lebags, and their horses pulled heavily laden wagons. Fourteen legionaries from the Amicii Veri rode in disciplined horseback ranks. Leander drove a wagon, while Rufus drove a carriage with Leah and the children inside. Young Roxane was disguised as a servant boy, and the two small children had learned how to disappear under burlap bags.
Their caravan joined the noisy stream of traffic flowing out of Jerusalem, and soon they were in the open countryside. With luck, they calculated, it would be forty days from Jerusalem to Alodia.
“We’re doing it, Valerius,” Samara exulted. “Escaping the Empire!”
That this powerful man was willing to give up so much, risk so much of his future, just to be with her and support her vision – she was stunned to realize it. Was he motivated for the most part by wanting to make money for Rome from the trading they could set in motion? What about his vision for changing the history of Rome and Judea? Could he have really meant it when he said he’d help reinstall a Hebrew king to rule their nation again?
Whatever his true intentions may be, she had to admit: she had an overpowering desire for one thing alone – for his love. She wanted to be sure that he was as deeply in love with her as she was with him.
Often, she had felt flows of charged energy coming from him, stirring her heart and triggering powerful emotions within her very soul. This was indeed something very special. Surely she was right about this love between them. But what if she wasn’t?
He gazed at her lovely face; she seemed lost in contemplation. He wondered, Is it really happening? Am I really leaving my Roman way of life behind? Of all the events of his life, this one was the most challenging. Would they find the legendary African land about which they had seen such scant evidence? For that matter, would they survive crossing the Atbai, land of strange non-human warriors? Would he actually find a way to marry this woman who had come to mean more to him than anything?
He reached over and touched her arm, and when she smiled at him, he felt an electrical tingle flow up his fingers. In his heart there was a surge of warmth.
He had never faced such uncertainty. Yet he had never felt so strong, so sure he was doing the right thing, because he knew now that he was really, for the first time, in love.
He pulled his horse up besides hers. He reached out, took her reins out of her hands, and pulled on them until both of their horses stopped. Behind them, the entire caravan came to a lurching halt. He couldn’t put his arms around her without them both losing their balance, so he took her by the shoulders and kissed her firmly, lingeringly.
She laughed. “You’re endangering us, sir. We could fall off our horses.”
“You, Samara, have already endangered me completely. In fact, I’m drowning in peril. You’ve done worse than knocking me off my horse. You’ve knocked me out of my life. Yet I’ve never been so alive, so full of strength and hope.”
“I’m so glad to hear it, Valerius, because we’ll need all the strength and hope we can muster. I do love you, and that shall carry me onward.”
“And I you. Every day you surprise me, intrigue me, nourish me.”
As they trotted forward, the caravan behind them started up, and Rufus, from his high perch atop the wagon, the reins held loosely in his hands, began loudly, energetically singing an old Gaulish song:
Forward O love, forward we go,
Where we are going, we cannot know,
Yet willing we are, we move with the flow,
Forward O love, forward we go!
END OF BOOK ONE