Ravenna, December 13, 476 AD
Nineteen days after the arrival of Gelasius.
The request came during breakfast.
Romulus was chewing hard bread dipped in warm milk, a morning habit he had maintained since childhood because his mother taught him and because the bread in Ravenna was indeed too hard to eat without soaking it first. Fritigern sat across the table, in the chair that had unofficially become her spot for the past week, ever since Romulus decided that his most famous prisoner deserved to eat at a proper table instead of on the cell floor.
Spurius did not like this arrangement. He ate at the other end of the table with a face that looked like he was chewing stones, not bread. But he did not protest. Not anymore.
"Romulus," Fritigern said. Her voice was casual, as if what she was about to say was no more important than the weather. But Romulus knew her well enough to realize that Fritigern never started a sentence without a purpose.
"Hmm?"
"I want to go to the camp."
Romulus stopped chewing. Spurius, at the end of the table, raised his head.
"The barbarian camp?" Romulus asked.
"I have not been there since you captured me. It has been almost a month. My people are there. I want to see how they are doing."
Spurius had already opened his mouth to say no before Romulus could respond. But Romulus raised his hand, a small gesture he had just learned in the past few weeks, a gesture that said 'I am deciding this' without needing to vocalize it.
"Why?" Romulus asked. Not refusing. Not agreeing. Asking.
"Because they are still my people, even though I sit at your table," Fritigern answered. Her eyes did not avoid Romulus's gaze. "I will not pretend that they do not exist just because you gave me blankets and warm soup. They are still living in that camp. Freezing. Starving. And they must be wondering what happened to me."
Romulus stared at Fritigern. In his eyes there was a small battle that took place quickly. He had learned, thanks to their nightly conversations, that Fritigern did not lie. Fritigern withheld information, yes. Kept secrets, certainly. But lying outright was not how Fritigern operated. And this request sounded honest.
"Return before afternoon," Romulus said. "Before the sun touches the western wall."
"Caesar..." Spurius began.
"Before the sun touches the western wall," Romulus repeated without turning to Spurius. His voice was calm but final. "And two guards will accompany you to the camp gate. They will wait outside."
Fritigern nodded.
"Thank you."
Romulus went back to chewing his bread. Fritigern stood and walked out without looking back. Spurius stared at the woman's back until she disappeared behind the door, then shifted his gaze to Romulus with an expression combining frustration, worry, and a reluctant acknowledgment that he had already lost this fight.
"You trust him too much," Spurius said quietly.
"Perhaps," Romulus answered. "Or perhaps trust is the only thing I can offer that is more valuable than a prison."
Spurius did not answer. He dipped his bread into the milk and chewed in silence. But behind his silence, he was already calculating. Already planning. Two guards outside the camp were indeed Romulus's orders. But Spurius would add three more scouts, hidden among the buildings around the camp, unknown to anyone but himself.
Trust is one thing. Carelessness is another.
The Western Sector barbarian camp was a place that made Fritigern want to cry and kill someone at the same time.
She walked through the wooden gates guarded by Roman soldiers who looked at her with a mixture of suspicion and confusion. Her two guards stopped outside the gates according to Romulus's instructions, giving her space to enter alone. And the moment her feet stepped onto the muddy and foul-smelling earth of the camp, all the memories she had pushed to the back of her head for a month came rushing back.
Tents made of patchwork fabric and animal skins that had worn thin. Small campfires that produced more smoke than heat. Children playing in the mud with bare feet even though the December air bit to the bone. Women washing clothes in buckets of nearly frozen water, their hands red and cracked from the cold. Men sitting with empty eyes, their weapons confiscated, their pride trampled upon.
Her people. Her nation. Whom she left here while she ate bread at the emperor's table and practiced swords in a marble courtyard.
Guilt attacked her chest like a punch coming from within.
An old Heruli woman whom Fritigern once knew in Odoacer's camp stood in front of a nearly collapsing tent, repairing leather stitching with hands trembling from the cold. The woman raised her face as Fritigern passed by. Her eyes narrowed, recognizing, then widened.
"Fritigern," the woman whispered. "We thought they had killed you."
"Not yet," Fritigern answered briefly without stopping her walk.
"They feed you?" the woman asked, her eyes tracing Fritigern's body which was clearly healthier than anyone else in the camp. "You look fuller than last time."
Fritigern did not answer. She quickened her pace. The woman's words clung to her back like arrows not sharp enough to pierce but heavy enough to be felt.
You look fuller. Yes. Because I eat warm soup every day while they chew hard bread and drink half frozen water. Because the Roman emperor gave me thick blankets while the children in this camp sleep huddled together to ward off the cold. Because I chose the comfort of the palace's underground cell over shared misery in the camp that belongs to my people.
News of her arrival spread through the camp faster than fire in a dry field. Some called her name with a tone that was a mixture of relief and anger. Some spat on the ground as she passed. Some bowed their heads with the respect that still remained.
She had not walked a hundred paces when a young man ran up to her. His breath was panting, his eyes wide.
"Fritigern! The leaders want to meet with you. In Gisulf's tent. Now."
Fritigern felt something move at the pit of her stomach. Not surprise. She knew this was going to happen. She knew that returning to the camp meant facing questions she had managed to avoid for a month behind the cell walls which, ironically, were exactly what protected her from her own people.
"Show the way," Fritigern said.
Gisulf's tent was the largest tent in the camp, which meant its size was only slightly larger than a servant's bedroom in the Ravenna palace. Patched animal skins formed its walls and roof, with holes in several places covered by wet cloth that did little to block the wind. In the middle of the tent, a small fire burned on stones surrounded by a circle of dirt, its smoke billowing up through a hole at the top of the tent and vanishing into the gray sky above.
The three barbarian leaders were already waiting.
Gisulf sat on a pile of deer skins, his massive scarred body looking increasingly older beneath the flickering firelight. Beside him, Torsten crouched in a position that looked uncomfortable but which for the Rugii people was a natural resting stance. And Hrodic stood in the darkest corner of the tent, leaning against a wooden pole, sharpening a small knife with slow, constant motions that soothed himself more than they sharpened anything.
Fritigern entered and sat across the fire uninvited. Her hands folded in her lap. Her face was flat. Fritigern's mask was perfectly in place.
"I thought we would have to send someone into the sewers to meet you," Gisulf said, the smirk on his face displaying his incomplete teeth. "But you came yourself. On foot. With the permission of your little emperor."
"Say what you want to say, Gisulf," Fritigern answered. "I have to return before afternoon."
"Return." Gisulf repeated the word with a tone dripping with poison. "Return to your cell. To your blanket. To your emperor's dining table. To sword practice every morning where you teach the art of war of our people to the one who annihilated our brothers."
The fire in the middle of the tent crackled. Small sparks flew between the tense faces.
"I teach him to fight," Fritigern said. "It is the only thing I offer that keeps me useful and keeps me alive."
"Useful to whom?" That was Hrodic. His voice was low and quiet from the dark corner. His knife stopped moving. "Useful to your people who rot behind these wooden fences? Or useful to the Romans who gave you a blanket as a reward for your betrayal?"
A muscle in Fritigern's jaw twitched. The only sign that those words pierced her defense.
Torsten spoke, his voice more calculative than his two comrades. Colder. Without emotion cluttering his thoughts.
"We did not call you here to scold," Torsten said. "We called you because you have something no one else in this camp possesses. You have access."
The word hung in the stuffy tent air like the smell of dried blood.
"You train with the emperor every day," Torsten continued, his fingers drawing patterns in the dirt as was his habit when thinking. "You eat at his table. He trusts you enough to let you come here without chains, without guards inside the camp. His guard is down around you. Open. Like a person who was never taught that trust can be the deadliest weapon."
"Say it clearly," Fritigern said. "I do not like people who speak in circles."
"Kill him," Torsten said. Flat. Simple. Like discussing the specifications of a table, not murder. "One stab. During training. When his guard is down. When he smiles and thinks that you are his friend. In the neck or under the ribs. He will not even have time to scream."
The words dropped in the tent like stones dropped onto the surface of calm water. Its ripples spread in all directions.
"And after he dies?" Fritigern asked. Her voice was steady. Trained.
"Chaos," Gisulf said with satisfaction. "Without an emperor, Ravenna collapses. Vitus and Spurius will fight over who leads. The army will splinter. And in that chaos, we break out of this camp. We seize weapons from their armory. And we walk out of this city as free men."
Hrodic stepped out of the shadows. He walked toward Fritigern and stood before her, looking down. His voice carried a weight that could not be ignored.
"You have the blood of Fritigern, young boy. Fritigern the Goth. Who defeated Rome at Adrianople. That blood flows in your veins. And now that blood, the blood that once made Rome kneel, is teaching war tactics to a Roman boy."
Hrodic's words hit the exact spot. Fritigern felt the sting, sharp and deep, at the point where blood loyalty met the new reality that had begun to grow inside her.
Hrodic extended his hand. In his palm, wrapped in cloth, lay a dagger. Small. Thin. Its blade was no longer than a palm, but sharp. Sharp enough to pierce skin and find the vein beneath.
"Hide it in your belt," Torsten said. "Wait for the right time. We give you three days. If in three days that emperor is still breathing, we will assume that you have chosen your side."
He did not explain the consequences of choosing the wrong side. He did not need to. In their world, traitors to the blood received no trial or prison. They received a slow death, in front of a campfire, surrounded by people who once called them brother.
In her head, two voices shouted simultaneously.
The first voice was the voice of blood. The voice of a mother dragged from a pile of hay. The voice of a father whose neck was broken. The voice of an entire tribe slaughtered on a night she could never forget. The voice that said; it was Rome that caused division among her people, Rome destroyed everything. Rome took everything. And now Rome, in the form of a brown-eyed little boy who gives you blankets and apples, is taking the last thing you have left. Your identity. Your loyalty. Your blood.
The second voice was a newer voice. Quieter. The voice born in the underground cell, amid midnight conversations and apples tossed through iron bars and small smiles that appeared increasingly often on a face that was supposed to be the face of her enemy. The voice that said; he also lost everything. He is also an orphan. He was also forced to become something he is not. And he comes down here every night not because you are useful to him, but because he is lonely. Just like you.
Fritigern extended her hand. Took the dagger from Hrodic's palm.
The cold metal touched her skin. Familiar. Comforting and terrifying at the same time. She slipped the dagger behind her belt, in a place hidden by the folds of her tunic.
"Three days," Fritigern said.
Gisulf grinned widely. Torsten nodded. Hrodic returned to his dark corner without saying a word.
Fritigern stood and walked out of the tent. The daylight blinded her eyes after the darkness of the stuffy tent. She walked through the camp without looking right or left, her steps steady and her path straight, leaving her people behind with a promise she had not yet decided whether to keep or betray.
The dagger at her waist felt like a block of ice that never melted.
She reached the camp gate before the sun reached the middle of the sky. The two guards waited with bored faces. She walked past them without speaking, heading back toward the palace, back toward Romulus.
Back toward the person she had to kill in three days. Or not.
That afternoon, training proceeded as usual.
Romulus was already waiting in the enclosed yard when Fritigern arrived. A wooden sword in his right hand, an awkward smile on a face still sleepy from a nap he stole between his meeting with Vitus and his lesson with Gelasius.
Fritigern stood at the far end of the yard. A wooden sword in her right hand. The dagger hidden behind her belt, pressing against the skin of her waist like a constant whisper that could not be ignored.
"How was the camp?" Romulus asked while stretching his shoulders.
"Still standing," Fritigern answered. "Still cold. Still hungry."
Romulus stopped stretching his body. Stared at Fritigern.
"I will speak with Vitus about their food rations," Romulus said. "There is no use letting people starve in our own backyard. A starving person is a person with nothing left to fear, and a person without fear is the most dangerous person in the world."
You learned that from me, Fritigern thought. It was I who taught you about a person with no fear of death. And now you use it to protect yourself from my people without realizing the irony.
"Let us train," Fritigern said, changing the subject before her thoughts swallowed her alive.
They trained at close range. Fritigern taught Romulus how to lock an opponent's arm and turn their balance. Dirty and efficient techniques that were not taught in any Roman military academy. Romulus learned at an impressive speed. Every technique Fritigern demonstrated, he tried, failed, tried again, adjusted, and tried once more until his brain and muscles began to communicate without a pause.
And at one moment, when Romulus fell with his back facing Fritigern, when his body was open and his neck was exposed and the distance between Fritigern's hand and the dagger at her waist was only a hand's breadth, the moment arrived.
The perfect moment.
Fritigern's hand moved. Her fingers touched the hilt of the dagger through the tunic fabric. Feeling its cold metal. Feeling its shape. Feeling its promise.
Now, whispered the voice of blood in her head. His back is open. His neck is exposed. He will not see it coming. One stab and it is all over. One stab and your people are free. One stab and you become a hero of the Gothic nation.
Her fingers wrapped around the dagger's hilt.
Then Romulus rolled on the ground and turned to face her. His face was full of dirt and sweat. And he smiled. Not the smile of an emperor. Not the smile of a victor. The smile of a child who had just learned something new and could not wait to try again.
"I almost got it this time!" Romulus said, his face beaming even though his shoulder clearly hurt from the fall. "Did you see? I almost broke out of your lock!"
That smile.
An innocent smile that did not know the hand that had just taught him to fight was the same hand gripping the hilt of a dagger aimed at his neck.
Fritigern released the dagger's hilt.
Her fingers let go of the metal as if touching hot coals. She pulled her hand back to her side and clenched it until her nails dug into her palm.
"Yes," Fritigern said. Her voice was slightly hoarser than usual. "Almost. Again."
They trained again. And Fritigern did not touch the dagger again for the rest of the training.
The second day was harder than the first.
Fritigern brought the dagger to training. Hidden in the same spot. Romulus was already there, shadowboxing alone, repeating the movements Fritigern taught him yesterday with an obsessive diligence. His lips moved soundlessly, counting the beats. One, two, turn. One, two, turn.
On the other side of the city, in the barbarian camp, Gisulf stood near the wooden fence and observed the palace watchtower in the distance. Torsten sat beside him.
"It is already the second day," Gisulf said without turning.
"I know how to count, Gisulf."
"And that little emperor is still breathing."
"Perhaps Fritigern is waiting for the right moment."
Gisulf snorted. His breath formed white steam in the December air.
"Or perhaps that boy is already too comfortable in Roman blankets. Too full of the soup and apples and sweet words of his little emperor."
Hrodic emerged from behind the nearest tent. His face was flat as stone.
"One more day," Hrodic said. "If there is no news tomorrow, we take another path."
He did not explain what another path meant. But his hand moved to his waist, to the place where the small knife he had already given to Fritigern usually rested.
Meanwhile, in the training yard, perfect moments continued to appear. Romulus grew more confident, opened up more often, and more frequently turned his back to Fritigern. Every moment was an invitation. Every dropped guard was an open door.
Fritigern did not go in.
On the second night, Romulus went down to the cell as usual. Bringing two pears this time, because the kitchen's apple stock had run out. They sat facing each other, separated by iron bars, and Romulus recounted his lesson with Gelasius. About Marcus Aurelius. About the difference between hard and strong.
"Gelasius said my mother asked me to be strong, not hard," Romulus said, chewing his pear. "A stone is hard but shatters. Iron is strong but flexible." He stopped chewing. Stared at Fritigern through the bars. "Do you think you are stone or iron?"
Fritigern bit into her pear. Chewed slowly. Giving herself time to answer a question far heavier than Romulus realized.
"I don't know," Fritigern answered. "Perhaps I am neither. Perhaps I am water. Water is not hard and not strong. But water can pierce stone if given enough time. And water always finds its way, no matter how many walls you build in front of it."
Romulus smiled.
"Water," Romulus said, nodding. "I like that."
Fritigern pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders. A blanket from Romulus. The dagger to kill Romulus was hidden in the folds of the same blanket. Both objects were wrapped together in the same corner of the same cell, and that contradiction felt like someone was tearing her soul into two pieces that could never be sewn back together into one.
The third day. Gisulf's deadline.
Fritigern stood in the training yard with the dagger at her waist and a decision unmade. Romulus was already there, shadowboxing alone, his footing already lighter than last week, his movements already possessing a flow that was not entirely Roman and not entirely barbarian. Something new. Something solely his own.
Fritigern observed him from the edge of the yard. And in that moment, with a clarity that came suddenly like lightning in the winter sky, she realized something.
She was not going to do it.
Not because she could not. She could. She had killed before. These hands had taken lives. One stab in the right place and it would all be over.
But she was not going to do it.
Because that boy smiled at her. That boy came down into the rat hole every night to speak with her. That boy removed her chains with his own hands. That boy brought apples and pears he stole from the kitchen and considered it grand theft even though he was the emperor of all Italy. That boy told her his nightmares. Told her about his dead mother. Told her his fears.
And Fritigern, who had lost everything, realized she could not bear to be the one who took everything from someone else.
Not from this person.
That decision descended into her with a strange weight. Not relief. Not calmness. More like a boulder finally finding the riverbed after falling from a very high cliff. Heavy. Final. Irretractable.
And with that decision came a consequence she understood with perfect clarity: Gisulf would not forgive this. The three days would end. The emperor was still breathing. And they would come for her. Not as brothers. As executioners.
Unless she acted first.
Romulus stopped training. Turned to her.
"Hey. Are you going to start or are you going to stand there staring at me like a statue all day?"
Fritigern walked to the center of the yard. Raised her wooden sword.
"Again," Fritigern said.
They trained. As usual. Falling, rising, turning, attacking, evading. The Dance of the Wolf that had become their daily ritual. But today Fritigern trained with a different intensity. Harder. Faster. As if every strike and every leg sweep was her way of bringing the decision she had just made out from inside herself and planting it into the hard earth.
Romulus felt that change. He did not comment on it. But his eyes were sharper than usual, observing Fritigern with an alertness that showed he was beginning to learn how to read other people, not just reading the books of Marcus Aurelius.
When training finished, they sat leaning against the yard wall. Gasping breaths. Sweat flowing. The December air cooled their wet skin.
Fritigern stared at the gray sky above the training yard. Low clouds moved slowly east, carrying the promise of rain that had not yet arrived.
Tonight, she thought. Tonight I must decide not only whether I will kill Romulus or not. That has already been decided. What I must decide now is what I will do with that decision.
Stay silent and wait for Gisulf to come looking for her. Or act first.
Water always finds its way, she thought. I said that to Romulus last night. Now it is time to prove if I am right.
Romulus stood, dusting off his trousers.
"Tomorrow morning?" Romulus asked. The same question every day. Simple and innocent.
"Tomorrow morning," Fritigern answered.
Romulus nodded. Smiled. Walked away. His steps were light, as always after training. The steps of a child who did not know that he had just been freed from a death sentence he never knew was passed upon his head.
Fritigern stared at his back until he disappeared behind the doors of the training yard.
Then she reached into her tunic. Her fingers touched the hilt of the dagger one last time. Cold and lifeless metal. A weapon that never touched Romulus's skin and now never would.
She pulled the dagger out. Stared at it. The December afternoon light reflected on its polished surface, creating a thin white line that moved along with the motion of her hand.
Then she slipped it back into her belt.
Not to kill Romulus. For something else.
Tonight, Fritigern thought while walking back to her cell, her steps heavier than usual but her direction more certain, I will seek out Vitus.
And somewhere inside her, in a place that had been locked up for so long and sealed by eight years of disguise and solitude, something small and warm and very dangerous finally took shape.
Not love. Not yet.
But loyalty.
Loyalty to someone who saw her not as a barbarian, not as an enemy, not as a masked warrior. Someone who looked at her and laughed, and in that laugh there was a whole world that Fritigern or Gisela had never possessed.