Reign of Iron: Iron Age Trilogy: Book Three

by Angus Watson

  While the Romans regrouped, Lowa went to send her son away. There were two points she had to weigh up in making the decision. On one side were twenty thousand or so Romans about to storm her wooden wall, its defences greatly weakened by the Haxmite treachery. On the other was the dream of a ghost. It wasn’t much of a contest. She’d heed Dug’s warning, she’d listen out for the shout Demons attacking from the north-west, but soon this fort was going to a bad place for an eighteen-moon-old child. It was time to remove him.

  “Now you be a good boy for Mummy,” said Lowa, pulling down Dug’s little cotton dress so it wasn’t so rucked at his shoulders.

  “Haaarbs!” said little Dug, pointing at the horse that was to carry him and Keelin away to the south and then west.

  “Horse,” said Lowa. “Horse.”

  “Haaaaaarrrbs!” shouted Dug, with a throaty giggle and a cheery scream.

  Lowa picked him up and hugged him tightly to her. He smelt of warmth and life. He hugged her back, then grabbed her ear in a fat little hand and pulled.

  “No, Dug, not Mummy’s ear,” she said, reaching up and prising his paw free. He was strong. Behind him Keelin mounted the horse. Lowa squeezed him one more time and handed him up to his nanny.

  Dug smiled uncertainly down at his mother, wrinkling his nose and showing his sharp little white teeth. His eyes were huge and brown in his oversized head.

  “Goodbye, little Dug,” she said. “Look after Keelin.”

  The queen turned and jogged away. She could almost feel the child sucking in air behind her and she hadn’t gone far when a wail to waken the dead rang out. She didn’t turn. She didn’t want the boy to be upset, but she was also glad that he was so sad to see her go. A little voice said yes, but he screams like that if you take away the stick he was playing with. Lowa told the voice to bugger off.

  Back on the tower, she saw that the Romans were coming. One legion had been all but destroyed by her incendiary attack, but four more were marching at her. They were outside even her range, but their shields were already up.

  She looked across the hills to the east, towards the Roman base camp and their ships. The sky over there remained stubbornly blue, unblemished by smoke. Caesar had brought five legions here, which meant he’d left one defending the camp, possibly alongside his elephants. Shouters had reported that the African beasts were heading north, towards the camp. Had they repelled Chamanca’s assault before they’d managed to set the camp and the ships alight?

  She scanned the land around. She would have heard from her shouters, but it was good to see for herself. The Romans hadn’t encircled the fort, they were still coming only from the north, and there was no sign of Felix’s dark legion. The latest shout about the demons, from her best shouters who were skilled at throwing their voices in only one direction, said that they were still on the coast. Lowa didn’t know why they had stopped there, but she hoped they stayed.

  The Romans advancing towards Big Bugger Hill had found only one of her hidden shouters, which was a testament to how well they hid, since they must have walked right over several of them. Simshill the shouter’s final shout–“Shouter Simshill discovered!”–had been a poignant one, made worse because Lowa had known her. She was a merchant whom Lowa had persuaded to join her army as a shouter because of her excellent voice. Yet another life Lowa was responsible for throwing away…

  She looked to the east again. Was that a tendril of smoke rising up into the summer sky or just a weird cloud?

  Back on the plain she saw that a handful of Roman cavalry had come within her longbow range. Idiots, she thought, wondering how many she’d get before the survivors galloped out of range, and wishing she had Spring with her. She would have taught somebody else to shoot the longbow, but she knew that nobody would take to it like Spring, and, besides, it was Spring’s bow and she didn’t want anyone else touching it. The queen had brought it with her from Maidun, telling herself that it was a spare in case hers was broken, but really she was hoping beyond hope that she could somehow free the girl and give it back to her herself.

  Chapter 13

  Without fresh kills, Felix reckoned that his Maximen and Celermen were probably right up there with the most dreary creatures in the world. They were never conversationalists at the best of times, but at least when they were vibrating with the power of others’ deaths they did interesting things. Now they were just sitting about under the trees, where grass met the sand, staring into nothingness, as stimulating as a pot of slugs. A few of them had walked about a bit earlier, but that had angered Felix because he’d noticed that none of the fucking idiots would cross the high-water mark of dead seaweed. They were terrified of the tide rushing in and drowning them. They’d happily charge an army of any size, but they were scared of dead marine plants. Jupiter’s tits, thought Felix.

  So he was overjoyed when a centurion turned up, followed by a century of eighty legionaries on foot. Their leader dismounted, removed his helmet and tucked it under his arm.

  “Centurion Lucius Aurelius Dolabella reporting, sir! With the first century, second maniple, sixth cohort, Seventh Legion!” He smiled in readiness, then furrowed his brow and said: “Sorry, that’s wrong. We were moved. They didn’t tell me why and I still don’t know. It’s first century, fourth maniple, fifth cohort, Seventh Legion. No, wait, that can’t be right, there are only three maniples to a cohort so we can’t be in the fourth. By Diana, it’s confusing. Sorry! We’re here and we’re a century, that’s the point. Sorry.”

  Dolabella was probably not even in his twenties, yet he had hair like an old man’s–dry, orange-brown and naturally curly, but combed furiously so that the top of his head looked like a minute, precisely ploughed field. He had a long, thin and bony nose, no chin and a small mouth, all of which combined to create a face like an inquisitive rodent’s. He was taller than Felix, but he seemed smaller. He had the look of a high-born young man, but shit high-born. The kind of man that Rome’s greatest families produced every now and then to their dismay. It was traditional to send sons like him off to their deaths in the furthest flung corners of the empire. And here he was.

  “What are your orders?” asked Felix.

  “They come from Caesar himself! He spoke to me! He is attacking the Gaulish fort, and he wants you to cover any possible retreat. He said he hoped I’d give my all, and that I was to tell you that I’m completely at your disapproval. No! Sorry! Disposal! My men and I are completely at your disposal.”

  Felix smiled. “We’d better get going right now then.”

  “Yes, there is one thing. We got really very lost on the way to you, so we took a jolly long time getting here, so… there’s a good chance the battle’s already started. I am sorry. But I am sure that I know the way back.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  “Yes, and one more thing. We were with one of your leather chappies–Brutus?”

  “Bistan.”

  “That’s the fellow. When night fell last evening, he went off to find the route. He wasn’t back this morning so we carried on and found you as much by mistake as anything else…”

  “And no sign of Bistan?”

  “No. He went north. Or possibly west. Probably not north or he’d be here. Are we north, here?”

  Felix shook his head but smiled as well. He genuinely didn’t always like ordering people’s deaths. But sometimes he did.

  Lowa knocked three of the cavalry from their horses and stuck one more in the leg on the extremities of her range as he tried to gallop clear. The Maidunites cheered each dismounting and she got a long “Oooooh!” for the leg shot. It was good to hear them confident and cheery after the Haxmite treachery.

  She looked back to the east. There was definitely smoke coming from the direction of the Roman beachhead. Could have been some oblivious forester in the woods in between her and the camp, of course, but it looked further away…

  “Roman camp ablaze!” came the shout.

  The Maidunites cheered. Lowa smiled and be
ckoned her shouter over.

  “Shout that again,” she said, “and ask every shouter who isn’t hidden to spread it through the land.” The shouter did so and the words “Roman camp ablaze!” were repeated twice from all directions, then again more faintly, then again almost imperceptibly. It was a good sound, thought Lowa, a shout going out, even better now that she’d decreed each shout was repeated, hopefully to avoid the misheard shouts as they’d sometimes had in Zadar’s day, which had had both hilarious and tragic consequences.

  She watched the tiny figures at the back of the Roman army to see their reaction. One of them rode up to the foremost and it was a joy to know that at that very moment a translator was telling Caesar what the shout had said. A glance to the west–yes, there it was–would confirm the words and it pleased Lowa greatly knowing that Caesar was certain to be rattled–mostly by hearing that his camp was on fire, but also because he’d have just realised that the barbarian British had not only killed an entire legion with almost no loss to themselves, but also had a more advanced system of communication than he did.

  “Roman ships destroyed!” came the next shout. The Maidunites cheered more loudly.

  The queen’s shouter looked at Lowa, eyebrow raised. Lowa nodded and the shout went out again.

  Chapter 14

  Mal had thought the Romans would retreat on hearing their fleet and fort were ablaze to rebuild their bridgehead. Lowa had disagreed. Annoyingly, she was right. Shortly after the second shout, Mal saw riders gallop up to the little command group at the back of the Roman army. Shortly afterwards the Romans trumpets sounded and the remaining legions rolled forwards. All four of them.

  All the archers that could fit on the walls were there and ready. Three partially broken scorpions had been fixed and the carpenters had managed to create four more from parts of smashed ones, so there were twenty-one scorpions primed and ready to shoot. Roughly one per thousand Romans, Mal calculated.

  The Romans rumbled forwards. Shields went up to form their tortoises well outside scorpion range, not that shields would help them much against a scorpion arrow. He saw that they had a new battering ram, at least that’s what he thought the great wooden shed on wheels must be. He walked over to the left of Big Bugger Hill’s wall, the part over the gate nearest the approaching ram, and told the three scorpions there to prepare to shoot it.

  Behind him, the body of the fort was emptying. All the Britons who couldn’t fit on the walls were pouring out of the south gate on the far side of the fort from the coming Romans. He had a while before the Romans were in range. He asked Taddy to shout for him if the Romans started running and walked around the wall to check the retreat was working as well as Lowa had intended.

  On the south wall, he shook his head in wonder. If you could call a retreat glorious, this was it. For a couple of thousand paces away from the hillfort, along the flat land between two low ranges of hills, Lowa had ordered two wide, parallel roads to be constructed. On the westward road a stream of empty carts was bouncing towards the hillfort. Each was light but well made, drawn by four horses. On the eastern road, the same type of carts were trundling away, each one carrying thirty troops.

  Nearest to Mal, fifty paces behind the hillfort, the western road looped round to become the eastern road. Here was the mounting area. Two wide bridges allowed troops to cross without hampering the flow of the carts, and meant that both sides of the cart could be loaded with passengers at the same time, so that they hardly needed to slow down. The whole idea had apparently been Dug’s–the big, dead one, not the child. He and Lowa had often sat late into the night coming up with ways to defeat the Romans. Mal smiled. Dug had always been one for buggering off away from a fight as fast as possible and this rapid, brilliant way of removing as many people as possible from a battle as quickly as possible was truly the work of a brilliant coward. It was just a shame—

  “Mal! Mal!” It was Taddy Ducktender, hollering from the far side of the hillfort. “They’re coming!”

  “You should have let me kill him,” said Tertius, leading Spring outside to the better light as Ferrandus ran up with warm water, cloths and pots of who-knew-what to clean and treat her cut, swollen face.

  As they eased her into a chair she said: “I shouldn’t have. You’d be in trouble and he’s not a bad man. He’s had a bad time, that’s all.” She had to hold her hand back from slapping herself in the face when she realised she’d spoken Latin. But neither of them seemed to have noticed.

  “What’s all that smoke?” she asked in Latin, thinking never mind, she really wanted to talk to someone other than Ragnall, even if opening her mouth hurt her entire face. She thought that her secret would be safe with Tertius and Ferrandus anyway. If, indeed, they actually noticed that she was suddenly speaking their language.

  “Burning. Quite a big British attack apparently, or at least an effective one. All the warships and half the transports are gone. Couple of hundred garrison troops killed, mostly by the elephants that are meant to be on our side, so they’re saying.”

  “You don’t seem too upset.”

  “Not our job to be upset!” said Ferrandus. “But this,” he said, moving his head around Spring’s face and peering at her like a crow looking for the best place to peck an apple, “this it is our job to be upset about. Are you injured anywhere else?”

  “No.”

  “You’d tell me if you were?”

  “I would.”

  “Good, and these aren’t so bad. What did he hit you with? A cushion? If all the British men are as tough as him we’ll have this island by lunchtime tomorrow.”

  Spring giggled. “It’s the British women you need to worry about.”

  “If they’re all like you, you’re right.”

  “Most of them are even more frightening.”

  “Talking of frightening,” said Tertius, “I’m going to go and find Ragnall.”

  “Don’t hurt him,” said Spring.

  “I don’t take orders from you,” said the praetorian as he walked away, still apparently unfazed by her sudden linguistic ability.

  He came back a short while later. “Not great news, I’m afraid.” He caught Spring’s eye. “But you’re looking a lot better! It’s like nothing happened! Ferrandus might be a complete idiot when it comes to almost anything else, but he does know how to patch people up.”

  Spring giggled again. She hadn’t felt like such a little girl since the peaceful times with Dug. She knew he was lying; she must look like she’d lost a fight with a bag of hammers, but Ferrandus’ cool water presses and herbal salve had reduced her swollen lips a great deal and made everything a lot less sore.

  “What’s the bad news?” she asked.

  “I caught up with Ragnall at the medicine tent,” replied Tertius. “When he’d gone a doctor told me that he’d been asking… Hang on a minute! Why are you speaking Latin?”

  “Ah,” said Spring. “That.” She felt heat spread up and through her cheeks.

  “Juno’s big brown arse!” laughed Ferrandus. “I hadn’t even noticed. I’ve been chatting away to you! Have you been able to… Of course you have! You’ve been able to understand us this whole fucking time… ever since the beginning, right?”

  Spring grinned and nodded then greatly enjoyed watching the two men looking at each other, their mouths open in unison, both saying “Fuck!” then looking at the floor, trying to remember what they might have said.

  “Don’t worry,” said Spring, “you’ve both been perfect gentlemen. Not like the first lot.”

  “How long have you been able to speak Latin?” Ferrandus was shaking his head.

  “Maybe ten years?” said Spring.

  “And Ragnall doesn’t know?”

  “He doesn’t.”

  “Well I’ll be…”

  “Would you mind…”

  “Keeping it quiet?” said Tertius. “Sure. Ferrandus won’t spill your secret either.”

  “I don’t take orders from you, but by happy coincidence
I’m not going to tell anyone,” Ferrandus pouted.

  Tertius smiled. “Yes, well, to business. Ragnall was at the medical tent looking for Quintus.”

  “Hercules’ piss,” said Ferrandus. “Blokes don’t like it when little girls beat them up. Apart from Tertius that is, who loves it.”

  “Not as much as you like little boys who—” Tertius looked at Spring. “Ah. Sorry.”

  “It’s OK, it really is. I do think you Roman soldiers are all very strange, but I’m used to it now.”

  “So then,” said Tertius, “he got us to tie you up, and then he attacked you when you were helpless?”

  Spring wrinkled her nose. A scab cracked and she felt blood trickle.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” said Tertius, as Ferrandus leant forward and dabbed her newly opened wound with a cloth. “Sorry to ask, I just wanted to be sure of what the fucker is guilty of before we hunt him down and pack him into his own scrotum.”

  “No, you should leave, he’ll probably be on the way back here already with Quintus and a gang. You should both leave.”

  “Nope,” said Tertius

  “Seriously. They’ll kill you to get to me, but they’ll still get to me. If you’re not here, same thing happens but you don’t get killed. Makes sense, no?”

  Both men looked at her, shaking their heads. “No,” they said in unison.

  “Then let me go. Take me to the edge of the camp and set me free.”

  They looked at each other. Tertius shrugged and Ferrandus nodded. “All right.”

  “You’re going to free me?”

  “Yup.”

  “Oh good! That is good. Just let me get my—” She stopped and looked at the praetorians. They both looked very sad. Realisation dawned. “What will happen to you if I get away?”

  “Possibly washing-up duties for a week,” said Tertius.