Terra Incognita: A Novel of the Roman Empire Read Online Free Page A

the baby. She had worried for nothing. Surely not even the most money grabbing of innkeepers would turn away a newly delivered mother in a storm. Only her guilt-ridden midwife was alone in the dark, getting wet. Unless, of course, the driver had not brought the cart into the yard at all. Lydia could be anywhere among the houses huddling around the army’s camp.
    Wrinkling her nose at the stench of flooded drains, Tilla turned to splash back across the courtyard and stubbed her toe. Her feet were so cold that the pain took a couple of paces to register. When it did, it reached her mind at the same time as the thought that there was still one thing she could do to help the mother and baby.
    Raising her hands to the gods roaring in the sky, she cried in the language they had given to her people, “Great Taranis, god of the thunder, come to visit us this night! I am your servant, here to greet you!”
    The rain lashed at her face. She stood with her arms stretched out, trying not to shiver. Perhaps she had said the wrong things. Prayer was a difficult business at the best of times, and even harder when the worshipper was growing numb with cold. “Listen to me, great god of thunder!” she shouted into the rain. “I have no gift today, but I will make one if you keep safe the woman Lydia and the—”
    She was silenced by a white flash that left her blinking, staring, wiping the water out of her eyes, unable to take in what she had just seen. Summoning her courage, she peered into the darkness and called, “Who is there? Speak to me!”
    Something brushed against her. She shrank away, lost her footing, and landed with a splash. She lay with her hands over her ears as another crash of thunder buffeted the yard.
    When the thunder god’s voice rolled away, she scrambled to her feet. Someone was calling out. It was not the strange creature she had seen in the lightning. It was a recognizable voice, speaking in Latin, and definitely not heavenly.
    “Tilla, where the hell are you? What are you doing?”
    She turned toward the medicus. “I am looking for someone who is not here!”
    She heard the splash of approaching footsteps. She felt herself seized and lifted and pressed against his warmth as he carried her back toward the safety of the doorway.
    He said, “Who were you talking to?”
    Tilla closed her eyes, picturing the creature who had the form and face of a young man but growing from his head there had definitely been . . . “You will not believe me,” she said.
    They both lurched sideways as the medicus kicked the door open. “Try me.”
    She saw again the angles of the antlers in the harsh light. Antlers. The sign of Cernunnos, king of the beasts. But she had seen the hand on the wheel of the cart. . . . The wheel was the sign of Taranis, ruler of the thunder. She did not know whom her prayer had conjured in the yard. But she knew what. As the medicus stumped up the stairs, she whispered, “It is a powerful god.”

C ENTURION A UDAX OF the Tenth Batavians had stumbled over nasty things in back alleys before, but none quite like this. He took a step backward, unable to believe what he was looking at. Then, glancing around to see if anyone else was watching, he unfurled his cloak and bent to drape it over what remained of Felix the trumpeter.
    The only sign of life in the street was the huddled figure of a woman making an early start out of town with a bundle on her back. A swelling chorus of birdsong was heralding a clear dawn. The rest of Coria was either still in bed or yawning over its breakfast.
    Audax rapped on the door of the butcher’s shop. “Go over to the fort,” he ordered the bleary-eyed slave who finally responded to his knocking. “Tell them Audax needs Officer Metellus down here right away. And tell him I said to come alone.”
    He tramped back through the stink of the alley and crouched beside the body, pulling out a fold in the cloak to hide another inch of pale leg. It was pointless, but until