As she looked harder, she could see the snow on the tops of the mountains and darkness below, which suggested a valley.
Did she dare walk along the road? If that man was looking for her, he would be expecting her to make her way along it. On the other hand, if she walked elsewhere, she could fall off a cliff to her death. The mountains were steep.
Maybe she could walk along the side of the road, she determined. The road was the only safe place to walk. She had to risk it. But it could be playing right into his hands. She was bound by indecision.
Slowly, she clambered up toward the road. It was incredibly steep in places and she had to climb on all fours. Intermittently, she stopped and listened, but heard nothing. The good thing about the road was that it made noise. Particularly if someone walked on it. Definitely if a cart ran along it.
Carefully, she walked along the edge of the road, making sure she didn’t make noise. What would she do if she saw the man? Jump off the edge where she’d fallen down before? There was little other choice. She would have to jump and hope she didn’t injure herself too much. And hope the drop wasn’t too far.
One foot in front of the other, she walked. Growing a bit more confident as there was no sign of the man. Her luck held. It was difficult to gauge time, but after a while, her luck changed. Mist came in, or clouds, they just floated in, along with their obscurity and chilly wetness. The air felt heavier to breathe and her poor visibility got even worse. Only the noise of the road told her she was still on it. Now she had to walk on the road, and she tried to do so as softly as she could.
The movement kept her blood flowing, but she was far from warm. If she stopped, she probably wouldn’t start again. It was difficult to acknowledge she was so close to real danger. There was no guarantee she would live until morning.
A noise distracted her and she froze in place. The man was coming. This had been too good to be true. Her luck had run out. Quick steps had her running off the side of the road, blindly into darkness. The ground was softer and more uneven, and she could again not be sure her next step wasn’t into a sheer drop.
Something hit her in the face and with flailing arms, she fought it. It wasn’t a man, or anything warm. Calming her panic, she felt for it, feeling needles. A tree branch.
The noise was still there, coming closer, but it was hard to tell what was noise and what was echo, or where it was coming from. It had to be from the road. What was clear was that it was coming closer.
Slinking around the tree, Clemmie crouched down with her back to it, making herself as small as she could. Her heart beat painfully in her chest and her breathing sounded labored. She had to slow it down, had to calm, but panic tore at her mind again. Whatever it was, whoever it was, were coming closer. That she could hear.
It sounded like marching. The clang of armor and marching. Steps in unison, but more than one. This couldn’t be. But it was. The noise reverberated in her mind, and bounced off the rockfaces all around her.
It grew louder and she held her breath. Too afraid to look, she sank her head down on her knees and silently counted in her head to distract herself. Any moment, she feared she’d be discovered, grabbed and dragged out. By who, she didn’t exactly know. That man in the cart, or ghostly Roman soldiers. And which would be worse was something she couldn’t answer either.
In the dark, she sat, not breathing as she heard them come close. The sound became more nuanced. Various squeaks and grinding metal. The heavy movement of men. But the pace didn’t change. The marching didn’t stop. They hadn’t seen her. Or if they knew she was there, and who knew what ghosts perceived and what they didn’t, they didn’t stop.
The marching felt as if it was endless, step after step, but it kept going, and the point came when she noticed they had passed—were moving away from her.
She didn’t dare move until they were far away. Her lungs were burning for air and were far from satisfied with the small, slow breaths she allowed herself. Fingers curled so tense, it was painful when she uncurled them.
They had passed and they hadn’t noticed her in the dark, crouched down tight behind a tree trunk.
The sound of them still echoed across the valley, coming from all directions, but more faint than it had been.
Carefully she rose, worried she would see a face staring at her as she looked around the tree trunk, but there was nothing. Nothing moved, at least so she could see in the darkness. A tentative step and she paused to observe, but nothing seemed to shift.
She silently walked to the edge of the road again, but observed nothing, so she continued to walk the way she’d been going, the way the cart had brought her, figuring that would lead her back to the hotel.
At times, when the wind shifted, she heard the soldiers again, the sound of them drifting to her on the wind. At points, she even heard them speak. Just fragments of words.
Hours she walked, forever stopping to listen. Her hearing was becoming quite attuned. At one point, a crack in the forest had her melting in terrorized panic, but nothing resulted. It had to be an animal.
Then she came to what looked like a field, and she saw shadows and the half-hearted clang of a bell. Cows, she’d concluded. She wondered what they thought about the ghostly Romans marching the district and abducting people. Perhaps they
