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Prologue - Roman Year 630 (124 B.C.)

The Roman consul Caius Sextius Calvinus wrapped a woolen blanket around his legs and feet. The fabric of his tent drummed with the beat of half-frozen rain, and beads of moisture formed where a careless aide had brushed the fabric. He should have brought a good leather tent, like the ordinary legionnaires used.

The mad Mistral wind drove ice-rimmed puddles into the tent where fabric met rocky ground. So this was fair, sunny Gaul? Calvinus felt like a fool, an old fool, wrapped in a blanket. But it was beneath the dignity of a Roman general to wear bulky bracae—ridiculous baggy trousers, bound at the ankles.

"The veleda is outside, Consul," a centurion rumbled.

"Bid her enter." In this weather, even a crazy Gaulish hag shouldn't have to stand outside for the sake of his Roman dignity.

The centurion pushed the tent flap aside. His words—and the seeress's reply—were whipped away on the battering wind. Calvinus made as if busy with a dispatch he had been trying to write—until the ink had clotted with the cold. To complete his disgruntlement, the oil lamp on his table blew out when the flap was thrust aside. Thus his visitor was no more than a bulky shadow in the dim light that penetrated the wet fabric of the tent.

"Here," she said, stretching forth an arm. From her fingertips, a tiny bright flame leaped to the smoking wick. Again, the warm glow of burning oil illuminated Calvinus's hands, and the crone's veiled face.

"How did you do that?" Startled by the trick, he failed to remark that the single word the woman had uttered had not been in a voice cracked with age—nor had those briefly illuminated fingers been an ancient harridan's claws.

"How? Do you have a Great Year to learn my trade?" A Great Year was the druids' nineteen-year cycle, that reconciled the lunar and solar periods. "You have no time at all."

Now those young, strong fingers reached to loosen her woolen scarf, to toss back the close-knit fabric of her fine, waterproof sagus. She tossed the heavy mantle across a brass-bound chest.

Calvinus stared, at a loss for words. The veleda—the druid seeress—was a girl. Her glossy black hair was piled atop her head in curls that a rich senator's wife would have envied. Her pale blue garment was draped Greek fashion, but was belted with pale leather encrusted in gold.

Despite his goose bumps and the indignity of his blanketed legs, Calvinus was all too aware of his maleness. This was no big, gruff Celtic camp follower, and no starved old woman. Blue eyes the color of summer skies appraised him dispassionately. Small, well-formed breasts pushed against soft blue fabric, their nipples as proud as if just fondled—but that was chill, not arousal.

Aware that he had lost not only his dignity, but all of the initiative in this unfortunate meeting, the Roman gestured at the cloak-draped chest. "Will you sit?"

A smile dimpled her pretty—no, lovely—face. She slid gracefully to the impromptu seat, her legs turned slightly to the side, accenting the smooth curvature of thighs and hips.

"Centurion Varro said you have a message from the Gauls' chief. What is it?" No degree of gruffness, he discovered, could regain him his lost poise.

"Your centurion misunderstood. King Teutomalos has nothing to say to you. He intends to outwait you, then send your headless body to Roma. Your head he'll hold for ransom—its weight in gold. Or he'll drive a bronze spike through it, from ear to ear, to hold it in a niche by his door."

Had anyone else said that—under any other circumstances—Calvinus would have had him flogged, or he would have leaped up, groping for his short sword. As it was, he merely crumpled his goose-quill. The woman's tone had been matter-of-fact, even regretful, not challenging or insulting. He was clear on that, because her command of Latin was as good as his own, despite the sweet lilt of her unfamiliar accent.

"Then whom do you speak for?" he grated.

"For myself—and for a hundred Roman generations to come, whose fate hinges upon the outcome of this siege. You must not wait. Attack now, before it's too late."

"Another legion is on its way. And the Massalian Greeks are levying more troops. By summer Teutomalos will be starving, and I'll overwhelm his pitiful fort."

"By springtime his power will be so great that all the legions that ever were, led by the Scipios themselves, could not prevail. Your reinforcements are not coming, and Massilia is a city of merchants, not soldiers. You are alone. Attack now, and prevail. Wait . . . and Roma itself will crumble, and be forgotten in a hundred years."

The woman—the girl—had gone too far. "Who are you? What filthy druid magic is this? What mad Gaulish god whispers in your ear?"

"If I tell you, will you really listen? It's a long story, and a strange one. You may think me mad—and continue to wait, until it's too late."

"I'll listen," he said. "But not here. My soldiers have been repairing the roof of a snug farmhouse with a hearth and a dry floor. Varro! Are my new quarters ready yet?"

They were ready—or near enough. Seeress and general soon retired there and, in considerably more comfortable circumstances, she began a tale that was long indeed. . . .

 

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Framed