Emperor by Stephen Baxter Page B

For her toilet she dragged her fingers through dirty hair, and wiped a hand over her face. She caught her own breath and was aware of its stink. She really ought to find a bit of willow bark to clean her teeth. She had no idea how she looked, nor did she care. After the battle she had smashed all her mirrors and given the fragments to the river. It wasn’t a time for mirrors, or other Roman fashions.
    She stepped out of the house. It was close to midday, judging by the position of the sun. It had been a hot, oppressive summer, and though autumn would soon be here the heavy heat still lingered.
    She walked with Cunedda across Camulodunum. The town was busy. People were on the move, carts rolled through the lanes, children and animals scurried about as they always did, and spindles of smoke rose up from the smiths’ forges. The market was thronged too, as people bartered goods and services, a young pig for a new sickle blade, a basket of strawberries for a dyed wool blanket. All this activity had nothing to do with the Romans but with the seasons. This was a town of farmers and, regardless of the great events of the human world, the sun and moon followed their patient cycles through the sky, and soon it would be time to gather in the harvest.
    And yet things weren’t the same. People went about their work joylessly. Only a few people dared carry weapons; Cunedda himself didn’t. The battle had taken a bite out of the population. There were fewer young men around than there had been at the beginning of the summer. And there were injured, amputees, even among the women, and a few helpless folk who could no longer work at all lay in the shade with wooden bowls or cups before them. But nobody was starving in Camulodunum; if your family could no longer support you, the community would do so.
    It had been this way since the defeat at the river, forty days already since that disaster. They had been long days of anxiety and waiting for the final blow to fall, while the humid heat lay like a dome across the landscape.
    And all the while the Romans sat in their camp just half a day’s ride away from Camulodunum.
    Everybody had expected the Romans simply to march straight into Camulodunum. Who could have stopped them? The townsfolk whispered rumours from Gaul and Germany of Roman atrocities, of towns burned, babies disembowelled and women violated–men too, it was said of these decadent Latins. Certainly the Romans might wish to make an example of the town, the centre of the most significant resistance they were likely to face in the whole of Britain. At times Roman soldiers even came riding into Camulodunum itself, as if to inspect their property, their Latin harsh and unfamiliar, their cheek galling.
    But still they did not act, and as the days passed the tension of not knowing what was to come became ever harder to bear.
    Agrippina and Cunedda reached Braint’s house and pushed inside. Braint herself was out but Nectovelin was here, rummaging through a heap of armour and weaponry.
    It was hot enough inside the house for Nectovelin to have stripped to the waist; his tunic and cloak were heaped up against the wall behind him. Agrippina’s eye was caught by a slim leather folder among his effects. It looked like the kind of document case she had seen in Gaul carried by lawyers or moneylenders. She could only think of one document a Brigantian warrior like Nectovelin might carry in such a case.
    Cunedda had brought her here to see the weaponry, for much of it was Roman. ‘We managed to pinch all these pieces from a heap outside their fort. The Romans went out onto the battlefield after they routed us. They stripped the bodies of their fallen before taking them away.’
    Nectovelin grunted. ‘They reclaim the equipment of their dead for repair and reuse. Nothing if not thrifty, these Romans.’
    Cunedda said, ‘Look, Agrippina.’ He picked up shaped strips of iron.
    ‘A legionary’s armour,’ Nectovelin growled. ‘They call