Free Emperor by Stephen Baxter

be marched away along these roads to go fight in Germany and Thrace and Asia, far from the misty cool of their homeland. Thus the empire absorbed its enemies and used them for its own further expansion—
    A hand was clamped over her mouth. Agrippina struggled, but she was pinned to the ground. Her mind flooded with awful memories of that night on the beach. But then the weight shifted off her back, and she was able to twist and see the broad, dirt-streaked face of Braint, the farmer.
    ‘Sorry,’ Braint hissed. ‘Didn’t want you yelling out.’
    Agrippina tried to control her anger. ‘You shouldn’t have done that.’
    ‘Well, you should be watching your back,’ Braint said. She crawled deeper into the undergrowth, and winced.
    For the first time Agrippina noticed that Braint’s leg was bleeding. ‘What happened? Were you found?’
    ‘Nearly. I gashed my leg on a rock, and lost my knife, but I got away. Dodgy work, this spying. No wonder they gave it to us women.’
    ‘You need to tie up that cut. Do you want to borrow my knife?’
    ‘No need.’ Braint cast around on the ground, and turned up a lump of flint. She slammed it down against a rock and cracked it in two, exposing an interior as smooth as cream. She tapped half the rock with a pebble to crack off long thin flakes, selected one shard, and began to saw a strip of cloth from her tunic. All this took only heartbeats. ‘So,’ she said as she worked, ‘you counted the legionaries as they went by? How many?’
    ‘You don’t want to know. I even stayed to see the road builders pass.’
    ‘Oh, yes. Those blond young Germans, stripped to the waist. I bet you enjoyed the sight.’ She leered and grabbed her own crotch.
    Agrippina, still shaken up, couldn’t help smiling, for she had had some earthy thoughts as she watched the soldiers work.
    Braint said, ‘I saw them smashing up a holy place. They pulled down a ring of standing stones and crushed them for rubble, to make their road. They have no respect.’
    ‘But it’s a mighty force they’ve brought, Braint. Even Caratacus is going to be discouraged.’
    ‘I wouldn’t count on it,’ Braint said gloomily. ‘He’s too fond of himself for that. Yesterday he led another assault on the Roman line. He burned a cart full of legionaries’ socks, and lost three warriors in the process.’ She snorted her contempt. ‘Perhaps a thousand such flea bites will cause the Romans to falter. But it’s beneath Caratacus’s dignity, and I can’t blame him for that. What’s worse, all day the Roman commander has been receiving embassies. One local rich man or petty boss after another, coming to pledge allegiance to the Emperor.’
    ‘We expected that,’ Agrippina said.
    ‘Yes, but one of them was the princes’ own brother, Cogidubnus.’ One of the sons Cunobelin had sent off for education to Rome. ‘The word is that Cogidubnus is going to travel the country under Roman guard, negotiating treaties for the Emperor.’
    ‘He would betray his own brothers?’
    Braint shrugged. ‘I think Cogidubnus would say that with their antics in recent years, Caratacus and Togodumnus have brought this storm down on all our heads. But there’s rarely a right or a wrong in family matters, Agrippina, as you know.’
    ‘So what now?’
    ‘Caratacus is impatient. He’s giving up the plan–the skirmishing, the ambushes. Soon the Romans will have to ford the Cantiaci River. Caratacus says that is where he will make his stand.’
    ‘He’s going for a pitched battle after all?’ Agrippina felt a thrill of conflicting emotions. ‘I suppose the whole course of Caratacus’s life has led him to this point–him and Togodumnus.’
    Braint harrumphed. ‘If you use the word “honour” about them I’ll smack you. The princes are two spoilt little boys who won’t quit until they have it their own way. And they have the druidh whispering in their ear. Anyhow we have no choice but to support them. And, who knows, they