The Road North

During the first century A.D., in the time of the Emperor Nero, a young cavalryman named Crow takes his troop of new recruits across southern Europe and the Atlantic to the Roman colony of Britain. They arrive to find the new town of London and two other Roman towns burned to the ground by the tribes of eastern Britain. These tribes and their families, under the leadership of the Iceni queen, Boudicca, were slaughtered by Romans of the Twentieth Legion in a battle before the return of Crow and his squad. Crow and his recruits help the Twentieth clear damage done by the Iceni. They stand guard as the engineers, troops and slaves of the legion build a new road leading north from London across the now barren, depopulated lands in the east of Britain. General Paulinus, whose troops fought and destroyed the Britons, is enraged by the insult of a mere woman’s ability to lead an uprising. He is obsessed by finding her, alive or dead, and will not be satisfied until he has her head as a trophy. Crow and his troop of boys are sent into the land of the Iceni as scouts and sentries. They are to hold the tribal capital till Paulinus’ engineers arrive and turn it into a Roman fort. On the way, Crow befriends a survivor of the Roman retribution. He mistakes the survivor for a boy, but soon finds it is a woman, starved nearly to death and disguised as she hides from the Romans. Crow feeds and cares for this survivor, called Ceres, who follows him and his troop to the Iceni capital. As he trains his recruits and they become a real squad, Crow sees that Iceni community is now abandoned and its land has been left fallow. Its owners are now almost entirely lost to slavery and death. Crow’s troops are holding the land for its re-distribution to Romans and Roman-friendly land holders. Although Crow’s troop is made of boys who have been volunteered to serve the Romans as tribute, some of them are not satisfied with the situation. Crow himself, as he looks back at his own lost family in the plains of Eastern Europe, becomes sympathetic with the local tribes and their precarious position under Roman power. He is especially concerned for the fate of the woman has lost everything to the Romans. One member of the squad, Dionysus, wants more than to ride with the Roman army. He spends his time making friends with Roman troops and finding ways to trade his way up from the cavalry. His chance comes when he meets General Paulinus and impresses Paulinus with a gift, a statue of Paulinus’ enemy, Boudicca. Paulinus, in gratitude, promises Dionysus to help him get closer to the powerful of this Roman colony. As Crow surveys the abandoned eastern coast of Britain, he remembers the damage done by Roman rule to his own people. He becomes more involved with Ceres, the woman he saved from starving, and more sympathetic to the tribes that for centuries held the land which is now in Roman hands. Crow’s men return to the legion and its road building. Because they are better horsemen than the Romans, and tougher, they are in demand as couriers. Dionysus finds himself assigned to light duty for the higher-ups in the headquarters near London. In comparison, the rest of the squad are run almost to death. The legion sets up camp in an unhealthy part of the fens and soon Crow’s men and Primus Centillius, the leader of the legion’s cavalry, fall ill. All of them but Dionysus end up in an infirmary. Through manipulations and payoffs, Dionysus becomes attached to the Roman warehouses as a clerk, partly because of a small store of valuables he collected from the town he and Crow’s squad were meant to save from looting. A slave comes to Crow, with a message from the woman he has cared for. She has left Britain, and the slave, an old and honorable man, tells Crow It is possible to find her across the German Sea. He gives Crow a token from Ceres. Crow decides to leave the legion, even though it has been his home for years, and desertion means death. He takes a boat to the Gallic lands across the German Sea, in search of Ceres. Crow lands among the Roman legions in a busy port. He finds his way out into the countryside and while he is there, stops at a farmstead where a young boy is training a horse. Taking a chance, Crow shows the token from Ceres, a coin engraved with her name, to the boy. The boy recognizes the name, and leaves Crow at the farm. Soon he returns. Behind him, the woman called Ceres follows with two young girls, both scarred and injured. She welcomes him, and tells him if he wishes, he can stay. This is her family’s home, and her property. Crow gives her the token and she gives him her name: Boudicca, Queen of the now lost-British tribe called Iceni.