Part I
Chapter 1
43 AD, Cantium, Britannia
Roxilana, 7 years old
The screams wake me.
Fear gnaws at my bones as I lay in my bed and listen to them. The sounds are high pitched, terrified, pained.
On either side of me my older sister and younger brother sleep soundly, blithely unaware of whatever is happening outside the walls of our house.
Across the room, one of my parents stirs, then sits up. I stare at them in the darkness, too afraid to call out, but yearning to be close.
The screams, they’re getting louder and more numerous, and they’re now accompanied by the roar and crackle of fire.
I hear my mom’s voice across the room of our house, she shakes my father awake.
“Wake up, get up. Something’s happening.”
Outside, people rush past our house. There are shrieks and shouts and terrible, wet noises that scare me most of all. My siblings are stirring but then—then—
I hear the crackle and hiss of fire so much closer—first near our door, then on our thatched roof.
A shout, then a scream—I think the sounds belong to my parents, but it’s too dark. I cannot see, I cannot tell.
One of them rushes to my bedside and begins to shake me and my siblings. My mom, I realize. In the darkness, I can just make out the gleaming whites of her eyes.
“Wake up, wake up!” she whispers, her voice frantic, hoarse. Behind her, smoke is billowing into the room of our house, backlit by an unholy orange glow as the flames grow. The bundles of hanging herbs my mother sometimes uses for potions catch fire, and I can smell their clashing fragrances in the thickening smoke.
My brother and sister finally wake, and they’re beginning to shout in confusion and fear and someone’s crying. Is it me? There’s a lot of smoke. It stings my eyes. Maybe I am crying.
My mother tugs me and my siblings, shouting commands at us, but fear has dulled my senses. My older sister gets up first, crossing the room, vanishing into smoke.
“Up, now!” my mother commands, giving me a swift yank on my arm.
I stumble forward just as part of our thatched roof collapses. I scream, backing away from it. I can’t see the door; darkness and smoke have obscured it completely.
Somewhere in the distance I hear my father’s shout, but it cuts off sharply. Where is he?
I move toward the noise while my mother helps my brother out. My heart feels like it’s trying to escape my chest. I can hear the pound of it, even over the roar of the flames.
Ba-bum-ba-bum-ba-bum.
Overhead, more of the roof collapses, the burning thatch falling behind me, right where my bed rests. I scream, but it’s quickly eclipsed by my mother and brother’s screams.
I turn to them, all I see is fire—hungry, hazy fire.
“Mom!” My hoarse cry ends in a hacking cough.
Babumbabumbabum.
More screams. Pieces of burning thatch fall on my shoulders, and in my panic, I flee in the opposite direction.
The door materializes through the smoke, and I rush through it. I’ve barely crossed the threshold and tasted the crisp air when I trip over something large.
I go sprawling forward, falling into warm, sticky mud. The screams are louder out here. Around me, people run through the streets while strangely dressed men dash around, swinging swords and cutting people open like they’re meat. Everything else is obscured by fire and smoke. Ash swirls in the darkness, and I’m sure this is the end of the world.
“Mom! Dad!” My throat burns as I shout. I think maybe I am crying again, but it’s too hot for tears to linger.
I scramble to my feet, my attention moving to the lump I tripped on. My gaze crawls up a bloody body and lands on my father’s slack face, the flames dancing in his lifeless eyes.
I scream then, the sound mingling with all the other cries out here. I scream and scream and scream until I vomit, and then I scream some more.
My house collapses fully then, the walls and the last of the roof caving in. I continue to scream, the sounds only interrupted by my frantic shouts for my mom and brother to escape and for my dad to wake up.
It feels like something cracks wide open inside of me, unleashing more than my terror and pain. I reach a hand to my chest, where a throbbing pain has started up, sure I’ve been struck, but I don’t feel a wound there.
Someone grabs me with a roughened hand then, someone who wears leathers and armor that slap and clang as they move. There’s a sword in their grip, and as they drag me off the ground and force me forward, they cut down a neighbor running by.
I’d scream again, but my throat hurts and there’s that sharp ache in my chest. My father is dead. My mother and brother … I—I think I know their fates … but no, that cannot be. They cannot be gone too.
As for my sister … I do not know whether she’s alive or dead, only that she’s not among the ashen-faced villagers these armor clad men have taken captive.
When the sun rises, all that’s left of my town are its smoking bones and a graveyard of unburied dead.
