The Witch of Carnuntum

Chapter 1 – The Ice and the Blood

“Bero!”

“I’m here.”

“Where are you?”

“Behind you. I’ve got you.”

“I can’t bear it. It burns. Bero, it burns!”

Her skin was wet under his hands. Through the cloth he could feel her ribs, every single one. It had been a long winter. Her breath hung white in the air, and where the embers didn’t reach, the clay under his knees was frozen.

“Oh, gods. I—I can’t.”

“You can.”

“I can’t!”

She screamed.

The dogs leaped up and threw themselves against the door. They barked out into the forest. A scream like that carried far on a winter night. Wolves heard it. Others too.

Bero turned his ear to the door. Then back to her.

It eased. Sunna slumped against him, wet, shaking. The dogs stood at the door, hackles raised, and were silent.

“Bero.”

“I’m here.”

“If I—”

“No.”

He had heard women scream like that. Not all of them had spoken again afterward.

Years. They had waited years for this child.

The next one came. She screamed his name, the dogs barked into the night again, and he held her. There was nothing more he could do.

“I see it. The head. Sunna, now. Now!”

The child slid onto the damp earth.

Both of them waited for the cry.

It didn’t come.

At the door, the dogs fell silent.

“How is it?” Sunna whispered. “Where is it? Show her to me. Go on. Where?”

Bero let go of her.

Sunna lifted the child herself. The little chest rose and fell, slowly, without haste. It opened its eyes. Blue. Not the blue of newborns. The blue of old glaciers. On its head lay a fuzz of down, white as hoarfrost.

“It’s beautiful,” she whispered. “She’s so beautiful.”

“Why isn’t she crying?” Bero’s voice broke. “Sunna. Quick. Why isn’t she crying? Is it breathing?”

“It’s breathing,” said Sunna. “It just doesn’t want to cry.”

She put her mouth to the child’s ear and spoke a name. Bero didn’t hear it. He didn’t ask, either. A name carried across the threshold of the hut belonged to everyone. This one was meant to burn with the mother.

Later the priests would call the girl only by her task: Vessel. The name this story knows her by still lay years and miles away. In a mouth that spoke Latin.

* * *

“Hold the rope!”

“I am holding it!”

“Damn it, hold it!”

Water ran into the boy’s eyes. The hemp was heavy and slick, and every time the stone moved, it slid a little way through his fingers and took skin with it. Under his feet the clay gave way.

“I can’t—I can’t!”

“More men on the north side!”

Beside him a man fell full length into the mud and kept pulling where he lay.

Behind them, on the earthen ramp, stood two priests, their hoods pulled low over their faces.

“It’s been raining since evening.”

“I know.”

“The hole is filling up. The wedges are sitting in mud.”

“I know.”

“The timber is wet. If a lever slips—”

“Then it slips.”

“Then there are men under it.”

“Men we have.” The Eldest didn’t look down. “If the stone tips to the south, it breaks. Then we wait five years for a new one.”

“We don’t have five years.”

“No.”

The boy had heard it. He held on tighter.

“There. The clouds.”

Above the lintels the sky tore open. A constellation slid toward the gap.

“One more hand’s breadth.”

“Less, then.”

“How many?” the boy asked over his shoulder. He looked up at the stones that stood in a circle around them.

“Count them,” said the Eldest.

The boy didn’t count.

“One for each,” said the Eldest. “Every stone stands for one we have given. This is not a circle. This is a memory made of blood.”

“The cult is older than the memory of men.” The Eldest spoke to the sky, not to him. “The first stones were already standing when the world was still made of ice, set by the paths of the stars. Longer than any empire that ever wrote itself in stone.” He lifted his chin toward the sign. “The sky wanders. The stars wander with it. When the sign stands there and the child draws its first breath, we begin the count again.”

“How do we know it’s breathing?”

“Because the sign stands there.”

“Now!”

“Wedges out! Pull!”

The oxen threw their weight into the yoke. The rope sprang taut, and one of the men hung in it. He had looped it around his forearm to hold it better. Now it held him.

He screamed.

The loop pulled tight. He braced his feet in the mud, wrenched, threw himself back. The rope didn’t give. The hand below the loop turned blue. The fingers stopped moving.

“Hold him!”

Hands seized him, by the shoulders, by the belt, by the neck. Someone turned his head away, to the side, into the rain.

Wind lashed across the pit. Shouting everywhere. Above them the stone swayed, heavy as twenty oxen, on wet timber.

“The rope stays!”

The ax came.

One blow. The man bucked in their hands. A second. A third.

Blood ran into the wet ground, a great deal of it, and the rain carried it off.

He toppled sideways. Someone tied off the stump with a strap, someone else shoved a piece of wood between his teeth. He lay in the mud and shook.

No one stayed with him. The stone swayed.

“Pull!”

A jerk in the rope. Then a dull impact, and the mud sprayed as far as the oxen.

For the space of a breath, no one said anything.

“To the left. A hand’s breadth.”

“Another.”

“Good.”

“One is nothing,” said the Eldest. “The next.”

On the third day the seekers came to the Eldest. They were already standing in their traveling cloaks.

“The Vessel lives. How much longer are we to wait?”

“Until the last one stands.”

“It’s breathing somewhere, and we’re standing here in the mud.”

“The stones first.”