He turned to Ballan. ‘Britte?’
The Briton shook his head. ‘We would need a wagon. I-’
The Iceni was interrupted by an inhuman shriek that made Hanno fall to his knees with his hands held over his head. The cry was followed by a thundering of giant feet and a roar that almost shook the leaves from the trees. Ballan muttered a silent prayer and raised his spear to meet whatever terrible end the gods had decreed for him.
Did she remember Nuada from the day the Batavian shield wall broke? Was the scent of Britte’s dying somehow transmitted through the forest to her? Only the gods would ever know, but it was the Druid who paid the price. First Nuada scuttled into view at a speed Rufus wouldn’t have believed possible. He was followed moments later by a grey-brown shadow that dwarfed the man it pursued. Bersheba hunted the Druid through the forest as unerringly as a stoat chasing a rabbit. Nuada was exhausted, but he was agile and he dodged energetically, using one tree then another as a shield as he fled for his life. But if the Briton was nimble, Bersheba was nimbler still. She ghosted amongst the great oaks and the slender elders as easily as if she were in an open field, never quite narrowing the gap between herself and her quarry, but always giving the impression she had the ability. Time and again Nuada must have believed he had escaped, only to find Bersheba at his heels like some god-sent nemesis.
In other circumstances Rufus would have felt pity, but the memory of Britte’s death was too fresh in his mind and he only wanted it to be over. He covered Gaius’s eyes. As if she had read his thoughts, Bersheba increased her speed and Nuada, feeling her presence, panicked. His foot caught a hidden tree root and a despairing cry escaped his lips as he went down among the leaves and nettles. In an instant the elephant towered over him, her trunk held high, trumpeting her victory roar.
Nuada cried for mercy, but there was no mercy in the forest of the sacred grove.
With one swift movement, Bersheba lowered her head and hooked her left tusk below Nuada’s ribs. The Druid’s howls of agony split the forest as he squirmed like a worm on a bone hook and that terrible ivory spear bit ever deeper into his vitals. It was a mortal wound, but still Bersheba’s revenge was not complete. With a flick of her neck she tossed Nuada’s body high into the air. When he landed, she was on him in an instant, grinding his body into the forest floor with one great knee so Rufus could hear the Druid’s ribs snap like so many dried twigs. Still she wasn’t satisfied. Rufus had seen her do many things in their years together, but he had never seen her dance. She danced over the Druid for more than a minute, until his body was little more than a red pulp beneath her enormous pads.
When it was over, she stood by the body for a few more moments as if she were considering the morality of what she had done, and once she was satisfied she ambled through the trees to where Rufus stood, no longer a terrible, unstoppable weapon, but gentle Bersheba once more.
Rufus handed Gaius to Ballan and walked to Nuada’s shattered body. He looked down at the bloody smear on the ground and gingerly reached for what had once been the Druid’s cloak. It was there, as he knew it would be, and, amazingly, undamaged. He unpinned it and walked back to where the Briton held his son.
‘Here.’ He handed Ballan the brooch of Cunobelin, which so many sought and so many had died for. ‘Take it and do what you will with it. But do not keep it long, Ballan.’ He stared at the place where Nuada had died. ‘If it can kill a Druid, then no man is safe from its spell.’
He took Gaius’s hand in his, and, with Bersheba following, set off in the direction of the camp. Ballan watched them go, then looked down thoughtfully at the treasure in his palm.
XLII
Claudius stared out across the wide expanse of grassland Nacissus had chosen for the surrender of Britain. Was it worth it? He had invested the wealth of an empire to be here this day, had risked the lives of fifty thousand soldiers; his own life. Was it worth it? Yes. Definitely, yes.
He breathed the heady air, felt the power grow in him, and turned to survey the might of Rome. They formed three sides of an enormous square that seemed to stretch for miles across the flat plain. Four legions and their attached auxiliary units were on parade — the Eighth, Ninth, Fourteenth and Twentieth — an army forty thousand strong, even without the Second Augusta and the bulk of the cavalry, who had marched west after the fleeing Caratacus. The fourth side of the square consisted of the Emperor’s reviewing stand with three cohorts of his Praetorian Guard forming a wing on each flank of the huge structure of purple and gold.
To the front right of the stand, in which Claudius and the politicians who had accompanied him took their ease, Rufus stood beside Bersheba, resplendent once more in the golden armour. He was aware of the spectacle around him, but his mind was still numbed by what had happened in the forest, his head filled with the obscene vision of Britte’s last moments. Poor Britte, who had asked nothing but a full belly and a warm bed. He would miss her. A fanfare rang out and he realized the presentations that would precede the surrender were about to begin. He was close enough to the Emperor to see the pride on Frontinus’s face as he marched up on behalf of the depleted ranks of the Cohors Prima Batavorum to receive the unit citation from Claudius’s own hand, and the sadness in his eyes as he remembered the absent comrades who had truly earned it.
‘None deserves it more.’ Rufus flinched as Narcissus spoke the words from a few feet behind him. ‘You should be with them, you and Bersheba. The feat of the river rats and the Emperor’s elephant is still the talk of the army. They’re saying the Batavians swam the Tamesa in their full armour like a shoal of leaping fish.’
‘Verica should be out there too.’ Rufus didn’t particularly mean to say it, but when the words came out of his mouth he didn’t wish them back. ‘He earned his place among the heroes. Even you wouldn’t deny that?’
Narcissus gave a hurt sigh. ‘Verica did his duty, Rufus… as we all did. Verica is the past while Gnaius Hosidius Geta, the horse-faced tribune you see before you, is the future. Geta will receive the honours poor Verica earned and more, but in life he has not done half the service for the Emperor that Verica has in death.’ They watched Geta march up to Claudius to receive his prize and Rufus was puzzled when the Roman’s face went pale. ‘Overwhelmed by the Emperor’s generosity, and well he might be,’ Narcissus explained. ‘The first occasion in our history someone not of consular rank has been awarded the triumphal regalia. They tell me Vespasian is quite put out.’
Rufus tensed and Narcissus moved to one side; the last of the honours had been dispensed and the Emperor was approaching. Rufus touched Bersheba’s flank and the elephant bent her knee so he was able to vault smoothly on to her back just in front of the gold-embossed howdah with its bearded image of Mars, of whom Claudius was now the earthly embodiment. A set of wooden stairs was hurriedly brought forward and the Emperor carefully took his seat two feet behind Rufus.
‘Take her forward — close enough for them to smell her,’ he ordered.
Ten kings, Narcissus had promised, and from a grass-clad mound in the centre of the wide plain ten kings and two queens had watched in wonder as all the terrible power and the awesome glory of Rome marched past. Forty thousand men moving as one behind the eagles of their legions. Forty thousand spear points glittering in the morning sunlight. Forty thousand reasons to obey.
Now the rulers of Britain shifted uneasily as Rufus manoeuvred Bersheba’s huge bulk towards them, bringing her to a halt a few feet from the kneeling line so each was forced to stare upwards at their new Emperor as he sat atop a living mountain of gold that blinded them with its lustre. One by one they rose to pledge their loyalty to Rome.