She was about thirty yards from the trees’ safe cover when a crowd of screech-howling figures burst forth from those very same trees.
“Scathach!” one of the Romans behind her shouted.
That word Allie couldn’t translate. But she assumed it meant the horde of blue-painted, red-eyed (glowing red-eyed, not just hay fever red-eyed), wild-haired women, some running flat out and some riding astride madly careening chariots, all of them brandishing weapons. Or maybe it referred to the raven feather– cloaked figure who strode out of the trees toward Allie, hefted a flaming spear, and launched it in her direction.
Ha! Gotcha beat, Clare. You only had flaming arrows! I get a whole spear! Allie thought, shock having utterly disconnected her mind from her emotions. Her next thought, watching the spear coming straight at her, was I’m gonna die!
Suddenly she felt a hand reach down and a muscled arm snake around her waist, and with a sharp yank, Allie’s feet were no longer touching the ground. Without breaking his horse’s stride, one of the cavalry soldiers had thrown her over his mount’s withers, driving the breath from Allie’s lungs and winding her utterly.
The flaming spear tore into the earth where she’d stood only a micro-second earlier. The rider hauled sharply on the reins, wheeled his mount around, and headed straight back toward the Roman soldiers who’d been howling for her death. And that, shockingly, was the preferable option: from her upside-down over-theshoulder perspective, hanging over the side of the galloping horse, all Allie could think was that the rapidly approaching warriors looked like a bunch of lunatic groupies at a death-metal thrashrock concert. She’d never seen such crazy hair and war paint. The weapon-wielding crazy women ran and fought and screamed with such insane levels of abandon that Allie thought they must have been drugged or brainwashed or something before being set loose on the Romans.
And she’d almost run straight into them.
Not that her present situation seemed much better. The motion of the galloping horse was jolting her sharply, her temple was banging into the rider’s knee, all the blood was rushing from her head, and she thought she might pass out.
Then she heard her captor shouting: “Gate! Open the gate!”
Horse, rider, and terrified teenage girl from Toronto pounded through the sudden gap in a palisaded wall made of sharpened, lashed-together tree trunks. They were followed by the rest of the cavalry riders—the ones who’d made it through the gauntlet of berserkers. Some of them didn’t. Allie saw the scathach—or whatever the hell they were called—actually leaping into the air to take men down, right off the backs of their horses, and then trampling them with their own mounts. The warrior women seemed preternaturally strong and fast. They were like animals—a wolf pack, or hunting cats—savage and brutal.
Safely inside the fortified compound, the soldier who’d grabbed Allie threw himself off his horse and hauled her roughly down behind him. She teetered unsteadily on her feet as he ran back to the gate he’d shouted for them to open so that he could get her safely inside. At least, that’s what she’d thought he’d been doing. Maybe he was just taking her prisoner … she thrust the thought from her mind. There were a half-dozen legionnaires still out there fighting in the field in front of the camp. They fought bravely. Heroically, even. But the howling horde of berserker women cut through them in swaths. It was the most terrifying spectacle Allie had ever witnessed.
And so she was damned glad she was witnessing it from inside the Roman encampment—right up until the cavalry soldier who’d called her a witch and howled for her death came careening through the gate that the other soldiers were hurrying to close. He was the last to make it through. And when he fixed his gaze upon Allie, blind red murder was in his eyes.
She stood paralyzed with fear as the soldier, his face a mask of rage, threw one leg over the neck of his horse before the exhausted beast had even slowed to a stop, its withers heaving. The soldier’s feet hit the ground almost at a run and he stalked toward Allie, sword raised—
—only to be knocked aside by a powerful shove from the shoulder of the rider who’d captured Allie in the first place.
What the hell?
Were they going to argue now over who got to run a sword through her? What on earth was going on? She resisted the urge to cower in a heap on the ground with her hands over her head.
“What in Hades is wrong with you?” The soldier rounded on Allie’s captor, looking like he was about to take a swing at him.
But the young man stood his ground. “She’s unarmed.”
“She’s a witch! A stinking Druid sorceress.”
“She’s a skinny, unarmed girl, Junius. She doesn’t look anything like the others. Probably a peasant from a nearby village. Look— just look at her.” He pointed disdainfully at Allie with his sword. “Killing her would be like stepping on a baby bird fallen from its nest. It’s beneath the dignity of Rome.”
“The dignity of Rome is getting its arse kicked out there, thanks to her kind,” Junius snarled back. “Those bitch berserkers are tearing our dignity to bloody shreds.”
Allie suddenly realized that, with exacting precision, she was understanding an exchange of heated Latin. Which was far beyond what her admittedly excellent scores in high school Latin should ever have allowed her to do. It must have been because of the physical contact (the brutal manhandling!) she’d had with the young legionnaire. Just as it had happened to Clare.
Well, that was convenient—although the invisibility thing that Clare’d had going on would have come in handy, too. That particular mystic bonus feature seemed to have gotten lost along the way. Never mind. If her trip was anything like her best friend’s had been, then Clare should be showing up in the guise of a bird any moment now to trigger the transition back to her own time.
Any moment now.
Any …
Allie glanced around wildly for a raven to appear in the sky and call her name—just the way she had for Clare—and then mystically whisk her away from the cohort of legionnaires. At least, she thought it was a cohort.
What exactly qualifies as a cohort, anyway? she wondered. Maybe this is a maniple, or a century, or …
Allie tended to dwell on minutiae in times of stress. It was a kind of default setting designed to keep her from panicking, and it did seem to be helping at that moment. She was too busy mentally cataloguing details to truly give in to the desire to freak right the hell out.
I’ll Google it the second I get back, she thought. C’mon, Clare … Any day now …
With a painful, irrational stab of longing, Allie suddenly missed her tablet. At the same time, she was glad she hadn’t been holding it when she’d shimmered. Shimmering, as they’d learned early on when it first happened to Clare, tended to irreparably fry anything that had an active electrical current running through it. So that at least was a relief. And something Allie could dwell on. Instead of the shouting soldiers in front of her, and the swords they held in their hands.
“It’s not your decision to make,” her captor was saying. “I took her prisoner. And I say we wait for the praefect to decide her fate.”
“That’s if he ever manages to regain consciousness.” Junius shook his head without taking his eyes off Allie. “Not very likely, is it? The Praefect Postumus has been in a death-sleep in the infirmary for five straight days now. In another five he’ll most likely be dead for real—just as we’ll all be if we stay pinned down to this gods-forsaken hill—killed by those murdering savages. I say her life for his.”
“Shut your mouth! He’ll awaken. He has to,” the younger soldier snarled. He looked over at Allie, his gaze travelling the length of her from head to foot. For a long moment his eyes rested on her workboots. Then his glance flicked up over her face and he took a deep breath. “Come on, Junius,” he said in a more reasoned tone, lowering his voice. “I know you’re angry. And I know you’ve lost friends out there. I have too. Just … think first before you act in a way you might be made to regret.”
Allie fervently hoped he was getting through to the other man, who stood glaring so fiercely at her that she could almost feel the heat of it burn on her skin. She avoided meeting his eyes, glancing instead at the one who was arguing on her behalf.
Suddenly, that heat was replaced with a shocking, icy cold as she looked directly into the other one’s eyes for the first time. Now, if there was one thing Allie knew about the Roman army from Clare’s experiences, it was this: they were always angry about something. They were ruthless. They’d conquered most of the ancient world by main force, after all. Their soldiers were coldblooded murder machines. They killed without a second thought. Hobbies included good old-fashioned frontier-style rape-andpillage potlucks Saturday nights.
Right, right … okay. I get it.
Allie did her best to tune out Clare’s voice in her head and concentrated instead on not fainting from fear, caught as she was in the baleful gaze of the legionnaire who’d rescued her. The baleful, angry gaze. She could sense a simmering rage coming off him. But unlike Clare’s hypothesis that ire was just the standard Legion grunt’s default mode, the anger Allie saw in the young soldier’s eyes was more than that.
It felt … personal.
Allie quickly looked away, but that offered only a less-than-scenic view of another group of soldiers who were—she noticed with a squirming twist of fear—very purposefully making their way toward her. One of them wore the crested helmet of a higher rank. Allie guessed he was a centurion.
Her acrimonious self-appointed captor/guard/possible saviour saw them, too. He turned away from her, sheathing his sword as the other men approached, and Allie got a good look at him for the first time. He was taller than most of the other soldiers and there was something a tiny bit different about the way he carried himself. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it. His arms and legs were long and deeply tanned, as was his face, and their planes and contours were all sharply defined under the light of the scary red moon. It was hard to tell what colour his eyes were under the brim of his helmet, but she’d gotten the distinct impression that they were dark. Probably brown or a deep hazel. His posture was upright and the set of his head gave him an air of arrogance. Maybe even callousness.
Before the centurion reached him, he turned and gave her the coldest, hardest stare she’d ever had the displeasure of receiving. And even though he’d ostensibly saved her life—twice—Allie decided that she probably kind of hated him. She mustered just enough spirit, under the circumstances, to glare defiantly back. And was surprised to see him frown a little and blink in what might have been confusion.
But then he turned away from her again and threw a stiff-armed salute to the officer leading the other soldiers toward them—a grizzled, hard-looking man who returned the greeting with casual precision.
“Legionnaire,” the centurion growled in heavily accented Latin. “Report.”
The young soldier answered back, the words spilling from his lips fluidly and forcefully. He spoke with confidence and passion and—now that these Romans weren’t barking at each other— Allie had a chance to really listen to what they were saying. She was surprised to hear just how much actual Latin sounded like modern Italian, all rolled r’s and fiery intonation. It was much more dynamic than when Mr. Cavendish, her Latin teacher back in Toronto, spoke it in his nasally, pseudo-English accent. He’d sounded as if he were playing a villainous emperor in an old swords-and-sandals movie starring Richard Burton or Charlton Heston. Not these guys. Especially not the young rider with the dark, glittering eyes who’d thrown her over his horse like a sack of grain. Coming from the mouth of that guy? Even though she’d already written him off as a pompous macho shithead, she had to admit that the way he spoke was actually kind of … sexy.
Sexy dead languages. You really are a high-order geek, McAllister.
She really was.
Also? Speaking of “dead”? You know you’re in mortal peril here, right?
She really did. She was just trying her best to ignore that fact. Concentrate on the minutiae, avoid the big-picture panic. Right. Or maybe she could listen to what they were actually saying instead of just the sexy way it was being said. That might be helpful.
“A Druidess, Centurion.” The young legionnaire glanced back over his shoulder in her direction. “At least, Junius here seems to think so.”
Junius—a thick-necked bull of a man—stepped forward, glaring sideways at Allie as he passed her. Despite his size and obvious strength, it almost seemed, now that the fever of battle madness was gone from his eyes, as if he was afraid to look at her directly. Junius stopped in front of the centurion and threw a salute forceful enough to make his armour rattle. Then he looked at Allie’s rescuer and nodded in agreement.
“She … appeared in front of me, sir,” Junius confirmed, casting glances at Allie. “Just appeared. Right out of thin air.”
“Right out of thin air, eh?” The centurion walked over and looked down on Allie as if she were something offensive he’d just scraped off the bottom of his sandal. He hawked and spat to one side, plainly unimpressed by the so-called Druidess. “Well, let’s see if she can disappear back into thin air after we’ve clapped chains on her and thrown her on a ship bound for the slave markets in Rome along with her fellow barbarians. Take her to the blacksmith and get her fitted. Then put her in with the others.” He turned to the young legionnaire. “As for you, attend me. I want a full account of what’s going on out there.”
The centurion turned on his heel and stalked away. Allie was instantly forgotten in the wake of more important matters. Their curiosity satisfied, the other soldiers dispersed in groups of twos and threes, drifting off down the alleyways between the regimented lines of tents that made up the Roman camp. There were rows and rows of the things, and Allie wondered just how many soldiers there were in the compound. Then she wondered what her odds of escape might be. Probably worse than abysmal.
Junius grabbed Allie ungently by her arm, and she saw the young soldier cast a long look back at her as he followed in the centurion’s wake. Then the two men disappeared down a side alley and Junius shoved her forward, prodding her with the butt end of his spear as she stumbled toward a thin line of smoke that rose up between two tents. A blacksmith.
He was going to put her in chains.
Allie felt her heart sink into her stomach.
7
Clare’s lunch wasn’t sitting very well. And she hadn’t even had the fish and chips. Mostly she just had a terrible feeling in the pit of her stomach as she and Milo retraced their route back to the dig site. They’d lingered in the pub for half an hour longer than usual, just waiting to see if Al would show. She didn’t. Nor did she call Clare’s cell phone to tell her she’d be late. Calls to Al’s cell went unanswered. Text messages, the same.
“You know that half the time she’s got the thing on silent and stuffed in the bottom of her bag, right?” Milo said, reiterating a version of his standard reassurance. He’d been cycling through several variations with slightly altered wording ever since they’d ordered lunch.
But to Clare’s ears, even he wasn’t sounding so sure anymore. “So you’re saying she probably just stumbled on a really gripping essay on the web about dendrochronology,” she said. “Or, I dunno, tree-ring dating—”
“Those are the same thing.”
“—whatever and is sitting somewhere with her nose happily glued to her shiny new gadget. Oblivious of tummy rumblings or the need to call me and expound on her latest scientific theorizing about … stuff.”
“Clare … it’s Allie. She of the level head,” Milo called after her as she quickened her pace and pulled away from him. “Wherever she is, she’s fine.”
But Clare wasn’t so sure and was almost sprinting by the time the fork in the road that led to the dig site came into view. She shoved open the livestock fence that barred the gap in the tall, thick hedgerow leading to the dig field, ran through, and then paused. From the north, she thought she could hear som
ething. A far-off noise that sounded like …
“Whoa!” she exclaimed, diving for cover in the long grass.
All around her the air shook with the thunder of horses galloping madly past. The ground beneath Clare’s feet trembled and her ears rang with piercing neighs and the gruff shouts of many men. A wave of darkness washed over her. Clare smelled smoke and blood and churned mud … and then, in the sudden silence, it was gone.
“Clare!”
Milo came tearing around the corner of the hedgerow, leaving the gate to swing shut behind him.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
Clare glanced wildly around. The day was back to its sunshiney bird-tweety empty-meadow normalcy. And Milo was hauling her up off the ground and gripping her by the arms, staring down worriedly into her eyes.
“You didn’t hear that?” Clare pushed past him, looking for the massed cavalry that—she was certain—had just thundered past. “The galloping and the whinnying and the potential trampling?”
He shook his head.
Clare ran back to the gate and hoisted herself up on the rail, looking up and down the road for signs of a nearby rodeo that had just experienced a horsey jail break. Not even a dust cloud to be seen in either direction. Maybe it had been … thunder? She glanced skyward. Not a cloud.
“Nothing?” she asked.
“I didn’t see or hear a thing,” Milo said. And then added cautiously, “Are you sure you’re okay?”
Mental breakdown it is, then. Enh. Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve approached that fine line. I still haven’t crossed over it. Yet.
She told herself she was just worried about Al and that it was causing her imagination to run away with her. Milo stood watching her patiently, head tilted, arms crossed over his chest.
“Oh … quiet, you,” she sighed as she stalked past him. “I’m not normal. You know that. Let’s go find your wayward cousin. And not tell her about my invisible horsey friends. She’s already been driving me crazy with the watching-like-a-hawk thing to make sure I don’t inadvertently do something enormously stupid like fondle the artifacts without adequate protection. Imagine how she’d react if she thought I was suddenly hallucinating.”
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