Hosker, G [Sword of Cartimandua 05] Revolt of the Red Witch Read Online Free PDF Page A

ground.  “I taught you well!”
    “Lucky for you! You old fraud.  He nearly gutted you then.”
    Shrugging Gaelwyn added, “He didn’t.  The Allfather has a different end for me.”
    They quickly cut down a sapling and thrust it through the boar’s snout and out of its anus. They managed, with some difficulty, to lift it onto their shoulders. “I hope that Ailis isn’t expecting us soon.  It will take us longer to get home than it took to get here for this is a mighty beast.”
    “Stop moaning old man. The food will taste all the better after a healthy walk and besides think of the taste of this fine beast when we come to eat him.”
    “Lead on then you old Brigante and try to find a shorter route or we will still be eating our food at breakfast time.”
     
    Ailis loved it when the three young boys played amongst themselves and she could just watch then whilst she and the cook prepared the evening meal.  The two years that Gaius had been home were the happiest of her life.  Her whole world was perfection.  Her two sons were healthy and no trouble at all while Marco’s son, Decius was even more pleasant.  He was a lovely little boy who was as much her child as her own two. She loved the hunting days when the three men in her life would return full of tales of heroic hunting and full of praise for her food and they would sit until the early hours drinking mead and wine and, in typical old man’s style, making the world a much better place.  For her part she was happy to bring their drinks and just listen to them smiling at their banter and their humour. When she wanted the company of women she would go to her kitchen and talk with the slaves who helped her prepare the food. She had been a slave once and went out of her way to make life as pleasant for them as possible.  For their part they adored both her and the children.  To Ailis, after so many years in captivity, it was like being in heaven already.  Life was good.
     
    Outside the warband had surrounded the stockaded settlement. The warband leader remembered leaving a dead brother here the last time they had raided, years earlier, and he was taking no chances this time.  There would be guards and sentries, that he knew, but because it was protected there were things inside worth stealing, animals, women, treasure. He had brought fifty men with him and he had watched as the three men had left before dawn. They waited until just past noon when he saw that the men who were guarding the villa had been fed. As two of them relieved themselves and two others walked off into the woods he dropped his arm as the signal. The two men entering the woods were grabbed and stabbed by four warriors.  The sentries two relieving themselves were struck by arrows as were the two also in plain sight.  The rest of the warband just raced through the open gate, blades drawn and ready to kill any man that they saw.
    The first that Ailis knew of the raid was when one of the farm’s guards, standing at the door, watching the boys play, fell through the opening, an arrow through his neck. She was so shocked that she did not even begin to react, she couldn’t understand what was happening in her peaceful part of the province of Britannia ;there had been peace for so many years that this was impossible, it was a nightmare from which she would soon awake.  Suddenly she heard the screams of men dying and the clash of sword on sword.  She yelled at the cook, “Get Decius!”
    The two of the grabbed the three boys and ran for the doorway.  The sight which greeted them was their worst nightmare and worse than anything Ailis might have dreamed; a Caledonii warband had managed to get close to the perimeter and attacked without warning.  The guards already lay dying and the farm workers were busy trying to defend themselves with whatever came to hand, farm tools, sticks, even leather belts were used. Ailis and the cook ran in the opposite direction from the fighting.  In