Some vague impressions of running free through the forests of Germania, but that was all. He had lived through only thirteen winters when the Romans came to his land and captured his tribe. He remembered the fear that snaked through the trees, the courage that the warriors called upon to face it, and a bloody fight that stripped him of his father, his brothers, his uncles, his cousins. The last time he saw his mother and sisters, they were being raped by the Roman soldiers, three of his sisters dying of it, the youngest only nine years old. He remembered looking into his mother’s eyes and seeing her command: Live! He had a different name before he was in his thirteenth winter, but he would never speak it now. They had called him Phillip because he had attempted an escape by stealing their horses, creatures supposedly so loyal to their masters that theft was not a worry. He had been caught, of course, having never so much as ridden a horse before that day, but for the rest of the journey back to Rome, he had learned of the magnificent creatures, how to care for them, ride them properly, speak to them.
