Age of Iron

by Angus Watson

  The charioteer steered the horse into a gallop around the periphery of the arena. Lowa picked up the chisel and stood in the centre, sword in one hand, chisel in the other, turning to follow the chariot’s progress. She had an insane plan. Her head told her that it would never work, but the battle lust fizzing in her blood told her head to stay the Bel out of this one. She smiled.

  In the chariot, Chandler took a sling from his belt, fitted a stone, swung it about his head and loosed at her.

  Lowa pulled her sword back, swung and whacked the stone out of the sky with a spang! The stone sailed off into the crowd, who roared their approval.

  In front of the castle, below the king’s seats, the chariot turned for the centre.

  Lowa ran away from it in a straight line.

  “Go to the side! Dodge!” she heard people shouting above the increasingly loud thundering of the horse’s hooves. She reached the wall and veered left. She heard the chariot turn behind her. She sprinted along beside the wall. The chariot closed on her, fast.

  She turned to run across the centre. Before she was halfway across she could hear and feel the horse no more than a pace or two behind. She knew Chandler’s shot was coming, so she jinked her head from side to side. A slingstone stung her ear. She saw the horse’s head in her peripheral vision and tossed her sword away, keeping the chisel in her left hand, then sprung into a leap that would have cleared a small man’s head.

  At the apex of her jump she drove the chisel down at the horse’s neck.

  The charioteer saw her plan and jerked the reins. The horse twisted. Her chisel glanced off a bronze fitting and sliced a short gash in the horse’s shoulder. Lowa fell.

  The horse’s flank thumped into her legs. Her arse went up as her head came down and she was falling upside down, the wheel blade flashing towards her face.

  Elliax was watching but not seeing. His mind wasn’t on the fight. They’d put him between Drustan and Felix, only one away from Zadar himself but with his feet bound to his seat and his hands bound to each other. What did it mean? When they’d walked him down to the royal section he’d thought that maybe he’d been right before, and they were going to give him some position of power – perhaps they were going to announce it to the thousands in the arena that very day! And then they’d tied him up. What, by Cromm Cruach’s many tentacles, was going on?

  Everyone around him was focused on the action. In the ring Lowa, brave but stupid woman, threw her sword to one side and attacked the horse with the spike that the blacksmiths had left. The crowd screamed in excitement, then cried a communal “Whooahhh!” as she completely missed her mark and fell onto the spinning blade of the chariot wheel.

  The arena quietened, dust drifted down and he could see her lying prone. Elliax expected her to be in two pieces – those blades were heavy and probably very sharp, and at that speed … But no, she stood. There were massive cheers, including a scream of delight from Zadar’s daughter, sitting on the other side of the king. The clamour subsided as Lowa tried a step and almost fell, one hand going to her right butt cheek where the blade must have hit. The leather of her shorts had deflected it. Good leather that, he thought.

  “It must have been the flat of the blade,” said Felix, sounding appalled.

  “Do you think so?” said Zadar.

  Felix turned to the king. “You don’t think…?”

  “Probably not. But be ready.”

  What the Bel was that about? thought Elliax.

  Back in the arena Lowa staggered over to pick up her sword. She was badly injured, by the way she was walking. It looked like she was beaten.

  The chariot circled the ring. The charioteer climbed forward to stand on the horse, which won him some applause. He put the reins in his teeth and danced a jig, which wasn’t, to Elliax’s mind, particularly good, but it plucked a few whoops from the audience. While the driver capered, the passenger whirled his sling and loosed. It was a good shot, but Lowa dodged it somehow.

  The Warrior said something terse to the driver and he climbed back in. Quite right, thought Elliax, the show-off jackanapes had work to do. He pulled the chariot in a tight curve back towards the centre, directly at Lowa. She waited, sword in one hand, spike in the other, bouncing from toe to toe. At the last moment she dived. The charioteer was ready. He pulled the reins in the same direction. Lowa hit the ground. She went under the blade, almost clear, but the iron-rimmed wheel ran over her calves, throwing her into a spin. She came to a crumpled stop and immediately a slingstone from the Warrior whacked into her back. She arched in pain.

  The chariot turned.

  Elliax was distracted by an animalistic squeak from Drustan next to him. Strange noise for a man like him to make, he thought. The druid was bent forward, staring at Lowa, muttering, with his hands inside his robe, working away at his groin. Yuck, thought Elliax.

  He looked back at the action. Somehow Lowa had stood up, but she was all twisted. The chariot picked up speed, hurtling towards her. She dropped her sword. It looked like she didn’t have the strength to hold it any more. The chariot was paces away. She wasn’t even looking at it. It was going to be messy.

  Chapter 30

  “Badgers’ tagnuts! They said it was big, but…” Dug pulled at the reins to stop and have a proper look. There it was, Maidun Castle, gleaming colossal and white under a blue sky. Despite what it symbolised, despite Lowa’s plight, despite his lurching, poisonous hangover, the sheer majesty of the hillfort made his chest swell in appreciation.

  “It’s just a shaved hill. Get over it,” said Ragnall. “Come on, they’ll have started by now.”

  As if to prove his point, a distant cheer drifted from the direction of the fort.

  “Let’s go!” shouted Ragnall. He kicked his horse into a gallop.

  Dug looked after him for a moment, tempted to stay where he was, even to shout, “Bugger off, you horrible wee jumped-up woman-stealing kludge-bucket!” at his back, but he sighed and remembered Lowa and whacked his heels into his mount. It jerked forward unpleasantly, and Dug was bouncing down the hill, past the first outlying tents and sheds of Maidun’s sprawling camp.

  There was another cheer. It sounded like Lowa was still alive, so, theoretically, they could still rescue her. There was just the matter of a several-thousand-strong army in the way. Some kind of plan would have been comforting.

  Chapter 31

  Lowa spun to a stop. Before she could get up, a slingstone cracked into her back, right on a vertebra. She yelped. That shit Dord Chandler. She pressed her shoulders together to squeeze the pain out, and it dissolved. She wiggled her back. Chandler must have held back with that stone, she thought. The Makka-cursed rat wanted to kill her slowly. She reached down to her calves, where the wheel had run her over, expecting to find her feet at least half-severed by the metal rim. They weren’t. It must be a very light chariot, she thought, if the leather sandal thongs had saved her from injury. Probably Chandler had found a new kind of wood or a way of hollowing out struts that he’d been busy boring the crap out of everyone by describing.

  Lowa stood. She tried her legs and arms. The worst pain was in her right buttock where the blade had hit her. A touch with her fingers revealed that she wasn’t bleeding, which was a surprise. Everything else worked too. She wasn’t exactly winning, but where there was life …

  The chariot was coming at her again. Looking ready for it last time had been a mistake. She hung her head, dropped her sword and waited. And time slowed. She felt energy surge. She could hear the boom boom of her heart. She was looking at her feet but knew where the chariot was. She could tell how far it was by its smell. Now it was a pace away. She leaped, pleased to see surprise in the charioteer’s eyes. He pulled the reins. Too late this time, thought Lowa. Without looking, she sensed the gap between the horse’s shoulder blades and smashed down with the chisel. It drove in to the hilt. She pushed on it, adding thrust to the momentum of her jump.

  Her feet came up over her head. She thrust on the chisel
with both hands so powerfully that she felt the horse begin to collapse under her. She released, flinging herself up and back, somersaulting over horse and chariot. Two faces, looking up open-mouthed, flashed underneath, then she was over.

  She landed square on two feet as if she’d practised the move for years. The horse ploughed into the arena floor. The draught poles dug into the ground and the chariot flipped up, over and smashed onto the arena floor in an explosion of wood, blades and limbs. The boom was loud enough to wake the dead, but it was immediately overwhelmed by the ear-bursting roar of the crowd.

  “By Danu,” said Drustan.

  The girl Sabina had jumped up and was pumping her fists in the air. Zadar was looking at the carnage below. His expression hadn’t changed, but Elliax could feel his rage. Elliax realised that his own mouth was open. He closed it and shook his head. That, he thought, was the most amazing thing he’d ever seen. One small woman beating a chariot. Not with luck, but with the most elegant, stylish, effective …

  “Cromm Cruach,” said Felix, then turned his head to look at Drustan as if Elliax wasn’t there.

  “You!”

  “If that is a question, you will need to flesh it out a bit,” said Drustan.

  “But I saw … I didn’t see. You don’t have…?”

  “Carden, Atlas.” Zadar’s calm voice cut though Felix’s enraged gibbering. “Detain Drustan. Ensure he cannot use his hands. Check his person for animals.”

  “Animals?” Carden asked from his seat behind Drustan.

  Zadar looked back at him. Carden swallowed any further questions, leaned forward, grabbed Drustan’s shoulders in two massive hands and lifted him back, over his seat.

  “Be ready with plan two,” said Zadar.

  “I’m ready.” Felix turned and winked at Elliax. Elliax felt as if centipedes were scurrying up his back.

  “I found a freshly dead rat, nothing else,” Carden called out.

  Lowa looked at the destroyed chariot. She bounced on her toes, still thrumming with the energy of a forest fire. Then, suddenly, the power poured out of her like wine from a tipped amphora. She almost sobbed. What the Bel? A moment ago her body had zinged with the force of a god; it had seemed like anything was possible, and she’d almost burst into song with the joy of it all. Now she felt about as zippy as seaweed at low tide on a cloudy winter’s day. What was going on?

  She shook to try and dispel her lassitude. She walked around the twitching horse. The men were no longer part of the wreckage, recognisably human. It looked as if a butcher’s cart had been pulverised by a giant hammer. For some reason Chandler’s and the boy’s deaths filled her with chills. She shook her head and pulled at a wheel. The sling and its stones might be useful, if she could find them. Stifling through the debris, she heard the crowd go quiet. She didn’t want to know why yet. Then she heard an Iberian voice ring out: “Cooo-eeee! Stop playing with the dead! It’s time to play with me!”

  Chamanca.

  Lowa’s stomach fell. She couldn’t beat Chamanca. Not without her bow. Although she’d had her bow on Mearhold and Chamanca had still bested her without breaking a sweat. And now, as if to ensure she had no hope whatsoever, this bizarre weariness had come over her. It was a strain to lift her head.

  “Who’s dressed like a blind whore now?” asked Chamanca as she sashayed across the arena in her usual skimpy armour. She had her ball-and-chain mace in one hand and a fine-looking iron sword in the other.

  “We both are,” said Lowa, swivelling her eyes to look for her own sword. “But I didn’t have a choice.”

  “Ha ha! So clever with words.” Chamanca smiled to show her filed teeth. “But such a heavy and clumsy fighter. It’s a shame to kill such a clever girl. Go on. Get your sword, clever girl. It won’t help you.”

  Lowa walked over and picked up the weapon. She raised it, lifting the other hand for balance. She bent her knees and shifted from the ball of one foot to the other. The torpor was falling away, normality returning. She knew the basics of fighting with mêlée weapons. In fact she knew some fairly advanced stuff. However, compared to Chamanca, she knew nothing. She turned to face the Iberian.

  “Those are my clothes you’re wearing,” said Chamanca, cocking her head. “Somebody must have stolen them!”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Never mind. I will take them back in a moment.”

  “I don’t suppose we could ally against Zadar? Slutty dressers take on the tyrant?” Lowa tried.

  “No, Lowa. Today you die. I’m going to enjoy killing you.”

  The Iberian came at her, lithe as a liquid. The crowd chanted: “Lowa! Lowa! Lowa!”

  From a swirl of limbs Chamanca’s sword flashed at Lowa like a bolt of lightning. Lowa parried. As their swords jarred together, she felt something crunch into her ribs. The ball mace. She hadn’t seen it coming. Her left side was paralysed with agony and she fell. She climbed up onto one knee, but the pain overcame her and she flopped onto her face.

  “Do not let Drustan move!” Felix commanded Carden.

  Carden nodded, tightening his grip.

  “In fact, knock him out.”

  Carden pinched the druid’s neck with a mighty thumb and finger. The old man sighed and went limp.

  That looked fake, thought Elliax, turning back to the fight.

  Lowa half lifted herself, but her hand skidded out and she crashed down in a wave of hurt. I’d hoped to do a bit better than that, she thought. She felt arms curl around her head and pull her up. Her broken ribs screamed in protest, but she was helpless. Chamanca dragged her across the arena towards Maidun’s finest and the soaring castle wall.

  “Kneel, shrimp,” Chamanca snarled.

  Lowa tried to resist as Chamanca pulled her up and kicked her legs into a kneel, but she was powerless. In the stands, Felix was beaming. Zadar looked unconcerned. Chamanca’s arms tightened around her neck and harbinger clouds of unconsciousness bloomed through Lowa’s head. She closed her eyes.

  “No! No!” she heard the crowd shout.

  Chamanca let go of her neck. Lowa considered leaping up and spinning round with a high kick, but her limbs were limp and incapable. She was pulled to her feet. She saw Zadar’s face at the centre of a swimming mass of faces. Her hate gave her no energy.

  Chamanca’s arms encircled her arms and chest, and squeezed, hurting her injured ribs. “Now I’ll eat you, my pretty.”

  She felt Chamanca’s tongue lick from the top of her back to her ear. Lowa expected the tongue to probe her earhole as it had on Mearhold, but instead the Iberian bit into the lobe.

  This is no good. Lowa gathered her energy for one last struggle, tensed her shoulders and pulled back her leg to stamp, but before she could carry out her move, Chamanca flung her grip open and punched her in the small of the back. Lowa felt her legs become useless. She would have fallen had Chamanca not gripped her again, all the tighter.

  “No, no. You don’t fight. You’re a shrimp, remember. I bite your head off.”

  Lowa felt the teeth pop through the skin on her neck. Not this again, she thought. The scabs were only just healing from the last time.

  “Noooo!” the crowd howled.

  So this is it, thought Lowa. She thought of Dug, Ragnall, Zadar, little Spring, Aithne, Seanna, Realin, Cordelia, Maura, her bow … and came back to Dug. Big Dug whom she’d treated so appallingly. That was a big regret. That, and not killing Zadar a long time ago. And, now she thought about it, Felix could have done with an arrow in the face too.

  The sound of Chamanca gulping her blood became louder and the roar of the crowd quieter. The pain in her ribs and her back dissolved as consciousness slipped away.

  It wasn’t a big deal, dying.

  She thought of the top and trousers that she’d cleaned, drying on her bed in her cell, waiting for her return. Somehow that was the saddest thing of all.

  Chapter 32

  Ragnall and Dug pushed through the packed masses outside the arena. The wooden stairs tacked onto the
wall – the only way up to the terraces that Ragnall could see – were so thick with people that they’d never have got up them, but that was a moot point since the crowd was so dense that they couldn’t get anywhere near the bottom of the stairs anyway.

  “Noooo!” A great shout, the loudest yet, came from within the arena.

  “I do not like the sound of that! Get out the way!” Dug heaved, people stumbled. Ragnall swallowed an urge to apologise for him.

  “There’s no need to push, chum,” said a prim young chap with a vast bush of a beard. “We’re all—” Dug’s fist crashed into his face. He crumpled. Dug looked for the next person to hit.

  “Dug.” Ragnall grabbed his arm. “You can’t punch your way in.”

  “I can try!” Dug swung again and another man fell.

  “No, no. There must be another way. Come on, over here.” Ragnall grabbed his arm and pulled.

  Chapter 33

  “Lowa.” She heard a voice through the crowd’s tumult. It sounded like her mother, calling quietly into the hut to see if she was awake. Maybe it was her mother. Maybe there was an Otherworld after all.

  She opened her eyes. Blood was flowing over her stupid little leather top and over Chamanca’s arms, which were still gripped around her ribs. Her blood. She felt foolish. “Lowa.” The voice insisted. She looked up.

  A mass of blurred shapes and muted shouting whirled in a dizzy dance of noise and colour. The dance swirled into a spinning maelstrom. Slowly burning in the centre of the whirl, more and more brightly, until it outshone everything else, was one face. Spring. She was looking calmly at Lowa with bright eyes and a peaceful smile. Lowa had never seen anything more beautiful than the little girl with the overbite and ball-fungus nose. Spring dipped her head, as if to say Well, go on then.