Looking at the Saxon, not at Brica, she walked up to him. He eyed her expectantly, as if trying to see her figure through her shapeless, leaf-strewn shift. She pulled at the fabric over her thigh, and parted her lips. She reached out to her daughter, and touched Brica’s breast as coarsely as had the Saxon.

He laughed out loud. She could smell barley ale in his breath. His huge hand still clamped over Brica’s mouth, he dragged the girl sideways, so his body was exposed; he was wearing a torc of tarnished silver around his neck. Regina stepped closer to him, touched his chest, then ran her hand down over his crotch. She could feel the bulge there. She smelled urine, semen, the stink of horseshit and the road. He grinned and spoke again, and she pressed her body against his.

The knife slid easily out of her sleeve. Using all her strength she rammed it through layers of coarse cloth into his crotch, above the root of his stiff penis.

His eyes bulged. The Saxon brought down his sword arm. But Regina was standing inside the arc of the stroke and he could do her no harm, not in that first crucial heartbeat. She got both hands on the hilt of the knife and dragged it upward, cutting into flesh and gristle.

And now Brica was at his back, her cut-open tunic flapping. She thrust her own knife into his back and twisted it, seeking his heart. Still the Saxon stood, flailing with his sword arm, as the women ripped and tore with their knives. It was like a dance, Regina thought, a gruesome dance of the three of them, in wordless silence.

Then the Saxon clutched Regina against his torso, and blood dark as birch-bark oil spilled from his mouth into her face. He shuddered and toppled like a felled tree, pulling both women down with him.

With disgust, Regina slithered backward across the dirt-strewn floor. She wiped the blood off her face with her hands. Brica fell on her mother, burying her face in Regina’s chest. Regina tried to comfort her daughter, to stroke her hair and soothe her.

Their return to the farmstead created panic. Marina insisted on treating the bloody scrapes on Brica’s chest with her poultices.

Regina longed to get the Saxon’s blood off her. But first she instructed the younger men to round up the children and animals, while others checked over their simple weapons — a few iron swords and knives, mostly spears and arrows tipped with wood or stone. Meanwhile, led by limping, ancient Carausias himself, now more than sixty years old, others were to go back to the villa, take what they could from the Saxon’s body, and dispose of it. The rest of his raiding party might yet ignore the farmstead, as had others in the past — but they surely would not ignore the murder of one of their own.

When everything was in hand, all Regina wanted was to get to her pallet. In the gloom of her house she curled over on herself, as if trying to escape the world.

She had done many things over the years in order to survive. But she had never killed a human being before. She remembered the little girl who had once run to her mother as she dressed for her birthday party. That child is long dead, she thought, the last vestige of her now gone; and I am like her ghost, or her corpse, kept alive but steadily decaying.

Not without purpose, though. Poor or not, she knew that what they had built here — what she had built — was something to be proud of, something worth saving.

But now the Saxons were here. And Regina must decide what to do.

With the dawn she was awake.

After a brief toilet she pulled on an old tunic and cloak. She slipped out of the compound and walked down the hillside to the marshy land at the side of the river.

On some level she had always known this day would come. She had put it out of her mind, hoping, she supposed, that things would return to normal before she had to face it. But now the day of trial was here, and she had woken with shame that in her denial she had left her people, her own daughter, woefully undefended. They hadn’t even built a palisade around the compound.

She waded out into the water and began to rummage in the black, reed-choked mud. The weather had been dry since spring and the water level was low. She had not forgotten the rusted iron dagger she had once found here, and she had always wondered if any more of that long-dead warrior’s hoard might have survived. If so, it might provide better weaponry than their own poor wooden sticks and stone-tipped arrows. It was a poor idea, but she could think of none better.

She had found nothing but a shield, so corroded it was no more protection than a papyrus toy, when Brica came running down the hillside.

“Regina! Oh, Regina! Mother, why are you here? You must come!”

Regina straightened up, startled. There was smoke in the air. It came from the west. “Exsuperius’s farm,” she said grimly. “The Saxons—”

Brica reached her and grabbed her arm. “We have visitors,” she said.

“Who?”

“I don’t know — you’ll see — you have to come—” She grabbed her mother’s hand and dragged her from the marsh. Together they hurried up the hillside to the farmstead.

A group of soldiers stood before the largest roundhouse, their hands resting casually on the hilts of their swords. They wore leather body armor, short tunics, and woolen trousers. The people of the farmstead stood in a sullen row before the soldiers. With them was the boy Bran, grandson of Exsuperius. His face was blackened by soot, perhaps from the burning of his home, and he stood in subdued silence, a mute testament to the power of these new arrivals.

“There are more of them down on the road,” Brica whispered. “A few carts, too, and a sort of trail of people behind them. Their leader came up and demanded to be let in — we didn’t know what to do — you weren’t here—”

“It’s all right,” Regina said.

“Are they Saxons?”

“I don’t think so.”

One of the soldiers was taller than the rest, obviously the commander. He wore a red cloak and an elaborate leather cuirass, inset with metal buckles. He was perhaps thirty, but his face was lined with the dirt of the road. Regina’s first impression was of strength, competence, but fatigue. And his short brown hair was brushed forward, in the Roman style — even his garb was almost Roman. For a brief moment her heart beat a little faster. Was it possible that the comitatensis had returned?

She stood between her people and the interlopers. She drew herself to her full height, disregarding the dirt on her face and legs, her disheveled clothes, the people in their mud-colored clothes behind her.

The leader hadn’t even noticed her. “Riothamus — “ One of the soldiers tapped his shoulder, indicating Regina. He seemed surprised to find himself facing a woman. He asked, “Are you the leader here?”

“If you wish it. And what rank are you, riothamus ?” She pronounced the word mockingly, masking disappointment. It was Latin, but a version of a British word — ’high king.’ This was no soldier, no officer of the imperial army, but a mere warlord.

He nodded. “That is the only rank I have, and not one I wished for.”

“Oh, really?”

He spread his hands. “I am not here to harm you.”

“Oh,” she said. “And you did not harm this boy, Bran, by burning down his home.”

“I did him the least harm that way.”

“Your definition of harm is interesting.”

He grinned, his eyebrows raised. “Defiance! We have found a new Boudicca, boys.” He won a ripple of laughter from his troops.

She drew herself up. “You will not mock us. We are living poorly here; I can’t deny that. But if you think we are illiterate Saxons—”