Clash of Iron

by Angus Watson

  Former waterfall or not, there was a gang of people peering down at them from the top of the cliff. On their left and her right was a giant, with short arms and an oversized head. Spring had never seen one before, but she knew it was a wicker woman. Wooden cages were nailed together in the shape of a woman and their bars interwoven with wicker. They’d fill the wicker woman with live animals, then set light to it. It was horrible idea, and Spring couldn’t believe that it impressed the gods, but it was also kind of awe-inspiring. She couldn’t take her eyes off it. A vision flashed into her mind of Lowa, bound and helpless, trapped in the burning—

  She shook her head and the image cleared. It had been like a bad daydream, not a proper vision like she’d had with the aurochs. There was nothing to be afraid of here. They were a delegation, and nobody would ever break the ancient code and attack a delegation, especially a royal one. And, besides, she knew that this place wasn’t as scary as it looked. Dug had told her all about Mallam before they’d left the south. From this direction, it looked like the most impenetrable fortress imaginable. However, come from any direction other than the south, according to Dug, and you could easily get around the cliff and the only defences were a few scrappy stone walls. The fort at Mallam, seat of Grummog, king of the Murkans, Dug had said, was all mouth and no trousers. The people from that part of Britain, Dug had added with a naughty look in his eye, were mostly the same.

  “Come on, Spring!” yelled Holloc. Spring realised she’d stopped. She kicked on to catch them up.

  Lowa and Miller had almost reached the track that led up the steep slope to the top of the cliff. The sixty soldiers from the Two Hundred were spread out behind them, riding in a more casual manner now they’d reached journey’s end unmolested and could look forward to a feast and a rest. Some had ambled to the stream to let their horses drink, others were dotted about while their horses pulled toothily at the clumps of grass which sprouted all around the field below the cliff, between large bushes.

  Spring looked about. On their long walks, she and Dug speculated often on how the land had come to look like it did; why specific plants lived in specific places and so on. Going by the washes of gravel all around, here was a place that flooded regularly. If it did flood, it meant that the only vegetation would be that year’s growth – the grass – and no large bushes.

  She opened her mouth to scream a warning exactly as the out-of-place vegetation burst apart. Four or five men and women jumped from each bush and stabbed spears into the Maidun riders. Spring watched, mouth open, as the few Maidun soldiers who’d survived the surprise attempted to rally, but were closed down and speared by the hundreds of Murkans who’d suddenly emerged.

  By the cliff, Miller and Lowa were caught, pulled from their horses, spear points at their throats. As she watched, Lowa whacked away her guard’s arm with her bow and fell back, stringing the bow as she fell, shooting an arrow into her captor, then almost immediately stringing and shooting another. Another Murkan fell and Spring realised with a jolt that she was in a battle, and so far all she’d done was watch like a dumb-struck dimwit. She reached for her bow, but something thumped into her and knocked her from her horse. She hit the ground. She shook her head. A man with a moustache trimmed into a straight-edged square was sitting on her, his legs pinning her arms. She opened her mouth to tell him how stupid he looked but he punched her in the side of the head. His moustache swung around and around, filled her vision, then shrunk, taking everything with it and she saw no more.

  Spring came to. She was on a horse, her hands were bound and somebody was holding her from behind. Up ahead were Miller and Lowa, both riding on their own horses with their hands chained, spears at their backs.

  The path – the track to the top of the cliff, Spring deduced – curled on to a broad expanse of flat, bare rock, criss-crossed with cracks and mini crevices. There were a couple of dozen more spearmen dotted about, but no buildings other than a black longhouse in the centre of the pavement, with the wicker woman looming behind it. Three sides of the field of rock were overlooked by craggy bluffs, dotted with tartan and leather-dressed Murkans, come to gawp at the captives from a safe distance.

  The longest side of the rock-floored expanse was the top of the cliff. The view was vast. Spring fancied that she could see Maidun Castle, three hundred miles south, and, just beyond that, Dug’s hut by the sea. She wished she was there. Here, a semi-circle of Murkans with long spears demanded that Lowa and Miller dismount. Spring looked behind her. The Murkans held six more Maidun people at spear point, including Holloc, whom she’d been rude to just a few heartbeats before, when things had been very different. Each of them had their wrists chained like Lowa and Miller. Presumably the rest been slaughtered at the base of the cliff. She’d liked a lot of them, but she didn’t feel upset by their deaths, which seemed odd. She guessed that she would later. This must be what war was like. You had to get on with it and grieve when you had time. The man behind her dismounted and pulled her from the horse.

  “Come on you,” he said, pushing her in the back, “over this way and no fucking funny business. Start acting the squirrel and I’ll stick you with my fucking spear.” He had an unpleasantly sharp, nasal voice.

  “What do you mean, acting the squirrel?” she said.

  “You know – larking about, causing trouble.”

  “Oh, I see. I thought you might be worried I was going to bite your moustache off. Why is it that strange shape? Did you lose a bet?”

  She ducked his punch, said “OK, OK, sorry,” and went where she was pushed, over towards the longhouse. The network of cracks on the cliff top, mostly about a hand-span wide, made it look like a giant version of a dried mud puddle. They picked their way over the gaps.

  The longhouse was a heavily constructed, black wooden building, with curved iron blades splaying out from each corner of its roof and no obvious door. Spring followed Lowa and Miller and their captors round to the long side facing the cliff edge, which was open, without a wall. The six captured riders filed along behind them. All the Maidun people had their hands tied, but Murkan soldiers still followed them closely, spears ready.

  King Grummog and his retinue were waiting, looking out over the edge of the cliff. The Murkan king was a wee man, sitting in a big wooden chair that made him look all the smaller. He was perhaps a little older than Dug, but it was hard to tell because his little body and limbs were all twisted. His shoeless feet and his hands were curled into claws and his round head jutted forward on a scrawny neck, forced there by the large hump of his upper back. He had the blinking eyes of a bird that expected to be thrown a crumb, but a straight, expression-free mouth.

  Towering behind Grummog was a giant of a woman with puffy, piscine eyes and fat, shiny-wet lips which were the same pale yellow-pink as the rest of her face. The expression in those fishy eyes, Spring reckoned, said that she would watch you drown in a puddle rather than bend to help you. She wore a thick, dark wool waistcoat with a faded, smudged swirl decoration and a stupidly short leather-flanged skirt. Her legs were like bark-stripped oak trunks, each of them surely heavier that two of Spring put together. Her arms were heavy with fat-coated muscle, thicker at the biceps than Spring’s thighs. Her broad, smooth shoulders were rounded with bovine strength and extra bits of muscle grew from midway along them almost up to her head, like scaffolding to help her neck support her thick skull. Sprouting from her meaty right hip was the large coil of a thick leather whip. On her left hand she’d grown and somehow thickened her nails, so it looked like she had bear’s claws. Spring thought that she might be a Fassite – a giant from the island of Fassent. Everyone agreed that Fassent existed, just south of Eroo, but nobody set foot on the island for fear of the mythical giants that were said to live there. Spring had met a man once who said that he’d sailed past Fassent and giants had hurled rocks at his boat from the shore. She’d assumed he was lying, but this woman looked like proof that the myth of the giants was a reality.

  Arranged in a fan sh
ape, left and right of the strange ruling pair, were an array of tough-looking men and women, twenty or so armed with swords and spears. They watched in silence as the guard attached six Maidun riders and Miller to a longer chain which ran between an iron ring hammered into the rock ground and another set in a boulder the height of Spring. The boulder perched on the cliff edge. Spring did not like the look of it and neither, given the looks on their faces, did any of the others, but with hands bound and spears everywhere, there was nothing they could do.

  “Queen Lowa,” spat Grummog, “I wondered when you’d grace us with your magnificent presence.” His voice was even sharper than Spring’s square-mustachioed captor’s, managing to sound offended and aggressive at the same time, like a bandit you’ve caught in the act of murdering a traveller who’s claiming that it’s all your fault while planning to attack you. It made Spring wince.

  “I’m Grummog, king of all the Murkans,” he continued. “And this beauty,” he indicated the woman next to him, “is my queen, Pomax.” If Pomax was flattered by the lie about her looks, it didn’t warm her cold scowl.

  “You are a fool, Grummog,” said Lowa. Spring swelled with pride at how commanding she sounded.

  “Am I? Well, aren’t I lucky to have you to come up here and tell me? Would you like to explain why?”

  Lowa told him about the Romans’ progress in Gaul, and the news that they were set on conquering Britain. She told him about the power of Caesar’s army, leaving out Chamanca’s report on Felix’s dark legion.

  “You have made a terrible mistake in attacking my people, Grummog,” she finished, “but, if you free us now and we draw up a pact to unite against the Romans, I will forgive you and instruct my soldiers’ families not to retaliate.”

  “Ooh, thanks so much for giving me the chance!” Grummog was sarcastic and Spring hated him all the more. Sarcasm was not always appropriate. “I’m so lucky, me. But tell me, just for interest’s sake, what will happen if I throw you and all your people off the cliff now?”

  “The Maidun army will march here within the moon and slaughter you all. Then the Romans will come and take Britain, but that won’t matter to you because you’ll be long dead and forgotten.”

  “Oh, well, I suppose we’ll just have to take that risk,” said Grummog, sounding like a fatalistic traveller warned that there might be rain on the way.

  “Grummog,” said Lowa, “Caesar has pillaged, murdered and raped through southern Gaul. Northern Gaul is likely to capitulate within the moon, then he will come to Britain and take our freedom. However, if all the tribes of Britain can unite, then his army can be beaten. For the benefit of everyone, the first thing for us to do is to make an agreement to—”

  “Stop, stop, stop!” Grummog waved his gnarled hands. “Stop your bleating, woman! You know, don’t you, who benefits when someone says that something is for the benefit of everyone? The person saying it, that’s who! Always! You’ve got a weak little position in the south and the Romans are going to piss all over you. I don’t see why I should stop that. You know what I say? I say that it’s,” he attempted to copy Lowa’s accent, “for the benefit of everyone for me to help the Romans against you, then live at peace with them. I say ‘you’ but I mean Maidun. You’ll be well dead before they come. Dead and curled into a little ball of black meat and charred bones.” He looked to his left, over at the wicker woman, then back to Lowa. He winked.

  “The Romans will massacre you.” Lowa’s jaw was clenched.

  “Your arrogance makes a fool of you.” Grummog narrowed his eyes. “You think I don’t have people with the Romans? You think you’re the only one who heard the druid’s warnings and decided to have a look what was happening? You come up here, thinking you’re doing some sort of favour for the stupid Murkans? Talking to me like I’m a child? Shall I tell you what I know about the Romans in Gaul?”

  “Go for it,” said Lowa, sounding unimpressed.

  “I will go for it!” screamed Grummog. “The Romans are unbeatable by anyone in Britain because they’ve been training for hundreds of fucking years, and we haven’t and we don’t have time—”

  “My army can beat them.”

  “Shut up! And listen, for once in your fucking life! I know who you are, Lowa Flynn. I know what you did for Zadar. And I know that you’re the last one to start preaching about fucking murder. You were at Cowton. Don’t deny it, I know you were.”

  Lowa stayed quiet. She had, Spring knew, not just been present when Zadar’s army killed every man, woman, child and animal in Cowton. She’d led the attack.

  “My sister was at Cowton,” Grummog continued. “On the wrong fucking side. She was a peaceful person. She left here because she didn’t like me putting people in the wicker woman, but I loved her anyway. And she was killed for being in the wrong place. So don’t you try and tell me that you’re better than Caesar, me or anyone. And I’ll tell you another thing I know. The Romans have killed a lot of people, but do you know the one thing that links everyone they’ve killed? The common factor, if you like?”

  “I do,” said Lowa, her voice like solid iron after Grummog’s whining.

  “You do, do you?”

  “Yes. All of them were brave men and women who stood up to Caesar, not honourless turds who capitulated.”

  “Brave men and women who all died! The common factor is that they opposed the Romans. Lowa, you fight the Romans and you’ll kill everyone who calls you queen. You fight the Romans, and you give your land to the Romans. That’s what happens. I’m going to keep my land, I’m going to save my people, by helping the Romans take yours. And I’ll tell you another thing you don’t know, clever clever Lowa. It’s not the Romans you should be worried about. You won’t live to see the fucking Romans. Manfrax is sailing from Eroo any day with an army that’ll smash yours. The Dumnonians, too. They aren’t your puppies like you think. Bruxon, who you made king, went over to Eroo and asked Manfrax to invade. The Dumnonians will supply the Eroo army. They’re going to tell him about your cavalry and your chariots and all your other secrets. You think the Romans are bad? You think they rape and murder? Wait until you meet the Eroo army. The Romans at least pretend to be civilised.”

  Lowa reddened. The twisted king grinned. “You didn’t know, did you? You only sent your spies over one sea. I sent mine both ways, because I’m cleverer than you. Manfrax has conquered Eroo and now he’s going to use his army on Maidun. But he won’t worry the Murkans, because guess what? The Dumnonians are going to ask me to join them and Eroo and I’ll say yes – not immediately, obviously, because I know how to negotiate and get the best for my tribe, unlike you, you stupid woman.

  “While you’ve been building your army to face the Romans, Maidun’s destruction’s been planned behind you. But don’t worry, you’re not going to see. I’m going keep you until Beltane. Then you’re going in the head of the wicker woman, where you can think about how fucking brave and clever you are as you burn. And I tell you what. The rest of your life, before you burn, is going to be really, really shit. Pomax here is going look after you.” Grummog nodded at the gigantic woman. For the first time, she smiled.

  Lowa looked about warily. Spring did the same. With twenty spears at their backs, twenty swords in front and their hands bound, they were short on options. It was exactly the sort of situation that could do with some magic. Spring strained to pull power from within. She stared at Lowa, willing her to become a super-warrior. Nothing. She closed her eyes. She saw a vision of Dug that first time she’d seen him, when he’d killed Ulpius and unwittingly saved her. She felt a shift, as if a weight was being lifted out of her body. She opened her eyes.

  Nothing had happened. Lowa stood facing Grummog, no more powerful than she’d been a heartbeat before.

  “Right!” said Grummog. “I’m bored of these other southern bastards. Pomax?”

  The big queen smiled and walked from the open-sided longhouse towards the boulder.

  “No!” shouted Lowa, straining at her wrist b
onds. Three spear points pressed into her neck. Spring tried to run at Pomax, but strong arms encircled her from behind.

  “You’ll want to watch this,” said square-moustache man in her ear, heaving her around to face the cliff top.

  Spring couldn’t see what Pomax was going to do. She had no lever, and there was no way that one person could move the boulder, even if she wasn’t far off the size of an aurochs.

  Pomax was going to give it a go, though. She squatted, placed her hands and a shoulder on the rock, then drove up into it, her thighs doubling in girth as bovine muscle bulged. The boulder shifted, leant and toppled off the cliff. The seven soldiers of Lowa’s Two Hundred hardly had time to scream before the chain attaching them to the falling rock snapped tight and they flew, hands first, over the edge. Miller was the last to go, staring hate at Grummog.

  While everyone listened to the cries of the falling, Lowa dropped away from the spears at her neck. She dived, rolled and bounced on to her feet, elbowed a Murkan in the neck and whacked her chained wrists into another’s face. She spun to avoid a sling salvo and caught one of the slingstones. She continued her spin and hurled the stone at Grummog. He squeaked and half-raised his arms.

  Somehow Pomax had sprinted back from the cliff edge. One of her hands flashed out and caught the stone, the other cracked her whip. Lowa tried to dodge, but the whipcord struck home, flicked around her torso and pinned her arms. She tried to pull away, but Pomax was a pace taller and three times her weight. She needed only one hand to hold the queen of Maidun. Lowa’s only option was to run head first at Pomax, which she did. Pomax met her charge with a lazy backhanded slap across the face. Lowa’s head snapped back, and she slumped. Pomax flicked the whip, Lowa pirouetted a grotesquely floppy dance and collapsed on to the bare rock, out cold.