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The sound of wild cheering and revelry was carried on the cooling autumn winds from one of the Gauls' fortified hill towns behind me. I stood in one of the many fallow fields toward the base of the oppidum's hill, a testament to the cost we legionaries and our general had inflicted upon the barbarians in nearly a decade of fighting. Dry dead grass crunched under my feet as I shifted nervously, rubbing my hands over the goosebumps on my arms that I pretended was from the cold. The coarse ropes binding my wrists together, and tying me to my comrades, itched at my skin.

Like my fellow legionaries, and a few of the Germanic auxilia, the victorious Gauls had stripped us of everything upon our capture. I had been left with nothing but my tunic while my red horsehair crested centurion's helmet, and the rest of my armor, had been paraded through the streets of Gergovia. The town had burst to life with jubilation, and my heart sank like a cold stone into my stomach, as the legions withdrew. I had watched with mounting horror as men prepared for the conclusion of the festivities.

Across the fallow field from my comrades and I now stood a great wicker figure. Made of dry woven fibers around a wooden frame, it loomed over us from a height of some thirty feet. I swallowed nervously with an eye to the wicker man's featureless face, which observed the preparations impassively. Gallic warriors mingled with townspeople in a great semicircle around us. In the intervening days, the Gauls' sense of celebration had faded to somber bitterness as the war raged on and they buried their dead. Flashes of anger and misery appeared in the eyes of those warriors and women that regarded me.

One of these women abruptly broke from the crowd, shrugging off a man's restraining hand, perhaps a brother. The murmurs of the crowd quieted as she marched directly at me and the guards behind me made no attempt to halt her. She pierced me with eyes that were red with rage and tears of grief that flowed down her cheeks. She carried a polished bronze torc in one hand, and she thrust it in my face when she approached me. “Carantus," she said. Her tongue was alien to me, but I recognized that it wasn't just a word, but a name.

I regarded the torc in her hand. It had a braided pattern carved in its length, and its terminals were shaped into boars' heads. A flash of awful recognition struck me. I had seen it around the neck of a bare-chested Gallic warrior that had bravely charged me even while I was ahorse, swinging wildly with his curved sword in attempt to gut me. I had plunged my pilum, a long spear, through his chest and out the back. I remembered how I had sneered and kicked the man over as blood ran form his mouth, and left him behind to crumple in the dust as I rallied my century of men.

“Carantus!" the woman howled, her voice cracking with anguish as she shook the torc in my face. It had been her husband that I had slain.

A man with a long gray beard appeared behind her then, wearing flowing white robes. I recognized him as one of the Gauls' Druids, and my blood ran cold. Whispers had run through the legions of their terrible powers. He took the woman gently by the shoulder and murmured a few words to her. She retorted sharply, her eyes streaming and tears beading down her skin. The Druid nodded and offered a few more gentle words, to which the woman finally dropped her hand with the torc to her side with a trembling sigh. The Druid patted her arm and steered her into the arms of her brother, who had strode across the field to collect her. She sobbed in open grief as he led her away, the man shooting a hateful look at me over his shoulder.

“Why did you come here, Roman?" the Druid surprised me with nearly perfect, if accented, Latin. His face was impassive and difficult to read.

“Gaul has threatened Rome since…" I began.

The Druid waved away my response. “Why did you come here?" he asked more pointedly, indicating me with a bony finger.

I hesitated for a moment and then set my jaw with determination and lifted my chin, standing as tall as I might before the old man. “For the glory of Rome."

The Druid seemed to think on that for a moment. His cold gray eyes settled on my horse, which a Gaul held by his reigns a short distance from myself and the other prisoners. He glanced back at the woman that had confronted me, now weeping quietly in her brother's arms. The old man shook his head and said sadly, looking back at me, “All this, for glory."

The Druid motioned towards the Gaul holding my horse's reigns as he turned and ambled away towards the center of the gathered circle. There he stopped beside a great iron cauldron had been carried out and set there, beside which sat a small wood table draped with a tartan fabric. The old man withdrew a bundle of fabric from the folds of his robes, and untied the string that held it together to reveal his sacral tools and arrange them upon the table.

I watched as the horse ambled along, led by the Gallic warrior, neighing and waving his head nervously. I remembered pressing silver denarii into a palm while thinking how glorious it would be to return victoriously to Rome astride the handsome mount. Instead I had consigned the creature to death as surely as I had myself that day.

The horse was led beside the cauldron in front of the Druid, who laid a hand on the animal and spoke soothingly to it. The stallion calmed while the man produced a black iron knife in the other hand. In a moment the animal's throat was slit and it slumped to the earth, its dark blood spilling into the cauldron. A terrible waste that spoke ill of my own fate.

At the direction of the Druid the carcass was dragged away and dumped inside the great wicker cage of the effigy dominating the field. I thought I was to follow my mount to the cauldron, but instead I was roughly pushed towards the effigy directly. My limbs were heavy with mounting dread as I marched across the field. The long walk seemed to both go on forever and end much too shortly.

Dimly I was aware of the barbarians cheering around me as I climbed the scaffold and was pushed into the wicker prison. I fell roughly onto my horse's body, soon followed by the other prisoners. I quickly found myself near the bottom of a heavy mass of limbs writhing in increasing terrified panic that threatened to crush the air out of my lungs.

That terror wormed its way into me, infecting and consuming me as I saw the white robed figure approach through a gap in the fibers. The Druid bore a blazing torch in one hand, and stopped at the effigy's foot and extended his other hand to the sky. The crowd went silent all at once as the man's voice boomed unnaturally across the field, seemingly much too great for an old man.

Toutatis toexreretetic rata buont uer snis

Buont rata Esous iccatis dagos

Suuispe uer snis

Taranis nertacos aresnisueððet

The Druid's gaze seemed to pierce right through me as he spoke. A moment later three Gauls behind him hoisted their peculiar Celtic bronze trumpets. Tongues danced in the boars' head trumpet mouths, several feet above the crowd. The haunting sound of the carnyces reverberated through the air and my heart thudded in my chest as the Druid slowly lowered the torch to the wicker man.

The dry fibers caught instantly and raced upwards. My fellow victims yelled and flailed, limbs battering each other as they desperately tried to climb over each other to escape the flames. At the bottom of the crush, I could do nothing as smoke began to sting my lungs.

TA – RA – NIS

My horse's carcass shielded me from the heat for a time. Above the crying of the victims my ears made out the steady beat of drums, timing the Gauls' chanting. I choked on ash and soot as the air boiled and thickened with the sickening smell of burning horseflesh. I screamed as tongues of flame crept around the sides of my once proud mount and came for me.

TA – RA – NIS

My horse burst fully into flames and I screamed in agony as the heat burned my skin. I flailed involuntarily, trying to escape the consuming fire even as my skin was seared. I grasped at the men above me, pleading for them to pull me away from the flames. Instead they kicked at me in panic as my clothing burst into flames and melted to my blackening skin.

TA – RA – NIS

I fell back onto my mount's corpse, into the heart of the inferno. No longer could I scream, my lungs seared from the inside by the smoke. I curled into a ball, skin cracking and peeling away as I suffered those few seconds as an unending eternity. My lungs could no longer push air. My hammering heart finally broke and surrendered. I died, and joined the flames.

Some time later, I don't know how long, I was recovered from the ashen remains of the wicker man. There was movement, until damp soil kissed my charred body. More dirt landed on me in small piles until I was swallowed by the earth. The pressure on me increased steadily as more and more dirt was piled on from above. Then there was nothing but silence, stillness, and darkness.

The great weight of the earth pushed in from all sides. I laid there forever, curled into a tight ball, my knees against my chest. There in the blackness, time had no meaning. There was only the great weight of the cold earth all around, and silence. A dark and dreamless sleep smothered me.

Gang ût, nesso, mid nigun nessiklînon

A distant voice pierced the thick veil of stillness that laid over my world. The words woke me from my slumber, and my body twitched.

Ût fana themo marg? an that bên

My head turned, seeking the source of that voice and the way upward. I dug with my arms and pushed with my legs. My ancient vessel cracking back into motion as I began to dig and push myself through the dirt.

Fan themo bêne an that flêsg

My arms and legs seemed to stretch outwards. Even as I ascended, my hands seemed to become useless to me. Burrowing fingers fused together, becoming unwieldy and hard. Hands and feet clattered into rocks painfully.

Ût fan themo flêsgke an thia hûd

My face and torso seemed to lengthen, my bones cracking and snapping under the pressure of the rocks. I ignored the pain, and dug. I wormed my way through the damp soil. I writhed around boulders, scraping thickening skin. Slimy mud matted short fur to my body.

Ût fan thera hud an thesa strâla

I kicked wildly and desperately as breathless tightness built in my chest. The voice pulled me while the earth itself seemed to push me upwards, birthing me from prison and womb.

Drohtin, uuerthe sô!

I sucked in an enormous gasp of air as my mouth broke through the surface of the mud. Immediately my face was pelted by rain as I struggled for breath. A deafening peel of thunder greeted my ears as they emerged from the muck. I kicked and stretched out ungainly long limbs as I tried desperately to wrest myself free.

Between the last bolt of thunder and the next I heard frightened screaming somewhere nearby. I shook my head, trying to whip the muddy mop of coarse hair that covered my eyes out of the way. I heaved for breath, panting with the effort of pushing myself out of the mud. I crawled forward blindly on all fours.

I cracked open dirt-caked eyelids, and a brilliant bolt of lightning arced through the dark clouds above. In the brief flash of light, I saw a great hill sloping upwards before me. At its crest, the stone walls of Gergovia lay in a crumbled and half-buried ruin. The oppidum sat as a dark, lonely, and dead sentinel over the surrounding plains. Its people were as lost to time as I seemingly was.

The arcing bolt of lightning faded and I was once more plunged into darkness as the earth shook with the thunder's power. My head hung low as I regained my breath, squatting low with my hands in the mud. Something caught my eye in the deep puddle in front of me, a glint of red…

Another bolt of lightning cracked the sky and illuminated my reflection in the water. I screamed in terror, but instead of hearing a human yell in my ears, it was the panicked whinny of a horse.

Eerie pupil-less red eyes gleamed through a dark mane plastered to a horse's long head. The reflection of the horse I saw in the water had a dark gray coat, interrupted alternatively by patches of ghostly white and deep crimson fur. Unnatural sharp white fangs extended down from my upper lip.

For it was my upper lip. I could feel the fangs there with a probing tongue. My breath became panicked and choppy bursts as I followed my arms, no, legs, with my eyes into the mud where they ended in dark hooves. The light faded and my world was once again plunged into darkness.

“Who are you, demon?" the familiar sound of Latin reached my ears through the rainfall after the crack of thunder had faded. I looked up to find a man in a dark jerkin and leather trousers standing before me. A small carved stone hammer hung from his neck as a pendant.

A small group of people, a family, huddled together some distance away behind the man. It was his voice that I had heard calling me from the earth in that strange tongue. Perhaps he was some sort of shaman, or sorcerer.

“You bear a mark…" the man continued, indicating my flank. “I have seen many trinkets like it pulled from the earth." I recognized his voice as the one that I had heard beckoning to me from the surface.

I turned my head to study my side. On my upper thigh I found a brand seared into my hide through fire in the shape of a spoked wheel. A flash of recognition arced through my mind much like the lightning above. The Gauls would leave such carved wheels as offerings to one of their gods; one whose name they had chanted through my death.

“I have been cursed…" the words came not from my mouth but fled forth from my mind. I felt the strange man's consciousness brush my own, and he seemed to recoil in surprise. I turned my head, regarding the man. “Why did you call to me? Are you a sorcerer, like one of those cursed Druids?" I demanded, indicating the ruins upon the hill with a shake of my head.

The man's eyebrows scrunched with surprise and concern. “The Druids have been gone for centuries…This family means to start a farm here, but something tainted the earth…" he said, indicating the people cowering behind him with a wave of his hand. He turned back to me and restated his initial question, “Who are you?"

Centuries. The news rattled me to my core. Everything I had known was gone.

I shook my head, trying to clear it. I searched my memory for the answer to his question, but to my alarm I felt it escape my grasp. Memories of my past life fled before me as fleeting images, impossible to grasp. Truly I was an exile cast adrift on the sea of time.

I pushed myself up onto unsteady hooves. A word from the strange sorcerer's verse beckoned from my mind. It was all my mind had to latch upon.

“I am Nesso."