Even the sky seemed in league. Scudding cloud blew southward, against the Wall. The rain and sleet were at their backs, and into the teeth of the Romans.
XXXV
This time Valeria knew the way. Time had allowed her to associate landmarks with the daily path of the sun. She knew which direction must lead to the Wall.
After slipping out of Tiranen before dawn, she saddled her mare in the valley below and started south in sorrow, blinking back tears. The barbarians couldn't win, she knew; Rome was too strong. Arden was reckless to conspire with Galba. So now she must lose the only man she'd ever truly loved in order to save him, by warning the Romans of the attack so it could never happen. She'd ride back to the Wall. Back to her husband. Back to a lifetime of regret, as Galba had once warned her.
The gods were cruel, and Savia's new god seemed just as indifferent to her prayers as the old ones.
To avoid pursuit she followed high ridges and empty moors, riding all that lonely day and on through the lonelier night. This time she'd had the sense to bring proper clothing and food, including oats for her mount, but anxiety and the lack of rest exacted a mounting toll. The landscape was gray and cheerless, the wind sharp, the heather brown. Once she heard the distant howl of wolves.
Always she turned to look for pursuit. The tension slowly drained her.
Near the second morning she restlessly snatched two hours sleep in a grove of barren birch, wrapped in her cloak against the cold. She woke to a day cloudy and still, without sun or shadow, and had to use her own rough sense of geography to go on. Her months among the Celts had given knowledge enough that she was able to keep the Highlands at her back and retain a rough sense of direction, but she dared not use road or trail. Her meandering course added many miles.
In the afternoon of the second day it began to snow lightly, small flakes kissing the cheeks where her tears had been. She was too weary to be excited about weather she'd once dreamed of seeing. The snow was wet, soaking her cloak, and made it hard to see. Valeria noticed dully that her horse left a trail of tracks in the snow as it padded across the moors, helping any pursuers, but that when night fell again and the snow stopped, the thin coverlet also brightened the gloom and made it easier to find her way. It was thus both curse and blessing. Mostly, though, the snow simply made her feel colder and lonelier than ever. She felt lost between two worlds.
As she rode south and the number of farmsteads thickened, she'd sometimes hear the barking of dogs or the faint call of human voices, rising from a hollow and echoing across the moors. She'd wearily and carefully veer away. The detours might force her to drive through a thicket or circle a bog or climb an otherwise unnecessary hill, devouring time, but she couldn't risk capture. Finally Valeria would be alone on empty moorland again, making better progress, with the cold north wind at her back and endless rolling hills before her. She was sore to the core of her bones, her rump and thighs blistered, reeling in the saddle from exhaustion. Still she pushed on.
On the morning of the third day the dawn broke on a cold sky of pale blue studded with clouds. At long last, the pale line of the Wall! How endless it looked. It crowned the crest of Britannia's boundary like a great white worm, perched atop an escarpment here, plugging a narrow ravine there. How could the Celts hope to prevail against a civilization capable of building such a thing? How could Rome muster enough soldiers to adequately defend it? She saw legionary pennants flying from each milecastle where a contubernium of soldiers would live and stand guard: isolated, bored, quarreling, gambling, and dreaming. The sight gave her relief and disquiet.
How would Marcus receive her?
How would she respond to him?
She'd encountered the Wall at a place she was unfamiliar with.
Rolling, windswept hills led down to a wet valley of small lakes and bogs. Dark volcanic cliffs on the far side of the marshes were fortified at their top by the stone barrier, making this a place impossible to attack or even approach. What a view the clifftop must have! Had the barrier's builders stood there once, proudly imagining the line they were about to impose upon the earth? Guessing in her fog of exhaustion that Petrianis must lie to the west, she rode slowly in that direction, paralleling the fortification. The muscles of her horse were shuddering.
"Just to the Wall," she whispered, "and then you'll have feed and shelter. Just to the Wall, and then you'll be a Roman horse. Then it will be over."
After two miles the ground in front of the Wall rose out of marsh and grew firmer. She picked her way toward a milecastle, its base marked by a gate. It looked uninhabited. No helmeted heads watched her. No trumpets of recognition rang out.
Up close, the barrier seemed even more impregnable. Its V-shaped ditch exaggerated the effective height of the parapet, and all brush and trees had been chopped away for four hundred paces, the distance of a ballista shot. Even a Roman like herself felt naked and vulnerable when crossing that final stretch of ground. She felt watched, even though she could see no one.
There was a wisp of smoke from a cooking fire rising from behind the crenellations of the milecastle, but still she saw no sentry. They must be huddled inside because of cold. The absence of any visible soldiers made it seem as if the barrier was patrolled by ghosts, but no, that was Samhain, and this was the frontier of Rome: a place of stone and discipline and crisp reality.
It was simply early.
"Is anyone here?" she shouted across the ditch and its bridging causeway.
No answer. She was salivating at the scent of their breakfast.
Valeria got down from the mare, the horse sighing in gratitude. Wearily, she took out the spear she'd slipped into a holster at the rear of the saddle. It was the spear that Hool had given her, the one she'd used to kill the boar. The weapon had been presented to her in honor, and she wasn't about to leave it behind at Tiranen; it was her reminder of that vibrant, lusty, rough-textured, rank, colorful, and communal world, now left behind. She hefted the spear experimentally, her arms having gained a surprising and unaccustomed strength, and aimed at the gray and pitted oaken gate. Then she threw.
It thudded home smartly, the shaft quivering after it stuck, its knock booming inside the milecastle. "Hallo! Open this gate!"
The hurled weapon finally brought oaths and a rattle of footsteps. "Who's there?" someone shouted angrily. She looked up. A Roman infantryman was leaning over the parapet. "This gate is closed to passage, barbarian!" he said in Latin-accented Celtic. "Go down to Aesica if you want through! We're having breakfast!"
"Please! I'm Valeria of the House of Valens, daughter of a Roman senator and wife of the commander of the Petriana cavalry! I'm too exhausted to go anywhere! I've just escaped from the Caledonii!"
The man looked bewildered. "You're a woman?"
She realized what she must look like: Celtic trousers and mud-stained boots, her hair tucked beneath a woolen cap, her cloak hiding any hint of figure. She wore a raw tapestry of stains and spatters and bits of burr and leaf. She'd just hurled a spear.
"I'm a pig after riding two nights and three days, but yes, underneath all this I'm a daughter of Rome! Please open, before I faint!"
He shouted orders, and she heard the pounding of hobnailed infantry boots. The gate was unbolted and swung inward, creaking from disuse. She stepped into the milecastle archway, her horse pushing anxiously in behind her in hopes of food. Beyond was a small courtyard and barracks building where the soldiers slept, with a second gate on the far side. These entrances were traps. Anyone charging through the first gate could be blocked by the second and killed by Roman soldiers firing down from parapets on all four sides.