"Finish him, Arden," one of the Celts hissed.
"The lady is fond of him," the leader said, breathing heavily.
"Finish him before he dooms us all!"
Valeria lifted herself to run, but a boot caught her in the stomach. She went down again heavily, the wind knocked out of her, stars dancing, breath clogged, the distraction diverting the barbarian leader's eye. It was enough! Clodius leaped, sword whistling in a long overhead stroke. Now he would avenge his ambush!
And yet the counterreaction was instinctual and instantaneous. The Celt ducked under the descending blade and lunged forward, his own sword stabbing through the Roman's stomach and out his back before either man knew consciously what was happening.
Clodius froze, his expression not of pain but utter surprise, as if something inconceivable had happened. His weapon left his hand and stuck in the ground.
The graveyards are full of fair men.
Then the Celt butted the Roman with his shoulder, knocking him backward, and as he did so his sword slipped from the Roman's torso to shine in the moonlight, its blade slick with the young tribune's essence. Clodius was dead before he hit the ground.
Yet now came the other Romans, Rufus and three companions, weapons out, unsure what they'd stumbled into but anxious for battle. They were running silhouettes in the dark. "Put the sword to them!"
Bowstrings twanged and arrows buzzed. The other Celts had set themselves ready, and the Romans ran into a volley. There was almost no sound, just the quick thwack of missiles striking armored flesh, and then the four would-be rescuers toppled like puppets with their strings cut. They hit the ground and lay still, each bearing two or three arrows.
The Celts ran forward and severed the Roman necks with a howl of triumph. Great gouts of blood blackened the shadows.
The Celtic leader wiped his own sword on the grass, sheathed it, and strode back to Valeria, scooping her up in his bloodied arms. She felt hurt, winded, sick, and faint all at the same time. It had all happened so fast!
"If your friend there had let us go, all of them would still be alive now," he said. Then he carried her through the trees and threw her over the front horns of his saddle, mounted, and gave his horse a hard kick. "To Tiranen!"
His men gave a cry of shrill agreement. "Tiranen!" They mounted themselves, swords raised in triumph, Savia captive as well, their whoops an echo across the glen, the spring of Bormo still serene under the moon. Then they rode north, away from the Wall, and deep, deep, into the barbarian night.
PART TWO
XXIV
The barbarians had taken the riderless Roman horses, and so, just a mile from the spring, Valeria and Savia were freed of their gags and seated on their own mounts to enable better speed. Their wrists were tied to the saddle horns, and the reins attached by rope to other riders. The dead soldiers' horses and Clodius's steed followed in train behind, the Celt who had died draped across one saddle. There were eight surviving warriors, Valeria counted, seven of them raffish-looking men and the eighth, shockingly, a woman. Her waist-long hair was braided and tucked into her baldric to tame it in the night wind, while a yew bow and quiver of feathered arrows was slung across her back. The female had the same arrogant ease as the men, riding with confident expertise.
It was frightening, this perversion of nature. But fascinating, too.
Their chieftain commanded with a quiet surety different from the stiff formality of Marcus or the sternness of Galba. The barbarian didn't demand obedience so much as expect respect, and his ragged warriors gave it to him, even while joking about his choice of route or his eye for pretty hostages. They followed no obvious course, trotting along a track here and leaving it there, cutting across moonlit field and moor and woodland with casual certainty, all of Caledonia the color of bleached bone. Savia was mute with fear and clinging miserably to her jouncing saddle, while Valeria grieved silently for poor Clodius and desperately tried to puzzle out what had happened. What was this chieftain doing at the sacred spring?
Why had poor Rufus ridden up, only to be killed? Above all, where were they going, and what would they do with her when they got there?
They descended at dawn into the dimness of a wooded hollow to rest and water the horses. A tether tied the captive women to a tree. The barbarians looked curiously at their prisoners in the light as the Romans looked at them. The one called Luca was a compact, strongly muscled man with long hair and mustache in the Celtic manner, wearing nothing but trousers and cloak and seemingly as impervious to weather as a greased legionary tent. The barbarian's chest was bare, his face and arms smeared with charcoal to help hide him in the night. The woman wore similar trousers but also chain mail over a leather jerkin, her breasts slight and bound flat and her limbs long and sinewy, like the toughness of young willow. Despite the mannishness of her garb, she was blond and rather pretty, but the men treated her with wary distance.
"Brisa, give them some food and water," their leader commanded in their native tongue.
The woman nodded and went to the stream. The decision that their female member would tend the captives, not a male, seemed somewhat reassuring.
Savia wrinkled her nose as she ate some of the sharp cheese offered, but Valeria refused, her appetite gone. Both women did drink from the offered skin of water. Then they waited, apprehensive and desperate for some opportunity to escape. The warriors made no move to molest or help or even watch them; their initial curiosity satisfied, they now paid no more attention to their captives than to dogs.
The barbarian leader squatted alone by the stream, carefully washing his face and arms and apparently lost in thought. Valeria viewed him speculatively. She'd escaped from him once and was determined to do so again. Arden, the men had called him. He wore a sleeveless tunic that left free the powerful arms that had gripped Valeria, yet he too seemed oblivious to the dawn chill. It was interesting that he cleaned himself, contradicting her image of the northern barbarians as little more than unkempt cattle thieves. Maybe he was trying to wash his blood from his hands. No doubt he felt satisfaction at killing Clodius and capturing Valeria after his earlier failure. But how had he known she'd be at the spring? How did he know Galba?
Eventually the leader stood and strode to his prisoners with the stride of a man accustomed to covering many miles, then dropped into a squat before them. The water's transformation of his appearance was surprising. Washed clean of dirt and paint, the barbarian was actually rather handsome: unexpectedly so, like a hero among jackals. He was beardless in the Roman manner, though stubbled this morning. His long hair was tied behind him, his nose straight, his expression firm, his eyes that bright, disconcerting blue, his gaze bold, his manner calm.
Valeria hated him.
"We're going to sleep here a few hours before moving on," he told them in Latin.
"Good," she replied with more confidence than she really felt. "It will give time for the Petriana to catch you, and flog you, and hang you from that tree."
Her abductor looked up mildly at the limbs. "There'll be no alarm yet, lady. We'll be on our way again before the Petriana is much out of bed."
So he was overconfident. "You've condemned yourself by seizing a commander's wife and senator's daughter," she insisted. "The entire Sixth Victrix will come looking for me. They'll burn Caledonia to ashes before they give up."
He pretended to consider this. "Then maybe I should chop off your pretty head now, send it in a basket, and save them the trouble."
Savia moaned, but there was nothing in his manner to make Valeria take this threat seriously. If he wanted to kill them, they'd already be dead. "I have influence," she tried. "Let us go now, and I'll stop the pursuit so you can get away."