Page 10 of Boudicca

Arianell had dressed and was at her usual place before the hearthfire. My two daughters looked up as I entered, grinning sleepily at me.

“Mama! Enfys said I cannot have strawberries with my cream today. Tell her I can!” Ceri, who had known ten namedays, fisted her small hands at her waist and glared at her sister, who was three years her senior—and never let her forget it.

“I was just kidding! Don’t be a baby who runs to—”

“The Romans are in the village.” I cut off my daughters’ bickering as soon as Briallen closed the thick wooden doors behind us. Quickly I slid the satchel that held Andraste’s precious gift over my head and hid it behind one of the tapestries that covered the wall from floor to ceiling.

“Oh, goddess! What do they want?” Arianell stood so abruptly that she stumbled into Dafina, who had moved to stand beside her mistress.

“Nothing good. Andraste warned me they were here. Mother, Dafina—get the girls out through the rear door.” As I spoke, I hurried toward my bedchamber. Phaedra was standing just outside the thick deer-pelt curtain that served as the door, eyes wide, wringing her hands. “I’ve stalled them, but they will not wait long. Get out now. Warn every villager you can. Tell them to leave immediately—fade into the forest—meet at the Chief’s Barrow. The Romans are loath to trespass there.” Romans did not desecrate graves. They knew the barrows were where we buried our dead, a place specially protected by our gods and goddesses, and thus they avoided them.

I turned at the entrance to my chamber. “Briallen, go with my daughters. Protect them. Phaedra, help me change and put out our second-best mead. Then follow the girls to the forest.”

Briallen frowned but nodded in acknowledgment of my command. “Come, Arianell, bairns, let us go with haste as Herself—”

The double wooden doors to the lodge burst open. Skewered by a Roman pilum, Bryn’s still-twitching body fell inside. Decianus stepped over him and spoke with a sneer. “I have waited long enough. This discourtesy is what happens when a woman thinks she can lead men.” Then he replaced his sneer with a wide, feral smile as he studied Enfys and Ceri. “The daughters of Prasutagus. How fortuitous that you are here to take part in this valuable lesson.”

Chapter V

Briallen moved with the speed of a viper. She placed herself between the Roman and the two girls. She unsheathed her sword and stood at ready.

Decianus’s look hardened and he commanded, “Drive the girls and the queen from the lodge. Kill anyone who gets in the way.” A mean smile slid across his florid face. “Except for this fierce woman.” He pointed at Briallen. “Let us toy with her. I find females who masquerade as soldiers fascinating.”

Decianus stepped aside to allow two Roman soldiers to rush within, and the lodge exploded into movement. Briallen slid the point of her sword up between the leather strips of the first soldier’s tunic, slicing his groin. He dropped with a terrible scream. Briallen spun around and her sword cut neatly through the second soldier’s throat, causing him to fall backward out onto the raised wooden stairs as blood geysered in an arc around him.

“Mother! Take the girls! Go!” I shouted as I pulled the dagger from the leather sheath at my waist. I didn’t think. I reacted. I met Phaedra’s shocked gaze and commanded, “Go! Now!” My servant sprinted to the rear of the lodge and the shadowy back door. Then I rushed past my screaming daughters and lunged at Decianus. My knife almost found his throat, but the tax collector shrieked and staggered back as another soldier burst into the lodge. Set on killing Decianus, I tried to follow through with a deadly lunge but the soldier was there, blocking my way. “No!” I sobbed brokenly, bowed my head, and dropped my shoulders in pretended defeat. When the soldier momentarily relaxed I jabbed the hilt of my blade into his thigh.

“Get in here, you fools!” Decianus commanded.

And then there was no more respite. The well-trained soldiers of Rome’s Ninth Legion poured into my home.

“Do not touch her!” Arianell shouted, and pulled Ceri from a soldier’s grasp. And then my mother gasped and her eyes went wide when the blade of his pugio—a short sword—plunged into her belly.

“Nain!” Ceri sobbed.

“Nooooo!” Ancient Dafina howled her rage. The gray-haired woman, who had spent her life serving and loving Arianell, hurled herself at the soldier.

In more of a twitch of reflex than a true strike, the soldier met her hysterical onslaught with his iron-tipped pilum. He speared her through the chest as easily as if the old woman had been a lamb rushing to its own slaughter. She crumpled to the ground beside Arianell’s motionless body. The Roman soldier pressed his foot to her soft belly as he pulled his spear from her body.

I watched Mother and Dafina fall but had no time for tears. I rushed to my daughters and shoved them behind me. Briallen took up a position with her back to me, my two frightened daughters between us.

“Do not kill them!” Decianus shouted. “Drive them from the lodge as I commanded!”

The attack paused. The soldiers reevaluated, regrouped. When next the soldiers entered the lodge it was with the practiced control for which Rome’s legions were renowned. They entered in pairs with their body-covering shields raised and locked. Though Briallen and I thrust at them, they did not break ranks but surrounded us with an impenetrable wall. Then slowly, methodically, they closed their circle of shields and forced us from the lodge.

The world was death and confusion. Screams echoed through the fog around us. I knew my people were being slaughtered but could only catch glimpses of the village between brief breaks in the wall of shields surrounding and herding the four of us through the settlement.

“Mama! Mama!” Little Ceri fearfully panted my name.

I brandished my dagger before me as I tried to keep the soldiersfrom getting any nearer. With my other hand I reached back to touch my youngest daughter. “Stay between Briallen and me! And when we tell you—run for the woods!”

“Yes, Mama! We will! We will!” Enfys said between sobs.

I’d spoken automatically, trying to soothe Ceri, but I knew my girls and I could not escape the Romans. Smoke lifted in dark tails above the shields, obscuring my view. Tasceni was burning.

And then I heard a sound that momentarily had my heart swelling with joy—voices raised in the Iceni battle cry followed by the crash of steel on steel. The soldiers who were herding us forward paused as other Romans met the few Iceni warriors who had chosen to remain in the village as well as the sick, the feeble, the elderly, and those heavy with child. No matter the age, each Iceni was a warrior who bravely charged at the Romans. And each Iceni warrior fell nobly as they attempted to protect their queen, her heirs, and their village.

An officer called out a sharp command and the marauding soldiers fell into formation, making a column with their shoulders pressed against one another so that their large, curved shields extended the impenetrable, confining wall. They held their pilums—long, deadly spears—at the ready as the circle of soldiers herding us continued to move forward, inside the Roman column. I realized we were being forced to the Iceni practice field.