With her curled hair and fine clothes they must have known she was special, and they decided to toy with her instead of indulging in an immediate violation. Claudia found herself spun round, punched and pushed back and forth, trying to shut out of her mind the leering faces, the spittle-flecked lips and the hoarse cries she could not comprehend. Somehow she knew there was an argument going on as to who should have the privilege of violating her first, the greatest prize, a very young woman who had been exquisitely clothed and, now naked, showed the full figure and smooth skin of a true beauty.
Whatever bargain was struck she was eventually grabbed by two individuals, her arms pinned as she was hauled to the ground. One look at the man who had won her had been enough to make Claudia want to close her eyes; yellow teeth, dark bronzed skin ravaged with smallpox, eyes like a small pig, but she fought against that. Whatever her fate, Claudia had had to look it in the eye, to let this barbarian beast know that whatever they did they could not break her Roman spirit. The glare of her look, and the pearl she spat into his face made him hesitate just a second, so that neither he nor she heard, from behind him, the swish of the falcata. The great steel blade of the Celtic sword had appeared in the corner of one eye like a flash of lightning, and the look had died in those piggy eyes as the head was lopped off the body, to jump free from the trunk like some child’s toy, that followed by a fountain of blood that drenched her, forcing her at last to close her eyes.