Clash of Iron

by Angus Watson

  “You think I have no magic? How then do you think I move so quickly? Why am I still alive when so many have tried to kill me?” Chamanca slapped his hand away, jumped over a plant pot and then onto the neighbouring roof.

  She sprinted along the building tops and leapt between them, ball-mace in one hand, short sword in the other. By good fortune the last roof was thatch, so it provided the bounce she needed to clear the wide gap on to the town wall. By another stroke of luck, everyone on the wall was looking away from her, towards Caesar’s show on the tower.

  She used the momentum of her leap to drive her sharp blade though the neck of the first guard. Blood jetted and she heard a gasp from several spectators. Good, she thought. Her show had begun.

  The praetorians on the wall turned to face her. She dropped into a slide, cracked open a kneecap with her ball-mace and severed an Achilles tendon with her sword. She leapt out of the skid, smashed a cheekbone with a back-handed mace flail and severed a windpipe with a forehand sword-slice. She dodged a downward strike, jabbed her slim blade into the sword-swinger’s guts and withdrew, leapt another praetorian’s side swipe and crowned him with her mace.

  The trick with fighting, she thought, carving and whacking the life out of the next three praetorians before they could strike at her, was neither to think nor to stop. She didn’t know that her ability to move so quickly and instinctively was magic, as she’d told Atlas. She didn’t care. It worked and she liked it.

  Two non-soldier types threw themselves off the wall. Probably a good thing. She had no qualms about killing unarmed people, but her display would work better if she killed only the armed ones.

  The next two looked like the stiffest challenge so far. They pushed others away to give themselves space then flashed their swords about as she came at them, presumably hoping to dazzle and demoralise with their skill and teamwork. She dived at their feet, spun on to her back and drove her sword up one man’s anus. The oh-so-clever Romans should have worked out a way of protecting their lower halves, she thought.

  Then, as she crunched her ball-mace into the other praetorian’s balls, the arse-spitted guard stabbed down with his blade. It pierced the bare skin between her ribs and pelvis and deep into muscle before she twisted away. Hypocrisy, she thought, the curse of all people. Just when she’d been thinking the Romans needed more lower armour, she’d been reminded that she was clad only in leather shorts and a light iron chestpiece. She always told people that she wore so little because she needed the movement, but really she dressed like that because she looked amazing. That sort of vanity, if the gods had any say in anything, was always going to lead to trouble.

  So, her first wound of the day. Quite a serious one, by the blood pulsing out of it, but not enough to slow her down yet. She somersaulted her legs over her head and whirled. Four praetorians came at her and she spun through them, leaving them dying in her wake.

  Her sliced side throbbed with potentially debilitating waves of pain. Her right leg was soaked in blood. Bel! But not far now. Ahead was one more praetorian, then a very surprised looking Ragnall, then a bunch of terrified toga-wearers who probably weren’t going to be a bother, then the tower.

  Kapiana was standing on the edge of the wall, facing the massed soldiers and townspeople. Caesar’s guards were standing along the near side of the tower, swords ready to hack her down when she tried to climb up.

  Felix appeared between two of the praetorians. He grabbed one and sliced his throat open while pointing at the guard between her and Ragnall. That was a surprise. The guard shuddered as if struck by lightning, then came at her faster than she’d ever seen a man move before. He stuck downwards with his sword. She parried with her mace, but he was stronger. His sword chopped into her shoulder and lodged in bone. She dropped her mace and tried to push his sword arm away. She couldn’t. She cut into his thigh, but he grabbed her sword arm in a superhuman grip.

  He smiled like a madman and sliced his blade deeper into her shoulder. She heard the squeak of iron cutting through bone. Not a nice noise. She punched his side. Ribs cracked under his leather armour. He didn’t notice. She punched, harder, again and again. She felt his ribs splintering into soft organs, but he was unfazed. His eyes rolled back so only blood-flushed whites were showing, but still he sliced that sword into her shoulder.

  She gave up punching, grabbed his sword arm again, craned her head forward and bit deep into his wrist. Arteries popped and she drank. Delicious blood. She felt power flow into her stomach and out along her limbs. She wrenched her sword arm free of his grip and stabbed her blade up into his armpit, severing tendons. His arm went limp. She pushed his sword out of her shoulder. He staggered back. She crouched, leapt and spun, walloping the side of her foot into his shoulder. He tumbled sideways, off the wall.

  She walked towards the tower, blood-drenched. She’d dealt with the praetorians on the wall. The remaining toga-wearers gave up trying to open the heavy, locked door that led into the tower, climbed over the edge then leapt down from the battlements, leaving only her and Ragnall on the walkway. On the tower above Ragnall five praetorians waited, swords ready.

  “Chamanca…” Ragnall said.

  She winked at him and launched. She landed on his shoulders, crouched and sprang for the top of the wall and the waiting praetorians.

  “Thank you Ragnall!” she shouted in Latin as she flew, loud enough for the furthest watching soldiers to hear.

  One blade pierced her cheek, another cut into her calf, but she landed firm on the tower. She felt calm. The woman Kapiana was standing on the low parapet, looking outwards, unruffled by events behind her – clearly under some kind of glamour or heavily drugged. Caesar was in the far corner, brandishing a sword next to Felix. The five praetorian guards were behind her.

  Felix thrust his hands at her, palms flat, as if pushing an invisible boulder. Suddenly she felt like she’d been wrapped in an impossibly heavy iron blanket. She shook her head and felt the foul force seep in through every pore of her skin. As it entered her veins, the cloying tendrils of magic changed from foul to fair, and the power that had rendered her motionless suddenly fizzed energy into her muscles. The guards were coming at her, but to her they seemed no faster than statues. A praetorian raised a sword. She whacked its sharp blade into the throat of the man next to him.

  She was a flurry of limbs and iron, stabbing her blade into an eye, driving a knee into a groin, mace-smashing an elbow, crushing a Bel’s apple with the sword hilt. The last guard she simply pushed off the wall.

  After one, maybe two heartbeats, only her, Felix, Caesar and Kapiana remained. She leapt at Felix. He squeaked and fell. She was on him, teeth in his neck.

  Then came the blow.

  She managed to turn. Caesar was there, holding a sword with blood on it. Her blood? Time returned to its normal pace, perhaps slower. She felt weak and beaten. Consciousness was flowing away fast.

  “Assassins always forget the general’s sword,” said Caesar, raising his weapon again.

  Chapter 13

  “Fuck off, you Roman twat! Fuck off, you Roman twat!” the German children chanted, tripping along merrily next to Ragnall’s horse. They were healthy looking mites, aged between five and ten, he reckoned. Some of them had circles of flowers in their hair. “Fuck off, you Roman twat! Fuck off, you Roman twat!” they sang as they skipped.

  It wasn’t the most sophisticated of insults, but after a while the young Briton could stand it no longer.

  “Fuck off yourselves!” he shouted.

  “Oi! You watch it! Don’t you dare talk to our kids like that!” said a thick-armed, lank-haired man, waggling a meaty finger at him. The man was wearing nothing but sandals and a scrap of black, furry leather pouched around a weighty-looking cock-and-balls bundle. Dark pubic hair sprouted from the garment’s hems. Ragnall couldn’t tell which fur belonged to the man and which to the luckless animal that had lost its skin so that a German might have warmer bollocks.

  “Sorry,” said Ragnall.
By Jupiter, he was unhappy.

  “Fuck off, you Roman twat! Fuck off, you Roman twat! Fuck off, you Roman twat!” the children continued.

  “I’m not Roman!” he shouted.

  The children paused for a heartbeat, then resumed in joyous unison with: “Fuck off, you twat! Fuck off, you twat! Fuck off, you twat!”

  Ragnall had met someone once at an orgy in Rome who followed a monotheistic eastern religion. She’d told him about one of their great druids, a fellow named Ezekiel, who’d been teased by a gang of children about his baldness. He’d complained about this to his solo god and the deity had sent a she-bear to slaughter forty-two of the children. Ragnall had drunkenly suggested, and by doing so massively offended the woman, that a more intelligent, less reactionary god might have sent Ezekiel a hat. Now, for the first time, he sympathised with Ezekiel and his brutish god. He called on Camulos, British god of animals, to send a bear to kill them, or at least a frightening dog to scare them, but no animals came and Ragnall rode on through the children’s rude chorus until, mercifully, the path narrowed and rose into the trees, away from the tent town. The children ran off, presumably to find someone else to torment.

  Away from the settlement, the path rose up the valley side, dipping and climbing sharply as it traversed tributary streams etched into the main valley’s flank. Worn by heavy use and light maintenance, the track was a mess of ruts, holes, loose scree from landslips, fallen away sections and teetering overhangs that might collapse at any moment. This nigh impassable trail was the only route to the summer seat of Ariovistus – or Harry the Fister as the locals seemed to call him – king of the agglomeration of German tribes that was occupying half of Gaulish Skawney territory. Below the rough track, winding up the valley floor next to a frolicsome stream, were the traces of a decent road, smashed and blocked by boulders, tree trunks, mud and other debris from floods, rock falls and avalanches. When this became Roman land, thought Ragnall, roads like that would be cleared regularly, especially if they led to the seat of a leader. And the children wouldn’t be quite so cheeky either. Even more, now that he was away from the distractions of Rome, Ragnall saw that things would be so much better under the Romans for Gauls, Britons and probably the rest of the world.

  Unfortunately, his chances of seeing the day when a resplendent Roman army marched on to a conquered Maidun Castle were slim. Caesar had believed him when he’d said that he had done nothing to help Chamanca or anyone else against the Roman cause. The rest of the army hadn’t. She’d shouted out her thanks to him after killing several praetorians, then killed a few more and tried to kill Caesar, so every Roman soldier was certain that Ragnall was in league with the enemy. She knew his name, so they must both be conspirators. They had no other argument or evidence than that, but it was enough for them. He’d tried to shake several people’s convictions – Caesar and Cato knew each other’s names, didn’t they, but the two were hardly friends – but his logic had fallen on dumb ears. The Roman soldiers weren’t ones to let sense get in the way of an interesting story. A furious Iberian woman had shouted out his name, so he was in league with the enemy. That was that.

  Caesar had said that he was sorry, but Ragnall was irreversibly sullied in the six legions’ eyes. Thousands had called for him to be beaten to death and hundreds had offered to do it. If Ragnall were ever to be accepted again, he needed to do something incredibly brave and indubitably beneficial to Rome.

  Luckily, Caesar had said, he had just the mission. Ragnall was to report to Labienus, who would explain the terms he was to deliver as Rome’s envoy to Ariovistus. Labienus had told him the message for Ariovistus, with seemingly genuine regret (Labienus really was, Ragnall thought, a decent fellow). The message was: “If you do not cross the Renus river back into Germany before the next full moon and stay away from Gaul for ever, Caesar will slaughter you and all your people.”

  Ragnall knew that the demand was a long way from realistic, especially when you remembered that the Roman army had no more right to that part of Gaul than Ariovistus did, arguably less, since they’d arrived more recently, and that the German army was more than twice the size of the Roman one. It was like a small man walking into a much larger man’s house and telling the larger man to leave, it was his house now, because he said so. Oh, and he should leave his wife behind too.

  So, if Ariovistus was anything like kings and queens that Ragnall had learnt about on the Island of Angels, he’d reply to Caesar’s ridiculous demands by sending back a vital part of the messenger who’d brought them – invariably the messenger’s head, usually with his private parts stuffed into his mouth. Ragnall gulped and almost pulled his horse to a halt.

  He really could run away. He could ride north then west and back to Britain. It would be a dangerous journey to make alone, but a lot less dangerous than riding into the German headquarters and delivering terms which pretty much demanded that they made him chew on his own balls.

  But he didn’t want to go home. He’d found a new home with the Romans. The idea of returning to Britain, or at least British ways and people, made him shudder. And you never knew. Perhaps Ariovistus would turn out to be a marvellously compassionate man who’d send him back to Caesar with another suggestion? Ragnall’s father, king of Boddingham, would never have harmed, let alone killed, a messenger. Perhaps Ariovistus would be like him? Perhaps he’d even agree to Caesar’s terms?

  A gap opened in the trees to the left. In the meadow across the valley a troop of marmots stood on their hind legs, front paws lolling on their chests, heads swivelling to watch him pass. He liked the fat, furry animals, but was surprised to see so many thriving near a gigantic German camp full of people who favoured furry groin warmers. Perhaps it was a good omen?

  An hour later, he came to a gateway in a spiked barricade that stretched across the valley, guarded by men and women. They were all dressed like the man who’d shouted at him, in nothing but thongs about their waists attached to furry pouches and sandals. One of the women reminded him of Lowa. He tried not to look at her tits as he told them who he was. They told him to dismount and let him through. The Lowa-alike took his horse, and a gruff man told him to wait at the edge of a large, newly built but already stinking German village.

  He stood there, feeling awkward while people walked from the village to stare at him silently, then walked away, seemingly underwhelmed. Eventually the gruff man returned, showed him to one of several paths that led up the valley and told him to follow it until he found the king.

  It was a pleasant walk, away from the pungent ming of the Germans’ settlement, along the grassy, wooded edge of a steep valley. The gradient stretched his legs satisfyingly after the long ride. At one point a fat black squirrel with a tail like the most flamboyant centurion’s plume sat on the path watching him and scampered off only when he was almost on it. He took this to be another good omen.

  Presently the path opened out, and Ragnall found himself at the top of a sort-of cliff perhaps two hundred paces high. He couldn’t have called it a proper cliff, but it was definitely more than a steep slope. It had plenty of sheer faces, but there was the odd big bush, and several grassy ledges of varying sizes grazed by small, scraggy-coated and apparently sure-footed sheep. A haphazard array of sharpened stakes had been hammered into the slope’s face, their ends pointing diagonally upwards. Ragnall couldn’t see what they might be for. Possibly, he thought, they were for hanging sheep’s feed bags in winter, but that seemed unlikely, since they probably took the sheep down the mountain when the snows came.

  He stopped wondering about the stakes when he spotted, spaced along the edge of the cliff for two hundred paces, a line of naked people, a group of nearly naked people and a couple in clothes. The naked people were bound, blindfolded and tethered to metal pegs. The first fully clothed person was surely King Ariovistus, or “Hari the Fister”, surrounded by a dozen large German men and women. The second was a tall, one-armed woman at the far end of the line of naked prisoners, standing alone on a roc
ky outcrop, blonde hair blowing in the wind.

  Ariovistus was maybe sixty years old. He was the fattest person Ragnall had seen outside Rome, but he looked strong and solid, not flabby and easily exhausted like the wobble-breasted overeaters who lowered the aesthetic tone at Roman orgies. All his bodyguards, advisors, friends or whatever they were, were clad in the same thongs and fur triangles as the villagers. The women had bare breasts, some flat and floppy, some pert and interesting. Ragnall had heard that all Germans wore this skimpy garb year round and didn’t feel the cold. Ariovistus clearly hadn’t heard that rule, since he wore leather trousers and a red tartan wool cape, nor had the distant woman on the rock, who was wearing a long blue dress.

  Ragnall was about to holler a greeting, when Ariovistus took three big bounding strides towards a prisoner. He was surprisingly nimble for such a large man. He sliced through tethering twine with his sword and pushed the blindfolded captive off the cliff. The man roared in horror and fell. Ariovistus, his entourage and Ragnall rushed to the cliff edge to watch.

  The bound prisoner landed on his feet on a grassy shelf, missing a grazing sheep by a foot. The sheep carried on munching, apparently unaware. It looked for a moment as if the man’s fall might end there. Perhaps, had his hands not been bound, he might have grabbed hold of grass or sheep, but slowly, slowly, he toppled forwards. He fell another twenty paces and was impaled through the lower torso on one of the stakes. He screamed, convulsed like a dying fish and was still. Ah-ha, thought Ragnall. That’s what the stakes are for.

  Ariovistus and his people looked to the woman in the blue dress on the outcrop.

  “Dead!” she shouted.

  The Germans whooped and shouted. Backs were slapped. Ariovistus turned his attention to Ragnall.

  “Ah! Good! The Roman envoy! Welcome! I’m Arrivervister. But everyone calls me King Hari the Fister – or just plain King Hari.” The king had a richly mellifluous voice, cherry-red cheeks and watery blue eyes. The grey curly hair on his head showed traces of the ginger it had once been, but his shrub of a beard was bright white. He smiled broadly and his eyes creased into twinkling slits as he strode forward, took Ragnall’s hand and gave it an energetic pumping.