top hunter’s true love being swallowed by a great fish maybe, or a hairy beast with horns impaling the chief’s youngest son, just as the son managed to gouge its eye out with his stone knife …
Lowa briefed them on their roles. She and Spring shouted “Ya!” at the aurochs and he plodded out of the woods. When he was in the clear, he stood still, next to the cart track, breathing hard. Mal walked up, stuck his spear in his neck and the aurochs fell over. That was it. It was nothing like the hunts of old. They wouldn’t be telling the story of it that evening, let alone in hundreds of generations’ time.
Spring knelt next to him as he huffed out his last few breaths. His big eye looked into hers with aching sadness. Crying gently, she put her hand on his gigantic head. Images flowed up her arm and into her mind. She saw the slaughter of his kind by humans. She saw aurochs chased in their dozens over cliffs, fleeing burning forests to be met with spears, their orphaned, panicking calves caught and clubbed to death. Then, in a flash, she saw the future. She saw Romans, she knew that they were Romans, killing all the remaining aurochs, all of them, and piling their bodies into great carts.
Usually when she felt the coming Romans, it was a cloudy thing, impossible to touch, more a case of knowing something rather than seeing it. This was as real as if it had happened in front of her. The Romans were going to kill all the aurochs in Britain, she had no doubt of it. So now she knew. No matter what they did, the Romans would take Britain. She looked up at Lowa. The queen had been watching her with the dying aurochs, smiling with rare compassion. Spring resolved not to tell her that their defence against the Romans was doomed. She knew that Lowa was going to try to beat back the invader, no matter what.
Chapter 15
“You must let me kill her, Julius. You saw what she did on the wall,” said the voice. It was Felix. Chamanca would know the clipped tones of that nasty little druid anywhere. She decided to keep her eyes closed a while longer.
“I saw what she did to the praetorian guard. I saw your magic fail. Then I saw her beaten. By me.”
And that must be Julius Caesar.
“From behind, when she had several wounds, any of which on its own would have incapacitated the strongest gladiator.” Quite right, thought Chamanca. “We must kill her now and we must be certain that she is dead.” That she didn’t like so much.
“Can she not join your legion, Felix? She seems a little too … wonderful to simply destroy. I want to keep her. I will keep her.”
“If you must, so be it. But I cannot have her in my legion. And I cannot guarantee holding her, because my magic does not seem to affect her. I think she may have even absorbed it…”
I did absorb it, and I used it.
“…but I’ve never seen any evidence in her of anything but the most brutish magic. I don’t think she is able to bend others to her will, or break metal, so if she is kept very well chained, she shouldn’t escape, but … I would rather kill her. We should case her in concrete and throw her in a lake.”
“You’re sure she’ll survive her wounds?”
“Yes. She was wounded often fighting for Zadar and I never saw any infection, only miraculously quick recovery. Perhaps I should try rubbing her wounds with excrement—”
“No, Felix. I want her to be healthy. Caesar has decided. She will return to Rome with us.”
“Because you want her as a gladiator! Of course. She’ll be good. Very good. You will have to build an arena that also acts as her jail, so audiences will be small, but once word gets out you’ll be able to charge what you want. I’d pay a lot to watch her tear apart two or three big, cocksure barbarians.”
That doesn’t sound so bad.
“Indeed. It is settled. There is one more question we need to answer. Why is Zadar’s creature in Gaul, and why did she attack us on Vesontio’s wall?”
That is a good question.
“I suspect that she’s in Gaul because she follows violence,” said Felix. “Blood is her food. You suspect that she may be spying for the new queen Lowa. She isn’t. Chamanca has tried