by David McAfee
He reached her horse and took a knee, saluting as he did so.
“Report,” she said.
“We have captured…something.”
“Something? What do you mean, ‘something?’” She looked behind him, to a group of men who were dragging a prisoner behind them. The man was tied to a wooden beam by a length of heavy rope, and no less than a dozen men stood around him with their swords drawn. Several archers walked nearby, their arrows trained on the man’s chest. Boudica caught her breath when she noted the condition of her men. Many were bruised and bloodied, with gashes on their arms and chests. One soldier’s left eye was missing, a hideous red hole stared blindly out from his face where it had once been. A thin red line trickled from the wound, making the man look like he was crying blood.
Many more of her men were similarly battered. Petrus limped along on a hastily made crutch, and Bolvo’s left arm was missing from the elbow down. The stump had been tied with a leather thong, but the man was pale as death. Despite this, the prisoner appeared unharmed. While there was a great deal of blood on his clothes, which were ripped and shredded, she didn’t see a single mark on him. How was that possible?
The man glared at her. His dark eyes filled with hate and loathing, and she felt the heat of his disdain from her seat, a good twenty feet away. His straggly hair was matted and sticky with blood, and his face shone red in the moonlight. His thin cheeks seemed gaunt, even hollow, but he had the lean, strong physique of a trained warrior. His muscles bulged as he strained against his bonds. Despite the number of ropes tied to him, she felt a momentary fear that he would break them and come for her throat.
It’s the eyes, she thought, staring deep into their black depths. They aren’t natural. The color. Not brown but black. Who has black eyes?
And what had he done to her men? She did a fast count and noted that over twenty men were missing.
“Where are the others?” she asked. “The rest of your patrol? Where are they?”
The scout looked at his feet. “Dead, my Queen.”
“How many?”
“Twenty-four.”
Boudica tapped her fingernail on the horn of her saddle. Had Londinium known what was coming? Had they sent out troops to meet hers before the bombardment? It seemed unlikely, especially since the attack was well underway already. “Are there any other prisoners?”
“No, my Queen.”
Boudica stood in her stirrups. “You mean this man,” she pointed at the prisoner, “and his allies killed twenty-four of my soldiers and you only captured one of them?”
The soldier looked shaken. “No, my Queen. That is not…that is…there were no others.”
“What do you mean?”
“The prisoner was alone.” He wiped sweat from his brow with a bloody forearm. “He killed twenty four of our men and injured a score more before we were able to subdue him. He fought like a whirling devil.”
Boudica sat back down, staring at the prisoner. One man? Against twenty-four? She looked closely, noting the shiny pink welts on his skin. Scars. Fresh ones. How fresh were they? She doubted he battled such a large force by himself without taking a single hit. One look at her men confirmed that several of them had scored bloody hits. Half the swords pointed at him were stained red. She shook her head, noting the bloody hands and jaws of the strange man.
Bloody jaws… something about the image brought a story to her mind. Something she’d heard of as a child but never believed in. A secret race of beings that looked human, but weren’t. They were said to drink the blood of their victims, and were rumored to have healing powers beyond the imagination of mortal men.
But they were just stories. Weren’t they?
One look at the prisoner’s burning eyes, which reflected the fires of Londinium and looked like burning cinders in the middle of his face, told her they were not.
“Gods save us,” Boudica whispered.
“My Queen?” the scout asked. “Is something wrong?”
“The Bachiyr,” she whispered. “You captured the Devil.”
***
Taras ran through the city as fast as his wobbly legs would carry him, dodging through people and bodies while skirting the areas of heavy fire and fighting, trying to reach the western gate ahead of the invading army. By the looks of things, the enemy-Taras had heard rumors of everything from the Iceni to the Romans to even monsters from another realm, but had yet to see any of them, himself-had not sent in the infantry yet, but that didn’t stop the denizens of Londinium from attacking everything that moved. Already he’d been accosted four times. Each time, he managed to evade the aggressor, but it was getting harder and harder to do. Taras needed blood. He would have to find a suitable victim soon or he would die in the fires of this burning hell.
As he neared the center of Londinium, another knot of men emerged from around a corner forty paces ahead. When they saw him, they yelled a challenge, pulled out their weapons, and charged. Only one of them had a sword, the rest were armed with sharpened sticks. Taras eyed the sticks, knowing that if he allowed any of the men to put one through his heart he would be done for. The stick wouldn’t kill him, but it would leave him paralyzed in the street, after which the rest of the men could finish the job, or the invaders, or the fire, or even the sun. He dodged to the right as the man with the sword charged, leading with his off-balanced weapon. Oblivious, the man swung the sword in a wide arc. He swung hard, leaning in toward Taras and extending his arm to its full length, not realizing that by doing so he overbalanced himself. Predictably, he stumbled over his own feet and fell to his knees, scraping his thick, coarse clothes on the ash-covered cobbles.
No training, Taras thought. Just a man who found a sword. He stepped around the sputtering, cursing Briton, and just managed to avoid a blow from one of his stick-wielding compatriots. Taras ducked under the newcomer’s weapon and launched a sharp, hard right hand into his solar plexus. The man grunted, dropped his weapon, and rolled into the fetal position, huffing and wheezing while he tried to force air back into his lungs. Taras stepped around him, knowing another would be on him in a moment.
The next man came in with an overhand chop which Taras easily sidestepped. Taras planted his left foot on the street and launched his right boot into the man’s back as he stumbled by. The man fell face first into the street, and Taras ducked under yet another blow. Behind him, he heard the sword-wielder grunt and rise to his feet, shouting for his friends to circle Taras and attack him en masse.
But Taras had other ideas. There was only one man standing between him and the empty street, and when the fellow stepped forward, Taras reached out and grabbed his wrist. Despite his lack of blood, Taras was still stronger and faster than his opponent, and he twisted the man’s arms down and to the side, turning as he went. The man ended up rolling over Taras’s hip, then landed flat on his back, issuing as loud whumph! As the air left his lungs. Taras, meanwhile, maintained control of the man’s weapon. It wasn’t much, just a three foot wooden pole with one end sharpened to a deadly point, but Taras swung it hard, keeping the wood in front of him as he spun around to face the rest of his attackers.
The stick jarred his hand as it struck the sword-wielder in the temple, and a loud crack sounded through the street, though Taras could not tell if it was the wood that cracked or the man’s skull. The man’s eyes rolled up into his head and he slumped to the street, but Taras had no idea whether or not he was still alive, and the man’s friends didn’t give him time to find out.
They came on him as a group now. Only four of them were on their feet. The man Taras had punched in the solar plexus remained on the ground, clutching his midsection and howling in pain. Probably broke his ribs, Taras thought. The man was lucky. Had Taras fought with his claws, or with the sword on his belt, he would likely be bleeding his life away right now.
The four men stood no more than five paces in front of him, grumbling and brandishing their crude weapons. One of them pointed at Taras and made a slashing motio
n across his throat. But no one remained at his back. Taras turned and ran, ignoring the men behind as they shouted insults at his back. They could call him craven all they wanted, by the end of this evening they would all be dead. Taras meant to live, and to do that he needed to reach the western gate.
He ran in that direction, dodging several more skirmishes along the way, but it seemed the closer he got to the gate, the more intense the fighting became. Finally he came in sight of the gate and saw the problem. While the city was being attacked through the air at the eastern gate, the western gate was being overrun with soldiers piling in to the city and setting fire to everything. The infantry had come, after all, they had just gone around the rear of the city.
So that was the plan. The enemy surrounded Londinium and cut off the exits. It must be a sizable troop to have such forces on both sides of the city. The men scrambling through the gate and over the walls wore no plate and hoisted no banners. Many of them wore no armor at all and fought in little more than furry vests, their bare, muscular arms vulnerable to any Roman soldier who could get close enough to hit them. Many of their weapons were crude, huge things, and their wielders swung them about with little regard for tactics or style. It seemed strength and ferocity were enough. Barbarians, then. The rumors regarding the Iceni were true.
Their presence here confirmed his suspicion that this was not an invasion, but an extermination. No one would leave the city tonight. Not until it had burned to the ground, and its inhabitants with it.
Unfortunately, that included Taras.
***
Ramah followed the trail, lured on by the signs left by dozens of men. Several hundred paces back he’d come to the site of a nasty battle. Over a score of men had been killed. Their corpses littered the area, laying in the dirt and grass with their bowels exposed, hanging from their bellies like thick, wet ropes. Many were missing limbs, and a few lay headless, their life’s blood trickling into the thirsty ground. One of the men groaned as Ramah passed, and reached out a single trembling hand to the Bachiyr’s leg, grasping his pants in a weak and faltering grip.
“Please…” he wheezed. Ramah noted the blood on the soldier’s face, and the large red hole in his chest where something had clawed away the flesh, revealing the bare ribs beneath. Blood poured freely from the wound, soaking the man’s leather jerkin and pooling beneath him. “Please, help…”
Ramah’s boot caved in the soldier’s skull, which gave with a sharp crack that sounded like splintering boards in the otherwise still silence of the clearing. A mercy killing. The man should have been long dead, Ramah just helped send him to the next world all the sooner.
He knelt into the bloody grass, taking stock of the carnage around him. The smell of blood was everywhere, and a cloud of flies had begun to buzz madly through the air, laying their eggs in the stricken flesh of the fallen. The killings had been brutal, fast, and effective. It must have scared the life from the soldiers; the survivors had not even bothered to waste time gathering up their dead.
He recognized Theron’s handiwork when he saw it.
To his right, a slight breeze stirred the grass, bringing the smells of fire and war. That would be Londinium, burning as the Iceni lay waste to the city. He could still hear the screams as people died behind the walls. With only a token resistance to slow the Iceni horde, the entire city would be destroyed by dawn. Sooner or later the gatehouse would be affected, and Ramah’s passage back to the Halls would go up in flames. No matter, he thought. I can find someplace else to spend the day. The country around Londinium was spotted with thousands of small farms and holdfasts, he would be fine. In any case, he’d come too far to go running back to the Halls. Now that he was so close to capturing Theron, he refused to return empty handed.
Ramah resumed his examination of the site. There was no indication that Theron had escaped the soldiers and run, which would have been the sensible thing to do. Thus, he came to the conclusion that the renegade had allowed himself to be captured by the Iceni. What will their righteous queen make of that? he wondered. By all accounts, Boudica was a sharp one. Would she know what she had? If so, what would she do with him? Would she kill him? Or would she try to use him?
Ramah grinned. The better option would be to leave Theron securely chained someplace where, come dawn, the sun would find him. If that turned out to be the case, he could return to the Halls and report that the renegade had been dealt with. It wouldn’t be enough to appease Lannis or Algor, who both wanted to make Theron a Lost One, but Headcouncil Herris would be satisfied.
It still left the issue of Taras, but Ramah didn’t think that would be an issue much longer. The renegade was pinned to the cellar floor of a building that was locked and bolted, waiting for the fires that would end his life. Ramah would have liked to go back into the city and check, just to make sure, but Theron was more important. In any case, Taras had been too weak to do anything but lay in a pool of blood and whimper. He wasn’t likely to have escaped.
But what about Baella? Was she a prisoner of the humans, as well? Or had she escaped? He couldn’t tell anything by the marks around the site. It was possible the humans had captured both, but he doubted it. Baella had managed to evade the entire Bachiyr race for thousands of years, the idea that a small group of humans could catch her seemed absurd. And yet…
Ramah learned long ago never to discount anything where humans were involved. He found the trail again and followed the tracks of the survivors. If they had captured Theron or Baella or both, he meant to know about it. Perhaps he could even steal Baella away from the Iceni. He could fight off a large group of humans. Possibly thirty of them, or more. If they stood between him and Baella, he would shred his way through them until he reached her. He even looked forward to it. The thrill of battle, the smell of blood in the air as it mixed with the screams of the dying, the fear his enemies felt when they realized they were about to die.
Like music, he thought.
Ramah followed the trail through a dense group of trees, keeping to the shadows and enacting a Psalm of Silence to disguise his approach. As he threaded his way through the oaks, maples, and alders, his ears picked up a low, persistent buzz to the east. It sounded like a large number of people gathered in one place talking, screaming, eating, and probably fucking, as would befit the Iceni and neighboring tribes. The trail of the humans also led east, so Ramah followed his ears, thinking he’d found his quarry at last.
Before he caught sight of the group, he had already come to the conclusion that it was more than just thirty humans. The low buzz had evolved into a din of voices, indecipherable on their own and merging into one long, hushed sound. The trail continued toward the noise, and so Ramah kept following, though he began to think he would not be able to capture Theron and Baella as easily as he’d first thought. If the group proved as large as it sounded, he might not even be able to see them.
He poked his head around one wide maple and saw that the group of trees ended about thirty feet away, opening up into a large field of short, hardy grass that stretched for miles in every direction.
Standing in that field was an army.
Ramah swore, scanning the groups. He spotted the infantry right away, the chaotic, disorderly humans who stood on edge and waited, fidgeting with their weapons. They were a largely undisciplined lot, which would make sense. Only those Iceni capable of learning to ride or work the ballistae would be spared infantry duty. To the south of the infantry he spotted the ballistae troops. Missile after missile launched from the mechanical monsters to drop upon the city. The attack must have started just after he left.
Movement near the ballistae caught his eye, and he noted the mounted riders near their head. The generals, no doubt, planning the attack. Not that it did him any good. He could not rip his way through fifty thousand human troops. Theron and Baella were nowhere to be seen, not that he had much chance of spotting them in this chaos. Ramah watched the army, unwilling to give up his search.
After ten minutes
with no sign of his prey, he swore under his breath. He was just about to turn away when a group of men crested a distant hill and approached the mounted officers. Many of the men in the new group limped gamely along, and several were missing limbs. But every one of them held a crossbow trained and ready, pointed at the center of their group. Ramah tensed.
There, chained to a mobile platform, was Theron. The renegade’s shredded clothing was soaked through with blood. It hung from his flesh in tatters and rags, revealing dozens of fresh, pink scars. He struggled in his bonds and shouted curses at the humans around him, but he seemed secure. Still, the humans were taking no chances. Several of the crossbows were loaded with flaming bolts. The men might not know exactly what they had captured, but they had an idea how dangerous it was. Baella was nowhere to be seen. Ramah had figured as much. Another day, Baella, he thought.
The sight of Theron in chains spurred him on, and Ramah stepped from behind the tree and started walking toward the mounted generals. He didn’t know what he would say to gain access to the gathering, but he was not going to let Theron get away again. Somehow, he would find a way in. If he had to, he would rip and tear his way through have the damn Iceni army. But by The Father, Theron was coming to the Halls of the Bachiyr tonight, even if A flash of pain on the back of his head drove all thoughts of Theron and the Halls of the Bachiyr from his mind. His vision failed, and the last thing he felt was a strange sensation that he was falling…falling…then nothing at all.
26
The night was lit only by fire. The growing orange glow over the city mixed with the dancing light of nearby torches and the few remaining balls of burning tar that had yet to be fired. All in all, it cast the area around the queen in a flickering, shifting light. It was hardly enough to see the Bachiyr’s face-the thing stood tied to a thick pole in the center of a mobile cell-but even in the sullen light there was no mistaking those burning eyes and pointed fangs, which gleamed an evil red in the dim light.
