Now, after days of rising apprehension, they had come to a halt fifteen miles from Ulrika's destination. Her heart raced. Where was Gaius Vatinius and his legions? Everyone said that he was leading his troops directly across the Alps, a more hazardous route than the one caravans took, but a more direct one—thousands of men pushing northward like a deadly tide, bringing horses and weapons and war machines into the pristine forests of Ulrika's people. How far behind were the legions? How much time was left to her to find her father and warn him?
As she kept her eye on the soldiers, their armor clanking as they pushed their way into people's privacy, stamping the ground with their thick, hobnailed sandals, Ulrika wondered where Sebastianus was. She glanced at his tent. It was dark and deserted as usual. Once again, he had not slept in his own bed.
Where does he go every night?
As they had followed the busy trade route from Rome to Masilia, from Lugdunum to the Rhine, Ulrika had seen Sebastianus Gallus interact with merchants, traders, and travelers, inviting them to share his fire and a meal. Trade and commerce were conducted at each stopping point, with the abacus coming out, coins being counted, baskets and bundles of merchandise changing hands, and Gallus overseeing it all. When business was concluded, he would bathe in his tent, change into a fresh tunic and cloak, and leave the camp, usually bearing gifts, to head into the village or town, and return the next morning.
While Ulrika wondered what he did away from camp—while she wondered about many things concerning the master of her caravan—she did know one thing: his passion for the stars.
Ulrika had learned that Sebastianus Gallus was not a religious man in the traditional sense. He did not erect a small altar each time they camped, nor did he make a sacrifice of food and wine to the gods. Instead, he consulted the stars, making use of Timonides and his star-charts.
Ulrika thought about the gold bracelet on Sebastianus's wrist. It was a beautiful piece, finely molded with intricate designs. The surprising feature was a rather homely chunk of rock in the center, neither pleasing to the eye nor seeming to be of any value—a prosaic stone easily found in any street. She wondered at its significance.
As she watched the legionaries move through the camp, coming her way while a nervous Timonides stood at her side, Ulrika thought about the local people the caravan had encountered along the route, Germans who were not slaves, as Ulrika was used to seeing, but free men and women working their own farms, engaged in cultural arts and crafts and who came to the caravan to trade. She would stare at them, marveling at seeing this race in their own environment of forests and rolling hills and green, misty valleys. Women in long skirts and blouses, their hair worn in braids; men in leggings and tunics, hair worn long and nearly all of them bearded, reminding Ulrika that the term "barbarian" literally meant "bearded one," but that in recent years had come to mean any uncivilized person.
She trembled to think that she was near her father's territory. It filled her with pride to know that, not far from here, forty-five years ago, three legions commanded by Quinctilius Varus had been defeated by the German hero Arminius, Ulrika's grandfather! But sadness also filled her—leaving her mother without a proper good-bye. Fear was in her heart as well, that the childhood sickness that frightened her might never be cured, that she was going to be plagued forever with dreams that were too real and vivid to be mere dreams.
As two legionaries strode up to her tent, she braced herself.
Ulrika was familiar with the political climate of this region. Under the empire's pax romana, several important Germanic tribes worked peacefully with Rome, and seemed to have no problem with the presence of imperial forts and garrisons in their ancestral territory. So peaceful was this region, in fact, that Claudius had needed to pull idle troops from the Rhine and give them something to do: invade Britain. But now there was a new problem: an unnamed German warrior was firing up the tribes and uniting them against Rome for the first time in forty years.
And Ulrika was certain it was her father.
As the two legionaries approached, she tightened the shawl about her shoulders and drew herself up tall, ready to stand up to them. She would not let them search her tent. She had nothing to hide, but it was the principle.
ON THE FAR SIDE of the camp, at the edge of the clearing where the western forest began, a leather-faced centurion scratched his testicles as he watched the proceedings with a jaded eye. A twenty-five-year veteran of foreign campaigns, the middle-aged soldier was looking forward to retiring with his fat wife to a vineyard in southern Italia, where he hoped to live out his days idling in the sunlight and telling war stories to his grandchildren. This search for insurgent Barbarians—in a trade caravan!—was useless. The whole military thrust north of the Alps was futile, in his seasoned mind. Germania was too big and its people too proud to ever be conquered. But the centurion never questioned orders. He did as told and drew his monthly pay.
He stiffened. His trained eye told him that trouble had just arrived.
"What is going on here?" boomed Sebastianus Gallus, riding through the trees at a gallop. Jumping down from his mare, he strode up to the centurion. "What are these soldiers doing here?"
"We're searching for rebels, sir," the officer said, recognizing the bronze-haired young man, in a fine white tunic and handsome blue cloak, as someone of rank and importance.
Sebastianus scowled as he surveyed the chaotic scene. It would be an hour before he could restore order and another hour to break camp and get the caravan underway. He had to reach Colonia before dark. "Upon whose orders?" he snapped. "And why wasn't I informed?"
"General Vatinius, sir," the centurion said wearily, reminding himself of the vineyard and warm Italian days. "He ordered a surprise search, the better to find the fugitives. No forewarning, no chance to get away."
"We are hiding no one here," Sebastianus growled and marched off.
Sebastianus's ill humor was due only in part to this unexpected upheaval of his camp. He had spent the night at a nearby farm, the guest of a Roman farmer he had known for years, but he had not slept well. It was because of the girl, Ulrika. The day before, she had announced her intention to leave the company of the caravan the moment they arrived in Colonia, to go off on her own in search of her father's people. Sebastianus had not expected that. He had thought he would help her put together a party that consisted of local Germanic guides, bodyguards, slaves. As safe an escort as he could muster.