Clash of Iron

by Angus Watson

  Hopefully the war game that she was going to try today would get people working together. Mal and Nita had learnt it on the Island of Angels, and it did sound like a good idea.

  There was, potentially, a fourth problem, one that both Mal and Atlas warned her about often. Another possible arse-ache for Maidun Castle was the rest of Britain. Dumnonia still had a much bigger army and she’d humiliated them. To the north, possibly with a larger army still, were the Murkans. Lowa should be worrying more about these potential local enemies than the Romans, both men argued. She knew that they had a point, but she also knew that they were wrong. Rome was their enemy, Rome was the worry, and it was Rome that they had to focus on. She couldn’t tell herself why, she just knew.

  She buckled the final strap of her abdomen and chest armour, basically a fitted iron sheet that protected her from neck to privates. She wasn’t convinced by it yet. Elann faced a balance between the armour being thin and light enough not to hamper movement, yet thick enough to deflect a thrust from Rome’s sharpest, finest iron swords. This current model managed to block a sword, to a degree – Atlas, Carden and a few others could stab a sword through it, but most couldn’t – but it was very heavy and hampered movement too much. Atlas was in favour of forgetting the heavy armour and teaching the soldiers to avoid or block sword blows instead and Lowa was coming round to his way of thinking.

  She left her hut just as Spring walked through the gates of the complex that they shared on the Eyrie.

  “Hello, Lowa!” she chirped. “What’s up?”

  “Hi. How was Dug?”

  “He sends his regards.”

  “I thought he might come back for the war games. Did you ask him?”

  “I did but he had something to build or something.”

  “Right. Well, you better get your kit together. Be quick and I’ll wait for you.”

  “Sure thing!”

  Spring ran to her hut. Already, Lowa noticed, her gait was more like an athletic adult’s than a girl’s. She was shooting up like a nettle and broadening out at the same time. Their running training was working well, and she was almost as good an archer as she was a runner. The idea of Spring’s progress made her smile. There wasn’t much else to smile about.

  Chapter 9

  There was a tap on the door. Ragnall got up from the uncomfortable bed and opened it, hoping it was Drustan. It wasn’t. It was several large Romans. Ragnall opened his mouth to say something, but the foremost Roman shoved him in the chest two-handed, hard as a horse’s kick. He felt his legs working in a backwards run to keep himself upright. He thumped into the wall, burst straight through the thin barrier and flew out into the Aventine Hill’s fetid morning air in a shower of dried mud and splinters. The last thing he saw of the room was his attackers’ surprised faces. You’re surprised? he thought.

  Time stopped. His mind zoomed six storeys down to the ground, then splayed out past Aventine’s teetering immigrants’ tower blocks, through glorious, stinking Rome, across the giant fields and labouring slave gangs of the denuded Italian countryside, across dark Gaul, all the way back to Britain and his home tribe of Boddingham. His thoughts bounced off Boddingham’s broken ramparts and whooshed back, full of information on how far he had come, how much he had seen and more pertinent detail about the relatively short but still very much long enough distance from the top storey of a six-storey block of flats to the ground.

  Drustan had talked about falling just a few days before, after they’d heard about people being thrown from the top of tower blocks by hoodlums. It wasn’t the impact that would kill you, Drustan had mused, it was the bounce. The force of landing would break most of your bones, but that was fine, you could live with broken bones. When you bounced, however, your broken bones would slice through all your organs and that would kill you. So, Ragnall had suggested, the trick would be to grip on to the ground when you landed, so that you didn’t bounce. Drustan had agreed, but pointed out that it would be tricky with ten broken fingers and toes.

  But Ragnall didn’t land on the road with a bone-smashing thump and organ-slicing bounce. He landed with a slapping splosh in the open cesspit shared by the surrounding tower blocks. He gasped, and sucked in a disgusting mouthful as the foul gloop closed slurpingly about his head and he was buried again.

  His feet found solidity and he launched himself what he hoped was upwards, kicking like a madman and swimming his arms, grasping for air and life. He surfaced, sucked in sweet but horrible air and swam to the side. He crawled up and out of the pit’s lip, choking as he went. On all fours, he vomited horrible vomit, then vomited some more. When there was nothing left, he leapt up and ran north to the River Tiber. He didn’t think it through. He wasn’t trying to escape his pursuers. He’d forgotten about them, and been overtaken by some deep, primeval urge to get the diseased shit of a thousand plebs out of his hair, clothes, mouth and every other orifice. Cleanliness, suddenly, was all. He ran through the streets with animal speed, leaving a wake of complaining, shit-flecked citizens.

  A short time later, somewhat cleaner and more level headed, Ragnall arrived at the one place that might offer safety.

  “Please tell Clodia Metelli that it’s the British man with a Roman soul?” he said to the four door slaves. They did not look convinced. “That’s all I ask,” he continued. “If she doesn’t want to see me, I’ll go. But please do ask her. Surely she won’t mind being asked? I’ve got nowhere else.”

  The slaves talked amongst themselves for an interminable time and finally one went off to find Clodia. The rest stayed standing several paces away, hands on sword-hilts. It was fair enough, considering his toga was ripped from hem to nipple, and he stank. The Tiber had removed the lumpier muck, but its water hadn’t been much sweeter than the cesspit’s.

  A good while later Clodia came to the door. To Ragnall’s surprise, she didn’t look surprised to see him.

  “Come in,” she said with a smile and no trace of her “street” accent. “You,” she called to a hall slave. “Have him cleaned. Show him somewhere to rest then bring him to the blue salon an hour after sunset.”

  “Aren’t you surprised to see me?” asked Ragnall.

  “Should I be?”

  “You saw me buried.”

  “It takes more than death to make a man spurn my invitation.” She glided away, leaving a delicate floral-scented cloud that somehow penetrated Ragnall’s reek.

  He was taken to what he presumed to be a guest chamber, a room perhaps six times the size of the apartment that he and Drustan had rented. Four perfectly cut stone columns rose from an intricate blue, gold and white mosaic floor to a ceiling painted to resemble a bird-filled summer sky. Around the walls was a painting of a party at which topless women mingled with well-groomed farm animals. Despite the summer heat outside, a cooling breeze shivered the fine drapes in the doorways.

  Bedroom slaves spread a sheet on the floor and undressed him on it, noses curling, then led him to an adjoining room where two washing slaves washed him, shaved him, cut his hair, perfumed him, then led him back into the chamber and the big, soft, clean bed. He climbed on to it and fell asleep immediately.

  The first thing he saw on waking was a pretty young African girl sitting on a chair by his bed, watching him.

  “I’m your waking slave,” she said. “Tell me when you’re ready and I’ll take you to the blue salon. Will you need help with your ablutions?” He said that that would be nice. She clapped her hands and a new pair of washing slaves appeared.

  The Metelli household’s blue salon was longer, wider and higher that any longhouse Ragnall had seen in Britain. The floor was an epic mosaic of gladiators fighting a herd of lions and a handful of winged lizards that might or might not have been mythical. The walls were painted with scenes of mostly topless nymphs pursued by men sporting members the length, thickness and flexibility of conger eels. The crazy-donged men were representations of the Greek fertility god Priapus. Ragnall had seen a lot of him around Rome. The Romans h
ad no qualms about adopting others’ gods if it suited them. They didn’t, as Drustan had said when they’d discussed it the other day, have qualms about many things.

  Ragnall thought of his father’s partially rotting, crudely decorated wooden longhouse, which had seemed so palatial as he was growing up. Looking at the astonishing opulence, he wondered if he had, in fact, died and come to the Otherworld. The candles lighting the room gave off no smoke, only a more intoxicating version of Clodia’s floral perfume. There were tables of shiny fruit, a couple of sheaves of the most golden, perfectly proportioned corn, and black and orange vases taller than him, decorated with more naked men. These ones were racing or throwing discs and spears, rather than chasing women, and their private parts were dramatically under-sized. Ragnall suspected that the vase men had been averagely hung once, but had wilted under the disdainful gazes of the Priapuses on the walls.

  He found Clodia at the far end of the room, reclining on a large bed of plump, plush cushions, with a jewelled goblet in one hand. Her hair was loose about her shoulders and she was wearing a short toga. Her legs looked wonderful.

  Next to her, dressed in a red gown and sipping from a similar goblet, was either a beautiful woman or a very effeminate man – a man judging by the breadth of the shoulders – perhaps a little younger than Ragnall, with a mane of unnaturally blonde hair. He looked at Ragnall with narrow, drunk but predatory eyes.

  Clodia nodded towards the young man. “Ragnall, meet Heracles; Heracles, this is Ragnall. Ragnall, have some wine.”

  She pointed at a nearby table, where a goblet sat waiting.

  “Thank you. Do you know anything about Drustan?”

  “Drustan?”

  “Drustan Dantanner, the man I was buried with.”

  “They pulled his body out of the earth and burnt it. Crassus was arguing with Pompey about how long a human’s body took to burn, when they remembered that they had two on hand. They had some digging slaves exhume your friend, but you’d disappeared. Everyone thought it was very odd, maybe even Gaulish magic – they all thought you were Gauls for some reason – but Caesar gave one of his knowing smiles, so we all knew it was one of his magician’s tricks. Pompey lost the bet – he’d said the body would burn for three times as long as it did – but refused to pay. He flew into a rage. He said that you would have burnt for longer and somehow Caesar had known in advance that he and Crassus would be making the bet and that he’d arranged the whole thing to fox him. He left in a rage. There aren’t many men as paranoid, solipsistic and downright stupid as Pompey. I was wrong to be worried about him uniting with Crassus and Caesar.”

  “He’s dead?” Drustan couldn’t be dead.

  “Your friend? Yes. I saw his body, I saw them burn him. I should say he’s dead. But I saw you buried and you’re standing here, so who knows what’s possible these days? I would not be surprised if Caesar’s magician Felix was involved. Overly interested in the dead, that one.”

  “Felix is Caesar’s magician?”

  “Yes, the one I mentioned. He disappeared for a decade and has now returned. But I don’t like to talk of such people when I’m at home. Please, do drink your wine.”

  Ragnall picked up the cup and downed it.

  “Good!” She clapped her hands twice and called: “More wine!”

  Ragnall had no idea how long he spent living with Clodia Metelli. He never left the house. There was no need. Its interior and courtyards ranged wider than a medium-sized hillfort. Even minor rooms – all the guest bathrooms, for example – were roomier that a king’s hut. Each room had a team of slaves, who treated Ragnall as if he were their master. He never saw Metellus Celer, their real master. Clodia managed to keep him apart from all her live-in guests.

  The talk from outside was mostly about the annual election for the following year’s two consuls. Apparently Julius Caesar was certain to win, although Cato, the man who’d warned Ragnall off Clodia, was desperately trying to undermine him. At some point, Caesar, to nobody’s surprise, won. He was to share the consulship with a man called Bibulus, however. Bibulus was Cato’s son-in-law and reputedly his patsy. Everyone said that the next year would be a tumultuous one.

  The news that Felix, Zadar’s druid who’d killed Anwen, was also Caesar’s magician, disturbed Ragnall greatly, but he couldn’t find anybody who wanted to talk about it. In the end he gave up worrying, because he was too busy having a good time. At last, he was spending whole days doing whatever he wanted to do. He had had enough of people directing his every move. His parents, the druids on the Island of Angels, Lowa and even Drustan all saw him as someone to order about. He was sad that Drustan had been killed, of course, but this freedom he had found was wonderful, and Clodia’s house was the most marvellous place in the world. He was so much happier here than he’d been anywhere, so how could it be wrong?

  He drank, smoked and ate substances that helped to settle, develop and excite his mind. The house was full of people like him, young, attractive, intelligent men and women, from all over the world. Pleasure quickly overtook his hesitant innocence, and soon he was delighting in a wide range of drug and drink-fuelled sexual escapades. To begin with it was only Clodia, when she was always there, then he started hooking up with the others while she was out of the house. He became briefly obsessed with a slender Macedonian girl who had eyes like mountain pools whom Clodia had named Pydna, which Clodia found amusing for some reason. He became a little bored with her skinny frame, and a brawny German woman called Millinga with thighs like a horse’s became his favourite. He surprised himself one day when Heracles beckoned him into a bedchamber and he followed. For the next moon, he didn’t want to be with anyone but Heracles, although he still did his duty with Clodia, and many others during the regular orgies.

  As much as the sex, he relished the conversations; hours on end spent talking to people his own age. Most were from very differing cultures, but they all had similar ideas about how the world would be better in their peaceful, free-loving hands. Ragnall developed several plans about how he’d take these ideas back to Britain, stop the wars and start a wonderful way of living for all.

  But for now he was going to rest. He’d had a shitty time. He deserved a break from Britain’s mud, blood and endless striving.

  He knew that his parents and teachers would have disagreed with the morality of what he was doing. They would, in fact, have been disgusted. But see where their rules had got them! The same people who would have been horrified by Clodia’s orgies were the ones who went to war and killed people. Which was worse? Lowa had convinced him he was a rapist even though she knew he wasn’t, and she’d made out like it was the worst thing in the world, but she’d killed his family and lied about it, and she’d killed hundreds of other innocent people. That had to be worse. And they’d made her queen! Ragnall was going to change things when he got back. Rome was immeasurably better than Britain, and Britain could learn much from it. He’d bring Rome to Britain.

  It was yet another lovely morning and he was relaxing on a big bed with a few others, when a messenger slave came looking for him. Clodia wanted to see him, alone. He smiled.

  He arrived at the blue salon, and was surprised to see that there were several other men there, serious types with armour and swords. All men and Clodia was not his type of orgy, but these did not look like orgy types anyway. Then he recognised Caesar and, next to him, Felix. The swelling pool of happiness that had been growing inside him flowed from his every pore like water from a sieve.

  Clodia was standing with them. She looked at him, huge eyes as sad as a cow’s, shaking her head in apology.

  He turned to run, but two guards were already blocking the door.

  “Kill the Gaulish spy!” said Felix.

  “Not in my house,” said Clodia.

  “It’s not your house,” sneered Felix, “it’s Metellus Celer’s house and you are an embarrassment, a Copper Coin—”

  “That’s enough, Felix,” said Caesar. “What is your name, Gaul?
What are you doing in Rome? What are your plans? Are there others?” As he had at his party, he sounded interested rather than belligerent.

  “My name is Ragnall. I am British. I mean you no har—” He stopped, realising that he was speaking British again, not Latin. Felix winked at him. “I am…” he tried again, still British.

  Clodia stamped a foot. “What sorcery is this, Caesar? This man is not Gaulish, he’s British, and he speaks perfect Latin. What is your witch doing to him? I will not have it in my house.”

  Caesar raised an eyebrow at Felix, then turned to Clodia. “From Britain, you say?”

  “This man is dangerous. He will bring you down. He must be killed, now.” Felix spoke in a rush.

  Caesar peered into Ragnall’s eyes. It was hard to hold his gaze. It was as if the general, politician or whatever Caesar was could read his thoughts and see his memories. He thought of a few recent ones and blushed.

  “No,” said Caesar. “Clodia, may I buy your slave?”

  “Yes,” she answered with a sigh. Ragnall guessed that a request from Caesar wasn’t really a request. “On the condition that you don’t kill him.”

  “Thank you, Clodia. I have no intention of harming him, unless he causes me to. He is going to tell me about Britain. If he proves useful and interesting, he will lead me there.”

  Part Three

  Britain, Gaul and Eroo