Household Gods

She ducked into the alley between her house and the house where Sextus Longinius lulus lived and Fabia Ursa had died. As soon as she did it, she wished she hadn’t; the stink of dumped chamberpots was appalling. Flies rose in buzzing clouds, furious to be disturbed in their feasting. She flailed her arms. Maybe one or two failed to land on her.

Just as she turned to try another route, a German loomed in the mouth of the alleyway. Nicole stopped cold.

The German looked at her in – surprise? With a sound like an ox lowing, he collapsed. Blood poured into the filthy dirt from a wound on the inside of his thigh. So much blood – how had he run all the way from the wall?

The flies didn’t care what he’d done or how. They swarmed toward the spreading pool, milling around its edges, sampling it to see if they liked it as well as yesterday’s slops. It would do, their manner said. It would definitely do.

Nicole couldn’t bring herself to step over the dying German. She turned and went farther up the alley, picking her way past the piles of filth. At the back of her house, the alleyway jogged to the left instead of cutting straight through to the next street. The houses and shops facing that one weren’t directly in back of hers and its neighbors, as they would have been in a Los Angeles subdivision. Nobody here had bothered to think that might be desirable.

Nicole couldn’t see what was going on in the next street, but she could hear it loud and clear. People were screaming in several languages, and clashing iron against iron. Lucius would reckon it a great show, the bloody-minded little rascal. God, if he got embroiled in that…

Footsteps pounded toward her from the other street, heavy steps, much too heavy for a child’s. Armor clanked. A shout rang out in Latin: “The Emperor!”

She sagged against the indifferently whitewashed stone of the wall – her own wall, the back wall of her house. Not a German bent on rapine and plunder. A Roman legionary, a soldier of civilization – such as it was – one of Carnunturn’s rescuers from its barbarous conquerors.

“The Emperor!” he shouted again, just as he rounded the corner. He and Nicole saw each other at the same instant. Had he been carrying a gun, she might have died. By the gasp that escaped him when he spied her, his first thought when he saw anyone not a legionary was enemy. But instead of the twentieth-century soldier’s rifle, he had a sword in his right hand and a great, clumsy-looking shield on his left arm. He was still two or three strides away from her when he realized she wasn’t dangerous.

He skidded to a stop, heavy sandals scuffing up dust. His sword lowered. Nicole dared, at last, to breathe. She let it out as a word: “The Emperor!” And, as he stood still, staring at her, “Thank God you’re finally here!”

A moment too late, she realized that it should have been, Thank the gods you’re here! But the Roman soldier did not seem inclined toward literary criticism. He grinned. Between his black beard, the iron cheekpieces of his helmet, and the low rim that projected almost like a cap’s visor, she couldn’t see much of his face: that grin, a nose that looked like a nose, and dark eyes that stayed alert, wary, even while he grinned at her.

Then she did what she’d promised herself she would do with the first legionary she saw inside Carnuntum: she marched up to him and gave him a kiss. She’d had in mind a kiss on the cheek, but the soldier’s beard and the cheekpieces made that impractical. She kissed him on the end of the nose instead.

He laughed out loud. “Hello to you, too, sweetheart,” he said. “You can do better than that, I’ll wager.” He let the shield slip to the ground, wrapped his arms around her – sword still clenched in his right fist – and bent his mouth down to hers.

That kiss, crushed against scale mail and with a sword bumping her backside, was odds-on the most uncomfortable she’d ever had. She didn’t care. It was – damn, it was fun. Just like the basketball game years ago before she ever met Frank, when Indiana clawed from behind to beat Notre Dame with a shot at the buzzer. She’d let out a squeal and kissed not only her date but the guy who sat on the other side of her. They’d all laughed. It had been that kind of moment: dizzy, crazy, and oh so sweet with victory.

The legionary’s left hand closed, painfully hard, on her breast. She wasn’t really alarmed, not yet. She stiffened and tried to pull her head away, with a protest all ready to burst out as soon as her mouth was free. But he followed her, prolonging the kiss, driving his tongue deep into her mouth, grinding against her teeth.

She bit down hard. He yelped and recoiled. She slapped his hand away. “That’s enough!” she said sharply.

He laughed again, not pleasantly at all. There was blood on his lips. He licked it away, wincing: his tongue must have hurt like hell. His words were thicker than they’d been before, and his tone had a nasty edge. “Now, now. That’s not nice. Not nice at all.”