The Eagle and the Raven (104 page)

At noon she stopped to eat, sitting on the grass verge of the road with Lovernius, Aillil, and Domnall, but before long she was forced to take her sword and go among the angry tribesmen. Fights had broken out between those who still had dried meat and grain and those who tried to take it from them, and she strode from wain to wain, laying about her with the cutting edge of her tongue and the flat of her sword and followed by a crowd of delighted children and hopeful dogs. She returned to her chariot hot and angry, but just as she was about to give the word to move on, a scout came pelting along the road from the north. He fell from his horse and raced toward her.

“They are there!” he shouted. “Camped in a valley, seven, eight miles ahead! And so few of them!”

Her heart lurched and she turned swiftly to her men. “Lovernius, Aillil, pass the news quickly. We will spend the night here, and meet them in the morning.”

“Is that wise?” Domnall asked quietly. “A night without purpose brings risk.”

“I know.” She considered briefly, while all around her the news was being spread and excitement took the place of boredom. A night of more quarrels and pointless bloodletting, of too much beer and not enough sleep, and she acquiesced to him reluctantly. “Very well. We will go on, and fight today.” She glanced swiftly at the summer sun, now perched high above the treetops. “Perhaps it is a good thing. If we do not win we can rest for the night and continue fighting tomorrow.”

They went on at a faster pace now, buoyed by the thought of Paulinus turned at bay and his sacks of precious grain, and only Boudicca and the Iceni remembered why it was they had been brought to this hour, what was at stake. The Icenians fell suddenly quiet, and the chiefs drove their chariots with unconscious skill, not shouting across to one another. The freemen strode after them grim-faced. As the last miles were covered, Boudicca’s thoughts were on her daughters, each in her prison of loneliness, and for the last time she mourned for Prasutugas, and the wise, gentle strengths that were gone forever.

Then, suddenly, the land rose, and where for a short distance on her left the soil changed its character the trees had not rooted, and defiles gaped crookedly toward the road. On her right the forest still pressed close, leaning over the ditch and bank the Romans had built. It ran the length of the road to give clearance on either side, as though straining to regain the ground it had lost, but on her left cheek a wind blew steadily, hot and damp, and there they were, like gray pebbles shaken from the almost bare slopes behind them and still rattling against each other, soulless and dry on the bed of the valley, faceless and smooth, heavy and impassive.

Aillil gave a whoop and stamped his foot. “Look at them, Lady! Packed into the valley like dried fish in a barrel! How could Paulinus be such a fool?”

She did not answer. Her eyes roved slowly. Paulinus was many things but he was not a fool, and fear wet her palms and slithered cold down her back. Outwardly it appeared that he was beaten before the battle had even begun, for, as Aillil had said, the soldiers were crammed into the small place far back, where the valley began to narrow, and they had left the broad flat that bordered the road quite empty. It was not a sharp, high ravine. Its sides, thick with scrubby, stunted thorns, briars, and twigged elder bushes, sloped gradually to a naked plateau, and between her and the army, perhaps two miles, there was sand and gravel, a perfect arena for a chariot charge. Too perfect, she thought. This arrangement is much too perfect. Yet there are so few of them, a tiny handful that would be lost in the great ocean of the tuaths. Surely, no matter what is passing in the mind of Paulinus, we can swamp them with numbers alone. The constant undercurrent of sound around her was rising, breaking up into exultant yells, war cries, taunting shouts, and the deafening crash of sword on shield, a mounting furor of glee and anticipation. Far back, underlying it all, she heard the rattle of the wains and the shrill, excited baying of the dogs. “Call the chiefs,” she said.

The Romans were moving about quietly and methodically, ignoring the mad cacophony of noise on the road, and Paulinus addressed his unit commanders, looking out behind them to where the ranks were forming up. Legionaries in the center, elbow to elbow, six deep. Auxiliaries to either side, loose and wheeling freely, the mounted archers and slingers preparing to harass the rebels as they themselves formed up. Paulinus was fervently grateful that these auxiliaries—Thracians, Iberians, men from Germania—were predominantly and traditionally archers. The cavalry made the flanks, sitting easy and tall on their gleaming horses, their plumes waving proudly. The whole front was less than a thousand yards across, but it would suit his purposes.

“Impress my words on your men,” he said. “You have already received your battle commands, but in this situation, orders are not enough. Pay no attention to the noise the savages make, and close your ears to their empty threats. There are more women than soldiers in their ranks. They have no understanding of proper warfare, and they are badly armed. When they experience the weapons and courage of troops who have often beaten them before, they will turn and run.” His clipped, crisp words rose above the purposeful bustle around him, and the commanders listened gravely. “Tell the men this, also,” Paulinus went on emphatically. “In an army of many legions, few win battle honors. Think what glory will be yours, then, a small band which fights for the honor of the whole army! Keep your ranks. Throw your javelins, strike with your shield bosses, and drive on. Above all, do not pause for booty. Win the battle, and you win all. Is that quite clear?” They murmured their assent and quickly dispersed, and he, his tribunes, and Agricola mounted their horses.

“If we can hold off their first charge we have them,” Paulinus said. “Boudicca can’t throw all her chariots at us at once because the mouth of the valley is too narrow. Julius, I do believe that the day will be ours.”

Boudicca spoke rapidly to the impatient, jostling chiefs, her voice scarcely heard above the blowing of carnyx and the roar of the people. “This is my war,” she shouted. “I am a woman fighting for justice and revenge, and my cause is right. I will not live like a slave, and I want the tribes to know that today there will be victory or death. The Iceni will charge in the center, the Trinovantes to the left, the others to the right.”

“That is not fair!” a chief protested angrily. “The Iceni should not have precedence over the Catuvellauni!”

“Why not?” she snapped back. “The Iceni began this, the Iceni have brought you all to the brink of freedom. I say we fight in the place of honor.”

Some of the chiefs cursed her with surly mouths but she turned from them in disgust. “Form up, all of you, and keep your men away from the beer barrels.” They straggled away and she got into her chariot. The mouth of the defile was already choked with line upon line of chariots and the Roman auxiliaries swooped around them, loosing arrows and flying stones from the slings and then dashing back to their ranks, harassing the irate chiefs as they tried to hold to their positions. “They are playing with us,” she said angrily. “Aillil, get some of the chariots moving on the flanks and answer them back.” Then she whipped at her little horses and began a swift passage from tribe to tribe, admonishing, threatening, promising, joking. Far back, from his position above his own ranks, Paulinus saw her, a speeding flash of wide green cloak and floating red hair, tall in the afternoon sunlight, and he watched her until the praefectus cantered up and saluted.

“Ready to engage, sir.”

Paulinus took a last deep breath of sweet, untainted air. “Very well. Sound the incursus.”

In the few moments left to her she trotted back through the Icenian lines until there was nothing between her and the stolid, iron clad ranks of Rome but glaring light on the smooth gravel of the valley floor. She unfastened her soft cloak, folded it, and laid it beside her feet. She tightened her belt and lifted the heavy, winged helm, setting it firmly on her head. She drew her sword and Lovernius stepped up behind her and took the reins. Then she paused. There was a flutter of astonishment in the chiefs around her, a flurry of consternation, and she turned to see Ethelind standing by the spokes of the big chariot wheel, her face immobile, the glossy, rich hair braided tightly around her small skull. Boudicca stepped down, shocked. A silence had fallen around them, a tiny oasis of tension in the desert of deafening madness, and Ethelind spoke.

“Give me a sword.”

Boudicca stared at her, sucked into the poison wreathing from the venomous blue eyes, and when she did not respond, Ethelind struck the chariot with one stiff hand. “Boudicca, I demand a sword!”

A hundred objections sprang to Boudicca’s tongue. You have not been taught how to use one, you could not even lift one, the soldiers will cut you down before you have made such a useless, wasteful gesture—but behind the dry wells of hating in Ethelind’s cold gaze she saw a pathetic, soul-wrenching longing for death that eclipsed all memory and all claim to kinship between them. For Ethelind, as for Brigid, time had ceased to be when the soldiers pierced them with the hot flesh-swords of yesterday, and only another sword could bring a second, kinder death. Boudicca moved to embrace her but she held out both arms in a gesture of repudiation.

“No—no. Not that. Only a sword.”

Boudicca sliced brutally through the net of caring and mounted her chariot again. We stand alone, she thought, each one of us, and you must fall alone, Ethelind. “Aillil,” she barked. “Find her a sword.” She nodded brusquely at her charioteer and they rolled away, the incursus blaring at last and the voices of a thousand carnyx shivering on the air. When she looked back, Ethelind had gone.

The chariots lurched forward, wheel to wheel, and began to pick up speed, thundering like a howling iron wind over the ground. The freemen poured after them, shrieking. The land began to lift gently but the thrust of the charge was not slowed and the auxiliaries came to meet it, plunging fearlessly into the clamor. For a furious moment the two sides clashed but the charge was still gaining impetus, swelling to a gale, and all at once the auxiliaries broke and fell back. The main body of the legions had not stirred. They stood motionless, rank upon silent rank, faces all alike under the helmets, and the tribes came on, with arms flung wide and shields high. Then an order rang out. The soldiers raised their javelins like mindless dolls and waited, and Boudicca, almost upon them, had time to marvel at their dumb, brave obedience. Then came another order. She could hear it, level and clear, and the next moment she was jerked from the chariot as one of her horses fell and the other was dragged to a halt. Screams rent the softening late afternoon and the charge abruptly slowed, but before she could scramble up from the ground, another shower of javelins came singing and clattering among the tightly bunched chiefs. The front line of soldiers stepped back smartly and the second stepped forward, and again the hail of iron-tipped death fell among the people. Lovernius helped her to her feet and she saw Aillil clambering to her over the bodies already hampering the thousands who trampled them.

“Why don’t the idiots drive for the cavalry on the flanks?” she yelled. “I told them and told them! Aillil, get behind them and make them face the auxiliaries. We can do nothing but die bunched together in the front like this!” She swung her shield to cover herself as more javelins dove to transfix men and animals, and now the charge was disintegrating, for those chiefs who had not been killed were frantically tugging at soft, bucking javelin hafts that refused to slide easily from the wooden shields and rendered them useless.

In that moment, the trumpets rang out. The legionaries closed ranks swiftly, raised their long shields, and drew their swords, and now they were dolls no longer but crouched, shuffling beetles with stings in their hands.

Boudicca’s enraged shouts were swallowed up in the melee. The outlying tribes had not attacked the cavalry and auxiliaries on the fringes. If they had they might have broken through to surround the Romans, but while she swung her sword in readiness, and shook and cursed them all, they flowed into the already suffocat ingly crowded center of conflict. The cavalry sat astride their horses unchallenged, and watched, and Boudicca, with Lovernius hewing steadily beside her, forgot all else but the need to destroy.

The implacable, emotionless wedges of the Roman forces pushed foot by congested foot into the seething mass of freemen, dividing and scattering, and the tribesmen found themselves fighting not one front but two as they were isolated in iron-walled groups and remorselessly cut down. Every now and then some cool voice would issue a curt command, and the engaging line would fall back to rest while fresh legionaries continued the desperate handto-hand fighting against swiftly tiring, blood-soaked men and women who had barely enough room to swing, let alone maneuver. The shield bosses crunched and thudded their way into defenceless ribs. The little sharp swords licked in and out like snakes’ tongues, drawing blood from those who were trapped by their living comrades and by the soft but unyielding bodies that cluttered the ground and could not be kicked away. Boudicca found herself elbowed back roughly, and though she pushed and swore, the front line moved rapidly ahead. Swinging about she struggled for another area, and in the second of inactivity she looked about her. The soldiers had gained ground. A cold, drenching river of sweat bathed her as she saw the warriors in the forefront being inexorably pushed into the mass of freemen behind. The throng became thicker and more and more men died, standing hunched and impotent, crushed against their neighbors, while the Roman swords stabbed with no opposition and no check.

Andrasta, we are on the verge of a rout, she thought, horrified, and even as she jumped onto an overturned chariot and began to shout, the pace of the tuaths’ grim onslaught faltered and their clamor died away. For a moment time seemed to hang suspended and even the earth seemed to hold its breath, and her voice rose hoarse and clear, filling the hiatus with a lonely cry of fearless defiance. “Remember your slavery! Remember your oppression and your endless mourning!” But far back a trumpet blared forth, and her last words were drowned as the legions surged forward. The tide of battle had turned, and seeing its relentless sweep the tribes began to run, not knowing what had gone wrong, howling as panic engulfed them. Another trumpet spoke, and now the cavalry lowered their lances and charged into the struggling, bleeding mass. Lovernius pulled her from the chariot and dragged her away.