littering the street. Most of the city’s people had left before the attack, but enough remained behind that the smell of their burning flesh hung in the air, mixing with the smoke of fires too numerous to count. Speckled among the bodies was the rubble of the city. Buildings, wagons, and merchant stands littered the street with smoking debris, many reduced to piles of charred wooden boards, their splintery points aimed in every direction.
The store where Taras took his refuge had been all but demolished by a rock the size of a fruit cart, and flour, burst eggs, and a myriad of other ingredients covered the wreckage. Here and there, broken pieces of the baker’s trade littered the street outside the entrance. Mixing pots, spoons, jars of honey and sugar, all lay cracked and broken amidst the rubble. But the doorway stood, and it made as good a place as any for Taras to rest and evaluate his situation. It wasn’t good.
He could not leave the city through the western gate. He would have to find another way. Fortunately, there was another way. A small tunnel used by smugglers to bring questionable goods into the city. Taras had found it one night while trailing a robber who’d stolen an elderly man’s coin purse. Before the man died, he told Taras everything he wanted to know. The entrance was hidden beneath the floor of a tavern on the northern side of the city and the tunnel led to a small copse of trees about a hundred paces from the north wall. The smugglers had chosen that location because the trees hid their comings and goings from the city guard. It would accommodate him, as long as he could reach it before the incoming soldiers.
The area around him was thick with crazed people running and shouting, trying to escape. But they had no place to go, and so they simply ran up one street and down the other until fire or weapon claimed them. Here and there, officers called to their men, directing them to the walls to try and hold off the invading forces. No one was tending to the wounded or dead, and the fires were left to rage on. Defense of the city took first priority. But even from Taras’s vantage point, huddled under a doorframe, he could see it would be no good. Tonight Londinium would fall.
The smell of blood was everywhere. It drove into his brain like a hot metal spike. Gods, he needed to feed, but there wasn’t time to track down a suitable victim amidst the chaos. There were plenty of people nearby, but they were mostly soldiers, women and children. He couldn’t bring himself to kill them. Even after thirty years, Jesus’ words still haunted him. He could kill innocent people, or he could die a slow death.
There is always a choice. It is not always a good choice.
Killing innocents was no choice at all, and even though the city burned with flames taller than buildings, Taras could not bring himself to sacrifice his life to them. He clenched his jaw and strode out into the street. He would simply have to wait to feed. It wouldn’t be the first time.
But unless he found blood soon, it could well be the last.
Lannosea sat atop her mount and ran her sleeve across her forehead, wiping away the beads of sweat and leaving a smudge of soot as she examined the city walls. This close, the heat and smoke were almost more than she could bear. Her horse, a huge black mare known more for her strength than her disposition, shied away from the wall, wary of the flames that consumed it. The ballistae and catapults had certainly done their job, reducing huge sections of the outer wall to smoldering rubble. She and her fellow riders should have little trouble storming the city.
A long, low horn blast sounded behind her. She knew what that meant. The ballistae crews had nearly exhausted their ammunition, which meant it was time for the cavalry to get ready. She held her sword straight up in the air and shouted “Hail Iceni!” Every mounted soldier up and down the line returned the salute, raising their own swords in the air and shouting her words back to her. When the next horn blast came from the ballistae crews, indicating that the long range ammunition was gone, Lannosea lowered her sword and pointed it at the city.
As one, the line of mounted men rode forward, with Lannosea at its head. The creak of their saddles and the pounding of their horses’ hooves were soon drowned out by the noise from within the city. The screams of the injured and the dying overpowered the shouted orders from the town’s remaining defenders, and few of the soldiers on the wall looked like they knew what to do. Most of them stared at the approaching horsemen with a look of fear or resignation. By the look in their eyes, each of them knew they would not live to see the sunrise.
Lannosea could relate. The Iceni cavalry boasted over four thousand battle hardened warriors, each of them bearing multiple scars from one campaign or another. She doubted the Romans had that many legionaries in the entire city. Taking Londinium would be easy.
But she did not intend to come back.
Her mother knew. Lannosea saw it on the Queen’s face when she requested to lead the cavalry charge, and she’d given her consent. Had the queen known? Probably. The queen knew everything. Of course, Lannosea’s death would mean Heanua would one day be queen of the Iceni, but that would probably be for the best. Despite what her mother and suitors said, Lannosea had never really wanted to be queen. Too much responsibility. Her desires were far more mundane. A good husband and a quiet life filled with the laughter of children were more to her taste, but even that could not be now.
A flutter in her belly reminded her why she was doing this. The Roman bastard growing in her womb had ruined everything. Nero’s men had taken her maidenhood as well as her honor, and now they would get her life, as well. It didn’t seem fair, but she would not dishonor her entire family by birthing the bastard child of a Roman legionary. Her shame was hers alone, and she would wipe it away tonight by dying with honor. She could do that much, she knew.
“The Iceni do not fear death,” she whispered under her breath, reciting the mantra her father had taught her as a child. “Death comes for all.”
Fifty yards from the wall, her troops were hit by Londinium’s archers. Scores of arrows sailed through the night at the advancing Iceni, many of them carried small balls of flaming tar on their tips. Several dozen of her men and a score of horses went down under the deadly rain, but dozens more came forward to fill the gaps.
“The Iceni do not fear death. Death comes for all.” Even unborn Roman bastards.
She ordered a full charge and kicked her horse into a gallop. At full speed, the archers on the walls would have time for only one more barrage before Lannosea and her men crossed into the city. One would not be enough to kill her remaining soldiers, not even close. After that it would be over. The cavalry would soften up the remaining defenders, and then the infantry would march in and take care of the rest. The citizens, if any were left alive, might put up a fight, but they would not be able to stop the march of the Iceni. Soon they and their city would be ashes.
Tonight, Londinium would disappear from the maps of the world, and she would earn her place in history. The noble princess who gave everything for her people, they would call her. A hero’s demise in a noble cause. Perhaps they would write songs of her bravery once the war was over. And no one would ever have to know she sought death on purpose, or of the poison fruit in her belly.
The second volley of arrows was a bit more precise, and claimed the lives of over forty men and a score more horses. The man to her right, a noble son of the Iceni named Balwar, grunted and fell from his saddle, his hand wrapped around the vibrating shaft of an arrow that had buried itself in his chest. Still, Lannosea’s prediction that one more flight of arrows would not be enough to stop her troops proved accurate as her horse sailed over the remains of the eastern wall and charged into the fray, followed by four thousand seasoned warriors from her clan.
She swept her sword down and caught one legionary in the shoulder. With the speed of her horse behind the blow, she nearly severed the man’s head. He went down in a bloody, twitching heap, but another soon came up to take his place. Then another, and then several more.
Lannosea looked around the crumbled wall and realized that she and her mother had underestimated the size of the Roman garrison at Londinium. Instead of a few hundred battered legionaries, she and her men faced nearly a thousand of them, and more were coming. She spurred her horse toward a group of soldiers and ran one down while her horse trampled another, yet they still came.
In moments, the scene devolved into complete chaos. The Romans earned their blood, preventing the easy slaughter she had been expecting. Still, as she looked over the battle she knew the Iceni would easily overpower Nero’s men. The Romans were too few, and they had no supply lines and no way to get reinforcements. They were trapped in their city like rats on a burning ship, and this last, desperate attempt to fight back was just that. Desperate. They knew, as she did, that surrendering would do them no good.
