“Lean on me, Jago.”
The blind man felt the woman’s delicate grip and decided to move forward with her towards the stones. The soldiers made way for them, opening a narrow corridor of torches. Septimius Vegezius observed the scene in silence, at a distance.
“Tell me what you see,” ordered the blind man.
The woman stopped. She sighed and her frown became even more intense.
“Stones,” she explained. “Many stones. Of different shapes and sizes. Mostly side by side and overlapping and…”
“In layers?”
“Yes, I’d say so.”
“How many?”
“At least a dozen.”
“How tall is the structure?”
“What structure?! He can’t think somebody made this!” snapped the centurion, throwing his arms wide in frustration. His rod struck one of the muzzles of one of the scout’s horses, and it retreated with a neigh.
“Silence!” cried Septimius Vegezius. “Let them speak.”
The woman turned to look at him and the tribune saw the hint of gratitude in her eyes.
The blind man yanked her arm to communicate to her that he wanted to be brought even closer. The woman helped him forward until Jago found himself standing directly before the first layer of stones. He knelt slowly, the tip of his staff sinking at least a foot into the snow, then raised his head. The woman lowered his hood. Some of the legionaries retreated in surprise.
The man’s face was furrowed by numerous wrinkles despite his young age. They were not the wrinkles of old age, however – rather they seemed rather physical signs of some inscrutable past suffering. His thin hair covered only the front of his forehead, leaving the rest of his skull and the nape of his neck almost hairless. Under the sparse wheat-coloured locks, two slits like those which might have been produced by a sharp blade separated the upper eyelids from the lower ones. Now and again the red light of the torches made its way into those dark fissures, and when it did it revealed two yellow spheres without pupils and covered by a thin silvery veil that swivelled from one end of the orbits to the other, as though desperately seeking a point of reference.
Jago raised his arms, letting the stick fall. With the help of the woman he undid the woollen bandages that were wrapped around his thin fingers. Trembling imperceptibly, he lowered himself again. “I want… I want to see too,” he said, placing his fingertips on the stones.
The snow melted in contact with the heat that emanated from his flesh and the man’s hands began to slide over the irregular stony surface as though outlining its contours. He moved like that for long moments, while the falling snow tried to fill the gaps where his pale-coloured fingers had cleared the surface. The man struggled visibly both against the elements and the limits of his own constitution, and all the while the woman observed him attentively with a singular look which was both attentive and pained.
Suddenly Jago stopped. He raised an arm to ask for assistance and this time one of the legionaries was quick to help him to his feet. He handed the man to his companion with a nod and the blind man’s hands took back his staff. He put his chapped lips to the woman’s ear and whispered something. Septimius Vegezius thought he heard a few words in a dialect he could not understand.
She turned to the soldiers and sought the tribune’s eyes.
“They,” she said calmly, “do not want it.”
Septimius Vegezius looked rhetorically over his shoulder.
“They?”
“They who live in these places,” the woman explained, pointing to the mountain.
“By the gods, what are you talking about? This road is travelled dozens of times a year.” The tribune shook his head and kicked at the snow. “Centurion, proceed…”
“Evidently things have changed,” said the woman, her voice reaching him on the wind. “This is not a landslide. It is a warning.”
The blind man whispered something else to her. Perhaps the legionaries closest to him managed to understand but all the tribune heard was a sort of hissing. The woman went on.
“These lands are manned and protected and those stones indicate a boundary. The beginning of a sacred territory. And they indicate,” she added, turning to the blind man who nodded slowly as though to underline her explanations, “that it is not possible to continue along this path.”
“Not possible to continue?” exclaimed Vegezius, barely managing to restrain himself. “Listen, I have to get you to the other side of these mountains by mid-November. So we will move these rocks out of the way and pay the agreed portorium.”
“This is not the only way to get there,” the woman insisted.
“No, but it is the only one your wagons can take.” The tribune noticed that his soldiers were surprised to see their commander engaged in a verbal duel with a woman so he tried to cut it short. “And I have no time to waste.”
“We will find an alternative route and I promise you we will not be late,” said the woman, in a confident voice.
“We? A woman and a blind man? Do you think you can do better than my scouts and their dogs?”
“Yes,” she replied, her answer like the hiss of an arrow.
Vegezius looked at her in silence, then slowly approached her. He looked at the man by her side who was gasping from the cold as he sought light where he would never find it. Her eyes, though, were spirited, and as blue as a bottom of high mountain streams.
“Do you think you can guarantee it?” asked the tribune.
“I guarantee it.”
*
Septimius Vegezius recognised the halting, guttural voice. The prefect Victor Felix had arrived behind him on horseback and, as usual, had spoken through his servant.
Victor Julius Felix did not dismount. He merely gestured with his arms as the servant’s eyes followed his fingers, jerking about in their sockets as if they were following some mad fly. An alphabet of gestures composed of esoteric and arcane codes of which the prefect seemed to possess total mastery and his servant total understanding.
“If it will save you embarrassment, tribune, I will take responsibility for the decision,” said the servant, without taking his eyes from his master’s hands. The man’s aquiline nose with its slightly deviated septum, thin purplish lips and wrinkles that looked as though they were engraved in wood framed a face that showed all the signs of military experience. His body was wrapped in something very like a hooded overcoat, which fell over his arms and even covered his hands. His dowdy garb seemed designed to exalt that of his master, and in fact, the rigid linen cuirass which Felix wore beneath bronze spaulders seemed to glow with its own light in the darkness. A long, worn cloak of blue-grey wool fell from his shoulders and spread over the haunches of his mount, its fabric lined with fox fur. The unusual Gallic-style breeches that covered his legs ended inside two fur boots, and were reinforced at the thigh by sturdy femoralia.
“I don’t need anyone to protect me, and I have no intention of giving up my command,” protested Vegezius, adding cautiously, “unless I receive orders from someone of a higher rank.”
Felix listened with apparent indifference. He looked into the girl’s blue eyes and moved the fingers of his left hand as though counting. “Tell him,” the servant translated.
An annoyed expression on her face, the young woman shook her head several times. Felix repeated the gesture but this time the servant did not say a word and the girl bowed her head in surrender. She raised it slowly and looked into the tribune’s face.
“The Salassi,” she said.
The tribune glanced questioningly at the centurion, who shrugged.
“So? We know them well.”
“A Celtic tribe,” interjected Jago, wiping the drool from his lips before it turned into ice. “They descend from the Allobroges and worship the forces of nature. This place,” he concluded, “belongs to their gods.”
“I doubt it will anger their gods if we pass through.” The tribune was beginning to get irritated.
“We must not appear hostile,” continued the blind man, “it is not in our interest.”
“It’s not in our interest?” Septimius Vegezius went over to him. “Since when do the soldiers of Rome come to terms with the tribes of the mountains?”
“One day’s march more. Two at the most.” The girl joined her friend and helped him away from the pile of stones. “Aren’t we ahead of schedule? You said so yourself yesterday.”
Vegezius scrutinised the prefect’s reaction then put his hand on the neck of his horse and slowly began to stroke its mane. “Is the document you gave me still valid, Prefect Felix? Or do you wish to assert your rank?”
Victor Felix bent down until his face was almost at the height of the tribune’s, then crossed his wrists and opened his fingers.
“I have no intention of taking command of this expedition without your consent.”
Vegezius sighed. “Very good. That was what I wanted to hear.” He turned and looked for the centurion. “Camp, then. And in the meantime, let’s clear this road.”
Jago leaned against the girl’s shoulder. “May the gods help us.”
“Which ones?” she replied, with a fleeting glance at the dark gorge that opened up behind the pile of stones.