Age of Iron

by Angus Watson

  The night before he’d felt well enough to get into bed with Lowa for the first time since Kanawan, but Lowa had pointed at Spring and shaken her head. Which was fair enough. There was something a bit grim about shagging in the same hut as a pre-pubescent girl. Although Bel knew he’d had sex with Brinna enough times with Kelsie and Terry sleeping nearby. But family was different.

  So he very much wanted to go for a walk with Lowa, but Spring was bouncing on the island’s springy surface chanting, “Please please please please please.”

  “Aye, OK. Sorry, Lowa, but I did say I would.”

  “It’s not a problem,” said Lowa. She spun round and walked away briskly, almost exactly as if it was, in fact, a problem.

  Spring’s tanned cheeks bloomed with pink joy. “We’ll take a big boat for all the fish! We’ll need nets, and a spear hook. I’ll show you!” Dug looked after Lowa. By Danu her bottom looked fine in that light Mearhold dress. Spring cantered off to find things, chattering excitedly to herself.

  It turned out to be a good day, albeit in a different way from how he’d hoped. They paddled slowly on the still waters and dropped lead-weighted nets across channel necks. Spring pointed out all the birds whose names she’d learned from Maggot, Ragnall and the fishermen while Dug had been “lazing about”. Dug showed her how to hook trout from under mud banks with bare hands and flip them onto the bank. Spring said it was the best thing she’d ever done.

  “It’s called guddling,” he told her.

  “Guddling,” she said, copying his northern accent. “Guddling. I like it.”

  “People will tell you it’s a great skill – you have be patient, approach carefully from behind, win the trout’s trust by tickling it, then gently grasp it—”

  “But that’s wrong! You just grab it! Couldn’t be easier!”

  “Aye.”

  They guddled enough young trout to feed a multitude, collected their nets, tossed back the smaller fish and whacked the bigger ones on their heads. Shadows were lengthening by the time Dug paddled home. Their catch was piled in the centre and Spring knelt high in the bow like a youthful figurehead, looking for interesting birds.

  She turned and looked at Dug. He winked back.

  “Can I call you dad?” she asked.

  “No,” he replied without thinking.

  “OK.” She went back to her duck watch.

  It had been an instinctive response. Kelsie and Terry had called him dad. Nobody could or should replace them. But he felt bad.

  “Dug sounds a bit like dad anyway?” he offered.

  “Yes, it does. A bit.” Spring didn’t turn round.

  The next morning, over a magnificent breakfast of smoked pork, bread and duck’s eggs, Spring begged him to go fishing with her again. The day after that, Spring pleaded with him to go fowling with her on the marsh.

  To his surprise, Dug enjoyed his days with the girl very much. She was young, but she was at least his intellectual equal. He told her what he thought about the state of the land, the gods, life … She asked him questions which made him analyse his views more deeply and even change a few of them. He found himself believing some things more strongly, for example he was now more certain than ever that the Romans would not be a welcome addition to Britain.

  By the fourth day out of bed, a dull ache in his shoulder and swiftly healing scabs on his chest were the sole physical reminders of his battle with the Monster. At breakfast in their hut he told Spring that he was going to go for that walk on the northern hills with Lowa. He’d seen her only briefly every evening before he’d fallen asleep and, since Spring was always in the hut, seeing Lowa was all he had done.

  “Ah,” said Lowa when he said he was hers for the day. “Thing is, I’ve been teaching Ragnall how to fight. He needs it desperately. I promised him archery today…”

  “Oh. OK. Never mind then. I think Spring might be up for a day’s fishing?”

  “Yes! Yes! Hooray! Ow!” Spring sprang so happily from her bed that she hit her head on a shelf.

  “Sorry, Dug, but I’d be letting him down, and I thought, since you were always with Spring these days—”

  “Really, it’s fine. It could not be finer.”

  “Maybe we’ll go for that walk this evening?” she said with a smile that could have melted an iron ingot.

  Happiness returned to Dug like water through an opened sluice gate. “Aye. That would be grand.”

  Chapter 13

  Mal Fletcher yawned and scratched at his trimmed beard.

  “Sorry, are we keeping you up?” A grin split Will the wheelwright’s turnip-shaped face. “Or did young Nita keep you up?”

  Oh fuck off, Mal thought. “I didn’t sleep well.”

  “I’ll bet you didn’t. ’Ave you seen Nita?” Will nudged his apprentice, a dim-faced boy who wore only a pair of woollen pants and a leather apron. His long, bare arms were strangely skinny for a manual worker. “No, I ain’t seen her. Nice, is she?”

  “Nice? Why do you think he keeps his beard and his hair trimmed like a chief from the east? You’d have to work hard to please a little bit like that. If I had her … What does a girl that young feel like, Mal?”

  “Can we get back to my wheels? And besides, she’s twenty-two. Not that young.” Mal had a headache and his guts were far from settled. He looked at Will. Sometimes he wished for another war, because sometimes he missed killing people.

  “Yeah. But you must be, what, fifty?” Will looked for a response and noticed the look in Mal’s eyes. “All right, all right. Your wheels. Thing about your wheels … Danu’s tits!” Will was looking over Mal’s shoulder. Mal turned to see what it was.

  Maybe a hundred riders were pounding up from the stables to Maidun’s west, sitting tall on good mounts. Each was wearing simple dark clothes, but they were armed, most with broadswords strapped to their backs. The rearmost led a gaggle of packhorses, which had bundles of rectangular wooden boards to their flanks.

  “That’s Felix at the head,” Mal muttered. “And Tadman and Chamanca behind him. And that’s the Fifty behind them. Rest must be elite cavalry. “

  “Danu’s tits,” said Will again. “They look the bollocks.”

  “Must be important for Felix to lead them. But why aren’t they in armour?” Mal mused.

  “Who’s Felix?” asked the apprentice.

  “You really are stupid, aren’t you?” Will cuffed the boy across the back of his head. “He’s only the druid who commands dark magic. He’s only second in command after Zadar. He’s only been that since he came from Rome before you were born. All your life you’ve lived here, and … I don’t know. The young today. They have no idea what’s going on around them. These things are important.” Will cuffed the boy again.

  “What are them boards for then?”

  “That I do not know. Mal probably has a guess?”

  “Temporary bridge maybe? No, you’d need supports too … I don’t know. Big shields?”

  “Yeah, weird. Tell you what though: I wouldn’t like to be whatever’s at the end of their journey.”

  “No,” said Mal. “Me neither. Now. When am I going to get my wheels?”

  Chapter 14

  Ragnall and Lowa crossed the island. Ragnall was tired after the day’s training, but Lowa seemed fresh as a hyperactive lamb. She jogged ahead, bow in one hand, quiver joggling on her back. As the path turned a corner, Ragnall watched her pale bare leg flash through the slash in her brown cotton dress with every other step.

  He noticed that the lace on his sandal was undone. He bent to tie it. There was a brilliant green beetle on the clay path next to his foot.

  He smiled. No, it would never work. Be interesting to try though …

  He picked up the beetle and thought of his favourite love god. “Branwin, make Dug ugly to Lowa. Branwin, make Dug ugly to her.” He looked around. Nobody was watching him. The next part was on even shakier moral ground. It’s not as if it’s going to work, he told himself, then mumbled, “Make Lowa love m
e, Branwin. Branwin, make Lowa love me.” He crushed all life out of the beetle, then tossed the gooey little body aside and, feeling stupid, guilty and excited, ran after her.

  “Got you!” he said, tagging Lowa’s back as they arrived at their group of huts.

  She turned, looked up at him and took a step closer. “You wouldn’t have caught me if I’d wanted to get away.” Her chest swelled. She kept his eyes fixed on his.

  “I-I…” he stammered.

  “Hello there!” It was Drustan, sitting on a chair outside his and Ragnall’s hut.

  “Oh hello!”

  “Dug and Spring back yet?” Lowa asked.

  “They did get back from fishing, but Spring has dragged him off onto the marshes. A rare white bird has been sighted. Spring is keen to kill it. He is a good man, your Dug.”

  “Yes. Yes, he is. See you later!” Lowa skipped into the hut she shared with Dug and Spring.

  “See you,” said Ragnall.

  “How goes the training?” Drustan asked. “Can you shoot an acorn from a squirrel’s head yet?”

  “Not quite, but she’s a good teacher. And she could shoot a flea off an acorn on a moving squirrel from a mile away. She’s amazing.”

  Drustan smiled. Ragnall reddened.

  “Amazing at archery. What have you been up to?”

  “I have been talking to the sea fishermen. Here, sit down. After what they said, I have been pondering an important point which I would like to discuss with you.”

  Ragnall sat on the clay ground. He was keen to indulge the druid. Drustan may have recovered from his sickness, but he looked like he’d aged ten years and he’d been strangely quiet of late.

  “The fishers returned a few hours ago after several days away with a prodigious quantity of fish and other strange animals from the sea. I would have enjoyed looking at them with you. They told me their methods, which are innovative and make good sense, but almost all of which come from Rome. A few years ago, they told me, there was a great debate about whether it was right to take these ideas from an alien culture or whether it was an insult to their ancestors. Once they discovered that the new methods tripled their haul, the argument was quietly forgotten. So I came back here, and I’ve been looking out over the water, pondering the idea that the nearer you are to a thing, the more difficult it is to behave correctly.”

  “What do you mean?” Ragnall asked.

  Drustan paused for a long time, then drew breath. “Let us say that these Roman fishing methods are morally wrong.”

  “Morally wrong fishing methods?”

  “A hypothetical example. Accept please, for the sake of my point, that it is a self-evident truth that the way that the Romans trap fish is as wrong as, say, murder.”

  “OK.”

  “So, in this situation, we could sit on the Island of Angels and condemn them: ‘By Toutatis, those coves at Mearhold are using immoral Roman fishing methods. They are wrong to do that and they would be right to stop.’ At the same time, however, in Mearhold they are saying, ‘We are catching three times as many fish as before. We will salt them and smoke them and store them, and we will eat well this winter. We will exchange them for coin and other food so that our diets will be healthy, our fortifications secure and our children will grow up strong. These methods benefit us, so we will ignore the fact that others consider them to be “wrong”. Their opinions are but air, not food for our table nor coin to buy things that we like.’”

  “Right. So?”

  “So. It is easy to be morally courageous at a distance but difficult when you are benefiting from the dubious course. Equally, it is difficult to do something that you know is right, but will have a detrimental effect on the people you know and love.

  Ragnall could hear splashes of pouring water as Lowa washed in her hut’s tub. “Yes. Yes, I see that. We studied this. It’s the idea of the greater good. I like this one. The problem comes at where you draw your boundaries.”

  “Indeed. Carry on.”

  “Well, what comes first? Yourself, your family, your village, your tribe, your island – or all people? If your tribe is doing something to the detriment of all others – like Maidun is – then do you betray your tribe?”

  “And the answer is?”

  “In theory, yes, you betray your tribe. It’s right because it’s for the greater good. If Maidun could be brought down, that’s for the greater good.”

  “And in practice?”

  “If you and your wife were soldiers or workers in Zadar’s army, if all your friends and family were too, if you were bringing your children into a warm, well fed life that depended on not betraying Maidun, then you wouldn’t. It’s hard to persuade somebody that something’s wrong when their comfortable life depends on it. And, besides, it would take superhuman courage to betray one’s family and friends.”

  The old man smiled sadly. “Indeed.”

  Chapter 15

  “Now, I hear you’ve been dabbling in the noble sport of the archer?” King Vole pulled up a chair next to Ragnall’s and Lowa’s, placed his cider mug carefully on their table and sat down in the straight-backed pose that all good children know about. Ragnall and Lowa looked at each other. They’d been discussing Lowa’s plans to break into Maidun Castle, sitting apart from the Mearholders in a way, Lowa would have thought, that showed they were having a private conversation and didn’t want to be disturbed.

  “Listen carefully, both of you,” said King Vole. “I am going to give you a masterclass in archery.” He leaned back and nodded magnanimously, as if to say, “Yes, you really are that lucky.”

  Lowa flashed a what-the-Bel look at Ragnall. King Vole didn’t notice. He was holding his clay cider mug up to the firelight, admiring its craftsmanship. His face looked no older than Lowa’s, but his only hair was a hand’s breadth swathe slapped onto the back of his head like a cluster of black seaweed on a shiny boulder. A delicately pointed nose and chin poked from his clean-shaven, flabby face. He moved the mug to his nose and sniffed carefully, as if holding a fragile instrument over a volatile liquid.

  “The best cider in the world.” He took a sip. “From the finest clay.” He sucked bubbles of air through the liquid, swallowed and sighed exaggeratedly. “Now. Archery.”

  “You’re an expert?” asked Lowa.

  “The expert. Listen and learn.”

  “Looking forward to it.”

  “We’ll start with the basics. Few people see the benefit of a bow over a sling. Indeed a bow does have many drawbacks.”

  Ragnall laughed.

  “What?” King Vole looked offended.

  “Drawbacks? Bows?”

  “Yes, that is what I said.”

  “I—”

  “You’d be better off listening and not laughing. Now…”

  Lowa stopped listening. She imagined how King Vole’s expression might change with a knife driven through the top of his skull. But he wasn’t that bad really. He’d lent Ragnall his sword readily enough for sword practice, even though it was as good a sword as Lowa had seen: light, edges nearly as sharp as a flint knife, the leather-wrapped handle free from frivolous adornments. So the king was generous. However, he liked to talk. When they’d borrowed the sword they’d had to listen to half an hour of largely inaccurate fencing theory.

  King Vole droned on: “Some claim the whole body should be used to bend the bow, but they’re wrong. A light touch is…”

  King Coot, they called him behind his back, after the water-dwelling birds with black feathers and a white skullcap. Lowa had heard that name “Vole” came from his mother, Queen Vole, who’d ruled before him and been such a fan of voles and the qualities that she believed they possessed that she’d adopted the animals’ name and sought to emulate them. Since she thought that voles were hard-working, tolerant and generous, that worked out well for the tribe, and she’d been a popular queen, even if nobody had taken to the bark, grass and insect Vole’s diet that she’d tried to foist on them.

  “Lowa!” Ki
ng Vole was looking at her.

  “Yup?”

  “Try to keep up. Now. I was saying that I saw that stick you arrived with. Far too long and rough to be a useful bow. I suspect you made it yourself after hearing a story from a bard or perhaps seeing a band of archers.”

  Lowa looked around and caught Dug’s eye. He was talking to Drustan, Maggot and a few Mearholders. She smiled as he drained a big mug of cider in a few gulps, despite King Vole telling him the night before that the only way to drink such fine cider was to sip it. Dug lowered his mug and winked, his eye twinkling in the firelight. Lowa felt a twinge of annoyance. She couldn’t put her finger on why, but her growing affection for Dug had waned somewhat. In fact his constant good cheer and reasonableness was beginning to annoy her.

  “…why a recurve bow will always,” King Vole continued, “always be superior to straight bows like that crooked stick you’ve got. It’s to do with—”

  There was a scream from the eastern side of the island. Then another.

  Lowa jumped onto her chair to get a clearer view. Dark figures holding swords, spears and unusually large shields were climbing from the water all along the eastern fringe of Mearhold. A few gathered into a group and headed towards them. More lined up into a shield wall.

  She looked around. There were no weapons nearby other than the fire itself, a stack of logs and some chairs. Her bow would be much more useful.

  “Come on.” She ran for their huts, Ragnall following. Dug was already ahead. He was speedy for a large, recently injured man. He had ignored the longer route along the clay paths and was prancing across the island’s reedy surface like a fat deer.

  Arriving at the hut, she found Dug tying his bag of valuables to his belt. Spring was sitting up on her bed, a rug over her knees.

  “What’s going on?” The girl rubbed her eyes with her fists.

  “You can swim, right?” Dug said. Lowa grabbed her quiver and slung it over a shoulder.

  “Yes. Can you?”