Clash of Iron (The Iron Age Trilogy)

by Angus Watson

  “Any sign of the enemy?” Atlas asked.

  “Depends who you mean by enemy,” Tayden replied, looking pointedly at Mal. She was a tallish, strong looking woman of around Mal’s age. She had thinning fair hair decorated with shells, washy blue eyes and lips that looked like they were searching for something to suck on. Although there was definitely something of the frog about her, her features somehow combined quite pleasingly and Mal might have found her attractive if it hadn’t been for her constant suspicious hostility.

  “But if you mean the Eroo fleet, then, no, there’s no sign,” Tayden said, then followed quickly with: “So you and your soldiers will have to stay down here.”

  “The infantry will stay here. Mal and I are coming up the hill,” said Atlas. “Come on, Mal.” Atlas walked past her. There were two ways to the top of the mound: a more gentle road running round and round it for carts, and a steep path that led directly to the top. Atlas took the path.

  “All right, but just you two, and you leave your weapons here!” she shouted after Atlas. Atlas carried on, his war axe bouncing on his back. Mal jogged to catch up with him, which actually meant, due to the gradient, trotting daintily on his toes, which was embarrassing. He looked up at Atlas. How did he always manage to look so tough?

  As they crested Frogshold by the gates of the hillfort, the view of the ocean opened up and Mal saw them, spread all over the sea. It was like walking into your hut and seeing a million wasps clinging to every surface.

  The broad Haffen Estuary, stretching from Dumnonia in the south to the wild land of Kimruk to the north, was dotted with dark ships. They would reach the coast not far from Frogshold in a couple of hours at most.

  To the south, he could see the Dumnonian army on the march. Presumably they had spotted the Eroo fleet and were heading to contest its landing. No doubt they’d sent a shout to Maidun which Atlas and Mal had missed as they crossed the marshes from Gutrin Tor. The shout network was fallible, and the marshes between Gutrin and Frogshold were exactly the sort of place where shouts might not reach. That excused the Dumnonians for not alerting them, but not the Frogsholders …

  There was a clang behind him. Mal spun to see Atlas blocking a sword blow from Tayden with his iron wrist-guard then pushing her away with the palm of his hand. As Tayden staggered back, the big Kushite grabbed his axe from his back and swung it at two guards who’d come at him, slicing through leather, flesh and bone.

  Tayden regained her footing and launched herself at Atlas, sword first. Mal ran in, bashed her sword to the ground with his own and drove his hilt into her face. Another woman came in as the chief fell. He blocked her sword, leapt back to face her, but Atlas’ axe swung and she was headless.

  Tayden and her guard were down, but there were many more Frogsholders watching from the wall of the hillfort. They shouted, “They’ve killed Tayden!”, “Get them!” and other such things.

  “Shall we?” said Atlas, nodding towards the bottom of the hill.

  “Let’s,” said Mal.

  The two men sprinted down the slope. As he judged his footing, trying and failing to keep up with Atlas, Mal thought. There were, what, five hundred Eroo ships? Probably more. Allowing for supplies, each would be carrying about two hundred troops. Multiply five hundred by two hundred and … no, no, he thought. That simply could not be right.

  Chapter 14

  “Stop that! Just stand still in the middle of the chariot!” Spring yelled. “You’re swinging about like a badger’s dick! Stop it!”

  Dug did not have the temperament for pillion riding. At every bump, dip and corner he’d squat, leap or lean in an attempt to compensate for the chariot’s movement. He refused to understand that she could drive the heavy chariot perfectly well and balance out his weight herself without any effort at all, but only if he didn’t try to help. It was going to be a relief when they joined battle so she could be rid of him for a while.

  It wouldn’t be long. The Murkan army was jogging towards them, spread all along the floodplain. They shouted as they ran, bards’ horns sounding out. Spring felt sorry for them in their disorganisation. It was such a dangerous and silly way to approach warfare.

  The Maidun heavy chariots thundered on with a rumble that made Spring’s arm hairs stand on end. They were all a pace apart, with no danger from each others’ wheel blades since Lowa had had those removed. Each chariot had a lightly armoured child, small woman or man driving. Tucked in front of each of them was a bow and an arrow-stuffed quiver. Having the heavy chariots’ drivers join the fight as archers, rather than just hang about behind the fighting at the beck and call of the mêlée fighter, was another of Lowa’s ideas.

  Behind each driver was an armoured man or woman armed with a sword, long spear and a large rectangular shield. The shields were Atlas’ innovation. Or not innovation, as he’d explained to Spring, since they were a direct copy of the Roman ones. Whatever, they were new to Britain.

  So every one of the five hundred chariots was the same, with few exceptions. One exception was Spring’s bow, one of Elann’s special longbows, almost a pace longer than everyone else’s. Dug’s hammer was another departure from the uniform. He had a sword in a scabbard like every other chariot passenger, but his hammer jiggled along on his back in an adapted version of Atlas’ axe holder. He and Atlas had argued for an age about whether he could take his hammer into battle when he was playing chariot warrior. In the end Dug had conceded to use a sword like everyone else, but then he’d strapped his hammer to his back as well. Atlas had seen what he’d done and scowled, but said nothing.

  They were three hundred paces from the nearest Murkan. In theory, Spring was against all sorts of killing, but these were the people who’d slaughtered Miller, Holloc and the others in front of her, who’d thrown her from a cliff, who’d injured Lowa so horribly … It was hard not to feel slightly gleeful at the idea of unleashing a few dozen arrows into them. The northerners were sprinting now, yelling, all variously armed and clad. They were brave, she’d give them that, but they looked even more disorderly up close.

  Exactly as Spring thought “this is about right”, a trumpet over to the right blarted out two short barps and one long waaaaah. Spring pulled on the reins and her horse halted.

  “Do I jump now?” Dug asked.

  “Wait!” Spring shook her head. Why was it impossible for him to remember instructions? Spring would have thought he was going deaf, had he not been able to hear someone offering food at a thousand paces in a high wind. The stop and turn manoeuvre should work brilliantly across the entire light chariot division, unless of course some lunk leapt out early and milled about in the middle of it.

  She checked behind. Everyone else seemed to have got it. The drivers had stopped at a stagger, so that each chariot had room to swing around, and the passengers had stayed put. She waited the requisite count, slapped the reins on the horse’s hindquarters, pulled the left-hand one and the little animal trotted a semi-circle to rejoin the line, now facing back the way they’d come.

  “Now you jump.”

  “Right-ho!”

  “Take care!” she shouted at Dug as he jogged to form a line with the other Maidunites. She could feel the magic today. It wasn’t fizzing through her like it had on the day that Zadar had died or at Mallam, but she could feel quiet power flowing into her, which she was sure she’d be able to direct into Dug. He’d be fine. From what she’d heard of his last battle, it was the people around him that she should be worried about. Perhaps her magic would focus his rage a little.

  Chapter 15

  Ragnall tried once more to talk to Caesar’s legate, but Brutus declared that he wasn’t interested in Ragnall’s “pathetic barbarian attempts to be important to the Romans” and snubbed him again. Brutus then instructed everyone else to ignore the Briton, so nobody would give him any work to do. Purposeless, he left the army camp and wandered inland to the temporary town of the camp followers to wait for Caesar’s return. Caesar knew his value and Ragnall cons
oled himself that being seen in Caesar’s inner circle when the general got back would be a pleasing revenge against Brutus.

  The first evening he got drunk and shacked up with a sweet-natured Greek prostitute called Helen, which wasn’t her real name. From Caesar’s bag of coins, he paid her a daily rate not to bring any customers back to her large, comfortable slave-serviced tent, and divided his time between there and the mobile, army-following taverns, where he could listen to the gripes of the legionaries.

  Brutus wasn’t nearly the leader that Publius had been, everyone agreed. He drilled the men too hard and they disliked him for it. That didn’t necessarily matter; hard training wasn’t necessarily bad training and good leaders weren’t necessarily popular, but so many soldiers of all ranks were wounded in exercises that the structure of each legion was crumbling like a mud wall in a flood. Worse, he had the legionaries rowing ships. That was slave’s work, but Brutus argued that there was only enough space for fighters on his boats. The crews’ inexperience was proven when a couple of dozen men drowned in two separate shipwrecks during Brutus’ ridiculous manoeuvres. Dislike turned to hatred and Brutus tripled his bodyguard. While Caesar had walked among the ranks without protection as if he was one of them, Brutus always made sure there were several stern-faced praetorians between himself and the common soldiery.

  Perhaps even more devastatingly for the army, Brutus treated all the Fenn-Nodens as if they were insects to be crushed, whether they were rebelling or not. Many Fenn-Nodens tribes who had been Roman allies stopped sending them food. Several previously supportive towns joined Vastivias’ rebellion.

  One morning news came that the Armoricans had united and gathered a vast fleet. Everyone was saying that Brutus’ ships didn’t stand a chance. Consensus was that he should have sailed south and drawn the Fenn-Nodens fleet away. Remove their means of escape and the Romans could wipe out the Gauls that they’d left behind on land and destroy their towns. Instead, Brutus had gathered as many ships as he could in Karnac Bay and readied his soldiers to fill them as soon as the enemy were sighted.

  Everyone that Ragnall spoke to thought it was madness, and that the Roman fleet would be wiped out. Ragnall was dismayed. If Brutus went and got the fleet destroyed then the invasion of Britain would be delayed. There was nothing he could do about it, though, apart from wait and hope that Caesar returned in time to put things right.

  “They’re here, they’re here!” Helen shook him awake one morning. She had a croaky, little girl voice. It was one of the things Ragnall liked about her.

  “Who’s here?” he replied. The night before had been a big one so he wasn’t in the mood for any level of cryptic.

  “The Fenn-Nodens, in their boats. The Romans have sailed out to attack them! Come on, you’re missing it. All the good places will be gone!”

  She was an enthusiastic girl, Helen, in pretty much everything apart from sex, which made her profession seem an odd choice. When he’d asked her about it she’d told him that she’d met a centurion in Illyricum and travelled with him. She’d loved seeing the world, battles in particular, so when the centurion had been killed by one his own side’s scorpion arrows, she’d carried on following the army, earning coin in the easiest possible way to feed herself and maintain her two slaves. She never had proper sex with men, though. She was a five-knuckle-shuffle girl who considered occasionally sticky hands a small price to pay for the wonderful sights and fights that she’d witnessed. Besides, whale-blubber soap washed her hands a treat and she was attractive enough that she could still charge good money for her limited service. Nonetheless, she’d been glad to take Ragnall as a permanent client and give her wrists a rest. He demanded nothing from her apart from a place to stay.

  Ragnall washed his face and threw on his toga while Helen waited by the doorflap hopping from foot to foot. She’d told Ragnall she liked to watch battles, but he was still surprised by how frantic she was not to miss it.

  They headed for the coast along with the rest of the Romans’ hangers-on, and many of the friendly Fenn-Nodens who were keen enough on making money to put up with Brutus’ insults and attacks.

  The crowds were abuzz with excited speculation on the fleet’s size and composition, and there was other big news. Caesar had returned. He’d got back late the night before, everyone was saying. Ragnall told Helen he had Roman business to be about, pressed a gold coin into her hand and jogged off, leaving her standing open-mouthed with the crowds streaming around her.

  Ragnall found Caesar where he’d expected to, on the western promontory with the best view of the naval manoeuvres below. The praetorians waved him through in their manly way. He paced up to Caesar, annoyed and a little alarmed to see Felix beside him, and said hello.

  Caesar nodded to him as if they’d been apart for an hour, not half a year, and returned his attention to the battle. Ragnall hadn’t exactly expected a hug, but a smile would have been nice. He’d forgive him, though, since he was probably preoccupied by the imminent death of thousands of his expeditionary force under the idiot Brutus. Although, given the fact that he hadn’t tried to intervene, presumably he agreed with Brutus’ tactics.

  The general looked well. His hair seemed to have stopped receding, or perhaps he’d found a new skull-concealing way of combing it. He was paler than usual, reflecting, Ragnall guessed, all the time spent indoors securing his future with Pompey and Crassus senior, rather than riding about conquering people as usual.

  Felix glanced at Ragnall, treated him to an insincere grin, then returned his attention to the maritime manoeuvres below.

  One Roman ship had rowed way ahead of all the others, headed for the mass of Fenn-Nodens vessels. The foremost enemy ships were strangely stern-up, since all their complements had gathered in the prows, keen to hurl missiles at the Romans, no doubt. One long, then two short whistle blasts sang out across the waves. The Fenn-Nodens crews redistributed themselves back along the boats, and the trim of each was rebalanced.

  “They have some discipline, the barbarians,” Caesar noted.

  Three hundred paces behind the solo boat, the Roman fleet bobbed about in no apparent order. Some were clashing oars, a couple were heading out to sea. It was a shambles.

  In comparison, the Fenn-Nodens ships were whizzing along on the wind in a well-spaced, regular formation. Their boats were bigger and there were many more of them. They were a stirring sight. It did not look good for the Romans.

  “Why is that one Roman boat so far ahead?” Ragnall asked nobody in particular.

  “Caesar assumes that they seek to impress him,” said Caesar. “He wishes them luck.”

  “How are the Fenn-Nodens ships keeping such good form?” Ragnall asked, eyes still on the lone Roman ship.

  “Each captain arranges his sails so that he’s going no faster than the slowest boat. It is not difficult. It is a shame that Brutus does not seem to have had that idea. After we have won this battle, Caesar will have sails added to the boats.”

  Ragnall looked at Caesar. He did not seem to be joking. He really thought the Romans were going to come out of this on top. Did Caesar know something that he didn’t?

  The lone Roman boat closed on the Fenn-Nodens. The legionaries on rowing duty pulled harder. Others lifted long wooden poles topped with iron hooks.

  “What…?” asked Ragnall.

  “Those poles will hook and snap the enemy rigging, rendering the Fenn-Nodens boats immobile,” said Caesar. “The legionaries will board the incapacitated vessels and put the lesser armed and lesser trained Gauls to the sword.”

  The Romans rowed into sling range of the first Fenn-Nodens boats. Stones flew in a graceful arc from one enemy ship, then another and another. It looked and sounded from their perch on the cliff like a sudden, geographically specific hailstorm was striking the Roman boat. The helmsman tumbled from the stern and splashed into the water. Legionaries collapsed. Hooked poles were dropped. Oars fell and swept backward along the hull as rowers raised their arms to protect themsel
ves and others slumped in their seats. The ship lost speed and drifted sideways to the oncoming fleet. The lead Fenn-Nodens craft, a particularly large ship with someone who looked a lot like Chamanca standing on its high prow, struck the Roman craft amidships and ploughed through it like an aurochs through a rotten gate. Enemy cheers drifted across the water and up to the cliff. The sea behind the flagship was strewn with bobbing heads and waving arms among the wreckage. The heads and arms quickly disappeared. It was impossible to stay afloat in the legionaries’ leather and iron armour, Ragnall guessed, and difficult to remove it. Right now, he thought, they’d be on the sea bed, running out of breath and panicking madly, or perhaps resignedly cursing their luck. He’d been in a similar position himself and knew how shitty it was, but this lot didn’t have a one-armed German druid to rescue them. He was glad to be up on the cliff, safe by Caesar’s side.

  Another series of whistle blasts rang out. The main body of the Armorican fleet turned out to sea while the six lead ships kept sailing for the Romans. Shortly afterwards a second group of six peeled away and followed the first little flotilla.

  “What are they doing?” asked Ragnall.

  “They are maintaining the weather gauge,” explained Caesar as nonchalantly as if he were a philosopher discussing the movement of ducks. “If they keep the wind behind or to the side of their craft, they can manoeuvre as they will against our slower boats.”

  The six Gaulish ships came within sling range of the Roman fleet, turned ninety degrees like synchronised gymnasts and sailed in a line along the edge of the Romans, keeping clear of the legionaries’ hooked poles while unleashing volley after volley of slingstones. As the first six vessels cleared the edge of the Roman squadron, the second six turned and engaged. Two more enemy groups were already on their way. The Roman ships were impotent. The Gauls had adapted their land-based guerrilla tactics for the ocean and it was working. Boatloads of Romans were already immobilised. Other ships backed their oars to retreat. Many of them crashed into each other.