Clash of Iron

by Angus Watson

  That doesn’t sound so bad.

  “Indeed. It is settled. There is one more question we need to answer. Why is Zadar’s creature in Gaul, and why did she attack us on Vesontio’s wall?”

  That is a good question.

  “I suspect that she’s in Gaul because she follows violence,” said Felix. “Blood is her food. You suspect that she may be spying for the new queen Lowa. She isn’t. Chamanca has tried to kill Lowa twice, so Lowa would not use her. When I left Maidun, she was unconscious on the arena floor. She must have escaped. My guess is that they slit her throat and left her body in the open, as is their way, and she got up and walked away off.”

  You’re wrong there, my clever druid.

  “I see. Then take her and ensure she cannot escape. Is there anything else?”

  “I am keen to try my legion in combat, perhaps against the Germans?”

  “Yes … but they must remain hidden from the men. I don’t want news of their abilities travelling in any direction – neither to our enemies nor to Rome. I will look for an opportunity to test them and you will be patient until I do.”

  “Thank you, O Caesar.”

  Chamanca heard the druid leave. So, Felix had his own legion? She did not like the sound of that.

  Chapter 16

  “If Caesar’s army is a lion,” said Atlas, “then your cavalry are like mice with swords that can slice his heels and bring him down.”

  “And what animal are the rest of my soldiers?” King Hari the Fister asked, happily.

  “To Caesar’s lion? They are sheep.”

  The overweight German bellowed with laughter. Atlas raised an eyebrow at him, then continued: “Move your people from this tight valley to the open land fifteen miles south-west of here. Build a fortification between Caesar and his supply line. He doesn’t have enough soldiers to attack a manned wall. He has very few cavalry, so you will be able to torment him with yours. Destroy this small cavalry so he will have no reply to your own mounted men and women, then attack and retreat. Wear him down. Pick off foragers that stray from the guard. Slaughter any small groups that leave the camp. If you kill a hundred, two hundred Romans every day, the rest will crumble. You have time, numbers and food and he does not. He has only six legions and his supplies are limited. Chip away and you will win.”

  Ragnall was impressed. Without, as far as he knew, any detailed knowledge of the Romans, Atlas had laid out exactly what Ragnall himself would have suggested to Ariovistus for defeating Caesar’s army, had he been of a mind to advise the jovial old murderer to do anything other than take a running fuck at a rolling hedgehog. Ragnall had been treated well, but apparently surviving the fall from the cliff wasn’t enough. Ariovistus wasn’t convinced of Ragnall’s innocence, so he’d be taking part in the next trial, too. And, if he survived that, the one after, and the one after and so on until the king knew whether he was good or bad – or, in plainer speaking, Ragnall realised, until he was dead.

  “But, Atlas, my men and women want a glorious battle!” King Hari chuckled.

  “Then attack him with your full force. It will be glorious, but for the Romans, not for you.”

  “Hmmmm.” King Hari sat down on a log-hewn chair. “What do you think, Flotta?”

  The one-armed woman in the blue dress from the outcrop, who Ragnall now knew to be Flotta the Left, King Hari’s chief druid, said: “The gods have sent Carden and Atlas to us. These Britons have seen the Roman army fight and their reports tally with everything we have heard. Their plan is sound. We should follow it.”

  “And should I kill myself now, or wait until I am declared coward and stuck with spears by all my friends who’d rather that they ruled? Ha ha!” King Hari laughed as if this was the funniest joke ever told.

  “All right,” said Flotta. The druid had the lilting accent of the frozen north, very white teeth and blonde hair gathered loosely into two short ponytails. Her perky breasts pushed up at the light fabric of her blue smock like broad-nosed puppies under a sheet. Despite his predicament and his various pains, Ragnall’s gaze kept returning to her. It was odd, he thought, that in a land full of bare-breasted women, the woman he found attractive was the one who covered her chest. Drustan would have had something to say about that. Ragnall suppressed an upwelling of sadness, and along with it, as usual, the unwelcome question of what exactly he’d thought he was doing, aiding the Romans. No, he told himself. The Roman way was still the best way, and it was Felix, not the Romans nor Caesar, who had killed Drustan. Felix was the bad apple that spoiled the bumper harvest.

  Flotta continued with a saucy smile. “Oh, my poor king, you would love to attack I’m sure, but we cannot, not while the auspices are so appalling.” She shook her head in mock disappointment. “You see, just yesterday I sliced into a living deer with a golden sickle. A two-headed snake leapt from its stomach. The leftmost of the snake’s heads devoured a large red beetle, but the right head twisted around and bit the left head again and again until the beetle was freed. The snake died, the beetle crawled on to it and drank its blood. So the gods have spoken. No way can we attack the Romans … until the full moon after this one?” She looked at Atlas.

  The Kushite nodded. “That should suffice. If more time is needed, you will find another abomination?”

  “I might.”

  Ragnall was sitting at the edge of the gathering. You’d think that everyone had forgotten that he was there, but when he’d stood up earlier with the idea of quietly wandering off, one of the guards had looked at him and waggled his sword in an unequivocal “I’ve got my eyes on you, don’t do that again” message.

  Earlier, he’d been amazed when Carden and Atlas had appeared in the clearing that functioned as King Hari’s open-air longhouse. If they’d been surprised to see him, they didn’t show it. What they did do was tell King Hari that he was Lowa’s spy in Rome who’d turned traitor.

  King Hari had laughed at that, almost as much as he’d laughed when Ragnall had survived his plummet down the cliff. Ragnall hadn’t found the fall too funny. It had been even more frightening than being buried alive. When he’d been buried, it had all been so fast that he hadn’t really believed it was happening. Here, King Hari had gleefully ensured that he knew exactly what was to come. Blindfolded, hands bound, he’d stood for an age, listening to others falling and Flotta’s shouted results – all “dead!” apart from one “alive, but dead soon!” He’d begun to think it would be a relief to be pushed from the edge, but, when it finally came, it wasn’t.

  Because of the shock after the long suspense, he liked to tell himself, he screamed and voided his bowels – piss and turd at the same time. Then the world had rushed around him, he’d thumped and bumped for an age, and finally found himself lying on his back, mercifully still, apparently unbroken, his lower half soaked in his own urine and clagged by his own stinking excrement.

  “Alive!” Flotta’s cry had come from above, and Ragnall had wept with relief. He shuddered at the memory.

  “That’s decided then!” said King Hari, back in the present. “Tell everyone we move out at dawn tomorrow. Now,” he looked up at the sun. “We have a backlog of criminals to judge and time for a trial before dinner. Come on everybody! Ragnall?”

  Ragnall climbed to his feet slowly. Fear almost made him cry. What, he wondered, did good old King Hari the Fister have in store for him next?

  They walked uphill into woods, over a shoulder of land, then tramped downhill through the trees, along a rocky path next to a tumbling stream. Ragnall thought about running again. The hero in a bard’s tale would kick a captor and be away, hiding in mud pools to evade patrols, leaping down waterfalls, sprinting over pastureland and back in Caesar’s tent reporting the Germans’ plan by dawn the next day. But that was a story and you couldn’t do that in real life. What could he do? Assuming he got away from this guards, which he wouldn’t, he didn’t know anything about the local geography, apart from that it was crawling with hostile men and women in furry pants, pretty much a
ll of whom would best him in a fight. He’d just have to hope he survived whatever Ariovistus had planned for him next, and keep his eyes open for an opportunity to escape.

  Or maybe, maybe he could find help? He stooped to adjust his sandal, then stood so he was walking next to Carden. The British Warrior looked every part the hero. His leather-clad torso rose in the shape of a Roman five symbol from a narrow waist to great round shoulders. His shining mane of black hair framed a brow and chin as strong and stony as those on any of the statues of Hercules in Italy. Carden Nancarrow would have escaped or died trying. Surely he’d help a fellow Brit? Especially if Ragnall persuaded him that he was still on their side, that he’d wangled his way into the perfect position to supply Lowa with information to undermine the Romans.

  “Carden,” he whispered.

  “Yup!” said the Warrior, without looking down.

  “They’re going kill me. Can you help? Say something, or—”

  “Did Chamanca live?”

  “What? Uh – yes. She’s injured, but she’ll live. Caesar’s interested in her, so his own physician is treating her. But can you help me? I could get back to the Romans, keep gathering information for Lowa … and rescue Chamanca? I’m sure if you had a word with King—”

  “Nope. Sorry. You’re on your own.”

  “But we’re on the same side.”

  Carden looked down, his eyes dark. “We are?”

  “Of course! I’m pretty much Caesar’s right-hand man now. If one of you lot learnt to read, I could send you messages about all his movements? Or I could send a messenger? Or maybe a pigeon … but then you’d still need to read. Point is, I’m in the perfect position to help.”

  “All right,” said Carden, “I’ll have a word with the Fister.”

  “You will?”

  “Yup.”

  “Oh, thank Jupiter.” Ragnall wanted to hug him.

  “Carden, there’s no need to talk to King Hari,” said Atlas’ bass voice from behind them.

  “But…” said Ragnall.

  “He said he’d help,” said Carden.

  “I was listening. He was blathering about reading and messengers and pigeons. If he truly was our man in the Roman camp and always had been, he would have considered these things before and have a plan or two on how to do it.”

  “I…” Ragnall stammered.

  “Now that,” said Carden, “is a very good point. But should we not help him out anyway?”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s from Britain?”

  “No, we leave him. It doesn’t matter where he’s from, now he’s a Roman and he’s King Hari’s captive. It is not our place to interfere.”

  “All true,” said Carden, “but we should still help a Brit in trouble.”

  “It matters who he is, not where he’s from. I’m not from Britain but I’m not your enemy.”

  “You’re British now.”

  “I’m not but … just don’t help him, all right? He’s King Hari’s now. We will not interfere’

  “Okay!”

  “But I can help if you let me go!” Ragnall pleaded.

  “But I know you wouldn’t,” said Atlas. “You’d go back to Caesar and you’d help him against us. Walk ahead and don’t speak to us again.”

  Ragnall did what he was told, shaking his head at the injustice of it all.

  They emerged from the woods into a flower-filled, grassy meadow that shone warmly in the early evening sun. Butterflies fluttered delicately between bright blooms and bulbous bumblebees buzzed. A family of marmots stared with toothy surprise at the new arrivals for a moment, then ducked into their holes. The meadow was some forty paces across where they were, between wooded valley sides, widening for two hundred paces to where the grass became a strip of shingle beach, then a marble-smooth lake, stretching off along the valley floor and dotted with ducks and pelicans.

  Ariovistus had made the trial seem spontaneous, but it clearly wasn’t. At the meadow’s near end were more near-naked Germans and twenty or so wholly naked captives gagged and lying face down on the ground, ankles trussed to wrists in front of them. Next to them was a large siege catapult. Ragnall’s head dropped. It was no great feat of deduction to work out what was about to happen. King Hari winked at him.

  Everyone stopped apart from Flotta the Left, who headed off for the lake, presumably, thought Ragnall, to take up her post as “alive” and “dead” caller.

  King Hari boomed out happily: “More criminals to face justice. Gaulish horse thieves, this lot. Or are they whorish gorse thieves! Ha ha ha! Now. I’ll go first to show our guests how it works. In a nutshell, if they get wet, they go free! Ha!”

  With some help, King Hari cranked back the catapult’s arm. On his word, two of the large attendants strode forward with giant iron-headed, three-pronged forks. King Hari pointed out a captive. The men pushed their forks though the thick twine binding the alleged horse thief’s feet and hands together, interlocked their forks’ tines and lifted. When he was dumped into the catapult’s scoop, the captive’s gag came loose and he unleashed a stream of the vilest invective.

  “Oh dear, or dear,” chuckled King Hari. “I don’t like this one much. All that bad language. I do hope it doesn’t affect my aim. It might, though! Ha ha!”

  The catapult was on a turntable. King Hari pulled a lever, and shoved the catapult round until it was definitely no longer aimed at the lake. The Gaul cursed at him all the while.

  “And let’s try for a bit more height.” With help from two guards and the pulling of two more levers, King Hari moved the large leather and wool-wrapped crosspiece back towards the scoop holding the curled-up Gaul.

  “Right!” He pulled the shooting lever. The catapult arm shot upwards and cracked into the crosspiece. The captive zoomed into the sky, shouting ever quieter curses. His trajectory was not far off directly upwards, a little towards the woods at the meadow’s edge. His flight slowed. Perhaps a hundred paces up, he hung in the air for a heartbeat, then fell, screaming. He landed with a thud twenty paces from the onlookers.

  “Dead!” came Flotta’s cry from the lake. King Hari laughed himself into a coughing fit, reddening so much that Ragnall thought he might burst into flame.

  “Too much crossbar!” he said when he’d recovered. “You’ll all learn, I hope, from my … mistake. Ha ha! Who’s next? Atlas, would you like to try?”

  “No thank you,” said Atlas.

  “I’ll give it a go!” said Carden, rolling up his linen sleeves. Ragnall wasn’t surprised. During the winter that Ragnall had spent at Maidun, Carden had been desperate to be involved in any game or competition. If none was happening, he’d start one. Ragnall had once played hit-the-molehill with him. He’d thought he was pretty good with a sling, but Carden had won with ease.

  “Good, good!” King Hari slapped him on the back. “Pick a captive!”

  Carden choose a medium-sized man with a long moustache, then walked around the siege engine, tongue between his teeth, like a man inspecting a horse from a famously dishonest dealer. With the help of the Germans, he cranked the firing arm, swung the catapult back towards the lake and moved the crossbeam forwards. As the captive was loaded, the Briton walked round the machine again. He sucked a finger and held it up to the wind. He shook his head and made a few more adjustments.

  “Good luck!” he said to the panic-eyed captive, patting him on the head, “and try to keep your knees and elbows tucked into your stomach, like this.” Carden crouched and pushed his elbows into his midriff. “Blink if you get it? You do? Good!”

  The Briton waited for an eagle to pass by overhead, then loosed.

  A screech of twine and wood, a whump as the beam hit the padded crossbar and the man was gone, heading down the valley through the air, spinning in a tight ball, at around the same height as the top of the trees that flanked the meadow.

  “Ooooooh!” cooed the onlookers, other than Atlas and Ragnall.

  He landed short of the lake, bounced once, an
d again, then hit the water with a great splash. Ducks and pelicans scattered. Flotta peeled off her dress and dived in after him. The onlookers waited in silence.

  “Come on, come on, Danu help him…” Carden muttered to himself.

  “Dead!” came Flotta’s shout.

  The Germans cheered.

  “Bel’s bollocks!” shouted Carden.

  “Very, very good effort,” King Hari said, grinning happily, “best I’ve ever seen on a first try. Go on, have another go. Oh, and I almost forgot – Ragnall, would you mind disrobing and joining the captives on the ground? You can choose him if you like, Carden? The gods love this one. He’s a marvellous looking young man, but a bit wet. And maybe about to get a bit wetter! If he’s lucky! Ha ha ha!”

  Carden looked Ragnall up and down. He pinched the ring of fat that had agglomerated around Ragnall’s midriff in Rome. “He might be a bit heavy, but maybe with a bit more crossbar … yes, I’ll give him a go. Can I move the catapult nearer the lake?”

  “Would that be fair?” King Hari seemed serious for once.

  “I suppose not,” Carden admitted.

  “Indeed! And fairness is all! Ha ha! But don’t worry, my fine British visitor, I’ve seen bigger men fly further. Not too high, that’s the secret. Not too low, either – that’s another secret. None of them are really secrets! Ha!”

  The catapult’s cup stank of disease. Ragnall wondered if it had been used to fling decaying animals – or humans, knowing merry old King Hari – into a besieged fort.

  “Now tuck your arms and legs like the last guy,” Carden said. “I don’t want to blame him, it was partially my aiming, but he did untuck halfway through. He would probably have made the lake otherwise. But then again, you are heavier … Cross your feet over. Can you link your fingers? Yes? Good. That might help. Don’t uncurl and you might make it.”

  Ragnall squeezed his body into a ball and prayed to Jupiter and Danu.