“I believe you would, Centurion,” shefinally replied with a frown that I misinterpreted as disapproval.“But why? Why would you do such a thing for me? You barely know me.And,” this was when she broke our gaze, bowing her head andmuffling her words, “after what I did to put you in this position,why would you care?”
“That’s partly the reason,” I answeredher, deciding on the fly that a half-truth would serve. “Now that Iknow you were forced into it because of Cogidubnus’ threat to yourfather, I suppose I feel responsible for your…predicament.” Sheraised her head, but I sensed it was because of the unfamiliarword. “Besides,” I decided to fall back on a joking manner, “Isuppose I feel like if your father’s not around, I should do hisjob while he’s gone.”
She laughed, giving me a frank, direct lookthat told me that, again, she was not fooled in the slightest.
“Centurion, I do not believe that whenyou look at me, you are thinking of me as yourdaughter.”
Even if I could have thought of something tosay, I doubt I could have gotten it out, so the silence stretchedout, and my memory of this moment is that it was as if we were insome sort of bubble where the sounds of the people who were stillentering the camp, calling out to each other as some children werelaughing and others were crying could not penetrate.
I finally broke the painfully awkwardsilence by stammering, “Yes, er, yes, well…” Acutely conscious as Iwas that I was babbling, I could not seem to stop myself. “Isuppose that might be true,” I finally got out, feeling my faceburning in a way that reminded me of when I was twelve years oldand I had gotten caught peeking in Clotidia Scrofa’s window as shewas changing. “So, how about you call me Gnaeus instead ofCenturion?”
“Very well…Gnaeus.” Her tone suddenlysounded shy. Then, before I knew it, she had stood on her tiptoes,although she still had to grab my head to pull it down so that shecould give me a light kiss on the lips.
Even if I had reacted immediately, I wouldhave been too late to do anything because she spun about and,moving with an impressive swiftness, joined the last of thetownspeople entering the camp. And, once the last of them haddisappeared, there was no way to miss Ivomagus, standing on theopposite side of the gate, staring at me with undisguisedhostility.
Thanks to the Brigantes, Ivomagus never gotthe chance to confront me about what he had seen with Bronwen.Immediately after we got the townspeople tucked away in the camp,there were too many other things to do, and we mutually agreed thatit would be better to work separately. Not surprisingly, I wasgiven the tasks that did not require much instruction and relied onbrute strength, like moving the wagons, turning them over, thenweighing them down. The first problem I ran into was that therewere no rocks of any size, a result of the kind of terrain that isa feature of the Parisii lands near the coast. Instead, we had tofind substitutes, which included the iron forges of the two smithsin Petuar, although one shop had two of them. And, probably notsurprisingly, I took this opportunity to give my captors ademonstration of my strength, carrying all three to the easterngate. The first two did not pose a problem, but by the third, mylegs were on fire, my arms ached, and my tunic was soaked withsweat, but when one of the warriors of my working party who wasmore muscular than his comrades held his arms out in a signal tohand him the forge, I snarled at him in a way that he did not needa translator to understand. It angered him, but he wisely saidnothing, stepping out of the way as I made it the rest of the way,except this time, instead of placing the forge on the inside of thewagon, I just dropped it, cracking the sideboard. Fortunately, thewood had not cracked all the way through, but we still needed moreweight, and I sent men off in search of materials. We had taken offthe wheels on the side opposite from the ground, while the wheelson the ground side actually aided in the stability and would makeit more difficult for the enemy to simply push the wagon over usingtheir numbers. Once the men returned, some of them carrying sacksof grain while others found crates of iron ingots and these weredistributed equally between the three, I had the men, ten of them,try and shove the wagons out of the way, and they did not budge.The outer edges of the end wagons overlapped both sides of the gateby about two feet, so the eastern gate was now effectively sealed.We did manage to create a makeshift parapet with several overturnedbuckets, then laid planks on top so that the men who would bedefending the gate could stand on them with the upper edge of thewagons coming up to their waist, while their shields would protectthe rest of them.
Meanwhile, Ivomagus had summoned thecivilian men into the square, where he gave them instructions,dividing them between men who would be responsible for watching forfire arrows, those who would be responsible for dragging woundedwarriors to safety, and finally, townsmen who could handle a bowwho would supplement the handful of archers that were available.All told, Ivomagus told me that we had a hundred thirty-eighttrained warriors, and another fifty of the townspeople who couldact as archers. We had agreed to meet at the square once we weredone, and my last job was to physically lead the men of the workingparty who would be standing guard at the eastern gate and pointingto where I wanted them to stand on the makeshift parapet, thenusing one of
