by Angus Watson
To Felix’s left was Chamanca the Iberian, the much smaller but more dangerous of Zadar’s guards. Tadman could stand and smite effectively enough, but Chamanca whirled through the foe’s ranks like a greased weasel, leaving a trail of confused and mortally wounded enemies. She looked at Weylin now as if counting the ways she could kill him. He looked back. Her hair was like dried black grass, a soft frame around her hard eyes, shining gold-brown cheeks and lower-lip-heavy pissed-off pout. She wore epaulettes, elbow protectors, gauntlets, greaves, leather shorts and a double-cupped iron chestpiece inlaid with bronze swirls. Weylin looked from her metalled breasts to her muscled stomach, over her tight shorts which gathered into her crotch like an invitation, to her thighs glowing smoothly in the candlelight. He looked back up her body to her face. She was still looking into his eyes. He gulped. She grinned, revealing teeth filed into sharp points.
Weylin managed to look away. If Dionysia noticed him gawping for any longer, there’d be trouble.
“These,” said Felix, “are Elliax and Vasin Goldan.” Felix gestured to a bench where a man and woman sat, both dressed in Roman-style purple togas which suited them about as well as a hat suited a dog. Vasin’s white arms were circled by too many bronze armlets. Some of them looked painfully tight, with mauve flesh bulging on either side.
“They’re from Barton. Elliax is a fellow druid.”
Elliax greeted Weylin and Dionysia with a rodent grin, eyes flashing like a startled horse’s. Vasin appraised Weylin and Dionysia fatly, seemed to find them unworthy of her attention and returned her gaze to the middle distance.
“So,” said Felix. “Where is Lowa Flynn?”
Weylin looked at Dionysia. His wife narrowed her annoying green eyes at him. It seemed that he was to do the talking.
“She got away.”
Felix’s little eyes bulged and his lips retreated into a humour-free sneer. “Did she? You’re telling me that she escaped from a fort full of soldiers? From skilful highly rewarded soldiers such as you, who were all ordered to kill her?”
Weylin breathed in, then explained what had happened. Dionysia filled in the details that he missed. He was pretty sure he couldn’t be blamed for her escape, and anyway he’d brought down the Bullbrow girl where others had failed.
“So. She either swam the river or took a boat from the jetty.” Felix looked around as if seeking an answer.
“There is a boat at that jetty!” Elliax Goldan piped up from the bench. “Just a coracle but…” He noticed that all the Maidun people were looking at him in surprise. “Oh. Sorry. I shouldn’t have spoken unbidden…”
“Elliax, Elliax. A druid can always speak.” Felix smiled at him like a wolf smiling at a lamb with a broken leg, then back to Weylin. “She’s not a swimmer, so it’s plain she escaped in the coracle. If I’m not mistaken, that river flows past Barton village. It’s the same river we met by this morning. Geography, you see. The secret to success, Weylin and Dionysia, is knowing the land better than your foe. Geography makes history. And, of course, you have to know your enemy better than he or she knows him- or herself. So, knowing Lowa and knowing Barton, where would she go first?” Felix looked around like a teacher druid at a group of seven-year-olds.
“As far as she could?” piped Dionysia keenly.
Felix shook his head. “Good thing you’re a fighter, not a thinker.”
Weylin was pretty sure he could feel the heat from his wife’s blush. Ha! he thought.
Felix continued: “Lowa won’t stop until she has her revenge. She’ll need her bow for that. So the first thing she did, knowing that she was being chased by dullards, was to get her bow from her hut.”
“Shall we…?” Dionysia asked, making as if to leave.
“No. She’ll be long gone. Shame you didn’t think to go straight there. No matter. We can’t expect soldiers to think. But can anyone tell me where she will go next? I could relieve someone of their innards to look, but I don’t need to. Intelligence tells me. Can anyone else say the same?”
“She’ll run? To Gaul perhaps? I think she’s from Gaul?” Dionysia looked about as if hoping for confirmation.
“No, no, don’t think like a coward. Think like Lowa. And she’s from Germany, but that’s irrelevant.”
Dionysia reddened. “She’ll try to attack us here? Tonight?”
“Oh dear. Weylin?”
Weylin cocked his head and turned his palms up.
“Bladonfort,” said Vasin Goldan from the bench. Everyone looked surprised that she had spoken, apart from Elliax, who looked terrified.
“What?” said Felix.
“She’ll need information if she’s on a vendetta. If I were her, I’d go to Bladonfort for that. If you want anything useful around here you have to go to Bladonfort.”
Felix sat back, lower lip pushing up and eyes widening. “Yes, you’re right. Of course she’ll go to Bladonfort. She’ll be desperate to know why her women were killed. One minute she was Zadar’s pet, then next she was running for her life. Her desire to know why she fell from favour and why her women were executed will be even greater than her desire to avenge them. She knows that Maidun soldiers will be in Bladonfort tomorrow, drinking, buying weapons and armour, selling spoils, and she thinks that they’ll know why the order was given.”
“Why did Zadar order her killed?” asked Dionysia.
“It was necessary. Now it’s more necessary. Which is why you’re going take more people than you think you could possibly need, go to Bladonfort tomorrow, find her and kill her. You may go.”
They turned.
“Actually,” said Felix, like a man changing his order in a tavern, “bring her back alive. I’ve some new torture ideas that compassion has so far prevented me from experimenting with on everyday prisoners.”
Weylin nodded. He and Dionysia walked out into the cool night air.
“That wasn’t so bad?” said Weylin.
“You are such a prick,” said Dionysia.
In the big hut Felix’s bright little eyes bored into the couple from Barton. Elliax looked at his wife. She was picking around the edges of a scab on her hand.
Finally, when Elliax was thinking that he might have to scream to break the tension, Felix spoke: “Elliax. You’ve been collecting tribute for Zadar for a decade.”
“Yes.” It sounded like there was some sort of reward coming.
“And you started stealing from him right at the beginning. You’ve become increasingly brazen.”
Elliax felt like someone had rammed a hook up his arse and pulled his guts out. “I haven’t—” he peeped.
“Last year there were one hundred and twenty-two births in Barton, so you should have sent twelve slaves to Maidun, one for every ten born. How many did you send?”
How could he know? Elliax felt faint.
“But there was sickness.”
“Don’t bother trying to wriggle out of it. Of the two hundred and forty lambs born on Barton’s lands you should have sent forty to Maidun. You sent fourteen. Shall I go on? Shall we talk about crops, textiles, iron working or flint mining?”
Elliax put his head in his hands, then slowly looked up. “Where’s Zadar? Zadar won’t have—”
“Zadar knows what I have told him and has asked me to punish you.”
“What are you talking about!” Vasin made to stand up.
Elliax put a hand on her leg and shook his head.
“You … idiot,” she said.
“Indeed, Vasin,” said Felix. “But don’t worry. I’ve got a fascinating and useful punishment for your husband, and you’re going to help. A lot.”
“Who do you think you are! I’ve never heard—” Vasin made to stand again, but Chamanca darted across, pushed the much larger woman back down with a stiff arm, straddled her wide lap and pressed pointed fingernails into her fleshy throat.
“Get off!” shouted Vasin, swinging a fist. Chamanca caught her wrist and twisted her arm back to her side. She pressed her nails harder into the wom
an’s podgy neck, then opened her filed-tooth mouth and leaned slowly towards the other side of her throat. Vasin’s eyes bulged.
“All right, all right,” Vasin deflated.
“Thank you, Chamanca. No need to hurt her,” said Felix. “Now there’s an experiment I’ve been meaning to try for a while. You are the perfect candidates for it. It’s a good one. We are going feed you, Vasin, to Elliax. Bit by bit. Another druid will treat your wounds, and you are going to be very surprised to see just how much weight you can lose without dying.”
Vasin made a choking sound.
“I know, doesn’t it sound interesting? There is a greater purpose to this experiment, however, than entertainment, which will become clear. Meanwhile, you are what you eat, so we will watch as Elliax becomes his wife. It will be fascinating.”
Felix held up his small hands in triumph and looked around the room nodding, encouraging the others to show their appreciation.
Chapter 10
Ulpius’ pox-ruined face narrowed and the tip of his tongue crept out between his lips like a cautious little pink slug. He took aim. He swung, his hair tossed in a glorious arc framing his head and … Whack! The hand dropped away and the chunky bronze bracelet fell into the long riverside grass.
There were plenty of excellent pickings here on the edge of the field, without getting too close to Zadar’s camp. Ogre thought the Maidun army had moved out, but it was better to be safe than tortured to death for bodyrobbing. There was nobody left from Barton to join in the scavenging and they’d scared off a few punters from neighbouring settlements, so they were getting rich second dibs plundering the bodies. First dibs had gone to the battle winners, but there was always still plenty to find afterwards, when you could search without the worry of a spear in the back.
Red-faced and round-cheeked with exertion, her usually neat long hair tangled into a scraggly clump on top of her head, the girl Spring was trying to drag the spoils cart over some obstruction – probably the range of molehills that Ulpius had noticed but not warned her about. The cart was for big finds like ringmail, swords and helmets. Smaller spoils – the more valuable glass and gold kind – went into the men’s own bags. Ulpius had enjoyed watching Ogre tell Spring she was on cart duty. He’d said it was because she was too delicate to pull rings from death-swollen fingers and heave bodies about, but the real reason was so she wouldn’t get a proper share of the booty, because she was small and annoying. But somehow the look on Spring’s face when she’d been told, in particular the toss of her hair while wrinkling her nose and glancing in Ulpius’ direction, had left him feeling stupid.
But now look at her, kicking molehills apart to clear the cart’s path. She was all knees and elbows that girl, weak as … well, weak as a nine-year-old child. It was a superbly shoddy cart to boot, with bent axles and mismatched wheels. It looked like it had been assembled in the dark by a drunken carpenter, then rammed repeatedly into a wall.
Spring was getting left further behind, not just because of the cart, and not because she was doing anything useful like searching bodies, but because the wrong-headed little minx kept stopping to stare at everyday objects like herons and trees. She was always gazing intently at things that she’d seen before, like some kind of dimwit. Ulpius snorted out an involuntary giggle. If she carried on like this, it would only be a matter of heartbeats before she was out of the other men’s sight.
A short while later Ogre and the others disappeared behind a copse and Ulpius saw that his moment had come. Ogre would know that he’d killed her, no matter what he said, but he wouldn’t mind too much as long as Ulpius had the respect to do it out of his sight. Quietly, Ulpius drew the same little paring knife he’d used to kill Sulpicia all those years before, and headed back towards his tiny antagonist. As he passed the riverside reed bed, a glint caught his eye. Was that perhaps a richly clad dead Warrior lying half-hidden in the muck? It was a nice day and he was feeling generous. Spring could live a few moments more. He headed into the reeds.
The big, bearded ringmail-clad Warrior was dead or out cold. He had a heavy warhammer in one hand. Jupiter’s bollocks, thought Ulpius. Here was a vicious-looking one. Not a fellow you’d like to meet on the battlefield. Better make sure. He gripped the man’s hammer arm in one hand and swung his knife at his neck.
The man’s head moved as fast as a snake’s, and the knife shattered on his helmet. Something blurred in Ulpius’ peripheral vision and crashed into his head. He tasted iron in his mouth. He reached up, then pulled his hand away. He was holding a clump of his beautiful hair, far too big a clump, sticky with too much blood, attached to what looked like a large part of his head. Blood ran into his eyes. He blinked miserably and saw through a red blur the man he’d thought was a corpse stand and swing something at him.
That’ll be the hammer, thought Ulpius as his world slowed down. If only he had stayed in—
Thunk.
Chapter 11
Dug woke.
Oh, his head hurt. His everything hurt. That was mud in his mouth. He must have got drunk and fallen asleep outside again. But the last thing he remembered was facing two chariots, about to die. They must have hit him on the head and left him for dead. Seemed unlikely, but here he was. Good thing they didn’t have dogs. They’d have smelled him out and bitten his face off. He’d seen it happen. Nasty way to go.
He was lying in the reeds, cushioned on the muddy earth. He was comfortable and not too cold, although his head felt like it was being crushed in an apple press. He watched a small red spider crawl along a broken reed. He thought about the story of Cran Madoc, the northern king. Cran Madoc’s army had been defeated and he’d fled, friendless. He’d sat in a cave and watched a spider build a web, then destroyed the web with the tip of his spear. Then the spider had rebuilt the web and Cran Madoc had broken it again. And on and on, until Cran Madoc realised that no matter how many times he destroyed the web, the spider would always rebuild. So perseverance was the moral of the tale. Cran Madoc took heart, rebuilt his army and retook his kingdom. Dug had always thought the story was a crock of badger shite. Surely the real moral was that no matter what you build, some vicious bugger will always destroy it?
He lay still, in no hurry to sit up and make his head feel worse. He wondered if he was dead. Plenty of people died with their eyes open. Maybe the dead could see? He’d never heard them deny it. He’d never seen the dead blink though.
He blinked. Alive then.
He remembered his dream and wished he were dead, looking out through sightless eyes from a southern funeral bed. Up north they gave the dead to the sea. In the south, miles from any sea, they left the dead on funeral beds so animals could strip them to bones. Then they used the bones for all sorts. He’d seen babies with rattles made from ancestors’ teeth, and thigh bones of dead husbands used to stir the stew. A wee bit tasteless, he thought. Better to put the dead in the sea, he reckoned. He drifted back to sleep.
“Wake up!” Something poked him in the bottom. He spun round. Nothing but thousands of seals swimming through the land towards a hillfort … “Wake up!” The seals struggled up into the air like a flock of overweight birds, quacking like ducks. They whirled in a circle, zoomed up to him, stopped quacking and all shouted, “Wake up, you big fool!” His vision rushed away, came back and …
There was a woman sitting on him, plunging a knife towards his neck. Her other hand was holding his hammer arm. Actually it wasn’t a woman, judging by the stubble and Bel’s apple. It was a man in a wig. That would explain the strength of the grip but not the reason for it. Nor the strong smell of piss.
Whatever. Time seemed to have slowed, and the knife was still coming at him. He had plenty of time to move his head. As he felt the knife shatter on his helmet, he pulled his own long knife from its sheath with his free left hand and flailed it. He felt reasonable connection and the man lifted off him and staggered back.
He leaped up. His attacker was scalped and looked beaten. Better make sure though. He swung
his hammer and connected. The man went down. Dug looked around. Oh, Mother, was it bright! And, druid-fucking badger shit, his head! A burst of lights and nausea doubled him over. He coughed repeatedly and disgustingly. Had he had anything in his stomach he would have been sick.
In one direction was a river. Morning mist curled up lazily into bright early sunlight from its slow-churning water. In the other direction was a field littered with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of corpses. Arrows stuck out of the ground like new growth after a fire, and slingstones lay about in piles like wind-blown hail. Many of the bodies had legs sliced off at the knee or thereabouts, the standard running-away-from-a-chariot-with-bladed-wheels injury. Most of the leg-chopped were face down, heads towards the bridge, where they’d tried to drag themselves before bleeding to death or being finished off by one of the many options that had been available yesterday. Already there was a heavy buzz of flies. Crows and the odd raven hopped and strutted between the bodies. A vixen, muzzle red, looked up from her feast of entrails.
Well, at least it’s sunny, Dug said to himself.
He looked about for a route away that wouldn’t take him past the victorious army’s camp, which was bound to be at Barton. Over to the right, on one side of a stand of trees, was a little girl with a rickety cart. Strange-looking girl, thought Dug. She was sizing him up nonchalantly, as if wondering what he might do next but expecting to be disappointed. With her messy hair and indifferent stare she looked like a scrag from the forest, where they lived like animals – hunting, fighting, shagging and giving scant thought to their appearance, hygiene or anything beyond where the next meal was coming from.
He shook his head to clear it and bring himself back into the present, and looked over to the left. There things were more problematic. Four angry men, presumably accomplices of the wig-wearing body robber whose skull he’d crushed, were advancing on him in a line, knives drawn. They were filthy, clad in tattered leathers. Three, in rough-spun woollen hoods, looked young, wiry and strong. The older one – hoodless, hairless and it seemed earless – looked like he knew what to do in a fight.