by Angus Watson
“But, Lowa…”
“Come on. Buck up. I’m only probably going to die. I might get away, in which case I’ll come and find you. OK?”
“OK.” He looked at his toe, which for some reason he was poking into the grass. He’d last felt like this as a child being upbraided by his parents for something he hadn’t done.
“Now, go back that way.” Lowa pointed west. “Nobody will ask anything. If they do, you’ve been to the whorepits.”
“And you?”
“I’m going the other way. Goodbye, Ragnall.”
“No. Lowa.”
She stopped and turned. “Go, find Anwen and be with her.”
“But—”
“Go.”
Ragnall watched her walk away.
Chapter 11
Nita shook her head, took another swig of cider and carried on as loudly as before: “I bet she’s right. She’s been there. She should know.”
Mal looked around apprehensively. There were too many people in the courtyard of Maidun Camp’s biggest inn for this kind of talk. But he also knew better than to try to quieten Nita after a few mugs of cider.
“I’ve seen the way Felix looks at women when he walks through the camp. He doesn’t like them. Stands to reason the rest of Rome will be the same. No women in the army. No professions for women. Can you imagine! No female smiths! Where would smithing be without women like Elann Nancarrow? And I’d like to see what Chamanca and that Lowa would say about no women Warriors.”
“Excuse me?” A showily wealthy fellow called Ollic, whom Mal had never liked or trusted, leaned back from a nearby table. “Is this true, what I’m overhearing?”
“I have heard pretty much the same stuff before,” said Miller. “From a man who’d spent many years in Rome. He said that woman are treated like animals. Like pampered animals, to be sure, but like animals all the same. They can’t own property or coins. They wear jewels – better, bigger jewels than we have – but these are owned by their men and can be taken from them at a man’s whim. There can never be a queen, only kings. Worst of all, all the women in each family have the same name.”
“That can’t be true!” Nita protested. “How would that work?”
“Say you and Mal had a daughter. Rather than getting her own name like, let’s say … Chamanca Fletcher…” There were a few guffaws. “Yes, yes, calm down. Mal and Nita’s daughter would be called Mallia. Just Mallia, not Mallia Fletcher. If you had two more daughters, they’d both also be called Mallia. Mal’s mother would be called Mallia, because his dad would have been called Mal, and if he had any sisters they’d also be called Mallia.”
“So the men get the same names too?”
“No. I didn’t quite get it, but it seems they have three or even four names each. One, I think, is passed down the generations, but the rest are your own, including maybe a nickname. So my name here is Cheb Miller. Cheb’s my name, Miller is my family name. In Rome I might be called Cheb Zadar Miller Most Handsome.”
There were laughs and a few derisive comments.
“But my daughter would be just Millia, as would my sister, my mum, her sisters, her mum, her sisters … Women all just share the one family name.”
Mal and everyone looked quizzically at Miller. Yet again Mal had no idea what Miller was talking about. “Can you say that again,” he asked, “but so that people with just the one brain can understand it?”
“You idiots. The point is that women are thought of as objects in Rome so they all get the same name. If I have two dogs I give them different names. Roman women don’t get that much respect. I’m pretty sure that’s right, isn’t it, Silver?”
The girl nodded.
“What about the lands they’ve conquered? What about the women there? They can’t own anything?” asked Ollic.
“Same.”
“But how do they get everyone to agree?”
“I can guess!” said Nita. “The men go along with it! They see the chance to double their wealth overnight. To shag that sexy little cousin they’ve always had their eyes on. They run the businesses, do all the fighting, make all the decisions and have all the fun while the women do the drudge work. That’s about it, isn’t it, Miller?”
“That is, indeed, about it.”
“That’s just the women,” said Ollic, grinning. “We’ll be all right, won’t we, lads? Better off!” His friends laughed and clashed tankards.
“You’d think,” said Miller, “but I’ve heard that it’s not just the women who suffer. I’ve heard it said that everyone in the lands that Rome conquers, men and women, are slaves to the Roman soldiers, who treat them like curs with beatings, murder, rape, including male rape, by the way. Your Roman man loves a bit of male arse, apparently. For them, sex is all about power, rather than love or lust. So someone bold like you, Ollic, will need to be put in his place with a regular unwelcome bum-pounding. That’s just the normal people of course. The kings and the rulers still have it all right, better even, which is why so many tribes go down without fighting. The kings tell their people that it will be fine, so they surrender. Then the people live like slaves and the kings live like, well, kings. That about right, Silver?”
Spring gave another big nod.
Ollic had nothing to say to that, which pleased Mal because he always liked to see a dickhead silenced, but this was dangerous talk. If any of the Fifty overheard, they’d all be heading for the arena. People had been killed for saying a lot less. He had to put a stop to it.
“You’re wrong. We stay here under Zadar’s rule and we’re in a position of power like no Iberian tribe ever had. We can negotiate with the Romans to keep our way of life. A couple of minor things may change for the worse, but I’m sure that overall we’ll be better off. They have better healers, heating in their huts and plenty of cheap wine!” There was a murmur of approval. “We’ll have more comfortable lives. We’ll live longer. Things will be better.”
“Will we?” Miller looked sad. “Or will the well off simply become better off, while people like you and me sink?”
Chapter 12
Lowa Flynn slithered on her elbows through horse shit and grass towards the great white wall. The bundle containing her camouflage gear was tied between her knees, so her legs were splayed and of little use as she snaked along. She’d have liked to put the pack on her back, but it would have stuck up too much. Molehills were plentiful outside Maidun Castle, but none of them moved.
The path fifty paces to her right was thick with castle traffic. She was forty paces from the fort’s outer wall. She stopped and lay still for a hundred breaths, moved half a pace forward, then lay still again and counted. This was Drustan’s idea. People see movement, he’d said. After a hundred breaths – much longer than she thought necessary – any guard who thought they’d spotted her moving would decide that they hadn’t and moved on. Face down and unoccupied, she noticed things: the smell of the ground, the feel of the wind, the dropping temperature as night approached. With plenty of time for her mind to wander, she found herself thinking more about Dug than anybody else. She kept trying to focus on the mission ahead but Dug kept strolling into her mind with his ready smile and his childishly expressive eyes. She kept picturing the moment when she’d walked up to him in the valley after shooting the dogs. He’d looked so happy to see her, so vulnerable yet so brave.
She realised she’d stopped counting, then decided she must have been still for a hundred breaths and squirmed forward another half a pace, ignoring the temptation to lift her hooded head. It was most odd, she thought. She wanted to look after Dug and be looked after by him. She wished that he was lying on the ground next to her. This mission would be so much more pleasant with him along. Everything had been better with him around, until she’d … She shook her head. Thoughts like this had never troubled her before. Maybe it was the danger? Maybe she’d eaten something unusual. She decided to stop being so soppy and get back to counting.
She reached the bottom of the first wall, w
here grassy earth gave way to hewn chalk. This was the first place she was very likely to be spotted and pummelled with slingstones. The first of many. She untied the pack from her leg and pulled out the white-wool top and trousers. She took off her brown outfit and slid on the white one, pulling the hood’s white drawstring tight about her face. Her hair was near-enough white, but Drustan had pointed out that it might fly about in the wind.
She buried her discarded clothes in the loose soil of a molehill, tucked a coiled brown rope and its thin iron wool-muffled grapple into a white pouch on her side and looped the leather lanyards of the iron spikes around her wrists. She stood slowly and pressed herself into the white wall, arms spread, iron spike in each hand. She stayed there for a hundred breaths. The chalk wall smelled like flour, fresher than the soil.
No alarms and no surprises. She raised her arm, dug a spike into the wall, waited. No shouts from above. She raised the other spike. It was worryingly easy to jam into the soft rock but it seemed to hold firm.
Here goes, she thought, and ascended as elegantly as a spider. She was soon at the top, breathing heavily but quietly. She paused below the palisade and waited for a guard to pass. As soon as his or her footsteps died away – her, by the lightness of them – Lowa took out her rope and slung its padded grapple over the wooden wall. It landed between two spikes with a soft thud. She yanked. It held.
She landed two-footed on the walkway with a soft thump. The nearest guard was forty paces away, slowing as if about to turn. She gathered the rope, dropped over the inner edge of the walkway and slid, slowly, slowly down the wall. Mercifully, the inner side of the chalk-hewn wall was a little farther from vertical than the outer.
The base of the ditch was dark as a cave at night, but she stood still as she heard the guard pass overhead. She reached out and found two of the sharpened wooden stakes that lined the bottom of Maidun’s ditches. The second wall was as steep as the outer wall and significantly higher. The first seven tenths or so were in darkness, but after that the starlight lit the chalk a silvery white. She readied the iron spikes in her hands, then frowned.
Drustan’s theory that guards on a wall only ever looked outwards had seemed reasonable after a few ciders back on Mearhold. But the guards didn’t stand looking outwards, they walked along the walls. So they looked along the walls a good deal of the time. So when she climbed the starlit section of the second wall, one of them would surely spot her.
A low growl interrupted her thoughts. It was a dog, no more than ten paces away. She heard it pad closer. She flung herself onto the wall and scrambled up. When she was certain she was out of paw’s reach, she froze. Below her the dog barked, percussive shouts so loud she felt the air vibrate.
She clung to the wall. “Oi! What is it?” A man’s voice from atop the second wall. “Outer wall?”
“All clear,” came a woman’s nasal voice.
“Can you have a look in the ditch?”
A pause. Lowa hung motionless. It felt as if the guard’s eyes were boring into her back. Below her the big hunting dog barked and scrabbled at the wall. She pressed into the chalk. Stillness. Stillness meant invisibility. A beetle, spider or some other many-legged beast crawled onto her cheek and over her nose. She closed her eyes.
“I can just about make out the dog jumping about, but it’s darker down there than Felix’s heart. Could be an army of dragons hiding down there. But the dog’s probably just found a squirrel or something. He’s got form, that one. I climbed down once when he was barking and fell from halfway. I don’t know how I missed the stakes. And what had he found? A dead robin. Trust me. It’s probably nothing.”
“Yeah, probably,” said the man, “but last time I ignored a ‘probably nothing’ I was a hair’s breadth from a bout in the arena. I’ll lob a torch down. Lean right over and have a good look.”
“All right.”
Buggerfucktwats. Lowa pressed herself closer to the wall, willing herself to melt into it.
She felt the torch’s heat flash past her shoulder. A yelp was followed by angry barking. Laughter came from both walls.
“You hit the fucking dog!”
“I know! Stupid bloody dog. It watched the torch fall! Why didn’t it move? Is it alight?”
“Ha ha! He’s barking at the torch now.”
“And no armies down there?”
“Hang on…”
Lowa held her breath.
“No, just a deeply stupid dog!.”
Lowa waited. Below her the dog yipped at the sputtering torch. Slowly, she began to climb again.
She reached the moonlit section. Up close it was so bright she was certain that if she went any further she’d be seen by one of the guards on the outer wall. She’d have to find another way.
A hundred paces away was a narrow wooden bridge. Like all the bridges linking Maidun’s walls it had two barrels of oil at its inner end. In the unlikely event of an attacker capturing the outer wall, these barrels would be emptied onto the bridge and the oil set alight. Her plan had discounted crossing bridges because each one had a permanent guard. However, below this bridge the wall was in shadow. She’d be able to climb unseen underneath it.
Even as she’d been deliberating, the glare from the rising moon had crept closer.
It was too far for her to traverse along the wall so she decided to go back down, walk along the ditch and head up under the bridge. She’d just have to dodge the dog and avoid or silence the bridge guard. She was wondering why she hadn’t got to the bottom yet when there was a growl and a whoosh of air. Something clamped round her foot and pulled her from the wall. She landed on her back between two stakes. The dog leaped for her throat.
Chapter 13
In an inn in Forkton, Dug was interrupted. “Oi. What you looking at?” something said.
“Noverymush,” he managed.
“What?”
Dug screwed up his face in an attempt to drag his eyes back from where they’d been spinning on the sides of his head. That was better, but still skew. He placed both hands on the table to find a horizontal horizon. That accomplished, he looked over to the next table.
There were four of them. The man who’d said “what” looked unhappy about something. He probably always looked unhappy, Dug mused. His round head, sprouting necklessly from fat shoulders, looked like a lump of meat that had been cut from the side of a massively fat sow, had most of the hair boiled off, then the nose, eyes and mouth gouged out by the thumbs of an apathetic and cack-handed workman as the third to last job of a busy day. Gold earrings the size of knuckles and a chunky bronze necklace showed that he’d had some success with something and thought it important that people should know.
His three companions were cut, thought Dug, from much the same sow. They were two men and a woman. The woman’s anger-twisted, watery red, alcohol-melted face was topped by an incongruously fine and well brushed sweep of red hair.
“Garnish on a turd,” muttered Dug.
“What?” said the man again, louder.
“I said—” Dug cricked his neck from side to side, then shook his head “—that I’m not looking at very much. I was listening to you lot earlier. What a lot of banal crap you spout.” He put on his best southern accent: “Don’t you hate Mearholders? Yeah, they’re lucky to be sent away as slaves; it’s a better life for them. Don’t you hate Dumnonians? Don’t they all smell? Did you see the sport in the arena? Yeah, I did. Wasn’t it good? Blah blah blah blah.”
The four of them were staring at him, mouths agape.
“None of you think about what you’re saying. You don’t know if any of it’s right. You’re just repeating bullshit you’ve heard other people say. You might as well be sheep. The ability to speak is wasted on cunts like you lot.”
Dug shook his head sadly and took a swig of cider. The man who’d spoken took a step forward. The other three stood.
Dug smiled and reached down for his hammer.
It wasn’t there.
Big round badgers�
�� nipples, he thought.
Chapter 14
Lowa drove the iron climbing spikes into the leaping dog’s temples. It fell on her, dead. She heaved and squirmed out from under it.
If she left it, come sunrise the dog’s body would be a beacon announcing her infiltration. She intended to spend at least a day hiding out in the fort. If the dog was found, they’d search all the sort of places that she intended hiding in. The ditches were kept clean of course, so there was no debris to cover the corpse. She decided to heft it onto a stake to make its death look like an accident. A totally freak, difficult to believe accident, but it would have to do, and surely no harder to believe than someone scaling the wall and killing it? They already thought the dog was stupid. She straddled it, squatted, thrust her hands under its shoulders and pulled with her whole body. It hardly budged. Fuck it, she thought. She was just going to have to find a good hiding place up on Maidun.
Feeling her way between the spikes, testing each step to avoid noisy surprises, head forward, peering into the darkness, Lowa crept along the ditch towards the bridge. Every little noise drifting out of the night sounded like a pack of dogs. An age later she was under the bridge. She climbed. Her arms were wobbling with strain by the top. That did not bode well for the third, even higher wall, she thought as she stood underneath the bridge on a supporting beam, panting silently.
Footsteps approached. They stopped above her.
“How’s it going there, all right?” said the owner of the feet.
“Yeah, all good,” said another voice from the outer wall, presumably the bridge guard.
“Did you hear about the dog?”
“Yeah. Stupid dog!”
