Clash of Iron

by Angus Watson

  So he was sad when the journey ended and he was faced by the prospect of returning to his farm, alone.-This depite the retinue of farmworkers and merchants cheering the return of Queen Lowa, jogging and hollering alongside them even before they crested the final hill and Maidun Castle burst into view. By the time they reached the hillfort, it seemed that all of Maidun had flocked to greet them and they rode along buffeted by cheers and joyous shouting.

  At the foot of the castle hill, Lowa climbed on to a wall and addressed the people, thanking them for their kind reception and, in advance, for the massive effort and sacrifices they’d have to make to meet the coming threats.

  Dug was going to head off when she’d finished, but he loitered for a while then tried not to look too pleased when she beckoned for him to follow her through the gates and into the castle. He looked about for Spring, but she’d disappeared. He caught up with Lowa.

  The wide body of Maidun Castle was more sparsely populated than its environs, but there were still plenty of people pressing up to express their joy at her return. Even Elann Nancarrow left her forge briefly to nod approval at the returning queen.

  They walked up to the Eyrie and there were more people to greet them. Mal whooped with joy, and even surly Nita cracked a big smile and hugged Lowa, Dug and then Lowa again.

  Finally, the gates of Lowa’s compound closed behind them and they were alone.

  Dug had been to Zadar’s old compound only briefly before, but little had changed. At the far end, protected by a sunshade suspended by ropes from the wall, were chairs for the summer court. On the left was the palisade between the Eyrie and the body of the fort. To the right were three big huts. The only difference he spotted was a circle of bright flowers surrounding one of them.

  “Not very queenly, I know,” said Lowa, seeing him notice it, “but I like flowers.”

  “Aye, no, they’re very nice. I’ve done a similar thing back at mine, although more blues. I find that … well, it’s not really interesting. Listen, I ought to be getting back there. I’ve got some sheep which … I ought to go.”

  Lowa smiled at him, head tilted, eyes bright. “I was hoping,” she said, “that you’d stay.”

  “Ba…” said Dug. “Urb?” he managed.

  “Here, in Maidun. I’d like you to help me with the army’s training.”

  “Oh, right, yeah, I could do that. I’ll need to go home first and sort some things, but yeah. Would I get a hut in the fort?”

  “You can have a hut in the fort if that’s what you’d like.” She looked strangely vulnerable. “But, if you’d like to, you could stay here. With me. In my hut. Our hut.”

  She raised her eyes to his. Tears welled.

  The earth burst open, the sky collapsed and he strode forwards, took her in his arms and kissed her.

  Part Four

  Gaul and Britain

  Chapter 1

  Julius Caesar marched south followed by his loot. So numerous were the slaves from all over Gaul and the wagonloads of plunder that they said the vanguard of the booty parade made camp every evening before the tail had set off from the previous one. “They” were exaggerating as usual, Ragnall reckoned but it was true that the Romans headed home that autumn with an obscene quantity of pillaged and reluctantly donated treasures, and a multitude of enslaved men, women and children.

  When the conquering general arrived in Rome, he gave away spectacular quantities of iron weapons and tools, stone, bone and glass carvings, gold and silver jewellery, leather and metal armour and myriad other Gaulish curiosities. The citizenry let out a collective whoop of greedy joy to see their hero home. The Senate granted another fifteen-day triumph. Rome was aswirl with parties. New records were set in all aspects of party-related depravity, mostly at Clodia Metelli’s palace. Society had decided that she probably wasn’t an evil husband-poisoner after all and invitations to her orgies became the seal of social approval that winter. Stories of the excesses behind Clodia’s closed doors flew around Rome and bolstered the babbling of bards all the way to the outer reaches of the Empire, more flamboyant with every telling.

  The stories were as close as Ragnall came to the most debauched winter party season imaginable, because Ragnall was in northern Gaul. He wasn’t even in toga-wearing Gaul, the Romanised southern bit. He was in fur- and shit-stinking leather-wearing Gaul, very much barbarian-side, a thousand miles from the nearest gang of well-washed girls kissing honey off each others’ breasts in an underfloor-heated, perfumed marble palace, strewn with giant silk cushions and staffed by attractive slaves ready to bring you weird food, refill your cup or lick you clean as you required.

  “It’ll be good for you,” Caesar had said. “You’ll learn real soldiering and the legionaries will come to respect you.” Well, great, Ragnall thought. The respect of five thousand sweaty men is so much better than four moons of the greatest parties the world has ever known. On the bright side, Caesar had left him a small sack of coins that wasn’t much for a Roman but made him far richer than his chieftain father had ever been. Shame there was nothing to spend them on.

  As had become his habit, Ragnall was complaining about all this to Publius Licinius Crassus, son of Marcus Licinius Crassus. Crassus senior was famous for several adventures, such as becoming the richest man in Rome largely through the villainous actions of his private fire brigade and, as Felix had gleefully elucidated to Ragnall, crushing Spartacus’ Servile Rebellion and crucifying six thousand slaves on the Appian Way. These days, Publius’s father was only third richest man in Rome after Pompey and the newly affluent Caesar, but he was still very much in the thick of politics. Crassus senior, Pompey and Caesar had formed a union that controlled all that went on in Rome. People called their association the “triumvirate”. The word spread through the bards, as apt new words do, and now everyone was talking about the triumvirate as if they’d been saying it all their lives.

  Ragnall had assumed that his father’s fame was why Publius, Crassus junior, had been given the command of the legion left to shiver on the wind-pummelled coast of Armorica. However, if nepotism had bought him the position, then it was a lucky coincidence that Publius was an effortlessly competent leader. All but the most bone-headed of the well-fed, warmly housed legionaries knew that the off-season maintenance and control of a five thousand-strong garrison used to killing and taking what they wanted was a bastard of a job and that Publius was doing it well.

  Publius was the same age as Ragnall, but already he’d commanded troops in Iberia under Caesar. It was him who’d turned the German assault that had destroyed the Roman camp in the battle against Ariovistus and before that he’d led the cavalry against the Germans. Ragnall had asked him about the latter, specifically the massacre of German cavalry by Felix’s legion, but Publius would only ever say that it had been an atrocity, not a victory. The young commander loathed Felix with gusto, which was another reason for Ragnall to like him.

  They were walking along the beach, something they’d taken to doing on the odd afternoons that Publius’s duties allowed. Publius walked with a springy pace, his short but athletic frame somehow suited to walking on sand. He had an eagle-beak nose and a sharp, almost upward curving chin. He wasn’t ugly – far from it – but his face reminded Ragnall of the goblin-like figureheads favoured by the more jocular maritime tribes. His closely cropped blond hair and grey eyes reminded everyone else that here was a no-nonsense Roman who’d have you boiled in oil if you crossed him.

  The sky was white and bright, the wind a salty, ear-numbing lash whipping off the waves. On the beach, a few hundred paces ahead, seagulls and foxes were ripping strips from the washed-up corpse of a whale.

  “It’s not all orgies and wine for Caesar at the moment,” Publius said loudly above the wind, once Ragnall’s customary party-missing whinge was done. “I had a missive from a friend yesterday. A chap called Titus Domitius Ahenobarbus is running for consul. If elected, he will recall Caesar from Gaul and take the province for himself after his own consul
ship. If Caesar isn’t a proconsul any more – which he won’t be if he loses his command – he’ll no longer be immune to prosecution, and there are dozens, possibly hundreds of people waiting to prosecute him. Caesar will buy top lawyers and bribe the jury, of course, but so will his opponents, so eventually he’ll be found guilty of something that carries the death sentence. In practice that means exile, but that’s pretty much the same thing for a man like him.”

  “What can they prosecute him for?”

  “Oh there’s an awful lot. Hiring entire legions illegally, invading territories illegally and then everything he’s done with those legions in those territories – murdering Helvetians, murdering Germans, murdering a huge variety of Gauls, and raping and plundering the whole lot, of course. Any of those would sink him, and he’s guilty of the lot. The legionaries are loyal, but dangle enough money and witnesses will poke their noses out of the woodwork.”

  “I thought the Romans were all mad for his adventures in Gaul?”

  “Most are. Some aren’t. Some are outraged that he’s broken quite so many laws quite so blatantly – particularly because he enacted some of those laws when he was consul so the hypocrisy is amazing, even by Roman standards. Others really are upset by all the barbarian slaughter. Possibly they have a point. And, of course, if someone brings a successful prosecution, he assumes Caesar’s titles and a good amount of his wealth, so it’s tempting for your man on the make. Cicero started off by successfully prosecuting a governor of Sicily who all deemed to be untouchable, and he had nothing like the funds available to Caesar’s enemies. But mainly I think…” Publius paused and watched a seagull glide sideways overhead, whale blood dripping from its beak. “Mainly I think he’s in trouble because Romans are a paradoxical lot. They love a hero, but they hate a man who does too well. So perhaps Julius will be brought down simply because he’s climbed too high. Caesar has become like Icarus, flying too close to the sun.”

  “That’s very nicely put.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “But hang on, with Pompey and your father’s support…?”

  Publius looked around. The beach was still deserted. Up ahead three foxes were snarling at each other over a ragged chunk of whale meat, apparently unaware that they were right next to a gigantic carcass entirely comprised of the stuff.

  “Well, that’s the thing. It may be that my father and Pompey are behind Ahenobarbus and Caesar’s other detractors.”

  “What about the triumvirate?”

  “Like I said, Caesar has been doing too well. My father is no longer second richest man in Rome. How long before Pompey is no longer the richest? Nobody likes new money.”

  “So Caesar is doomed?”

  “Probably. One thing that may save him is that Ahenobarbus is an absolute tit. Total arsehole. I’ve met him a couple of times, only briefly, but he still managed to convince me that he was impressively stupid and entirely charmless. People say he’s so arrogant that to know him is to hate him, and, in my case, they’re right. So that might work in Caesar’s favour, but, then again, arrogance and stupidity have never been obstacles to high office. The opposite, as far as I can work out.”

  “But what will happen to us if Caesar doesn’t come back from Rome?”

  Publius smiled. “If Caesar doesn’t come back, we go home.”

  Ragnall kicked a worm cast. Home. What an idea. For some reason, it made him think of Drustan, even though Rome was his home now.

  Chapter 2

  Bruxon, Grummog, Pomax, Manfrax and Maggot were on the tower at the top of Gutrin Tor, high above Maggot’s old home, the once floating island of Mearhold, now trashed and mostly sunken after the Maidun army’s heavy-handed attempt to capture Lowa. It was a blue-skied, still winter’s day that made one forget just how unpleasantly cold winters could be. It was the weather for an honourable, vigorous pursuit like hunting boar on horseback, thought Bruxon. Instead, three kings were meeting to plot the destruction of a queen.

  Bruxon had been unusually disquieted of late, tortured by the notion that he had made a grave misjudgement. Dumnonian pride demanded that Lowa be obliterated, but was there any dignity in others doing the work? Maggot insisted that there was. This way, Dumnonia had its revenge and remained unscathed, in the best shape to negotiate a peace with the Romans. They’d fooled Manfrax into thinking the Romans would let the Eroo army occupy Maidun land, and now Maggot was persuading Grummog and his humungous wife Pomax that the Murkans should join the Eroo attack on Maidun. It was all going, he said, to work out very well for Dumnonia. So now Maggot the druid was making all the decisions, not just for him, but for Manfrax and now Grummog as well.

  Bruxon didn’t like it, but he had ways of reminding the druid that he was king. That morning, he’d ordered that his guard clear the bones from the roof of the tower. They were the bones of Maggot’s tribe at Mearhold, so moving them displayed a massive degree of contempt and disrespect. Maggot, in typically vexatious fashion, had responded by helping to clear the bones while singing some made-up bone-clearing chant. But Bruxon saw past his Bel-may-care exterior. He could tell that it wasn’t only his frightful jewellery that had been rattled by the defilement of the remains. Once this was over and Maggot had served his purpose, Bruxon would enjoy killing him slowly.

  “What’s in it for me?” spat Grummog, king of the Murkans. It wasn’t the most dignified look for a king, Bruxon thought, strapped to your queen’s freakishly broad back with your twisted little limbs waving about, but Grummog didn’t seem to worry about dignity. Since being king, Bruxon had tried to enhance his already measured, intelligent way of speaking. Grummog’s voice, however, was a horrible mixture of whining and snarling.

  “What’s in it for me?” he repeated.

  Bruxon was about to reply, but Maggot interposed: “Destruction of Maidun, security of your southern border so you can trot your army north and expand Murkan territory, improved position for negotiating with the Romans, enhanced esteem with your own men and women, a place in the tales of bards now and for ever … It would be easier,” Maggot put a finger to his chin, lifted his leg and placed the sole of his foot against the side of his knee in an annoying mock-philosophical pose, “to say what isn’t in it for you.”

  “My army is not used to fighting alongside another,” said Manfrax. “It would be like two men sharing one woman. One of us could go the wrong way and end up in the shit.” Clad in heavy furs, he loomed over Bruxon and Maggot, but was about the same height as Grummog’s statuesque queen, so his head was level with Grummog’s.

  “You won’t need to fuck them together,” said Maggot, “you’ll just need to fuck them at the same time.”

  “What if the Maidun forces split?” raged Grummog. “Haven’t thought of that, have you?”

  “The Maidun army is small,” said Bruxon in measured tones, showing Grummog how negotiations needn’t take the tone of a slanging match in a brothel. “If it splits, it will be all the easier to defeat.”

  “Oh yes, and where the fuck is Dumnonia in all of this? Why the fuck can’t you do this on your own? I’ll tell you why. It’s because you’re weak. Maidun already beat your shit army and you’re scared they will crap all over you again. Queen Lowa will bend you over and stick her fist up your arse. Like she did before.”

  Bruxon was too enraged to speak, but, to his surprise, Manfrax spoke up, his sonorous tones a joyful salve after Grummog’s spite-filled snarling: “The Dumnonian army is shite, to be sure, but that’s not Bruxon’s fault. He’s a new king following a long line of shite kings. Sure, the Dumnonians could fight with us, but they’d get in the way. Good that Bruxon here knows that. They’re better placed to support us, to guard our supply lines, to be our supply lines, to make the camps, to keep the roads clear. Maidun might be a small army, but a small wolf will kill any number of sheep, so we need to keep the sheep out of the way, and let the lions do the work.” Manfrax stretched, showing powerful muscles beneath the flesh of those heavy arms, then continued. “So, my
wee king Grummog, Eroo will do the fighting and so will the Murkans, but you’ll keep out of our way and we’ll keep out of yours. Once one of us joins battle, the other will take Maidun’s rear. With Maidun rolled over and dead, Eroo will take her land, and you will have two allies to your south.”

  Grummog’s small eyes shone: “I’m not convinced. Give me the Maidun territory as far south as Forkton and you might change my mind.”

  Bruxon looked at Manfrax. Manfrax shrugged assent.

  “You may have the land as far south as Forkton, but not Forkton itself,” said Bruxon.

  “All right,” said Grummog, “but how do I know I can trust you?”

  Manfrax laughed. “It’s time for a blood shake! Now, did you bring anybody with you that you don’t like? We’ll need three of them.”

  They selected one unlucky person from each delegation to die with kings’ hands shaking in their guts. Bruxon thought of choosing Maggot, but he knew that the druid would wriggle out of it somehow, so he selected a serving girl whom he suspected of having an impertinent attitude. She’d thought she’d been chosen to do something useful because she was pretty, so he enjoyed watching her expression change as he stabbed her and thrust a hand into her stomach.

  Shakes made and hands wiped, the three kings agreed that Manfrax’s army would sail from Eroo as soon as it was able. The Murkans would head south at the same time. Soon, thought Bruxon, Maidun and Lowa would exist no more.

  Chapter 3

  “Dug?”

  “Uh … Aye?”

  “What do you think?”