4

Rome was not built in a day, but it surely fell in one.

Siege and terror spread throughout the city. Consciousness ebbs through her thinly, she grows aware of the hardened earth beneath her cheek and flaming heat licking across her cheeks, thick heady smoke invading her lungs, charring it.

River begins to cough, struggling to blink past the haze of tears clouding her vision. The dullness that fills her hearing clears and with it comes piercing incongruous cries and high pitching wails. Something - someone - is pushing on her shoulder with forceful violence, urging her to wake.

Dull throbbing phantoms along her temple and she groans, tentatively touching only to pull away with dark smudged fingertips. River angles her head slowly, faltering at the feel of something weighted on her neck, the clinking of metal.

A collar and chain. She notices the women and girls then, each huddled amongst each other like sheep, petrified eyes widened in horror, reflecting flames which lick at their homes like it means to play.

It burns the grasses bleached yellow by the autumn sun. Scorch marks appear, the heat is so intense that all moisture is driver sky-bound. The walls light and the smell of burning cedar blows clear over the valley.

River flinches at the sound of guttural growls, the sharp whistling sounds that drown out male voices - screams.

Her heart drums against her sternum, fingers digging into the dry earth as large dark silhouettes phantom in violent blurs across the city. The beasts cut down their men without hesitance, claws rip bellies open, lungs and hearts. Jaws clamp down on exposed throats tearing at tracheas with ease.

Blood spills on the earth, stealing warmth that wicks into the cold night air. The air is closed with the iron-salt smell of their deaths.

River gazes in horrid hypnotism as men and boys fall beneath the wrath of shifting darkness that holds creatures. Like shadows, she tries to digest the bloody images, painting them flat and unremarkable onto the vase of posterity.

When the final man falls, a silence pervades the city like the stench of blood and corrosive ash. Beside her, River hears the soft weeping of women whose sons lay gaping and wheezing for final breaths, husbands quartered into sizes of unfamiliarity - and few girls who dared fight back.

Every man in the city lay dead that night, fighting at the borders or on the city square. Those who are too old to fight are dragged out of their houses and butchered in the street.

The attack had been swift. It was all over in a matter of hours. By the time the shadows lengthened across the square, the square was piled high with corpses. The creatures disappeared into the forest and resurfaced heartbeats later as men.

Men. River stares in a numbing daze at the tall, powerful mortals that stride past the trees with bare ritual marked torsos and clothed skin that shifts with each step, revealing long powerful legs. These are not men, she reasons, forcing down the caustic bile that bites at her throat.

The creatures move with eased practice. They carry corpses and toss pile them high at the centre, searching houses and gardens where the wounded might have tried to hide. When there are no men left to kill, the looting begins.

Men, like columns of red ants, pass goods from hand to hand, heaping them up close to the borders, ready to carry them. When space falls short, they drag corpses to one side of the marketplace, stacking them against the walls of the citadel.

Dogs drooling ropes of slobber begin sniffing around the dead, their lean, angular, black shadows knife-edged on the white stone. Crows come flying in, squabbling as they settle on roofs and walls, lining every door and window frame like black snow. Noisy, to begin with, then quiet. Waiting.

The looting grows more organized as men begin to drag heavy loads out of the buildings - carved furniture, bales of rich cloth, tapestries, armour, tripods, cooking cauldrons, barrels of wine and grain.

Now and then, the creatures would sit down and rest, sleek sheen of perspiration glowing on bronzed skin, muscles shifting restlessly as they reach for wine and swig it directly from the jug. They wipe their mouth on the back of their bloodstained hands, getting steadily and determinedly drunk.

More and more often, as the sky starts to fade, their predatorial gazes slant towards the herd of women huddled in circles with chains around their necks and shackles binding wrists. River’s scalp prickles as their stares linger, darkening with each passing second.

One captain moved from group to group, urging the men onto their feet again, and gradually they succeeded. A few final swigs and they were back at work.

River watches them strip houses and temples of wealth that generations of her people had worked hard to create, their actions so good at it, so practised. The image is similar to a swarm of locusts that settle onto a harvest field; not leaving an ear of single corn behind. Helplessness evades her as the city - her home - is stripped bare.

As the sun sets so does the weeping of other women wane to weak sniffles. They clutch each other, red-rimmed eyes hollowly staring, far too gripped by grief and fear to speak with each other.

Gradually, the looting stops - there was nothing left to take - and the drinking begins in earnest. Several huge vats are wheeled onto the square and jugs pass from man to man.

One man, towering at six foot eight, breaks from the group with a determined, somewhat derisive stare whilst approaching the women. River feels the girl beside her shift, pressing into each other as though the effort would make them one, invisible. It does not.

“You,” the man barks, pointing at a girl and curling his finger, “come.” River hears the wail that tumbles heart in her chest, she turns her head slightly, noting the girl being pried away from a woman’s arms. Even in terror, she remains stunning, skin like marble and hair flecked with gold as though granted the rights by Helios himself. The chief’s daughter, admired by most if not all.

The man’s patience frays its limits and he stoops low, grabbing the serpent chain and viciously yanking her forward. He remains impervious to her nails which rip at his forearms, dragging her towards a circle of men who watch on wickedly passing a wineskin amongst themselves.

The air grows heavy with the foreknowledge of what is to happen.

River sees their hands reach for the thin rope that holds their pants together as the girl is thrown onto the ground, her sobs sharply cut off as one man grabs a fistful of her golden hair, snapping her head back.

River drops her gaze at the sounds of her cries growing muffled - stuffed, then choking. They take turns between her, sharing a wine jug, passing it good-naturedly from hand to hand while waiting their turn. The rape does not falter, skin slapping on skin, grunts and groans, banter and laughter, sleek noises.

The girl’s two brothers - twelve, thirteen years old perhaps - lie wounded and dying a few yards from her. They die watching the defiling of their sister, and when the activity is complete, their breaths grow still.

River inhales a shallow breath, pushing down the lump of bile that wrings her belly and rushes up to her throat. Night falls, and darkness grows absolute, broken by the raging bonfire created at the centre. The smell of charred flesh permeates the atmosphere.

“Rise!” Obediently they begin to rise unsteadily, legs painfully numb from disuse.

River searches the crowd of faces for her friend as they form a line up outside the huts for inspection. Two men, who never speak except to each other, walk along the line of women, pulling down a lip here, a lower eyelid there, prodding bellies, squeezing breasts, thrusting their hands between their legs.

River realizes then that they were being assessed for distribution.

The first group of females, healthy and glowing, are led towards the bonfire where a small makeshift platform had been placed. River hears the shouts and indulgent whistles follow closely.

“The second group,” Fear swills through her like sour drinks as she walks behind another, head lowered, eyes focused on the ornate buckles of her dusty sandals.

Whoops of appreciation and terrible shouts echo around; what they would have liked to do to her and all the other village whores.

“Do not think of your previous life,” one man says as the first girl steps onto the stage dolefully.

The men bark at her ankles like rabid dogs, nipping at her heels. “That’s all over now—you’ll only make yourself miserable if you start brooding about it. Forget! This is your life now.”

Forget. Her duty lay out in front of her, as simple and clear as a bowl of water.

River shuts her eyes as her turn arrives. Bright light shines orange on her closed lids stained here and there with drifting bands of purple. Suddenly, the crowd’s shouts rose an intonation but it was not directed at her - another presence had stepped out of the shadows, languidly approaching the platform where River stood.

She feels something shift before her and seconds later, a hand grabs at her chin. The callous touch is like water from the sea, a freshness against skin, capricious. A cold chill runs down the length of her spine. The flesh that presses against her is, she knows, no more similar to her own than dust is to fire.

The grip is firm as he twists the young girl’s head from the left to right and back again. Through it all, River remains passive and compliant. Beneath shut lids, she feels his eyes focused and unmoving throughout the scrutiny. Always the same pressure against her skin, strong and firm.

Finally, the grip on her chin loosens as the figure steps back.

River’s eyes remain shut, but she hears the voice lay his final claim;

“She’ll do.”