by Angus Watson
“Fingers off, please.” Maggot twisted the pole.
“I’ll go one better than killing you.” Lowa lowered herself onto the prone Chamanca and pressed the arrowhead into the small of her back. “I’ll take your legs.”
“Nah nah nah.” Maggot took the pole one-handed for a moment and wagged a remonstrating finger at Lowa. His bracelets and rings clacked.
Lowa hesitated.
Chamanca writhed. “Do it,” she said. “If you do not, I will find you and kill you.”
Lowa touched her bloodied nose. She could see one half of her bow, splintered like broken bone. “All right then.”
“No,” said Maggot, “I’ll hold her here while you get off the island.” He gestured south with his head.
Lowa shook her own head. It hurt her neck. “No. I’ll cripple her. Then you’re coming with me. Otherwise she will kill you.”
“Sorry, love, I don’t do orders. Off you trot. I’ll be fine.”
Lowa ran, but slowed immediately to a jog, then a walk. She did not feel well. She leaned against a hut, then dropped into a crouch and vomited a spurt of acidic cider. She walked on, pretty sure she was heading in the right direction.
Yes, here was the hut she’d shared with Dug. Just a few more strides and—
“Hello, Lowa.”
Oh for fuck’s sake, she thought. There were two of them barring the way, armed with heavy iron swords. She recognised them. They were cavalrymen.
“You’re coming with us.”
“All right.” She was too tired to fight them. Maybe she could try to escape later. If Chamanca didn’t kill her … She turned back towards the middle of the island.
There was a thomp behind her. She turned. One swordsman was falling forward. The other was spinning, sword swinging in a wide arc. Dug dropped onto his back under the blow, swinging his hammer as he went down. The heavy iron head crunched into the Maidun man’s knees. The cavalryman half fell, raised his sword and sliced it down. Dug reached out with both hands, caught the hilt and slammed it once, twice, three times into the cavalryman’s face. The Maidun man toppled.
Dug stood.
“I thought you wouldn’t need rescuing.” Dug ran a hand through his wet hair to lift it off his face.
She smiled. “Will you get my new outfit from the hut, please?”
He walked towards her.
The world whooshed around him in a few swift, wide circles, and then disappeared as she fell into his arms.
Chapter 16
The cool water was chest deep in the channel through the reeds. He shifted his grip on Lowa so she was higher in the water. “My bow…” she moaned.
“Shush,” he said, placing a palm gently on the back of her head.
He spotted Spring and Ragnall in the centre of the three-pace-wide water course. They reminded him of the seal cubs up north, whose little heads would poke out of the water expectantly, waiting for him and Brinna, and later Terry and Kelsie to swim over and play with them.
“Got her. She’s all right. Let’s—”
“Shhhhh! Behind you.” Ragnall lifted a dripping arm to point.
He turned. Several log boats had launched from Mearhold and were paddling quietly towards them. There were three people in each boat, two paddling, one holding a torch.
“Badgers’ cocks.” Dug looked about. They were safe in their channel between the reedbeds for now, but any boat passing near would see them. If they tried to wade for safety, they’d be heard and overhauled.
“I can stand here,” said Spring.
“Quiet,” said Dug. They could try and tuck into the vegetation, but they’d surely be seen in the torchlight?
“Did you get my outfit?” Lowa was back in the land of the coherent.
“It’s in my pack. But keep quiet. They’re coming in boats from the island.”
“We’ve got to get out of here.” Ragnall’s voice was shaking. Dug gave him the benefit of the doubt and decided it was the cold.
“But I can also crouch down under the water!” said Spring.
A bird squawked and dashed out of the reeds nearby. There was a shout, and two boats headed towards them, slowly, making sure their paddling didn’t mask any sounds of escape. They were annoyingly proficient, these Maidun people.
“What weapons do we have? Can I stand here?” Lowa pushed herself out of Dug’s grip. The water came to her neck.
“I have my hammer,” he said.
“I gave my sword to King Vole,” Ragnall offered.
“I’ve got a knife,” said Spring.
“None of those are much use if they’ve got slings,” said Lowa.
“Aye. And if we attack one, we’ll bring all the boats on us.” Dug looked about. What could they do? Thankfully the moon wasn’t up, so it was darker than it might be. But the boats were coming closer, and they had torches. He might be able to hold his breath for long enough to stay submerged as they passed, but he doubted that the others could.
“I’ve cut some reeds with my knife,” said Spring. “They’re hollow. So I’ve got four hollow tubes. One each. They’re quite sturdy.”
“Spring, can you please be quiet,” Dug whispered.
“But we can breathe through the tubes and hide underwater. The fishermen showed me how. You can do it to catch ducks. Slings are easier if you’re going to eat them, but if you don’t want to hurt them…”
The boats were maybe thirty paces away. “Well, hand them out!” said Ragnall.
“What?” said Dug.
“One end in your mouth,” the young man whispered. “One end above the surface.” Ragnall edged back to the side of the channel and slipped underwater until only a short nub of his reed snorkel protruded. It looked like just another stem. Lowa followed and sank so close to him that Dug thought they must have been touching.
Spring sank too. Dug was alone.
“There’s a channel here,” said a low voice from a few paces away.
Dug backed to the channel edge next to Spring, took a huge breath, put the reed in his mouth, tilted his head up and crouched. He held the reed in a fist pressed against his lips, making sure to keep his hand below the surface but the top of the reed dry. The water was a pleasant chill on his face, the noisy noiselessness of underwater a familiar comfort from his days swimming and diving down in the sea. He puffed out a little breath and cautiously sucked one in, ready for a mouthful of water. Instead he got air. Reed-flavoured air, but air nevertheless.
He breathed out, then took a deeper breath. He stopped as firelight splayed out on the water, then danced more and more aggressively on the lightly rippling surface. The dark shape of the boat appeared. Spring gripped his arm. The boat came closer.
He didn’t dare exhale. A paddle splashed down into the water, then up out again. He watched its trail drip towards him. It was going to be close. He could dodge, but surely they’d see the movement …
The paddle crunched into the end of his reed. The reed jammed into the roof of his mouth. He gripped it, crushing it. He heard a muffled voice above. The paddle went up and came down again, just missing his face. More voices.
The boat slid by. His reed was useless. He held his breath. His brain clouded, his lungs squeezed and an anxious inner voice demanded that he surface. But the boat was still far too close. Fortunately he’d spent plenty of his youth and early adulthood diving for shellfish and pleasure, and he knew that the trick of staying under for a long time was to ignore the panicky voice. He also knew a trick to silence it. He pictured Lowa’s breasts. Was one bigger than the other? he pondered. He’d first seen them after the rainstorm …
The boat was past. He surfaced slowly. More boats were heading their way from Mearhold. Spring surfaced next to him. On the other side of the channel Ragnall and Lowa were still underwater.
“Can you cut me another breathing pipe, please?” he whispered.
Spring reached into the reeds. There was a snick, then another, and she handed him a newly cut reed. Dug leaned in to peer at
her, to see why she hadn’t delivered the reed with a quippy reproof for losing the first one. She was clenching her jaw tight to stop her teeth chattering. The girl was freezing. He crossed the channel and prodded Lowa. She and Ragnall emerged together,
“This is no good,” he whispered.
Lowa looked from side to side. “Yes. They know I’m here. They might widen the search but they won’t call it off. And we can’t stay in the water. So we go through the reeds.”
“They’ll see the reeds moving from a mile off. We need to take a boat,” whispered Ragnall. “There were three in that last boat, two with paddles at either end, one with a torch in the middle. If we can overpower them quietly while somehow keeping their torch, we’ll look like another search boat and we should be able to paddle away unchallenged. But I don’t know how we can take one…”
Dug looked at Lowa and nodded. The boy was right.
“Spring, give Ragnall your knife,” whispered Lowa. “Dug, you have your hammer?”
“Aye.”
“We’re set then.”
“What will you use?” Ragnall asked.
“I’ll manage,” said Lowa.
Dug tested the channel’s bed with a foot. It was firmer at the edge and hopefully he’d be able to get some purchase. “You two go on the other side and get underwater. When they’re on us, I’ll surface first and take the middle one. That should turn the heads of the paddlers. Lowa, you know what you’re doing. Ragnall, don’t mean to patronise, but in case you haven’t done this before, grab him or her by the hair, or even better get an arm round their head to muffle their mouth, and draw the blade across their neck with a sawing motion. Hard as you can, mind. Don’t worry, you won’t go all the way through. And grip the knife tight. Blood’s slippery. I’ll try to grab the torch, but if I miss don’t let it fall in the water. Got it?”
“Sure.” Lowa put the reed into her mouth and sank.
“Ye-es,” said Ragnall, following her.
“You just stay under, aye?”
“Aye,” said Spring.
Dug stood tall to look for boats. He didn’t see any but he heard someone say, not far off, “What’s that, in the reeds?”
The nose of a boat entered their channel. Dug sank, lower than before, not bothering with the reed. The boat glided through spangled torchlight into view above, the shadow of its nose, then the nose itself, then the first paddle …
Dug leaped like a salmon.
There were four in the boat. They all turned towards him. He whacked his hammerhead into the leftmost of the central heads, then into the right one, as if ringing a great bell. That was the joy of the hammer over other weapons. In group situations it was much more effective to whack than stab or slice. Blades could get caught in things; hammers tended to do their damage then bounce off. As the hammerhead cracked into the second head, a spurt of blood slapped into Dug’s face and open mouth. He swallowed some and fell back gagging, then gulping marsh water to follow the blood. He fought to get back on his feet, managing to grab the edge of the boat and pull himself up, a nasty metallic taste in his mouth.
His two were out cold in the centre of the boat. Ragnall’s was at the front, pouring black blood from his slit throat and convulsing like a dying fish. At the back Lowa had hers, a young man, by the back of the neck with one hand, strong archer’s fingers holding him in an eye-bulging, paralysing grip. In her other hand she held the torch. Ah, thought Dug. He’d completely forgotten about keeping the torch alight.
“Um…?” she asked. Dug cracked his hammer onto her captive’s head. He felt the necks of his two: both dead.
“What’s happening there!” shouted a gruff voice. The shouter was close but shielded from view by the reeds.
“Squeeeeeee!” squealed Spring. They all looked at her, bobbing in the water by the boat. “Squeeee?” she said.
“We startled some otters,” called Ragnall in a gruff voice. “Little bastards almost capsized us.”
“Fucking otters!” said the voice.
“Yeah!” said Ragnall. “Fucking otters! We’ll catch them and make hats for everyone!”
“Ha ha! Nice one!” The boat paddled away.
Dug sat in the back with a paddle. Then it was Spring, Lowa with the torch, then Ragnall on front paddle. They followed the channel to the main river, then south past the hulking shadow of Gutrin Tor, keeping to the edge to avoid detection and to stay in the slackest part of the contrary current.
They saw only one of the Maidun attackers, a man on the far bank.
“Any luck?” he asked.
“No!” Lowa replied. “You?”
“Not a sign. She’s a slippery bitch, that one.”
“She sure is.”
Dug could see Spring’s shoulders rocking in a silent giggle. He leaned forward and pinched her. She started and slapped his hand away. Dug smiled and paddled on. Soon Gutrin Tor was a memory behind them. They were away, heading for Maidun Castle.
Out of the pan, thought Dug, but charging straight to the blacksmith’s and leaping head first into the furnace.
Part Four
Maidun
Chapter 1
A metalled road ran from the south side of the great marsh, through the town of Forkton and on to Maidun Castle. It would have been two days’ hard walking or a day’s riding to reach Maidun on the road, but they couldn’t risk it. Forkton was Zadar’s town, so not only would the road have been thick with people who might have recognised Lowa, but there was a massive likelihood of meeting the force that had attacked Mearhold on its return journey.
So they travelled a few miles to the west, keeping to the woods. Dug and Spring scouted ahead with a tin whistle that the Mearhold hunters had given Spring. If they encountered anybody suspicious, the plan was for Dug to play the whistle and Spring to sing.
“Are you sure we’ll hear that?” Ragnall had asked.
“Oh you’ll hear me,” Spring had said, then launched into song with a voice that was at least half scream.
“Aye.” Dug interrupted her with a shout. “The giant beasts on the other side of the Great Ocean’ll hear you too, and rip their own ears off and eat them so they won’t have to hear any more.”
Other than the odd forager and hunter, however, they saw nobody and Spring’s song remained unsung.
Ragnall offered to take over the scouting a few times and Dug accepted, but Lowa pointed out each time that Dug had more experience with this sort of thing, and he’d be better at dealing with any trouble. So Ragnall stayed back with her. She couldn’t scout herself, of course, since she was the fugitive. She was disguised to a degree, with her hair piled up into a leather hat taken from one of the dead on the boat, but anybody who knew her would have recognised her immediately.
The weather had cooled a little, mercifully, and the walking was easy. There was the odd fallen tree to negotiate, a few bogs to tussock-hop or circumnavigate and a small hill to climb every now and then, but there was nothing like the miles-wide sucking morasses, slippery, wet cliffs, aggressive wolf packs and easily upset bears that Dug had regularly encountered up north. In the busy south, the only wolves and bears left were those that had learned to avoid human contact. They did happen upon a large, disgruntled-looking wild boar, which stood on the track barring their way, but Dug put Spring behind him and stared at the beast until it ran off into the woods with a groink and a toss of its head.
“And that, Spring, is how you out-ugly a boar,” said Dug.
“You’re not ugly,” said Spring.
Dug was happy in the girl’s company. He told her stories and expanded on his theories about life. Talking to Spring was like plucking his thoughts from his head, laying them on the ground, sorting them and slotting them back in better order. She was, he thought, a unique girl.
Ragnall and Lowa seemed content too. Whenever he and Spring waited for them for a break or to discuss the route, they’d appear deep in conversation, or laughing together, or they’d just be sauntering along in happy sil
ence like an old, devoted couple. In the evenings they would all talk together, but they usually covered subjects in which Dug had no interest and no view. So mostly Ragnall and Lowa talked while Dug listened and Spring slept.
The first night they sheltered in a derelict hut. With the animal droppings, bones and leaves swept out and a few branches interwoven across the door hole, it was cosy and secure. When it was time to sleep, Dug lay on the floor next to Lowa and put an arm over her. She rolled so she was facing away from him and was soon snoring softly.
The next evening they slept in the woods. Spring pleaded with Dug to lie so that she’d have him on one side and the fire on the other, so that any bears would eat him first and give her a chance to get away. He was, after all, used to being chewed by animals and she wasn’t. He acquiesced and kicked the twigs and nutshells away from a spot next to hers, while Lowa found a place on the other side of the fire, next to Ragnall.
That second night Dug lay awake, listening to the cracks of the fire, the shrieks, barks, rustles and clicks of the woodland animals and Spring’s porcine snufflings.
He couldn’t sleep.
He couldn’t ignore it any more. Lowa’s apparent indifference towards him and her contrary interest in Ragnall was so heavy on his mind that he was having one of his very rare sleepless nights. When Lowa and Ragnall had laughed together earlier, their merry sounds had shaken him horribly and he’d had to admit to himself that he was jealous. He’d felt like this as a boy a few times, when he’d been achingly in love with a friend’s mother or older sister and had to watch them enjoy the company of a lover who wasn’t him. He remembered childhood emotions well – it perplexed him that most other adults didn’t seem able to – but he’d thought this kind of infatuation had disappeared along with the belief that he was the centre of the world.
If he’d been talking to Spring, she’d have made him go through it in a detached way, as if he were looking from the outside rather than an irrational participant. He tried that. Yes, he’d found Lowa attractive, but he had by no means become obsessed like some old saddo. He’d been content with the traditional decent older man’s undertaking of only ogling her when he was absolutely certain he wouldn’t get caught. He’d never have tried anything. Then she’d kissed him. So, logically, she must have fancied him even more than he fancied her. Then that morning in Mearhold she’d leaped on him when he was half asleep. Then she’d suggested that they go for a “walk” with a saucy arch in her eyebrow. He hadn’t gone, but it had been clear what would have happened if he had. Then, when he’d suggested a similar walk a few days later, she’d been busy with Ragnall. Since then there’d been nothing: no suggestion at all that she had any interest in him whatsoever, sexual or otherwise.
