Marilyn Todd - Scorpion Rising

'Nothing she didn't deserve,' he'd told the Chieftains.

Bloody Romans, this was. Putting ideas in his wife's head that women could answer back.

'And your children? Did they deserve their beatings, too?'

'Discipline's breaking down under these bastards and you're castigating me for enforcing it in my own home?' He couldn't believe what he was hearing. 'You ask whether I'm blind to progress, but it's you who can't see that Rome's cut off your balls under the pretext of friendship.'

His loyalty was to his bloodline, he thundered. Where was theirs?

'I won't stand by while the tribes are annihilated through your self-centred apathy. You say trade benefits our people? I say they're selling their souls. You say peace is a good thing? I say it's man's duty to fight, not only to defend what is his, but to take from his neighbour if his neighbour is weak, for weakness cannot be tolerated in any society, least of all ours!'

The Chieftains had glanced at each other, but more in pity, he'd thought, than discomfort.

'You are still a young man,' they said. 'You have a wife, who will be married off to another should you be cast out, and whose husband will raise your children as his own. Think carefully. You are denying yourself, as well as them, the chance to speak to or hug them again, and you might wish to consider those consequences before we cast our votes.'

'Men are born to be warriors and though my sons might be forbidden from speaking to me, you cannot strip away their respect!'

As they grew up, they'd see it was their father who led

Aquitania to freedom and drove the oppressors from Gaul. Standing in that circle of longhouses, surrounded by browbeaten weaklings, the Whisperer's heart had swelled as he pictured his sons growing into warriors in his own image. Tearing up law courts, pulling down temples, putting an end to the trade that brought foreign ways into the region. What use were aqueducts anyway, when women were perfectly capable of fetching water from the river in buckets? Thanks to him, there would be a return to the old ways, when life was simple, the only tongue heard was their own and men went to war, as they should do. A return, moreover, to a morality in which children obeyed their fathers and wives didn't dare question how their husbands spent the household income.

He snorted. Stupid bitch couldn't understand that men drank to relieve the pressures of raising a family, that it was them who went out to work, them who deserved a treat for their slaving. Ach, the man who took on that lazy cow, good luck to him, that's what he said. Let some other poor bugger listen to her whining on about having no money for food because he'd drunk it away. Let some other poor bastard find out what it's like, coming home late at night and wanting his woman, then having to fight for what's his because she objected to being bent over the bloody table or was cramped up with a toothache. Who the hell wanted to look at her fucking face anyway? Good riddance to that selfish bitch.

'If you cowards won't back me,' the Whisperer had shouted to all the tribespeople who'd gathered to vote, 'there are enough Aquitani who aren't happy shouldering this foreign yoke. Who needs you?'

It was them who'd need him, watch and see. Them who'd bloody need him. Because who had united the Nations, eh? All right, some of these hotheads were bitter for all the wrong reasons, but who was it who'd stirred up passion among the dispassionate? Who'd inspired the disenchanted? Who'd roused the anger that had lain dormant for a whole generation? Through him — through his carefully executed crimes and his extensive contacts — an arsenal of weapons and supplies had been amassed, traps set, pits dug, nets sewn that would spring down from the trees, and when the battle cry rose up, the Oppressors wouldn't know what bloody hit them.

And if the Chieftains thought shunning would teach him a lesson, they were right. Instead of standing on the steps of the basilica and railing against his people's indifference, the Whisperer had adopted patience and stealth in his quest to rid Gaul of these pigs. Changing his name, changing his identity and being all things to all men, he moved from daylight into the shadows, conducting his business in secret and discussing rebellion in whispers. Oh, but soon. He smiled. Soon he'd be free to emerge from the darkness and lift his face to the sun. No more shadows. No more whispers. Only screams.

The screams of Roman women as his sword ripped their throats and hacked the heads of their children clean off their shoulders. The screams of Roman babies, the screams of filthy half-breeds, but most especially the screams of the Hundred-Handed, who'd done so much to suck the power from men, even to preaching that all life in the universe stemmed from a woman. Well, let's see how swiftly this earth mother rides to their rescue when their eyes are being gouged out and their precious gesticulating hands are chopped off. By the axe of the Thunder God, he'd leave so much carnage in his wake that the beehive of Rome would buzz wild with anger. And once grief and outrage had blinded it to all reason, that's when the Whisperer would slough off his disguise and lead the charge for freedom.

No armour. Not for him. He'd ride down on them shirtless to prove he had nothing to fear, and it wouldn't only be Rome who paid the price. The Chiefs would pay dearly for not backing him. Them, and that bitch of a wife.

He thought back to this morning, to the slave block in Santonum, and spat. He didn't hold with these Roman-style auctions. Slaves should be captured in combat and brought back as trophies. Let the bastards understand every day for the rest of their lives who was boss. But what he wouldn't have given right then to put the cow that he'd married on that auction block and see her sold into bondage.

That was another lesson he'd learned since that voting jug was upended with not a single white pebble in sight. Just how many different ways there were to hurt women. How many methods by which he could inflict pain.

Well, let's see the bitch answer back now. See who calls him a drunk and a loser, then.

As the gong summoned the new male slaves to assemble, the Whisperer counted the hours until he set the beehive buzzing.

And could finally step out of the shadows.

Suls?'

Giv

Given that her role was devoted entirely to death, Ailm seemed the obvious person to ask, and it was no sacrifice on Claudia's part that the questioning took place in what the Hundred-Handed termed the Hall of Purification — and everyone else called a bathhouse.

'It's not often a Roman enquires what happens to a Gaul's soul,'Ailm added drily, 'but since you ask, its future is determined by Avita the Mother, who lives deep in the earth and breathes life into all living things.'

Unlike the bathhouses Claudia was accustomed to, this was no stone-built complex of steam rooms, promenades and gymnasia. No works of art hung on its walls, no statues lined its entrance, no attendants wafted round with wine and sweetmeats. Indeed, there was little to differentiate the Hall from the rest of the rectangular, windowless, single-roomed buildings within the sacred precinct apart from the hyssop that decked the lintel for purification. Lit by candles tinted with green dye and scented with fragrant oils, and with its interior walls insulated with colourful woven withies, the Hall oozed peace and serenity. Begging the question, how stressful could watching trees be?

'Souls have three paths,' Ailm said. 'First, those that are judged to be honest and pure Avita ensures are reborn into a better life.'

While she explained the system, a young girl with a cap of blonde, almost white, hair helped Claudia to undress, then escorted her to a wooden table which was warm to the touch and on which Claudia was invited to lie face down. Carefully positioning her arms and brushing her hair free of her neck, the girl then placed a row of heated stones down the length of Claudia's spine. It was not a therapy she had encountered before and she wondered who'd first thought of laying hot stones on a backbone. And why it took them so long.