Age of Iron

by Angus Watson

  It made all the other hillforts look like ambitious badgers’ setts.

  It was more than a thousand paces long and four hundred paces across. The outer wall was fifty paces high, with a tall palisade on top angled flush with the slope’s vertiginous incline, so that if some gods-blessed fool managed to make it up the near-vertical chalk wall without being killed by slingstone, spear, boulder or arrow, he’d have nowhere to hide and nowhere to go. Maybe he’d be lucky then and get a boulder on his head. More likely he’d be doused in burning oil and fall screaming down the slope. He’d crash flapping into his comrades below, splashing them with oil, and they’d catch alight and fall too. Weylin rubbed his hands together with glee at the thought.

  And that was just the outer wall. There were two more inside that. They were even more formidable. The inner one was a hundred paces high. All three had palisades, linked to each other and the fort’s interior by wooden bridges which could be burned if the outer walls fell. The bridges made the defence of the fort a total doddle. A blast on the trumpets and everybody could be on the outer wall in moments. In between the walls were ditches so steep and deep that the sun seldom shone on the spikes spread along their depths. Weylin almost wished it was possible for an attacker to gain the palisade of the first wall, just to see the look on his face when he looked down into the ditch, then up at the second and third walls. Then there was the western gate, with its twisting, wooden-walled entry passage overlooked at every step by heavily armed sentries. An army attacking the gate would wish it had tried the walls.

  But, and Weylin thought this was something of a shame, no attacker would ever get near the gates or walls because first they’d have to get through the army. Blighting Maidun’s surrounds and sprawling towards him was a mess of a camp, containing – they said – more than twenty thousand soldiers, plus another ten thousand cooks, grooms, smiths, carpenters, wheelwrights, coopers and so on. On top of those directly employed by the army there were innumerable hangers-on – merchants, druids, bards, thieves, wives, husbands, children and a few ropey prostitutes operating in competition with the whorepits to the south of the castle. The camp stretched for miles, covering all the land that he could see north and west of the fort. Its buildings, roads and people blended into a dirty landscape, brown except for the odd green hummock of an untouchable ancient burial site.

  A couple of times he’d heard Felix refer to everyone who lived outside Maidun’s walls as plebs. He liked the word. Weylin wasn’t a pleb. He was one of the Fifty. He was better than them. The pleb soldiers were farmers most of the time, just soldiers for a few moons in the summer. Weylin was always a Warrior. He suddenly remembered Dionysia. Was he sad to be returning home without her? He looked at the sky and thought. Nope, not a twinge of grief. The opposite, if anything. A hero like him was much better off striding solo through life, free to do whatever, and whoever, he wanted.

  He kicked his horse and was soon passing through the smoke of countless pleb cookhouses and forges. The yelling of pleb babies, the hollers of pleb men, the bleats of pleb women, the blaring of pleb goats, shouts coming in from all about the country, the clang of forges, the bang of carpenters’ hammers and a dozen other sounds all melded together into a buzzing camp clamour which made him smile.

  He passed a few men, tough army grunts by the heavy iron swords slung on their shoulders. But not Warriors. They nodded manly greetings at him and he nodded generously back. They’d know he was one of the Fifty, a Warrior – in case they didn’t, his boar medallion was out and dangling. They might even know him by name, and that evening they’d show off to their friends that he’d acknowledged them. They’d say that he was on his way to The Castle – that’s what the plebs called it. “We saw that Warrior Weylin Nancarrow on his way to The Castle. Good bloke that one, got time for the little people.” That’s what they’d say. Then they’d swap tales and rumours about what it must be like up there. Only the Warriors of the Fifty, the elite cavalry and charioteers, and a few more of Zadar’s closest were allowed through Maidun Castle’s gates. And all the cooks, cleaners, delivery people, guards and others like them of course.

  Oh, it was good to be home. His journey back had been mildly soured by concerns about how Zadar would react to what had happened at Kanawan. But it hadn’t been his fault, he knew that, and he shouldn’t worry, but still … He’d sent a shout from the first village he’d come to after fleeing Kanawan, saying they’d been ambushed and all killed save him, and that he was on his way back. As far as he could see, the rational reaction to that would be to congratulate him for surviving and give him a couple of days’ leave – much of which he would spend down at the whorepits. But Zadar wasn’t always rational.

  Looking at Maidun Castle though, all those concerns evaporated like water flicked onto red-hot iron. A big grin leaped onto his face, he gave his horse some heel.

  He looked over to the left and saw the arena – ranks of wooden seats rising up the fort’s outer wall, above the huge, enclosed display area.

  “Ohhh!” He slapped his forehead.

  “Are you all right?” said a passing pleb.

  “Yes, thanks.”

  He wasn’t all right though. He should have known that the construction in Kanawan was an arena. OK, so the Kanawan one was much smaller than this and wasn’t built onto a hillside, but all the bigger settlements were building them and he should have known not to go in there. Spectators aside, nobody ever went into an arena for a good reason. He’d seen almost as many people killed in Maidun’s as he’d seen dispatched on the battlefield.

  Still shaking his head at his stupidity, he dismounted and handed his horse over to one of the grooms. He patted her farewell.

  “Put her in a good field,” he said, handing the groom a small bronze coin. “I’m not sure when I’ll be needing her again.” The boy bowed his head a few times, muttering obsequiously. Weylin smiled magnanimously at him, then walked on with a jaunty version of the rolling, unsteady gait of a man who has spent several days in the saddle. It was great to be back and nothing was going to shake his good mood. The first gate opened as he approached it. He nodded thanks to the guards. Someone had once told him to be nice to the little people as his fame increased. Sometimes he remembered. There was more to the advice, he couldn’t help thinking, but he couldn’t remember it.

  He walked between the heavy plank walls built over steep earth banks, turning left and right through the labyrinthine entrance. The track was wide enough for carts, but the wooden walls on each side, well over even his head height, were oppressive. Slingers and spear-holding guards looked down at him, faces hostile even though they knew who he was. He knew better than to try to talk to them. He’d been on duty on these walls himself, before he was promoted to the Fifty. Look hard, talk to nobody, be ready always. Those were the rules. Breaking them meant pain.

  Another gate swung open as he approached and he didn’t break stride. A few more turns and he was on the bridge that spanned the ditch in front of the main gate. The hefty oak doors ahead remained stubbornly shut. A figure appeared on the palisade to the right of the gate, anonymous in a black leather hood and iron helmet.

  “Weylin,” said the figure. “You’re expected. Go straight to the Eyrie.”

  The Eyrie! The western end, the upper part, the secret section, the elite zone! Weylin’s efforts and sacrifices were finally being rewarded. Ever since he’d been allowed into Maidun, he’d ached to know what was up there, on the other side of the palisade that bisected the hillfort’s enclosure. Everyone who went in, including Carden and Atlas, was strangely cagey about it. Weylin had always pretended that he didn’t give a crap. If they wanted to have childish secrets, then they could. But really he was dying to see what was up there.

  Weylin nodded coolly, as if every fibre wasn’t singing with excitement. The gate swung open and he strutted through.

  Maidun’s defended entrance didn’t end at the gate. On the other side of the oak doors was an open passage cut into the hi
lltop, leading through the body of the fort. It was three paces deep at the start, becoming smoothly shallower over a hundred paces and lined with flint nodules along almost all its length. As a final defence, it was pretty unnecessary. Nobody was ever going to get this far, but rulers liked to put captives to work, and some previous king or queen had decreed that this pointless passage be dug.

  Weylin walked along happily and emerged at the business end of Maidun Castle’s larger, lower section, near the deep pits and rectangular wooden sheds on stilts for storage of barley, oat, wheat and other crops. They’d been built by earlier less powerful rulers who faced the possibility of a long siege. These days only one in twenty of the sheds was needed to store more than enough food to feed the fort’s occupants through any winter. Weylin had heard people say that they should store more in case the crops failed, but that sounded like lame-arse talk. If you ran out of anything and wanted more, you took it from somewhere else.

  Past the storage area and towards the centre of the vast fortress’s plateau interior, he approached the top Warriors’ huts. They were stoutly made, their well tended conical thatch roofs each cased in a grid of supple but strong willow twigs as defence against the gales that could pummel the exposed hilltop. He looked around for friendly faces, but only a few people were about and nobody he knew well. No surprise. It was the middle of the morning, so Warriors would be off training, and apart from them the hillfort was sparsely populated. Neither animals nor children lived up here. The only industries were the forges and smelters of a handful of the best iron and bronze workers, people like Elann Nancarrow. He could hear the regular smash of Elann’s unmistakable heavy hammer now, over the bangs of unseen sword and shield practice.

  A couple of fellow Warriors who clearly didn’t know about his odyssey nodded hello as if this were just a normal day. He passed Carden’s hut and thought about popping in to see how his brother’s foot was healing. But that could wait. He would see what Zadar wanted first. That must be it! he thought with a jolt. Zadar was going to give him Lowa’s hut! He could see it now, up ahead on the left, surrounded by a garden of hardy plants and a small wooden fence. It was one of the best. He smiled. He’d been sharing a craphole hut half the size of hers with Dionysia, hard against the south wall. It was about time he got recognition and a hut to himself. Yeah, that would bring ’em in. Women liked a man with his own hut.

  He strode on. Up ahead was the palisade that separated the Eyrie from the lower camp. The ramp up to it was over to the right. This was going to be his first trip up that ramp, but soon it would be an everyday journey. Maybe one day he’d live up there himself …

  “What you smiling about, you wanker! How’s it going? You all right, yeah?” called a cheery voice. It was Nel, loping along the path towards him. He was a recent addition to the elite chariots and Weylin had deigned to talk to him a couple of times. His jaw had been knocked askew in some battle, but he still wore a permanent grin. People mocked him because he spent so much time with his top off, lying on banks and browning his skin in the sun. Weylin didn’t mind that – each to their own, he always thought – and he liked him.

  “Can’t stop and chat, Nel. Sorry. I’m heading up to the Eyrie.”

  The smile dissolved from Nel’s face. He rocked from foot to foot. “Ah, shit. You just got back, right? Ain’t seen Zadar yet? Shit.”

  “What do you mean, ‘shit’?” Weylin’s veneer of cheer cracked a little.

  “Well, you was sent after Lowa, right?” Nel looked nervous. “’Ave you got ’er?”

  “No, but—”

  “And where’s everyone you took with you?”

  “They’re dead. But we were ambushed. Nothing I could’ve done.”

  “Yeah, that’s what your shout said. And after that, what, you went after Lowa again?”

  “No. That would’ve been stupid. I was on my own and she had a whole bloody army. I escaped.”

  “Yeah. People’ve been saying you’d better come back with Lowa or not at all.”

  “What?” Weylin peered into Nel’s eyes. Was this a joke? “Well, people are twats. I’m the hero here. I may have lost a battle, but that happens. A true leader knows not only when to retreat, but has the courage to do it. Zadar said that.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe Zadar’ll see it like that. Better not keep him waiting though.”

  Weylin watched Nel stride away.

  At the top of the ramp to the Eyrie the gates swung open and he walked in. He stopped and looked around. To his right, south, was the awesome drop over three palisaded walls down to the Winter River. This was the highest part of the hillfort. He could see the long dormitory-style double shed of the whorepits, surrounded by its own ditch and fence, then farmland dotted with farmers’ huts, stretching to the sea. He’d been expecting a good view from here.

  Looking around, however, the rest of the Eyrie was not what he’d been expecting. Not at all.

  Chapter 7

  “What do you think of Lowa?”

  Ragnall and Spring were crouched with slings on the marsh among the cotton grass and heather, stalking partridge. Ragnall had a brace of birds lashed to his belt. Both had been brought down by Spring. She was an odd one: more accurate than any adult with a sling and a faultless stalker, yet full of childish questions.

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “Why don’t you want to answer?” Her eyes flashed.

  “What do you think of Lowa?”

  “I asked first.”

  “We’re meant to be hunting partridge. We need more than these two.”

  “There aren’t any around at the moment. There’ll be more along. Best thing we can do is stay right here. Meanwhile let’s fill the time by … oh I don’t know…” Spring put her finger on her lips. “I’ve got it! Why don’t you tell me what you think of Lowa?”

  Ragnall sighed. “She seems very sure of herself. But with good reason. I haven’t seen her use that strange bow she was carrying when you arrived, but I bet she’s good with it. She gives off an air of never having got anything wrong, and not expecting that she ever will. And she’s funny, in a clever way. Witty. But I still haven’t seen her laugh, not properly. She smiles, but it’s like she’s smiling despite her sadness.”

  “Do you think she’s pretty?”

  Ragnall laughed. “I wouldn’t say pretty.”

  “What would you say?”

  “She’s … she’s…” She’s beautiful, he thought. He cocked an ear and put a finger to his lips. “What’s that over there? Sounds like partridge to me!” He sneaked off around a marshy hummock in a crouch.

  Chapter 8

  Drustan and Dug sat on a bench, leaning against a hut under the shade of its protruding thatch roof. Lowa sat on an upturned wooden bucket in the sun, seemingly unworried by the unbearable glare. Dug was sweating like a fat and normally sedentary man who’d just run up a hill.

  It was odd, thought Dug, that Lowa spent a great deal of time in the sun, yet, at most, her pale skin might blossom into a pinkish glow towards the end of the day, while everyone else in summer was as brown as beaver fur. It supported his new, when-drunk theory that she was at least part goddess. Although that theory had been somewhat undermined that morning, when she’d waited until Spring had left to go hunting, pulled back his covers, pumped at his cock like a milkmaid in a hurry for the two heartbeats it took for it to be ready, then leaped on him and satisfied herself while he was still half asleep.

  “Do pay attention, Dug.”

  He shook his head. “Sorry! Mind wandered.”

  Lowa was explaining her plan to kill Zadar to the two older men. Nearby some children were splashing in the water. Most of the Mearholders were away working: clearing channels, hunting, tending to the farmland and so on. Lowa had been out hunting all night, so she had excused herself, and the two men were still deemed to be recovering and incapable of labour. They’d been asked to keep an eye on the children, but the children seemed able to keep eyes on themselves.

&
nbsp; The day before, Maggot had declared Dug free of infection and mucked out the last batch of maggots from his chest. Dug had celebrated his grub-free state with more of Maggot’s fine cider. Too much more. Now his hangover smothered him like a stinking, wet blanket.

  “You’re right – it is a crap plan,” he said when Lowa had finished.

  “Thanks. Helpful.”

  “Well yes,” said Drustan. “It is not totally crap, but, as I know that you know from your hesitancy in outlining it, it is only the beginning of a plan – a model, one might say, to work from.”

  “Aye,” chipped in Dug. “I can’t see how you get from just being in Maidun Castle to killing Zadar. And you missed the little bit on how I avoid being tortured to death when they realise straight away that I’m no bounty hunter.”

  “I know it’s not there yet,” said Lowa. “But that’s why I’m talking to you. No matter how hard I try, I can’t come up with a better plan. So I thought that maybe you two, with your vast experience and years of wisdom … but if you’re not up to it then I have other things I could be getting on with.”

  “No, child.” Drustan smiled. “Let us start from the beginning. Zadar is no coward, but he is cautious when it comes to his own safety and he knows what you can do with your bow, so he’s unlikely to leave the hillfort while you’re free and possibly nearby. So you have to get in. We can discount force since you have no army. So that leaves trickery or stealth. No doubt you know the story of the Trojan horse?”

  “No,” said Lowa.

  “It should really be called the Greek horse.” Drustan leaned forward onto his knees.

  “I know a story about Greek whores?” Dug offered.

  “No, horse. Although your story may be similar, if it involves Greeks fucking someone.” Lowa and Dug looked shocked at the teacher’s profanity. He winked at them. “A few hundred years ago the Greeks besieged the city of Troy for ten years. Troy had high, stone walls, which the Greeks could not breach. Finally, a bright fellow named Odysseus came up with a plan, and the Greeks built a huge, hollow horse out of wood. Some troops hid in it and the rest boarded their boats and sailed over the horizon. The Trojans woke up to see that the Greeks had gone and someone had left a huge wooden horse outside their gates.”