by Angus Watson
“The Roman army is made of men, Felix, and men can be killed. With our numbers, our knowledge of the land and our iron, we can beat any army. But we need to prepare now, not destroy ourselves to save them the job.” Lowa looked from person to person like a bard trying to engage a whole audience. Her eye even caught Elliax’s. “The point is that Felix and Zadar are disingenuous. The motives that they tell you are not their real motives. They are not enslaving, killing and raping for the sake of Britain. They’re working purely for their own—”
Zadar raised a finger at Chamanca. The Iberian lifted the collar pole, forcing Lowa’s chin onto her chest, cutting her off mid-sentence.
“You are becoming boring, Lowa.” Zadar leaned forward, chin on steepled fingers. “Now, for injuring Atlas and Carden for the murder of at least ten other Warriors, you will be punished.”
Elliax rubbed his palms together in anticipation.
“You will repay the Maidun army for weakening it by entertaining it. You will fight in the arena until you are killed. Take her away.”
Elliax slumped in his chains. He could hear the fights in the arena every afternoon, but he couldn’t see them.
Chamanca hefted the slave pole. Lowa had to jump to her feet.
“Wait!” she managed. Chamanca walked around her, forcing her to turn, and pushed. Lowa stumbled. “Wait!” she choked again.
Chamanca pouted questioningly at Zadar. The king shrugged assent. The Iberian swung Lowa around to face him.
“If I’m to die, I’d like to know why. Why did you kill Aithne and the others?”
Zadar sighed. “For all you’ve just said, Lowa. For betraying me, and Maidun. I liked you. And your women. But my likes and dislikes must take second place to Maidun and the land I’m bound to protect. I can’t have someone of your charisma and popularity speaking out against me.”
“I was loyal! I did nothing to undermine you.”
“No, but you were going to. You’ve never been a pack animal, Lowa. You’re a loner. You’re not a soldier, you’re a leader. We need only one leader. You know what decided it for you and your women?”
Lowa shook her head.
“When we lined up before crushing Barton, I ordered nobody to look at them. You did.”
“That was it?”
“That was it.”
Chapter 23
If he’d spent their whole year apart trying, Ragnall would never have guessed that this was how he’d see her next. She was opposite him, across the arena. He was sitting on a rough bench with the masses. She was in the best seats, the ones that you could only access down the wide wooden steps from Maidun Castle’s outer wall. She was only a few seats along from Zadar, next to a large, magnificent-looking Warrior. It was hard to be sure at this distance, but it looked like her hand was on his leg. Ragnall felt the same feeling deep in his gut that he’d had when they’d run from the soldiers in Mearhold. He was glad they hadn’t met face to face, because he was pretty sure he wouldn’t have been capable of speech.
Somebody jostled his arm.
She looked so beautiful and sad. She probably had no choice. The Warrior said something to her and she laughed. It was the fresh natural laugh that he recognised. The real laugh.
The jostler took Ragnall’s arm and forced him to turn.
“They say she tried to kill Zadar!” It was a cheery older fellow, maybe Dug’s age, with a cloud of sandy beard below a peaked leather cap and the ruddy, broken-veined skin of a man who’d spent many hours piloting a boat or a horse in a high wind and was used to a drink or three when he got home. He finished off in a loud whisper: “When they were driving the pork cart to salmon town.”
“Uh?” managed Ragnall.
“Her! Lowa! Come on, keep up!” The man pointed. “Tried to kill Zadar while they were, you know, hiding the stoat, playing snakes and snake-holes, putting the goose’s neck into the fur collar?”
“Ah, OK, I get it.”
A door opened in the arena wall opposite them, ten paces below Anwen. Lowa walked out onto the reed-strewn circular arena floor, blinking in the sun. She was dressed in the grubby white shirt and trousers she’d been so pleased with on Mearhold, holding a robust wooden stick topped with four regularly spaced blades and a spike. Ragnall wasn’t sure if it would be called an axe or a mace. She was barefoot, with a shackle around one ankle attaching her to a thin chain that ran back through the doorway she’d emerged from.
Her name rang out all around the arena and thousands of men, women and children applauded, jumped and cheered. Standing out among the jollity, the people in the elite seats remained still and stony-faced.
“Here, get your shouting gear round this!” Ragnall’s neighbour pressed a bulging bladder towards him. “It’s water,” he said with a huge “it’s not water!” wink.
Ragnall took the skin and sniffed. It smelled strong and disgusting. Some sort of rancid wine perhaps? He took a big swig. It tasted like it smelled, but it felt good.
“Thanks,” he said, handing back the skin.
The man smiled and nodded, then offered a hand. “I’m Rollo.”
“Ragnall.” Rollo had a surprisingly sure, dry grip.
“Should be a good one today. That Lowa, they say she bested Atlas Agrippa and Carden Nancarrow hand to hand at the same time. I wouldn’t believe it, but I’ve seen her with a bow, and if she’s half as good with a mêlée weapon as she is with her bow, well … But sorry, you probably already know all this?”
“I don’t. What’s going to happen?”
Rollo looked at Ragnall. “You’ve never been before?”
“Nope.”
“It’s always different. Well, it’s almost always fighting.” Rollo took another swig from the skin and handed it to Ragnall, who did likewise. “But the fights vary. There are four basic types of fighter. Most common are captives, or slaves you might call them. Useless mostly, but you get the odd good one. Next are criminals. They vary massively. They might be children, who are not very good at all. I don’t much like watching the children being killed, but you might? Each to their own!” Rollo smiled broadly but sadly. “But most of the criminals are adults, and some of them are really quite good. I saw one kill a Warrior once. She was freed. I think she became a Warrior after that. Zadar is true to his word. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Forget Warriors for now. So you’ve got your captives, your criminals and … Oh look, that’s Tadman Dantadman.”
The biggest man Ragnall had ever seen was walking across the arena, small shield in one hand, a stout sickle in the other. A few were cheering, more were jeering.
Lowa walked to meet him, her bladed weapon at the ready.
Tadman stopped. Lowa came forward slowly, then looked back. She was nearly at the end of her chain, and there wasn’t enough left to get to the big man. She stood, smiling her confident, sarcastic smile. It looked like Tadman was talking to her, but Ragnall couldn’t hear a thing over the cheers.
“He always does that,” said Rollo. “Always stands there. Sometimes they charge at him, reach the end of the chain and trip. That’s usually hilarious, but I’m glad Lowa didn’t fall for it.”
“I guess she’s seen the show before?”
“Probably. Although, now you mention it, I’ve never seen her in the posh seats, which is where she would have sat. Anyway, there’s always a bit of a gap while Tadman talks to the fighter, so I’ll carry on. Next after captives and criminals are animals. They can be great. It depends mostly on the type of animal and how many there are. We had something called a tiger once. From the east. It was amazing. They let it go on some children. As I said, I don’t like seeing children in the arena, but these were all seriously nasty little shrew-faced guttersnipe thieves, the type who’ll bump into you in the street and laugh, and steal anything that’s not nailed down … and I’ve never seen anything like it. It was like a fox with chickens.
“Next up from animals, best fighters of the lot, are Warriors like Tadman. They don’t fight very often, and actua
lly they’re not the best entertainment because they almost always win. They’re better fighters and they’re given superior armour and weapons. It’s unfair. But some of them are really good at using their imagination and stretching out the kill. There’s one woman called Chamanca. Oh, she’s a wonder. I saw her take an hour to kill a man, and it wasn’t dull for a heartbeat!”
“What will happen to Lowa? Could she get out alive?”
Rollo shook his head. “A top-end criminal and Warrior like Lowa? No. They won’t waste her. They’ll send in a few she can handle for our entertainment, but her fights will get progressively harder until they send in someone or something she can’t beat.”
“Like what?”
“Dunno. But it’ll be something good.”
Ragnall tightened his lips. What, by Kornonos’ knobbly knees, could he do?
Chapter 24
“I won’t kill them.” She felt like a child, looking up at the towering Tadman. She’d thought he was going to attack her, but instead he explained, with plodding glee, that she was to take on five captives from Mearhold.
Tadman breathed a short laugh through his big nose. “You will kill them.”
“I won’t.”
“They and their families will be freed if they kill you, so they will try to kill you. So you’ll have to kill them.”
“No, I’ll have to stop them from killing me.”
Tadman smiled a knowing smile and backed away.
A door at the side of the arena opened and a man walked out. The crowd cheered, jeered and shouted insults based on his appearance. He was a tubby, white-skinned, dough-faced fellow in his late teens or early twenties. He wore leather shorts and an armless leather waistcoat. Bright orange hair fanned out from a plain iron helmet. His short spear had a leaf-shaped iron head. Lowa didn’t recognise him from Mearhold, but he nodded at her as if they’d met. He walked towards her. The cheering crescendoed, then subsided in anticipation.
Lowa took a few steps back so she had more play with the chain. He didn’t look like much, but you never could tell. The retreat earned her howls of delighted derision from the crowd.
The man stopped and said: “They say I’ll go free if I kill you. And my wife and daughter – I mean they’ll go free too, I don’t have to kill them.” He shrugged.
“Well, that’s a plus.”
“Yeah. I don’t want to kill you, but…”
“We all have our burdens.”
“They say you’re good, but I’m pretty good with this too.” He hefted the spear.
“It should be quick then.”
“It will be, don’t worry. I’ll try and make it a clean kill.”
“Thoughtful. Shall we then?”
The man roared, the crowd roared, and he charged.
Lowa dropped her mace, skipped to the side, grabbed the shaft of the passing spear and drove a punch into the Mearholder’s kidneys. He folded around her fist and collapsed, leaving the spear in her hand.
The crowded cheered and shouted advice, most of it suggesting that she kill him.
She put down the spear and reached out a hand to help him up. The crowd booed. He took her hand and pulled hard, trying to launch himself at the spear. The crowd cheered. Lowa let him come at her, tripped him and jumped onto him, knee on the back of his neck, hands holding his wrists.
“I could have killed you with the punch. I held back because I don’t want you to die,” she said. “But I’m not going to let you kill me.”
“Seems we have a problem then,” growled the Mearhold man into the sand, “because they’ll kill me if I don’t kill you.”
“Hmmmm.”
Lowa looked around at the crowd. An odd sensation. There must have been … she had no idea how many. Thousands of people? Ten thousand? They were almost all shouting at her. Her eyes came to rest on Felix and Zadar. They weren’t shouting. Zadar looked bored. Felix’s lips were curled in a nasty little smile. Carden … Carden looked pained, as if unhappy with proceedings. He nodded at her with what looked like respectful support and raised a hand in some annoying we’re-all-Warriors-together gesture. She narrowed her eyes at him in disdain. If he wanted, he could ease his conscience by pretending he wished her well, but she wasn’t going to go along with it.
She looked back to the struggling man under her knee. What could she do? She could let him kill her. She was going to die in this arena whatever happened, so it might as well be at his hand. But she didn’t want that. She could kill herself? That would take the ox from their cart. But also hers, in a more permanent and severe way. Really cutting off her nipples to spite her tits.
The thing was, she didn’t want to die. If she stayed alive, maybe she’d get a chance to escape. Maybe they’d send her someone who needed killing, like Carden or Chamanca, although how she was going to beat anyone like that in an open fight without her bow … So what to do with the Mearholder? If she didn’t kill him, surely they’d sell him as a slave? No point in killing a healthy adult when you could trade him for booze or coins.
She stood off him and kicked him in the arse as he got up.
He scrambled away and turned to face her. He looked round her at the spear, which lay behind her on the arena floor. He looked back to her. The crowd watched, quietly curious.
“You’re a bit better than me,” he admitted.
“Sorry. Fighting’s my job. It’s all I’ve ever done.”
“Ah. I’m a weaver by trade.”
“There you go. I wouldn’t know where to start with weaving.”
“Yeah. Maybe we could get them to change the format? Duelling looms might be a real crowd-pleaser?” The man’s sad smile collapsed into misery. “But I’ll never be able to beat you, will I?”
“I don’t think so.”
“So you’ll kill me?”
“I won’t.”
“Not even if I attack you again?”
“No.”
“So what do we do?”
Lowa looked down at her chain. “I stay here. Why don’t you walk away and see what happens.”
“They told me. They’ll kill me and my family.”
“I don’t think they will. You’ll make a few coins as slaves.”
“A slave…”
“A weaving slave. Might not be too different?”
“I’m proud of being a weaver.” He was strangely angry, given the situation.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to insult your trade. I just meant that being alive has to be better than being dead. And really, you spend the day weaving. What’s the difference if you do that as a free man or a slave?”
“All the difference! I trained for six years under—”
“Look, the point is, with luck they’ll keep you with your family. Families of slaves sell for more than the sum of the individuals. You can slave a few years then buy your freedom.”
The ginger-haired man seemed to deflate. “OK, OK, I’ll try. Good luck in here.”
“Thanks.”
He walked away, back towards the gate he’d emerged from. The crowd booed.
“And where do you think you’re going?” shouted Tadman, loud enough for the crowd to hear. The Mearholder tried to run, but Tadman caught him easily, holding him by the neck of his waistcoat. The giant Warrior lifted his long-handled curved blade in one hand, the Mearholder in the other. The waistcoat strained, but its toggles held as Tadman lifted him a good pace from the arena floor, his muscles rolling and swelling like a draught horse’s, the Mearholder’s arms and legs waving like a gassy baby’s. The crowd cheered.
Tadman, soaking up the crowd’s admiration, turned slowly.
When his slab of a back was towards her, Lowa picked up the spear. It was short, with a heavy head – very much not a throwing spear. She took aim and launched it anyway. It missed by a good three paces.
Tadman turned, smiling at her.
“You have to kill them Lowa, or I kill them.”
Tadman let go of the man, pushed him stumbling away and swung his b
lade. The back of the Mearholder’s knees sprang open with a double spray of blood and he fell onto his face with a scream. He struggled onto his elbows and tried to slither away.
The giant raised his bloodied weapon for another cheer, walked over to the crawling man and knelt next to him. He scrunched the back of the man’s waistcoat in one hand and lifted him onto all fours. With the other hand he lifted his weapon. Slowly, all the while smiling at Lowa, he pushed the blade into the man’s anus then pulled it out. The Mearholder shrieked, then bellowed.
“All right, Tadman, I’ll kill him,” Lowa shouted.
“You had your turn. Now it’s mine.”
Lowa picked up her mace. She made to throw it at Tadman. He ducked behind his victim, then emerged grinning. He pushed the blade halfway into the Mearholder, withdrew it to the tip, then thrust it back, harder and deeper. Then out again. Then back in.
The Mearholder waved his head, screaming. His helmet tumbled to the arena floor and his long ginger hair swung from side to side.
Most of the crowd went wild with adulation, but there were also yells of horror and shouts of “Stop!”
Lowa put down the mace and yanked her chain two-handed. No joy there. She picked up the mace again and aimed a throw. Tadman ducked behind the screaming Mearholder again. This time he carried on working his blade, his arm bloody to the elbow and becoming bloodier as gore squirted with every thrust. Lowa took aim and threw the mace. It spun through the air and lodged in the Mearholder’s head. The screaming stopped and the man went limp. Some cheered, but most of the crowd booed.
Tadman pulled out his blade and stood. He grabbed the shaft of the mace, yanked it from the Mearholder’s head and tossed it back to land by Lowa’s feet.
“You kill them or I kill them. It’s up to you. Next!” he shouted.
Lowa looked over to the door that the ginger man had come from. A woman no more than seventeen years old – a girl really – came stumbling out of it as if pushed. She had a long dagger in each hand.
Roars of joy drowned out the few cries of “Shame!”
The girl looked around wide-eyed.