Sirens at the Gate
The River Allia, 16 miles north of Rome
202BCE
As Adagio looked down into the filthy, muddy waters of the Allia, she considered what a pitiful, wretched little tributary it was compared to the mighty Tiber. And yet what the destiny of such a small thing could have on those who relied on the mighty and grand. For after all that they’d suffered, all that they’d lost since this stupid, insignificant fight over land first began, she and the others couldn’t descend any further into the bowels of desperation.
She looked over at Aria and Sonata. It struck her faintly how differently they were taking their losses than her. Aria with impotent and directionless rage, incapable of even expressing it through action, and reduced to a sort of horrified contemplation. Sonata, her expression drained to emptiness as she knelt at the river’s edge, stared into the muddy waters as though seriously contemplating drowning herself in it. In some small part of Adagio’s predator’s heart, she knew that Sonata had lost the most.
A plopping sound beneath her drew her attention back to the stream, and she suddenly realised that she could taste blood. She wiped the trail from her lip and chin, and looked south to where she knew the walls of Rome stood, tall and unassailable. But she would assail them. She would breach those grand defences, walk sedately to the Senate building, to the centre of Roman power, and with nothing but the force of her voice, would bring her enemies low, bring certain annihilation down upon those who had wronged not only her, but Aria and Sonata as well. Those humans who had dared to injure them with their petty conflicts and ridiculous wars, to inflict their narrow prejudices upon them.
In time the meaning and significance of this chain link in the endless proliferation of human misery would be lost, cast aside by the significance of the next war, and then the next war, and then the next. But they would survive. They three would outlive the war, outlast even these pretentious little civilisations aspiring to their spot in the dusty annals of history by casting aside lives like theirs.
Very well then. If the lives of ordinary people was a just expense to pay for glory and renown, then perhaps it was time that they three took that cause up again.
Small village north-east of Carthago Nova. Carthaginian Province in Iberia.
Spring 218BCE
As Adagio looked down into the filthy, muddy water in the jug she’d been given, she considered exactly what to say to the child looking at her hopefully. She raised one perfect eyebrow, and opened her mouth slowly, as though still thinking through what she was going to say.
“You expect a hay-shekel for this?” she demanded, tipping the water onto the straw-covered ground. “You can either go back and get a proper jug full, or I’ll get some other rat to do it.”
The boy took the jug back, his face carefully smooth but his eyes flickering with irritation. Without a word he ran back off down the road.
“And if I catch you spitting in it again, I’ll put you in my pot like other witches do!”
Smirking, she stood back up and turned into her home. A sound of annoyance preceded her back into the wooden hovel.
“Could you not do that?” Aria snapped from her place by the fire. “Even if you like the attention, I’d rather not be made some priestess.”
“Or have people threaten to bury us up to our necks and have us trampled,” Sonata put in cheerfully. “Remember that guy?”
“Yes, Sonata, we remember that guy,” Aria sighed. “It was only a month ago.”
Sonata blinked. “Oh yeah.” She grinned. “Man, he was angry.”
“Yeah, and no wonder,” Aria snorted, pointedly looking at Adagio. “Someone pushed his wife into a ditch.”
“She told me to jump in a hole,” Adagio responded placidly, picking up her needlework. “I thought it only fair that as the older woman she get to go first.”
“Uh huh,” Aria said meaningfully. “Whatever. Just try not to piss off any more village leaders, okay? You’re lucky she didn’t die from that fall or we’d all be chewing horseshoes right now.”
“I like this village,” Sonata intoned dreamily. “It’s by the sea.”
Aria harrumphed. “It’s not like our sea.”
“It does taste a little different,” Sonata agreed. “I didn’t think I could throw up so much.”
Aria gave Adagio a gimlet look. “A world without magic, and we don’t age. How does that make sense?”
Adagio shrugged. “I like it. Plenty of conflict here. Gives us room to hunt properly.”
“Speaking of food,” Aria uttered ruminatively. “How much fish do we have left?”
Sonata let out a small noise and, too late, looked away, apparently fascinated with something in the mud-lined stick wall. Aria’s head snapped around, her purple eyes drilling into her.
“I swear to Tanit, if you’ve eaten all the meat—“
“I haven’t!” Sonata cried empathically. “Well, not all of it.”
Aria snarled and stomped out of the doorway. Within seconds she was back inside, her brow dark.
“I suppose I should be grateful you didn’t eat everything else.”
“You know we need some of that to sell, right?” Adagio asked acidly, glaring at Sonata too. “If you were hungry, you should have gone hunting.”
“But I was hungry right then,” Sonata whined.
“Fine,” Aria said in clipped tones. She threw up her hands. “Fine, I’m done. You can get more of the fish by yourself.”
“What!?” Sonata exclaimed, jumping to her feet. “No!”
“It’s only fair,” Adagio intoned, grinning wickedly.
“But you guys know I like to chase the bears!” Sonata shouted, anger driving her distress into the beginnings of a tantrum.
“You should have thought about that before you stuffed your fat face,” Aria snapped, throwing her a conical wooden trap. “Happy fishing. I’m going to find that wolf pack.”
“Seriously?” Adagio asked, her eyebrows arching.
Aria raised a warning finger and pointed it at Adagio. “That alpha wolf has it coming,” she said firmly. “I don’t care if he’s just some dumb animal, you don’t kill-steal.”
Taking up a crude spear, she headed out of the hovel.
“Do I really have to go alone?” Sonata asked quietly.
“Just this once,” Adagio said unsympathetically. “Look on the bright side. As far south as we are, maybe you’ll catch a dolphin.”
Sonata’s eyes sparkled with sudden excitement. “Oooh, do you think so? What do they taste like?”
Adagio shrugged. “I guess you’ll be the first to find out.”
Squealing with delight, Sonata sprinted out of the door, forgetting the wooden trap. Adagio’s mouth thinned slightly as her eyes lingered on the device itself. The spears, the nets, the traps. They needed none of them.
In Equestria, before their banishment, Adagio’s race were voracious predators, content to hunt the oceans and coastal areas. They were loathe to go to the surface, even though they were perfectly capable of doing so. Most disliked the awkwardness of mobility, but Adagio, Aria, and Sonata had had a magical solution to that problem their fellows hadn’t. Additionally, the vast majority of them didn’t devour sentient creatures; a byproduct of their biology. Even though Adagio’s people were not a generally social species, it didn’t do to kill one’s fellows if instead working together meant killing and eating bigger things, and it certainly didn’t do to accidentally murder one’s own children. Her people’s maternal instincts were amongst the strongest known among sentients in Equestria, and many larger, generally stronger predators had regretted targeting a child of her race whilst its mother was within reach.
But with this one minor genetic quirk aside, they were swift and tactical killers, employing a wide range of methods of foolproof slaughter. It was just as well that they remained underwater. Insufferably docile as they were, ponies were a formidable race, as Starswirl the Bearded had proven.
It was all wasted here, though, in the human world. As Aria had (wisely) caught quickly onto, this was not a magical world despite the innumerable beliefs and stories propagated by its inhabitants. The three of them knew what real magic was, and there was nothing of it here, or they would have devoured it by now and regained their quondam power. In fact despite their apparent adulation of magic, humans exhibited a paradoxically strong fear of anyone who actually did possess it, or appeared to possess it.
“Not that they’re wrong to,” Adagio muttered as a small smile curved her mouth, thinking of Aria’s example of the chieftain’s wife. But the fact also remained that Aria worried too much about it. Being all uptight and strung up would probably make the issue worse, at least in Adagio’s opinion, and besides, wasn’t everything good in moderation?
In the years since being banished, Adagio had picked up several essential skills. One of which was the trained ability to make such rationalisations. It helped after being on the cusp of ultimate power, only to be dropped into a world where her once world-dominating powers were reduced to the basic physical capabilities of her species. The second skill, which she was half angry, half reluctant to admit she actually liked doing, was sewing. Which after several centuries in the human world, she was frankly quite good at. As she sat by the entrance in the warm autumn air, she finished work on the animal skin hat she’d been tackling, and laid it to one side.
“Here you go, ma’am,” the boy said as he set the jug of water down. “It’s clear, look.”
“So it is,” Adagio mused.
Reaching a finger down, she slowly stirred the water, narrowing her eyes. Holding her facial muscles under strict control, she started murmuring something under her breath. Just enough. Just enough to suggest something.
The boy’s eyes flashed between the jug and her, his face paling as he took a few steps back. Then Adagio abruptly stopped murmuring, and the atmosphere broke.
“Good boy,” she whispered. “You didn’t spit in it.”
With a dextrous movement of her arm, she whipped the hat up and onto the boy’s head.
“There you are,” she said, “as promised.”
“You promised bronze!” the boy complained, whipping the hat off his head.
“That’s worth more than a bronze hay-shekel,” Adagio pointed out. “Don’t be ungrateful. I’m paying you more than I promised despite your mistake.”
“There was nothing wrong with that water,” the boy chuntered, scowling. “What am I supposed to do with this?”
“Wear it,” Adagio explained flatly. “It’ll be winter eventually.”
“It’s spring,” the boy growled under his breath. Without further preamble, he turned and ran into the village’s sparse arrangement of wooden structures surrounding the central market.
“So ungrateful,” Adagio sighed.
As soon as she entered the nearby forest, Adagio set the spear she was carrying down. Like Aria’s, it was for token effect, but had gotten them good relations with Salicar, the local blacksmith. For a moment, she considered what the best course of action was going to be. With the onset of autumn, most of the regular game was starting to thin out, and a lot of the predators were beginning to branch outwards, seeking more food. Adagio didn’t have that luxury, but what she did have were three advantages; natural aspects of her race that for whatever reason remained with her.
Made for underwater use, her sense of smell was less effective in the air, but still keener than that of a human. Her hearing on the other hand was extremely acute when focused. A particular derivation in her race’s diversification had rendered them the ability to actively sharpen their hearing through concentration. The third thing she retained was an unnatural strength for her size, which even in human form remained. It wasn’t absurd, boulder-crushing strength or anything quite so hyperbolic, but she had once left a noticeable dent and crack in a limestone block when travelling through Egypt. It was either the block, or some guy’s face, and on tap she’d considered the block would be easier to clean up.
Adagio walked sedately in between the trees, casually but expertly avoiding making overt noise where she trod. It was always so jarring to step on a twig when she was enhancing her hearing. She tried not to rely on her sight too much. Another vestige of her true nature, her vision edged ever so slightly into the infra-red, the better to see in deep waters, but out of the absolute darkness of the deep ocean and in even the dimmest of sunlight it was almost completely useless. Reliance on sight however was a habit that came with being human.
The mixtures of greens, oranges, reds, and yellows blurred and compacted, deadening her depth perception and making it difficult to perceive descents, ledges, or tree roots running beneath the fallen leaves. She stepped carefully, slowly relying on her tactile senses to judge her tread, her touch on the sides of trees, the movement of the air in case the faintest whiff of prey—
She stopped, all of her muscles tight as her ear twitched.
She remained perfectly still for exactly twelve seconds, her eyes still and unfocused as she drew in long, slow breaths, and slid her tongue slowly out into the light breeze filtering through the trees. Her eyes narrowed.
The smallest flurry of disturbed leaves. A desperate squeaking.
“A rat,” Adagio concluded flatly, holding the squealing thing in her claw-like hand. Her lip curled as she looked into its tiny black eyes, feeling its limbs struggle beneath her iron fingers. She sighed.
As she made her way deeper into the forest, the wrap over her feet helping to deaden the sounds of her steps, she was disappointed to find that her tasting the air had given her a more-or-less accurate view of her surroundings. Small creatures practically everywhere, hidden and wary of her. She could detect no larger beast in the vicinity.
She scowled, thinking she’d have to go further north and get a scent in the other direction. Perhaps that was the problem. It was risky though. As they lived on the south side of the village, going north through the trees would put her within sight of the village market. She certainly couldn’t be seen in hunting mode by her neighbours. That would be the outside of enough for many of them.
On the other hand, she really had no choice. So long as she was simply scouting out her prey, there could be no chance of detection. As long as no one saw her relatively inhuman reflexes as she brought down her kills, there should be no suspicion.
“Don’t do it.”
Adagio had to work not to make a sound of alarm, although even if she had made one, her canopy-high leap would probably have distracted from it.
“Found your wolf, then,” she snarled between her teeth as she tried to force her breathing back to normal.
Aria grinned, showing more teeth than was perhaps natural. Although in total it certainly was more teeth than was natural, considering she had gained an extra set of them. She sat perched on a nearby half-buried boulder, the pelt of a fairly large slate-coloured wolf draped over her like a grisly cloak. With her spear in one hand and her eyes full of supernatural fire, she looked uncannily like some kind of forest spirit. And not one of the friendly, lead-you-out-of-the-forest-and-offer-protection-to-your-crops kind of spirits, either. The darkening blood smothered across her face and hands, and speckled across her naked body made the idea an overly optimistic fantasy of the desperate and cornered.
“And there you were having a go at me for blowing our cover,” Adagio said mildly.
“It’s not my fault,” Aria snorted, jumping off the rock. “He tore up my clothes with all that struggling.” She gave Adagio a twisted smile. “So I took his instead. It was only fair.”
“I suppose you’re expecting me to sew that into something wearable,” Adagio inquired in a tone of false courtesy.
“Unless you want me to walk around naked,” Aria said, shrugging.
“That’ll be quite the thing to see in winter,” Adagio sneered, pinching one of Aria’s nipples.
Aria compressed her lips and turned pinker than her natural skin tone usually permitted, but said nothing to it. Instead she changed the subject.
“So what did you catch?” she asked, her eyes narrowing on Adagio’s mouth.
“Nothing much,” Adagio answered blithely, removing with a thumb whatever evidence from her lips that Aria was focusing on. “Small rabbit. Game is harder to find.”
“True,” Aria concurred, looking around. “All I can smell here are rats. There must be plenty around if I’m smelling right.”
“Must be,” Adagio agreed.
“Although,” Aria continued, “the pack was further north than they usually are. Maybe there’s still something that way.”
The legendary mountains of the land they occupied, the Pyrenees, were a far distance to the north, but the mountains near to Qart Hadasht – the principal Carthaginian city from whence most of the villagers spread out from – were nothing to sneeze at. The extant forests of their hunting ground hugged close to the subtle rise of the mountain range, giving anyone there an elevated view of the coastline, and indeed the village that settled it.
“We need to catch something,” Aria grumbled after walking for half an hour. “The sea always has fish, and even Sonata can catch them. If she comes back with more food than us, she’s going to be insufferable.”
Adagio felt only half the pain of the thought that Aria did, but it was enough to turn her stomach juices into sour milk.
“Didn’t you keep any of the wolf meat?” she asked.
“No,” Aria scoffed. “Unless you want to sell the bone marrow.”
“Well I’m glad you’re fed,” Adagio said icily. “What about the rest of us?”
“Relax,” Aria sighed dismissively. “We’ll catch something. If we can get a daddy bear, that’ll keep the villagers happy, us fed, and Sonata mad as hell.” She snickered. “Dibs on the liver.”
“No dibs,” Adagio said firmly.
“You’re right,” Aria conceded cheerfully. “It tastes much better to simply take it from you during the frenzy.”
Adagio rolled her eyes, but made no verbal response. As she did, she noticed through the trees on the distant northerly edge of the village. Owing to the placement of high ground around the southernmost point of the settlement, the proper entrance stood to the northwest, where a road to the south bent a semi-circular path through the mountains to the west. On this road, at great speed, were a dozen-or-so horsemen, all wearing bright bronze armour and bearing sheathed spatha.
“Ooh,” Aria intoned grimly, leaning close to Adagio so that she could see in the same direction. “Think we’re going to need to find a new village? Those guys look kind of pillage-y.”
“I don’t think so,” Adagio muttered, narrowing her eyes. “Isn’t that the mark of Tanit?” she asked, pointing at the lead horseman’s shield.
“Oh yeah, you’re right,” Aria said, sounding relieved. “Now that I think about it, Salicar told me about the army at Qart Hadasht being moved to some place up the coast.”
“There aren’t any Carthaginian lands up that way,” Adagio said thoughtfully.
“No,” Aria agreed. “They have a few allies, but Sal said there’s been trouble with the Greeks at Saguntum up there.”
Adagio scowled at that. She, Aria, and Sonata had lived in the area since the Iberians had been dominant, before the establishment of Qart Hadasht, and if there was one thing they’d been perpetually made aware of since the Carthaginians arrived, it was their hatred for the Romans. And Saguntum was a known Roman ally in the north.
“Let’s just finish up here and get back,” Adagio said, her eyes lingering on the men. “It wouldn’t do for them to find Sonata alone. Who knows what idiocy might come spilling out of her mouth.”
Aria chuckled a little more. “I don’t know, that sounds like it could be—“
Both of them stiffened, their head simultaneously shifting to look in the same direction. Through the knots of trees, in the still of the autumn colours, was a patch of brown that moved. A glint of deep brown eyes, and a large black snout, a mass of shaggy brown bulk turned in their direction.
The bear huffed, letting out a low growl as though considering whether it was worth the effort trying to chase down two mostly hairless monkeys. After tilting its head one way and then the other, it seemed to decide that it was, and lumbered its way towards them.
Both Adagio and Aria gave each other matching looks.
- To be Continued