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affection is prompted by love, fear or greed. Brennos would not have recognised the problem, having been convinced, all his life, that he required nothing from anyone, but he was, even if reluctant to admit it, human.Without losing face in any way, he always contrived to entice young Galina back to his bed.
    ‘If you mention Rome once more, I shall leave.’ He laughed, as much because of what she had said as the fact that she dared to say it, but the physical position contributed too. Her head was resting on his naked stomach, and this statement was addressed to his erection, which got a hearty tug, and a small bite, as a warning to desist. ‘It’s bad enough without visitors prattling on about them.’
    ‘Luekon has lived amongst them. He knows the Romans and their ways. What he tells me of their plans helps me to deal with them.’
    She was across him in a flash, straddling his body, the eagerness that he loved quite evident in her eyes. ‘I know Roman ways. I might even have Roman blood and I want you to do to me, at least ten times, what they always do to their female captures.’
    Luekon heard the hearty shout as Brennos responded to Galina’s delightful vulgarity. So did two of the chieftain’s nephews.
    ‘We are safe. That whore will keep him occupied for the whole night,’ said Minoveros, the eldest. As the son of Cara’s brother, he had command of the chieftain’s bodyguard.
    ‘They say Brennos can see through walls,’ saidLuekon, a cautious man, with a healthy fear of sorcery.
    The younger nephew, Ambon, spoke, a hint of jealousy evident in his voice. Luekon knew that this young man had an eye on Galina, whom he wanted to take over when his uncle was dead.
    ‘Right now he can’t see further than the end of his prick.’
    These were the two most prominent names given to Servius Caepio by the Greek traders. Luekon had come to see them, to persuade them to murder, on the promise of a reward large enough to tempt the gods. The Celtic laws of hospitality allowed him the freedom, and the time, to wean them from their primary allegiance, and it had proved simpler than Servius Caepio could have hoped. Related to Brennos’s wife, the two could bring Cara into the conspiracy, along with all her relatives, and all because of the voluptuous creature who had just made Brennos laugh.
    ‘Nothing must happen while I am here.’
    ‘Why?’ asked Minoveros.
    ‘No good would come of your actions. I have come from Roman territory, and if Rome’s hand were seen in this you would be pariahs amongst the other tribes.’
    ‘They hate Brennos as much as we do. I say we do it before their very eyes.’
    Luekon snorted derisively; to attempt to kill Brennos at a tribal gathering was madness. ‘They respect him as a man who keeps the peace in our own lands. He might talk down to them but he’s not taken a single blade of grass that he cannot rightfully claim belongs to the Duncani, yet he has the power to subdue them all, except the Lusitani. How do you think they will feel if they see that power in the hands of others, men they cannot trust, because they’ve taken Roman gold to kill their leader?’
    ‘It is not a thought that troubles us,’ Ambon replied.
    ‘Neither should it trouble Rome,’ added Minoveros. ‘Tell them we will put one of Brennos’s sons in power, and rule through him.’
    ‘Do you think that will fool the Bregones, or the Lusitani, a child as a chieftain? They’ll say nothing while they’re guests. They may even smile and bless your act, but those chieftains, with all their warriors, will be outside your walls within a month.’ The two younger men exchanged thoughtful glances. ‘And what if you lose? Not even Numantia can stand against the combined might of all the tribes.’
    If his argument lacked a degree of logic, he had at least made these two boneheads worried. Tribes fighting each other, instead of raiding the frontier,would suit Rome very well, and he was of the opinion that it