Zombies: Shambling Through the Ages Read online

  “Troth-breakers,” Brianne said, and Alene squeezed her again in unspoken agreement.

  She watched as the Romans drew closer, relieved not to see an army’s full strength on her threshold but nevertheless angered at the sight of eighty or more Britons—a century as the Romans named such things—dressed in the Imperial garb. With another two dozen cavalry and the half dozen scribae there in the name of either Seneca or the Roman Procurator himself, this was a force of well over a hundred. It was far more than she’d expected—enough to cover the hilltop’s southwest corner once they’d settled themselves in straight lines. Alene stood stiffly and awaited what would come, distracted only for a heartbeat by the wheeling shape and shrill cry of a gull that had wandered in from the coast to the east. A bad omen.

  Several Romans drew close to the altar. A scriba stepped forward. “You are Alene, wife of the late Prasutagus, client-king of the Iceni peoples?”

  Alene answered the man’s Latin words with her own. “I am,” she said, hiding her loathing of the scriba’s Romanization of her husband’s name.

  The moment had come. And still Alene hadn’t settled on how best to deal with the great offense the Romans had given to the Iceni over the past month—the wholesale murder and theft. By rights I should cut off ties and name the Romans outlaws! Her blood cried out for it.

  But I won’t. Today I bend with the wind. She wondered if she was grown old and soft, as she’d once seen Prastog through the eyes of a fifteen-year old bride to a man almost thirty years older than her.

  “These are my daughters, Brianne and Saraid, heirs to my husband’s kingship.”

  The balding man barely glanced at them as he consulted a wax tablet. It became clear as he read aloud from it that it was an accounting of all loans made to Prastog over the years. “Said loans are called due, at interest,” he concluded. “Are you able to make payment?”

  Alene laughed. “Only the Emperor himself would have such a trove at his fingertips.”

  Another scriba handed the first a second tablet before Alene finished speaking. “As wife of the late client-king of these defaulters, have you the means to make amends?”

  “Need I answer?” Bend like the ash beneath the wind.

  “No, you needn’t!” The centurion who oversaw the soldiers shoved aside the scribae and came forward. “We’ve waited long enough already, and I will now deliver the Procurator’s message to you, so take heed.”

  Scattered gasps passed among the Iceni; even those with no grasp of the Roman tongue balked at the unworthy tone toward their queen. At a sharp glance from Alene, those gasps were stifled.

  “In the name of the Procurator of the Province of Britannia, Catus Decianus,” he continued, “I hereby seize all chattel and estates of the one late called Prasutagus, client-king of the Iceni. Said lands and tangible goods shall be turned over forthwith at the orders of Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, fifth Roman Governor of Britannia.”

  Alene felt an angry warmth in her cheeks. “What madness is this? My own messengers went out some time ago bearing to the governor the terms of my husband’s death-will, a bequest wherein Prastog already divided his kingdom and wealth between his daughters and Rome. He was more than open-handed, keeping only those lands under his close sway for his daughters and for myself to ward until they come of age. The rest was bequeathed to Nero under the terms of the client-kingship . . . save of course what was needed so we might keep paying the hefty Roman taxes, tributes, and salaries!”

  The centurion laughed and waved several of his men forward. “Ignorant sow. It is illegal to impart any personal wealth to others in a will over the Emperor. If you believed the greater sacrifice to Rome would allow the oversight of what was left to your pups, you were sadly mistaken. And as further insult not only to the Emperor, but also to the governor, the procurator, and to the noble Seneca, you have now acknowledged your unwillingness to take responsibility for those loans keeping you fed and pampered for two decades. Niceties are thus at an end, and you and your brood are stripped of any claim to sway over these or any other peoples.” He indicated the assembled Iceni with a vague sweep of a gauntleted hand.

  Two soldiers snatched Alene.

  “Let go!” she shouted. But the Romans dragged her from the altar toward a spot where others raised a tall, wooden stake.

  She managed to free her right arm and drove a fist into the side of one man’s head. More soldiers detached themselves from the ranks to take her back in hand.

  “Mother!” Saraid screamed, and Alene’s two daughters all at once entered the fray. Brianne leveled one man with a hard blow to the forehead before the cudgel she always kept under her skirts was taken from her. She and her sister had their hands fastened behind their backs, and soldiers slung them over their shoulders to carry them toward their family’s roundhouse on the flattened hilltop’s north side.

  “Let them be!” Alene yelled, straining toward her daughters. Her hands were now tied as well, and bright, shimmering hues burst across her sight as the centurion came forward to backhand her jaw.

  Alene spat a mouthful of blood at the man and lunged toward him. The centurion laughed again at her hopeless flailing, and she stilled herself.

  Wiping her bloody spittle from his cheek, he leaned close to Alene. “You will learn respect soon enough.” His breath stank of sour wine. Then he bid her captors bind her to the wooden staff.

  “You will not do this,” a small voice came, and Alene turned to see her aged uncle Hirelgdas step forward from among the gathered folk, a spear clutched in his gnarled hands. Uncle, no.

  “Step back, old man,” the centurion said, “before you hurt yourself.”

  Other words might have worked, but the mocking tone only goaded her uncle, reminding him of the strength that had fled him, of his once-mighty warrior status now lost to the passing of long years. “Uncle, please,” Alene said, “all will be well.”

  Hirelgdas was not swayed. His hollow cheeks were mottled an angry red behind the droop of long, white mustaches. Alene sighed. How I once feared his wrath . . .

  The spear came up, shakily, and the centurion answered by drawing his own short Roman sword and passing its tip almost as an afterthought through the soft flesh beneath Hirelgdas’s chin. The old man’s eyes went wide, then a red beard grew from his severed neck, a wash of blood leaving him in one great gout. Alene looked away as he fell, glad at least that he’d died as he had once lived, with spear in hand.

  As the Romans manhandled her, no other Iceni raised a finger on her behalf, so cowed were they by their Roman overlords. How can I blame them? Likely they and their families had already undergone the same wretchedness in the past weeks, and there had been none to fight for them. She rued having earlier chided the uprooted folk who had gathered here, rued asking why they had not shown more backbone, why the Iceni could no longer fight even half so well as the men of Gwynedd. What choice did they have? To resist is to be broken like the oak. Now it’s my turn to be shamed.

  They stripped her.

  I am an ash. I will bend with this Roman wind. If her open shaming was what the Romans wanted in order to forgive the debts, then they would have it. If it meant giving up her sway over Iceni lands rightfully her daughters’, she would accept that. I am an ash, and I will bend so my folk might live, so my daughters will not be made slaves, so the Iceni will not be driven into the dust.

  They tied her to the stake.

  Let the winds blow.

  The rope dug into her neck, into her ankles and arms, but she took herself away from the ache. The world around her faded as she cast her mind out from her body in the way her father had taught her to do long ago.

  They scourged her.

  Alene’s body went rigid, and the darkness behind her eyelids filled with soothing greenery. The oaks on Mona—the druids’ sacred groves—a place as yet untouched by the Romans where nothing could hurt her. As ever, she saw herself walking among the ancient boles, hands out to stroke rough bark, draw strength. A
nd this time, something else—cold and clammy. A body.

  A gray-haired druid had been bound to an oak, a rope about his waist, iron spikes through wrists and feet, crucified in the way only the Romans would do. All around her, hundreds of druids and priestesses had been similarly slain, many of the oaks themselves hacked down by cruel Roman axes. The stone altars were toppled. She smelled the smoke before she saw it, felt the heat of the fire before she saw the flames. The groves burned. It was awful—too much to bear—and Alene could not keep her thoughts bound there.

  As though some great raven had snatched her into the sky, she was drawn up and away from Mona, saw it from an impossible height. In what had become an unbidden Telling, she saw all the island burning. In the smoke rising above it, Alene glimpsed the goddess, Boudicca, wreathed in flames, dying along with her people. What sort of wretches are these Romans, not only to slay men but to murder a god? The world is lost. Lost!

  She returned to her body. The lash had fallen upon her shoulders, her back, and her buttocks more times than she could guess. Blood crept down her legs to pool on the loamy earth. As the strap fell yet again, she opened her eyes. The centurion stared at her and smiled. She pulled her lips back, giving him a rictus of grim hatred but never once letting him hear her cry out in pain.

  In time the man’s cast turned to one of disbelief and then boredom. When even the soldier wielding the lash faltered, the centurion grunted and motioned for her to be taken down. He retreated toward the roundhouse. Alene’s bonds were cut, and her knees gave way. The wind has passed. I was not broken.

  The Romans stepped away from her crumpled form, and her own handmaids brought her a dark wool cloak. Gathering the last of her will, Alene rose and let them settle the cloak over her shoulders, gritting her teeth as the cloth chafed her raw flesh. She looked north to the roundhouse where her daughters had been taken, and as if in answer, the centurion strode out and called for Alene.

  She forced herself to walk between the soldiers who fetched her, not wanting to be dragged to her own doorstep like a sack of wheatcorn.

  One of the soldiers leaned close suddenly, his lips near her ear. “I’m sorry. I would spare you this if I could, but he would have my head.”

  The man drew back, and Alene turned to look at him. He was young, not much older than Brianne, and from the sound of his speech, he had been one of the neighboring Catuvellauni before taking up with the Romans. His look was earnest, almost pained, and for a heartbeat Alene nearly smiled her thanks at him. Then she reminded herself that he was a troth-breaker, and she spat at his feet.

  “So you will not cry out?” the centurion asked when Alene was before him. “Then we shall let your daughters do the screaming for you.”

  Alene’s throat tightened as they drew her into her house.

  She blinked in the sudden darkness. The place was a shambles—her loom toppled and broken against a wall, baskets overturned. A drinking horn that had been in her family for generations lay broken on the floor.

  Then her eyes settled to the dimness.

  Her daughters had been stripped. Each was bent forward and held down over one of the beds hugging the house’s inner ring. Romans stood about in groups, laughing, boasting, awaiting the order.

  “Stuprate them.”

  “Please, no!” Alene shouted, but the centurion ignored her as he and several of the waiting soldiers stepped forward, unfastening their belts. “No!”

  Alene strained against the men holding her, fighting like a wild thing to free herself. One man punched her hard in the face. Her left eye began to swell shut straightaway.

  Again he struck her. The crack of a tooth sounded loud in her ears.

  Saraid screamed, and Alene screamed with her. “Please! They’re children!” But there was a still greater wrong. Tears in her eyes, Alene stilled herself and looked toward Brianne, keeping her voice even. “Know that you defile daughters of the high ancient bloodline, the rightful leaders of a proud people. Stop now or invoke the anger of those gods who ward the Iceni!”

  The centurion and his men laughed. Alene wept.

  Through it all, Brianne never uttered a sound, though her younger sister screamed her throat raw as one after another, the soldiers came to her. Saraid kept struggling to get up, but one of the men always stepped forward to push her down, strike her, spit on her. It was too much, and Alene looked away. The centurion saw. “Make her watch!”

  The men holding her forced Alene’s head forward, fingers digging into her jaw so it popped and cracked where it met her skull. She felt a cold blade pressed against her throat by the Catuvellauni who’d spoken to her outside. Then he shifted, and his cloak fell in such a way that it was across her line of sight. “Don’t move,” he whispered.

  Thank you. Her tears fell unchecked now. Thank you.

  The kindness was short-lived. “I told you to make her watch,” shouted the centurion as he strode toward them. He smashed the ivory-knobbed hilt of his sword against the young soldier’s forehead, who then fell bleeding to the ground.

  The centurion took his place, holding her head forward.

  At every vile act she beheld, Alene now felt the lashes inflicted on her outside as though she lived them anew. She cried out.

  “Boudicca! Avenge me!” But Boudicca was dead. I saw her burning.

  The room swam and faded into murky blackness . . .

  When Alene awoke, a cold stillness had fallen.

  The last of the Romans were filing from the roundhouse. My girls!

  She met Brianne’s gaze first, saw the dread in her eyes. Unwontedly for her eldest, there was more sadness than anger or even hurt there. Then Brianne’s gaze dropped to her sister lying so still before her. Too still.

  No. Alene stopped breathing. No, no, no, no, no. She scrambled forward, saw Saraid’s lifeless, staring eyes, and swept her up into her arms, sobbing as she rocked back and forth. “No, my dearest. No, no. Hush now. It will be well. No, no.” She hardly knew what she said.

  Brianne’s arms went around them both. “We will make them pay for this, Mother.”

  Alene drew a heavy breath, pushing away her sobs. Brianne was trembling. She had to be strong now for her living daughter. “Yes. They will pay.” But how? She lowered Saraid’s head to her lap, supporting her limp neck with a hand as she had done when her daughter was but newly born. Oh, my sweet babe.

  Ignoring the burning ache across her back and shoulders, Alene took up an edge of her own cloak and leaned toward Brianne, wiping away the mark of tears, the blood from her daughter’s nose and split cheek. Looking up then into the darkness beneath the sloping roof, she whispered to her protectress. “Have you had enough blood yet, Lady?” She tried but failed to keep the anger from her voice. “Is this enough at last?”

  She fetched Brianne’s torn cloak and helped her to cover herself. She wrapped Saraid in a sheep pelt and rose, lifting her daughter’s body; it felt light as a bundle of rags now that the spirit had fled her. Only then did Alene take heed of the odd quiet. No sound of wind or leaf, soldier or horse, drifted in from outside; it was as though Alene had lost all hearing save for those small sounds she and Brianne made themselves. Brianne heard it too and eyed the heavy waycloth covering the entryway.

  “Stay by my side,” Alene whispered and edged toward the doorway, steeling herself.

  The light outside was harsh.

  A large flock of ravens had settled upon the hilltop. Alene strained to open her swollen eye, not believing what she saw. The ground everywhere was black with birds. She took another step, and the muscles in her neck twitched so she almost dropped her daughter. She crouched to lay Saraid’s body down carefully near the threshold. They warned me there would be more hardship, more bloodshed. But . . . not my daughter. Not Saraid.

  Taking another faltering step, she stared out at the centurion and his men picking their way among the silent, unmoving birds toward the rest of the Roman soldiers. She turned toward her roundhouse. Ravens on its roof thatch stared ba
ck with eyes of polished jet. Why are you here?

  A raucous caw spun her back around to face the dozen soldiers wading through the black feathers. The centurion had paused to shove several birds away with the toe of a sandal. He kicked again, more savagely, and something inside Alene jerked. Rage made her limbs quake, and the ravens themselves stirred at last. Several leapt into the air to flap about the centurion’s head. He and his fellows drew swords to swat at the ravens, but soon most dropped their weapons altogether in a bid to ward eyes and faces from sharp beaks and claws.

  Alene walked toward them.

  “What’s happening?” Brianne asked, limping at her side.

  Alene shook her head, having no answer.

  Twenty steps from the house, a further stirring behind them made Alene look back again. The ravens had swarmed over Saraid’s body.

  “No!” Alene began to run toward her, but the air around her filled with dark wings, batting at her, keeping her away. “Will you desecrate her now? Have the Romans not done enough?” She screamed—at the ravens, at the goddess, at the very air. At last she stopped, standing still, staring helplessly at the writhing mass overtop her daughter. One raven let out a loud screech and all at once Saraid lurched upright into a sitting posture, scattering the birds away from her.

  Hope sparked in Alene’s breast only to be snuffed. A lopsided grin marked Saraid’s cast where one of her lips had been pulled off; her eyes were two red holes, pecked out and eaten. And yet it seemed Saraid saw, for she turned her neck until her empty gaze fell upon the centurion. She scrambled to her feet and ran toward him with the jerky lope of a drunkard.

  Alene grabbed Brianne and pulled her close as Saraid—or whatever horror she had become—passed them by. An awful charnel stench swirled in her wake; Alene found herself gagging, bending over to bring up the bit of broth she’d eaten earlier in the day.