The Farthest Legion

An Audience With King Baudulf

Out of concern for the living, we ran from our home leaving no one to tend to the dead. My master and his two guards ran ahead of me despite their armor. A day of unaccustomed exertion and shock had turned my arms and legs to straw. It did not occur to me to ask our destination until we passed the center of the camp and continued on, not pausing at the Prefect's office.

"Master." I gasped. "Where are we going?"

"They killed the Romans." He answered over his shoulder.

"I don't understand."

"These men in their hoods, they've killed citizens right in the middle of an armed camp. They've killed a legatus. They are not afraid of the Empire."

"Yet they took Mistress Panthia alive. Why?"

"That's what I intend to ask."

When we arrived at the Villa of Baudulf, his palace guard, the only Ubii allowed to carry weapons in the city, were doubled on each door and marching back and forth when arrived. It was a sign of their agitation that they even tried to delay my master and his men.

Normally a patient man, my master did not waste time explaining his authority to investigate the murders, or to the debate the fine points of the Ubii alliance with Rome. Instead, he nodded to his men and each of the legionnaires hammered down an Ubii guard with the pommel of his sword while my master ran past, tripping another palace guard with a well-aimed kick and lifting another to slam him bodily against the wall so hard that the man slumped behind us to the ground.

I followed into the palace. It seemed prudent to at least attempt to explain ourselves, so I shouted "Official business! Urgent Imperial business!" as we sprinted past the impluvium in the atrium to Baudulf's personal quarters.

There the guards were thick and their spears ready, forcing us to stop at last.

I was grateful for the chance to breathe. "Official." I coughed and tried again. "Business." I drew a breathe and stood as the palace guards advanced.

Our own two loyal jailers arrived only slightly disheveled from their own encounters. They stood to each side of my master and myself, swords drawn.

I tried again. "We have urgent business. We must see King Baudulf."

"Have some patience!" A booming voice filled the chamber as Baudulf himself stepped through the line of spears, sheathing his sword. "Varus, you could have been killed. You are always welcome here, but you can't just run in here sword drawn." He gestured and the palace guard lowered their spears a fraction. "Now I'm sure you are here about the executions, but I think when I explain why it needed to be done, you will understand just as your Emperor did."

And this, more than being attacked by masked men, or holding back the lifeblood of my master's father or running around the camp and back--this pronouncement left me speechless.

My master had better luck finding words. "Murderer! You had them killed?"

The Romans all gathered close, the two legionnaires looked around, obviously weighing apprehending Baudulf against fleeing to report the criminal and call for reinforcements.

"When you find out what they were conspiring to do with those damn Batavians, you'll understand. It's what you or any reasonable man would have done."

"Conspiring." My master's self control was slipping. His voice rose and his grip shifted subtly on his sword. From long familiarity and sparring I knew he was bracing for a suicidal lunge.

I resigned myself to follow him.

"Yes, those two would have given us all over for sacrifice and sold the meat."

It struck me then that we might not all be having the same conversation. "Two? Forgive me, what two do you mean, King Baudulf?"

"Flaccus and Laevinus." Drutmund stepped from the shadows behind Baudulf. If he was armed, his weapon was not visible. "What other two could it be?"

Varus shook his head and snorted. "What two? My father. My mother. Their entire household. They were slaughtered by men in black hoods, men like the ones who attacked me this morning."

"That can't be." Baudulf took a half step back and turned to Drutmund. "Black hoods you said."

Drutmund cocked his head to the side. "The Batavians. They must have worn hoods to make it seem like our men."

Baudulf turned back to us. "We did not kill your family or their..." His voice caught as realization struck him. "Gasthild, my daughter! What of Panthia?"

"She was taken. Alive," my master said.

"My Gasthild, Damn them. I'll roast their eyes every last one of them. These are the same monsters we have been fighting. The same who you have been aiding, you ignorant, arrogant, Roman fools." Baudulf's face reddened and his hand wrapped around his sword hilt.

Drutmund lay his own hand over Baudulf's, staying his sword before he could do something rash. "They will have taken my sister as leverage against us. I'm sure they plan to use her as a royal hostage and will protect her. Unless..." He stopped and looked up and to the left as if noticing a thought there. "What if they mean to use her as a sacrifice? They would do that, if only to spite us."

"Sacrifice?" Baudulf whirled and half drew his sword again. "We must attack now, retrieve her. My daughter will not be fed to their hideous gods."

Varus' eyes followed the two back and forth as he argued, growing narrower with each pass. He sheathed his sword and gestured to his men to do the same, before holding up his hand and shouting to be heard of the two bickering Ubii. "Wait. Wait. Will one of you tell me just what is going on?" 

"They mean to raise their god from the tomb you unearthed for them. They plan to bring Hercules Magusanus, The Young Old One, bodily into this world. He will open the way the way for the Titans, the Old Ones, to return and devour us all."

I looked from my master to his in-laws and back and tried to sort the wheat from the chaff. Cults were a common enough part of political intrigue in the Empire. Everyone from the Mithraists to the Christians tried to sway things one way or another, sometimes by stealth, sometimes by force. I discounted the talk of Old Ones. One thing you could count on was the gods themselves never showing much interest in the games of men, whatever the poets might claim. I was wrong, of course, but at the time, it was something Baudulf had said in passing which worried me more than gods.

"Pardon me, King, but for the sake of the understanding of an ignorant slave, did you say that the Emperor already knows about this?"