by E. Knight
She waited to see what the day's end would bring—if she would be a slave forever or a Roman woman covered in shame. Either way, Valeria intended to live.
DURO
My low-slung open chariot lurched as the charioteer whipped up the ponies, and I rocked with the wheels, leveling my spear. Andecarus galloped on his red mare, cavalry sword aloft. My queen's lips were sealed in a savage line, her long body taut and swaying as her chariot hurtled over the broad expanse of grass. I felt victory race through my blood like a dram of divine nectar—for the gods rode with us on that charge; I could feel them all around me. Taranis the sky god, thunder coming in his footsteps, and dread Andraste herself with her lightning sword and her savage smile like my queen's.
From the dawn of the gods to the end of days, there would never be such a charge.
The field narrowed as we passed into the valley, and the crush pressed thicker around me. I shouted at my charioteer to drive ahead, faster. I was queen's champion; I would be first against that line of Roman shields. They were a solid wall before me, unmoving—frozen by terror? Would they turn tail and flee into the woods behind them? Die, you bastards. Die screaming.
Somehow over the roar of the charge, I heard shrill piping from the enemy line. Movement, crisp and fast behind the shields, and then a mass of shadows winged toward us through the clear sky like falling ravens.
A javelin clanged off my shield boss, spinning away like a bent twig. All around me Roman spears were falling, I heard screams, the gurgling of blood, but the crush was too massive, and the warriors behind kept pressing forward. I saw Boudica raise her shield, fending off a spear, and my heart skittered in my chest, but she rode on unhurt. The souls of our first dead heroes soared into the clouds to cheer us on in their fight, and the charge swept on, slower but still invincible.
This time I heard the shrill cry in Latin to accompany the piping. "Release pila!"
A second wave of javelins soared into our ranks at a twenty-yard range. My charioteer fell with a javelin spitting his ribs, tumbling from the chariot under the trampling hooves behind. I arced my own spear into the line of Roman shields and fumbled for the reins, whipping the ponies faster. The crush was immense now, our flanks folding inward as the defile narrowed; our front line faltering under that rain of wicked little spears, bodies falling, tripping those who came behind.
But we were so close, and the Romans were advancing in their neat squares, small units with shields locked, eyes glittering under their helmets. I picked my man, a swarthy legionary with a short beard, and I brought him death. I dropped the reins, raced down the axle shaft between the ponies, and vaulted from my chariot just as the raging line of Boudica's warriors met the marching Roman edge of legionaries. I was still leaping down through the air as I brought my sword down over the edge of the swarthy legionary's shield, cleaving down through his neck.
He dropped, scream disappearing into the great cacophony of iron and agony that is battle. I landed heavy on my bad knee but felt no pain. I was reborn, made young again by joy and blood, and I came up with a roar, hefting my shield. The Romans had already re-formed around the legionary I'd killed, overlapped shields advancing. The press behind shoved me forward, but I needed no shoving, just leaped at the tidy line and hammered the nearest shield down, driving the man behind it until a gap opened and my thirsty blade found it. My sword drove along the line of his breastplate, found the armhole, and slid through. I was forcing my way into the unit, using my blade like a hammer to beat those immaculate shields down—these swarthy Romans were so much shorter than me, I was swatting them from overhead like a god killing flies. My helmet clanged as a gladius glanced off it, and I laughed as I chopped the man down.
The unit was dissolving, falling back even as more units advanced on either side, and the crush was so tight I could barely turn my head, but I still saw Andecarus killing with terrible speed, his new arm ring flashing in the sun, his mare surging obediently beneath him. I saw a blood-splashed Sorcha stalking an optio who'd been separated from his unit, screaming as she hacked him to pieces. In the center, where Boudica's best warriors danced the terrible dance of death, we were slaughtering the Romans like sheep.
But on the flanks, they were rolling us up like a cloak.
"Auxiliaries!" The warning shouts were barely audible over the scream of iron and wounded men. "Auxiliaries!"
Roman cavalry like my son had once been were sweeping out of the trees, descending on our flanks where the Trinovantes had been placed, because a Trinovante in the center of a charge was like a hinge that would fold the whole line back. They were folding now, falling back under the sweep of horses, and I saw my son crying out orders, but the weight of our own men was too heavy, and Paulinus' riders hit the flank in looping lines, sliding along the chariots rather than engaging them. A split-second later, I knew why.
The high-pitched screams of wounded horses rose; the bastards were hamstringing the ponies in their traces, bringing chariots to pitching halts, flinging warriors out over the wheels where they were being slaughtered before they could rise. "The flanks," I shouted, "reinforce the flanks!" I saw my queen on the right already trying to do just that, haranguing the men to advance on foot; I saw Andecarus trying to force a path through to the left, but the battlefield was too crowded, and all along the sides of the narrow defile, the Romans were killing us.
So they would make a fight of this, after all, not turn like craven sheep? I did not mind that. A great victory is all the sweeter if it comes hard-fought. I left the flanks to my son and my queen as another unit advanced on the center toward me, short blades of the gladii flickering like serpents' tongues. The man on my left went down clutching his gut; I smelled the sudden stench of opened bowels. All I could do was tread him underfoot as I advanced, swinging my blood-dappled sword. I hit the man on my right in the backswing, glancing off his helm, so I bulled forward to make room for myself, trying to force a gap in those locked shields. They hung locked against me, stubbornly, and I felt a gladius hit my armored ribs with a force that would leave the flesh bruised black. I'll make a drinking cup of your skull and toast your writhing soul while my Roman bitch rubs that bruise down. I beat over the legionary's shield with my heavy pommel, crushing the dome of his forehead like an egg. The ichor of youth and triumph still ran through me, and I was stacking Roman souls on my sword . . . but my queen's warriors were falling back.
"No retreat!" someone was bawling—Boudica's dream-caster, shaking an axe in one hand and his bone-and-feather staff in the other. "No retreat!" and then a centurion filled the dream-caster's mouth with a gladius. I turned, barely able to squeeze around in the vicious clench, and I saw the Trinovantes throwing down their shields and running. "Bastards!" I screamed, trying to hack closer to the flank. "Stand and fight!" But those yellow-spined cowards were fleeing like dogs.
The monotonous, tinny blat of the Roman horns sounded again, and the lines of legionaries advanced. They were like insects, identical and swarming, until the moment you made them bleed, and then they became men again. I was sending them to their gods as fast as I could move my sword, but there was always another stepping into his place. We had so many swords, but we were packed so close we couldn't swing them. I bashed at skulls, using my hilt like a club and trying to force myself forward into those locked ranks, but all around me warriors were in retreat.
Falling back.
"No retreat!" I howled, staggering as I slipped in a mess of spilled guts, but there was space around me because my fellow warriors were edging back from the Romans. I tripped again on a fallen shield, nearly losing my own, looking around me in a daze. I did not understanding what I was seeing.
My queen's war band was fleeing.
Fleeing. Packed along the narrow defile, hemmed in by those circling auxiliaries, frantically pressing back toward the open plain where we had launched our glorious charge. I suddenly felt the drench of sweat gluing my hair to my skull, the bone-deep ache in my sword a
rm that had been rising and falling for what felt like hours. Not lost, I thought. Not lost, not yet! If we could lure the Romans to that open field where we had room to fight, we could pull them to pieces from all sides. I filled my burning lungs, ready to call for a shield wall where the narrow gorge fed out into the wide plain—but the warriors of the Iceni were already streaming past, casting their swords aside, sprinting for the hills. I could not find Boudica. I could not find Andecarus. Where was my son?
And everywhere—everywhere—the Roman units were advancing, scything into my fellow tribesmen like a sickle through an upturned throat.
A strangled howl burgeoned in my throat, but I killed it before it could escape. Not lost, I thought in fierce, frantic hope. Not lost! We could retreat, melt into the woods as our people had always done. My queen could reassemble her army. Even if a third of us fell on this field, we still outnumbered Paulinus' men more than six to one. We would choose another battleground and fall on the Romans unawares—the plan my son had proposed at the war council. The chiefs would not brush that advice aside this time, nor would I. Run today, fight tomorrow, I thought, gut churning, and as I shifted into a run, knee screaming pain in the cold sweat that had swamped me, I saw Boudica: bloody, desperate, alive. Holding her own whipsawed reins because her charioteer hung limp off the rail like a gutted sheep, screaming her ponies forward, her face a mask of gore and mud, but alive. My queen was alive. As long as she lived, all was not lost.
But then I came out into the crest of the open field and saw, outlined against the cruel blue sky, the wagons drawn tight around the mouth of the valley. Massive wagons weighed down by the treasure of three sacked cities, further packed by eager women and children, who had piled atop the heaped loot to watch the Romans die. Those enormous wagons and their placid teams of oxen plugged the valley like a cork, and I watched the first surge of fleeing warriors wash up against the barrier and break like a wave.
No, I thought, but the howl died unspoken. The scream was all in my mind, the scream of a child who wakes to find the dark infinite and knows the night is full of teeth. I was still running, slipping and sliding on slicks of blood and fallen swords, nests of entrails and dying men begging mercy, but there would be no mercy today for any of us. The world's teeth had snapped shut about us all.
Some of Boudica's warriors slipped between the tight-drawn wagons, crawling between wheels and lunging for the freedom beyond. Others hacked at the cattle, trying to cut them down and climb over the bellowing corpses. But too few—far too few. Wave after wave of fleeing warriors slammed blind and frantic against the barrier, clamoring, clawing, those behind pressing so frantically on those in front that they slipped into the churned grass of the wheel ruts and disappeared shrieking under so many trampling boots. The wagons rocked from side to side, too heavy to spill easily, and now the women and children inside had seen the danger and were fleeing like mice from burning thatch, but too late.
Too late. The words came in a harsh raven's caw, brushing the cavern of my hollow chest. Because the Romans now came at a sprint, shields locked, orderly units lunging over the narrow defile and into the expanse of the plain. Five units sprinted past me unstopping; what did they care for a solitary gray-haired warrior at the rear? They had their gaze fixed on the prize, and with another tinny blat of their ugly horns, they fell on the frantic churning rear of Boudica's army.
I was on my knees. When had I fallen? I was on my knees, rocking back and forth in the mud, sword clutched loose in my hand as I watched my people die.
This was not battle. It was slaughter. Every blink of my lashes saw another fifty fall as the Roman swarm advanced into the chaos and left wet red death in its wake. I saw a small boy fall from the wagons and disappear under the trampling feet of the warriors below. I saw a scarred woman trying to beat her way free of the crush with a broken shield, going down with a sword through her spine. I saw a warrior with lime-washed hair sag, head flopping half-severed—
My vision skipped. I was still on my knees, limbs stone-heavy, mouth working soundlessly. Some warriors were trying to turn and fight—my queen's second adviser with the amber bead in his beard swam out of the chaos as crazily distinct as though he stood beside me, screaming for a new shield wall and then sliding into the muck of tangled bodies. There were so many of us, still so many, if only we could turn and fight! But panic had come on death-white wings, and panic is the death of victory. We were no longer gods of the field; we were cattle in a churn awaiting the axe, and the Romans were building a dam of our broken, blood-webbed bodies.
The gods had not ridden with us today, after all. The gods had betrayed us.
I staggered to my feet. I took two faltering steps, my sword tip trailing the blood-soaked grass, and I tripped over a limp form and crashed forward again. A shriek rose as I realized what I'd fallen over: the Druid Yorath, so newly dead blood still pulsed from him in slow ebbs. His naked body lay white and bony as a child's; the wreath of mistletoe had fallen away as he tried to stuff his own guts back into his belly. The precious severed head on its spike, the sacrifice that had promised us victory, lay flattened by Roman boots.
I screamed then, and screamed again, clenching my own hair in bloody hanks, trembling and shaking as though I'd drunk a bellyful of dream-mead. The gods had not betrayed us—the gods were dead. They had died on Mona, murdered by Rome, and now the last Druid had gone to join them, and he had not gone serene as our priests are supposed to go to the world beyond. He had died howling, godless, and pissing himself—and so would we all. Our triumphs of this past golden year were nothing but lies. Nothing but the death throes of a world that did not realize it was dead.
The world I loved was gone, and I was the last to see it. A blind old fool.
A hard fist suddenly yanked my head back. I heard a snarl of Latin, felt the edge of a gladius at my throat, and I was still blind with tears, but I moved with the instincts of fifty summers worth of battles. I flung myself back against the Roman, knocking his gladius a few precious inches from my throat, and my sword had slipped from my hand, but the spike where Yorath had so proudly carried the severed head was at my fingertips. I seized it, still sobbing my grief for a lost, mist-wrapped world, and I stabbed the Roman up under the chin, driving the spike up through his jaw, into his brain, until I felt it scrape the inside of the skull. I screamed for my dying tribe and our dead gods.
Then I seized my sword and took off across the field of death in a shambling run, looking for my queen.
VALERIA
The screams seemed to rise from everywhere, like a chorus from Tartarus. Valeria bolted up from the stool where she'd been waiting for what seemed like hours. Women screaming, and children—and then the beautiful, distant sound of a Roman buccina instead of a howling Iceni carnyx.
She flew outside the tent and found the camp in chaos. Women were seizing bundled babies, grabbing baskets, trying to drag goats by rope halters—then finally just dropping everything but their children. "What's happening?" Valeria screamed into the spreading panic. "What's happening!"
No one paused to answer, but suddenly she could hear hoof beats thundering. The hooves of Roman cavalry horses, not shaggy mountain ponies.
Hope leaped in her throat, dizzy and desperate. Have we won? Had ten thousand legionaries really prevailed against ten to one odds? Her head swam. A crippled man on a staff shunted past, knocking Valeria off her feet and hobbling on with a shouted curse. Hastily, she scrambled back into the tent. The camp still had hundreds of Iceni who had been too young, too old, or too timid to join the wagon train that trundled off to watch the battle—who knew which of them might decide to kill the Roman bitch as they fled? The protection of Duro's name would not matter now. Blank, cold shock chilled Valeria then. Duro—was he dead?
The sound of hooves grew louder, louder, louder still. Then came the clash of iron and the jingling of mail, and the hateful companion to that sound—screaming voices. Women too slow to flee, paying the pric
e the women in Londinium had paid, and Verulamium, and Camulodunum. Paying the price the unarmed always paid when battles were lost, whether the victorious swords belonged to Romans or tribesmen. Valeria pressed her hands to her ears. "Stop," she heard herself crying, "just stop!" She never wanted to hear the clash of swords again or the screams of desperate women and dying children. Never. Never. Never.
The tent wrenched open, and Valeria looked up to see a centurion—square Roman face, Roman gladius, Roman helmet. She could hear his fellow soldiers dispatching the survivors outside, but she still felt a kick of violent relief at the sight of a fellow countryman. The words spilled over each other in their haste to leave her lips. "I am a Roman woman." She rose so he could see her stola, her coiled hair. It was over. It was over. Life as an Iceni slave was done. "I am the procurator's wife, Valeria of the Sulpicii, and if you will—"
"Tattooed slut," he snarled, and his gladius rose. Valeria froze in a moment's ice-cold shock, seeing the white about his eyes, the gore on his armor, the blankness of his stare. Too maddened from the battle to know a Roman woman when he saw one, or—
"I am Valeria of the Sulpicii!" she shouted in Latin, backing away from the gladius, but the centurion wasn't hearing her. He wasn't seeing her, either—or perhaps all he saw was another tattooed woman, and that to him meant Boudica and the other screaming harpies he'd fought on the battlefield. He came at her, stinking of blood and ready to gut her where she stood, and Valeria flung herself forward, past his sword, against his breastplate before she had a chance to think. Duro's bone-handled dagger snaked free from her belt, all but leaping into her scrabbling hand, and she screamed as she stabbed the centurion through the throat. "Thrust," she heard herself shriek, driving the blade with all her strength, "then twist—" and wrenched the dagger free. She stabbed him again, blood pattering warmly over her face, and the centurion dropped gurgling at her feet.