by Angus Watson
“The bleeding’s stopped. Nothing vital nipped.” Dug stood back and looked at Lowa expectantly. She felt very tired. She did not want to fight any more.
She looked up at the posh seats. Drustan and Spring were smiling at her. Atlas and Carden were holding Zadar by one arm each. He looked calm as ever. Felix was nowhere to be seen. Keelin was standing next to Spring, looking from the captured Zadar, to the crowd, to Lowa, in open-mouthed wonder.
“Dug,” Lowa said, “would you mind…”
“Looking for these?” He held the bow, strung, in one hand, a bloody arrow that he’d pulled out of somebody in the other.
“Yes. Thanks.”
She took the bow, nocked an arrow and tried to draw. She couldn’t. She was spent.
Zadar looked back at her, contempt shining from his eyes, as if, somehow, after all he’d done, he couldn’t see what an evil shit he was. He still thought he was better than her, better than her sister, better than her girls, better than everyone. She held his gaze and felt power flow into her limbs. She drew a full draw and loosed.
Zadar looked down at the little feathery rosette protruding from his chest, and died.
The crowd cheered. Lowa raised one arm and turned slowly as the chant – “Queen Lowa! Queen Lowa!” – washed over her like storm waves.
“Dug…”
“Got you,” he replied, putting an arm around her as she fell against him.
Chapter 35
Spring caught up with Dug on the north road near where she’d run away from Lowa and Ragnall. He was silhouetted in the silver light of the waning moon, a small pack on his back, valuables bag and hammer hanging from his belt. The night was so still she could hear the tramp of his feet on the road ahead and, from behind her, the shouts, squeals and music from Maidun Castle.
It was Lowa’s coronation and the end-of-Zadar party. Spring had been looking forward to it but then hadn’t enjoyed it at all because Dug hadn’t been there, and she’d left the moment Ragnall told her he’d seen Dug heading away. She’d kicked herself for being so stupid. Of course he’d been planning to leave during the party when she wouldn’t notice and try to stop him. That was why he’d tried to give her Ulpius’ mirror earlier, and insisted she look after it for a while when she wouldn’t take it.
“Hi,” he said when she caught up to him, without looking down or slowing his stride.
“Where are you going?” She took his big rough hand in hers. She pulled on it a little. She’d slow him down without him realising.
“North. Back home.”
“That’s silly. All your friends are here.”
Dug stopped and crouched down in front of her so their heads were level. He took her shoulders in his hands. He smelled of warmth and beard. His eyes shone with a thousand years of sadness. He looked up behind her, as if thinking what to say.
“There’s a lot to be done here,” he said eventually.
“So stay and do it.”
“It’s not my sort of place. I thought it might be, but—”
“It’s Lowa, isn’t it?”
“Maybe. A little.”
“Dug.” She felt tears swell. “It was my fault. On Mearhold—”
“Don’t be silly. I loved our fishing and our hunting. I wouldn’t change a second of it. Spending time with you didn’t make Lowa—”
“No, but I did it. I made her go off you.”
“What do you mean?”
Did he look angry? She hoped he wouldn’t be angry. He had every right to be angry. She shouldn’t have done it.
“You know what I did in the arena?”
“I really don’t, but, by Makka—”
“I don’t know what I did either, or how. But I know I did it, and I know that I did the same thing to make Lowa go off you.”
“What?” He let go of her shoulders. He was angry.
“I didn’t do it on purpose. I didn’t think it would work. But I told her to go off you. It was the same as when I helped you and Lowa in the arena, the same feeling. But I didn’t think it would work! I was just jealous and I didn’t like her after she wanted to leave me behind in Kanawan and I didn’t think she was good enough for you and I swear I didn’t make her like Ragnall instead. I really didn’t! I didn’t think she was good enough for you, and I was jealous. I’m sorry. But I didn’t make her full for Ragnall. That wasn’t me! I’m so sorry.”
“I see.” Dug nodded, not angry any more. He looked disappointed but accepting, as if a thatcher who’d let him down before had just told him he couldn’t do his roof repairs that moon as promised.
“I didn’t mean it to happen!”
“It wasn’t you, Spring, even if you thought it was. These things happen. Love is complicated. Sometimes it’s not love, it’s just physical. And people do go off people they liked before, immediately and irreversibly. It’s annoying when you’re on the wrong side of that, but it happens and you have to accept it.”
“I know it was me. And it’s good that it was, because it’s worn off! I’ve seen the way she looks at Ragnall now, and you! It’s back to how it was! You can come back and I won’t do anything this time! I promise. I like Lowa now. I didn’t like her because it was her fault that they were after us in the first place, and her friend Farrell was a total dong, and it was her fault you had to fight the Monster and I was so worried you’d die and—”
“Shush.” Dug smiled. “Spring. I’m grateful for what you’re telling me.”
“So you’ll come back?”
“I will not.”
“But I need you!”
“You don’t need anybody. They need you. Lowa faces some big problems. She’ll be a good queen, but there’s trouble in the west, there’s trouble in the north, Danu knows what in the east, and all the druids say that the Romans are coming…”
“They are coming.”
“How do you—?”
“I don’t know. But they are coming. Won’t you stay and help?”
“Spring, I’m just one man. I’m old. I’ve been fighting for so long. Before that I lived off the sea. I’m ready to go back to that. I can’t do anything here. But you could be the difference between defeat and victory.”
“I’ll come with you!” She’d dreamed of wandering from place to place with Dug, getting into adventures and helping people in trouble. There wasn’t anything she’d rather do.
“I’d love that, I really would, but you’re needed here.”
“So are you! I need you!”
She was frustrated that he wouldn’t believe her about Lowa, but she could understand. She knew for certain that she’d killed Lowa’s love for him, but she wouldn’t have believed her if she’d been him. She also knew, if she was honest with herself, that he had to go. She told herself to grow up and accept it.
Dug closed his eyes and opened them. It must have been her imagination or a trick of the moonlight, but his eyes looked wet.
“You don’t need me,” he said. “You’ll come to see that you don’t. I’m going. You’re staying. Goodbye, Spring.”
He stood and turned and walked away.
Spring watched him go, being grown-up about it for about four heartbeats, but then tears burst from her treacherous eyes and her shoulders heaved with sobs. He disappeared over the next rise and she was still crying. And he was gone.
After a long while, she decided that standing on her own in the night crying wasn’t helping anyone. She pressed a thumb into each nostril, blew out snot, wiped her eyes, turned and headed back to Maidun Castle. She’d help Lowa, kill all the Romans, and then she’d find Dug.
She was almost at the western gate when she heard the shout. It was still a good four shouters away, so it was too faint to make out. She stood still to listen to the next one. The words were clear this time: “Dumnonian army. One hundred thousand strong. Three days from Maidun.”
One hundred thousand Dumnonians. What had Lowa said Maidun’s army was? Twenty thousand? One hundred thousand against twenty thousand. Like ten a
gainst two. That didn’t sound too good.
“Big badgers’ bollocks,” she said, quickening her pace.
Historical Note
Because the British Celts didn’t write, and because the period was followed by four hundred years of Roman occupation, almost nothing is known about the British Iron Age. That is why the period is rarely taught in schools, and why most people couldn’t even tell you when the Iron Age was (800BC to 43AD), let alone what took place during it.
Pre-historians’ descriptions of life in the Iron Age are based on four sources: archaeology, comparison with other Celts at the time, comparison with modern primitive cultures and a few written sources from the Romans and Greeks. The most important of the written sources is Julius Caesar’s primary account of his invasions in 55 and 54BC. However, basing our history of Iron Age Britain on Caesar’s diary is like basing our history of Germany’s last thousand years on the account of a xenophobic Englishman who travelled to Germany in 1951 to see a football match which England lost, and who was beaten up several times, yet claims that he had a marvellous time and that England won the game 10-0.
The archaeological sources – hillforts and pottery, mostly – have been analysed by fine historians like Barry Cunliffe and Francis Pryor, and from such men and women we do have a picture of what an Iron Age Brit ate, what he or she wore and what their homes were like. However, it is just a picture. Very few man-made objects have survived from the Iron Age. For example, historians are certain that Caesar did lead two huge invasions into Britain in 55 and 54BC though there is no archaeological trace whatsoever of either invasion.
While we’re not certain about how they dressed and other details, we have absolutely no clue at all about what they actually did. We know nothing of their kings and queens, love affairs, wars, intrigues, disasters and so on. It’s slowly emerging that Iron Age Britain was much more sophisticated than previously believed, with towns and roads established well before the Roman invasion. Historical population estimates vary, but it’s likely that the population in 61BC, when Age of Iron is set, was about the same as it was in 1066 (between 1.5 and 4 million, depending on what you read). So Iron Age Britain was a busy, thriving place, with a lot going on. But what?
I became interested in the Iron Age when writing an article for the Telegraph about a management consultant called Allan Course who makes Stone Age tools (it’s on my website, guswatson.com, if you’re interested). He took me to Cissbury Hill, a Stone Age flint mine that became an Iron Age hillfort. Standing on this hill’s Iron Age ramparts, you can see another hillfort. It struck me for the first time that Britain’s hillforts were linked. I’d seen loads of these massive fortifications all over Britain, and briefly pondered what people might have got up to in them, but I’d only ever considered then individually.
Now you can look at, for example, Warwick Castle, as an individual building and it’s pretty interesting. But it’s much more fascinating if you consider why the thick-walled, multi-towered edifice was needed, how it fitted in with the rest of Britain, and what adventures took place there, both known and unknown.
So I began to research the Iron Age. I got another article commissioned in the Telegraph, this time on Iron Age hillforts directly, and went off to meet Peter Woodward, prehistorian and curator of the Dorset County Museum (this article is also on my website). As we walked up Britain’s finest hillfort – Maiden Castle, just outside Dorchester – I asked him flippantly whether the Iron Age was like Conan the Barbarian. Was it a time of lone warriors raiding temples and rescuing women from snake cults?
“Yes,” replied Woodward in all seriousness. “Some of the visuals in films like Conan the Barbarian are as valuable as any others.”
I decided that moment to write a novel set in the Iron Age, based around Maiden Castle (which became Maidun Castle in the book, as you may have worked out).
Over the next couple of years I worked out the story and the characters, and the book became a trilogy.
It is, of course, a fantasy story, not intended to be serious history. However, the history in it is generally accurate. I’ve made up the tribes and the characters, but all details – their homes, the towns and villages, clothes, industry, farming, flora and fauna, weapons, etc. – are as correct as they can be. One exception to this is Lowa’s longbow, which doesn’t officially appear in history until over a thousand years after the events of the book, but I think it’s conceivable that the secret of Lowa’s longbow lived on through her or Elann Nancarrow’s descendants in Wales before surfacing again for the Hundred Years War.
As for the magic, sixty-two years after this book is set, according to a lot of people, a chap was born who could bring people back from the dead, multiply fish and so on. Is it that much of a stretch to believe that he wasn’t the first person who could drum up a little magic?
Acknowledgements
Thanks foremost to my wife Nicola and her tireless and unfailingly cheerful support. Despite being a high-flier in a serious career, she has always listened attentively and compassionately to my gripes about writing a non-serious book, even when she knows that while she’s been in board meetings and on conference calls with New York, I’ve spent the afternoon in the bath, reading history books.
I’d also like to thank my brother Tim for his ideas about the plot, my agent Angharad Kowal for taking me on and finding me a book deal, and my editor Jenni Hill at Orbit for her enthusiasm and excellent editing.
about the author
In his twenties, Angus Watson’s jobs ranged from forklift truck driver to investment banker. He spent his thirties on various assignments as a freelance writer, including looking for Bigfoot in the USA for the Telegraph, diving on the scuppered German fleet at Scapa Flow for the Financial Times and swimming with sea lions off the Galapagos Islands for The Times. Now entering his forties, Angus is a married man who lives in London with his wife Nicola and baby son Charlie. As a fan of both historical fiction and epic fantasy, Angus came up with the idea of writing a fantasy set in the Iron Age when exploring British hillforts for the Telegraph, and developed the story while walking Britain’s ancient paths for further articles. You can find him on Twitter at @GusWatson or visit his website at www.guswatson.com.
Find out more about Angus Watson and other Orbit authors by registering for the free monthly newsletter at www.orbitbooks.net.
interview
What was your favourite part of Age of Iron to write, and why?
The interaction between Spring and Dug. The first book may be ostensibly centred on the love affair between Lowa and Dug, but I think the platonic relationship between Dug and Spring is more interesting and important.
If people are interested in the Iron Age, where should they look to find out more?
There’s a good museum in Dorchester, Dorset, and there are various books (see Historical Note for authors). However, it takes about ten minutes to find out ninety-five per cent of what’s known about the Iron Age (which you can probably do on Wikipedia) and after that it’s pretty much all just analysis of pottery samples. So the best thing to do is to walk up to your local hillfort, stroll around and imagine what might have gone on there.
Was there anything that surprised you about researching the Iron Age?
I was disappointed when I discovered that the history in Asterix the Gaul books, particularly Asterix in Britain, is far from spot on.
What prompted you to start writing Age of Iron?
I’d always wanted to be a novelist. After ten years’ travelling and mucking about, then ten years of writing features, I hoped the time was right. I came up with the setting while on a hillfort, but made up the characters and the outline of a story on a long bus journey in France in 2009. I started writing the book as soon as I was back at my desk.
Who are your biggest influences as a writer?
Aged about eleven, I would read parts of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams to anyone that would listen, particularly the passage about the filing
cabinet with a sign on it saying “Beware of the leopard”. That was the first book I remember loving, alongside Watership Down by Richard Adams. I’ve read those two books more times than any others, so daresay they are the strongest influences. I also read a lot of James Herbert and Sven Hassel as a child. Their influence just may have made itself heard in my gorier passages. Since then, Joseph Heller, John Irving, Thomas Hardy, William Boyd, Iain Banks, George MacDonald Fraser, Patrick O’Brien, Carl Hiaasen and Joe Abercrombie have probably all changed the way I write. I was lucky enough to interview Iain Banks once. He was an excellent man, genuinely interested in the novel I’d just started. That fact that both he and Douglas Adams died so young has not helped to dispel my atheism.
Talking of that sort of thing, my parents both died before I reached my teens. That changed the way I thought about everything, and so I’m sure has had a massive effect on my writing. I can’t say I recommend early parental death, but I don’t think the effects were all bad.
I also should mention the Asterix the Gaul books by Goscinny and Uderzo, which are set just a couple of years after Age of Iron and should be compulsory reading for everybody (although, with apologies to Uderzo, they haven’t been quite so good since Goscinny died in 1977).
You started writing as a features journalist for national newspapers – what’s the strangest thing you’ve ever been asked to write about?
Freelance features writers usually come up with ideas themselves and propose them to papers. An article I wrote about the noise ducks make when they land was voted Guardian readers’ favourite feature one year. It was good that Dug got to enjoy the same noise on the island of Mearhold. I like putting things in my books that people who know me will spot. Writers probably aren’t meant to do that.
What do you do when you’re not writing?
I read a lot more since I’ve been writing for a living because I can justifiably call it work. Years ago I pioneered the afternoon working bath (i.e. reading in the bath), and have been perfecting it ever since.
