Page 14 of Boudicca

“I can because I must! We bothwillbecause we must.” Briallen cut off my words. She went to her knees beside me and beseeched, “Forgive me for speaking so to you, my queen.” Then Briallen lowered her voice and added, “How badly wounded are you? I cannot tell through the blood that covers your back.”

“I do not know.”

“Can you walk?”

I met my warrior’s gaze. “I can because I must.”

Briallen nodded quickly. “Aye, my queen.” Her one-eyed gaze flicked to the children. “I can carry Enfys if you can carry Ceri.”

I nodded. “It will be so.” Then I spoke softly as I gently pried my eldest daughter’s hands from my torn tunic. “Enfys, Briallen is going to carry you and I shall carry Ceri. We must return to the lodge, where we can care for your wounds. Do you understand?”

Enfys’s eyes were glazed with shock, but she nodded and allowed the warrior to lift her. Then I turned to my youngest daughter, little Ceri. The child was curled on her side, knees to her chest, eyes tightly closed as she shivered violently.

Rage roiled within me again and I used it to fuel the fire that kept me moving. I drew a deep breath and caressed Ceri’s sweaty hair. “Little dove, I am going to carry you home.” Eyes still tightly closed, Ceri said nothing but allowed me to lift her into my arms.

I stood still for a moment until the world stopped rolling and pitching around me while I cradled Ceri’s body against my chest, as I had when she’d been a sweet infant—and was shocked by how light and boneless she felt.

Side by side, the only Iceni warrior left alive in Tasceni and I carried the girls to the lodge. The trek was like moving through a waking nightmare. Bodies of men and women I had known for fifteen years littered the path. I paused at the first of them and pressed Ceri’s face against my shoulder as I bent beside Heulyn, a mother of ten and grandmother of six, revered as an expert baker. I touched her face gently to see if there was any sign of life in the old woman. Heulyn was gone.

Briallen turned away so that Enfys was shielded from seeing the elder’s body. “None will be alive. The brave old ones who remained in the village to protect their queen and give the bairns and mothers time to flee into the forest were slaughtered—every one of them—along with the few warriors who were not at the spring games.”

I met Briallen’s gaze. “I am sorry. Bryn was a fierce warrior.”

“He died protectin’ his queen.” Briallen’s voice broke. She paused, collected herself, and continued. “He will join your mother in Annwn, as is right. Except for the four of us, ’tis a village of the dead.”

“It will live again.Wewill live again.”

I continued the trek to the lodge. As we approached the open wooden doors, the knowledge that my beloved mother was within—dead and cold—had me staggering.

“Steady!” Briallen caught my elbow and lent me her strength. “We will because we must.”

I drew a deep breath, nodded, then spoke gently to my girls. “Enfys, Ceri, you must do something for me. You must close your eyes and keep them closed until we are in my bedchamber.”

Ceri cried and pressed her face into my shoulder, soaking it withher sweat and tears, but Enfys turned her head so that she could meet my gaze. “Nain is in there with Dafina. I will look. I will remember.”

I thought my heart would break, though I was filled with pride at her fierceness. I badly wanted to command my daughter to close her eyes—to remain a child—but what had happened to her, to us all, had changed everything. And I understood intimately that in this new, terrible world of ours, anger fueled action. I met my oldest daughter’s gaze and saw the reflection of the fury that boiled within me, that kept me on my feet, that would keep me moving forward from this day on. “Then look. Remember. And know we will get vengeance.”

“Aye, bonny lamb. ’Tis as Herself says. We will get vengeance,” said Briallen.

“We will get vengeance,” echoed Enfys.

We entered the lodge. The scent of blood and loosed bowels permeated the air. There were only three bodies. Bryn’s body slumped just inside the door with the long pilum spear still embedded in his chest. My eyes were drawn to the middle of the spacious lodge, where my mother rested beside her beloved servant. In their final moments of life they had curled toward one another, and the two old women’s hands were joined—holding as tightly in death as in life.

I tore my gaze from the two women I had loved the longest in this lifetime and moved woodenly past them, pushed aside the hide that was the door to my private chamber, and laid Ceri carefully on my wide bed. Briallen placed Enfys beside her sister. The older child instantly took Ceri into her arms.

Enfys looked up at me through eyes a century older than thirteen namedays. “Go ahead, Mama. Do what you must. I will stay with Ceri.”

The pride I felt for her took my breath. I touched her cheek. “See how brave you are. I have never been prouder to be your mother than at this moment.” I pulled a blanket up over my beautiful, violated daughters. “We will not be long.”

I left my bedchamber with Briallen beside me and closed the pelt door. Then the warrior and I paused. Except for the three bodies, the lodge looked remarkably normal. The hearthfire was still burning,though the iron pot of water that had been boiling there was knocked over. It soaked the rushes along with the blood of Arianell and Dafina.

“We need to tend to our wounds, but first we must move them.” My hand shook as I wiped sweat from my face. My back had become so tight that every movement was agony, but I’d felt no new warmth of blood and my dizziness had passed, so I ignored the pain. My daughters must come first.

“Aye. We can take them outside and care for their bodies properly after we tend the living,” said Briallen.

We worked together silently. Bryn was the most difficult to move. In life, he’d been a massive but graceful man, like one of Tribe Demetae’s oceangoing war vessels. Now, in death, he was battered and beached. It took both of us, a human tide pulling and heaving, to remove him from the lodge.

I carried my mother myself. I cradled Arianell much like I’d so recently held my youngest daughter—tightly against my chest. I breathed in the familiar scent of the rosemary that Mother had liked to rinse her hair with and fought back tears by embracing rage instead.