Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Lucius stood on the platform above the entrance gateway looking south, his hands clenched on the sapling railing, searching for a glimpse of the returning riders. The group in the distance was not getting any larger on the horizon. It must have halted. Why were they taking so long to return?
A single rider appeared, galloping along the track to the fort.
At last!
As horse and rider came closer, Lucius recognized Maonos. Where was Sorcha? Had something happened to her? His heart raced, pounding against his ribs. “Maonos approaching. Open the gate,” he shouted to the youths below. He sped to the ladder and descended to wait for the lad.
The mighty oak gates, repaired since the battle, groaned open. Maonos cantered through and brought his mount to a halt.
Lucius grasped the reins. “Report!”
Maonos drew a couple of breaths. “Approaching party consists of Mai Dun refugees and some warriors from Dun Cam who have accompanied them, seeking shelter here. The Romans have destroyed Mai Dun, and for its own survival Dun Cam has accepted Rome’s overlordship on behalf of the remaining Durotriges. ”
Lucius’s stomach plunged at Maonos’s words. “And your older brothers?”
Anguish and anger flashed in Maonos’s eyes. “Dead.”
By the gods, no! Sorcha would be devastated. “Where is your sister?”
“Following with the Mai Dun people. She wants to hear everyone’s story.”
“Her temperament?”
Maonos hesitated to answer. “Angry,” he muttered and looked upon Lucius with a mixture of pity and concern.
As he had feared. Sorcha would never forgive him for being Roman…
one of the destroyers of their Celtic way of life and the people and places she loved.
Could he blame her? If it weren’t for his capture, he would have been among the soldiers that slayed her brothers. Guilt weighed heavy on his chest.
“May I be excused, Lucius?” Maonos asked. “I have a message for my mother.”
Lucius gave a curt nod. He now must wait for the slow-moving mass of Durotriges to arrive and to take whatever punishment Sorcha meted out.
The afternoon was creeping to its close when the survivors drove, rode, and walked through the settlement’s gates.
Alina assisted Lucius in directing the arrivals to vacant houses and inviting them to a welcoming feast. The Mai Dun people who had known Lucius as a manacled hostage raised their eyebrows when they saw he was unbound and trusted now.
A few spat on the ground at his feet. The Dun Cam warriors muttered amongst themselves.
From the corner of his eye, Lucius glimpsed Sorcha enter the fort behind the last stragglers. A small boy was seated before her on his horse, Maximus. Her face had aged a decade during this one afternoon.
He wanted to hurry to her, pull her into his arms, and tell her that he was sorry for the loss of her brothers and the people at Mai Dun… and to plead with her not to hold those things against him.
But he couldn’t.
He was part of the Roman army that had destroyed her world.
Garamaros had treated him with respect and the Dun Creg people had accepted him because they had not experienced Rome’s wrath, but these people from Mai Dun had suffered Rome’s punishment for resisting its will and couldn’t be expected to do the same.
As soon as the last refugee was accommodated, Sorcha strode toward him. Her shoulders were set, her vivid hair tugged into a tight plait away from her face, her lush mouth grim, and her green eyes as hard as flint. She looked beautiful, warrior-like, and magnificent in her anger.
And she was coming to expend it on him.
He stood his ground.
Sorcha halted before him. Just out of reach. He didn’t try to shorten the gap between them.
Her stare roamed his face as though searching for something. She said nothing, but her fists clenched at her sides. The only sounds were the clatter of the settlement’s domestic activities and those of distant gulls, delivered by each puff of the sea breeze.
The people surrounding them were silent and watchful, holding their breath, like him, waiting for Sorcha’s next movement.
She stepped forward, and lightning-fast, her arm swung towards him. He made no move except to close his eyes and ready himself for the blow.
Crack!
Her palm hit his cheek as fast as a snake strike, thrusting his head sideways. Stinging pain seared his face. Lucius tightened his jaw, willing away the throbbing of his heated cheek.
She shoved both hands on his chest and pushed hard.
He stumbled back a step and straightened.
“Why?” The word exploded from her stiff lips—the same lips that just a few hours ago had been soft and pliant beneath his.
He mourned for the loss, for the inevitable destruction of their rapport now she’d learned that Rome had triumphed over her people and done what it always did—killed or enslaved the conquered.
“Why did you Romans have to come here and destroy us?” She looked at him with such intensity. She wanted an answer.
He shook his head. “It’s what Rome does. It increases its empire.”
“For what purpose?” Anger vibrated every word.
He bit back a bitter laugh. Did she truly not know?
He would tell her the brutal truth, and she would never look at him again with anything less than hatred.
“Rome wants Britannia’s surplus grain, its minerals, its pearls, animal skins, even its hunting dogs…
and the Britons who resist, as slaves to sell. ”
“We already traded those things with the Roman Empire,” she whispered.
“Rome earns more through occupation and taxes than through trade.” He wouldn’t tell her that there were also reputations to be made through conquest. Emperor Claudius needed a victory to cement his power and what better way than a brilliant conquest and new lands added to his empire?
As Julius Caesar had proven.
Perhaps Vespasian, the leader of the army’s campaign in southern Britain, would one day become emperor too, based on the glory he earned here?
It had been Lucius’s own hope to rise to a governorship after this campaign.
Now it seemed a pointless wish that would bring him nothing but emptiness of heart and soul.
This woman and life with her people offered him more worthwhile purpose than he had ever experienced.
Something flared in Sorcha’s eyes. She ripped his dagger from its sheath at his waist. In one fluid movement, the weapon in her fist swept towards him, to slash open his belly and spill his entrails.
Lucius braced to meet death.
The weapon punched into his stomach. He folded in half from the impact. His hands clutched his abdomen.
He found no blood.
By the gods, she had spared him. She had hit him with the handle clenched in her fist.
Relief flooded through him, and he looked up at Sorcha in astonishment and thanks.
She spat in his face. “Tie him up.” Her weaponized fist launched toward him again. The blow landed against his head, coloring it with pain before the world turned to black.
* * *
Scrape. Scratch. Burn. Lucius forced his eyelids open. He lay on a pallet of bracken in near darkness. The smell of manure and damp earth clogged his nostrils. The metallic taste of blood filled his mouth. The moonlight showed just a roof above him.
He suspected he was lying under the awning beside the blacksmith’s workshop. From the distance came the hubbub of many people talking at once, with no one discernible voice. Chains jingled when he moved his legs. He lifted his right arm and found his wrists bound.
He’d thought he had earned his release from physical bondage with the defense of Dun Creg, but the slaughter at Mai Dun had brought back the distrust and hatred present at the beginning of his capture.
He skimmed his fingers over the side of his head and groaned when they found a tender lump. Lucius raised his head. He reeled, and lowered it again.
Lucius swallowed. His throat was a dry as the sands of Africa. A water barrel usually stood nearby. He needed to find it and slake his thirst.
Lucius closed his eyes against the pain he expected to rip through his head, tensed his muscles, and forced himself onto his side.
His head swam. Pulling his knees up to his chest, Lucius pushed up from the ground with his elbow into a kneeling position.
Pain zigzagged behind his eyes. He cradled his head in his hands until it eased.
Leaning on his forearms, he pushed up from the ground to a teetering stand.
He staggered forward, manacle chains dragging, clunk, clunk, clunk, towards the barrel.
It materialized out of the darkness, and he plunged his hands into its cool depths, splashing water onto his face before gulping down mouthfuls.
The cold liquid soothed his dry throat.
Thirst quenched, Lucius leaned against the vessel. What now?
Without Garamaros to mediate for him this time, what hope did he have of being released and treated as a trustworthy hostage? And Drustan, who had first saved his life by proposing he be kept as a hostage, was heading for the coast of Gaul with Garamaros. Lucius might be dead before they returned.
Did he try to free himself from these bonds and escape? Or should he remain, in the hope that he was still held valuable as a hostage? Did he even want to escape if it meant leaving Sorcha behind? What would she face, what would they all face, if the Roman army or other enemies came?
Before he could decide, approaching footsteps sounded. Friend or foe? He slipped into the shadow of the workshop wall.
Illuminated by the flame of a torch, Sorcha strode under the awning, her cloak flapping around her legs. Not finding him on the ground, she raised the torch to cast its light wider. In her other hand, she carried a wooden bowl.
Lucius put aside his idea of escape and stepped forward into the stream of light. “You search for me?”
“Food.” The word was gruff. She held out the bowl to him.