The Phantom Queen Awakes Read Online Free

with
the edge. He fell to the ground with a yell of pain.
    By then Paetus was up, but they were quickly
surrounded in a pocket devoid of Romans. His sword swinging hard to
the right, Severus connected with a heavy bearded Briton, catching
him in the stomach with the tip of his blade and spraying blood.
Pivoting on his foot, he blocked another blow, the force of the hit
reverberating down his arm and through his armored
chest.
    Sweat pooled in Severus’ navel and coated his
face and neck under his helmet as he and Paetus took on the
barbarians around them while standing back-to-back. Three Britons
approached from their right, hands tight on their sword grips and
ready to strike.
    Paetus let out a roar and attacked, sword and
shield flashing in the sunlight. One of the Briton’s launched
toward Severus, who slashed downward, penetrating the barbarian’s
thigh, before pivoting to meet the next-comer. A tall, well-muscled
Briton struck Severus’ shield, clashed with his blade, and then
pushed him back.
    Severus stumbled, tripped over a body and went
down hard. The Briton loomed over him. Then Paetus was there,
beating the Briton back before he could pounce. The Briton pivoted
at a crucial moment, and went for the unprotected area of Paetus’
neck, where his helmet did not touch his cuirass.
    “No!”
    Severus lunged to his feet and speared the
barbarian in the stomach. But it was too late. Just as the
barbarian fell, so too did Paetus, his eyes wide and surprised as
blood poured forth like the dark waters of the river, over his
hands and down his chest.
    Severus stared at the fallen body of his
friend, numb to the core of his bones, while the fighting raged on
around him. He plunged the tip of his sword into the ground beside
Paetus’ head and knelt beside his brother in the war-churned
earth.
    Paetus’ black eyes stared at the sky, seeing
not clouds but the Afterlife.
     
    ****
     
    Severus lurched toward a tree and rested
heavily against the trunk, bloody sword falling from his lax
fingers. He’d crashed through the forest to the river as soon he’d
returned from the battle. She was there, just as he’d known she
would be ― kneeling at the water’s edge and washing her
laundry.
    Was he going insane? Had the battle finally
grasped him in its clutches and was it pushing him towards
madness?
    Or maybe it wasn’t madness at all. Perhaps the
gods had sent him a messenger in the form of this woman. Perhaps he
was being punished for something.
    “You!” He stumbled towards her and came down
heavily on his knees, ridges of frozen earth piercing through his
blood stained leather bracae. He couldn’t get the sweet, sick smell
of death to leave his nostrils, not even long draughts of the
frigid night air could banish it. “Tell me who you are.”
    She only continued to dunk and scrub a tunic
under the swirling cold, black water.
    He reached out to touch her shoulder, to whirl
her toward him so he could see her face, but some unknown impulse
stopped him. Like a primal instinct. Fear welled, as though it
wasn’t a simple woman kneeling before him, but a wolf.
    In his mind, suddenly she was the warrior and
he was the prey.
    He made a fist, the skin cracking, causing the
blood to well and drip to the shore of the river. “Please,” he
entreated, his voice a low rasp. “Tell me what you are.”
    “I am nothing but a woman,” she answered,
continuing to wash the clothes that lay in a pile beside
her.
    “You lie. You are more than that.”
    “I am woman and I am everything you should
fear. I am fate. I am prophecy. I am war. I am destruction. And I
am death.”
    Severus could feel that she spoke the
truth.
    “He’s dead: the one who wore the woolen lacerna that you washed on this river bank last night. His
name was Paetus and he was a good man, a man with children and a
wife.”
    “So many of them are good men, the ones who
fall.”
    The incessant washing made anger pound in his
head in a low staccato. Still he