by Angus Watson
Age of Iron
Angus Watson
BY ANGUS WATSON
Age of Iron trilogy
Age of Iron
Clash of Iron
Reign of Iron
COPYRIGHT
Published by Orbit
ISBN: 9781405528528
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by Angus Watson
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
Orbit
Little, Brown Book Group
100 Victoria Embankment
London, EC4Y 0DY
www.littlebrown.co.uk
www.hachette.co.uk
Table of Contents
By Angus Watson
Copyright
Dedication
Part One: Barton and Bladonfort 61BC
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Part Two: Kanawan
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Part Three: Mearhold
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Part Four: Maidund
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Historical Note
Acknowledgements
Interview
For Nicola and Charlie
In 55 BC, ten thousand Roman soldiers commanded by General Julius Caesar invaded Britain. They advanced no further than the Kentish beach they’d landed on before returning to Gaul.
A year later Caesar crossed the Channel again, this time with twenty-five thousand soldiers, plus cavalry, in six hundred newly built transport ships. This huge force certainly intended to conquer and occupy Britain. Yet a few months after landing, the mighty Roman army fled back to Gaul with nothing to show for its expensive venture.
The Romans did not return until AD 43, almost a hundred years later.
History has always accepted the only surviving account of the 55 and 54 BC invasions – Julius Caesar’s diary – which says that the Romans won every battle in Britain, had never intended to stay anyway and departed in triumph with their forces intact.
The following is what really happened.
Part One
Barton and Bladonfort
61BC
Chapter 1
“Mind your spears, coming through!”
Dug Sealskinner shouldered his way back through the ranks. Front rank was for young people who hadn’t learned to fear battle and old men who thought they could compete with the young.
Dug put himself halfway in that last category. He’d been alive for about forty years, so he was old. And he wanted to compete with the young, but grim experience had unequivocally, and sometimes humiliatingly, demonstrated that the young won every time. Even when they didn’t win they won because they were young and he wasn’t.
And here he was again, in another Bel-cursed battle line. Had things gone to plan, he’d have been living the respectable older man’s life, lord of his broch, running his own seaside farm on Britain’s north coast, shearing sheep, spearing seals and playing peekaboo with grandchildren. He’d been close to achieving that when fate had run up and kicked him in the bollocks. Since then, somehow, the years had fallen past, each one dying with him no nearer the goals that had seemed so achievable at its birth.
If only we could shape our own lives, he often thought, rather than other bastards coming along and shaping them for us.
Satisfyingly, the ragtag ranks parted at his request. He might not feel it, but he still looked fearsome, and he was a Warrior. His jutting jaw was bearded with thick bristle. His big head was cased in a rusty but robust, undecorated iron helmet. His oiled ringmail shone expensively in the morning sun, its heaviness flattening his ever-rounder stomach. The weighty warhammer which swung on a leather lanyard from his right hand could have felled any mythical beastie.
He’d been paid Warrior’s wages to stay in the front rank to marshal the troops, so arguably he should have stayed in the front rank and marshalled the troops. But he didn’t feel the need to fulfil every tiny detail of the agreement. Or even the only two details of it. First, because nobody would know; second, because there wasn’t going to be a battle. He’d collect his full fee for a day standing in a field, one of thousands of soldiers. One of thousands of people, anyway. There were some other Warriors – Dug knew a few of them and had nodded hello – but the rest were men and women in leathers at best, hardly soldiers, armed with spears but more used to farm equipment. Quite a few of them were, in fact, armed with farm equipment.
What, by Camulos, is that doing here? he thought, looking at a small, bald but bearded man holding a long p
ole topped with a giant cleaver – a whale blubber cutter, if he wasn’t mistaken. He hadn’t seen one of those for a while and wanted to ask its owner what it was doing so far inland. But an interest in fishing equipment wouldn’t help his battle-hardened Warrior image.
He pushed out into the open field. Behind Barton’s makeshift army, children in rough wool smock-frocks ran across the bright field, laughing, fighting and crying. The elderly sat in groups complaining about the army’s formation and other things that had been better in their day. To the left, sitting in a heap of rags and shunned by all, was the inevitable drunken old druid, shouting semi-coherently about the imminence of Roman invasion, like all the other dozens of drunken druids that Dug had seen recently.
Over by the bridge were those others who escaped military service – Barton’s more important families. A couple of them were looking at Dug, perhaps wondering why their expensive mercenary was taking a break.
He put his hands on his hips in an overseer pose and tried to look like he was assessing the line for weaknesses. Very important, the rear rank of a defensive line, he’d tell them if they asked afterwards.
Dug hadn’t expected to be in the Barton army that sunny morning. He’d been stopping in Barton hillfort the day before when word came that the cavalry and chariot sections of King Zadar of Maidun Castle’s army would be passing on their way home from sacking the town and hillfort of Boddingham.
Boddingham was a smaller settlement than Barton, forty miles or so north-east along the Ridge Road. It had stopped paying tribute to Maidun. Perhaps Boddingham had felt safe, a hundred miles from the seat and capital of King Zadar’s empire, but along good metalled roads and the hard chalk Ridge Road, that was only three days’ journey for Zadar’s chariots and cavalry – less if they pushed it. It would have taken much longer to move a full army, as Dug well understood, having both driven and hindered armies’ movements in his time, but everyone Dug had spoken to said that Zadar’s relatively small flying squad of horse soldiers was more than capable of obliterating a medium-sized settlement like Boddingham. If that was true, thought Dug, they must be the elite guard of Makka the war god himself.
The Maidun force had passed Barton two days before, too set on punishing Boddingham to linger for longer than it took to demand and collect food, water and beer. Now though, on the way back, swords bloodied, slaves in tow, the viciously skilful little company might have the time and inclination to take a pop at weak, underprepared Barton.
“You!” A man had shouted at Dug the night before. So courteous, these southerners.
“Aye?” he’d replied.
“Know anything about fighting?”
You’d think his dented iron helmet, ringmail shirt and warhammer might have answered that question, but southerners, in Dug’s experience, were about as bright as they were polite.
“Aye, I’m a Warrior.”
And that was how he’d ended up at the previous night’s war council. He’d actually been on his way to sign up with Zadar’s army – finally fed up with the strenuous life of a wandering mercenary – but he saw no need to mention that to the Barton defenders.
Fifty or so of Barton’s more important men and women, the same ones who weren’t in the battle line, had been packed into the Barton Longhouse for the war council. Calling it a longhouse was pretentiousness, another southern trait that Dug had noticed. First, it was circular. Second, it was only about twenty paces across. At most it was a mediumhouse. It was just a big hut really, made of mud, dung and grass packed into a lattice of twigs between upright poles. Four wide trunks in the middle supported the conical reed roof. Dug could have shown them how to build a hut the same size without the central supports, thereby freeing up space. Perhaps the hall predated that particular architectural innovation, but there was a wood at the foot of the hill and plenty of people, so rebuilding would have been a doddle.
This tribe, however, was clearly neither architecturally diligent nor building-proud. One of the support posts leaned alarmingly and there was a large, unplanned hole in the roof near the door. At the end of a long hot day, despite the hole, the air inside was thick and sweaty. It could have done with double ceiling vents. Dug could have shown them how to put those in too.
King Mylor of Barton sat on a big wooden chair on a platform in the centre, rubbing the back of his hand against his two remaining rotten teeth, staring about happily with milky eyes at his visitors and hooting out “Oooo-ooooh!” noises that reminded Dug of an elderly seal. He looked like a seal, now Dug came to think of it. Smooth rings of blubber made his neck wider than his hairless, liver-spotted skull, which was wetly lucent in the torchlight. Whiskers sprayed out under his broad, flat nose. Dug had heard that Barton’s king had lost his mind. It looked like the gossipy bards were right for once.
Next to Mylor sat the druid Elliax Goldan, ruler in all but name. You didn’t cross Barton’s chief druid, Dug had heard. He was a little younger than Dug perhaps, slim, with tiny black eyes in a pink face that gathered into a long nose. Rat-like. If you could judge a man by his face – and Dug had found that you could – here was an angry little gobshite. Dug had seen more and more druids as he’d migrated south. There were three basic types: the wise healer sort who dispensed advice and cures, the mad, drunk type who raved about dooms – almost all Rome-related these days – and the commanding sort whose communes with the gods tended to back up their plans and bolster their status. Elliax was firmly in this latter camp.
On Mylor’s left was the druid’s wife, Vasin Goldan. Her skin was shiny and mottled. Big eyes sat wide apart, far up her forehead, very nearly troubling her hairline. Frog-face, Dug had heard her called earlier. Spot on, he mused. Seal-head, Rat-nose and Frog-face. Right old menagerie.
Behind Elliax and Mylor were four Warriors in ringmail. It was never a great sign, Dug thought, when rulers needed protection from their own people.
Elliax silenced the hubbub with a couple of claps, interrupting Dug’s explanation to a young woman of how he’d improve the hut’s roof. “The meeting is convened!” he said in a surprisingly deep voice. Dug had expected him to squeak.
“Could we not do this outside?” asked Dug, pulling his mail shirt away from his neck to get some cooler air down there. Spicily pungent body odour clouded out. The woman he’d been talking to shuffled away. Blooming embarrassment made Dug even hotter.
“Barton war meetings take place in the Barton Longhouse!” Elliax boomed, also reddening.
“Even when it’s hot and there’s plenty of room outside? Isn’t that a bit stupid?” Several people around Dug nodded.
“Hot-t-t-t-t!” shouted King Mylor.
Mylor, it was said, had lost his mind along with Barton’s wealth and position ten years before, when he’d bet his five best against King Zadar’s champion. The champion, a massive young man called Carden Nancarrow, had slaughtered Barton’s four best men and one woman in a few horrifying moments. Barton had paid painful taxes to Maidun ever since.
By persuading Mylor to accept the five-to-one combat rather than defend the highly defendable fort, Elliax claimed he’d saved Barton from annihilation. Over the following decade he’d continued to serve his town as Zadar’s representative and tax collector. Zadar’s taxes would have starved Barton in a couple of years, said Elliax, but he was happy to mislead Maidun about Barton’s assets and collect a little less. All he asked in exchange were a few easy gifts like land, food, ironwork or the easiest gift of all – an hour or so with a daughter. While others became steadily malnourished, Elliax thrived, his wife fattened, and unmarried girls bore children with suspiciously rodent faces. Anyone who complained found themselves chosen by Elliax’s druidic divinations to march south as part of Zadar’s quarterly slave quota.
“We have nothing to fear,” Elliax continued, ignoring Dug and King Mylor. “I have seen it. We pay our dues and it’s in Zadar’s interest that we keep paying them. He will not attack.”
“But Zadar can’t be trusted to act rationall
y!” shouted a young woman at the back. “Look what he did to Cowton last year.”
Dug had heard about Cowton. Everybody had. Zadar had wiped out the entire town. Men, women, the elderly, children, livestock … two thousand people and Danu knew how many animals had been slaughtered or sold to Rome as slaves. Nobody knew why.
Elliax looked sideways at King Mylor. The king was picking at the crotch of his woollen trousers.
“Who is your chief druid?” Elliax asked. Nobody had an answer. Elliax smiled like a toad who’d caught a large fly. He held out his arms. “This morning, on the wood shrine, I sacrificed a seabird from the Island of Angels to see its tales of the future. As the bird quivered in death, I was distracted by a sound. I looked up and saw a squirrel hissing at a cat. The cat passed by, leaving the squirrel unharmed.” Elliax looked around smugly, eyes finishing up on Dug’s.
Most people looked at each other and nodded. More often than not the gods’ messages were too cryptic for Dug to grasp immediately, but he got this one.
“Can’t argue with that!” said a stout man.
“Yeah, if it was true. Ever heard a squirrel hiss?” muttered a woman behind Dug.
“No one would dare lie about something like that!” whispered a man who, by the frustration in his voice, Dug took to be the woman’s husband.
Elliax continued. “I looked into the bird’s viscera and found Danu. She told me we had nothing to fear from Zadar. Next I found Makka. He outlined our strategy. The weather has been dry, so Zadar will leave the Ridge Road and take the quicker lowland road, as he did on the way to Boddingham. Makka told me that we should gather everyone on the valley floor and form a spear and shield line between the two curves of the river on the other side of the bridge. Cavalry and chariots cannot charge a spear line.”
“Unless the spear line breaks,” said Dug. He wouldn’t have usually challenged any god’s proclamations, especially Makka’s, but these people didn’t know battle and needed to be told. A few older voices murmured agreement, which encouraged him to continue: “In which case you might as well have a row of children holding wet reeds. Why not bring everyone up into the fort? Do a bit of work on the walls overnight – sharpen the angles, tighten the palisade, few spikes in the ditch – and they’ll never get in.”
