She resumed her trek. A chilly wind blew through the forest. A sandal strap broke and suddenly Ulrika was barefoot. Pain shot through the sole of her right foot, causing her to cry out. Her travel packs grew heavy on her shoulders, and her legs became sluggish. She had never known such hunger. A voice from the past, Aunt Paulina's, whispered, "A young lady never cleans her plate. It is always ladylike to leave food."

     Aunt Paulina was like a second mother to Ulrika because her own mother, Selene, was so busy with her healing practice and her many patients. "A well brought up Roman girl," Paulina would say, "never exposes her hair in public. She never fidgets. She never speaks out of turn. She works quietly at her loom every afternoon. She is always nice and polite and looks forward to the day she will marry and have children."

     As Ulrika stumbled over the uneven forest floor, sharp twigs and rocks cutting into her foot, she thought: Is this my punishment for breaking the rules?

     The wind shifted, rustling overhead leaves and branches, but this time bringing into the forest the smell of smoke. Ulrika stopped and lifted herface. Yes! There were campfires nearby! Perhaps a hearth with food in a pot, meat turning on a spit. But most of all—people ...

     As she stumbled through the trees, she heard voices. She came through the pines and into a vast, green meadow. Ulrika scanned for huts, signs of life, and saw a man lying in the tall grass. She approached him with caution. The man was sprawled in a strange position.

     She slowly reached down and touched him. He was stiff and cold.

     Ulrika snatched her hand back. She looked around the meadow.

     And then she saw—

     Another body.

     And then another ...

     Ulrika lifted her eyes to the edge of the meadow, where she saw the beginning of blackened earth—a shocking landscape of misshapen trees, many still giving off wisps of smoke. The earth had been set afire, a trademark of victorious Romans, whose policy was slash and burn after a battle.

     Numbness creeping through her body, she continued into the meadow, where she found more corpses, until soon she came into a valley that was strewn with hundreds of dead, perhaps thousands.

     She continued through the stench, the flies, the mutilations and bloated bodies, disembodied heads among decapitated corpses, a grotesque scattering of limbs and internal organs. She saw bulging eyes and tongues gaping up at her as if angry that she should see them in this condition. Ravens were pecking at faces, flying up, startled, with swollen tongues in their talons. Squawking and fighting over exposed testicles, ripping and devouring the tender flesh. Wolves chewing on bones.

     Nausea swept over her as she staggered among the dead. She sobbed to find men impaled on trees, their arms hacked off, blood that had run in rivers now congealed black. She heard groaning. Some were still alive!

     She followed the soft groans and came upon a German warrior lying in an unnatural position. His legs were twisted in an impossible way, as if his torso had snapped. The upper half of his body lay supine while his legs were almost prone. His eyes were open. Ulrika couldn't move. She stood over the dying warrior, frozen, not breathing, her eyes wide with shock and horror.

     His lips parted. Bearded chin moved. He whispered something. He wanted her to kill him, to end his misery.

     Unsheathing her dagger and clasping it tightly in both hands, Ulrika raised the weapon above her head and, with a strangled cry, drove the blade into his breast. His eyes remained open, but she saw the light fade and he stopped breathing.

     Sobbing, blinded by tears, Ulrika fell back and looked around the battlefield. At the thousands of dead. Was her father among them?

     She desperately searched for the hero named Wulf. But she saw only decomposing bodies nailed to trees. The remains of women who had been raped—women who had joined their husbands and sons in battle and suffered terrible fates.

     Ulrika stood frozen to the spot. She had misunderstood the boatman who had carried her across the Rhine. He had not warned of a battle about to be fought, but one that had already been fought. Vatinius had not just arrived in Colonia with his legions! He had already marched into battle—and won.

     I could have saved them! I came too late!

     She sobbed, tears rolling down her cheeks as she staggered among the butchered dead. "I am sorry," she whispered to the slain warriors. "I am so sorry. Please forgive me."

     The sun dipped behind the tall pines, casting the battlefield in gloomy shadow. Ulrika was suddenly engulfed in an eerie silence. She turned in a slow circle, her eyes sweeping over the corpses, and felt a strange chill invade her bones. It was death, she thought, coming to steal her soul.

     The silence was suddenly broken by a loud snap. Ulrika spun around. Her eyes widened as she saw movement in the forest. She could not move as shapes shifted among the pines. Cold sweat sprouted between her shoulder blades. The ghosts of the dead!

     Finally, white apparitions came voicelessly through the trees—tall figures with long, flowing hair. Ulrika felt her heart rise to her throat. Terror gripped her. When the figures emerged from the trees and into the clearing, Ulrika's eyes widened. Not ghosts—women. Stepping silently among the corpses, bending, retrieving, gesturing to the sky. What were they doing?

     Ulrika watched as two stunningly beautiful women paused in their queer posturing, looked at Ulrika, and then, straightening, walked toward her—tall women, long-limbed and robust in full skirts and colorful blouses,thick blond tresses draped over generous bosoms. Ulrika knew who they were: "victory women," or "shield maidens." In the local dialect, they were Valkyries, handmaidens of Odin who singled out those heroes slain in battle to take them to sit in the great Val Hall and drink mead for eternity.

     As the two approached, stepping over severed limbs, bending to touch cold foreheads, murmuring, chanting softly, moving among the fallen dead to whisper—what?—their images shifted and changed until Ulrika realized they were not young and robust at all, but old women, their heads crowned with white braids, their aged bodies draped in belted tunics and long skirts, coarse shawls around bony shoulders. Despite advanced years, however, they walked with erect spines, straight shoulders. Years had aged them, she thought, but pride had kept them strong.

     When the first came near, Ulrika saw that around the crown of her head lay a handsome circlet of twisted silver, twined and curled with silver leaves and stems, coming together on the old woman's forehead to support a tiny silver owl resting on two silver oak leaves, a pale moonstone between the leaves, like an egg, as if the owl were waiting to hatch it.

     The two women paused to give her close scrutiny. When the second of the two saw the Cross of Odin on Ulrika's breast, she pointed and murmured, while the other pursed her wrinkled lips. Milky blue eyes peered at Ulrika from beneath white brows. "Are you lost, daughter?"

     It was a dialect Ulrika understood. "I am looking for—" Ulrika could barely breathe.

     "You should not be here," the woman said gently, "among the dead."

     "I need to find—"

     The old woman had sharply chiseled cheekbones and jaw, a thin aquiline nose, making Ulrika think that in her youth she must have been a very striking woman. But now the young flesh was gone, leaving her with bone and sinew, but an air of strength all the same. She reached out and laid a hand on Ulrika's arm. "You are weary. Come, daughter. Away from all this death."