Age of Iron

by Angus Watson

  “Catch them, or Zadar will kill you and your families!” shouted Weylin.

  That, it seemed, was more of an incentive. The guards charged.

  One of their attacker’s heads exploded with the promised face shot. Badgers’ helmets, what a bow, thought Dug. Then they were too close. In half a heartbeat Lowa had jammed her bow lengthways into the ground to bend it, flicked the string off the end and gripped it in two hands. It was thick enough to make a decent fighting staff. Dug readied his hammer.

  The five guards stopped in a line, three paces away, weapons raised.

  Dug hoped Lowa knew that they needed to attack together. He took a step forward and she mirrored it. Good. Dug felt battle excitement bubble in his blood. Two on five suddenly seemed like reasonable odds.

  “Come on, you horrible wee fuckers!” he grinned.

  “Drop your weapons!” came a shout from behind.

  Dug glanced over his shoulder. Badgers’ arses. Quite an oversight. He’d forgotten the dozen or so other guards. Amazing how stupid battle made him. Half of them had blades and mêlée weapons, half of them slings, loaded and whirring round. There was no chance. He lowered his hammer a little.

  Weylin walked over from the inn, swinging Dug’s lime-bark rope in one hand. Despite his injury, a white-toothed grin cracked his face. He had them and he knew it.

  “We’re caught,” whispered Dug.

  “We are not,” Lowa said, jaw clenched.

  “OK. We’re about to be caught. We have to surrender.”

  “No.”

  “There are twenty of them and two of us. We fight and we’re definitely dead, or at least injured. We submit unharmed, we can escape later.”

  Lowa looked around. Dug could feel the rage boiling in her. She was about to make a move.

  “It’s not a choice,” he whispered. “Surrender is our only hope.”

  She took a step, jabbing towards the guards with her bow. Dug heard the whirl of leather slings preparing to loose behind him. He raised his hammer in two hands, slipped the shaft over Lowa’s shoulders and trapped her arms.

  She stamped hard once, then again. He danced his feet out of the way.

  “Stop!” he hissed in her ear. “You’ll need me. I’ll be more use without broken feet. Trust me.”

  She was stiff in his arms, humming with frustrated energy. She smelled fantastic and felt even better, but he tried to think about something else. He didn’t want to weaken his image as a noble hero by nudging a boner into her back.

  “We will get out of this,” he whispered.

  “We’d better,” she said, “or I’m going to find you in the Otherworld, and I’m going to get you by the balls and—”

  “Disarm yourselves!” shouted Weylin.

  Dug heard Lowa’s bow clatter to the ground. He let her go and put his hammer down.

  “Well thank you, northerner!” said Weylin. “You wanted to join Zadar’s army? Looks like you’re going to get your chance – as a practice dummy!”

  Weylin looked about for laughter, but there was none.

  “What do you mean?” said Dug.

  Weylin’s smile faltered. “I said you’ll get your chance to join the Maidun army as a practice dummy!”

  “Sorry, I can’t see what you’re driving at.” Dug’s smile grew as Weylin’s dissolved into anger. His fist swung back. Dug saw the blow coming. He tensed his stomach muscles and shifted his gut sideways. The punch was ineffective.

  “Ooooofffff!” he said, falling onto his side. He lay there breathing like an ill horse.

  “Please, no m-more,” he stuttered. Bravado was all well and good, but when caught he’d worked out it was less painful if you came across as pathetic as possible.

  “There’ll be more when I say so!” Weylin took a running kick at Dug, who rolled so that it glanced off his back. That seemed to satisfy the tall young man. “Lowa, on your knees!” He shouted. Lowa knelt. “Right you lot.” Weylin addressed the guards. “Anybody good with knots?”

  “I am,” said Dug.

  Weylin punched him in the face. Dug rolled his head with it, but this one did smart a bit.

  “Anyone else?” Weylin asked, shaking his bruised fingers.

  The guards discussed how best to tie up the captives. In the end one of them made a large noose with the rope. Weylin made Dug and Lowa stand back to back with their hands crossed on their chests. Dug held a big breath and tensed his arm and chest muscles as Weylin looped the noose over and wound the rope around them.

  He was nearly finished when there was a shout from the other end of the square: “Weylin! Got the chain!” A Maidun Warrior was lumbering up from the road to the north-east gate, weighed down by a length of chain.

  “Drop that, Tristan. Go and find a cart.”

  “A cart? Where from?”

  “Find one! I don’t care – There! That one!”

  Well, that’s odd, thought Dug as a cart came into the square driven by a girl who looked an awful lot like Spring.

  Chapter 21

  “You can borrow the cart but only if I can drive it.”

  “I’m taking it. Get down now, or I’ll—”

  “You’ll what? You’ll hit a girl? Maybe you’ll kill me? Is that the kind of man you are?”

  Weylin rubbed his temples. Lowa smiled. This had been going on for a while now. It didn’t take much to confound Weylin, but Lowa was enjoying the girl’s pluck. She reminded her of herself at that age. There was something else familiar about the girl that she couldn’t quite reach in the recesses of her mind.

  “Weylin,” said Dug, “how about you drive with your man Tristan up front, and let the girl sit in the back with us? That way she can take her cart back when you’re done borrowing it.”

  “I’m taking the cart. Not borrowing it.”

  “Oh come on,” said Dug. “You can’t take a girl’s cart. Her Dad will—”

  “We took a whole tribe yesterday! Of course I can take a fucking—”

  “Language!” said the girl. Weylin looked at her, mouth open. She smiled at him. “Now of course you can use my cart. I’m very glad to help with whatever’s needed to get these horrid ugly criminals out of this lovely town. But I can’t lose the cart and the oxen! My father is such good friends with Zadar that he’ll probably get Zadar himself to punish me. Please can I come too? I promise I won’t do anything wrong. I’ll sit up front with you so you can keep an eye on me?”

  “He’s a friend of Zadar’s, your dad?” Weylin asked, taking a step back.

  “I say friend. They’re actually cousins. But they act more like friends – you know, drinking beer and making plans and things. My dad has his own little army, so they talk about fighting a lot. It’s really boring. They go on and on about different ways to torture people who annoy them or take things from them.”

  “OK, OK. All right.”

  “Weylin,” said Tristan, “what if she’s in league with them?”

  “Good point. Are you trying to help them?”

  “Why would I try to help them? He looks like a bear that needs a wash and she’s got a criminal’s face.”

  “Maybe you’re in with the northerner?”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” said Dug. “Every ageing northern Warrior has a wee southern girl for a partner.”

  Several of the market guards laughed.

  “All right! Fine! You can come in the cart, little girl, and you can have it back afterwards, but you ride up front with me. Tristan, you guard these two. Now get them onto the cart.” Weylin eyed Lowa’s bow covetously. “Throw their weapons in too, but out of their reach.”

  “Maybe you should have tied us up after we’d got into the cart?” Lowa said. They were trundling out of the market, the girl driving. Weylin sat next to her, his broken wrist in a sling. The cart was a simple thing consisting of wooden planks nailed together into a platform surrounded by a rectangle of thick boards half a pace high. She and Dug were sitting on its bare boards, facing away from each other with
their torsos tied together. It had taken almost all the market guards a long, expletive-filled time to lift them in.

  “Keep talking,” said Weylin, leaning back to look at them. “You’ll quieten down soon enough once Zadar has you. Keep a close eye, Tristan.”

  Tristan was in the back with them, holding Lowa’s long knife. Her bow and Dug’s knife and hammer were out of reach at the front. Behind them walked a press-ganged squad of market guards. They weren’t happy to be there and the merchants hadn’t been happy to let them go, but Weylin had promised them payment to guard the captives and threatened their masters with Zadar’s wrath if they didn’t.

  Lowa had tensed all her muscles and breathed in when they were bound, so there was a good bit of give when she breathed out and relaxed, but not enough for her to wriggle free before Tristan would be able to stop her. She was about to ask Dug if there was any give on his side when the carter girl piped up, “By Bel and Danu and Toutatis’ brother! Is that a gold necklace lying on the road there?”

  “Where?” Weylin leaned forward like a curious pigeon.

  “Oooh, it’s just gone out of sight. We’re going to run it over. It’s on your side. If you lean…”

  Weylin leaned out. “I can’t see it.”

  “You’d better grab it or those guards will get it. If I hold your belt?” The girl gripped Weylin’s belt. He leaned farther. The girl let go of his belt and shoved, at the same time whipping the reins with her other hand and shouting, “Yah!”

  The cart lurched forward and Weylin fell out, barking with rage.

  “You little…” Tristan jumped up from his perch in the back. The girl whipped the reins again, two-handed now, and the oxen jerked into a lolloping gallop. Tristan toppled.

  “Go!” said Dug. Lowa felt him shrink as he breathed out and pulled his arms in. The ropes around her loosened massively and she slid out. Tristan was crawling up the bouncing cart to get at the girl, long knife in his teeth. Lowa leaped onto his back, grabbed the hilt of the knife and pulled. Tristan had been clever or was lucky enough to have put the knife in his mouth blade forwards, so he escaped without serious mutilation, but it was easy for Lowa to manoeuvre him to the back of the cart and kick him out.

  Weylin was already up and running behind them with the guards. “Slings!” He shouted. Lowa dropped into the cart.

  Dug was lying on his side, still struggling to free himself from the rope. “Watch out for slingstones, Spring!” he shouted.

  “So you do know her?” said Lowa above the rattle of the careering cart.

  “Aye. Like I said, every northern Warrior has a wee—” A stone whizzed through Dug’s hair and he ducked lower.

  Lowa peered over the back of the cart. The guards were ten paces away and keeping up. Slingstones flew. She ducked as they cracked into the backboard and zipped overhead.

  “Where did you get the cart from?” shouted Dug.

  “Where did you get the tart from?” Spring replied.

  Lowa smiled. “Can we go any faster?”

  “No. But there’s a stable not far from the gate where we can steal some horses,” answered the girl.

  “Yes…” Lowa looked over the edge again. They were no farther from the running guards. She crawled up the cart, grabbed her bow and strung it. She peeked again, but the slingers were ready. She felt the wind of a passing stone on her cheek as she ducked. So she couldn’t shoot the guards …

  “Problem!” shouted Spring from the front. “Drawbridge is up!”

  Lowa and Dug crawled speedily to the front. Bladonfort’s residents were diving right and left to avoid the speeding oxen. Beyond them the drawbridge was indeed up, its counterweights hanging from ropes. Lowa looked at her quiver. There were two half-moon-headed rigging-cutter arrows in it, the ones she’d thought she’d never get a chance to use.

  “Dug, I can cut the ropes, but the slingers…”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” Dug gripped one side of the cart and shook. It didn’t budge. He crawled across and tried the other. There was some give. “Arrgghhhh!” he shouted, pulling at the heavy plank.

  “We’re getting close!” Spring yelled. “What should I do?”

  “Keep driving at the gate. Come on Dug!” Lowa shouted.

  “We’re nearly there!” Spring’s voice was an octave higher.

  “Drive at it! Don’t slow down!” Lowa notched a half-moon.

  Dug stood in a stoop and worked at the plank. Two slingstones bounced off his back with painful-sounding whumps. The blows seemed to make him stronger. He wrenched the side of the cart free of its nails, spun and stood, holding it as a shield.

  Lowa leaped up in its lee.

  The counterweight was falling from the first severed rope as she loosed another arrow. It sliced the second rope, which whizzed through its pulley as the drawbridge fell open and banged down onto the stone quay. A heartbeat later the cart thundered across the River Bladon.

  “Wait!” shouted Dug, leaping off the back with his hammer and makeshift shield.

  Spring dragged the oxen to a halt.

  “What are you doing?” Lowa shouted.

  The guards, just the other side of the gate, saw their chance and sped up, yelling. Lowa could see Weylin a few paces behind them. “Take them alive!” he shouted.

  Dug swung his hammer about his head, then down and round into the side of the bridge. There was a loud crack. The bridge shifted maybe a finger’s breadth. The first guard was on the bridge, sword raised. Dug swung his hammer into the bridge again. There was a splintering, wrenching, crashing scream as drawbridge and guard fell into the river.

  Dug sprinted and leaped back into the cart just as the first slingshots from the guards in the gateway hit the backboard.

  Chapter 22

  He was on the beach near the broch at night with Brinna. The light from the boat was like a white sunrise. They couldn’t see who or what was aboard.

  “What do they want?” said Brinna, clutching his arm.

  “I don’t know.” Dug tried to wave the boat away. “We don’t want you!” he shouted. “Go away!”

  The light on the boat went out and the sun came up, and it was Lowa, standing in the place of a figurehead at the prow of a great sailing ship. The vast white sail was full, but the boat was still in the water, ten paces from the beach. Out of sight somewhere, all the horns of Maidun’s army were blaring their cacophony.

  “You want me to go?” Lowa said, pulling aside her brown dress to expose a firm white breast.

  “No!” Dug looked at Brinna. Brinna stared back at him, ears smoking with hatred. “No, come here. We don’t mind, do we, Brinna?”

  Brinna opened her mouth to disagree, but instead she disappeared and became Lowa. She took his hand. The boat had gone and they were outside the broch. “Let’s go inside,” she said.

  “Daddeee!” called both his little girls. They were standing on the sand dunes, wind whipping their red hair about their heads and the marram grass around their bare legs. Dug worried that the sharp edges of the grass would cut them.

  “Forget them,” said Lowa. “Come with me.”

  The wind rose and caught in his girls’ dresses, lifting them and carrying them away.

  It took Dug a moment to realise where he was. He was wrapped in a woollen blanket on the leaf-covered floor of the woodland enclosure where he’d tried to abandon Spring. They’d come back to it from the Bladonfort road leading two horses they’d stolen from the stable outside Bladonfort through the woods, diverting via his stashed mail shirt and helmet and waiting at one point as Spring stole blankets and food from a forester’s house.

  It had been dark by the time they’d arrived. They hadn’t risked a fire in case anyone was looking for them, and it had been warm anyway. They’d supped on honey bread and apples stolen from the forester and Dug had gone to sleep quickly, Spring on one side, Lowa on the other.

  Now the air was cold and wet but wonderfully clean-tasting after the dust and dung of the town. He rolled o
ver. He could see Lowa’s hair in the false dawn light, shining like polished iron. She was facing away from him, close enough that he could smell her scent of dried earth, musk and flowers. He closed his eyes.

  “Do you want eggs? I found some duck eggs. After you didn’t get eggs with my coin. Where is my coin?” It was full light now, and Spring was poking him with a stick. He looked about. There was no sign of Lowa. Someone had lit a fire. “She’s washing. Do you want eggs? I have mushrooms too. And nettles. She picked some berries and fruit so we can have those too. And she gave me some salt. I’ll put that in the eggs.”

  Lowa returned and nodded good morning. They sat on logs and passed the pan, taking turns to scoop out crisp egg and mushrooms with their fingers. Chewing, swallowing and the whistles and squeaks of woodland birds were the only sounds. When the omelette was gone, Spring filled the pan with cherries, hazelnuts, blackberries and gooseberries, and passed it around. The sweet food mixed well with the salty egg remains, at least to Dug’s ravenous palate.

  His absorption with breakfast wasn’t so total that it stopped him from glancing at Lowa. After a night sleeping rough she looked fresh and beautiful as a princess in a bard’s story. His interest was purely aesthetic, he told himself. There was no way she’d be interested in him – she must have been a good fifteen years younger. But there was no denying that she was the first woman in a long time he’d been so immediately and powerfully attracted to. The first, in fact, since he’d met Brinna at the ceilidh all those years before.

  “That was good, child, thank you,” said Lowa when the omelette was gone. She had an accent that Dug couldn’t place.

  “My name’s Spring.”

  Lowa stood up. “I have to go.” She wasn’t a great deal taller than Spring, Dug noticed.

  “You don’t,” said Dug.

  “See ya!” said Spring, snatching up the pan and heading for the river.

  “You don’t have to go.”

  “I do. There are things I need to do.”

  “What?”

  “I need to kill Zadar.” Lowa picked up her bow and looked about for her arrows.