet."

"And now?" Abster asked.

Wallia looked at him for a long moment. "I still don't know," he said. Not evasion. Simply the most accurate thing available. "I know Sigmar made room for me once. That's what I know."

— ✦ —

They were walking back toward the boundary — Abster heading for camp, Wallia and Vidimer going the same direction out of proximity — when the voices reached them from inside the camp.

Two soldiers, somewhere near the perimeter, doing the half-attentive talking of men working — the words secondary to their hands.

"...if he's bringing that many—" one voice, cut by something Abster didn't catch "—not enough billets here for all of—"

Then the second voice, something Abster missed entirely, and then: "—western lot, supposedly. If Gratian's actually—" Wind shifted. The rest went.

Vidimer had been listening with the focus of a man whose Latin had gone from functional to good over the course of several months of boundary work and Pilo's corrections.

"Western," he said. "And a name. Grat — something."

"Gratian," Abster said. The name had landed somewhere in his chest before his head caught up with it — Gratian, western Augustus, Valens's nephew, sixteen-year-old emperor of a different half of the same empire.

If the western legions were part of whatever this was. If the bridge was not just for Valens's army but for both of them converging from different directions. The shape of it shifted in his head and landed somewhere larger and colder than where it had been a moment before.

"Does it mean something," Wallia asked.

"I don't know," Abster said. This time it was simply true, with none of the comfortable edges that I don't know sometimes had. He genuinely didn't know what it meant if Gratian was coming too. He knew it was bigger. How much bigger he couldn't yet say.

"Tell Adalric exactly what you heard," he said. "Not what you think it means. Just the words. I'll do the same on my side."

They split there. Abster walked back toward camp carrying two things — Wallia's account of Sigmar shifting over to make room, and a name he hadn't been expecting to hear on a warm afternoon in May. Both of them sitting in him, neither one willing to be filed away cleanly.

The Vellum417 days.

Wallia's brother was Hunwulf. Ulf, Sigmar and Ragnaris ran together when they were boys. Sigmar made room for Wallia once, shifted over without making anything of it. Wallia remembers. Sigmar doesn't. Wallia doesn't have a word for what that is. Neither do I.

I came to find Wallia expecting something. He told me something different. I should have asked before assuming. Filed that honestly.

Gratian — western Augustus. If both of them. If converging. The shape of what I've been counting toward has been getting larger every week and I keep thinking I can see the edges of it and the edges keep moving.

Settlement faces today: Ingrid the not-smith, up before dawn. Geberic on the roof with yesterday's argument. Thordis handing materials up. Their daughter looking at something in the path I couldn't see from where I was standing.

I should have learned these names months ago.