Chapter Text
Octavia au Aquilli pulls her sword from the limp body of the woman underneath her, lungs heaving, struggling to catch her breath as she stands. The battlefield has gone still, a heavy, thick silence punctuated only by the moans of the wounded and dying blanketing the fields. Blood soaks the ground at her feet and the wool of her cloak, and she tastes the copper tang of it on her tongue. She wipes her blade on the tunic of a dead legionnaire and surveys the field of battle with a veteran’s eye.
Their losses today are grievous, for a battle against the Amazons. For any other battle, they would have been devastating. Over half of her cohort lies dead or dying on the ground. She doesn’t allow herself to stand vigil over their last breaths or strain to hear their final, gasping words. She is Primus, First Spear of the Roman legion, and she cannot afford to appear weak, cannot allow herself to feel anything for these men and women who have bled with her today. She moves, searching for any of her primi ordines, the centurions serving directly under her. Years in the legion have taught her that above all else, she must always keep moving. Harder for an enemy to find her, to corner her… harder for her own mind to grapple her into halting indecision. She finds herself on the edge of the battlefield, looking on as four Roman centurions force a group of Amazonian warriors to their knees.
They are who she is looking for, and she comes to a halt next to the first in the line, a tall, lanky man who she would not have personally picked as a soldier. Still, the Augustus saw something in him and raised him to centurion, and she will not question the judgment of her Empress. “Ave, Jasper.”
“Ave, Primus,” he says, flashing her a quick but crisp salute as he switches his sword temporarily to his left hand. She watches the Amazons out of the corner of her eye, making a note to speak to Jasper later about how battlefield decorum is less important than keeping your eyes on the fucking enemy. His Adam’s apple bobs up and down in his throat as he waits for her to speak. “How did we fare today?” She asks lowly, hoping the man will have the sense to keep his voice down as he replies.
He does not disappoint in this, at least. “I don’t have a count on our losses, Primus. I have been preoccupied with the prisoners.” Octavia raises her head at that, glaring at him, and he shakes his head quickly, lifting his hands in self-defense. “Not in that way, Primus. I have respected your prohibitions.” She nods, satisfied, and he rushes to continue. “Their losses are great. I think around two hundred dead, at least, with another hundred or so more captured. Several tried to flee, but none were successful.”
Octavia thinks for a moment, and then tilts her head toward the prisoners. “Let that one go,” she says, gesturing towards an Amazon with long, dirty blonde hair and scowling features. The woman is tall enough that Octavia can guess her stature even though she is kneeling. The Amazon snarls and spits at her Roman captors when they jerk her to her feet, and Octavia smiles. “She can tell the world what happened here,” she says, the edges of her smile turning feral. “She can tell them that the Empress always wins.”
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The wagon jostles and bounces along the rutted dirt roadway, throwing its occupants uncomfortably against the walls of the covering every time they hit a rough patch. Clarke has a spear wound in her side that cracks open just a little bit more every time they hit uneven ground. It has clotted, mostly, and she knows that if she had even one day to rest it would clot completely, but for now every tiny indentation or curve in the road shifts her body into a stretch that leaves the wound weeping blood and clear clotting fluid.
Still, she is one of the lucky ones. The spear missed her vital organs, and she will heal. She glances around the wagon, checking the rest of her tribe for the thousandth time. Maya lies unconscious, having taken a blow to the back of the head, and even now she seems to drift in and out of wakefulness, muttering fitfully. Clarke has seen enough concussions in her years as a healer to know that if Maya does not wake soon, the chances that she will ever wake will diminish drastically. It has been two days since they have been taken, and though Clarke has tried, she has not been able to keep the other woman awake through their journey. She has not been able to keep her safe.
Monroe kom Skaikru slumps in the corner next to her. She is sleeping, but not passed out; the woman has only a shallow gash on her leg. Watching the other woman sleep even while being tossed about like a sapling in a storm, Clarke fights down her disgust. Given the appropriate amount of time, Clarke might have confronted her willingness to give in to the enemy while she was still standing and mostly unharmed. Clarke might have called her a sympathizer, a traitor, and maybe even a coward. It doesn’t matter now. They are all in the clutches of the Empress, and Monroe fighting wouldn’t have changed that.
There’s a strangled cry from the opposite corner of the wagon, and Clarke forces herself to look at the woman she’s been avoiding for the past several hours. When Raven had initially been carried in, Clarke had spent every minute by her side, ignoring her own wounds as she tried to comfort the stubborn, feverish brunette. Raven had slipped in and out of consciousness, but she’d awoken for good yesterday, and her pointed questions about her own health were too much for Clarke to handle.
The healer has been giving her patients serious news – both good and bad – for years now. She has comforted mothers who lost babes before birth, warriors who lost their partners or their limbs in battle, and children orphaned by the ravages of war. She has seen vicious wounds and terrible diseases and has kept a calm mind and steady hands throughout all of it.
So she cannot explain why it is that she finds herself utterly unable to face her best friend when she asks about her wounded leg. The leg is completely crushed, a bloody mess of bone and mangled flesh, and Clarke is hard pressed to do anything but clean the wound as best she can and pray to the gods that infection doesn’t set in. She could attempt to set the bones, but she has nothing to keep the leg stabilized. The bones would just shift again, causing even more injury to the limb. She has not been able to keep many of her healing supplies, but she does have a few poultices that she has sewn into the lining of her tunic so that she could have them ready at hand during and after battle. She has almost exhausted those supplies, but she thinks they are working to prevent infection for now, at least. This is the critical time.
“Clarke,” Raven mumbles, the words strained through clenched teeth, and Clarke reluctantly moves closer to her friend. “Just tell me,” Raven says, and Clarke tries not to hear the plea in her voice. She knows Raven wouldn’t want that. She also knows she can’t avoid the question forever. She takes a deep breath and decides the truth is the best she can give right now.
“It’s bad, my friend,” she says, and is both surprised and horrified to realize that tears are starting to form in her eyes. She swipes them away quickly, knowing Raven would reject any sign of pity. “Do you remember what happened?”
Raven’s eyes are cloudy with pain, and she doesn’t see the movement. Or she chooses not to comment. She lets out a staggered breath and faces the wall of the wagon. “My horse…” she gasps out, and then cannot continue. She is weak and the pain must be unbearable. She shivers, but the skin under Clarke’s questing hand is warm.
Clarke swallows heavily and nods. “Your stallion was cut out from under you in the battle. Your foot was tangled in the tresses and you were unable to jump free in time. The horse landed on you, and it… he crushed your leg, Raven. He was panicked and in his death throes, and he didn’t… it was…” Terrifying. Clarke doesn’t say it, but she had been certain that her friend was going to die. If not by the horse, then by the blade of the Roman centurion that had brought it down upon her best friend. She forces herself to finish. “You will not walk again, not without considerable pain and effort. Maybe not at all. You will not regain full use of that leg.” She does not soften the words. It will do Raven no favors to feel hope where there is none to be had.
The brunette clenches her jaw and Clarke pretends not to see the tears slip down her face. She is still struggling not to cry herself, and her heart breaks to see her strong, brave friend facing the loss of the thing that defines her above all else – her status as an Amazon warrior. Raven had been one of their tribe’s best horsewomen, and could match any of their warriors with a spear. When Raven speaks, it’s barely a whisper. “She didn’t kill me.”
It’s not a question – it’s a truth – but Clarke answers her anyway. “Our Queen stepped in.” She does not finish the statement, because Raven knows. She knows that Abbinia – Clarke’s adoptive mother – threw herself in front of Raven, battling the Roman centurion over the prone body of her fallen warrior. She knows Raven saw the centurion thrust her sword through the vulnerable gap where Abby’s breastplate met her back plate, because when she found Raven, Abby was gasping and dying only inches away. Clarke – a capable fighter, but by no means their best – had launched herself at the centurion, rage fueling her attack, only to be brought low by a legionnaire attacking from the side. She had fallen to the spear thrust and the centurion had been carried away by the tide of the battle. She had lain next to her mother, watching as the light faded from her eyes and she took her last breath. She had felt the press of her mother’s royal torque into her palm, had manage to slip it under her tunic before the legionnaires had rounded up the survivors and shoved them roughly into the wagon. They’d been checked for weapons, but the Romans had not cared about her token. She has it still.
Raven’s angry hiss jolts her out of her reverie, and she focuses again on the wounded woman beside her. Her next words are the loudest she’s spoken yet, and the conviction behind them makes Clarke’s heart swell with determination. “I’m going to kill that Roman bitch.”
Clarke hopes that she’s right.