by H. B. Ashman
Chapter Three
T he dark depths that had swallowed Amalia shifted with moving specks of light. Amalia woke from a deathlike slumber. She could feel the cold, wet surface of the lake’s shore underneath her, both of her feet still dangling in the freezing water of the lake.
Alive. She was alive. And she was breathing. Amalia opened her eyes in response to a voice. It sounded like a young man, though she couldn’t make out what he’d said.
Sprawled and soaking wet, she wiped her eyes with her sleeve, blinking away mud and rain.
“Ave tribune, haec est enim nova et barbara,” an older man’s voice responded in Latin.
Wait . . . Latin?
Amalia shook her head. She was probably just confused. But when she opened her mouth to ask for help, something struck her in the ribs. Amalia gasped and then vomited, muddy lake water spilling down the side of her mouth as she rolled onto her side. Did someone just kick me? What the hell was going on here?
Holding her ribs with one hand, Amalia used her wet sleeve once more to clean the last bit of mud out of her eyes.
“Noli ludere cum mortuis,” the younger man’s voice said in a calm tone—but yes, there was no doubt this time: he was speaking freaking Latin!
Gasping for her breath, Amalia pushed herself onto her elbows and looked around. A few more blinks and the blurry images finally came into focus. In front of her was the lake, calm and beautiful now. The clouds above her were grey but peaceful, the storm gone, almost as if it had never happened. Her gaze briefly stopped at the caves next to the lake. A swarm of birds tweeted cheerfully as they landed on the tallest rock of the rock formation. But then she realized that the stairs of the caves were gone. Not damaged from the storm—no, gone, as in vanished.
She turned her confused stare toward the voices. Between Amalia and the edge of the woods stood a middle-aged man dressed in a Roman military outfit. It looked as if he’d jumped out of one of the Latin books she’d been tortured with throughout high school. He was wearing a round metal helmet with long cheek covers, and his chest was protected by more metal armor. Underneath, he was wearing a red tunic. His leather sandals and leather greaves were drenched in mud. A sword in a leather scabbard hung over his shoulder like a purse. Behind him was a tall young man, who was also dressed in a Roman combat uniform that looked slightly different, more glamorous. His tunic was white and had a narrow purple stripe on it. His armor and greaves were metal with detailed decorations. He was even handsome, his hair and eyes light brown. He must have been Amalia’s age, maybe a bit older.
Speechless, Amalia pushed herself into a sitting position. There must be some sort of cosplay party going on, or war reenactment game or something.
“Puto ut vivat barbara,” the older man said to his companion, both staring at her as if they had never seen another human before.
Amalia’s jaw tightened. Were these two for real?
“Can you please call for help? I almost drowned,” Amalia said, her voice clearly annoyed. But the older man just watched her every move, his forehead wrinkling.
“Quam aliena est?” he asked the younger man. Was she supposed to play along, ask for help in Latin? Like most Germans, Amalia had been forced to learn Latin in high school, but that didn’t mean she wanted to play these two idiots’ game.
“I really need—”
“Videtur ut nos intellegat,” the younger, more noble looking of the two said to his friend.
Amalia narrowed her eyes and let out an irritated sigh. She was exhausted, almost drowned. This was starting to get on her nerves big time. She gathered her thoughts. It had been two years since she last spoke Latin, but she couldn’t forget thousands of hours of Latin classes. She mumbled a few words, trying to summon the correct grammar formation when the older man grasped his sword’s handle.
“Delira videtur.” He took a step forward. “Proinde occidam eam.”
“Occidam?” Amalia blurted. “Kill? No!”
But the man ignored her, calmly drawing his sword from his scabbard with a hiss of metal—not plastic. This was no prop. It was real. These men were insane! Amalia tried to get up again to give this guy a nice ass-whooping, but her knees straight-up failed her. Last night had been too much. She’d never felt more tired and weak before, but then she’d also never drowned before.
The man was within reach now.
“No!” Amalia yelled as her arms shot up over her head, but the man lowered his sword to his hip, as if he would stab her rather than behead her.
“You’re crazy!” Amalia shouted.
“Consiste,” the younger man called from behind to the older man.
Halt, Amalia translated.
The older man lowered his sword. Amalia used the last bit of energy she had left to get back to her knees.
“Puto ut Latine loquatur,” the young soldier said to the older one. He pointed at the older man’s sword. “Exclamabat ad te antequam gladium tuum eduxit.”
Amalia focused as hard as she could. Shouted . . . before . . . sword. Yes! That was it. He said that she shouted in fear before he drew his sword; that she must understand Latin. This was her moment: “Quod . . . intellegi!” she growled. Both of the men stared at her. “Yes, I speak . . . I mean, quam, equam . . . loquimur.” No that wasn’t right. Try again. “Possum vos intellegere!”
The two men exchanged confused looks. What was the matter with these two? Maybe this really was a roleplay. Maybe they’d break character now.
“You speak Latin?” the young man asked her in Latin. He did so in a slow, weird tone, as if he were talking to a child. The older man sheathed his sword. It had worked. Now she only had to convince those two to leave her be. She could get help on her own, crawl to the nearest street if she had to, as long as it was far away from these two.
“Yes. I can speak Latin,” she said in her sassiest Latin.
The two men broke out into laughter.
“Let’s speak first,” the younger soldier said, still laughing, “then you can fly if it pleases you.” Shit. Loquere meant speak, volant meant to fly. She’d just told them that she could fly.
The young man narrowed his eyes. He seemed to be the one in charge despite his age. “What tribe do you come from?” he asked, analyzing every inch of her. Amalia remained silent. How could this be? Was this some sort of prank show? Where were the hidden cameras?
“The tribune has spoken to you!” the older man barked, stepping forward with clenched fists.
But the young man, apparently the tribune, raised his hand, stopping another attack on Amalia. “She will speak. In time. Take her to the camp.”
“To the camp, my Tribune? But our legate—”
“Will not be your concern. Now do as you are told.”
“Yes, my Tribune.”
The younger man turned around and strode toward a small path in the woods. His long crimson cloak flapped with his movements as he disappeared behind the first line of trees. Amalia’s gaze met the older soldier’s. He let out a sigh, then walked up to her and reached down.
“What are you doing?” she protested in Latin as she tried to push him away, but her body betrayed her once more. Her arms were too weak. God, she was tired.
“Don’t touch me!”
The soldier ignored her as he bound her wrists behind her back with rough, biting rope.
“Let go of me!” She squirmed as much as she could, but her attacker swept her easily onto his shoulder. Amalia formed a fist with both of her tied hands and started hitting the soldier in his spine, but her blows bounced off his metal armor without the slightest dent.
“Help!” Amalia cried out. “Somebody help!”
“Quiet, woman, or I will throw you back in the lake.”
Amalia stopped fighting. She bit her lip, hard, and tasted the metallic flavor of blood. There was nothing she could do right now but watch in horror as this insane man carried her along a small path in the woods. But the terrain wasn’t quite right. The forest was thicker, the tree
s taller. Where was her jogging trail? Had the storm destroyed it somehow? None of this made sense. Trees and bushes were growing out of control into each other as if these woods had never felt the touch of a human hand before. The light from nearby streets had been replaced with shadows—the trees and canopy were so thick, they blocked out the sun. Bright moss covered the trunks and rocks, and there was a mysterious fog that gave the forest an even spookier touch.
“Where are we?” Amalia wondered out loud. Suddenly her hair got caught on a branch and jerked her head backward; she almost fell off her kidnapper’s shoulder. But rather than stopping and gently untangling her hair, the damn brute yanked her forward. Amalia screeched as a patch of her hair tore from her scalp and snapped back with the branch, waving at her like a pale flag.
“I told you to be quiet, woman.”
Amalia swallowed all the things she was about to shout at him. She felt angry tears burn her eyes as the soldier carried her deeper and deeper into the forest. Whatever camp he was taking her to, surely there would be a normal person, someone who could help her. She just had to stop provoking this man, be smart. She was about to rest her eyes, gathering her strength in case she needed to fight soon, when a white flicker moving between the branches caught her attention. She focused her gaze and saw, in the far distance, almost hidden by the fog, a white bird sitting on a rock. Its amber eyes glared directly at her. Then it spread its majestic wings and let out a cry that echoed through the forest. It launched into the air, flew through the canopy, and was gone.
Chapter Four
T he soldier carried Amalia out of the woods and into a wide opening. She jerked her head up in excitement. Was there a street? Parking lot? Edge of a town? But that tingle of hope was instantly replaced with pure panic. Instead of finding twenty-first-century infrastructure, Amalia and her captor were approaching an enormous camp. It was several hundred yards long and wide and was surrounded by a ditch several feet deep. Wooden spikes lined up perfectly between tall, strategically placed wooden watchtowers. Two guards stood on each tower, their eyes settling on Amalia hanging over the shoulder of the older soldiers. He, Amalia, and the young tribune walked toward a large wooden gate.
Amalia blinked, trying to grasp the scene in front of her. “What . . . what is this?” she muttered.
“Castrorum,” the solider replied. “We are here to fight off your barbaric brothers and sisters,” he added. Amalia ignored him, trying to come to grips with the scene in front of her.
Only a few feet away from what had to be a reenactment site, the young tribune waved his hand to signal to the guards to open the wooden gates.
“Ave Tribune!” one of the watchmen shouted down. Within a matter of seconds, the rattling gates opened wide.
The tribune stopped and turned, his brown eyes settling on Amalia. “Take her to your tent and keep the others away from her. I shall join you there later.”
“Yes, my Tribune,” the man underneath Amalia huffed. It was more than impressive that he had carried her all the way without stopping once, but the shimmering pearls of sweat running down his head and arms proved that he was only human.
The inside of the camp was nothing short of breathtaking. Amalia was taken down a path between a sea of tents, thousands of them, which were carefully lined up into squares that formed a barrier around a larger tent in the middle of the encampment. Everything screamed discipline and organization. Every tent was lined up perfectly with the next. The camp itself was lively, yes, but even the buzzing movements of the countless soldiers were organized and controlled. A group of soldiers beneath an open pavilion was handing out meals in one corner of the camp, while another group was brushing horses and cleaning what looked like human-sized crossbows in another.
They passed some sort of training field, where men were practicing with wooden swords and shields in rhythmical motions, constantly barked at by an older, well-built soldier with a helmet that had a red feather crest.
“Boss?” Amalia asked her kidnapper and nodded at the man in the training field. It would be good to know who was in charge here, who could help her.
“Centurion,” he grunted.
Amalia wanted to ask if he was in charge of the tribune, but before she got the chance, some of the soldiers who were watching the training turned toward Amalia and starting whistling at her. They were of all ages, Mediterranean looking, with dark hair and brown eyes and skin. The centurion turned, his angry eyes darkening at the sight of her. He shouted something at the men who looked away, then he marched over to her, grimacing.
“Cassius, how dare you defy the legate and bring one of their whores into this camp,” the centurion fumed. Amalia swallowed a lump in her throat. The man reminded her of the drill sergeant in a Kubrick movie she’d watched once.
“She belongs to the tribune,” Cassius, her escort, said. The centurion narrowed his eyes once more at Amalia, then nodded curtly and strode back to the training field. So that was that. Amalia sighed. Tribune was above centurion, and the young soldier by the lake was some sort of executive here.
Cassius moved on, Amalia bouncing up and down like an idiot on his shoulder. At some point in the woods, he had tossed her onto the forest floor and commanded her to walk, but when her legs gave out in exhaustion after only two steps, her head hitting the ground hard, he cussed and threw her back over his shoulder.
All of this was insane. There was no way this was anywhere near Horn-Bad Meinberg. A reconstructed Roman camp like this would not have gone unnoticed in her town. This place was a sensation. But then where was she? And how had she gotten here? Just as she opened her mouth to ask where she was, her kidnapper dropped her onto the ground like, as they say, a sack of potatoes. Amalia thought she felt a rib crack as all the air left her lungs.
“Screw you!” she coughed at him in German. Some of the soldiers sitting in front of their tents and playing a game with dice turned their heads.
“A wild one you got yourself, Cassius,” a young, rat-faced soldier said, laughing. He had bad acne and was short and skinny. Late teenage years, Amalia guessed.
“I am not a slave!” she barked at him in Latin again, which seemed to amuse the men.
“If she is too much for you, I can tame her,” the rat-faced soldier said. “I prefer my women wild.” He thrust his pelvis back and forth, his thin lips carving a smile across his rat face. The soldiers laughed and grunted encouragingly.
Cassius shook his head. “I doubt your little prick would know what to do with a woman like this.”
Loud laughter followed Cassius’s comment as the rat-faced boy deflated like the child he was. Then Cassius moved past the men, disappearing into the brown leather tent behind them. For a moment, Amalia thought she was rid of him. But Cassius returned just as quickly as he had stepped away, and much to her horror, he was carrying a metal chain and shackles in his hands.
“No,” Amalia said, scrambling backward, but Cassius rammed his knee into her back before she could even try to stand. A sharp pain spread across her spine as tears of rage and anger burned in her eyes, but there was nothing she could do. She felt the cold embrace of metal on her bare skin as the shackles wrapped around her wrists and neck, followed by the metallic click of a lock.
“Take them off!” Amalia managed to grab some of the chain that was hanging off to her side and swing it upward as hard as she could. She couldn’t see if her pathetic attack was successful, but she heard Cassius cry out.
“May the wolves eat your children,” Cassius cursed, jumping from her. Amalia rolled onto her back and saw him pressing his hand against his head, then looking at his palm for blood. But there was none—much to Amalia’s disappointment. The soldiers laughed, their dice game entirely forgotten. Cassius produced a heavy iron bolt from God knows where and hammered it into the ground. Amalia watched in horror as he fastened her chain to the bolt. She sat up and tried to pull the bolt out of the hard ground by yanking on her chain, but the damn thing didn’t move an inch.
&n
bsp; Cassius watched her, mumbling something as he took a seat on a wooden log beside the men, who had finally returned to their dice game. On the other side of Cassius, a group of soldiers were mending boots. Like factory machines, they were grabbing boot after boot from a large pile to hammer some sort of hobnail into the soles. Amalia forced out a frustrated breath and then scanned her surroundings. Whatever was going on here, she needed to survive long enough to escape. Her gaze found its way back at Cassius, who had now taken off his helmet, revealing short dark hair that fell lightly onto his forehead. Like most others around here, he had pale skin and looked to be in its late thirties. He had a big scar on his cheek that she hadn’t noticed before. It ran from his ear to the edge of his lip.
“Where am I?” Amalia asked, but Cassius ignored her. “Hey, you! Cassius. I asked where we are.”
His gaze settled on the men mending shoes beside him. Amalia took a deep breath. She had to calm herself; this wasn’t going anywhere. Amalia inhaled again. Exhale.
“Cassius. That’s your name, right?” she asked again in a calm, almost kind tone. He remained silent. “I was wondering if you could be so kind and tell me where we are.” She bit her lower lip, then forced the next word out. “Please.”
Without looking at her, Cassius grabbed another boot from the pile and said: “Your mind must be as cloudy as your sky to ask that.” He hammered a few hobnails in the boot before tossing it into one of several small piles beside him. Amalia watched as he grabbed another boot, methodically carrying out the task.
“That’s smart to add traction to the boots,” she said in an even friendlier tone that Anni would have called fake as hell.
“It’s needed in this barbaric land with its barbaric weather and barbaric people,” he growled back at her. A few of the other soldiers muttered approval. Amalia bit her lip again.
She watched Cassius and the other soldiers work for a few minutes before a thought occurred to her. “Mark the boot, then rearrange the piles,” Amalia said, pointing at a soldier who was combing through an enormous pile of leather boots. He had been holding boots to the open-toed sandals on his feet, looking for the right fit. Cassius stopped hammering and looked up at her.
