Chapter Two

The Call of the North

Even before Lucius had given words to my feelings, I had learned that for a poor but ambitious junior officer, the legion’s permanent barracks, situated as they were just outside of Rome, could not be considered the most hospitable of postings. And if that officer gambled a bit too much, and was heavily in debt, his plight was even worse. I was restless, increasingly desperate, hating my poverty, and thoroughly bored with the dull routine of camp life in the peacetime Army. It was a few days earlier when I had been ruminating about my fate that I happened upon a slave caravan. Such long lines of fresh captives were quite common in Rome in those days. Day or night, one could find them bound for the slave markets, wending their ways through the streets of that decadent city, a city insatiable for ever more human flesh.

Now I watched as two long rows of dusty naked captives, at first, only men. They trudged past me, their eyes downcast, their tread slow and dull. It was easy to see from their long unkempt hair, powerful builds and scarred, hard-muscled bodies that these must have been barbarian fighters, once proud warriors whose spirit had been broken by defeat at the hands of Rome’s invincible legions. Now, they were being led by the overseers, who found no need to use their whips on their dazed and beaten captives. The shuffling men moved their feet mindlessly, hands manacled before them, chained to one another in loose coffles of eight men each.

There were lines of captured women too. And although these were fewer, I studied them with much greater interest. Many were stocky, heavily build barbarian women, clearly destined to end up as field slaves or at best house slaves, although occasionally one found the kind of well-made body that might elevate its fortunate owner to work in the bedchamber or in one of the city’s pleasure houses. The long lines of would-be slaves were broken by the occasional slaver’s wagon, the kind with the large wheels and wide flatbeds that held standing captives in tall barred cages. The wagons were reserved for captured nobles or for those women who were fated to become specially trained sex slaves, since it was felt unwise to wear out the more valuable merchandise by the rigors of a long exhausting march to Rome.

I watched the sorry parade without much interest as it made its way slowly by, when a creaking wagon came into view and with it a particularly rare prize. The jogging cage held a breath-taking statuesque blond girl. She must be a captive from the Northern peoples, I realized, a rare Teuton to be sure, as I recognized the striking Nordic features that Gaius had once described to me in such loving detail. This Germanic beauty was impressively tall, regal in bearing; her sculpted features so elegantly made that I could only stare in awe. Most of those favored captives who found themselves so displayed in the tall wooden cages would shrink back to huddle in a far corner averting their eyes, or they might squat down studying the planks on the floor with head held low in the utter shame of defeat. But this woman did no such thing!

This regal beauty stood naked yet in bold defiance, her cold blue eyes squarely meet