Page 11 of Boudicca

My tribe, the brave Iceni, continued to resist. They tried to get to me, but the Roman formation never broke—never even wavered. They threw themselves at the soldiers as they shrieked the Iceni battle cry. Over and over, grandmothers and grandfathers attacked the Romans—and each of them fell. Suddenly I understood what my people were doing. The tribal elders were keeping the attention of the centuria on them so that the next generation of our people—brave children and their young mothers—were able to flee into the safety of the forest.

The Roman soldiers easily cut down all challengers. I felt each of the blows as if they had sliced through my own body.

Impotently, I tried to pull the attention of the soldiers from my people. I struck, thrusting my dagger over and over at them.The Romans ignored my attempts to break through their shields. The most they did was to parry my thrusts—careful never to strike me—and continue to crowd us toward the Iceni practice field.

But they toyed mercilessly with Briallen.

From the edge of my vision I could see that Briallen’s tunic was soaked scarlet from stab wounds to her breasts. Every time she had to swivel even a little to parry a blow from one man, another soldier from the column would dart forward and slash at her buttocks—and then the soldiers would laugh uproariously.

My hands were slick with sweat, and the metallic scent of Briallen’s blood thickened the air by the time our little group reached the practice field.

From his horse, Decianus watched everything. He called the order. “Make an end of it! I tire of the goat-shit smell of this place.”

The circle of shields suddenly tightened, separating Briallen from my daughters and me. Briallen shrieked like a banshee, whirling and slicing so that it took five Romans to subdue her. They knocked her to the ground and dragged her behind a goat shed—and then she stopped shrieking.

Everything went silent. The Iceni warriors were dead. The elderly Iceni had all fallen. There was no one left to worry the soldiers.

I straightened my spine as Andraste’s words echoed in my mind:Your husband did not heed me... You cannot stop the consequence of his choice. You must avoid it, survive it, or die with it.

I stood tall and proud as I tried to shield my daughters. But I had no chance against the mass of soldiers, so I lifted my chin and leveled my gaze on the tax collector.

“I demand a queen’s right to speak with your governor Gaius Suetonius Paulinus!”

Decianus made show of looking around before he shrugged. “My good friend Paulinus does not appear to be here. Pity. You will have to speak with me instead.”

I shook my head and sneered at the little fat man. “I have spoken with you,tax collector, and I am done speaking with you. You overreachyour station with borrowed soldiers. What you have done today breaks our treaty—one approved by your emperor and signed by Paulinus. You have no authority over the Iceni!”

“Again, I see no one here except me, which makes my authority absolute. And to be clear, Rome does not acknowledge a woman’s right to rule; therefore, you may demand nothing!” His nasal voice mocked me as he turned away. “Take them to the stake!”

The soldiers closed on us. I circled my daughters, lunging forward with my dagger as I tried to find a weakness in their wall of shields. One soldier parried my jab. Using the pommel of his pugio, he struck me hard across the cheek. My world grayed and I staggered, gasping for breath. He easily slapped away my dagger, and then he and two of his comrades used their long pilums to herd the three of us through the rest of the column of Romans to the center of the training field.

Decianus had gotten there first. He dismounted, and as my daughters and I spilled out of the column of soldiers to the open ground before him, he commanded, “Tie Boudicca to the post.”

We were doomed. I knew it as surely as I drew breath. We could not escape a centuria of Romans, but I would not break before these usurpers. I would not break before my daughters. Let them witness the strength of will of an Iceni queen. I blinked away the last of my dizziness and wiped my sweaty, bruised face with my sleeve. Then I put myself between my girls and the procurator. I looked down my nose at Decianus and spit in his face.

Laughing, the procurator pretended to turn away, but then he spun around and punched me in the stomach. Air rushed from me as I doubled over and fell to my knees. While I retched onto the hard-packed dirt of the training grounds, Enfys and Ceri shrieked and tried to reach me, but Decianus grabbed them by their slim wrists and threw them at the soldiers closest to him.

“You may have sport with them, but do not kill them.”

“No!” I screamed, and staggered to my feet to lunge after my girls.

Decianus caught my braid as I tried to rush past him and jerked me off my feet.

“You see what happens when you aren’t polite?”

From the ground I looked up at him and pleaded. “Please! Do as you will with me, but they arechildren. They are no threat to you.”

“Ah, but they will grow up, and because you insist on arming your women, they will become my enemies. Think of this as a lesson in propriety. I am actually doing them a favor. Perhaps, when they are adults, this will teach them not to bear arms against their betters.”

“Mama!” Ceri sobbed.

“Help us!” Enfys screamed.

Rage filled me to overflowing. I surged to my feet again. Shrieking the Iceni war cry, I ran directly at Decianus. I bared my teeth to use them as weapons and made my hands claws as I went for his eyes. The procurator staggered back. Off balance, he fell against the soldiers who were struggling to contain the two hysterical girls.

For an instant I thought Ceri and Enfys might escape—might dart between the wall of soldiers and shields and flee into the misty, concealing forest. But the men only laughed, made the mocking sounds of clucking hens at the girls as they closed their wall of shields. Ceri and Enfys ran in the other direction. Again, the wall closed and the soldiers taunted. Hand in hand, the sisters raced from the column and ran into the only building on the field, the hut in which straw targets and wooden practice swords were stored. They closed the door. My heart ached with the futility of it. The hut was no barricade against the lust of Rome. Still laughing and clucking like hens, soldiers broke down the door and entered the hut.

As my children’s screams lifted to the boughs of the great, watching oak, Decianus backhanded me before he wrapped my long, thick braid around his hand and dragged me to the center post.