Belis didn’t smirk or say she’d told me not to come. She sat down beside me, resting one hand on my shoulder.
“It’s all right. You did well in the moment, it’s normal to panic afterwards. It’s a sign you’re not taking it too lightly. It’s when you start laughing things off. Then you have to worry.”
“It’s different from when you see it and when it happens to you. I was…” I paused. “I was quite worried.”
Belis snorted, then looked contrite. “Worried! My word, Mallt, what a thing to say. I’ll freely admit that I was scared when I saw you being attacked. What were you telling me abouthow the only way to be brave is when you’re scared? Be brave with me, Mallt.”
I smiled wanly at her. Rhiannon appeared, climbing over a coil of dead snake.
“We need to move,” she said. “There are handholds in the western wall and for certes this snake didn’t make them. Besides, it seems dead now butshadowbittennever stay that way for long. I don’t think you’ll want to be here when the corruption reanimates it, even more twisted than before.”
Belis met my eyes and I nodded, trying to appear calm. She didn’t seem convinced, but she helped me up and we left the giant corpse behind us and headed to the wall.
The steps I had seen were crude, as if whatever had made them had simply stabbed rough claws into the rock rather than carving them out deliberately. Each was large enough to provide a toehold or something to grab onto. Belis scrambled up the first few yards to check the path. She jumped back to the ground before the mist could swallow her.
“The distance between the footings is the same as far as I can see. You should be able to reach.” She looked at Rhiannon and me. “I’ll go first, then Rhiannon, you follow me. Try to use exactly what I touch. Mallt, you bring up the rear. If something at the top clobbers me, get Rhiannon back to the floor and run like hell. There’ll be another crossing somewhere and you can try there. Understand?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” Belis jumped back onto the wall and pulled herself up. Rhiannon followed, examining the holes in the rock before putting her hands in and stepping up from the floor. Belis moved another few steps up and Rhiannon clambered awkwardly after her. I watched the old queen: she was ungainly but there was strength in her arms. I breathed out in relief. I hadn’t wanted her to fall on me. When she had cleared the first steps I took a final look around the ravine, eyes flitting over the twitching body of the snake, then reached for the wall.
The rock was coated with ash and dust but the filth provideda reasonable grip. I was grateful for the assistance; my hands were still clammy with the cold sweat of the fight. Rhiannon took another step above me and I grabbed for the hold her foot had vacated. Climbing was harder than Belis had made it look and the cliffside seemed a lot higher on the way up. One reach after another, my arms started burning with the effort, my legs to wobble and cramp. I snatched a glance back down. It barely seemed like I’d covered any ground but the height made me dizzy and I clung to the wall.
Rhiannon stumbled above me, causing a shower of pebbles and rock shards to fall on my head. I shut my eyes in time but enough dust slipped beneath my mask to choke me. I coughed hard, desperately wishing for a gulp of water. I could feel my waterskin sloshing around in my pack but I couldn’t reach for it now. It was maddening to have water so close but not to be able to drink. I tried to put it out of my mind and pulled myself up another few inches.
We crawled up the face, step after agonising step. My arms were screaming at me now and I was battling the urge to cough again. I was sure that I could hear something scuffling below us – a harsh gnawing sound floated up on the clouds of ash. I wondered if something had found the snake and was enjoying a meal. My throat was bone dry, too dry to breathe without coughing. I struggled to keep climbing on the same breath but my chest felt as if it would burst. I took one final step and my left hand landed on flat ground. I looked up, realising Rhiannon and Belis had hauled themselves up to the top of the cliff. Belis was leaning back over, reaching out her hand to me.
I sighed with relief, remembering too late why I had been holding my breath. A horrible cough racked my body and burst out of me. I shook, almost falling from the wall. Belis seized me by the collar of my tunic and swung me up. I coughed violently again for a few more moments before Rhiannon thrust a waterskin at me. I took a deep glug of the sweet water. The scratching sound below us stopped.
For a moment we were silent, listening to the quiet. Thenscreeches ripped through the air, first from the rift then from around us.
Rhiannon grabbed the waterskin back from my hands and Belis pulled me to my feet.
“What do we do now?” I whispered, staring through the clouds of dirt that were even thicker up on the rim.
“Now?” Belis said, unslinging her spear from her back. “Now we run.”
Belis Before
6
She is twenty-one years old and her family is broken. They are camped in the fens, close to where the Nene meets the sea. Belis sits at the edge of the tents, staring out across the pale yellow reeds, still gilded by the early-morning frosts. Behind her slumber perhaps four hundred men, women and children. They have been gathering slowly since she and her mother first arrived, two weeks ago. Mostly they are Iceni but a few from the Trinovantes have come, and there are at least four huge old Catuvellauni warriors, still bitter from the Roman defeats some twenty years ago.
The queen welcomes each one, embracing the adults and bending to pat each of the children on their heads. She walks through the encampment in a robe open at the back and her hair pinned high so that all may see what the Romans have done to a British queen. In the evening she gathers the oldest and fiercest fighting men and women in her tent and talks strategy late into the night.
Belis joined her at first but for all the training and practice she has no experience at war and her mother sent her away. Now she spends her nights lying in the sedge grass and watching the secret paths for more pilgrims, more blades to pledge to this sacred endeavour.
Cati is half ghost, rarely straying from their mother’s side. She flinches if men come too close, hands creeping to the knives shehides under her robes. The men of the camp are understanding; they don’t take offence but Belis hates seeing the death of youth in her sister, the innocence that faded as she huddled in her barrel, listening to the world end around her.
So she sits and watches the wind blow through the marshes and watches the herons fly low over the horizon and watches another day in her life pass away.
In another week they are a thousand-strong, in two there are more of them than can be supported by the fenlands and Boudica gives the order to move out. A band of warriors meet them south of Elge with chariots and ponies and from then on Belis and Cati ride beside their mother, wielding spears and shortswords.
Hundreds are coming every day now, the lands of the Iceni and Trinovantes emptying of all their warriors, all their rage focusing on this one point. Even the queen cannot greet each one individually, but she drives the chariot up and down the line, showing the still raw scars on her back, talking of the wrong done to her daughter. Belis stands silently next to her; every day her fury grows and she longs to quench it, to drown it in Roman blood.
She has barely practised with the spear since Icenorum but now as soon as the army stops – for it is an army, there can be no longer any doubt about that – as soon as the army stops she leaps to the ground and calls for a sparring partner. She fights with her battle tip, scorning the blunted wooden staffs used for training. She drills daily and has defeated every man who dares face her. This time, Belis promises herself as she runs laps of the encampment and sharpens her long knives, this time she will fight back. This time they will do the screaming.
They approach Camulodunum at midday. The lords of the Trinovantes know the city well for it is their own capital and they have come up to the front of the column to speak with the queen.
