Clash of Iron

by Angus Watson

  “Hang on.” Dug raised a hand, thinking that it would probably stop the little arrow if necessary, and wondering why Sadist and Pig Fucker hadn’t heard the man shouting and come running. “You can’t kill me just because I caught you thieving from me. If anything, I owe you an arrow.”

  “He’s right, you fool,” said the torch-holder, slapping his son over the back of the head.

  “Ow!” The chicken thief opened his hands in surprise. The arrow loosed and flew to where Dug’s head had been an eyeblink before, but thwocked into wood because Dug was already leaning over the edge of the bed to grab and hurl his hammer. The heavy metal hammerhead hit the chicken thief full in the forehead with a soggy crack. His head snapped back and he toppled. The father squatted down next to his son, then stood, glanced at Dug, and ran from the room.

  With the torch gone, it was dark. Dug threw the wool blanket back, swung off his bed, took a step and tripped over the clothes that he’d dumped there the night before. He fell and landed on a knee and two hands. He groped about and found lumpy wetness. He guessed that it was the chicken thief’s brains. His throw had been quite a bit harder than he’d intended.

  He found the hammer, clambered to his feet, and walked swiftly through his spacious hearth room, knowing his way in the dark. He strode out of the front door and stopped.

  “Ah,” he said to the four people who stood in his yard in a semi-circle. As well as the torch-holder, there was a useful-looking young woman bouncing from foot to foot and aiming an arrow at him, a nervous looking boy with a sword and a bare-armed man with a swinging sling. The latter had possibly left his arms bare to display his arm muscles, which were certainly large enough to shoot a slingstone with lethal velocity. This lot were the chicken thief’s family, Dug supposed.

  He stood. He’d been striding so purposefully that he’d come too far from his door to duck back in. That would teach him, he thought. Where were his dogs? On his own he didn’t stand much of a chance against four of them, particularly when two of them had projectile weapons. He’d have to talk his way out of this. He was thinking what to say – just blurting out the first thing hadn’t helped much before – when the woman piped up.

  “Are you sure Wim’s dead?” she said, looking at Dug, but presumably not directing the question at him. She had a firm intelligence and air of command about her. Dug guessed she was the chicken thief’s sister and the torch-holder’s daughter, but effectively the head of the family.

  “Yeah, Ruthanna, sorry. This man knocked Wim’s brains out,” the torch-holder said matter-of-factly. It he was upset about his son’s death, it didn’t show.

  “Look,” said Dug, “this has gone further than it should have. Your man Wim stole my chickens, so I taught him a lesson. I didn’t even hurt him.”

  “You punched him and your dogs humiliated him,” said Ruthanna.

  “Aye, but he deserved it. Like I said, he was trying to steal from me. And I only hit him because he tried to hit me. Then I got my dogs to chase him just to scare him a bit. I knew they wouldn’t hurt him. It seemed a fair return for trying to nick my chickens and attacking me when I caught him.”

  “He’s right,” said the torch-holder. “That’s a fair return. More than fair. That Wim…”

  “Good!” said Dug. “Some sense finally on this difficult night! So if you want to all be on your ways, I’ll—”

  “Dad, we’ll never know if this man’s telling the truth. Frankly I’d believe any stranger over Wim but—”

  “Exactly,” Dug butted in. “I’m telling the truth. I did nothing wrong.”

  “But,” continued Ruthanna, pulling her bowstring, “the truth about earlier on is neither here nor there. He’s killed Wim, and for that he must die.”

  “My name’s Dug,” said Dug. He’d heard that people were less likely to kill you if they knew your name. “I don’t have to die. Haven’t we established that it was all Wim’s fault?” He glanced at Spring’s shutter. It was open, but hopefully she was sleeping through this. She’d be bound to try to intervene and he didn’t want them killing her, too.

  “I’m sorry, but we do have to kill you now,” said the man. “I know it’s Wim’s fault, but that is the way. Ruthanna?” He nodded at the woman, who drew her bowstring further back and aimed at Dug’s chest.

  “Aye,” said Dug, torn between dropping to the ground or charging. Where the big badgers’ bollocks were those dogs? There was a buzzing sound. Was that death coming?

  Spring was on the edge of a clearing in the woods. In the middle of the clearing were four big bears standing around a little bear, threatening it with their claws. That’s no good, she thought. She looked about and saw that the trees’ branches were packed with bright-feathered yellow and black birds, all looking on silently. She wondered whether they might help the little bear? As if in reply, the birds, thousands of them, leapt from the branches with a great whoosh and attacked the big bears. The bears disappeared in a cloud of birds. A few heartbeats later the birds flew back to their perches. The big bears had gone and the little bear was left, blinking in bewilderment.

  Ruthanna yelled as if stung, the torch-holder bellowed, Ruthanna yelled again, loosening her bow and swinging it about over her head. The other two yelped, slapping at themselves. The buzzing became a roar. The attackers were enveloped in a throbbing, shifting shadow. They screamed and screamed. The torch fell. Dug stood, mouth open, unable to see anything other than the odd flailing limb briefly flapping free of the cloud. The screams stopped. Dug was about to dart back into the house and close the door, but the bees lifted with a buzz that made his bones shake and flew away.

  Dug picked up the torch. They were all dead, tongues swollen and protruding, their faces red from countless stings, bloated beyond recognition. The muscular lad’s arms looked like hammered, rotten meat.

  He peered in through Spring’s open window. She was snoring gently.

  He found the dogs asleep by the chicken house. He nudged Sadist with a toe to check he was alive. The hound woke up, grumbled and went back to sleep. Pig Fucker responded the same way. He guessed that they must have been drugged by some druid-made potion. They seemed fine, just sleeping, but he resolved to check on them after his unpleasant chores were done.

  He loaded the five corpses on to a cart and wheeled it along the valley. As the powdery orange of dawn glowed through sea mist, he hurled the bodies from the cliff.

  Back at the house he cleaned up the worst of Wim’s brains and put a rug over the rest. He listened outside Spring’s door and heard her snoring still.

  He decided not to tell her or anyone else about the visitors in the night. Hopefully the sea would take the corpses off to become someone else’s mystery, but if they were found at the bottom of his cliff and reported to Lowa, he’d claim ignorance.

  Chapter 7

  Ragnall woke. He was lying on his back, on a cool, hard surface. The stars were brilliant above him in the clear, moonless night. He remembered. Drustan was dead. He himself was dead. So where was he now? There was only one place he could be. The Otherworld. He gasped in fear, but at the same time felt a thrill of excitement. What would he find here?

  He lay still, listening, and looking at the stars. The stars were very similar to, if not the same as, the stars in the living world, but here, if he wasn’t mistaken, they were brighter. Chances were it was always night in the Otherworld. Or perhaps day and night here were geographical entities? Perhaps you arrived in the dark places and had to find your way to the lands of the light? Perhaps the better the life you had led, the more and brighter the stars to guide your path to the light? In which case he could pat himself on his ghostly back. He’d been awarded barrel-loads of stars.

  All around was silence, but … there! A soft cough. Could it have been the snuffle of some great beast prowling on huge, soft paws, its wide head crammed with poison-drooling teeth? Ragnall thought it could. Was the Otherworld a wild land, where giant animals preyed on people? That seemed likely, at least in
the Dark Places, before you fought your way to the Land of the Light. The idea didn’t scare him. It galvanised him. He’d slay the evil beasts.

  Slowly, so as not to alert any predators, he turned his head from side to side to get his bearings. Soil tumbled from his hair on to his stone bed. Nearby were towers and angular piles of rock, and single-branched trees with what looked like ropes … they looked more like hangmen’s gibbets than trees. He shouldn’t be surprised, he told himself. This was the Otherworld. There were going to be surprises. And adventures. And reunions.

  Further away, he could see lights. Perhaps the lights of human settlements, built against the beasts, where people gathered before making the journey to the Land of the Light?

  He would do better, he decided, in this world. He may have been a decent fellow in the previous one, but he had done nothing outstanding. Here, he was going to be a hero. The hero.

  Carefully, quietly, he felt about at his side. If the Otherworld fit his fantasies, he’d have a mighty sword girded to his waist. He’d take this blade and adventure across the Dark Places. He’d need neither food nor water. He’d rescue others from the beasts and lead them into the Light, where he’d find his father, his mother, his brothers … Drustan perhaps he would meet on the way. With Drustan’s cunning and his strength, they would prevail.

  There was no sword. He was still wearing his toga. Far off, but unmistakeable, he heard the donkey-bray laugh of a young, upper-class Roman. He sat up. Soil from his hair tumbled down his back. He leant forwards and shook his head until there was no more earth to come.

  The area immediately around him was in darkness, but nearby were hills and illuminated buildings that looked an awful lot like Rome. Closer, the piles of rock and angular trees came into focus and he realised he was on a building site. The tall strutures weren’t trees or gibbets, they were cranes. The cough he’d heard was a guard. He could see him now, heading away, torch aloft.

  By the position of the lights of Rome and the size of the unlit area, he even knew which building site he was on. Pompey, scourge of pirates and recipient of three Triumphs for military victories, was using his immeasurable resources to build a colossal theatre on the Field of Mars. Ragnall had walked past it with Drustan a couple of days before. They’d commented on a particular block of stone, saying how massive it was. Drustan had marvelled at the ingenuity needed to cut it, and speculated on how they might have brought it to the site. They’d talked to one of the workers and found out that Drustan’s speculations had been correct.

  Ragnall was atop that very stone. He realised what Drustan must have done. He looked about, but there was no sign of the druid. Surely he would have transported both of them? Or had he given his life to make magic powerful enough…? No, it wasn’t worth considering. Drustan could not have sacrificed himself to save Ragnall. He couldn’t have done. Drustan would be just as alive as he was, only elsewhere.

  Wherever he was now, surely Drustan would head for the apartment they’d rented – their lofted hovel, as his old tutor had called it – on the top floor of a block in the Aventine? Ragnall would go there and meet him.

  He climbed down his stone and out of Pompey’s building site with ease. Its high wooden wall had been built to keep people out, not in.

  He walked home, keeping to the side streets. Even at night they were full of men, women, rag-clad children, stray dogs, dusty pigs and easily flustered chickens. At one point he had to break cover and cross the Forum, where suddenly everything was cool and spacious – a stone pavement, elegant ladies and gentlemen gliding about in clean togas – then it was back into the pell-mell, slummy tangle of filthy alleyways that made up most of the great city.

  He ran up the rickety flights of stairs and slammed open their door. Drustan wasn’t there. No matter, he’d wait. There was nothing else he could do. Or was there? Was he being stupid, going back to their rented apartment? Nobody apart from them knew that they lived here, they’d given false names to the landlord, and if Felix could use magic to find him, then he’d find him wherever he went. No, the best thing would be to stay put and wait for Drustan.

  Chapter 8

  For the first time in her life Lowa knew relative peace. The Romans were coming, that was for sure, but there was no sign of an imminent invasion. There was no immediate, obvious enemy, no rival to fight. She’d never been so stressed.

  She had three main problems, she mused as she strapped on the ungainly new iron armour that Elann Nancarrow had made for her. One, she had no idea how soon the Romans were coming, or where they might land. Spring still insisted that they’d be there “quite soon”, but merchants and other travellers insisted that there was no sign of any Roman move towards Britain. So somehow the Romans were keeping their preparations secret. With any luck, Ragnall and Drustan would be back soon and they could tell her what they were up to. Until they did, she was in the dark, and preparing to meet a foe without knowing anything about the size or composition of its forces. She sometimes fantasised about knowing exactly where they were going to land and preparing a load of surprises to knock them straight back into the sea. She wished that she could make the whole coastline one big death zone – the salt flats pocked with hidden, spike-filled pits, beaches covered with caltrops and all the cliff paths blocked and guarded by archers who’d shoot anyone who tried to climb – but that was far too massive an undertaking and, besides, the fishermen and seafaring merchants wouldn’t like it.

  Problem two was Spring. Not the girl herself. Lowa like having her around. She lightened things up and Lowa enjoyed teaching her what she knew, especially about archery, which Spring was taking to like a fish to water. The girl was such good company in fact that Lowa had nearly given up trying to work out if Spring had used her magic to make her go off Dug temporarily. No, the problem with Spring was that there was only one of her. Lowa had to rely on only one soothsaying druid’s prediction, and that prediction was far from specific. With Drustan in Rome, Spring was the only druid whom Lowa believed in. There were plenty more around, all raving about Romans, but many of these were drunk and most were certainly charlatans. A few seemed sensible, but Lowa had no proof of their abilities and she mistrusted them. She’d felt Spring’s power and knew that her magic was real. She’d seen evidence of Drustan’s magical ability in the arena, when he’d found her hiding under the bridge, and possibly when he’d claimed to have changed the wind direction for the battle with the Dumnonians. But what if both he and Spring had been mistaken, or, more likely, what if things had changed and Spring didn’t know? Drustan had told her that Roman invasion would have come sooner if it hadn’t been for civil war in Rome and a slave revolt. Perhaps something else had happened? What if they weren’t coming for a century? Or, more likely, what if a hundred thousand fiercely trained legionaries were climbing into boats in some secret cove that very day?

  So Lowa desperately wanted another believable druid to consult, several preferably, but she couldn’t find any. She’d sent Mal and Nita to the Island of Angels to see if there was any help there. They’d been well received, but Mal said that they’d seen no evidence of real magic, nor been able to find out anything more than a general sense that the Romans were coming. They had found out a good deal more about Rome, its history and its army from the island’s scholars, which had already come in handy, but Lowa would have much preferred if they’d come back with a team of reliable druids who could have told them exactly what the Romans were up to.

  Third problem was her army. First, it was small. By freeing the slaves and reducing the crushing taxes in the lands that Maidun had conquered, Lowa had massively reduced her income, making it near impossible to keep the twenty thousand men and women who were already in the army, and she wanted more. A lot more. The tribute she had secured from Dumnonia provided some funds, but more important were the contributions that she’d negotiated with the loose agglomeration of tribes that occupied the tracts of land east of Maidun’s territory, bordered by the Channel to the south and east a
nd by Murkan land to the north. Before Lowa’s time, the eastern tribes had been terrified that Zadar was going to invade and enslave them, and, indeed, that had been his plan. So when Lowa usurped Zadar and displayed her military capabilities by immediately triumphing over the Dumnonians, the eastern tribe sent delegations pleading loyalty, and, more importantly, tribute. Lowa negotiated a tithe – one-tenth – of their agricultural output. Still it wasn’t nearly enough. She would have liked an army five times the size.

  Size wasn’t the only problem with her forces. The army she did have kept fucking around and buggering off. Very few of them took anything seriously. It had been easy enough against the Dumnonians when she’d split the army into three, each with a clearly defined task, but they’d need much more advanced manoeuvrings against Rome’s tactics and ferociously well-trained legionaries and, so far, she hadn’t been able to make her men and women see the value of working in small groups. There was no honour, excitement or fun in learning how to move around the battlefield like interacting flocks of birds, only hard, boring work, which the average Briton did not have the stomach for. The one exception was her cavalry, her Two Hundred, but, in a way, their cohesion and skill just exacerbated the problem. People didn’t see the point of acting like the Two Hundred if they didn’t share the glory of being part of the Two Hundred. “Why should I dart around like a twatty Warrior when I’m just a bog-standard soldier?” she’d overheard someone say. She didn’t sympathise and she wouldn’t have been like that herself – she would have worked her tits off to prove she was better than anyone in the Two Hundred – but she could understand the point. It didn’t help. She couldn’t garrison the entire coast; she needed a superbly mobile army and for that she required dedication and discipline. Those two characteristics, it seemed, were impossible to teach.

  The lack of dedication led to another problem: her soldiers kept deserting. Often the leavers were key people whom she’d thought she could rely on. No doubt they’d heard of trouble at home – flood, fire, bandits or something similar – and running to help was a reasonable response, but Lowa wished that they’d come to see her first so that she could have used her army to solve their problems. That would help them and, as a bonus, develop some camaraderie amongst the smaller army units she was attempting to form.