Faustina and the Barbarians (8 page)

I left the conference convinced that four of the six were in favour of the alliance. But it all depended on which of the kings had the loudest voice. And we would not have an answer until the ambassadors returned to consult with their masters. I wasn’t happy with this. News reached us that the south was suffering under a massive Saxon assault, that bands of them had even swept as far north as Eboracum, which, apparently, had never happened before. When the oily Pictish ambassador heard this, I saw him smiling. And then I remembered something basic I’d forgotten. As the old saying goes: my enemy’s enemy is my friend. But did the Picts really think these savage Saxons needed anyone’s friendship, that they would stop anywhere?

A week later we had our answer from the kings. The Picts would not dishonour themselves with any alliance with Romans. We were on our own.
 

“Let it be so,” I told our glum little group around the campfire. “Rome began alone, and if necessary she will finish alone.” We thanked our hosts and rode proudly out of Trinomontium.

We’d been riding an hour or so when we heard hooves racing up behind us. A sight for sore eyes indeed. It was those four darling boys who’d given us so much pleasure with their glowing cocks.

And behind them a mounted—somewhat awkwardly as the Picts aren’t natural horsemen—troop of over fifty young warriors.

“We’re coming with you! At least long enough to kill some Saxons.”

I must finish this letter now Flavia. We are in the hills above Eboracum and planning to attack another party of Saxons. We have killed many in the last few weeks. Pray to the gods that you hear from me again.

Chapter Four

To: Flavia Maxima, Constantinople

From: Faustina Maxima, Erfurt, Thuringia, September 413

My darling daughter-in-law, doubtless you are alarmed at the address from which I write. Calm yourself. Your mother-in-law is well. All will be explained.

I left you at the end of my last letter, as we were about to attack a party of Saxons. The more I experience of these people, the less inclined I am to dismiss them as barbarians, despite their stubborn crudities. They can be clever, not least militarily. The party we saw was one of several decoys used to lure the British forces out from Eboracum. So eager were our Pictish volunteers for Saxon blood that they led the charge before the rest of us had time to consider. We could do nothing but follow, so, we swooped upon the Saxons in all our fierce martial glory. Botilda and the girls—even the demure Caeli—covered in bright blue war-paint, hair braided with multi-coloured beads sweeping behind them. I led the charge of course, invoking my great-great-etc grandfather Maximian and the Great Julius, not forgetting history’s great unsung hero Julian the Apostate.
 

It was a good fight, with much Saxon blood flying in great arcs through the air, mixed with sprays of mud and foam and sweat from our brave horses. But within minutes we were completely encircled by the Saxon host. Death was certain and my life began to flash before my eyes. Well, you have some idea of what my amourous life has been, and in order not to be distracted by this wild, visual tumult of coitus I levelled the spear I’d taken from a dead Saxon at the enemy massed around us and, spurring Bucephalus on, charged toward death and glory.
 

I had almost broken through the great blond links in the Saxon chain, with blood flying, and my own war cry terrifying their mounts enough to throw a few of them, before poor Bucephalus was brought down by a dart in his shank and all was blackness.

I returned to consciousness with the eager faces of the girls bending over me. They had all survived unhurt, praise the gods, apart from a few flesh wounds. Most of our British cavalry had been killed unfortunately, though a good few had escaped; and the same with the Picts. The Saxons had made a point of keeping the girls alive, and not only that, but had been treating them fairly well.

But what barbaric practices were we being saved for?

Two days later we were brought before Cuthbert, the Saxon king, in chains. He sat, drinking mead from a huge ram’s horn, his free hand groping the mountainous breasts of his chief concubine, a creature much fiercer looking than her lord, whose beautifully-shaped green eyes glinted with the flickering fire of a debauched intelligence. The woman—her name was Wulfflaed—devoured each of us with her great green orbs, the tip of her tongue, pierced with a silver stud, playing over her full red lips as her great thrusting tits were massaged beneath her loose embroidered shift. An interpreter stood behind the pair, trying not to look down at the exercises going on within Wulfflaed’s dress.
 

“What do you plan to do with us, Sire?” I voiced the title mockingly and was immediately yanked almost to my knees by the guard who had brought us in.

“Do not speak before the king!”
 

“The king seems preoccupied. And I’m getting bored, slave.” I kicked the guard in the balls and he doubled up in agony.
 

“Ha! This Roman kicks well. Unchain them and leave us.”

“But Sire, this one is dangerous.”

“You dare question your Lord?”

“Calm yourself, Wulfflaed. Unchain them, dog, before I throw you to this proud Roman lady for her supper.”

We all rubbed our wrists.

“So, what are your plans for us?

“I’m not sure, as yet. But it will involve sport, won’t it, Wulfflaed?”
 

Wulfflaed purred, clasping the hand that had not ceased from its breast-massaging.
 

“And, much pleasure.”
 

“Could you give me a few details?”

“I’ll give you a clue. It will involve you Romans’ favourite leisure pursuits.”

“Killing Saxons?”

“Ha! I like you more and more, Faustina. No. I was talking of the arena.”

We were chained and led out of our pig sty of a prison the following evening, out of the camp, and into the woods. It was growing dark and Caeli, convinced we were about to be butchered, clutched my hand desperately. I was more sanguine. I knew the king and his concubine had amorous sport in mind for us, though we might well be butchered when we had sated their perverse curiosity, but, as I always say, we could cross that burning bridge when we came to it.

Suddenly we came upon a ring of fire. A large circular tent open to the sky and stuck with torches around its rim in a sunken clearing between two tree-clogged mounds, completely secreted from view. Inside, as I expected, Cuthbert was sat, slouched on a couch, aping Roman fashion, clutching his trusty mead-horn in one hand and one of Wulfflaed’s titanic breasts in the other. The inside of the tent consisted of a circular muddy floor, the consistency of which, as we watched, a slave thinned further with a casket of water. It was enclosed by a low wooden barrier which Cuthbert and Wulfflaed drunkenly overlooked.

“I promised you an arena, and here it is. ‘Let the games begin,’ I believe is the phrase.”

The interpreter explained what was to happen. The girls would be put in the ‘arena’ in pairs in combat with a ‘gladiator’ while I was reserved for last. I began protesting against this—not with my usual fierceness, as hadn’t we Romans perfected the arena, and wasn’t it still in use in much of the Empire?—when Botilda hushed me. For the first gladiators had entered. Two big brawny blonds, their bodies glistening with oil, the long plaits of their freshly washed and aromatic yellow hair hanging down either side of their great hairless punctums, which they were gripping and working into hardness. Over their naked shoulders they had a net each, in the Thracian style.

“Me first,” Botilda hissed.

“And me, me,” insisted Aquilina.

“Appealing though it looks, ladies, this is no game. Be careful. I suggest you disarm them quickly in traditional fashion.”

“Kick those big gorgeous pricks? Never! Lugh God of Light, I’m dripping. Let me at them.” Botilda’s eyes were fixed on the now massive upright erections of the two warriors.

“I see your friends are eager for battle, Faustina. Into the arena with them at once.”

Cuthbert leaned up on his couch, waving his horn. Wulfflaed’s breasts were out of her dress and gleaming with spilled mead in the torchlight. Botilda and Aquilina, taking the wooden swords that were thrust at them by the interpreter, stepped into the ring.

“The women are to be naked. Strip or be stripped!”

Proudly the two pulled their begrimed tunicas over their heads, tossed them toward Cuthbert, and shook out their long hair. The interpreter resumed his station behind the king, the guards left, the Thracians stepped into the ring, their cocks swaying like the thick rudders of ships. Silence descended.

The men swung their nets adeptly and there was barely room for the girls to avoid them, but avoid them they did, for a couple of minutes at least. Botilda, trying not to scream with glee, was the first to be caught. Her captor yanked her to him, but rather than allowing herself to be tipped on her back, Botilda flipped him deftly over her shoulder, where he landed spattering mud over everyone, including, despite the interpreter’s attempts to shield them, Cuthbert and his concubine’s exposed, palpitating breasts. The king rubbed the mud spots into them, slid a muddy hand up her neck, and pulling her mouth to his, kissed her excitedly.
 

Aquilina still danced squelshingly around the arena, dodging the net, but almost tripped over the big cock of the flipped Thracian sticking up like a great pink pole out of the mud. Botilda, battle-frenzied, bent, gripped it by the base and jabbed it up into her cunnus, sinking down on it with a swift liquid motion.

Meanwhile the other gladiator, wiping the inordinate length of his mud-spattered cock with a spit-filled hand, approached a tremulous Aquilina, her mud-slicked, dripping nakedness wrapped tight in the mesh of the net, so tight she must’ve done the job herself. With one motion he spun her round, bent her over the low wooden parapet, and tore a hole over the netting that clasped her smeared, dripping buttocks and, gripping his smooth glinting weapon, drove it up to the hilt into the moisture-twinkling lips of her eagerly back-thrust cunnus.
 

Botilda rode her man down deep into the mud, a tide of the stuff lapping up her muscular thighs, and sopping up her belly and her breasts that flicked liquid pellets of mud as they swung off her body with the wild motion of coitus. Aquilina, gripping the parapet, kicked up a torrent of mud back at us as she was fucked by her blond stallion, the back of his legs and the bunching bellowing muscles of his arse spotted and streaked with mud. I looked at the king. His concubine was working his cock furiously under the loose fold of his trousers, while the interpreter, spoiled for choice, whacked himself while swivelling his bulbous eyes feverishly between the dual action in the arena and the jouncing mead and mud basted tits of Wulfflaed.
 

I was in heat too, as was Alexis, who was impatient for the tournament to end so she could do her share for the honour of Roman Britain. But Caeli didn’t look happy.

Botilda came, fiercely cursing, up to the waist in mud, her braided hair whipping wildly as charging cavalry horses’ tails. Quickly followed by Aquilina, her gasps mixing with the musical squeaking and creaking of the wooden parapet as she came violently with her Saxon following in rapid tempo.
 

“Next!” Cuthbert clapped his hands and two even bigger young Saxons trotted in, their great ballistas already bursting with rigidity. With a war cry, Alexis leapt onto the back of one before he’d even gotten into the churned-up arena and both fell, laughing into the juice-seamed spunk-seeded mass of warm mud. Caeli still stood by my side, reluctant and ill at ease. The other Saxon pulled her in and twirled his net around his big beaming head.
 

Alexis, with her Saxon’s net wrapped tightly around him was furiously riding his cock in reverse seating position, such were the force of his thrusts that she had to bend and grip his calves lest she be thrown completely off.
 

But Caeli was backed against the parapet, swiping her ineffective toy sword at her gladiator as he approached her, the gripped, fiercely empurpled head of his cock aimed at her cunnus.

“No!” she screamed and lashed out with her foot. The Saxon stepped back and then, dodging further kicks, grabbed her by the shoulders and spun her around. His cock was piercing the beautiful cleavage of her arse cheeks when I pounced upon the interpreter, grabbed his knife, and, getting Cuthbert in a headlock, pressed the dagger against his throat.

“Enough! Call off your sex dogs, Bertie, or by Jupiter, your blood will enliven the mud of the arena!”

Wulfflaed grabbed my arm, but a swift flying kick from Botilda made her desist. At that moment we heard war horns blowing and the sounds of tumult. I released Cuthbert, but kept the dagger at his throat.

“This could be danger for all of us, Faustina. Sheath your weapon. I swear by Odin no harm will come to any of you.” I lowered the knife.

“You and I will have a rematch later.”

He smiled, and I was impressed by his bearing, which would not disgrace a true Roman.

The tumult increased. It was the unmistakeable din of battle. But who was attacking? In a moment we had our answer as the war cries of the Picts resounded through the forest amid the clash of sword blades and the crash of flaming wood.

The Saxon gladiators, a couple of them freshly erect from the battle in the arena, closed round the king with their swords to protect him and we all ran out of the wood.
 

Blue-painted Picts were streaming through the camp like a spring river surging with the high melt of winter snow, and for once, the Saxons, taken by surprise, and many of them the worse for mead, were being cut down by spear, arrow and sword. But Cuthbert rallied them, and gradually the Picts were diverted from the camp.

Overnight another eight thousand strong troop of Saxons arrived to swell Cuthbert’s number to over ten-thousand, and the king and the other chiefs discussed their plans. With such a huge host Eboracum could be sacked, and with Eboracum in their control, the north-eastern sea coast was theirs, providing another huge safe haven for the landing of their brethren across the sea. But there was a surprise awaiting them—and us—when the new day dawned with an angry, sore-eyed sun shooting its rust-coloured rays through the smoke-filled air.