"What will you do now?" asked Guihen, who found her sitting disconsolately in the courtyard, her cheeks streaked with drying tears.
"Everyone expects me to do something! Even you!"
"Me? I have no expectations. I was thinking only of your own. You can't tell me you aren't the one driving yourself. Why, from the time you were this tall you . . ."
"Guihen! Is that you? Are you remembering?"
An expression of dazed confusion washed across his mobile face. "Why . . . what do you mean? For a moment there, I thought I knew you when . . . but it's gone now. What was I saying before?"
He had remembered. For a fleeting moment he had been her Guihenher friend and mentor. Now he was only . . . Guihen. She shook her head sadly. "I'm going back to the Roman camp. I can't fight Teutomalos and the dryadeae all by myself. If I could convince that Calvinus to do what he was sent here to do . . ."
"Ah!" Guihen brightened. "You'll need my help sneaking out of here. Well? What are we waiting for? There is the wall, and there too is a ladder. We should be able to climb down to the spring, and then retrace our stepsthough I greatly fear we've been gone far too long to walk right into the Roman camp with a basket of early raspberries. . . ."
"Why don't we leave the way we came?"
"You think they'll let you out just like that? After what you said about a Roman victory? Even Kraton will suspect you've been a spy all along."
"Then I'd better change into something better for climbing."
"Change into . . . oh. You mean clothing. I wish I'd seen when you changed into an old woman. If you changed into a big birda craneyou could carry me in your bill, and we could fly down."
"I don't know a spell for that. And besides, you're too heavy."
"So make one upand become a really big crane, or an eagle." Then he saw that her tears were flowing again. "Don't cry! What did I say? I didn't mean . . ."
"It's not your fault. You just reminded me of somebodya boy named Cletus." A boy who would not be born for centuries, if ever, yet who seemed so very far in her own past, as if in a different life altogether. And Guihen, saying "Just make one up," as if she could. As if he were really her Guihen, goading a little girl to extend herself beyond what she believed possible.
She rolled her meager belongings into a tidy bundle, keeping separate her sky blue dress, her white mantle, the crystalline "serpent's egg" on its cord, and Doreta's fine gold fibulae. She planned to approach the Roman camp in style.
Guihen peered upward. "You must be feeling better now," he said. "I think I saw a star peering through the clouds."
"What does that have to do with me?"
"When you are angry, lightning flashes. When you were sad, rain fell like tears. And now you've picked yourself up again, I saw a star, which means the sky is clearing."
"That's silly! The sky is not a brass mirror, reflecting my moods."
"Are you sure? When you visited Minho, and sat on an ivory throne, you called out to Taranis, and he sent a storm."
"That was only a dream . . . and I . . . I never told you that! How did you know?"
"Are you sure yourself? I seem to remember it." Again, his eyes had that glazed look.
"If you remember other things, let me know at once. This is very strangethough not unwelcome. There is no magical theorem that would account for it." Guihen agreed to tell her. She went inside, put on bracae and tunic, then threw her old woman's ragged sagus over her shoulders.
They climbed the ladder. Even through the rain, Pierrette could see some distance, though the Roman camp was obscured. They pulled the ladder up, and then let it down on the far side of the wall. There was just enough room: a narrow, rocky ledge, and then the ground sloping steeply away.
Guihen hid the ladder by laying it horizontally, close against the wall's base. No one would be likely to spot it unless they looked directly down.
No one challenged them as they picked their way down among the rocks, then zigzagged along the switchbacks below the postern gate. When they reached the spring, Pierrette quickly changed into her fine clothing. Raindrops beaded on her white sagus but did not soak in. "Wasn't the Roman outpost right over there?" she whispered. "I hope we can get their attention without getting speared."
"How?"
"We must let them know we're coming." She tore a rag from her old cloak, and wrapped it around a green stick plucked from a small oak. She sprinkled the rag with liquid from a tiny clay vial.
"What kind of potion is that?"
She giggled nervously. "It's scented oil from the Greek merchant's stock. If the scent doesn't bemuse the Roman sentries, the light will at least let them know we're not sneaking up on them." She ignited the oily rag with a flick of her fingers.
Guihen's eyes widened. "I saw you do that before!" Pierrette tried to remember when she had last used the small spell. It was such a habit it was easier to remember when she had lit fires or lamps without it. "It wasn't . . . here," said Guihen. "I think it was a long time ago, or . . . I'm sorry. Maybe it was a dream."
Someone shouted hoarselyin Latin. "I think we've been seen," Pierrette whispered. "Stay in the middle of this clearing so they'll see we are alone." It was not hard to tell where the Romans were, from their noisy approach. Tough, dedicated citizen-soldiers they might be, but they were not woodsmen. Pierrette pulled her cloak over her head like a hood, then raised the torch high, holding it away so its light illuminated herbut she kept her cloak over her head, and her face in shadow.
"Who in all the hells are you?" demanded the first soldier to push through the brush, a weighted pilum in each hand.
"We are unarmed," Pierrette said gently. "You won't need those spears."
"This is Petra, a seeress," said Guihen. "She bears a message for your general. We have just come from the city."
A centurion pushed forward, just strapping on his helmet, with its sideways-mounted blue horsehair crest. "A message? Are they ready to surrender?"
"My words are for Caius Sextius Calvinus, centurion. Please take me to him."
"I'll take you as far as the gate. Someone else will have to rouse the consul, not me."
"Ow!" shrieked Guihen. "Keep that thing away from me." A spear-wielding soldier guffaweduntil the centurion turned, tapping his scabbarded short sword against his calf. They proceeded down the rough trail, with soldiers behind and ahead of them. When Guihen got ahead of her, Pierrette saw a spreading bloodstain on his kilt, over his left buttock. It did not seem to impede his walking.
At the gate, the centurion shouted, "Horatius, open that damned fence! I'm getting soaked."
"That's not the password. What are you supposed to say?"
"I've forgotten it. Damn, man, this rain is cold. Stop playing games. You know who I am."
"I've seen the little fellow with the big ears before, but who is the woman?"
"She says she's an envoy from the Gauls. Is the consul awake?" Pierrette had said no such thing, but she did not attempt to correct the centurion.
"I'll send someone to alert him."
They waited. The Romans grumbled as the drizzling rain worked its way to their skin, and cursed the unpredictable gusts that flayed their bare legs and arms. Pierrette hardly noticed rain or wind; runnels worked their way down her impervious cloak and puddled on the ground unnoticed. She saw that the gate was a lash-up of the same poles that comprised the camp's walls. The rain made its bindings stretch, and it took two soldiers to lift and drag it aside, cursing as they slipped in the mud.
"Come with me, veleda," said the centurion, using her Gaulish title. He led her down a wide way, between rows of tents, to one larger than the rest. He stuck his head in. "The veleda is outside, consul."
"Bid her enter." The voice Pierrette heard was a smooth tenor. The centurion pushed the flap aside. A light within flared, then died. Pierrette slipped past the soldier, and reached toward the smoldering wick. "Here," she said . . . and a small, brilliant flame danced at her fingertips, then stretched toward the lamp. Again, the warm glow of burning oil washed the tent's sodden walls.
"How did you do that?" Despite his surprise, Pierrette heard no awe in the consul's voiceas if she had performed a charlatan's trick, not a genuine spell, however small. This man, she decided, would not be easily impressedbut she had to try.
"How?" she asked, trying to force herself to sound arrogant, even annoyed. "Do you have a Great Year to learn my trade? You have no time at all." With studied casualness, she tossed her cloak aside. She saw his eyes widen. He himself was no gruff old soldier, a male equivalent of the ancient hag he had surely expected her to be. His hair was dark as her own, but curly. His eyes were blue, as were hers, but lighter, as if reflecting the clear light of an Italian sky. He smiled. "Will you sit?"
For once, she reflected, being pretty was an asset, not a hindrance. At least he was going to listen. She sensed that a barrier had dropped. She sat, self-consciously, then realized she might have made a mistake. "Pretty" was not the impression she wanted to convey to this man.
"Centurion Varro said you have a message from the Gauls' chief," he said grufflyas if he, too, had let himself slip, and was annoyed because of it. "What is it?"
"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 ransomits weight in gold." Ah! That had gotten a reaction. He had been holding a goose-quill pen, and had just broken it. "Or he'll drive a bronze spike through it, from ear to ear, to hold it in a niche by his door." Perhaps now he would take her more seriously.
"Then . . . whom do you speak for?" Yes. He would heed her words now, not just her eyes and their long, dark lashes.
"For myselfand 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."
She could see the puzzlement in his eyes, and from it could read his thoughts: why was this woman, this enemy, pressing him to attack her people? It could only be because the effects of his siege were being felt up there, in the fortified oppidum. His next words dripped scorn. "Another legion is even now marching up the Argentum. The Massilians are gathering a force of thousands, too. I can afford to wait, while Teutomalos grows weak with hunger. His poor walls will fall to my machines in short order."
This was not going as Pierrette had hopedbut at least Calvinus was talking, and had not ordered her chained outside in the rain, like a dog. She forced herself not to be angry at his obtuse suspiciousness. "There is much you do not know. Before summer has come, Teutomalos will have such power that all your legions, even led by Scipio himself, could not prevail. Besides"she did not know where her next words came from, but she somehow knew they were true ones"your reinforcements are still in Italia, waiting for the spring winds that have not yet come. Did you think this storm outside was a fluke? No, this winter lingers long. You have had a false taste of spring. And your Massilian rabble is merchants' sons, not soldiers, and they'll be of little use to you. Either attack now and prevail, or Roma itself will be only a crumbling memory in a hundred years. Your actions alone will determine it."
He was still handsome when he gritted his teeth and glared at her. "Who are you? What filthy druid magic is this? Does some mad Gaulish god whisper such things in your ear?"
"I ask you only to listen. I greatly fear you'll think me mad, but if I can't make you understand, all will be as I have said."
He seemed to soften just a bit. Perhaps he had seen the tears of frustration that glittered in the corners of her eyes. He called out for the centurion, and asked if someonePolybius, she thought he saidwas still awake. "There is someone I want to meet you, to listen to your tale. He'll cut through the smoke of your predictions."