It took Malcolm and Caratacus almost half an hour to reach the head of the winding column, only to be told that Boiorix and Teutobod had gone east through the trees with the other sub-kings along a faint trail that led upwards to higher ground. Malcolm and Caratacus found the tribal leaders standing together in a small group in an open clearing, with Clovis talking quietly with his father a few feet apart from them. The young warrior gave Malcolm a dark look filled with malice before turning his focus on an ancient seeress named Gunda, who stood over the body of a prone man wearing only a loincloth.
The man was tied face down across a flat stone near the edge of a windswept cliff—one of the many slaves captured during the tribes' wanderings. The slave was weeping as the seeress chanted, her white robes and long grey hair whipping about her in the wind. Gunda wore a string of finger bones around her neck and held a bronze dagger against her chest, standing with her eyes closed as her body swayed while she spoke with the gods. A large silver cauldron sat on the ground directly beneath the weeping slave’s head that hung awkwardly over the edge of the rock.
Malcolm stared at the cauldron in surprise, the history professor in him awed by the sight as he recognized what it was. The silver vessel was a well-known artifact to historians—called the Gundestrup cauldron—which had been discovered in 1891 in a peat bog near the Cimbri fortress of Borremose in Denmark. At twenty-seven inches in diameter, seventeen inches tall, and weighing almost twenty pounds, it was the largest cauldron of its type ever discovered. Malcolm had seen it displayed in the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen once, although it had been cleaned and polished then and looked much different than it did now. Malcolm knew the silver plates around the exterior of the cauldron were heavily decorated with embossed figures of exotic animals, Celtic warriors, bare-breasted amazons, and hunting gods with antlers. None of those figures could be seen today, though, as the plates were covered almost entirely with thick layers of crusted blood.
The Gundestrup cauldron, thought by historians to have been a gift of friendship from the Thracians to the Cimbri during their travels, had in fact been taken from the Scordisci the previous year as plunder after the migrating tribes had routed them. What the vessel’s original purpose might have been was unclear, though the Cimbri seeresses were now using it to collect blood from human sacrifices. How the cauldron managed to make its way back to Denmark into a bog was a mystery that no historian could offer an answer to with any authority.
Boiorix finally saw Malcolm standing with Caratacus, and he gestured for the two young men to come closer. “Gunda had a vision,” the king explained to his son in a low voice.
“What kind of vision?” Malcolm asked, wondering if this was how the migrants had learned of the coming ambush. Roman historians had theorized that the Cimbri and Teutones had been warned of the trap by one of the Norici guides. But that had been nothing other than conjecture, as no proof had ever been found to back that theory up. Malcolm noticed four men standing off to one side, muttering to each other in obvious agitation. These were the guides.
“Gunda has seen many deaths in these mountains,” Boiorix said, keeping his voice low. His face was etched in seriousness, as were the features of all the others. The Cimbri and Teutones took visions and prophecies very seriously. “Gunda will ask the gods if we should continue on or seek a new path. One which does not include death.”
Malcolm nodded, looking toward the Norici guides again. No wonder they were so upset. If the migrants changed their route, the Roman ambush that had been so carefully prepared these past weeks would fail, and Carbo would lose his chance at glory.
Gunda suddenly spread her arms, shrieking as she raised her wrinkled face to the skies. She held the knife out at arm's length, then started rotating it in a circle as the bound slave beneath her began wailing hysterically, matching her shriek for shriek. Malcolm had seen this many times before, and though he felt sympathy for the man, he knew that there was nothing he could do for him. The tribes would not go any further until the gods had spoken, but to do that, they needed the slave’s blood. Gunda began to chant again, pressing the dagger to her forehead, then her mouth, then against each withered breast, and finally to her groin before she grabbed the sobbing man by the hair and drew his head back, exposing his throat.
The seeress abruptly stopped chanting, holding the trembling slave’s slick hair as she knelt and whispered into his ear. The man ceased his howling at her words, his terror-stricken features slowly relaxing at whatever the woman was saying to him. Finally, he nodded his head in acceptance, closing his eyes as the seeress ripped the gleaming blade across the soft flesh of his neck. The slave made a horrible gurgling sound, his body trembling as blood sprayed outward, steaming in the cool mountain air as it splattered on the ground and across the cauldron. Gunda held the man’s head up almost lovingly, cooing softly to him as dark red blood dribbled from the gaping wound in his neck down into the cauldron.
Finally, when the last drop had fallen, Gunda gently lowered the slave’s head, stroking his hair as she thanked him for his sacrifice. She cut the corpse’s bonds and rolled the body over tenderly, then whispered a prayer to the gods before she lifted the knife and stabbed downward into the dead man’s stomach. She started sawing the blade across his belly, chanting again, until finally satisfied, she set the knife down on his chest and reached inside the open cavity, drawing out the dead man’s gore-covered entrails. The seeress studied the entrails carefully, sliding them through her bloodied fingers for long minutes before finally she grunted in satisfaction and stood.
“We can proceed,” she said to no one in particular, her voice low and deep.
Gunda’s robes were stained a deep crimson as she went to the front of the rock, where she knelt and carefully lifted the cauldron, grunting at the weight. No one moved to help her when she turned and hobbled away, struggling to carry her burden across the uneven ground along the cliff’s ridge. She reached a smooth, perfectly rounded stone stained dark across the top—known to the tribes as a Direction Stone. The stone sat on a small pedestal built of smaller rocks and pebbles. The seeress balanced the cauldron on top of the smooth surface of the Direction Stone, panting as she paused to catch her breath.
Malcolm, Caratacus, and the kings and sub-kings had all followed silently behind her, and now they halted in a half-circle ten feet away as the seeress used her knife to stir the blood inside the cauldron. She began to chant as she worked, her eyes fixated on the vessel's interior, until finally the chanting ceased and she dropped the knife to the ground at her feet. Gunda bent then, her grunt of effort loud as she wrapped her hands around the rim of the cauldron and lifted it as far as she could above the stone. The seeress paused, her thin arms shaking as she called out one last time to the gods before tipping the cauldron forward, pouring the blood onto the head of the stone.
“Go,” Malcolm heard Teutobod say softly to his son, gesturing to him and the sub-king, Adalwolf.
The two men hurried forward, pausing on either side of the seeress as she swayed back and forth, her eyes closed, her lips moving soundlessly. The old woman started to shake as dark blood rolled slowly from the base of the cauldron, where it hung suspended along the rim for a moment in elongated, sticky globs before plummeting downward like jeweled raindrops. The dead man’s blood splattered across the smooth surface of the stone, with nothing but the sounds of the wind and chirping birds to fill the eerie silence on the clifftop.
Malcolm was expecting Gunda to collapse at any moment, for it had happened before, but the old woman persevered somehow, despite how weak she appeared. Finally, with another grunt of effort, the determined seeress turned the cauldron completely upside down and lowered it on top of the Direction Stone. The Gundestrup cauldron sat perched there like a gruesome, red and silver crown as Gunda slowly dropped to her knees, with Adalwolf and Clovis hurrying to support her.
“You must rest,” Adalwolf said in a gentle voice as Gunda struggled to stand.
“N
onsense,” the seeress snorted. “I’ll rest when my bones are dust. Not before.”
Gunda brushed aside the Teutone warrior’s help, then groaned as she regained her feet. She glanced at Boiorix and Teutobod, a question on her face. Both kings nodded solemnly and Gunda put her hands back on the cauldron, chanting softly once again as she gingerly lifted it from the stone. She handed the vessel to Clovis, who took it and stepped back, then the old woman moved closer to the rounded stone and peered down at it. The seeress stood for a long time, unmoving, an intense look of concentration on her face. Finally, she made a sound of annoyance, then began to shuffle slowly around the stone, muttering to herself.
“Is everything all right, Gunda?” Boiorix finally called. “Which way have the gods decreed that we should go?”
Gunda took a deep breath, then slowly made her way back toward the gathered tribesmen. Malcolm could see the fatigue lying heavy on her face as she approached. Would they keep going, heading for Carbo’s ambush, or turn away? Historians had often wondered why the migrants had taken such a rambling path throughout Europe, but the simple truth was that their way was dictated by the seeresses. Whichever side of the Direction Stone contained the most blood from a sacrificed slave or enemy soldier was the direction they would always take, which sometimes sent them looping back around places they’d already been. The results of the Direction Stone were never questioned, simply because it was believed the gods had chosen it. Malcolm knew that was a load of crap, of course, but trying to explain that to superstitious people like the Cimbri and Teutones would not only be a waste of time, it could also get him killed. Even Alodia would probably become enraged if he even tried to broach the subject of random chance.
“I have been reading the messages of the Gods for most of my life,” Gunda said, shaking her head, looking perplexed. “But never have I seen such a conflicting one as this.”
Boiorix frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“You will, great king,” Gunda said, crooking a finger at him to follow her.
The seeress returned to the Direction Stone, standing over it as Boiorix and Teutobod joined her. Malcolm and the rest of the tribesmen followed, and he could hear anxious mutterings beginning before finally he got a good look at the stone. The blood had rolled down the rounded surface on two sides like a stream, looking like mirrored images of each other. Even the pools streaking the base of the stone and pedestal were identical, with one thick stream pointed toward the direction the caravan was heading and the other back the way they had come. Malcolm could see a red ring around the entire top of the stone from where the cauldron's rim had sat, but even that ring looked uniform.
Boiorix crouched down on his knees, studying first one of the stains, then the other, before finally, he shook his head. “There is no difference,” he said, slowly standing and looking down at the stone in bemusement. Teutobod and the rest of the sub-kings followed his example, with no one able to say with certainty that one side was different from the other.
“What do we do now?” Caratacus asked Malcolm in a whisper.
Malcolm shrugged. “I have no idea.”
“What are the gods telling us, Gunda?” Adalwolf asked. The sub-king was stroking his beard in confusion as he stared at the stone. “I don’t understand what this means.”
“Nor do I,” Gunda replied. She lifted her hands with her palms upward and then dropped them to her side wearily. “Perhaps this is the gods way of saying we must choose our own fate this time.”
“We should turn back,” Clovis said with determination. “The gods are telling us death lies ahead and salvation behind.”
“The gods could easily be telling us the opposite,” Boiorix said with a snort. “There is no way to know for certain.”
“Then we should vote on which way to go,” Clovis said stubbornly. He looked around him, his eyes bright with determination. “I vote we go back. We should never have left to begin with. If the Romans want a fight, then I say let’s give them one.”
“I agree with my son,” Teutobod said. “We should not have been so hasty to accept their terms. The Romans think us cowards now.”
“I say we keep going,” Adalwolf grunted. “We’ve already come this far and will find much easier prey west of Noricum. Prey that does not have Roman legions protecting them.”
One by one, the rest of the tribesmen—excluding Caratacus—voted. Eventually, only Malcolm was left to cast his vote, with five men choosing to keep going and five to return to the valley.
“Well, my son?” Boiorix asked. “Which is it to be? Do we keep heading west or turn back to face Rome’s wrath?”
Malcolm hesitated, a momentary vision of Alodia swimming naked in the lake filling his mind. He could change everything right now, he realized. With one word, he could return the Cimbri and Teutones to the valley, where they might find a way to negotiate an agreement with the Norici and Romans to stay. It was a long shot, Malcolm knew, but he was also aware that pressing ahead meant certain destruction for all of them in just a few short years from now—Artturi and Alodia included. Just the thought of the fate that awaited the women of the tribes sent a shiver of dread down Malcolm’s body.
Malcolm closed his eyes, wavering as the temptation to say to hell with the history books pressed down on him like a weight. He thought suddenly of Claire, wondering where she was and what she was doing. Was she still stuck in 1718, even after all these years? Or was she somewhere in this timeline, trying to find Gerald? Claire, of all people, would be overjoyed at what he was contemplating, as the repercussions of his actions today might do exactly what she so clearly wanted to happen—change the future. But in what way? Malcolm knew that was the million-dollar question, with no easy answer and no way to know for certain. The results of the coming battle with Consul Carbo and his thirty thousand over-confident legionnaires would shake Rome to its foundations. So much so that eventually it would cause a massive transformation in how the Roman military did things—a transformation that would set the path of Rome’s future for centuries. If that path was never taken because the coming battle didn’t occur, what would become of the Roman Republic and future empire?
Malcolm sighed in frustration, realizing that the risk to the future was too great to take a chance. He and Alodia still had time, he reasoned, and there was nothing to say that they had to accept the fate waiting for them years from now. He would figure out a way to save them both.
“We go west,” Malcolm finally whispered.
CHAPTER TWELVE
CLAIRE: City of Noreia, Kingdom of Noricum
The domus was abuzz with excitement—as much as could be expected with most of the occupants unable to speak. A Consul of Rome, Gnaeus Papirius Carbo, was coming to visit the master, which had never happened before. In fact, no Roman Consul had ever stepped foot inside the city of Noreia, so it was a momentous day not only for the familia of Quintus Barbii, but for the city as well. The master was in his tablinum—which was essentially a room in the domus set aside as an office—where he was meeting with Seisyll and Noreia’s mayor, Tristram.
Claire could hear the deep murmur of male voices coming down the hallway from the tablinum as she cleaned the floor tiles of the central hall, called the atrium. Seven other slaves worked silently along with her. Some were sweeping the floor free of any dust before the scrubbing, while others cleaned the intricate mosaics on the walls. Two male slaves had scooped the water out of the impluvium, which was a small pool in the center of the room filled by rainwater from an opening in the roof. The slaves were inside the impluvium, washing the interior, having preserved the water that had filled it in large jugs beforehand so that none was wasted. An older female slave named Valentina was carefully wiping down the tall statue of Minerva, the goddess of wisdom and trade that stood on a pedestal near the impluvium.
Claire heard the familiar shuffle of Camilla’s sandaled feet on the tiles behind her and the aggressive cracking of the ulmas against her heavy thigh. She immediately put her
head down and started to scrub harder, as did Milena, a girl of roughly her own age who was working beside her.
“Hurry up, all of you!” Camilla snapped, her harsh voice echoing loudly. The ulmas smacked with promise against her thigh twice in rapid succession to give added incentive to her words. “Consul Carbo will be here in less than an hour,” she said, as if the slaves weren’t already aware of that fact, having been constantly reminded by the manageress. Camilla strode to where Claire and Milena knelt, then bent and stared at the tiles in front of them critically. She pointed to a spot with the ulmas that gleamed in the sunlight streaming through the roof opening. “There’s still dirt there. Are you blind or just lazy? Scrub harder, you two!” Both Claire and Milena nodded, working frantically with the hand brushes. Camilla watched them for a moment, the ulmas twitching in her hand before finally she grunted in reluctant approval and strode away.
“You call that clean, you stupid toad!” the manageress suddenly shrieked moments later.
Claire automatically jumped, then winced as she heard the unmistakable sound of the ulmas striking bare flesh. She chanced a quick glance behind her. The unfortunate bearer of Camilla’s ire turned out to be a boy named Lulius, who was short and stocky, with dark, sullen brown eyes and long pink and purple burn scars running down both his arms. Lulius was new to the domus, having lost his tongue less than a month ago. The boy always appeared angry, his eyes looking haunted as he desperately fought to make words that would never come. Claire could certainly relate to that frustration.
Lulius had become Camilla’s favorite new target of late, which had thankfully taken some of the pressure off Claire. The boy looked strong for his age, and with his attitude, Claire was always hopeful that he’d snap one day and kill Camilla. So great was her hatred for the manageress, that there was nothing Claire wanted to see more in the world than that right now, not even Gerald. Claire paused at that thought, realizing in surprise that it was true. All she’d ever wanted during the past lives she’d lived so far was to find and be with Gerald. The entire concept of changing the future to save Julie had been his idea in the first place, after all, suggested over a few glasses of wine as they had plotted revenge against DakCorp. But the only chance they’d had to talk since entering the past had been on Blackbeard’s ship, and Gerald had fluffed her off with barely a word before getting himself killed.
Past Lives (The Past Lives Chronicles Book 1) Page 13
