by Angus Watson
“What if she lets me kill the third sheep, but my desire to bed her is so strong that I keep her anyway?”
“That, my dear Ragnall, would mean that you are a young man who, like all young men, ignores the wisdom of his elders and will spend the rest of his days regretting it. Old age may look impossibly far away, but looking back it will seem but the blink of an eye since you married a woman with an ugly soul because she once had a beautiful body. And you will hate her and you will curse yourself for marrying her.”
“Right.”
“I know you are not paying me any heed, Ragnall. I can warn you over and over, but it will make no difference because you are a young man with beauty, strength and the firm belief that you know better than anyone who has ever trod Britain’s green fields before you. In reality you have the judgement of a sex-starved billy goat with a head injury. When you are old and wise, you will see what a fool you are now, and you will see life’s cruellest joke.”
The horses’ hooves clopped on the stone road.
“Which is?”
“By the time you realise what a wonderful gift youth is, you no longer have it.”
“You’re wrong, Drustan. I’m already fully aware of how wonderful life is. I know myself.”
Drustan coughed out a short laugh. “You don’t. Men will know the ways of all the beasts and the gods before they know themselves. The only way men or women can know themselves is if there’s almost nothing to know. If that was the case, however, they wouldn’t have the nous to know even that.”
“I thought you knew everything, Drustan?”
The old man smiled. “The wisest man or woman is but a child poking a stick into a rock pool next to a boundless ocean below an unending range of mountains. Which is why, Ragnall, it would do well for those druids who think they can explain everything to take their heads out of their own arses.”
“I don’t remember learning that on the Island of Angels.”
“I would not be welcome there if I taught it, but it is something that everybody who aspires to be more than a sheep or a dog should know.”
“Hold,” Drustan said several miles later. He dismounted, walked ahead and bent down. The woodland track had narrowed so they’d been riding in single file with the druid leading. Ragnall couldn’t see what had made him stop.
“Sword to the gut, I would say,” Drustan said.
“What?” Ragnall slipped off his horse and ran forward. A dead man lay across the path. The woods felt suddenly colder. The birdsong had stopped. This was not part of his imagined homecoming.
Drustan lifted the dead man’s shirt. There was a black wound. Dried blood was crusted down his stomach, trousers and leather shoes.
“I would say he has walked between five and ten miles after being stabbed with a sword,” said the druid.
“Which means he could have come from Boddingham.”
“It is a possibility. Do you recognise him?”
Ragnall leaned over the man’s face.
“No. I don’t think he’s from Boddingham. More likely he’s been attacked by bandits right here and your calculations are out by between five and ten miles.”
Drustan raised an eyebrow. “Here, help me.”
The two men heaved the body a little way into the trees. Drustan called on the beasts and birds to eat the flesh and return it to Danu. He asked that the man might be given a longer life in the Otherworld. As he stood and listened, Ragnall became increasingly worried. What if the man was from Boddingham? If his home had been attacked, then his father, his mother, Anwen …
“Let’s go,” said Ragnall as soon as Drustan had finished. They left a marker on the path so that if the murdered man’s kin came looking for him at Boddingham they could tell them where to find his body.
Six miles later the road left the woods. Woodsmoke, thick and white, was billowing up into the clean blue air from Boddingham Hill. Ragnall kicked his horse into a gallop.
Chapter 13
“I like your ringmail. Did you make it yourself?”
“No.”
“Is it heavy?”
“Yes.”
“Was it expensive?”
“It would have been if I’d paid coin or bartered for it.”
“What did you pay for it?”
“The blood price.”
“The blood price?”
“I took it from a man I killed. Well, I think I killed him. Actually someone else probably killed him. But I killed the man who killed him. I think. Battles get confusing. I didn’t pay coin for it or exchange anything is the point.”
“Oh, I see.”
Spring skipped ahead for a while, her pigtails bouncing. It was going to be a hot day, but it was still cool in the woods. A soft breeze shivered through a grove of aspen. The girl picked up a stick and slowed down until she was back at Dug’s side, swinging her stick and looking up at the big northerner.
“Why was there a battle yesterday?”
“Because adults, as you’ll come to understand when you are one, are fools.”
“Oh, I already know that. Ulpius was a total fool.”
“Who’s Ulpius?”
“The man who put poo and pee in his hair, who you killed with your hammer.”
“Oh yes.”
“But why was there a battle yesterday at Barton?”
“You can look at it on two levels.” Dug looked down and raised his eyebrows at Spring to see if she understood what he meant. She nodded.
“In the big picture it’s because the Romans are coming. Go to any marketplace and you’ll find a druid shouting about it. The Romans are very dangerous people who have conquered—”
“I know who the Romans are! Ulpius was Roman.”
“Oh, OK. So the Romans are coming, and everyone’s scared and they’re behaving like even bigger idiots than normal. We could unite and defeat them but instead we’re doing the opposite. It’s like we’re fowl farmers who know that a fox is coming. Instead of repairing our coops, we’re running around like fools, killing each other’s ducks and piling them up ready for the fox. In fact we’re even shipping ducks to the fox before he gets here. All in the hope that he’ll leave our own ducks alone when he comes. Which he won’t.”
Spring nodded wisely.
Dug continued: “At the heart of it all are three tribes. Really they’re groups of lots of tribes, but everyone uses the dominant tribe’s name to cover the lot.”
“Got it!”
“In the south west are the Dumnonians. They’re serious bastards from what I’ve heard, fierce as weasels and proud as cockerels. To the north and east of here the Murkans under King Grummog are more or less in charge. I worked for them for a while and they’re nasty buggers too. Down here in the south you have Zadar, king of Maidun Castle. They say – although it’s hard to know if they’re right – that even though he has the smallest army of the three, he’s the worst of the lot. They also say that Maidun Castle is the biggest and strongest of all the hillforts. It has three massive walls all the way round, a giant palisade and a labyrinth – a maze – for a gate. People get lost just trying to walk into the place. Zadar’s army lives in this fort. Well, probably next to it. I haven’t been there, but armies generally live outside hillforts unless they’re being attacked.”
“I know!”
Dug paused to clear a large branch that had fallen across the track in case a cart came along later.
“OK. So. We saw just how good Zadar’s army was yesterday when a handful of them beat a much bigger host, probably without so much as broken nail.” He thought back to the horse archers, the six who’d attacked first. He’d been thinking about them quite a bit, particularly their leader, the blonde one.
He felt Spring’s warm little hand take his. He pulled away gently but she tightened her grip. Her hand felt tiny, cool and precious in his coarse paw.
They walked on. The going was soft, dry and shady under overarching trees.
It had been a very odd day already and th
ey were only a couple of hours into it. Waking in the reeds, being attacked by that bizarre-looking man, and now walking with this child who he really should have killed back on the battlefield.
“Don’t do that, please,” she’d said politely. That had stayed his hand, and she’d run over to the man he’d killed with the hammer, rummaged through his pockets, produced an antler comb, tidied her hair, tied it in two pigtails and run back over. “There,” she’d said. “I can look smart and we can be friends.” And he’d gone with it. He hadn’t killed her. He still wasn’t sure why. He quarter-suspected that she was not a child at all, but a mind-bending imp, slipped over from the Otherworld when he’d been so close to it. She was definitely an odd little thing and something weird had definitely happened to the speed of time when he’d woken up. It shouldn’t have been so easy to dodge that knife strike and to scalp the man who attacked him.
“So,” he continued, “Zadar’s doing what he wants, and piling up more riches than any king before him by taxing half of southern Britain and selling the rest as slaves to the Romans.”
“Why don’t people stop Zadar?”
“They can’t.”
“Bet they could. Oh look! A squirrel!”
A red squirrel was watching them from the branch of an oak tree, a nut in its paws. Dug reached for his sling. The squirrel squeaked and ran to safety.
“Why don’t you stop Zadar?” Spring asked.
“Me? What can I do?”
“Have you tried anything?”
“Not as such.”
Spring didn’t talk for a while, humming quietly as she walked. Her head twitched round at every rustle or tweet, trying to spot what made it as if she’d never seen a woodland animal before.
Dug strode along, mulling over his hypocrisy. Everyone else was selfish and blinkered, but he was off to join Zadar’s army, which was arguably even more selfish and worse than blinkered because he knew what he was doing. But he hadn’t started it. Why shouldn’t he make the most of a bad situation that he didn’t cause?
They walked into a grassy clearing. Bees buzzed about wildflowers, loud in the stillness.
“That cloud looks like a boar.” Spring pointed to the sky.
“So it does,” said Dug, “and that one’s a gull’s head.”
“Yes! With a fish in its beak!” He felt Spring squeeze his hand. “I thought it was just me that looked at clouds like that.”
“Aye well, I thought it was just me too. I used to do it the whole time with my girls.”
Spring nodded as if she knew exactly what he meant.
“That one’s a whale jumping,” said Dug.
“What’s a whale?”
“A big fish.”
“Bigger than a pike?”
“Dear oh dear. Bigger than a thousand pikes. Have you never been to the sea?”
“I have. But only to the edge, never out in a boat.”
“You should try it. The clouds are even better when you’re at sea.”
“Can you tell me the story of the war against the halfmen, please?” she asked a little while later as he lifted her across the gap in a broken bridge. Sunlight speared through the trees and dragonflies hummed along the babbling stream.
“Aye, well, that’s a good one. My ma used to tell me that one, and I used to tell it to my girls. Many years ago, before the war of the gods and the time of ice, Britain and the rest of the world were one big land and you could have walked from here to Rome without getting your feet wet…”
Chapter 14
“You’re a bad husband. Do you want to know why?”
Weylin didn’t bother answering. She’d tell him anyway. He looked over his shoulder. The six other riders – also members of the Fifty who Felix had ordered to capture Lowa – were far enough back and talking among themselves. They probably couldn’t hear Dionysia even if her voice was like knitting needles in his ears. He sighed and looked at the face he’d come to hate. Green eyes that were once seductive now radiated sour misery. Once-kissable lips were ruckled like a dried limpet. Freckles that he’d once traced with an adoring finger were now a blight across flushed, angry cheeks.
“You never support me. You didn’t support me in front of Felix last night. You didn’t take a Roman name like you said you would. Worst of all, you didn’t look out for me in the battle!”
“A kingfisher!” Weylin pointed at the brightly coloured bird watching them from a fence post. They were riding along the riverside path to Bladonfort, so he’d been looking out for kingfishers. “They’re usually more shy than that. It might be injur—”
Dionysia grabbed his arm and pulled him back towards her. “Stop looking at the fucking wildlife and get back to the subject. You. Were. Not. Looking out for me!”
The kingfisher darted into cover. Weylin shook his head. His thick mane, lumpen from that morning’s application of beeswax, swayed heavily. The sun glinted off his freshly shaved scalp. Not often you saw a kingfisher.
“All right. In which battle do you think I wasn’t looking out for you?”
“At Barton.”
“That wasn’t a battle. Nobody was killed.”
“Thousands were killed!”
“I mean on our side. None of ours even got injured.”
“That’s still a battle.” Dionysia sounded unsure. Weylin loved the rare occasions when he wrong-footed her.
“Actually I did hear about one guy afterwards,” he said. “A guy in the light chariots got stabbed by the woman he was raping about an hour after the battle. He’ll live. She won’t. He punched her face in. He had to finish off into her corpse…” Weylin chuckled.
“You are such a fucking animal. You think it was totally fine to rape her and kill her when she resisted? And then … a dead body? Do men have no shame?”
“I dunno. What does it matter? We won the battle; he can do what he wants. But he should be ashamed that he let her stab him, and she was stupid not to kill him. And what do you mind? I’ve never seen you try to stop the raping. And it’s not like I join in.” Not when you’re around anyway. “But that’s not the point. Point is, it wasn’t a proper battle, so I didn’t need to keep an eye on you. But, as it happens, because I am such a good husband, I was watching you. And what I saw was you, as always, showing off to Atlas and Carden.”
“That’s bullshit.”
Weylin’s horse skittered as a frog hopped off the road and into the grass. He rubbed its neck soothingly.
“I heard you shout, ‘Atlas, Carden, watch this!’ then ride, big arse in the air, at a group of peasants who you chopped down from behind. You almost fell off trying to copy Atlas’s torso-in-half thing on a girl who couldn’t have been more than twelve.”
“I do not have a big arse!”
“Don’t you?”
“It’s smaller than Lowa’s.”
“Really?” Weylin rolled his eyes in disbelief, knowing how much that would annoy her.
“You turd. You’re no looker with your … stupid, stupid hair … and that wasn’t showing off to Atlas and Carden, it’s my fucking training. I’m at a level now that you won’t ever reach. I could have asked you to watch, but frankly I’m not interested in any criticism about my swordplay from anyone who isn’t at least as good as Atlas.”
“I’m a Warrior.”
“We’re all Warriors! It’s not hard to kill ten people when you’re in this army, although there are those who think that cutting down ten children shouldn’t count.”
“I have earned my Warrior medal again and—”
“Possibly, dear. But there are different levels of Warrior. And since I’m quite a few above you, there’s no point asking you to assess my swordplay. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Cromm Cruach, paranoid and arrogant.”
They rode on in uncomfortable silence, Dionysia gazing blankly at the road ahead, Weylin looking for kingfishers.
“You don’t fancy me any more,” she said after a while. “I saw the way you looked at Chamanca. Only
you could fancy a woman with teeth like a dog’s. But she’d never go for you, you know, not with that stupid hair and the brains to match. What does your hair look like? What was it Carden said? It was brilliant. ‘Like a squirrel fucking a turnip!’ That was it! I’d forgotten that! Just brilliant.”
Dionysia bent over her horse’s neck, almost choking with fake laughter. Weylin thought about opening up the back of her head with his sword. He looked back. Nah. The others were too close.
They rode on to Bladonfort.
Chapter 15
An hour later Dug and Spring came to the hideout described to him a moon before by a short-term travelling companion. He hadn’t thought he’d need it, but it was always good to have an escape plan.
It was an enclosure maybe ten paces across, ringed with a ditch and low bank, tucked into woods skirting a grassy flood plain. Probably it had been a small fortified farm, but many generations ago it had been abandoned or sacked, looted for building materials and overrun by trees and bushes. Now it was part of the woods and far enough from the river that people walking the banks wouldn’t know it was there. Dug was glad to see the vegetation was untrodden. Nobody had been here for a while. It should suit his purpose.
A battle, Dug thought, was like a boulder lobbed into a pond. The initial splosh of killing and uproar created waves and then ripples of violence all around for days. A petty thief might become a murderous highwayman. A women who’d been happy to be unhappy at home for years might suddenly butcher her husband, children, dogs and a couple of the neighbours before throwing herself off a cliff. That sort of thing. So Spring would be better off hiding here for a couple of days until the region had calmed. Dug wasn’t concerned about himself. There were so many easy targets around that someone his size and ugliness needn’t worry too much.
Spring sat on the bank and made a daisy chain while Dug stripped bark from a silver birch with his flint knife, folded it into a watertight box and pinned the corners with split twigs wound in bark twine. He walked over to the river, checking all the way that there was nobody about, and filled his new container. He drank it down, refilled it, drained it and refilled it again. A grey heron watched from the opposite bank. Dug felt for his sling. He’d left it with Spring. The heron, seeming to read Dug’s mind – or actually reading it for all he knew – took off and flew lazily upriver.
