Prologue
You Romans are to blame for this; for you send as guardians of your flocks, not dogs or shepherds, but wolves. (Cassius Dio)
Germania Magna, Cherusci tribal lands, circa 6 BCE
My damned brothers wouldn’t leave me to milk the goats alone again. Cursing with each step, I ran out of the roundhouse and down the path to my family’s animal corral, bare feet slapping in the dust.
So help me, I would drag them back by their ears and tie them to farm tools. Though the twins were only six years to my nine, every day they grew in strength and height, and speed, damn them. If I could just wrangle Levin to a shovel, he’d be forced to help me. I could worry about catching Lennart later.
Milking the goats and corralling my younger brothers was my job, and I took it with utmost seriousness. The day was early yet, but a cloudless sky promised a sweaty afternoon. The sooner we finished our morning chores, the sooner I could sneak off to the meadow where Mama and her warriors trained. If I was lucky, one of the younger women would take pity on me and let me train with her. I was supposed to train with the other village children, but by my logic, the best training happened with the best warriors. Mama’s troop of women and men were the best in our whole tribe.
Fortunately for me, I found the twins arguing in their half-spoken, half-unspoken secret language in the aging lean-to where we stored our tools.
“Did you see it?” Lennart whispered to Levin.
“Of course I saw it.” Levin gave his brother a playful shove. “He’s been showing it to everyone.”
In my very best imitation of Mama when she tired of our antics, I sighed gustily. “Levin, go get a goat and start milking. We’ll never get done if you two don’t stop gossiping about that treasure.”
Levin stuck his tongue out at me but did as I instructed.
“But Thusnelda,” Lennart whined, “it’s Roman treasure. Our warriors pummeled a whole band of them!”
“And I’ll pummel you if you don’t make yourself useful. Go collect the eggs.”
I took up my stool and bucket and collected the goat I called “Brown Goat,” for obvious reasons. The matter with the Romans was settled in my mind. They had attacked a farmstead belonging to a family of our tribe, the Cherusci, after the farmer had refused to sell his crops for coin, coin we didn’t use. They had taken the women as slaves, put the men to the sword, and taken the boys for their army. We struck back to teach those whoresons a lesson, and the band, mostly comprised of Mama’s troop, returned to much merriment and celebration for their victory. Our fighters laid waste to nearly fifty of theirs and returned with trophies of armor, short swords, horses, tents, anything we might use. This was Cherusci justice.
Lennart’s egg collecting resulted in outraged squawking from the birds and an impressive litany of swearing for a six-year-old. I laughed at his antics and Levin shouted, “There wasn’t enough smart in Mama’s belly for both of us!”
“What’s going on over there?” Mama called. Papa and Wout, my older brother by a few years, stood behind her. Wout held two fishing poles, a bucket, and a fish knife on his belt, and Papa had slung not one but two water skins across his shoulders and wore a large floppy hat to shield his eyes. Today was his day to mind the village cattle, an unspeakably boring and smelly chore I didn’t envy.
“Lennart still can’t collect eggs right, Mama.” She grinned at me. I lived for those conspiratorial grins, as though I shared secret knowledge with her and only her. I didn’t yet, but that grin told me one day I would. One day I would understand all her private amusements.
“I can see that.” She chuckled from across the corral fence. “I’ll be fishing with Wout for a few hours down by the river in case you need me for anything.”
Her hand smoothed over her massive belly in the unspoken reminder that at this stage in her pregnancy, sitting in the shade by a calm river was second only to remaining in bed all day. Three different midwives agreed it was another set of twins, what with how large her belly had grown so early in her pregnancy.
Papa frowned behind her. We all knew he’d prefer it if she remained abed all day until the time came, not walking down to the river shore and certainly not overseeing the day’s training. She’d barely survived the twins’ births, and her last two babes had died in the womb. It wasn’t uncommon, but Mama was a hearty and muscular woman with the soul of a warrior, and she wouldn’t be taken from us so easily. My Mama wouldn’t die without a sword in her hand.
I tried not to take umbrage at Mama’s suggestion that I might need her help managing the twins through our daily chores. The fact that I was only nine years old seldom stopped me from demanding adult treatment.
Instead of snapping about the silliness of her reminder, or pouting, or rolling my eyes, I pushed back from Brown Goat and offered her what I thought was my most reassuring smile. “I know, Mama. We’ll be fine here.”
Though Papa and Wout marched off with absent waves, Mama hesitated, her eyes flicking from Levin and me with the goats, to the chicken coop still loud with offended birds. After a moment, she shook her head, bade us farewell, and followed down the path.
It took another hour for the three of us to work through the goats. After that we raked the corral free of goat droppings and other mess, then checked each length of fence for weak spots. Squinting against the bright afternoon sunlight, I spotted a figure in dark clothes sprinting toward us down the dirt lane. Once he got closer, I recognized Ermin, and my heart raced. We’d been betrothed since my birth, but only that spring had I grown to appreciate his handsome features and the impressive height promised by his gangly, fifteen-year-old body. As chief Segimer’s eldest son, he would one day be chief himself and I would be his wife, queen of the Cherusci. I sat up straight and tried to smooth my fair hair into something respectable with grubby, dirt-stained hands.
Levin noticed Ermin’s alarm before I did and abandoned his fence-kicking. “What’s wrong?”
“Romans,” he wheezed, “hundreds of them. Spotted near here, heading this way.”
I called Lennart, who’d returned to cursing and banging around the chicken coop.
“Come.” Ermin snatched my and Levin’s hands. I took up Lennart’s when he wandered over to us, shaking his head and frowning in confusion. “Get to the woods.”
“But Mama—” I tugged to get free and rush toward the river. Mama and Wout were at the river. I could warn them.
“No time.” Ermin tightened his grip. Poor Lennart hadn’t the first idea what was happening and burst into tears. Ermin scooped him onto his hip, skinny yet strong from his training and toiling in the fields, and I took Levin by the arm.
Ermin yanked me along despite my protests. I was too little to put up much of a fight, and his urgency inflamed my rising panic.
Levin and I barely kept up with his fast pace; Ermin was outrunning us even with Lennart in his arms and slowing himself for our sakes. Levin stumbled and cried behind me, but I wasn’t big enough to carry him. The twins were big like Wout and though I was three years older, I was only a few inches taller.
We darted up and over the tall palisades encircling our village. When Levin slipped, I jerked him back to his feet and kept us going. Ermin turned south, through the spelt and oat fields. The tall grasses whipped at our faces, and it was only Ermin’s height that kept us on a straight track. At last we burst into the trees and still Ermin ran on, deftly avoiding the myriad natural obstacles at his feet and protecting Lennart from the swipes of brambles and low branches. When he stopped by a copse of alder trees, we were all panting and sweating. I swiped at a biting fly swarming around my face and earned myself a stinging bite to the arm.
“Up.” Ermin lifted Lennart to the nearest thick branch. “Everyone up there, as high as you can.”
With my knee, I gave Levin a boost to follow his brother and turned to Ermin. “What about you?”
Instead of answering, he pulled a dagger from his belt and handed it to me.
“Take this.” He held my hand in both of his and looked at me with a gravity I’d never seen from him. Good humor, often. Annoyance, most definitely. A feigned sobriety, the kind boys put on when they wanted to act more adult than they were, regularly. This look, however, chilled me. “Don’t let them take you alive. The twins will be all right. They’ve been taking our boys into their army. But not you. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
What they would do to me that was so awful I should choose death, I didn’t understand. Many years later, I’d at last sympathize with why Mama had sought to shield me from the horrors men wrought on women and girls. At nine summers old, I didn’t know anything.
“I can fight them,” I said, brandishing the blade for good measure.
“No, Thusnelda,” he shook his head. “You can’t. There’re too many of them.”
“But—”
“Promise me!” He gave me a shake. “Promise me you won’t let them take you alive.”
He was red in the face, wild-eyed and frantic. I had no choice but to go along with him, though I had every intention of fighting my way free.
“Yes, Ermin.”
“Good,” he said. “Whatever happens, whatever you hear, don’t come down from this tree. Don’t reveal yourselves. I’ll come back for you, I promise.”
Without warning and to my shame, hot, wet tears burst from my eyes. I didn’t wail or sob despite the tremors wracking my body. He’s not coming back, I thought. He was going to run back to our village, fight, die, and I’d never get to marry him. I had eagerly anticipated the day when I got to marry such a fine man, the kind of man who rushed to my side to protect me and my little brothers. I was only a child, but I knew enough to understand that was special.
He wrapped me in a tight hug against his sweaty chest and patted my head. “Don’t worry, Wildberry,” he said, using the nickname he’d invented for me. “I swear I’ll be back for you. But I need you to get in the tree and be strong for your brothers. Can you do that?”
I sniffed and brushed my tears away with the back of my hand. “Yes.”
“Good. Go on, get up there.”
Only once I was up the tree did he leave. As he disappeared from view, the steady, rhythmic clomping of heavy feet, the clatter of armor, shouts in a lyrical foreign tongue overtook the natural sounds of the forest.
Through the leaves, I caught glimpses of their army in the distance. There were so many of them. They marched in strict order and straight lines, each step matching a steady beat. In that moment, I learned the horror of discipline. This was no mob of warriors competing for glory, but a machine of death.
They blew horns, a menacing noise so deep and loud our tree shook with it. The Romans shouted and their voices rose into a chant so clear I made out the word.
“NECO! NECO! NECO!” When I at last learned Latin, I thought back to this day and recalled their chant.
“KILL! KILL! KILL!”
Then came the screams, so much screaming. My people responded with their own battle cries, but they were half-hearted, surprised. The pleasant smell of burning wood drifted to us and it forever altered any comfort I once took in the scent. Though the words were lost over distance, I recognized the sound of begging. Animals howled and yelped and squealed. Metal weapons clashed and rang out. A few branches above me, the twins wept and moaned as quietly as possible. I feared that by the time the Romans finished and we climbed down, the village would be destroyed. No family, no tribe, and I would be responsible for raising the boys, keeping us safe and fed. Silent tears streamed down my face. That task was impossible for a child. We’d be lucky to survive the winter all alone. We’d be lucky to be taken as scalcs by another tribe.
Finally, blessedly, the noise dwindled. Smoke rose, gray and thick. When the Romans marched back the way they came, flashes of brightly colored tunics and trousers in the Cherusci fashion joined their ranks, shuffling along in a mass of bodies and clanking iron chains. With an eye on the sun moving across the sky, I made the twins wait several hours more, certain this was a trick or, if the Romans fought anything like us, they’d be back after this initial assault.
When they didn’t come back and Ermin remained absent, I eased to the forest floor and coaxed the boys with me. Someone had to take charge. We held hands on the walk back. The dagger weighed heavily on my belt, and I hoped I wouldn’t have to use it. Our world smelled of smoke and death, but I heard low voices speaking in our tongue and I swelled with relief. We weren’t left alone to fend for ourselves! Perhaps our family had survived. Perhaps Ermin was wounded or busy, and that’s why he hadn’t returned for us.
The fields to the north burned, and the smoke stung my eyes. A few roundhouses also burned, but not nearly as many as I expected. Smoke billowed from grain and food stores dotted throughout the village. Men dragged bodies into our square. I fought the urge to shield the boys and myself from the sight. We all needed to witness what Rome was. We needed to know our enemy.
But for the murmur of voices, our village was strangely silent. Blood coated our central road, and I breathed in its coppery tang. This was battle, and I had to inure myself to it if I was ever going to be a warrior. Shocked, grief-stricken survivors cried in near total silence over the bodies of their loved ones. It was as if any loud noise might call those demons back to finish what they had started.
“Children!” Papa cried, almost shrill. He staggered to us, tears streaking through dirt and ash on his face. I had never seen him weep before, and the sight stunned me into stillness. He hugged and inspected each of us with rough pats. “Thank the gods you’re all right. Where were you?”
“Ermin took us to the woods. Where is he?” I coughed over the smoke scratching at my throat.
His face darkened and behind him, Wout sat in the dirt, sobbing. His lip sported a gash, and blood dribbled down his chin.
Papa grabbed all three of us and pressed our faces into his soiled tunic.
“Don’t look at her,” he said. “Don’t look.”
I twisted until my face poked out beneath his arm and immediately wished I hadn’t. Among the bodies littering the road, I recognized Mama’s tunic. Dark red blood stained it and she wasn’t moving. Her sword was still in her hand.
Move, I willed her with my mind. Get up. You have to get up.
She didn’t; my mind refused to make sense of it. I’d seen death before—animals, babies, people who suffered accidents—but not my mother. Not a woman so hearty. Not a woman I loved so much, a woman I needed.
Beyond her, Chief Segimer lay dead, slashed from shoulder to groin, and his wife knelt over his body with a face of stone. Nearby, Segimer’s brother, Ingomar, sat in the dirt holding the body of his young daughter, rocking her back and forth as though she were sleeping and her skull wasn’t cracked open. His own wife’s body lay next to him. Our chief was dead and his family decimated.
I didn’t cry. The twins wailed and ran to Wout, who took them in his arms and together they let their grief take the form of a flood. Not me. I pushed away from Papa and stood in the middle of the road, swaying beneath the weight of it all. Mama was gone. I screwed my face up tight lest I crumple, like the men. Mama was gone, our chief was dead, and before the day was out, I’d discover all the friends and cousins we lost, too. I couldn’t breathe.
“Do you see?” Papa’s voice broke in a shout. “Do you see what happens when you fight them? I told you to make peace!”
A few faces turned his way, but most remained lost in their own pain.
“No one had to die!” He railed on, tugging at his hair until his side knot loosened and hung down his cheek. “Never again. I will never let this happen again.”
He wandered away, muttering about all the things he’d do to save us from Rome. If I had listened more carefully, I would have known then what he intended for us and it wasn’t salvation from the invaders.
Ermin wasn’t there to stop him and claim the chieftainship that was rightfully his, nor was his little brother. It would be many years before Ermin returned to me, but over one devastating afternoon, I lost my mother and became the female head of our household, responsible for everything Mama had seen to. With Ermin’s dagger always at my side, I spent the next fourteen years shaping myself into a warrior and fervently praying to the gods I would be ready the next time the Romans came for us.
