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

by E. Knight

  My Roman held up her bone needle with a frown. "Are there no good bronze or iron needles in this camp? Three cities sacked and you people grabbed all the wine and coin you could lay hands on; did not one of you think to loot a proper needle? In any case, barbarian, your son is a good lad. Not quite as barbaric when he left my house as when he arrived, I like to think."

  "You turned him halfway Roman." That came out a growl.

  "I turned him halfway civilized." She tied off her thread; shook out my mended cloak. "He turned out better than that brutish young man you fostered."

  Why did I let the bitch talk so freely? My father would have sliced her tongue out by now. "Verico was a brute, but a useful brute. I made him a fine warrior, and the queen needs good warriors, whatever their other faults."

  He is no more my brother than you are my father. Words Andecarus had spat at me in Verulamium, and just thinking of them made me flinch like a sword had gone through my gut. Like Andecarus' blade had gone through Verico's throat. "If they could've become friends . . ." My Roman snorted, and I slanted a glance at her. "It's how you raise sons, woman! Pit them against each other like pups. They fight, they hate each other, they brawl it out, and then they end friends."

  The eyebrows again. She was straightening my tent now, like a Roman legion whirling through drills. "Is that how your father raised you?"

  "Yes. I had four brothers—we beat each other, broke each other’s noses, hated each other. Would have died for each other, too." All of them dead now but me. Two in the Scapula rebellion, one to a Roman patrol having a little fun, one swept up by slave traders and never seen again. I missed them all still. In the morning, when I woke to the world as it was, my brothers were still alive. "Brothers fight," I mumbled and realized my throat had gone thick.

  "And sometimes brothers kill each other."

  I should have demanded a blood price against Andecarus for what he'd done. My father would have taken my sword hand off himself, told me never to darken his door again. I couldn't do the same to my son, but I'd always known I was weak compared to my father. Did Andecarus know how my love for him had weakened me?

  Weak old man. That was my father's voice, harsh as a raven's, loud and clear in my mind, though he'd been dead more than a decade. "Fathers and sons," I heard myself saying. How they haunted each other! "Is it the same for mothers and daughters?" Did Princess Sorcha feel it, looking at her whip-marked, sword-made queen of a mother?

  "Yes," my Roman slave answered, surprising me. She had paused, refilling my mead. "No daughter can ever be her mother, and yet we all try."

  Gods, what a horror her mother must have been. "My father thought I was the runt of the litter," I heard myself saying.

  "My mother told me I failed my husband by not giving him sons."

  We eyed each other with rather grim little smiles. "Childless, then," I mocked. "Yet you tell me how to raise my son?"

  "I did raise your son."

  "Enough of that," I said sharply and rolled up my trouser leg. She was a slave; she might needle me, but it was all she could do. "I could use your hands on my knee."

  She fetched the goose grease, shaking her head at my purple scar. "That would have healed without a limp if you'd had a proper medicus. I suppose some Druid waved a magic feather over it?"

  "A magic skull," I said, just a little defensive.

  "Skulls again. Can't you barbarians decorate a tent with anything else?"

  "What's wrong with a bit of bone?" I liked a nice line of skulls over the door. It said home to me. Mine all had names—enemies I'd killed, the notable ones, anyway, and I could tell you the story of how I'd brought each one down.

  "Women don't like bones as decor, in general."

  "Queen Boudica does. Got a line to rival mine."

  "She's not a woman," my slave sniffed.

  "According to you Romans!" I hooted. "Gods, why do they keep their women as useless as you? We use our women. They speak in council, they drive their own chariots—" I broke off in a hiss as she dug her thumbs into my knee's weak spot. The bitch loved hurting me. I let her because, gods, her fingers were turning my twisted muscles to liquid.

  "Civilized women know their place," she informed me, kneading my old wound with a zeal well past cruelty and into the inhuman. "We take our pride in the achievements of our husbands and sons, as is proper."

  "Well, you haven't got a husband or a son right now, so what do you take pride in?"

  That hit her where it hurt, I could tell, but the face she turned on me was a stone shield, and her eyes spat murder. This one could have been a warrior if she'd been born to the Iceni. I liked women who could fight—Andecarus' mother had been a bitch and a half, but she could hold her own with a sword. It was a Coritani cattle raid that took her; a wound in the thigh that turned bad. I'd mourned her.

  "If you're a Roman wife who knows her place," I said with another wince for the merciless thumbs digging at my knee, "did you strop your husband with that razor you call a tongue?"

  "Never," she said virtuously. "Well—except the day Londinium was invaded, but that was under extreme duress. In all other ways, I was quiet and deferential, as a wife should be."

  I snorted. "Don't believe it."

  "It's true!"

  "Then if you endured fifteen years of meekness, Roman, it's no wonder you're letting loose on me."

  She let loose on me in other ways. She raked my back with her nails every night like she was trying to peel the flesh off my bones, which she probably was. I was wincing the next morning as I shrugged a tunic down over the new scratches she'd laid over the old ones when one of my warriors came to tell me the news: Governor Paulinus and his legions were on the move.

  VALERIA

  Councils assembling for momentous decisions should not, Valeria decided, be this colorful. If you looked out at a sea of white togas, the effect was calming: you knew the men about to make a momentous decision were educated, calm, probably not armed, certainly not intoxicated. Looking out at Boudica's war council was not calming. Hundreds of chiefs had flocked to the center of camp in scarlet cloaks and yellow cloaks, striped breeches and tasseled breeches, torcs and arm rings of bronze and silver, plaited hair and matted hair and hair limed into spiky points. It looked like a rainbow mated with a riot, and everyone was getting drunk.

  "Are you imagining a room full of white togas?" Andecarus asked at her side, reading her mind. He had offered to escort her to the war council, and his status as Duro's son secured them a place in the first circle.

  "It's more colorful than I'm used to." The vast crowd had the air of a festival: children running back and forth, dogs sprawled on the crushed grass, slaves moving through with bread and meat, jugs of mead, and stolen amphorae of Roman wine, which of course the savages drank unwatered. "But I'm starting to wonder if all councils are the same—men getting up one after the other to demonstrate how much they love the sound of their own voices." That was perhaps the only thing an Iceni war council and a cluster of Roman senators had in common. The queen was not even present yet, and a chief in an orange cloak was already droning away.

  Andecarus smiled. "All Iceni love to talk, Lady." Valeria nearly told him the honorific was ridiculous, but it was pleasant to get an honorific at all when she only heard "Roman" from Duro and "Roman bitch" from everyone else.

  Queen Boudica made her entrance then, inciting a cascade of roars as she arrowed through the throng in long impatient strides like a man. She wore a rust-colored gown under a red cloak, and her loose red hair was crowned by a gold circlet studded with chunks of amber. She settled into the fur-draped chair at the center, shrugging back her cloak, and Valeria shuddered at the sight of the scars on her arms, not to mention the inked tattoo of a raven's wing. The queen of the Iceni was the most unwomanly thing Valeria had ever seen in her entire life. No wonder Roman men all over Britannia had run for the hills; she was terrifying.

  Standing behind his queen, Duro raised hi
s arm and roared for silence. Boudica rose, speaking into the hush. "The Roman governor has begun his march. He advances southeast, and slowly."

  Another storm of cheers. "Coward!" chiefs and warriors cried. "The shitting coward fears to meet us!"

  "He's not afraid," Andecarus muttered. "He's taking his time looking for advantageous ground."

  Boudica calmed the storm with a raised fist, hair blowing around her like a cloud of flame. "Paulinus looks for a place to meet in open battle. Do we give it to him, chieftains? Or do we strike his army unawares as we took Cerialis?"

  There was a good deal more in this vein, and every line in Boudica's bronze trumpet of a voice provoked cheers. At last the queen took her seat, and Duro rose before any other man could claim the council's attention.

  "The gods promise victory in an open fight," he said, folding his arms across his broad chest. "But there are other tactics to consider. My son knows better than any how the Romans fight—we will hear him speak."

  A few growls sounded, but Duro sent a glare around the assembly, and Andecarus rose into the silence. "Do not face the Romans openly. Harry Governor Paulinus through the winter instead, striking from the shadows, and his men will be corpses feeding the ravens by spring. And then"—Andecarus turned, young and fierce, to meet every wary eye—"when the Romans look west, they will think twice about sending more legions from Gaul to finish us! If we make this island too much an expense in lives, they will let us keep it . . ."

  I should have left him a savage instead of Romanizing him, Valeria mourned. If Queen Boudica defeats Governor Paulinus and Rome loses Britannia all because my husband and I taught that boy the value of discipline and restraint . . .

  If that happened, maybe Valeria really would fall on a sword.

  "Avoid open conflict," Andecarus finished with a bow to the queen, "and we seal a lasting victory."

  "Afraid to meet your friends head on?" a young warrior in the front circle mocked. Andecarus just set his jaw, but Duro erupted to his feet.

  "My son stacked Roman corpses wall-high at Verulamium. I don't remember seeing you in the first line of shields, puppy. Make that insult again and I'll cram it down your throat with iron."

  He waited, fist on hilt, but the young warrior wilted. Andecarus sank down silently, face set. "I wish he hadn't done that," he muttered as his father sent a final glare around the crowd

  "What, defended you?"

  "I don't need defending."

  Sons, Valeria thought. Maybe it was just as well she didn't have any. "You made a good speech," she said as another speaker rose. Unfortunately.

  The next chief to speak, thank the gods, argued for open battle. "Why all this discussion?" Valeria whispered. "Can't your queen simply command them to the course she prefers?"

  "It doesn't work that way with the Iceni, Lady. Each chief has a voice and an oath—they gave their oaths to Boudica, but they have the right to take their warriors home at the campaign's end. To advance past the war season into the autumn, she must have their votes."

  "No wonder you never get anything done! If this were Rome, the emperor would issue orders, and his orders would be carried out. It's the only civilized way to proceed. This voting business is so inefficient—"

  "Inefficient," Andecarus admitted as more chiefs rose to speak. "But fair. One man's will does not dictate the future for all. There are no tyrants among us, only free men and free women."

  "That's why we conquered you. Free men and free women do not agree on anything. They need an emperor or at least a senate to tell them what they want. You think Rome could govern the earth with rules this disorganized?"

  "We aren't trying to govern the earth," Andecarus retorted. "Only our little corner of it. And for an island, it works well enough."

  "So say you. I say this fair play business will be the death of you all."

  A figure in a white robe came forward, and everyone fell silent for the Druid. "I saw omens today," he said simply. "A hare ran across my path, and it spoke to me of victory. A crow spiraled through sunlight and spoke to me of victory, too. But only if we put our trust in Andraste." He raised his staff, and Valeria recoiled at the human head on its spike, its features stretched in spectral decay. Savages, she thought all over again, I am among savages—and suddenly yearned for a Roman temple, clean and cool, where the only offering might be a dove or a pig but never a quaking, screaming human being. She thought suddenly of her husband, who hated to see even animal sacrifices, and wanted to weep. In this crowd of barbarians who put heads on spikes and hung skulls over doors, she wanted Catus Decianus with his ink-stained hands and gentle smile.

  "We put our faith in the gods," the Druid was saying. There was something in his rapt, moon-like eyes she found distinctly unsettling, but the chiefs watched him fervently. "Andraste will reward us with victory only if we march on the Romans. We stake all on one battle, and the raven will feast on the eagle."

  The roar that went up deafened Valeria's ears. Duro gave a savage nod. Andecarus leapt to his feet, protesting. Boudica's face was proud and immobile. Chiefs reached out to touch the Druid, who smiled radiantly as he raised the severed head to the sky. Warriors clapped each other on the shoulder, swearing victory.

  But Valeria remembered the chill, immaculate figure of Suetonius Paulinus. The man she had met half a hundred times, with his cool gaze and pristine armor and wintry smile. And she thought, with cautious hope, You have all just lost your war.

  It was near dawn when Valeria's captor finally returned to his tent. Valeria was curled up on the furs, smiling a little. She had been smiling since the war council ended. "What are you smirking at, Roman?" Duro asked, shrugging out of his cloak.

  Valeria rose to light the lamp, brushing back her loose hair. "Imminent victory."

  "Kind of you to congratulate us." He unstrapped his sword. She smelled mead and beer on him, but he was not staggering drunk as so many of the chiefs were by the time the war council broke up. "Can you be getting fond of barbarians, if you're cheering for our imminent victory?"

  "Not your victory," she said sweetly. "Ours." There was no better commander in the west than Suetonius Paulinus. He might not have the advantage of numbers, but given his experience and the benefits of legionary discipline . . .

  "Our war band numbers more than one hundred thousand warriors." Duro drew the words out. "Your Governor Paulinus has perhaps ten thousand soldiers cobbled together. How does he beat us with that?"

  One hundred thousand. In the middle of the war band, the spread of children and dogs, cattle and wagons, warriors and chariots, Valeria had not seen that the spread was so vast. The number made her pulse leap in sudden doubt, but she thrust doubt and fear away. "Nothing beats our legionary discipline." Not even such staggering numbers. Surely that was true.

  Carrhae, doubt whispered in her mind. Rome lost there, discipline or no. And at Cannae . . .

  Valeria was not going to think about Cannae. Boudica was not Hannibal, and Rome was not going to lose.

  "Ten to one odds, Roman," came Duro's implacable voice. "Think on that."

  He wore such a complacent expression as he flung himself down that Valeria itched to slap him. "Tell me something, barbarian." He didn't have to tell her anything, but with that smug expression, he'd be dying to talk. "If you do win, what happens?"

  "Life returns to what it was before Rome." Duro smiled. "This world becomes what it should have stayed."

  "Nothing ever goes back," Valeria stated. "There's no returning to the days that were." What would I do if I could go back to the day I wed Catus Decianus? Married a different man, an ambitious man more in the mold of her ever-striving family? Not pushed Decianus to take the post of procurator, the sort of post he hated but her father and brothers thought appropriate?

  Or she could have said yes when her husband told her to flee Londinium with him ahead of Boudica's horde instead of stubbornly refusing to run—now that would be an excellent decision to
get back. Imagine, she could have heard about the Iceni rebellion and its mad red-haired queen from the safety of her atrium in Gaul and just said, "How terrible," and gone on about her day.

  "You have no idea how beautiful this world was before you Romans came and wrecked it." Duro shook his head, staring at the lamp as though gazing into a dream. "Mist hovering over the hills, not smoke from your paved towns. Roads winding around the path of the earth, not cutting through it in your straight stone lines. Freshwater springs coming up wild, each with their own little god, not being dammed up for your wells . . ."

  Oh, now, really, Valeria thought in exasperation. It wasn't like the tribes didn't have roads and wells and towns before Rome—the Romans just did them better. And that was their fault?

  "You know how we lived back then, Roman?" Duro looked at her fiercely. "We lived clean and unspoiled, in a land more beautiful than anything outside the world of the gods. Battles were fought openly and honestly between warriors, not left to ambush and trickery. Our children grew up without the threat of being marched off in slave chains. We worshipped our own gods without seeing our holy men slaughtered, and we cast votes for our own futures without needing to hear what an emperor commanded from a thousand miles across the sea—"