others down.
They stood, breathing hard, listening to distant shouts and a moan
as the last of their assailants died. Slowly, as if she were rising up through
deep water, Boudica came to herself. Her arm trembled like a bowstring
after the arrow has gone. Her blade dripped red. Thank you . . . she
thought numbly, bending to wipe off the blood on the tunic of one of
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the men she had killed, and felt the approval of the goddess within. Tas-
cio and the others were staring at her with wide eyes. She did not feel
like explaining that the week of training had strengthened her muscles,
but it was the goddess who had used them.
“Good work,” she said steadily. “Now let us be moving on . . .”
They dodged as burning debris from another house showered down,
and came out into a crossroads. Men had got ropes around the great
bronze statue of the emperor Claudius on a horse that stood there. Hav-
ing met the emperor, Boudica doubted that he had ever ridden such a
horse in his life, certainly not in full parade armor. Everything about
this image but the protruding ears was another Roman lie. She smiled
in grim satisfaction as men began to heave on the lines. The piece was
solidly built, but no match for their rage, especially after they found a
smith to knock free the bolts that held it to the pedestal.
Boudica jumped back as the thing crashed down. Screeching trium-
phantly, someone swung an ax, and in another moment they had gotten
the severed head on a pole, still surveying the scene with a gentle frown.
As they admired it, Tascio came around a corner, saw her, and grinned.
“We’ve found them,” he cried. “The soldiers and the rest of the
people have holed up in the Temple of Claudius. It’s going to take a
while to winkle them out—the thing is made of stone.”
“Secure the rest of the city,” she answered him. “Let them sit there
and stew for another day, hoping the legions will come to save them . . . and
imagining what will happen if no one does,” she said, baring her teeth
in a smile.
T W E N T Y- F I V E
L ys Deru was burning. Flames billowed skyward, filling the sky
with lurid light, as if the fires had consumed the stars. Below, sparks
moved across the meadows as legionaries with torches scoured the land.
Their commander had sent several detachments out to form a perimeter
and work inward, driving fugitives before them as men might drive
game.
Lhiannon lay in a hollow beneath a thorn hedge where a badger’s
burrow had fallen in. From time to time she heard cries and knew an-
other fugitive had been found. Sometimes it was a woman, and then the
screams continued. As long as night lasted her dark robes would hide
her—it would be another matter when the sun rose. It was all very well
for Ardanos to tell her to save herself, she thought grimly. If he had
wanted her to stay safe, he should not have allowed her to stay at all.
But there might be no safety for a Druid priestess anywhere on Mona.
The Romans went about their work in an appallingly methodical way.
When they had finished scouring the area around Lys Deru, no doubt
they would search the island. By now they must know what it meant
when a woman bore a blue crescent on her brow. The tattoo would
mark her as a priestess even if she got rid of the blue robe.
Sweet Goddess, watch over Caillean, she prayed. If I cannot return to Eriu
to claim her, keep her safe— keep her free! She would have thrown herself
back into the fray and sought a quick ending if it had not been for the
child.
She had seen Cunitor struck down as she fled the shore, and glimpsed
Brenna being dragged away. It seemed unlikely that Ardanos could have
survived. So many men and women she had known were dead, and if
she had not liked them all, they still compelled her loyalty. But it would
be time enough to feel guilt for having survived them if she lived to see
another dawn.
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She heard the tramp of hobnailed sandals and a mutter of Latin
and grew even more still. I am night . . . I am shadow . . . she thought,
slowing her breathing, fighting to quiet her soul. You see nothing here—
move on . . .
She heard two sets of footsteps, and a regular whisper and thump
she could not identify. Closer they came. Through the grass stems she
glimpsed a metallic gleam and knew it for a spearpoint an instant before
it stabbed past her head.
Even Druid training could not prevent a gasp. One of the Romans
swore and turned, and in the next moment a hare burst from the
hedge and leaped across the grass. The other man laughed, and the
pair moved on.
Holy Andraste! thought Lhiannon, remembering the goddess and
totem of Boudica’s clan. If I survive this, I owe you an offering!
It was a long time before she dared to move again. When she raised
her head at last, the fires of Lys Deru were burning low. But a little to
the east new flames were rising. With a sinking heart she realized that
they had set fire to the Sacred Grove. For some reason the sight of the
burning trees pierced her heart with a pain she had not yet allowed her-
self to feel for her fellow men. Weeping silently, she watched the flames
and waited for the dawn.
The embers of Colonia were smoldering. From time to time a
charred roof-beam would fall in, or a last bit of wicker fencing would
burst into flame. It had taken nearly twenty years to turn this Trinov-
ante hilltop into a crude imitation of Rome. The Britons had destroyed
it in two days. Colonia Victricensis was victorious no more, except for
this final symbol of imperialism, this ultimate hubris, the temple of the
deified Claudius, that stood surrounded by devastation, stone columns
glowing as men held their torches high.
Boudica felt a flicker of amusement from the goddess within as she
reflected that she was the last person to deny that a human could be a
vehicle for divinity, or even that each human soul held some spark of the
divine. But it was the god that ought to be worshipped, not the man.
Even the ancestors at whose barrows her people left offerings took time
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to grow into their godhood. Let the Romans pay their honors to the
Deified Claudius at his own tomb and build him a temple there if their
prayers were answered. To worship him here was an insult and a blas-
phemy.
The building was unscathed except for the scars on the bronze doors
where the battering ram had failed. In a detached way Boudica could
appreciate the elegance of its proportions. She supposed that Prasutagos
would have wept at the thought of destroying it—one more thing she
could be glad he was not here to see. She herself had no such compunc-
tions. The only way to get to the meat of an egg was to crack the shell,
and this shell still sheltered half the populati
on of Colonia—men, women,
children, the soldiers from the fort, and the paltry two hundred the
procurator had sent them from Londinium.
“There’s no way to burn it from the outside, see,” said a gnarled little
man with a missing front tooth who had been forced to help build the
temple. Boudica turned to look at him, vaguely aware that he had been
talking to her for some time. “Outside’s all faced with stone, aye? And
bronze all over the doors. But the roof, now—” he glowered upward,
“—over the roof-beams there’s just tiles. I should know, Lady, half broke
my back helping to put ’em there. Tear those loose and you’ve fi ne stout
wooden beams to burn. We can smoke ’em out, just like putting fi re
down a badger’s hole. They’ll open the doors themselves and come out
when it’s a choice between facing us and not breathing!”
The men around them were nodding. Boudica sensed anticipation
from Cathubodva. A raven called, settling atop the bronze eagle at-
tached to the peak of the temple’s roof as if to show them the way.
“I hear you,” she murmured, then turned to the men around her.
“Yes—do it now!” As men dragged out the ladders they had been building
and swarmed up the side of the building she told herself there was no work
of man that other men, with sufficient motivation, could not destroy. Tiles
clinked as men hammered to loosen them and then began to pitch them
down, nibbling at the expanse of terra-cotta until the roof began to look
like a moth-eaten wool cloak. Soon she saw the long beams laid bare.
Shouts echoed from within as some of the men began to shoot
through the openings. But now men were hauling up jars of olive oil
and pouring it over the wood, hammering stakes smeared with pitch
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and flax into the beams and setting them alight. They dropped the re-
maining jars through holes and followed them with flaming arrows as
a promise of what was to come.
The attackers scuttled down the ladders as tendrils of white smoke
changed to black, followed by tongues of flame.
“Burn, Claudius,” whispered Boudica, “for surely your own people
never made you such a noble pyre or gave you so many off erings!” This
was a midsummer bonfire such as Britannia had never seen.
Above the mutter of the flames she could hear screaming.
“Not long now,” said one of the men.
Inside it would be getting hot and dangerous, as flaming fragments
of roof began to shower down. Black smoke billowed through the roof,
but as much again must be swirling inside as fire worked its way along
the undersides of beams. Those who died from lack of air would be the
lucky ones.
A shout brought her attention back to the front of the temple. The
bronze doors were opening.
“At last!” exclaimed Bituitos, striding forward. “They will come out
to die like men!”
Soldiers appeared in the doorway, each man’s shield protecting half
his body and the sword arm of his neighbor. Their blades flickered in
and out like an adder’s tongue. For a few moments they held off the at-
tackers, but the pressure of people behind them was pushing them for-
ward. Now she could see space behind them, and in the next moment
the Britons had fl owed around to attack them from in back and by sheer
weight bore them down. Others tore into the massed bodies behind
them. Some tried to retreat, trampling those behind them, only to be
thrust out again.
“Pull back,” cried someone. “We can’t kill them unless we give
them room!”
Clouds blazed in the light of the setting sun as if the heavens, too,
were aflame. Even at the edge of the square Boudica could feel the heat
as the flames rose higher. The attackers began to edge away, leaving
a tangle of bodies behind. The blood that covered the temple steps
glowed an even more vivid crimson in the light of the fire. A few more
Romans emerged from the doorway. For a moment a woman with a
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child in her arms stood silhouetted against the flames, then turned back
again.
After that, no more appeared. Boudica fought to clear her mind of the
image—they were Romans! They deserved to die. The shifting wind
brought her the reek of the smoke and the choking scent of burnt fl esh;
she pulled her cloak across her face to filter it, and for one horrible mo-
ment she was back at Dun Garo, watching Prasutagos burn on his pyre.
The men and women inside the temple were wives and husbands . . . they
were Romans . . . anguish seized her, but in the commotion no one heard
her moan.
A cheering crowd surrounded her. She could not run away. “Help
me,” she whispered, but even Eoc, who stood beside her, could not hear.
Only the goddess, rising like a dark tide within her, recognized her
agony, and shared it, and absorbed it, drawing a soft veil between Boudica
and the world. As one who watches from a far distance she saw slabs of
stone crack and pop outward from the walls, leaving a skeleton of burn-
ing uprights within. And then even that was gone, and she was in a
golden country watching Prasutagos building a wall.
In Colonia, Cathubodva watched the Temple of Claudius burn.
it wavered. For another moment the eagle on the rooftree showed stark
against the flames, then a gout of smoke swirled around it and it fell.
Celtic horns blared in triumph, but their music was overwhelmed
by the shouts of the crowd. Standing in the midst of them, the goddess
wept Boudica’s tears.
L hiannon woke with a start. She still lay beneath the thorn hedge.
Heart pounding, she tried to identify what new danger had startled her.
It was day, but the sun had not yet lifted above the mountains on the
mainland. From the direction of Lys Deru she heard shouting, and then
the harsh music of a Roman trumpet. Again and again it blew. Wincing
as the movement woke a host of pains, she peered through the leaves.
Black smoke still drifted from Lys Deru and the Sacred Grove. On
the students’ playing field legionaries were gathering, more and more of
them as the trumpets continued to call. Lhiannon shrank back into her
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hole as a pair of soldiers jingled by at a swift march, perhaps the same
two who had nearly found her the night before. They were not hunting
now. From the sound of their muttering they were as puzzled as she.
There was a disturbing beauty in the speed with which the confu-
sion of men settled into orderly ranks. You would never see Britons
bracing to attention like so many images as an officer came by. As she
watched, men continued to arrive. They must be pulling in the perim-
eter guards as well. But why? Surely they would want to do another
sweep for fugitives in the light of day.
Lhiannon watched throughout the morning, bu
t no more soldiers
came near. A little before noon the trumpets blew once more, and still
in their precise formations, the Romans marched back to the shore. As
the last of them disappeared, Lhiannon began to weep, releasing all the
tears that through that long and terrible night she had locked within.
And when she was done, she wriggled out of her refuge and started
across the fi elds toward what remained of the Druids’ sanctuary.
The reek of charred thatch lay heavy on the air. Lhiannon tied her
veil across her face, but it did little good. As she got closer she could
smell a sickening hint of burned flesh and the iron tang of blood. The
timbers of the gatepost lay charred, but before they burned, someone
had hacked at the swirling sigils that had given them magic. The devas-
tation beyond made a mockery of the bright day.
Sweet Goddess have mercy, she thought numbly, am I the only one who
survived? She stiffened as something moved, but it was only a raven lift-
ing from the corpse of one of the community’s dogs with a flick of black
wings.
As she let out her breath, something stirred in what she had taken
for a pile of rags. It was Belina. Slowly the older priestess focused on
Lhiannon, and humanity came back into her eyes. There was a bruise
on her cheek and the livid marks of fingers on her arms.
“Lhiannon . . . you are alive . . .” Her lips twisted in what was in-
tended to be a smile.
“How is it with you?” Lhiannon knelt at her side.
“No worse than one might expect, save for a knock on the head.”
Belina winced as Lhiannon helped her to stand. “Help me to wash their
filth away. Thank the Goddess I was no virgin.”
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And what of those who had been? wondered Lhiannon. Was a quick
death the best fate she could hope for them?
A dead cow lay half in and half out of the stream, but the water
above it ran cold and clear. Both women felt better when they had
washed and drunk. Lhiannon was even beginning to wonder if any food
had been left unfouled. They returned to the houses and began the grim
work of identifying the dead. Some of the older Druids had chosen to
burn in the houses. Elin had died beside the hut where she kept her
herbs. Mandua seemed to have found a knife and killed herself after the