Escape into the wild: Run to the Western Shore, by Tim Pears, reviewed

Quintus, an Ephesian slave, is in attendance on his master, Sextus Julius Frontinus, the Roman governor of Britain, when Cunicatus, the chief of one of many warring tribes in ‘this hideous island at the edge of the world’, seals a marriage alliance between Frontinus and his daughter, Olwen. She, however, rejects the match, escaping from the camp at dead of night and impulsively asking Quintus to accompany her. Despite having seen a recaptured fugitive in Gaul torn apart between four horses, he agrees to go.

Tim Pears’s Run to the Western Shore follows the pair as they flee through south Wales, hotly pursued by Frontinus’s legionnaires. They encounter a host of wild beasts, including bears, wolves and lynxes, and even wilder people, notably two druids: a priestess who sacrifices an elderly simpleton to ensure a fruitful harvest, and an acolyte who carves a mystic totem pole that predicts the future (wrongly, as it turns out).