"L. Warren Douglas - The Veil of Years 2 - Veil of Tears" - читать интересную книгу автора (Douglas L Warren)

- Prologue




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 - Prologue




Prologue - Roman Year 630 (124 B.C.)
The Roman consul Caius Sextius Calvinus wrapped a woolen blanket around his legs and feet. The
fabric of his tent drummed with the beat of half-frozen rain, and beads of moisture formed where a
careless aide had brushed the fabric. He should have brought a good leather tent, like the ordinary
legionnaires used.

The mad Mistral wind drove ice-rimmed puddles into the tent where fabric met rocky ground. So this
was fair, sunny Gaul? Calvinus felt like a fool, an old fool, wrapped in a blanket. But it was beneath the
dignity of a Roman general to wear bulky bracaeтАФridiculous baggy trousers, bound at the ankles.

"The veleda is outside, Consul," a centurion rumbled.

"Bid her enter." In this weather, even a crazy Gaulish hag shouldn't have to stand outside for the sake of
his Roman dignity.

The centurion pushed the tent flap aside. His wordsтАФand the seeress's replyтАФwere whipped away on
the battering wind. Calvinus made as if busy with a dispatch he had been trying to writeтАФuntil the ink
had clotted with the cold. To complete his disgruntlement, the oil lamp on his table blew out when the
flap was thrust aside. Thus his visitor was no more than a bulky shadow in the dim light that penetrated
the wet fabric of the tent.

"Here," she said, stretching forth an arm. From her fingertips, a tiny bright flame leaped to the smoking
wick. Again, the warm glow of burning oil illuminated Calvinus's hands, and the crone's veiled face.

"How did you do that?" Startled by the trick, he failed to remark that the single word the woman had
uttered had not been in a voice cracked with ageтАФnor had those briefly illuminated fingers been an
ancient harridan's claws.

"How? Do you have a Great Year to learn my trade?" A Great Year was the druids' nineteen-year cycle,
that reconciled the lunar and solar periods. "You have no time at all."

Now those young, strong fingers reached to loosen her woolen scarf, to toss back the close-knit fabric of
her fine, waterproof sagus. She tossed the heavy mantle across a brass-bound chest.