Celtic Ceili: First Battle

At last the nightmare was over. Rhosyn stirred weakly, rolled painfully to her side, and slowly gathered herself into a crouch so she could creep to Fedelmid's side. She tried to pull the weeping girl into her arms and reach beyond to Genofeva at the same time, but couldn't reach her. Suddenly Boudicca was there, ignoring the blood still sluggishly oozing down her naked, lacerated back, her shattered expression matching those of the three girls. She pulled her younger daughter to the tiny group, and they huddled together, weeping in each others' arms.

When all their tears were spent, Boudicca raised her head and stared into each of their eyes in turn. They could see the wolf returning, wounded but undefeated. "I promise you," she told them, low and fierce and deadly. "I promise you. This will not stand. This will NOT stand."

^..^

The next few weeks passed in a blur for Rhosyn, as dark and determined as the previous stretch had been joyous. She threw herself into weapons training, forsaking Akido, spear, and even learning to handle the small war chariots she'd enjoyed before, to concentrate on her wooden sword which stood in during practice for the new iron one glinting balefully beside her cot, a dreadful gift from her hostess. She sparred daily with anyone who would face her, one after another, until she was exhausted, then she grabbed a bite to eat, unheeding of what she crammed into her mouth, laid down for a few fitful hours, then was up at dawn to pace the yard again. She ignored the war councils and all the messengers and chiefs coming and going, just as she ignored the bruises and other wounds that slowly, painfully healed, while Boudicca gathered her people and joined with her neighbors to create a massive army.

Whenever she stopped moving for a few moments, the memory of the horrific violation and injustice done to her – so rare in the egalitarian world she'd come from – went screaming down her senses again. She couldn't process it. She wavered constantly between disbelief that it had happened at all and rage at the brutal, misogynist Roman Empire that had so casually taken its pleasure and then discarded her like a used rag. And she vowed, again and again, that this rag would bite back. The bitter irony of her becoming a victim of the very violence she'd come back to try to stave off vied with the madness of her joining the retribution – and whenever her thoughts came to that, she fled them, seeking refuge once again in the mindnumbing, repetitive, exhausting exercise of training muscles, nerves, and tendons in their new tasks.

The others in the camp springing up around the village gave her respectful room, this strange young she-wolf who prowled unseeing through their midst. A palpable cloud of Otherness hung around her, made menacing by the single-minded devotion towards gaining her revenge on those who had wronged her. They whispered, wondering, about her past: none could place her accent nor her strange ways. And slowly a new belief arose among the Iceni and the Trinovantes and the Catuvellauni, that this flaxen-haired visitor would led them to victory, as much as their fierce warrior queen. Had she not already begun to teach them a new way of fighting? The few Akido maneuvers she'd taught the villagers were taught in turn to others, who taught others, until most of the three tribes knew at least some, and some of them in turn began incorporating them into their own dances with sword and spear, creating a new style of fighting.

At last, all was in readiness, from top to bottom, and the word went out. In the morning, the massive army began its march south to the Roman garrison town of Camulodunum.

^..^

A scant half-mile north of the town, they halted briefly, and the leaders heard their spies' last reports: Suetonius, the Roman governor, had indeed taken most of the Legions across Britain a few weeks before, and was reportedly laying waste to the sacred druid's isle on the western shore. Boudicca allowed that bit of inflammatory news to spread, and spread it did, ripping through her army and inciting them to even greater heights of rage against their oppressors. As the council ended, Boudicca nodded at Rhosyn to come with her on her chariot.

Just before she stepped up, a stray memory struck Rhosyn, and she looked up at the Queen. "Before we attack, send a small group of riders down to the seaport below Londinium. Tell them to simply wait there, and see what fish they can catch."

Boudicca was mystified, but there was no time to discuss this strange whim, so she turned to one of her lieutenants and told him to see to it, and he hurried off. Then they climbed aboard the chariots, and formed up into a broad column for the final advance. The brief pause had refreshed the attackers, but it had also given warning to the remnants of the Legion left behind to supplement the town's guard of retired soldiers. A hundred or so Roman soldiers were formed up before the gates, a pitiful showing with no hope of stopping the tide. The chariots simply rolled right through them, leaving the pickings for the foot soldiers behind.

There wasn't room for two fighters to swing their swords on the small chariot as well as the driver, so before they reached the action, Rhosyn lightly jumped off, and found herself overtaken quickly by the first ranks of the mob. By the time she reached the gates, the action, such as it was, was mostly over, and she barely registered the bodies she leaped over. Then, suddenly, a figure from her nightmares loomed before her: metal armor, a small shield, and the gladius, the short sword that had conquered the world, clenched in one hand. One Roman soldier was still among the living, and his snarling gaze had just picked out a short, blonde figure among his enemies as his target.

For all she'd been working to learn swordfighting so relentlessly these last few weeks, here in the moment of truth, it was her former training that took over her muscles and reflexes. She dropped her sword in the dust without thinking, stepped in past the descending overhand slice, grabbed the soldier's wrist and elbow, turned and threw him to the ground. Taken utterly by surprise, the wind completely knocked out of him by the fall onto his own armored back, he fought for both wits and air, unable to move for a moment.

It was his last. Rhosyn's sword lay beside him. She scooped it back up without thinking, reversed it, and stabbed it down with all her fury through his neck and into the ground beneath, before she could blink.

Time stopped completely still, shuddered, then dragged itself limping on. Rhosyn stared down at the spurting red, transfixed, horrified. She had taken a life. The rage she'd been living on since the assault drained out through her hands and feet, puddling with the soldier's blood in the brown dust of the road, while all around them, the Briton warriors streamed past and into the town.

"I didn't even know his name," she whispered. His sightless eyes stared into hers, accusing. He was human now, a man from far away, with hopes and dreams which had just died with him, two thousand years before she was born.

His blood had finally stopped before she gathered her wits enough to let go of the sword and step back. She stared around in renewed horror, feeling as though she were awake for the first time in weeks – and finding herself in greater, waking nightmare. Boudicca's army had all passed through the gates and were ransacking the city, leaving her alone with the dead.

Only half aware of what she was doing, Rhosyn drifted through the gates and down the street, staring at the carnage. Bodies were everywhere, left where they had fallen: men, women, children. The stench of blood – and other, even less attractive odors – permeated the dusty afternoon. From all sides now came screams, and crashes, and shouts. Smoke was already rising from dozens of spots – the sack of Camulodunum would end with it burned to the ground.

She came to an open square and halted, unable to continue. Not a living soul was in sight. Her eyes came to rest on the small figure of a child near her feet – a boy, not more than eight years old, his throat slit, while nearby his mother's corpse reached out towards him, even in death.

"You do not fight, Rhosyn?"

It took a few extra seconds for the words to penetrate her fogged mind, then she whirled about to stare at Boudicca standing a few feet away, her long red hair wild around her shoulders, her sword dripping blood into the street.

"Fight?" She was incredulous. "This isn't a battle, Boudicca. This is a massacre. These people aren't my enemy. The Romans are the enemy – the soldiers, the commanders, the bureaucrats. Not these people. Boudicca, these are Britons, not Romans. They're just ordinary people, just trying to live their lives as best they can. They're..."

Boudicca had been growing angrier by the word, and now she cut Rhosyn off. "They lived the Roman way, in Roman towns, towns build on our land, stolen from our people. They were Romans, and all Romans are the enemy," she hissed.

Rhosyn stepped to one side and pointed at the pitiful corpse of the child. "This boy was not a Roman, Boudicca. Neither was his mother. They were Britons. And I will not take part in their slaughter."

With that, she whirled back around and marched swiftly away, leaving Boudicca gaping at her back, then down at the boy sprawled in the dirt at her feet. Rhosyn didn't stop, but half-ran out through the gates and across the fields to the far edge, disappearing into the forest beyond. She didn't return for two days, after the fighting was over, after the siege of the remaining few soldiers inside the temple ended in conflagration, after the fires that leveled the town and served as the citizen's giant mass funeral pyre had gone out, smoldering in the ashes of the once-thriving town.