"Madness!" I muttered. "Davus, I knew it was a mistake to leave the road. Shortcut indeed!"

"But, father-in-law, you heard what the man at the tavern said. The road to Massilia isn't safe. The Massilians are all shut up inside the city, under siege. And Caesar's troops are too busy laying the siege to bother with patrolling the road. Gaulish bandits are running wild, waylaying anyone who dares to take the toad."

"A Gaulish bandit might not be entirely unwelcome at the moment At least he might give us directions." I studied the bewildering prospect around us. Gradually we had made our way Into a long, narrow valley, the cliffs on either side rising in Imperceptible degrees around us like stone giants slowly lifting their heads, and now we found ourselves surrounded on all sides by sheer walls of pale limestone. A stream, almost dry at the end of a long, dry summer, trickled through the narrow defile, its rocky banks shaded by small trees. Our horses delicately picked their way around jagged rocks and gnarled tree roots as thick as a man's arm. It was slow going.

Early that morning we had set out from the tavern. We had taken the tavernkeeper's advice to abandon the flat, wide, finely wrought Roman road almost at once. As long as we used the sun to stay on a southerly course and moved in a generally downhill direction toward the sea, we couldn't possibly miss Massilia; the tavernkeeper had said, especially with so many of Caesar's troops camped before it. Now, as the sun began to drop behind the western cliffs of the valley, I was beginning to think the, fellow had played a nasty joke on us.

Shadows deepened among the boulders. Tree roots, wildly splayed over the stony ground, seemed to quicken and quiver in the dim light. Again and again, from the corner of my eye I imagined thick clumps of snakes writhing amid the rocks. The horses appeared to suffer the same delusion. Repeatedly they snorted and shied and tested their hooves against the knotted roots.