Age of Iron

by Angus Watson

  “But they’ll see us out in the open.”

  “Not if you’re quick, and even if they do see you and for some reason they come after you instead of me, horses will outrun dogs.”

  “You’re on foot!”

  “I’ll lose them in the trees. Get going. We don’t have time for a debate. Just go.”

  Dug looked like he was going to say something else, but then climbed onto the larger horse. Spring, scowling, mounted the other, in front of their baggage.

  “Yah!” Spring kicked the horse up the bank and out of the clearing. Dug bounced awkwardly after her.

  Bow in hand and quiver on her back, Lowa Flynn set off up into the trees.

  Chapter 25

  Drustan and Ragnall carried the latter’s father’s tortured body from the battlefield at Barton on a stretcher made from spears and dead men’s clothes. Ragnall was the same person he’d been two mornings ago, but so much was different. How could he be alive and unchanged when they were all dead?

  Zadar’s army had been easy enough to track. They’d followed the trail of looted farms and dead or terror-struck peasants. At night Ragnall hadn’t slept. Terrible images – Navlin and the rats, his brothers, the angle of his mother’s broken neck in the slave collar – tumbled in his mind. He’d thought he might go mad, but instead he went numb. So when they found his father among the corpses at Barton, dead with a bolt through each shoulder, attached to a cart next to some other luckless fellow, it wasn’t a surprise.

  Pupil and teacher carried the body to the woods and into a clearing, as they’d done with his mother. Ragnall felt sick with guilt that they’d left his brothers where they’d fallen, and everybody else at Boddingham for that matter. Drustan had told him that, given the circumstances, the gods would make allowances, and all the deserving would still drift happily to the Otherworld. They had given the rites, and that was enough.

  He’d always accepted that when people died they went to the Otherworld, where they occupied new, strong bodies and lived lives of heroism, love and joy. Some druids could talk to the dead. Other people could see or hear the dead sometimes at liminal places – where the sea met the land, at the edges of woods, where fog became clear air. But they also said that the gods rewarded the good. His family had been good. Boddingham as a whole had been good. It was hard to see brutal early death as much of a reward.

  Agonies and questions crawled over each other as Drustan chanted the rites for his father, Kris Sheeplord. Ragnall was the only Sheeplord left now. Probably. His brothers had had children, but it looked like Zadar had taken them, and when – if – they grew up, they were too young now to remember who they’d been. All he had left was Anwen.

  He would find her. He would take her back from Zadar.

  They left the stinking bodies on the battlefield and rode to the town of Bladonfort. Ragnall became like one of the dead himself. He stopped thinking. He did what Drustan told him to. They went to one of the cheaper inns by the lower market. It reeked of stale beer, bad food and vomit in the low-ceilinged common room, but the two men slumped down next to each other. Drustan signalled for beer. The old man was exhausted by the journey, Ragnall was still numbed.

  It was shortly before sunset and the inn was busy with merchants, children of merchants, market stallholders and a small but noisy knot of soldiers. Nobody paid much heed to the two dusty men in the corner, incongruously quiet among all the liveliness.

  Ragnall was halfway through his second beer before Drustan broke their silence. “We should head for Dumnonia.”

  Ragnall didn’t look up. Dumnonia was Britain’s south-western limb. Maidun was directly south, a good distance from Dumnonia.

  “Perhaps. After we’ve been to Maidun.”

  “Ragnall. What will happen if you walk into Maidun and demand Anwen?”

  “If Zadar wants me to fight for—”

  “Keep your voice down!” Drustan nodded at three leather-clad soldiers at the bar. They were looking at Ragnall. He had been talking quite loudly. One was a large man whose luxuriant moustache was wet with beer. The other two were small and dark – brothers, even twins. Each had a small mace hanging from his belt. Drustan raised his mug and smiled at them. They glared back, about as friendly as a posse that’s just caught up with a child killer. Drustan took Ragnall by the sleeve.

  “I know it’s difficult, but you’ve got to think about this more. There are so many obstacles on the direct path to Zadar, each of which is insurmountable. You’ve heard, for example, about Maidun Castle’s gate?”

  “What of it?” Ragnall finished his beer and signalled for another. The barman, a tall skinny man with a thin, disease-pocked face, picked an empty mug off the bar, wiped its rim with his apron and filled it from a barrel. He plonked the mug on the bar, looked at Ragnall, pointed at the beer with a long hairy finger, then headed over to where others were clamouring for drinks. Ragnall went to get his beer. The iron-ringed leather mug had a leak. He’d have to drink quickly.

  The sat in silence again. Ragnall was thinking about Maidun’s gates. It was the most secure hillfort in the land, they said. Its outer chalk wall was near-vertical and fifty paces high. The inner one was a hundred paces high, with a palisade all the way around. The only way in was through a mile-long labyrinth barred by three gates.

  “You will not pass even the first gate,” said Drustan as if reading his mind. “They will kill you for sport when you ask to see Zadar. They may decide that your demands to see their king are arrogant, and do worse.”

  “I’m not arrogant.”

  “No. But you look it.”

  It was true. Ragnall had heard it enough times before.

  “But that’s not the point.”

  “What is the point?”

  “Victory comes from attacking when it is time to attack, and retreating when it is time to retreat.”

  They sat in silence until Ragnall said, “I can’t do anything but retreat.”

  “You cannot attack alone.”

  “But who else—?”

  “Come with me to my people in Dumnonia. Zadar holds no sway there.”

  “As far as we know.”

  “I’ve heard they’re gathering an army. The best shot you’ve got at revenge is as part of a Dumnonian force. And a brain like yours will be useful to them.”

  “But Anwen?”

  “Anwen’s gone. Either she’ll be kept in Maidun, where we can’t reach her, or she’ll be on a slave ship to Rome before we can get to the coast.”

  “We’ve got to find her.”

  Drustan’s beard wobbled as he shook his head. “No. You’re not thinking clearly. You think you’ll be able to spirit her out of Maidun or perhaps follow her across the sea, rescue her and bring her home.”

  Ragnall had indeed been thinking along those lines. He said nothing.

  “You will not. This is not a legend and you are not Lugh and you do not have a magic spear. Legends rarely dwell on practicalities, but these alone will beat you. What will you eat? Where will you get a boat? You will be killed and you might get her killed too. Chances are she will be sent as a slave to Rome. I have been there. I have travelled throughout the empire. Life under the Roman yoke is not nearly bad as they say. Away from the frontiers, in long-established territories, most Romans are decent. She will probably be taken in by a kindly family and have a good life. She may win her freedom or, more likely, have it bought for her by a man. If we do not find her when the Dumnonians take Maidun, then we can talk about tracking her to Rome.”

  Ragnall slumped a little. “If they take Maidun.”

  “Force is not the only way to breach walls. You have a great mind, Ragnall. Use it to help break Maidun, to defeat Zadar. Begin by coming to Dumnonia with me. Attacking with anger is like scooping molten iron out of a furnace with your bare hands instead of using tools to make a sword.”

  Ragnall thought about his brothers, his father, his mother. He saw those bolts through his father’s shoulders. He must have died in m
iserable agony, knowing he was dying.

  “No!” Ragnall stood up. “I will kill Zadar and I will do it today!” His chair crashed back against the wall and the table tottered. Beer slopped from Drustan’s almost untouched mug as the druid grabbed it.

  “You’ll kill Zadar, will you?” It was one of the soldiers from the bar. He had a sharp nasal voice. His two friends looked on.

  Ragnall walked slowly around the table. Drustan raised an arm to stop him, but Ragnall pushed it out of the way. He raised his handsomely cleft chin and looked down at the soldier along his well shaped nose. The soldier looked up with weasel eyes in a narrow, peasant face. Ragnall was a good head taller. He’d start his attack on Zadar by teaching this little –

  Ragnall’s balls exploded in pain. His breath left him in a feminine squeal as he went forward, hands gripping his groin in an effort to press out the agony. He saw a blur and his face was snapped sideways.

  “Ragnall? Ragnall?” His head was bursting and his genitals were in a tightening vice. He could hardly think. Slowly the blinding blanket of pain became jolts of agony and he could see. He was curled on the sticky floor of the inn. Drustan was kneeling in front of him, a hand on his shoulder, looking into his eyes.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Tell me your name.”

  “Ragnall.”

  “And mine?”

  “You’re Damona the Sky Cow.”

  Drustan smiled. “Good. Have some of this.” He handed Ragnall a beer.

  “What happened?”

  “You were a fool. You discovered the difference between boxing with a boy and fighting a soldier. It would have been worse but I paid him to stop.”

  “That little man?”

  “Shhhh!” Drustan nodded back at the bar. The three soldiers leered at them happily and raised their mugs.

  “The little one did this to me?” Ragnall said quietly. “He’s half my size.”

  “Younger than you too. You may win in the boxing ring, but you were not made for rough fighting.”

  “Did his friends help?”

  “No.” Drustan wiped blood from the corner of Ragnall’s mouth. “You are not ready to take on Zadar’s army yet.”

  Ragnall put his head in his hands. “You could be right.”

  “It is interesting that a scare is always more effective than advice. We owe that little fellow more than coins.”

  “What?”

  Drustan gripped the younger man’s shoulder. “Never mind. But remember, when you set out for revenge—”

  Ragnall interrupted. “Always prepare two funeral beds, one for you, one for your enemy. What I’d like to do to Zadar and the Maidun army though … we’d need a lot more than two.”

  Chapter 26

  “She lied.”

  “What?” The earth was firm under the long grass of the meadow and the horses were trotting jauntily. Spring was rising and falling in rhythm with her little horse as if beast and rider were one. Dug felt like a jester riding for comic effect. No matter how he moved, he always found the counter rhythm to the animal’s and whacked his arse against the horse’s backbone with every bounce.

  “That woman you’re in love with. She lied.”

  “I am not in love with her.”

  “Are you going to marry her?” Spring treated Dug to a big mocking grin.

  “How old are you?”

  “Sixteen!”

  Dug looked sideways at the girl. Her brown-blonde hair was billowing out behind her, self-satisfied little overbite smile and round nose pointed into the wind. She really was an odd little thing. He’d asked her how she’d come to be driving a cart in Bladonfort, and she’d ducked the question in such a way that he’d felt stupid for asking. She was brighter and more able than any child he’d met before, but there was no way she was sixteen.

  “You’re ten. If that.”

  “A formori cursed me to look young for ever.”

  “You’ve never seen a formori. They’re all across the sea in Eroo.”

  “I’ve seen loads. They’re a hundred paces tall and green and covered in hair, and one cursed me to look young for ever because I’m too beautiful to ever grow old and ugly. There were two of them. The other one was blue. It didn’t speak. It juggled sheep and farted like thunder.”

  “What do you mean she lied?”

  “She said the dogs would follow her. They won’t. Ogre had dogs. Five of them. If they’re chasing riders, they track the horses’ smell. Horses are much smellier than people. So a good way of escaping dogs is to change horses. But we only have these two.”

  “Who or what is Ogre?”

  “My old boss. Boss of the man with the stupid hair who you killed too. He’s bald. He looks like an angry egg. Ogre isn’t his real name.”

  “The one with no ears?”

  “Him. He has dogs and they follow horses. Not people. So that woman you’re in love with lied.”

  As if to confirm her point, a deep-throated bark echoed along the valley. Dug turned. Three big dogs were bounding towards them through the long grass.

  He couldn’t believe she’d betrayed them. She must have been mistaken and she may have been wrong about who the dogs would follow, but surely she was right about horses being faster.

  “See?” Spring smiled.

  “Come on!” He whacked Spring’s horse on the rump as she kicked its flanks. It sped ahead. Dug looked back again. There were four dogs now, already appreciably closer. They were British hunting dogs, tongues flopping in great black faces, dangling cords of thick saliva glinting, ears bouncing. They were not as tall as the great wolfhounds from Eroo, but much heavier. Like something between a bull and a bear, built of thick, springy muscle, with a hinged array of daggers for a mouth.

  Behind the dogs three people burst out of the trees at a sprint. It was the earless Ogre and the two other men from Spring’s gang he’d seen off the day before. Now there was a coincidence. Were they following Lowa or chasing him for revenge?

  He didn’t have time to dwell on it. He heel-kicked his horse and it lurched. Somehow he gripped its mane and stayed on. The ground rushed underneath. They plunged into a dry stream bed and his tail bone hit his mount’s back with a spine-jarring thump, then out again and the ascent sent him pitching alarmingly to the left. He hauled himself upright as the horse galloped on. He had never travelled so fast. Tears streamed from his eyes, snot bubbled from his nose and spread across his cheeks. The speed was extraordinary and his seat far from secure. He was deeply unhappy. Ahead, Spring was waving an arm over her head and … singing.

  Gosh, what a dong,

  Oh my, what a schlong,

  Thick as your leg and three paces long!

  That spurred his confidence. If she wasn’t scared then neither was he. He wiped his cheek with a sleeve. Grip with your thighs. He’d heard that somewhere. He tried it. The horse seemed to realise that he was getting his shit together and moved more smoothly. He leaned forward and patted it. Aye, this was OK.

  The three men were dots in the distance now, but the dogs were closer. Maybe two hundred paces back, gaining every time he turned. Badgers’ tits! he thought. These dogs clearly didn’t know that they were meant to be slower than horses. Long distance, he consoled himself while shifting a thigh to free pinched skin. Dogs can’t do long distance. Horses can.

  A minute later the dogs were closer. It’s easy to escape animals if there are two of you, he thought. You just need to be faster than the other bugger. He’d met a man once, a Gaul, who claimed he’d escaped a pack of wolves by tripping his companion and fleeing while the wolves ate him. He wasn’t going to do that to Spring, but strangely he did seem to be catching up with her. Not just catching up. Overtaking her. Easily.

  “My horse!” she wailed as he passed. Her eyes were bright with panic. He reined in. Spring caught up, but her horse looked done for. Every time its front right leg touched the ground it snorted with pain and half collapsed.

/>   “I don’t know what to dooo!” Her face was red and wet with tears. Her horse stopped. Dug dragged on his reins, slid off and ran to Spring, pulling his horse behind him. The lead dog was a hundred paces away. He grabbed the girl by the waist and swung her onto the uninjured mount.

  “Noooo! Leave me and you go!” She grabbed at Dug, but he swatted her arm away and slapped the horse’s rump so that it galloped off along the meadow. Spring turned, desperate-faced.

  The dogs barked triumphantly, very close now.

  The injured horse, reins still in Dug’s hands, bucked in terror.

  “I need my hammer, you stupid animal!” It was slotted through the leather straps that held the pack. He got a hand to its shaft but the horse reared again. As it came down, he punched it in the muzzle. It looked at him with hurt surprise.

  He nodded an apology and struggled to wrench the hammer free from its bindings. His back was to the dogs. The barks were so loud now that they’d surely hit him any moment. Finally his hammer came loose.

  He spun and stood ready, knees bent, bouncing from foot to foot, left hand up by the hammer’s head, right gripped down at the shaft’s end. The nearest dog was twenty paces away. It was big as the dancing bear from Bladonfort and coming at him – Dug realised with annoyance – faster than a galloping horse. Lowa had lied to save herself. He was an old fool.

  The dog’s eyes locked on to Dug’s. It barked like a creature from the Otherworld and sped up.

  He squatted lower, gritted his teeth and twisted to the left, ready to spring and backhand the hammer into the dog’s head. His plan was to swing back left for the next dog, then repeat the manoeuvre for the other two. It sounded good in theory, but he’d never fought dogs. He’d seen what they could do on the battlefield though. Throats. That was their thing. The quick, efficient and devastating tearing of throats.

  The dog leaped. Roaring fangs flew towards him.