much he declared that he wanted to be a pirate when he grew up. I suspected most of the legionnaires had even enjoyed ditch-digging more than my class.
It was late evening when the final horn blew and the cohorts tromped back to camp. I was hungry and exhausted. I wondered if this was how mortal teachers felt after a full day of classes. If so, I didn’t see how they managed. I hoped they were richly compensated with gold, diamonds, and rare spices.
At least the cohorts seemed to be in an upbeat mood. If the praetors’ goal had been to take the troops’ minds off their fears and raise morale on the eve of battle, then our afternoon had been a success. If the goal had been to train the legion to successfully repel our enemies…then I was less than hopeful. Also, all day long, everyone had carefully avoided addressing the worst thing about tomorrow’s attack. The Romans would have to face their former comrades, returned as zombies under Tarquin’s control. I remembered how hard it had been for Lavinia to shoot down Bobby with her crossbow in the tomb. I wondered how the legion’s morale would hold up once they faced the same ethical dilemma times fifty or sixty.
I was turning onto the Via Principalis, on my way to the mess hall, when a voice said, “Pssst.”
Lurking in the alley between Bombilo’s café and the chariot repair shop were Lavinia and Don. The faun was wearing an honest-to-gods trench coat over his tie-dyed T-shirt, as if that made him look inconspicuous. Lavinia wore a black cap over her pink hair.
“C’mere!” she hissed.
“But dinner—”
“We need you.”
“Is this a mugging?”
She marched over, grabbed my arm, and pulled me into the shadows.
“Don’t worry, dude,” Don told me. “It’s not a mugging! But, like, if you do have any spare change—”
“Shut up, Don,” said Lavinia.
“I’ll shut up,” Don agreed.
“Lester,” Lavinia said, “you need to come with us.”
“Lavinia, I’m tired. I’m hungry. And I have no spare change. Can’t it please wait—?”
“No. Because tomorrow we might all die, and this is important. We’re sneaking out.”
“Sneaking out?”
“Yeah,” Don said. “It’s when you’re sneaking. And you go out.”
“Why?” I demanded.
“You’ll see.” Lavinia’s tone was ominous, as if she couldn’t explain what my coffin looked like. I had to admire it with my own eyes.
“What if we get caught?”
“Oh!” Don perked up. “I know this one! For a first offense, it’s latrine duty for a month. But, see, if we all die tomorrow, it won’t matter!”
With that happy news, Lavinia and Don grabbed my hands and dragged me farther into the darkness.
I sing of dead plants
And heroic shrubberies
Inspiring stuff
SNEAKING OUT OF A Roman military camp should not have been so easy.
Once we were safely through a hole in the fence, down a trench, through a tunnel, past the pickets, and out of sight of the camp’s sentry towers, Don was happy to explain how he’d arranged it all. “Dude, the place is designed to keep out armies. It’s not meant to keep in individual legionnaires, or keep out, you know, the occasional well-meaning faun who’s just looking for a hot meal. If you know the patrol schedule and are willing to keep changing up your entry points, it’s easy.”
“That seems remarkably industrious for a faun,” I noted.
Don grinned. “Hey, man. Slacking is hard work.”
“We’ve got a long walk,” Lavinia said. “Best keep moving.”
I tried not to groan. Another nighttime hike with Lavinia had not been on my evening’s agenda. But I had to admit I was curious. What had she and Don been arguing about before? Why had she wanted to talk to me earlier? And where were we going? With her stormy eyes and the black cap over her hair, Lavinia looked troubled and determined, less like a gawky giraffe, more like a tense gazelle. I’d seen her father, Sergei Asimov, perform once with the Moscow Ballet. He’d had that exact expression on his face before launching into a grand jeté.
I wanted to ask Lavinia what was going on, but her posture made it clear she was not in the mood for conversation. Not yet, anyway. We hiked in silence out of the valley and down into the streets of Berkeley.
It must have been about midnight by the time we got to People’s Park.
I had not been there since 1969, when I’d stopped by to experience some groovy hippie music and flower power and instead found myself in the middle of a riot. The police officers’