Emperor: Time's Tapestry Book One
Stephen Baxter
Language: English
Pages: 384
ISBN: 0441017037
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
A Celtic noble betrays his people and sides with the conquering Roman legions?all because of a prophecy that reveals secrets about the world that is to come, guiding those who hold it to wealth and power.
1812: The Rivers of War (Trail of Glory, Book 1)
Snaked through a patch of farmland owned by the fort – the ‘soldiers’ meadow’, Tarcho called it – and the party crossed over a ditch clogged with weeds and stinking rubbish. Then they passed through a kind of town, sprawling east and west along the road outside the fort walls. The roads were more like sheep tracks than Roman roads. The place was noisy, smelly, crowded. Some of the buildings were quite smart and built to square plans, but the rest were just shacks. Many of them had open fronts,.
His own trousers on the right way round. In fact Isolde grew up thinking of herself as the adult in their relationship. Isolde had briefly escaped when she married a young man called Coponius, of ancient Roman stock. But his good looks had belied a sickly nature. Only a month after Isolde found out she was pregnant he had been carried off by a nasty little plague, one of a series that had nibbled at the population of Rome in recent years. So Isolde had had no choice but to return home to her.
The legionaries’ leather tents were being set up in their usual rows. Already cooking smells curled up from a dozen fires, and the digging of latrines was itself a minor industry. And when Narcissus looked further west, across the shining body of the river, he could see another force massed on the opposite bank. They were the Britons, here to oppose the Roman advance. The Britons, lacking any of the obvious discipline of the Roman troops, looked more like an urban mob, Narcissus thought idly,.
Smiled. But that phrase of Nepos’s – ‘little Greek’ – shocked Severa. ‘What did he call him?’ Nepos had used a Latin word: ‘Graeculus’, Greekling, Little Greek. ‘It’s just a nickname from Hadrian’s childhood,’ Karus said. ‘He always had a passion for all things Greek, even then…’ Severa turned to her daughter, who looked as startled as her mother. ‘Rome’s great son has come to earth…A little Greek his name will be…A little Greek! That’s what the prophecy says, mother. Oh, my eyes! It’s coming.
She does. Shall we ride on?’ They walked their horses further along the line of the Wall, and the sun rose steadily into the sky. Brigonius talked of his wife, his boys; she spoke of her own children who were growing up in such unimaginably different circumstances. And they spoke of old times, of Karus, long retired to Camulodunum – ‘I’ve had enough of history,’ he had protested, ‘all I want is life!’ – and old Tullio, who had completed his twenty-five years in the army, filled a sprawling farm.