Ravens of Avalon (54 page)

The gathering crowd hooted and cheered as the pudgy body jerked and twitched and then with a last convulsion went still, but that part of Boudica that watched from within understood that this had been mercy.

“Give the carrion to the birds and purify this place by fire,” the voice, at once more harsh and more resonant than her own, penetrated the babble of the crowd.

“Have we done well, Lady?” a dozen voices asked.

“You have done what you must,” came the reply. “You are My fire, you are My sword, you are My fury … But understand this,” She said, Her gaze sweeping the upturned faces that then grew still. “The fire that burns your enemy burns you as well, and the blood and fire will not cease until they have run their course throughout Britannia.”

The Morrigan gestured toward the slack body on the gate. From the gash in Nectovelius’s chest a trail of red blood twined across the pale flesh to drip to the dirt below. “Your blood or theirs—it all feeds the ground.”

“Then let all of it flow!” snarled Vordilic, frustrated bloodlust hurling him toward the woman by the gate. A shout rose from a hundred throats and clubs and swords blurred through the air. In moments Nec-tovelius’s family had gone to join him.

Is this, too, Your mercy?
gibbered Boudica within.

“Would you not have welcomed it, after you lost your king?”
came the reply. The resulting surge of anguish plunged Boudica back into her body with a shaken sob.

She took a deep breath, staring around her. A fire-haired goddess red with blood was turning away from the battered bodies at the gate. A jolt of recognition sent fire through Boudica’s veins.
This is how they see Me, before they die …
said the goddess within. Boudica closed her eyes, dizzied at the doubling of vision.

When she opened them she was fully herself once more. With a mother’s appalled certainty she recognized the figure before her as Rigana.

“What are you doing? Get away—” She bit back the words, observing the lingering battle fury in her daughter’s eyes, and knew herself for a hypocrite for wishing to deny her daughter the same release she craved. “Rigana …” her voice sounded strange in her own ears. “Rig-ana, it’s over … come back to me, my child …”

The thought was her own, but it was the goddess who put power in the words. She continued to murmur as the fire died in Rigana’s eyes, until she was only a girl again, her eyes widening in disquiet as she realized who and where she was. But this final sacrifice seemed to have satiated the bloodlust of the mob as well, which was now focusing more on loot than on vengeance.

That night the Ver ran red below the town.

igana, I must talk to you.” Boudica took her daughter by the arm and made her sit down with Argantilla beside their fire. The Britons had settled in a loose cluster of tents and wagons just beyond the embers of Verulamium. Now they were gorging themselves on the looted food and getting drunk on captured wine. “We will be fighting the Romans soon.”

“And what have we been doing for the past moon?” Rigana jerked free and looked around her with a laugh.

“Slaughter,” Boudica said grimly. “We have destroyed three towns, none of which were defended by soldiers. The legions will be another matter. When we fight them, I don’t want you in the battle. You and Argantilla will stay with the wagons.”

“You want?” Rigana’s eyes flashed. “And what gives you the right to deny us the choice that’s free to everyone else here?”

“You are children—” Boudica began.

“The Romans didn’t think so …” muttered Argantilla.

“We are
women!
Remember, the umbilical cord was cut at the sacred spring!” Rigana exclaimed. “If we are old enough to risk death in childbed, we are old enough to risk it in battle!”

“What do you mean?” Boudica scanned them in alarm. “Did those vermin leave you with child?”

Rigana fixed her mother with a bright, bitter gaze. “No, Mother. Our moon blood still flows, and mine will continue to do so, for I see no reason to ever want a man. But if you do not know that for the past two weeks your little Tilla has been sharing her blankets with Caw, you are blind indeed!”

The flush staining Argantilla’s fair skin as she glared at her sister told Boudica all she needed to know.

“You take life,” the girl protested, turning to her mother again. “I’d rather give it. I have loved Caw since we were children, and when I was weeping because the Roman pigs had defiled me he comforted me. When his arms are around me, I am perfect and whole.”

Boudica gazed at her helplessly, shaken by a surge of longing as she remembered how she had been completed in Prasutagos’s arms. If Ar-gantilla had found such a love, should she forbid it?
Could
she?

“You are royal women of the Iceni,” she said weakly. “We do not marry at our own whim …”

But Rigana was laughing. “Are those only the Iceni I hear out there? When we have fought the Romans you will be the mistress of Britannia or of nothing. If we win, the chieftains will not cross your will. If we lose, what you want will not matter at all.”

“I am your daughter.” Argantilla straightened and wiped away her tears. “If you can lead an army, I can at least choose my own man. And I swear to you that I will have no other, so if you wish the line of Pra-sutagos to continue, you will accept my will!”

“After we have fought the Romans we’ll speak of this again,” said Boudica repressively. But her daughters were smiling.

TWENTY
-
EIGHT

o look at the fields, one would have thought the land at peace. The swelling heads of wheat and barley hung heavy on the stalk as they waited for harvest. In the fields with a southern exposure the reapers were already at work, scythe blades flickering in the summer sun. Just so the swords would flash when the time came for the Morrigan to begin her harvest, Lhiannon thought grimly as she passed. Now and again a worker would look up, then bend to his task with steady patience, as his fathers had served these fields before ever the Druids came into the land.

And as they will when we are only a memory,
she reflected, urging her horse forward.

Rumor held that the soldiers of the Second Legion were still hiding behind their walls at Isca. The road they should have taken to reinforce the governor carried Lhiannon north more swiftly than she could have imagined, though her heart sped faster still. As she moved into the midlands of Britannia, the farmsteads where she stopped were full of rumors of the destruction of Verulamium.

Farther north, though, the talk grew more guarded. Lhiannon had been traveling for just over a week when the farmer whose fields she blessed in exchange for a bed and a meal told her that she was nearing the point where the Isca road crossed the road from Londinium. A day or two’s journey farther north lay the new Roman fort at Letocetum, though the legionaries had marched out of it a week or so before.

But they had not passed the crossroads. They were waiting, thought Lhiannon, on that hillside where Coventa had seen them. Did Boudica know?

“The Great Queen is coming up the other road to the east of here with all the warriors in Britannia in her train,” the farmer said with mingled pride and fear. “If you wish to join her, my son Kitto will go with you. He has been begging my leave to join the army, and I take your coming as a sign that he is meant to go …”

The Great Queen …
With an effort, Lhiannon kept her face serene. That title could have more than one meaning. Not for the first time, she wondered who was really leading that army, and to what end.

“The Great Queen gathers all the brave To muster in their might, To strike with spear and sword and stave And put the foe to flight!”

The people in one of the nearer wagons were singing. That song had been a frequent accompaniment to the rebellion, but this evening it came constantly, now from one direction and now from another as a new group took up the refrain. Boudica had heard birds do that in a wood, the song shifting and swelling from one tree to another as a migrating flock settled there.

Since the destruction of Verulamium a little more than a week had passed. The Britons had come to the plain beside the little river as the sun was going down, catching the glitter of Roman armor on the hill above it, where the governor had taken up position to wait for them. Boudica had hoped to catch them on the march. Attacking them uphill would be difficult, but if the Romans wanted to stay safe they would have taken refuge in their fortress. This evening the Celts feasted on the oxen the Druids had sacrificed to the gods who govern war. When they faced the legions tomorrow the Romans would have to come down the hill, and one way or another, the song would have an end.

“She is the Raven and she is the Dove, The ecstasy of battle and of love …”

The chorus followed. Brangenos had begun it, but not all the verses men were singing now were his own.
The song has escaped him,
thought Boudica,
as the army escapes me. I am not their leader, but their icon … their talisman.
That much had been clear to her for some time. A Roman general might be able to command from the rear, but as they journeyed north, Boudica had been thinking. Her only hope of directing what her warriors did tomorrow was to be the point of their spear.

And if she must be in the forefront of the battle, what were the chances that when it was over she would still be alive? The question came with a cold clarity that surprised her, but no fear. Her life would be a small price to pay for victory. Given their numbers, she found it hard to doubt the confidence of her men. And if they were defeated? The world the Romans would make then was one in which she would not want to survive. But it would be hard to part from those she loved.

Boudica considered them as they passed the wineskin, their faces warmed by the light of the fire. Some belonged to her life with Prasutagos. She had grown close to others on this journey. Argantilla sat with Caw, her bright head close to his dark one as they whispered. Rigana was at Tingetorix’s feet, listening to the war stories of which he had an endless store. Brangenos was speaking calmly to Rianor.

The old storm crow had seen so many battles. This one would just be another verse for his song. But even as the thought came to her she suppressed it as unworthy. During the past weeks the older Druid had been a welcome source of counsel. As if he had felt her thought, Brangenos looked up. Before that calm gaze, her own slid away to rest on Eoc and Bituitos, who would stand by her to the end, whatever that might be.

She missed Prasutagos and Lhiannon most of those she had loved. But if her husband had still been alive none of them would be here. She tried not to think about him. The king walked now on the Isles of the Blessed. Would he even recognize the person she was becoming now?

Lhiannon, she devoutly hoped, was still on the Isle of Eriu. Once, Boudica’s anguish had drawn her friend all the way from Avalon. But too much time had passed, and their bond had surely weakened. She tried to be glad the priestess lived now in a peace and safety that Boudica would never know again, and even as she did so felt her heart twist with longing to see her friend’s luminous eyes smiling at her across the fire.

They all looked up as young man appeared at the edge of the firelight and bent to whisper in Tingetorix’s ear. It was Drostac’s son, who had been on patrol. Boudica got to her feet.

“What is the news?”

“The Romans appear to have no more than ten thousand men, to judge by the number of their fires.”

“It’s kind of them to make it so easy for us to count them,” Bituitos laughed.

“They don’t have to send scouts to guess
our
numbers,” observed Eoc. “They can see us from that hill!”

Boudica smiled. On their march yet more men had come in. She herself had no real idea how many Britons had camped on the plain, but surely they outnumbered the Romans at least ten to one.

“See us, and tremble,” Bituitos replied.

“We’ve no need to draw sword against them,” said Drostac with a grin. “We can stampede across them and trample them into the dust.”

Boudica exchanged glances with Tingetorix. Numbers could be a handicap if they were not well used, but she was not about to tell any of these people to go home.

“Get some rest, lad,” she said to the scout. “Whether you use your sword or your feet, tomorrow you will need your strength.”

“We should all sleep,” said Argantilla seriously, “including you, Mother.” Drostac had taken his son’s arm. Others began to rise.

“I know.” Boudica gave her younger daughter a hug. “But my legs are too restless to lie still. I will walk for a little, and then I promise that I will lie down.”

Argantilla looked dubious, but Caw had taken her hand.
She will be loved,
thought Boudica, picking up her dark cloak,
whatever happens to me.
From nearby she heard more singing and smiled.

“The horn blares and the carynx sounds When the Great Queen rides, White with red ears, her seven hounds Run baying at her side.”