by Angus Watson
Lowa, Ragnall and Spring walked for two more days through the woods and fields, keeping a good distance from the road. They were a subdued group. Ragnall and Lowa hardly spoke. When they did start to chat, about what they might have for lunch for example, Spring would interrupt, asking what they thought Dug might be having for lunch. “Some betrayal pie? Or a nice loaf of cheat bread?” she’d say.
The girl’s tireless spite began to grate on Lowa. At first she tried talking to her, telling her that Dug’s leaving was to do with adult issues that she couldn’t possibly understand. Spring had replied that it seemed pretty clear and pretty childish to her. Next Lowa had tried ignoring her. That didn’t work. Spring had an uncanny knack of knowing exactly when to mention Dug’s name to the greatest effect. So when they finally turned west to join the main road and its steady trickle of soldiers, rag-clad refugees and driven slaves heading for Maidun, they were so deeply miserable that the role of poor farmers made homeless by bandits came to them easily. The guards along the road, undoubtedly looking out for Lowa, didn’t give a second glance to the pissed-off hooded woman, miserable man and surly child.
“By Danu, Fenn, Toutatis and the lot of them,” said Ragnall when they came over the rise and saw Maidun Castle for the first time, “I’ve heard the stories, but I never guessed…”
The great white hillfort shone like a beacon in the sea of brown town that had agglomerated around it.
“Yeah, yeah,” said Lowa. “Built by giants and heroes.”
“It looks like the gods built it.”
“It’s a shaved hill. Get over it.”
“OK, but—”
“Where’s Spring?” Lowa looked about. There she was, disappearing through the crowd. Lowa was off like a hound after a hare. The girl heard her coming and turned, and … it wasn’t Spring.
Lowa looked up and down the road, scanning every person who could have been Spring. None of them was. How could she have disappeared like that? She went back to Ragnall.
“When did you last see her?”
“Just before we saw Maidun.”
“She waited until we were distracted. I can’t believe I didn’t spot her slipping off. I must be tired.”
“She’s a clever one.”
The road running downhill into Maidun was choked with people moving in both directions, spreading out into the delta of grubby huts, workshops and corrals that made up the town. There was no sign of Spring.
Chapter 7
“Who’s that?” Jorth pointed at the new girl.
“That’s Silver,” said Miller. “She wandered in here this morning with a wondrous tale of woe, asking for work, food and lodging. Soft-hearted Mal believed her story, took pity on her and took her in. That about the size of it, Mal?”
Mal nodded reluctantly. His deputy knew him better than anyone with the possible exception of his piercingly perceptive young wife, Nita. Mal always seemed to be surrounded by people more intelligent than himself. He often wondered why they let him remain in charge of the yard.
Silver had convinced him that she was honest straight away, even though she was a far from convincing wastrel. By her looks and voice, Mal suspected she was high-born, and her story about her parents being eaten by wild horses that had drunk salt water and developed a taste for human flesh didn’t ring true at all, but he found himself compelled to take her in. He didn’t know why – he’d rejected many more experienced people looking for shelter and work – but there was something about this girl that made her impossible to refuse.
“Silver? What kind of name is that?” asked Jorth
“Yes, how did you get your name, Silver?” piped up Miller.
“How did you get yours, Miller?” replied the girl, looking around at the cart-building yard.
“My great-grandfather was a miller. As I might be. Perhaps I only work here occasionally? Perhaps I’ve popped in to chat? Don’t judge a duck by its feathers, young Silver. So. How did you get your name?”
“My great-great-grandfather. He always sat on a stool in front of his hut on a busy road. Travellers started calling him Still There because he always was. That name came down to his son. Slowly it changed it to Sillthere, and then, you can see…”
“Yes. All right. Get back to your sweeping then.”
“I’ve done it.”
“Have you? That was quick. You can help Jorth.”
“How did you get a name like Jorth?” Silver asked.
Jorth opened her mouth and looked at Miller.
“She has no idea, Silver. Like a lot of people round here, she doesn’t know where she’s from. Isn’t that right, Jorth?”
“It’s just my name.”
“And,” continued Miller, “she’s not the type to make up a story about it.” He winked at the new girl.
Silver smirked.
Mal looked from one to the other. Was he missing something?
Chapter 8
Ragnall and Lowa walked through the ever-growing town of Maidun Camp. Lowa wanted to avoid the castle gate – there’d be too many people there who knew her – so they were going the long way round to the whorepits. He’d thought she’d forgotten about Anwen but, after a brief and fruitless search for Spring, she’d suggested they search for his fiancée. He could hardly disagree.
The idea of seeing Anwen might have troubled him more if there hadn’t been so much to look at. Possibly it wasn’t as big a settlement as Bladonfort, but, with no tall buildings in the camp to block his sight, he had never seen so many people at the same time. There were so many, all looking as if they had parts to play … And, soaring over all of it, the castle! The walls were like great breaking white stone waves topped with the brown wooden surf of the palisade. He stopped for the tenth time to stare up at them. Tiny guards with spears looked down. To them he’d be just one more ant in this mass of ants.
“Can you stop gawking like a halfwit?” Lowa asked from under her hood, interrupting his wonder.
“Isn’t gawking like a halfwit a bit more subtle than skulking along in a bandit’s cowl?”
“Lot of cowls. Lot of skulkers. Not many gawkers.”
She was right, as always. It was one of the many things that made him want to rip her clothes off. And yet they were off to find Anwen.
“Is that Spring?” she said quietly a few moments later, pointing at a child in the distance.
“No,” said Ragnall. He was glad it wasn’t. Life was a lot easier already without the brat’s constant put-downs.
They rounded the eastern end of the hillfort.
“Those are the latrines.” Lowa pointed down to the river. A long wooden building lined the nearer bank, with a door every pace or so. As they watched, a door opened. A man came out, stretched expansively and headed up the hill.
“People crap in a big hut by the river?”
“It’s split into little rooms. Each room has a seat with a hole. The shit drops into the river and floats to the estuary and the sea. You scoop water through the hole to wash your arse.”
“That’s not a bad idea at all.”
“Unless you live downstream.”
“And here,” said Lowa a little later, “are the whorepits.”
Across a shallow valley, below Maidun’s spectacular south wall, were two long wooden buildings facing each other across a narrow yard. High spiked fences linked each end of the sheds, with a ditch around the whole. It was essentially a little fort, its gate flanked by four guards, although open windows all along the spiked wall made the place look a little less formidable than the standard military stockade.
“Not pits as such, then?”
“No. Probably it used to be pits, or at least less spruce than now.”
“It looks like the riverside shitter shed, with fewer doors.”
“They were built at the same time. Same architect. And they’re both places where men grunt and loose a load.” Lowa smiled her not-smiling smile.
Ragnall laughed. “So what do I do?”
“
Offer a guard three coins and ask to see all the women who have been brought in over the last moon. Hand over one of the coins and say you’ll give her the rest when you’re done. Say you’re looking for your sister.”
“They won’t like that, will they?”
“They’re used to it. Say you’ll pay twenty coins for her if you find her. Three coins is the going rate for a search, twenty will buy a girl’s freedom. They won’t be surprised.”
Ragnall hooked three coins from the heavy purse Drustan had given him, put them in his pocket and handed the purse to Lowa. “You’d better look after this.”
“OK. See you in a bit.” Lowa walked up the hill a little and lay on the grass, eyes closed, face towards the sun. Ragnall looked at her for a moment. She’d been off-ish all morning, but then again she had a lot to worry about. He wanted to think that she was upset about him possibly finding Anwen, but he knew that the task ahead of her was much more on her mind. For some unknown reason, he reckoned that Spring running away was troubling her more that she would admit as well.
One of the guards, a small, smiling woman with a large head, no chin and a nose like a puffin’s beak, greeted Ragnall’s request to see if his sister was among the whores with all the surprise of a barmaid asked for a pint of beer.
“Although,” she said cheerfully, “we like to call them sex smiths, not whores.”
“Why?” said Ragnall. “Surely they are what they are?”
“If you wouldn’t mind, we prefer it.”
“Right. Sex smiths.”
“That’s it! Well, come with me and we’ll see if your sister’s a sex smith.”
They went to the far end first, where a group of women was chatting and playing dice in a flower garden. They were all about as pretty and shapely as any women Ragnall had ever seen. He asked after Anwen, trying to keep his voice level and to focus on their eyes. They said they were sorry, but none of them had heard of her.
“I hope you find her!” said one as he walked away.
“Don’t worry, sir, there’s still hope. She might have used a false name,” said the guard.
She knocked on doors and they met several more sex smiths, but no Anwen. Ragnall was surprised by the comfort and cleanliness of the place, and, more than that, that the women seemed to be happy, confident and relaxed. Their rooms, bright and airy from the open windows with a large clay vase of fresh flowers in each, were welcoming. They were more pleasant than the sleeping quarters on the Island of Angels.
Soon there was only one door left. They waited outside while the occupants finished.
“I am sorry if this isn’t her,” said the gatekeeper.
“No problem at all – not your fault,” Ragnall replied, then found himself saying, “I must say, it’s more homely in here than I thought it would be.”
“Really? That’s nice.”
“I don’t mean to be rude, I just thought—”
“That the whorepits would be a stinking, torture chamber of a place full of diseased, suicidal women who hated what they were forced to do and themselves even more?”
“Well, yes, pretty much.”
The gatekeeper laughed. “Everyone thinks that. I suppose it’s the name. But why wouldn’t we make it nice? We’re not trying to punish or torture the women. Far from it. It’s about making money. The happier the girls, the happier the customers. And we like to work in a decent environment. Can you imagine if it really was a collection of pits? Who’d come here?” The guard put her hands on her hips and smiled. “Yes, best detail in Maidun, working here. It’s safe, it’s clean and—” the gatekeeper nodded hello to two passing women, who smiled back at her “—there are beautiful girls everywhere. Plus of course, the more money we make, the nicer we can make it, and the nicer we make it, the more money we make. It’s a circle, you see. A happy little circle within the great circle of life.”
“But the women are … captives?”
“Aren’t we all, sir, aren’t we all?”
“I’m not.”
“Then you’re lucky.”
A happy shout interrupted them. Soon afterwards the door opened, and a small sharp-eyed fellow with a distinguished-looking cropped silver beard walked out, grinning. He tipped his cap at them and sauntered away.
Ragnall knocked. “Come in!” said a voice.
Was that Anwen’s?
He pushed the door open. A dark-haired woman was facing away from him, bending to adjust her outfit.
Chapter 9
“Miller, Mal, would you come over here a minute and listen to Silver?”
Nita was standing in a hands-on-hips pose that meant her request wasn’t a request. Miller and Mal looked at each other across the table, shrugged, stood, picked up their cups and walked over. It was nearing sunset and the first ciders after work were the best ciders. It was a shame to interrupt them.
Over at Nita’s table the new girl was the centre of attention.
“Come on then, Silver, what were you saying?” Mal asked.
“Stuff.”
“Silver was saying that things will be worse when the Romans come.”
“Oh brilliant,” said Miller. “Well done, Mal – you’ve found a rabble-rouser. You know how much Zadar likes troublemakers…”
“I didn’t say worse,” said Silver, “I said different.”
“It sounded worse to me.” Nita’s eyes narrowed. “They have weird gods; there are loads of rules about who can do what, and women can’t own or do anything! Is it true, Mal?”
For years now the soothsaying druids had screeched and moaned so much about the coming of the Romans that everyone took successful Roman invasion as a done deal. Mal didn’t know about elsewhere, but in Maidun, until recently at least, everybody said that the Romans’ arrival would make life better for everyone. They’d eat better food, they’d live in houses that could be heated without filling with smoke, there’d be no more disease, everyone would have their own chariot … Mal was happy to accept this. He didn’t care who was in charge as long as he could carry on making carts and living with the people he loved. And if he had a warm, smoke-free house and lived longer, that was no hardship. And who cared if the people who bossed them around looked and sounded a bit different? However he was hearing more and more rumblings, at the tavern particularly, that it was all lies. Zadar was going to sell them to the Romans as slaves. Families and friends would be separated. Some would be put to work making wine for strangers without being allowed to drink it themselves, others would be chained in great ships and made to row until their backs crumbled …
“It’s not true,” he said.
“Although of course there are many rumours,” said Miller. “Not many of them are believable. I’ve heard that they eat rotten fish.”
Everyone laughed.
“I don’t know any rumours,” said Silver, “I just know what it was like when I lived in Roman Iberia.”
“You’ve lived under the Romans?” Miller sounded sceptical.
“Oh, it wasn’t so bad. My parents and me worked in a big Roman villa – like a load of big huts stuck together and lived in by just one family and all their slaves. My mum and dad always said that being a slave under the Romans wasn’t that different to living under a king’s rule. We didn’t like the beatings though.”
“Beatings?”
“They beat us all the time – but not so we’d be really hurt. We were always able to work the next day, and we could have had it much worse. The Romans have these big mines in Iberia. Tens of thousands of slaves work at each one. The air at the mines is so poisonous that the slaves’ skin turns white and any birds that fly overhead drop dead from the sky. The slaves don’t live long either.”
Her listeners made various amazed noises and somebody asked, “How did you get away?”
“Well first my dad died.”
“How?”
“The Romans killed him.”
“What for?”
“He was caught making cider.”
Ev
eryone at the table gasped, apart from Mal, who shook his head and walked away. He did not want to hear this.
Chapter 10
Lowa looked like she was asleep when he came back, but, standing over her, he saw that her eyes were open. Then he noticed her hand on her knife. One didn’t creep up on Lowa.
“That wasn’t what I expected,” he said.
“She wasn’t there?”
“No. Nor anyone who’d heard of her.”
“I see.”
“What does that mean?”
Lowa stood up and rubbed an eye. She had been asleep.
“Could be any of three things. She could have been taken elsewhere, most likely shipped across the sea, possibly to Rome. But if she’s as beautiful as you say, it’s possible that one of the Warriors has her up in the Castle, or she’s in Zadar’s harem up there, or…”
“Or…”
“Or she’s dead.”
“What do you think?”
“I think you need to ask around and find out. It’s time we went our own ways for a while.” She held out his purse.
He didn’t take it. He stood on the green hill under the blue sky, feeling as if a trap door had opened under him. The whole world was whooshing into it and he was about to plummet himself.
“But, tonight … to get you into the fort, I need to make a … distraction?”
“You don’t. It was never an integral part of the plan. Chances are it’ll make things worse. They won’t divert any guards and you’ll put them on a general alert.”
“But?”
Lowa took him by the shoulders.
“Ragnall. Go back to the camp. Talk to people. Keep your eyes open. Go and see a show at the arena. You’ll soon find out what happened to Anwen.”
“And you?”
“I’m probably going to die very soon.”
He’d never seen anyone look more beautiful.
“I hope to kill Zadar first,” she said with a shrug. “If I do, the place will be in turmoil. There will be chances for advancement. You could do worse than stay here and join the army. You could easily make Warrior in a year or two. While you’re doing that you’ll probably find Anwen and discover whether she’s still interested in marrying you. If she’s not here, you should be able to discover where she went, then go on a well-informed quest to find her. Or just move on.”
