That night they ate a cold handful of uncooked grain and the last scrap of the horsemeat. Before night fell, the girl took time to search among the trees for herbs and plants. Finding what she needed, she waited until they stopped for the night, and then began to eat her collection of green things. Casca said nothing, content to leave her to her own devices. After about an hour, she began to cramp, drawing her legs up to her chest then jerking them back again. When Casca asked if he could help, she said between gritted teeth that what she had taken was insurance that she would not give birth to a slaver's bastard and that the cramp would end soon enough.
They huddled in their furs half sleeping, one ear cocked for any unusual sound. Glam had given the girl the filthy hide coverings of the corpse to use. Stinking as they were, they did serve to keep out the worst of the night chill. Several hours before dawn, Casca made the others rise and get ready to move out. He had thought about the situation and decided to get ahead of the slavers and see if there was anyplace on the trail that would serve as an ambush site. The girl stayed behind the Roman's back, keeping close to him, with her face down to avoid whipping branches. Glam broke trail, somehow always seeming to know which way to go, even in the almost complete darkness of the woods.
At dawn they stopped by a narrow creek to drink and rest. The girl took advantage of this to wash as much of the filth off her as she could.
Glam cast an admiring glance at the girl as she bathed nude in the stream. Nudity was nothing to be ashamed of in her tribe. And after a little scrubbing, she looked a lot better. Before, her hair had a dull, drab look to it, but after rinsing out the ashes and dirt, it took on a healthy auburn color. She was small but well-built and toned. The girl told them that there was only one way through the passes, which the tribesmen had to take, and, like Glam, she had an instinct for direction that civilized man could never hope to attain. One had to be raised in these forests to acquire that kind of sense. Glam grunted and threw his pack up a little higher and they moved again. This time Casca was leading, following Glam's instructions. All that day they kept moving, until finally they approached the entrance to the mountain's passes, which led back to their lands. Casca figured they were three or four hours ahead of the slavers, who would be held back by their human cargo. The trio had time. And most likely the raiding party would make camp outside the walled entrance to the mountains. The steep cliffs and narrow defiles gave an enemy too many opportunities for ambush to be risked.
Following Casca's orders, Glam and the girl spent the rest of the time before nightfall searching for saplings of ash or oak. Casca would have a use for them that night…
Glam and the girl moved further up into the passes, where they built a small fire. There they cut and sharpened the ash and oak poles into spiked stakes and hardened the points over the fire. Casca kept watch. Waiting, he let his mind drift while watching the racing clouds gather overhead among the high peaks. Occasionally shafts of gold light broke through and lanced the earth below. He sat on a gentle incline near the entrance. Below him was a clearing through which his prey had to come. A distant sparkle caught his eye: a gleam of light had bounced off polished metal. They were coming.
Casca left his perch and ran up the pass to warn Glam and the girl. Tying their bundles of sharpened stakes together with a strip of leather, they moved back down to where they could keep an eye on the approaching party.
The leader of the group, after crossing the clearing, held up his hand to signal a halt. He wore a bell-shaped iron helmet with the horns of a goat protruding out of it at angles. A big man and tough, he hadn't survived this long by not having an instinct for danger. Something about the pass bothered him. Besides, it would be warmer here on the lowlands in shelter of some rocks. They could build their campfires and feed with a degree more comfort here than in those high passes where the wind ripped and tore at every piece of exposed skin. Casca nodded, pleased with himself for correctly deducing the barbarian leader's course of action. They would camp outside the pass.
Glam and the girl followed him to the sheltered cleft in the rock wall. There they huddled together to wait and rest and wait for the dark.
The enveloping darkness would be their ally this night-that and the sharpened stakes. They slept, the girl dreaming of dark thoughts of revenge while Glam muttered in his sleep for more beer and meat, making smacking, sucking noises. Casca stayed awake, eyes half open, letting his body relax. Taking in one deep breath and then letting it out slowly, he eased the tension.
He and Glam had come a long way since they had first met on the banks of the Rhine, a long way from that river to where they were now, near the borders of Pannonia. How far they would go together was yet to be seen. But so far Glam had been as good as his word. He had told the smaller Roman that he would show him all this land had to offer-even to the steppes of Scythia. There the Alani tribes were slowly being pushed back by gnomish invaders from the east, who never removed themselves from their horses' backs unless it was to take a crap.
These tribes were called by the rest of the western world the Huns. Glam had met them before when working as bodyguard to one of the Alani kings. He swore they even made love on horseback. When they walked they looked like trolls, with their legs twisted and undersized from so many years in the saddle. On horseback, they were… unbeatable. On the ground they were helpless in the way a crippled wolf was. You could kill them easily as long as you kept out of the way of the snapping jaws.
These Huns were the vanguard of a great migration that had begun a hundred years before when a great king of Han defeated them and drove them from their trivial lands to wander. And in the wandering, they had gained new strength as they followed the grass. When they met a new tribe, they either destroyed it or took it in with them to swell what was called the Horde…
It was not uncommon anymore to find men from a dozen races riding under the horse and yak-tailed standards of the Khans. They would even take the name of Hun for themselves and emulate their dwarfed masters in every act of cruelty known. Glam swore that one day they would come out of the east by the tens of thousands, and when that day came, there would be enough bloodshed to drown even the Seven Hills of Rome.
When there were still about three hours to dawn, Casca rose and stretched out his legs and arms, breathing in deeply the crisp air of the highlands. He shook his head to clear it of the half-dreams and mist. Speaking softly, he woke Glam and the girl. It occurred to him that he had never asked her name. Glam and the girl each woke in their own manner. Glam, grumbling about food, walked to the edge of the cleft and urinated. The girl gathered their bundles of stakes together and stood ready to leave. Her movements were quick and eager. The woman wanted blood and, as Casca well knew, a female was far more dangerous when she had the upper hand than any man was. He touched the thin scar running from his left eye to the corner of his mouth. Indeed, it was best to always keep one eye on a woman-especially if you thought you had done something to piss her off…
Chapter Three
The three moved together back down the darkened gorge like a cat on a hunt, quick and intent. Glam, for all his size, was as surefooted as a mountain goat. And the girl had been born to these parts. Casca was the one who stumbled a couple of times; he swore under his breath each time, until the girl told him to shush. Chastened, he obeyed. Whoever got this one for a wife was in for a rough time. He grinned at the thought that maybe the worst punishment possible for the man who raped her might have been to make him marry her in accordance with the laws of the tribes. That would really have taught him a lesson. Nothing quick like having your neck snapped, but the long, lingering agony of a nagging wife's tongue.