Interlude QB: Morituri te Salutant

Queen Boudica was a worrier by nature.

If asked, she would say that she had always been that way, but it seemed that motherhood had sharpened that trait in her to a keener edge. Being queen had only extended that care and devotion out from her family to her people, to all those who thought her worth referring to with such reverence.

She liked that part of herself. There was something incredibly fulfilling about wielding a knife to carve up the latest catch for dinner instead of a sword to stab an enemy on the battlefield. The act of caring for other people warmed her heart, and the simple pleasure of offering a smile and a pat on the head for a job well done had easily carried her off to sleep at the end of a long day many a time before.

Boudica's heart was full of love, and that love belonged to all of her subjects, from the lowest to the highest born. Even if she wasn't really a queen in the same way as those exalted rulers of great nations spanning from sea to sea, that was okay, because it just left more room in her heart for the people she did rule over.

It was wrong to say that they were like her own children. No matter what, she would never know even a fraction of her people as well as she did her daughters, and as much as it pained her to admit, naturally, she could never love them on the same scale as the two beautiful girls she had brought into the world.

Even so, she loved them and she wanted the best for them. Their tribe, so tiny compared to the sprawling kingdoms of later years and the empire whose yoke they had tried so unsuccessfully to throw off, may not have been as her children, but they were her family.

Many of those people were now gone. Some had fought beside her and perished when their rebellion was crushed. Those who had escaped that fate had instead been put to the sword when Rome swept in to stamp out even the tiniest embers her crusade had sparked. Were she to impossibly return to life, those that remained might expect her to gather them all together and rise up again — a temptation that Boudica knew, in her bones, that she mustn't fall to.

And so, when she was given this miraculous second life, she closed herself from Britain so that her heart could survive.

But who she was at her core remained, and as she found herself on the side of Rome against this United Empire that slaughtered for pleasure and strategy and whatever whims struck their fancy, more people began to worm their way in, occupying space in her heart with all those she'd loved before.

Boudica the woman had lost everything and died. Boudica the Servant was slowly finding new people to love and worry over, because she was suddenly in command of a cohort of Roman soldiers, many of them young and untested, all of them looking to her for leadership, and every single one utterly ignorant of exactly how outclassed they were against the enemies they would inevitably face.

How could she not come to care for these men, after spending weeks trying to keep them all alive? Could anyone listen to them tell stories of the families waiting for them at home and be so cold-hearted as to think of them as expendable?

Boudica was a worrier by nature. Caring for others brought her joy and fulfillment.

And then, Queen Aífe sent her son, Connla, to call her to the Joyous Guard, and there, Boudica met a trio of children saddled with the burden of stopping the United Empire so that everything could go back to the way it was supposed to be.

Boudica wouldn't have been Boudica if her heart didn't stutter at the mere thought of those children marching towards danger, no matter how well-protected they were in fact.

"The rebellion is strong, but the oppressors are legion," said Spartacus from next to her. "The only failure is death. Even so, the rebellion continues on in the hearts of all those who fight the oppressors!"

Boudica smiled and shook her head. "You're right, Spartacus. Yes, I'm worried about the others, but all I can do now is look forward and trust that they can handle themselves."

Spartacus just kept grinning, never once turning to look at her. His eyes remained firmly fixed on the road ahead.

If only it was as easy as saying it. The mind might know that they were as safe as they could reasonably be, doing what they were and heading to fight who they were, but the heart could not be swayed by things like logic and reasoning.

The mother in her begged her to turn around and go to them, to abandon her mission and rush to their aid. Aífe was every bit her superior, both as a queen and as a warrior, and if there was something that the greatest woman warrior the British Isles had ever produced couldn't handle, then another mediocre Servant wasn't going to make a difference — but surely, that part of her argued, surely, something terrible would happen if Boudica herself wasn't there to make sure that no one got hurt. Surely, she would be the difference between life and death for one of those children.

Her fingers tightened on her chariot's reins.

She couldn't do it. What was needed now wasn't Boudica the mother or Boudica the queen. What was needed now was Boudica the warrior. Not the warm, cheerful woman who had smiled at her daughters and her husband and her people, but the fierce, vicious woman who had ripped apart Britain on her quest to avenge her family. She needed to embody that. Not a harmless housecat, graceful and affectionate, but a ferocious lioness, claws at the ready and teeth bared.

(She hated that side of herself. Not for what she'd done or the pain she'd inflicted, but for the way it made her think, for the way it made her act, and for the hollow chill it left in her chest afterwards. She didn't like where it led her.)

So she couldn't turn around and go back to them. They were counting on her to see this through, and Boudica the warrior would bring them the victory she never had in life.

"I'm sorry, everyone," she told the wind. "Even when I know better, I just can't help wanting to coddle you."

The howling wind that whipped her hair offered no answer and no solace. The people who deserved her words were too far away to hear them.

The journey was long and continued on, stretching out before her chariot. Her horses couldn't tire in the way mortal horses could, and neither could Boudica herself, but with all that time, she was left alone with her thoughts and her worries, and nothing she told herself could really, truly soothe them.

But that was nothing new. Doubts had plagued Boudica in everything she did from the moment her husband died, but a kind of terrible inertia carried her on as it had then. She was going, and so she kept going. She was fighting, and so she would keep fighting.

Now, she was on a mission to intercept the attack force moving on Lugdunum, and so she would see it through, because she must.

That, more than anything, allowed her to steel her heart and keep moving forward. Not the thought of duty, but the thought of all those still living there who would suffer under the attackers' cruelty. They had already been deemed expendable when last the United Empire had been forced out, and Boudica held no illusions that the Empire's attack dogs would think them any less so when they took the town again.

As much as she worried about the others, Boudica could not stomach the thought of what might happen to those innocent townsfolk, just barely recovered from their losses last time. The image alone made her nearly sick, of bodies strewn about the streets, lying in pools of red blood, of men, women, and children slaughtered indiscriminately, of the blackened burns left on those unlucky enough to have been caught up in the Empire's attempts to burn the city down behind them.

She would not let it happen again.

The pounding of her horses' hoofbeats became like war drums in her ears. Her thundering pulse quickened to match the tempo. Liquid fire pooled in her belly, waiting for the moment it would surge and spread through her limbs. The howling wind became as her people's cries for blood in the aftermath of her worst day, egging her on.

This was how Boudica prepared for battle. If she had been summoned as an Avenger, this would have been her every waking moment.

"Spartacus," she said in a voice like cold iron. "This should go without saying, but there is no surrender, this time. If they're willing to use innocent people as bait, then we offer them no quarter."

"The oppressors shall know our boundless fury," Spartacus agreed. "The shackles of oppression shall melt in the fires of our rage to become our swords and strike at the bleeding heart of tyranny."

"Good."

They fell back into silence after that for the rest of the journey. The distance they had to cover was over twice that of their comrades, and Boudica's horses were simply not the equals of Aífe's divine horses, so they couldn't travel as quickly, even if they weren't limited to having to use the roads and stay on the ground.

Eventually, however, inevitably, there came the tingle of her sixth sense, to let her know that there was a Servant nearby in that general direction. A powerful one, or perhaps simply a single ordinary Servant and several who were much weaker.

Boudica pulled on the reins of her chariot and steered her horses towards that presence — or rather, in the direction she felt it moving.

They were distressingly close to the mountain pass that would take them through to Lugdunum. Boudica angled it and arranged for that pass through the mountains to be at her back, so that she only had to fight in one direction instead of watching for a sneak attack.

Once her chariot had come to a stop, she and Spartacus dismounted, and as she drew her sword and checked the fastenings on her targe, Spartacus' own sword materialized in his hand as though it had never left it, fading instantly into existence. His ever-present grin grew even broader, so wide that she could see the dark pink of his gums.

"The oppressors draw near!" he announced excitedly. "The time of rebellion approaches! My love grows hotter with every second!"

"Yes," Boudica answered, "let's get a better look at who or what we're dealing with."

It didn't take long. Bare minutes after Boudica's chariot had stopped, a column of red shields came down the road at a clipped, careful trot, slower than a man sprinting all out, but so consistent that it was undoubtedly faster in the long term. Twenty men in Roman armor, each of them carrying a spear in one hand and a sword at the hip.

Leading them was a grizzled officer. He, too, was dressed in Roman armor, but it looked like an older model than his subordinates, with more decorations and a more ornate design, befitting a revered Heroic Spirit who had distinguished himself from his legion. A helmet covered most of his head and his clean-shaven face, but one blue eye stared out at them. The other, on his left side, was a milky white. Useless. A jagged scar that ran from his brow, over it, and halfway down his cheek told the tale of some terrible trauma that must have inflicted the wound.

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To remain and linger even after death, immortalized into him as a Heroic Spirit, it must have been a defining attribute of his legend.

The officer — the Servant, almost certainly, since his presence was stronger than the others — commanded his squad to stop in perfect Latin, and they all stomped to a halt about twenty feet away from Boudica and Spartacus. Then, he shouted another order in Latin, and forty feet thumped as twenty shields clattered into formation, spears jutting out at the ready.

He did not, on the other hand, give the order to attack. Yet.

"Queen Boudica," he greeted her in a voice as smooth as wine and deep as the ocean. "So. You've come, truly."

"Yes," she said coldly. "To prevent you from reaching Lugdunum."

"We need not pretend otherwise," he began diplomatically. "You know as well as I that my orders were never to sack the city itself, only to draw your attention away from the others. No violence need be visited upon Lugdunum or its people."

"Again, you mean?" she asked with frosty heat.

"Not so long as it comes under the United Empire's control," the Servant went on smoothly. "If you prefer, we could even arrange it so that you were its…provincial governor, shall we say? I'm certain neither side would have any reason to provoke a response so long as a Servant of your caliber was in control of it."

And suddenly, she understood his game.

"You're offering me to join you."

It was quite clever, actually. Not particularly like the standard Roman response to their enemies and second or third class citizens, either. A threat and a promise both: "Come to our side and give us this territory you already control, and there will be no need to risk the safety of the people living there." The easiest way to defeat your enemy was to make them your ally, after all. It was how her people had originally secured their own safety, before her husband's death had seen Rome try to steal it away.

The Rome she knew wouldn't have even bothered with the pretense of negotiation. Not if they felt they could just take whatever it was they wanted.

"You have no reason not to," the Servant pointed out. "You and I both know: you have no love for Emperor Nero or for Rome. You owe them no allegiance. In fact, you have more reason even than I to see the whole edifice torn down and the earth upon which it stands salted. You, who suffered and died at the cruelties of this decrepit Rome, would you not help us destroy it and rebuild a new, more glorious empire?"

It was a tempting thought. Boudica would have been a liar if she dared to claim that no part of her wanted to agree with him, because even as a Rider, the ache of the injustices she and her family had been forced to suffer still burned. After all, the woman who had died cursing Rome had, because of when and how she died, never gotten the chance to let those passions cool. Queen Boudica's legend ended with the sting of her defeat, the cruelties inflicted upon her unpunished and the crimes committed against her unrepaid.

But…

Spartacus chuckled. "Hahahaha! The oppressors change their faces, but they cannot hide the stench of their tyranny! A change of clothes cannot sway the cause of justice! My love cannot be smothered by a pleasant sight!"

"Spartacus is right," Boudica said levelly. "The atrocities committed by Rome can never be forgiven. I can't forgive them, not for what they did to me and my daughters, and not for what they did to my people. Even so… If the new empire you and your masters are trying to build is built on the corpses of innocent civilians, then it will be no better than the Rome you're trying to topple now."

Even if she hated Rome and she hated Nero and the pain of her suffering and her daughters' suffering still burned in her gut, what would be gained by tearing down Rome just so these Roman defectors could build a new Rome, just as terrible and just as unjust as the original? She couldn't be so selfish that she would seek her own personal satisfaction, not when there were people in need of protection and a greater purpose in seeing Rome returned to its proper place.

And besides, there was a future where Rome's own decadence would one day bring it down, if only this era could be put back on track. She would not be around to see it, but she could take solace in the fact that the Empire's own corruption would be its downfall.

The Servant's face drew tight.

"No empire has ever been built on peaceful thoughts and happy dreams," he told her. "The future cannot be bought with kind words and empty promises. It must be taken, its foundations cemented with the blood of those sacrificed to see it come into existence."

"An easy thing to say, when the blood being used isn't yours," she countered. "When the village being ransacked means nothing to you and the people dying are nothing but strangers. How convenient it is when it's always other people making the sacrifices."

"You think I haven't sacrificed?" the Servant growled. He thumbed at his ruined eye. "I've sacrificed plenty, and if my Caesar demanded I throw my body upon the altar so that my bones could be used as brick and my blood as mortar, the only thing I would ask is where I would best serve!"

"And yet, you're already dead," Boudica replied coldly. "The same as Spartacus and I. What value would your sacrifice have coming from someone who isn't actually alive in the first place?"

"The colosseum thrives on death," Spartacus added for good measure. "However, only the living may die. The restless dead can only howl and moan."

The Servant's lips curled into a sneer.

"Pah!" he spat. "It seems there's no reasoning with you. I don't know why I expected anything else from a barbarian whore!"

He shouted an order in Latin, and as he drew his sword, a standard Roman spatha, the twenty men behind him stomped the ground and let out an answering battlecry.

"This barbarian whore won't let you get any closer to Lugdunum!" She pointed with her sword. "Spartacus!"

"Hahaha!"

Spartacus leapt forward towards the formation, and the Servant shouted another order as he hefted his own shield. Spartacus crashed into it like a meteor, hacking away with his sword without any kind of grace or technique, just raw brutality. The nameless Roman Servant grunted but weathered the assault, keeping his large shield positioned between himself and Spartacus' sword.

Spartacus didn't seem to care. He kept laughing and hacking as though he was determined to wear the Servant down through sheer attrition.

Being fair to Spartacus, that wasn't exactly the worst plan of attack for him, considering how his Noble Phantasm worked.

The unknown Servant must have figured something like that out, too, because he shouted another order in Latin, and in between swings, he bashed his shield into Spartacus' face. Spartacus stumbled a few feet back, but he righted himself almost instantly, still laughing, even as blood streamed down his face from his nostrils.

He moved to reengage immediately, but the Roman Servant retreated after his blow and the line of his soldiers opened up only long enough to admit him, and then they closed around him. He became just another part of the formation, with his allies arrayed along either side like wings.

"Alae Scaeva!" the Servant shouted, addressing his men. "Promoveo!"

Twenty-one pairs of feet stomped as they answered him with another roar, their shields forming a wall of red. Each of them, Boudica could see now, depicted a sword with wings sprouting from the guard, gold patterned on a crimson background.

Spartacus crashed into them like a wrecking ball.

The line of shields bent slightly under the weight of his bulk and the strength of his blow, but they pushed him back just as quickly, and those not directly in the line of his attack jabbed at him with their spears through the small gaps in the formation. They bit into his unprotected flesh, scoring wounds along his muscular arms, his thighs, even his torso.

Spartacus just kept laughing.

"More!" he cried. "More! Yes, let me show you my love even more! This pain is the pain of my love! This ecstasy is the ecstasy of my love! Let my love overflow!"

Red blood splattered all over, staining his chest and limbs as more and more injuries accumulated, gouging out more and more flesh. Even as he was wounded, however, his wounds healed, sealing up, scabbing over, filling in, and something grotesque glowed and moved under his skin as his Noble Phantasm converted the damage into power.

It was hard to watch. Boudica wasn't the type of woman to stand back and sit on the sidelines as a battle unfolded before her, especially not when it was her allies and her friends who were doing the fighting. She ached to join in.

But Spartacus was in his element. Even more than that, he was getting stronger with every attack as his muscles bulged and his arm swung. His blood splattered all about the ground, and the thunderous force behind each blow shook the Earth, but he wasn't tiring and he wasn't slowing. Quite the opposite, because he got faster and more energetic with each passing second.

The soldiers had been aiming at first for his limbs, his joints, for disabling blows that would make Spartacus vulnerable for a follow up attack by one of the others in the formation — but Spartacus ignored them entirely, like he didn't even feel the pain, and kept battering at the Servant's shield as his wounds healed almost instantly.

When they realized that Spartacus was unaffected by the attacks meant to cripple him, they moved instead for more immediately dangerous attacks, aiming their spears for his head and his vital organs. They jabbed at his torso, trying to hit his kidneys, his liver, his stomach, his heart and lungs. They jabbed at his muscular thighs, perhaps trying to puncture one of the critical blood vessels therein, though Boudica herself didn't think that actually could kill a Servant.

Even when they found their marks, however, Spartacus was undaunted. Covered in his own blood, drenched red from his wounds, he only got faster and stronger, and the air howled with each pass of his blade. The strike of each landing blow was like the crack of thunder, shaking the world with their might such that even the trees quivered. Somehow, the Roman Servant kept his shield up and blocked them, although Boudica couldn't imagine how. Her arm ached just imagining being on the receiving end of those attacks, and her bones rattled even from here.

And still, she worried, because even seeing that their own attacks were only making Spartacus stronger, the Roman soldiers didn't change their strategy at all. They kept jabbing with their spears as Spartacus hammered away at their leader with single-minded intensity.

This couldn't be it, she found herself thinking. Their theory had been that this Servant's Noble Phantasm let him split himself into twenty separate warriors, and the coordination between him and his men seemed to bear that out, but if their enemy was clever enough to have sent a distraction force to divide them up and make them easier to beat, would they then send a Servant who couldn't do anything but mindlessly stab with their weapons at an opponent like Spartacus?

If this really was Julius Caesar's plan, where was the cunning? Where was the strategic genius? This just seemed…far too basic.

"Alae Scaeva!" the Servant suddenly shouted, and he gave another order to his twenty men. They bellowed a wordless answer, and then they fanned out, forming an arrow around Spartacus, with the leader at the tip.

Spartacus ignored them and swung his sword — except it was caught, this time, not by the enemy's shield, but by a gleaming, silver sword.

"Ah?" Spartacus stopped, confused.

"Your strength is formidable," the Roman told him. "My bones ache to match blades with you. However…I have suffered wounds far more grievous than a few aching joints, and I will not be defeated by a mere howling beast!"

And he pushed Spartacus' sword away, sending Spartacus stumbling back a step. Spartacus just grinned again and charged back towards him, but the Roman met him head on, and their swords clashing echoed with an unholy screech that set Boudica's teeth on edge as Spartacus was forced back a step again.

Something was happening, she realized. Something had changed, but what?

The Roman stomped forward before Spartacus could reengage, and now he was the one pushing Spartacus back, meeting him blow for blow and responding with punishing force. Boudica almost couldn't believe what she was seeing, even as Spartacus was driven back into the center of the soldiers' formation.

"Pin him down!"

The formation collapsed on Spartacus, and spears flew as they were thrown at him. Spartacus whirled about, trying for the first time to block them, but the Roman was already there, locking swords with him as several of the soldiers stabbed their spears through his legs and his feet and into the ground.

It wouldn't hold him long, but Boudica had a nasty suspicion it didn't need to.

"Spartacus!"

She kicked off the ground, racing towards the fray. A few of the soldiers turned to her as she approached, but she batted one aside with the face of her shield and parried the other's sword, sliding her blade across his throat with a smooth motion that she couldn't help thinking Aífe herself would have praised.

Spartacus swung wildly up ahead, smashing one soldier's head with his free arm, but with his legs skewered by almost half the squad's spears, he couldn't move very far or very well, and the rest of the legionnaires avoided his wrath by ducking out of the way once they had done their job. The Roman himself occupied his other arm, keeping his sword from swiping at any of the soldiers who got close.

Boudica was prepared to barrel through them, but they all gave the Roman and Spartacus a wide berth, retreating a safe distance. She didn't take time to think about why — the only reason the Roman would take care to immobilize Spartacus in the first place was to use a finishing move, a Noble Phantasm.

Alone with the Roman, Spartacus wound back for another swing, but the Roman stepped in and took it on his shield with a grunt, leaving his sword entirely free to do with as he pleased. He lifted it high above his head like an executioner's blade, and then he spoke.

My Sword is Sharpest When Dull

"Ferrea Voluntate Scaeva."

"No!"

Boudica threw herself onto Spartacus' back, desperately swinging her shield up above his head to intercept the blow.

With an echoing CRACK, it split, and white hot pain surged up her arm. Someone screamed, high pitched and shrill — it was her, she realized.

The world spun. The sound of splintering wood popped in her ears, and the world moved around her, carrying her along for the ride.

When she opened her eyes again, the Roman was several meters away, scowling at her, and she was cradled in Spartacus's arms as he knelt protectively over her.

"Spartacus?"

"No rebellion can be without pain," he told her with what might be called regret, "but by overcoming pain, one can find the strength to do battle. This pain…is not the pain born of such strength."

She looked down —

"Oh."

And her left arm ended abruptly below the elbow, red blood still flowing from the wound.

How strange it was to be a Servant, she thought. A wound like this would likely have been a death sentence while she was alive, one way or another, and yet, here, as a Servant…

"It's fine," she said, and she slowly climbed to her feet. "I can still fight."

Spartacus hovered over her cautiously as she stood, his eyes still locked on the Roman Servant. The blood from his own wounds still ran over his body sluggishly as the shattered splinters of those spears were forced out of his flesh.

The remaining soldiers had moved back into formation, leaving their dead where they lay — actual bodies instead of vanishing spirits, and if there was time later, she would think about it then — and Boudica turned to face them with determination, her mouth set into a firm line and her back straight, like her arm wasn't missing at all. The wound hurt, but not nearly as much as she thought it should have, and although she was losing magical energy almost as quickly as blood, she was still stable enough, she thought, that she could at least last through this fight.

"It seems I underestimated you, Queen Boudica," the Roman said grudgingly. "Very well. Then as a sign of my respect, I shall tell you my name before you die again."

"The only one who's dying here today is you," she retorted confidently.

His lips pulled into a smirk on one side, a brief expression of mirth that was gone just as quickly.

"I am Marcus Cassius Scaeva," he said, "loyal servant of Gaius Julius Caesar, his most trusted subordinate."

He hefted his shield and brandished his sword. The soldiers behind him mimicked him as one.

"My Alae Scaeva and I will kill you in his name, so as to pave the way for the glory of his United Empire."