Emperor by Stephen Baxter

were like men left over from the past, Agrippina thought, men from an age when physical strength and drinking prowess were all it took to be a leader.
    Cunobelin had always had trouble with his sons. As was the custom of his people, and indeed Agrippina’s Brigantians too, Cunobelin had cheerfully taken many wives, who for twenty years had produced a steady stream of children. Cunobelin had lived to see grandsons grow to adulthood, including Cunedda. But even before his death many of Cunobelin’s sons had quarrelled among themselves. And when Cunobelin at last died it was as if the lid had blown off an over-heated pot.
    The two sons Cunobelin had sent for education in Rome, Adminius and Cogidubnus, had been driven out–the talk was they had gone all the way back to Rome to seek Claudius’s help. And meanwhile the two ‘warriors’, Togodumnus and Caratacus, cared nothing for Caesar who was long dead, the signing of his treaties beyond living memory.
    So the princes started to raid their neighbours. This was when Nectovelin had been drawn to the Catuvellaunians, relishing the chance to swing his sword at their side. The peoples they raided were cowed, not assimilated; theirs was a sullen imperium.
    At first all this turbulence appeared to do no harm to the Catuvellaunians’ trade with the Romans. But then the princes deposed a ruler, Verica of the Atrebates, a nation whose sprawling holdings covered many south coast ports. Verica, a friend of Rome, fled there. And this time Claudius listened.
    All summer, Agrippina learned from the talk, just as Cunedda had told her, traders and spies had been bringing back rumours about a build-up of Roman arms and men in the Gallic coastal town of Gesoriacum. The princes and other local rulers had fitfully prepared for an invasion, drawing up their warrior bands on the coast to fend off Roman landings–only to disperse again, bored and hungry. Perhaps, after ninety years of impunity, nobody had really believed that the Romans would ever come again. Meanwhile the princes had continued their wilful ways with the Catuvellaunians’ neighbours.
    And now the storm had broken. The Romans had landed after all, late in the season, unopposed, and were already moving out of their beachhead. There was a good deal of argument about whose fault all this was. Had the princes been foolish in their truce-breaking aggression? Should they have prepared better for the invasion, and listened to the warnings of their spies? Agrippina couldn’t find it in her heart to blame the princes, who had at least tried to assemble a force in response. Even she, who knew Romans far better than they did, had not believed the invasion would come.
    There was no eagerness for a battle. This place was named for a war god, for Camulos. But for all the knives in their belts and the swords they hung on the walls of their wooden houses, for all their myths of themselves as a warrior people, these were farmers. Agrippina could see that even now some of them were growing restless, itching to get away from this purposeless talk and back to work. But their princes, restless as they were blamed for their unpreparedness, were now spoiling for a fight.
    At length Nectovelin stood up. Even the princes hushed as the massive warrior waited for silence. ‘From what I’m hearing I’m glad I had a good night’s sleep instead of enduring all this waffle. The question is not who is to blame but how we are to get rid of the Romans now they’re here.’
    ‘The old man is right.’ The interruption came from one of the druidh. He was a thin young man in a shapeless black robe, and his accent was of the west country, of the Silures or the Ordovices. ‘This land is sacred, and must remain inviolate.’
    Nectovelin was irritated. ‘Everybody knows your game, priest. The Romans drove your sort out of Gaul, and you fled here because you have nowhere else to go. Now the Romans are coming after you again, and you want to spill our blood to