one of his own kind. The last of the free Celts had been herded from the mountains by Roman spears. Resisters had been killed or taken as slaves, by order of the Second Legion’s iron-fisted commander, Sextus Sempronius Gracchus. Those who’d surrendered had been resettled in the Roman fortress city of Isca.
Yet even if that grim history hadn’t emptied the mountains of human activity, Owein would never have mistaken the unconscious woman for a hardy Celt lass. She was too delicately formed. Too dark. Too richly garbed.
She was Roman.
Amazement overtook his loathing. A young Roman woman, wandering alone in the mountains, more than a full day’s journey from Isca? ’Twas pure insanity. He couldn’t imagine one of her kind straying half so far from the fortress.
He reached out, his open hand hovering over her parted lips. Warm breath bathed his palm. Alive, then.
Something in his chest eased. He frowned. He hadn’t even known he feared for the woman’s life. Now an unexpected urgency flooded his veins. If she weren’t warmed quickly, she would die.
Bending, he gathered her limp figure in his arms. His weakened muscles screamed in protest. Teeth gritted, he heaved her upward, scattering a shower of snow.
Shaking the stars from his vision, he shifted, distributing his burden more evenly. The lass started, then relaxed against his chest with a small sigh. As if Owein were a man to be trusted.
Slowly, he retraced his path, his breath laboring with each step. In normal circumstances the lass’s small weight would have been as nothing. Now, in the aftermath of his vision, ’twas all he could do to place one foot before the other, trudging through lengthening shadows, whirlwinds of snow gusting before him. As he rounded a bend in the trail, the woman stirred in his arms. Her eyelids fluttered open.
Her gaze sought his. Her chapped lips parted, the tip of her tongue snaking between them. She drew a breath.
Instinctively, he dipped his head.
Her words came in Latin. It was a language Owein hadn’t spoken willingly in many seasons, and it took him a moment to work out her meaning.
Ego inveni te. I have found you.
She blinked up at him. Pressed to describe her expression, Owein might have labeled it one of awe. He shook his head. She did not see him, not truly.
She lifted a hand to touch the bare patch of cheek above his beard. Her fingertip was a cool blessing on his heated skin.
She exhaled a whisper of misted breath. “You … are wreathed in light.”
The reverence in her tone shook Owein to the core. Light? A harsh laugh stuck in his throat. Her words couldn’t have struck the target farther from the truth.
He formed his reply carefully, the taste of the conquerors’ language bitter on his tongue.
“Light? Nay, lady. Ye are mistaken. I live in darkness.”
You are wreathed in light.
An odd utterance, and not fitting, in any case. Owein wondered at it, but feared he’d not have the chance to ask the Roman lass her meaning. Her eyes had swept closed and the blue tinge of her lips had deepened. Her breath came in uneven spurts, its rhythm marred by the shuddering of her body.
He tightened his arms around her. Was it his imagination, or did he detect the aroma of springtime?
With steps as quick as he could manage, he threaded his way through the broken bones of what had once been a village. A charred bit of stubble was all that remained of the settlement’s encircling palisade wall. The cone roofs of the roundhouses, deprived of families to shelter, sagged like the faces of old women. In many cases, the thatching had scattered completely. Only one dwelling, on the fringe of the settlement, was not completely ruined.
He shoved open its plank door. Winter swirled into the hut, spiraling along the curved wall before settling with a sigh near the center hearth. He ducked inside, the door slamming crookedly behind him.
He’d left his fire smoldering. He’d meant to check his traps before they were completely lost in the snow. A task, he thought belatedly, he’d left undone.
The Roman woman stirred in his arms, causing his weakened muscles to burn. Almost stumbling across the roundhouse’s single room, he laid her not on the grass-stuffed pallet that was his bed, but on the bare dirt nearest the hearth. His muscles kinked as they released her weight. Bracing his arms on either side of her body, Owein closed his eyes and took a steadying breath. His strength was returning,