A Year of Ravens: a novel of Boudica's Rebellion

by E. Knight

  That got her another clip to the jaw. "The Druid brought us good omens," Duro continued. "He made sacrifice of a Roman legionary and brought the head with promise of Andraste's favor."

  Heads again. That poor legionary. Had anyone put a coin in his mouth after he died for the ferry ride into Pluto's realm? Probably not; that would be too civilized for a Druid. Valeria gave an extra-vengeful jab at the back of her captor's knee.

  "He's young for a Druid." Duro sipped his mead. "Maybe eighteen. But the gods spared him for a reason."

  "Eighteen? That is ridiculous. It takes decades of training to read the future in a spill of ox-guts!"

  "It takes skill to strangle a man with a ligature and cut his throat in the same motion, but our skinny little Druid evidently managed all right. Maybe our holy men learn faster than your priests."

  "The gods of Rome do not approve of human sacrifice." That was not strictly true, historically speaking, but Valeria decided not to muddy a good argument with minor details.

  "Yes, you Romans don't kill men for your gods, but you're perfectly willing to kill them for your entertainment. Gladiatorial games—your gods smile on those."

  Valeria dipped more goose grease, shifting mentally to stronger ground. She'd never been a great enthusiast for gladiatorial games; her family always took the view that they were vulgar and should be outlawed—but the plebs adored the whole crass spectacle, and frankly it wasn't a point in her favor when arguing with a barbarian about inherent Roman superiority. As if such a thing needed to be argued. "You may have your Druid," she said, massaging the scar. "We have legions."

  He looked amused. "You think I fear your legions?"

  If they were my legions you would. Decianus had said once that she could run a legion every bit as well as she ran a household. He hadn't meant it precisely as a compliment, but Valeria knew she could have run a legion. She used to tamp such thoughts down as unseemly, but nothing in life now was seemly. "Our legions have conquered the world," she said instead.

  "And we've beaten them. We destroyed the Ninth at Camulodunum—"

  "Not in open battle. Roman discipline will always carry the day in open battle." Valeria knew that as surely as she knew Jove ruled in the heavens. Hadn't she grown up hearing her father and uncles and cousins—legates, tribunes, men with illustrious campaigns to their names—expound on the wonder that was legionary discipline? "There is nothing that can face a properly ranked formation of Roman legionaries on well-chosen ground," she quoted her father.

  Duro's smile was like the thin edge of a blade. "Who said anything about facing them?"

  Valeria strangled her unease before he could see it. The natives loved headlong charges, and in headlong charges, they died—it was when patience ruled the day that things changed. Painted tribesmen falling from the shadows to slaughter Roman legionaries, then disappearing again—that was how Caratacus had held out so long. That was how eagle standards had disappeared before in Germania. Thank the gods most barbarians were too undisciplined for stealth campaigns.

  Most of them. Valeria met her captor's gaze and saw an ocean of calm, savage patience. She found herself offering a prayer, not to any of the Roman gods but to the strident red-haired Boudica. Listen to your Druid, Valeria thought. Listen to the ones who tell you the only honor is in a headlong charge.

  She met Duro's eyes long enough to prove she had not flinched, then returned to his knee.

  "Silence from a Roman?" Duro rumbled. "That's new."

  She finished, wiping down her hands. "Romans don't argue with the uninformed."

  He sat forward, coming nose to nose with her. "I'm tired of your tongue. Put it to better use or get out of my tent."

  She didn't flinch from his face, scant inches away. "Force me."

  "Why?" He didn't touch her, just gave his edged smile again. "Plenty of willing ones out there for the queen's champion."

  You just like watching me choose every night, she thought. My husband had your queen flogged, your son is more Roman than Iceni because he lived in my house—and you punish me for both by making me choose to bed you.

  Valeria had chosen that from the moment she was captured—she made no pretenses, not to herself. When Duro returned from supervising the sack of Londinium, she'd been naked in the bed furs and grimly, ferociously prepared to get on with things. Her life as a slave would be easier the more she pleased her captor, and a pleasing bedmate would be better treated than a sullen, weeping dishrag. She'd given herself willing from the first night and gone right on doing it.

  She leaned forward and nailed her mouth to his, sinking her teeth into his lip and hearing him chuckle, not mistaking his amusement for anything but hatred. The grapple of limbs inside the furs was just another fight, the only kind Duro had between battles, the only kind Valeria had at all. She hated the tribesmen, and he hated the Romans; it was bright, visceral loathing that leaped between them with a heat that left her bruised from the weight of his grip and him bleeding from the marks of her nails and teeth. As a substitute for passion, it worked very well. Roman wives were restrained in lovemaking, but her husband was gone, as were honor and restraint, and Sulpicia Valeria was a savage's whore.

  She wondered what else she was going to become before all this was done.

  DURO

  There is a moment every morning when I wake, when the world becomes old.

  Each dawn I open my eyes, and for a moment I have woken into the world of my youth. Woken into a land where Latin is not spoken, where Roman sandals have left no footprints, where the horses clop on soft earth and not Roman roads. Where there are no thrusting, foul-smelling Roman cities with their officious square temples and their even more officious gods, no Roman taxes and Roman clerks with their endless totting up of what we owe. Where families have no aching gaps where sons were torn away to toil in Roman mines. Where the only fighting is in border spats and raids for cattle. Where the land is ours and ours alone, and Rome is gone.

  That is how it was in my youth. The young ones now, they look to their childhoods, and Rome was always there—but the old know better. I am old, even though my sword arm is still strong, and I remember. Every night I dream of how it was, the beauty of this land before Rome came, and every morning I wake and think I am still there. And then I rise from my bed, and the smell of the empire rushes foul and stinking into my nose—the smell of conquest, blood, and pomp—and I remember that my beautiful world is now a sad, ruined place.

  They ruined it. But I will take it back and make it as it was. My queen and I. Whatever the price.

  I was training the two princesses this morning—or rather, little Keena hung back with her sword tip drooping while Sorcha did her best to kill me. We had an area of trampled grass behind Boudica's tent between a rack of war shields and a line of chariot ponies, and our breath steamed white—a long hot summer had at last turned to autumn, the days still warm but the nights and the mornings cold. The queen liked to watch her daughters train, but she was settling a dispute between quarreling chiefs who had already knifed each other, and I was happier when she stayed away. In her mother's presence, Keena's awkwardness with a blade doubled, and so did Sorcha's recklessness.

  The elder princess was coming at me now, lips skinned back from her teeth, rough red hair strapped into four plaits. I beat back her lunge, smacking the flat of my own blade along her ribs. "Left yourself wide, see?" She nodded curtly, came at me again, and blade bit blade. She whipped past my wooden shield, stabbed at my side, came around for my head. I deflected her thrust and knocked her flat on the trampled grass. "Sloppy," I snapped as she glared up at me. "Too fast, too careless, and now you're too dead to do anything about it."

  "If you hadn't short-footed me—"

  "I thought you were here to fight, not whine."

  "This isn't fighting," she flared. "Drills with practice shields? I could do this at ten years old. You said I fought well in Londinium and Verulamium—"

  "Against
rickety old veterans and screaming Catuvellauni. You think hardened legionaries will die as easy?"

  She gave a grudging jerk of her chin, scrambling up and flying at me again. I stepped right into her this time and caught her along the ear with my hilt. "Too. Sloppy," I growled. "You keep letting your temper get the better of you, girl, and the next Roman soldier you face will skewer you. Fight angry if you want, but not if it makes you careless. Fight sloppy, get dead."

  She glowered, as much at herself as at me. Sorcha had always been a fire-headed, fire-natured copy of her mother, burning like a torch—the lucky princess, we all called her, because her birth had been blessed and she seemed to spread good fortune wherever she sauntered. Now she still burned like a torch but with a fierce white-hot hatred, her freckled face pale with an almost permanent fury. The Romans had done that—despoiled my beautiful land and despoiled my princess, the girl I'd known all her life, in whose tiny hand I'd put her first wooden practice sword. If I ever found that centurion who had tossed her on a storehouse floor and encouraged his men to desecrate her and her sister, I'd lead him to Sorcha on a leash of his own entrails so she could geld him, kill him, and banish her nightmares. If such nightmares can ever be banished.

  "Practice the strokes," I said. "But slower. Control, girl." She nodded, blade already in motion as I turned to her sister. "Now you, Keena."

  The younger princess stabbed at me halfheartedly. "Again, harder," I encouraged, but her stroke wouldn't have killed a field mouse. She took after her father, dark-haired and narrow-faced, and she'd always been small, but now she was a bony little shadow; thirteen years old and looking no more than ten. After that Roman centurion and his men were gone, Sorcha had walked back to the Great Hall on her own two feet, white-faced and shaking, striking away any offer of help—but I'd had to carry Keena, her legs bloody and her little body trembling inside my cloak. If that day had lit a great fire in Sorcha, it had extinguished the flame utterly in her younger sister. She sparred with me every morning because she didn't dare disobey her mother, but I could have told Boudica plainly, This one will never make a warrior.

  "That's enough for today," I told Keena, passing my hand gently over her hair. She gave me her shadowy smile, sliding away toward the tents of the injured, where she could help the healers tend our wounded fighters—it was the only place she seemed to muster any contentment. But Princess Sorcha kept going, her sword moving through a complicated pass. "You should rest," I said, but she gave a fierce shake of her head.

  "Get me a Roman to kill. Then I'll rest."

  "You've killed quite a few Romans." She'd had blood up to the tops of her arms after Verulamium—I'd hoped it would ease her tense fury, but it just seemed to stoke her further. She'd get herself killed in the next fight if she didn't keep a cooler head, and I opened my mouth to say so, but just then I saw my son crossing toward me, and my pulse leaped.

  Andecarus. My only son was shorter than I, lithe as a hunting dog, his hair in a dark plait down his back. Too hairy for a Roman, too neat for a tribesman. He seemed lost in this world, and he'd avoided me ever since our quarrel after Verulamium. Maybe now was a chance to patch things up. I scrambled for an opening line ("Back from all your advance scouting?" "Done sulking at me yet, boy?"), but when he halted, all I managed was a gruff nod, keeping my eyes on Sorcha.

  Andecarus spoke without preamble. "Will the queen call a war council?"

  "Why? Looking for more news to tell my Roman bitch?" It annoyed me, the courtesy he showed Valeria, as though he were still a fosterling. Rome had stolen his youth from me and given it to her—didn't that matter to him? "You don't owe her anything, boy."

  His face hardened, and I wished the words unsaid. Why did I always prickle at him when I didn't mean to? It had been like that since he came back to me from his hostage years. He'd gone away a shaggy pup in green breeches; he'd come back a wiry youth in Roman cavalry armor. "Look at the little Roman," I'd blurted, laughing as I stepped forward to embrace him—but his hazel eyes went flat and wary, just the way they looked now, and I knew I'd made a mistake. I hadn't meant it in mockery, just wanted to raise a chuckle at how many changes the passing years had wrought—but I'd done it all wrong. After that, he kept trying to please me, and I still kept getting it wrong.

  And now he wasn't trying anymore.

  Sorcha called over brusquely, sword still whistling through cold air in its practice strokes. "Andecarus, I need a sparring partner."

  It was a kind of apology—Sorcha's hatred of the Romans had soured her trust in my son, at least until she saw him fight with us against them at Verulamium. I used to hope they'd make a match of it, my son and Queen Boudica's daughter—Sorcha definitely had an eye for him when she was younger, and the queen and I had planned a betrothal. But then the Romans had come, and now the lucky princess had no eye for anything but vengeance. "Spar with her," I nudged my son anyway, hoping. "Make it a horseback bout." No one rode like Andecarus—he'd ridden with Roman cavalry; on a horse, he was a sweep of death in motion. "He can teach you anything about fighting from a saddle, Sorcha—"

  "Very Roman, I know," my son said, expressionless. "The Iceni only fight from foot or chariot."

  Not what I meant, I thought, but a clash of iron and curses interrupted us. I ducked through the tents, bad knee protesting, and Andecarus sped past me. "Fucking Trinovantes," he cursed, wading into the fight that had clearly broken out between an Iceni chief and a Trinovante chief. Their retainers were all half-drunk, though it was still morning, lurching and pounding at each other. Andecarus started cracking heads together, and I laid the red-enameled hilt of my sword across any rump I could find, but it was a good while before the two sides disentangled sullenly.

  "His shield bearer stole six cattle from me," the Trinovante chief roared, but I clipped him over the ear like a puppy.

  "Settle it among yourselves without blows. No brawling, queen's orders." I smelled the stench of sour beer on his breath. "And keep your men sober."

  "May as well order the stars to stop moving in the sky," Andecarus said as the men dispersed.

  "What, that they stay sober or stop fighting?"

  "Both."

  At the beginning of our march from Iceni lands, the queen had kept the war band in tight order, limiting beer and mead. But three sacked cities meant there was plunder and strong Roman wine for anyone who wanted it. Triumph was making the men happy, swaggering, and eager to brawl. I shrugged. "Of course they're getting a little rowdy. They have victory in their grasp."

  Andecarus gave me an exasperated look, as though I was the child and he the gray-beard. I bit back a retort because we'd already had this argument after Verulamium. He'd been flapping like a doom-crow for months, croaking about how many legions Rome could bring across the sea and how the Iceni would be dust on the wind once they were done. I didn't care how many legions Rome had; an Iceni champion was worth ten legionaries any day—but his opinion clearly hadn't changed.

  "The queen's war council," I said for the sake of keeping the conversation going. "You should address the chiefs."

  He looked sardonic. "Won't I poison their minds and weaken their knees with my doubts?"

  He was throwing my own words at me. "The Druid promises us victory in open battle, but the queen still favors less frontal tactics. Like you." A Druid's promise was good enough for me, but Boudica was a priestess of Andraste, and if she wanted to doubt the Druid's vision and find her own, that was her right.

  "The chiefs won't listen to me. Andecarus the Roman sympathizer—"

  "I'll make them listen."

  He gave a short laugh. "When you agree with nothing I say?"

  "Whether I agree or not, the queen will want to hear it." I smiled, willing him to smile back. "I'll make sure you're heard." I'd happily sacrifice a little pride if it would get him to stop avoiding me.

  "I'll speak, then." He turned away. "For now, I've got a horse to find."

  "Still missing that caval
ry mare of yours?"

  "Since Londinium. Some chief probably claimed her."

  I wanted to say he had better things to do than look for a horse. I wanted to say he should come eat with me, share a flask of mead. I wanted to say—

  But there were warriors, freedmen, and chiefs clamoring for my attention, bringing me the problems of war. I didn't have time to watch my son stride away.

  "Find him his horse," my Roman slave advised.

  I blinked. "What's his horse got to do with anything?"

  "A peace offering." She was mending my torn cloak, making far finer stitches than it needed. I'd have told her to just slap a patch over it, but if there was anything I'd learned in fifty summers, it was that women will do things the way they want them done. All women, whether slaves, wives, or queens. "I've known your son since he was a boy—he has a gentle heart for animals. Find him his horse; he might decide to like you again."

  Her fine black brows arched, indicating just how slight she thought the chance that anybody might ever like me. Her eyebrows were terrifying things. No wonder her husband had run clear across the sea to get away from them.

  "I know how to handle my son," I grumped.

  She gave me that sweet, edged smile. "Yes, that's going well."

  I glowered, wondering if I should hit her again. But shouts, threats, and clips on the jaw did not work with this one—if I truly wanted her to hold her tongue, I'd have to give her a good beating, and frankly I lacked the energy. With all the petitioners consuming my hours, I never got back to my own tent until the moon was descending, and by that time all I wanted was mead and quiet. Tomorrow, I promised my Roman bed warmer silently. I'll beat you tomorrow.

  "As I said, I know that boy of yours well."

  She had to rub that in. I glared again, and she returned it. She was an odd picture in the lamplight, half-Iceni and half-Roman: small, straight-shouldered, swathed in a striped cloak, my slave mark blotting the hollow of her soft white throat. She still kept those brows plucked in their fine imperious arches with a little set of tweezers, and her black hair was coiled atop her head like she was going to dine with the emperor. She was perhaps thirty (she looked younger—Roman women always did; they lived so soft) and the other warriors said a queen's champion deserved a younger, prettier bedmate, but at fifty summers, the girls of fifteen looked like weeping infants to me. I couldn't stand weeping women, and this one never wept. Maybe all Roman women were like that—I'd never had one for a slave before, and I confess the thought had pleased me when I claimed her. Catus Decianus was the man who had held my son hostage as a boy, ordered my queen flogged last year, and left my princesses to be defiled by legionaries—yes, I enjoyed having his wife wear my tattoo. But that hadn't turned out quite as I'd thought it would, and you'd think that with fifty summers to my name, I'd have learned that with women, it never does.