Clash of Iron

by Angus Watson

  Ragnall thought it was a bit odd to worry about calling people the right thing while occupying their land, taking their food and generally treating them badly, but he didn’t want a row. “Fine, sorry, general-to-be. Take food from the Fenn-Nodens then.”

  “We’ve taken all we can from nearby. Some of the Fenn-Nodens have already starved, and more will. Luckily it’s only a few poor and weak so far. But if we took any more it would start to seriously impinge on people who matter and we’d have a revolt.”

  “So what are we going to do?” said Ragnall, wondering if the chief concern of the people who’d starved had been whether the Romans had got their tribe’s name right.

  “Other Fenn-Nodens towns and the rest of the Armorican tribes will give us food.”

  “You reckon they’ll help? I’ve heard they’re not overly supplicant.”

  “I reckon they’ll do whatever I tell them to do. Or, more to the point, what you tell them.”

  “What I tell them?”

  “Who better to send to demand food from the Gauls than Ragnall the super envoy? Half British, half Roman, all hero?”

  Nauseous fear flooded in and washed away all happiness as he remembered his previous jaunt as an envoy. “Publius, please don’t send me. I didn’t achieve anything last time apart from very nearly being killed several times. I only survived because a German druid took pity on me.”

  “So you’re lucky.”

  “I’m a bad envoy. I was sent to make peace and it ended in battle and slaughter.”

  “Which was exactly what Caesar wanted. You’re a brilliant envoy.”

  Ragnall sighed. “Do I have to do it?”

  “I’m sorry, Ragnall, but you’re our best chance at persuading the locals to give us food. This time will not be nearly so dangerous. You’ll be one of three envoys, and I’ll give you my second best century to protect you.”

  “What’s the best one doing?”

  “Protecting me.”

  “OK.” Ragnall sighed and gently kicked a menhir. Thousands of generations may well have walked this very field, but he doubted if any of them had had as tough a life as he had.

  Chapter 5

  Chamanca spat as they rode from the town.

  The Romans had sent envoys to demand food from every town and village in Fenn-Nodens territory. She and Carden were staying ahead of the envoys, pointing out that it was the perfect opportunity for the tribes to take high-level Roman hostages, a reasonable move to counter the high-level Armorican hostages that the Romans already held. The Romans, they said, expected their envoys to be taken hostage and would respect the Armoricans all the more for doing so.

  So far their pragmatic reasoning had met only short-sighted cowardice. It didn’t surprise Chamanca, it was the same lily-liveredness that had led to the hostages being given up for nothing in the first place, but she was still disgusted. Most of the leaders whined about the invincibility of the Romans and the protection of their people being their foremost concern. A couple promised to think about taking the envoys hostage, but Chamanca could tell that these were the same as the promises that Galba of the Soyzonix had made to Atlas. By Fenn, there were few people she hated more than those who said “yes” because it was easier than arguing. One tribe tried to capture them to hand over the Romans. That hadn’t ended well for the tribe, and Chamanca had got to drink some blood. That had been pleasing, but not helpful.

  Her mood perked up as they approached the next town, a place called Sea View. Like all the towns they’d been to so far, it was a semi-independent part of the Fenn-Nodens tribe, under the wider union that comprised the Armoricans.

  They rode on firm sand round a sweep of beach, the only way to reach the town and impassable at high tide. At its far end the sands rose up into the peninsula that held Sea View. The town was protected on its land side by a deep ditch and a wall topped by a doughty palisade. The isthmus it occupied was a cliff-fringed finger of land, with a scoop cut out halfway along on the side they were approaching from. Within the scoop was a small, walled harbour, defended by stone towers above its entrance. Surely, thought Chamanca, such an excellently placed and neatly defended settlement was proud enough to stand up to the Romans? It would be nigh-on impossible for any army to break the town’s defences. The defenders would only need to hold the wall until the tide came up and drowned the attackers. If the town wall was breached in the brief window when the tide was low enough to allow an army to approach, the entire population could escape by boat.

  “I can see why they called it Sea View,” said Carden.

  “I think it’s dumb,” said Chamanca. “You call this one Sea View, surely every town with view of the sea should be called the same? It’s like calling a person ‘Has Head’.”

  “So you can’t deny it’s accurate.”

  They rode on.

  It took her a while to persuade Sea View’s guards to open the robust looking, newly renovated gates and let them in. That pleased her. These Sea View Armoricans didn’t seem quite as wet as the rest of them.

  Inside the gates, a road led along the spine of the peninsula. Either side of it were large, well-maintained huts, stout storage sheds and busy workshops. The gate guard escorted them to a clear circular area in the centre of which was a towering, excellently carved stone statue of a beautiful woman with large breasts and a fish’s tail, whom Chamanca took to be Leeban, goddess of the sea. Standing on short plinths all around her were various marine oddities.

  “Wow!” said Carden, stroking a polished whale skull that was taller than him. “How big was this fish?”

  “Biggest I’ve ever seen!” called a hearty voice. “I’d like to say that we caught the cove, but, sadly, he swam on to our beach and died there, despite the children singing at him to return to the brine. He must have been driven to take his own life by some terrible, terrible woe, to withstand the children’s noise. Their caterwauling would have sent me as deep as I could dive within a heartbeat, no matter what watery misery was waiting for me!”

  The owner of the voice strode up. He was an overweight man, perhaps fifty years old, with red facial hair, a very large nose and a small helmet perched on a tapering head. Escorting the man, judging by their boar necklaces, were two Warriors and an elderly man with a long grey hair and beard in an off-white robe, who had to be the druid.

  “What makes you think the whale was a ‘he’?” Chamanca asked.

  The tiny-helmeted man leant back with a hearty laugh, wiped his eyes and said: “We males have a mystical instinct for these things, I think. And there was the tiny giveaway of his penis, longer than a fishing boat!”

  “Ah.”

  “Ah, indeed! Now, I’m Chief Vastivias. You are Carden and Chamanca, from Britain. You’ve come to persuade me to fight the Romans.” Chamanca was pleased. It took no great intelligence network to know who they were or what they’d been doing, but it was still more than any other chief had managed. “Before you begin, allow me to introduce my Warriors and our druid.”

  The Warriors were Modaball, a man even fatter than Vastivias, with long red hair in pigtails, bare-chested above bizarrely high-waisted blue and white striped trousers, and Bran, a short man with a wily eye and a big blond moustache. The druid was Walfdan. He nodded formally to Carden, then took Chamanca’s hand and kissed it. Chamanca took Walfdan’s hand and kissed it back, which caused a good deal of amusement.

  “Now, tell me why I should risk my village,” boomed the chief.

  Vastivias listened intently to Chamanca’s arguments, stroking his russet moustache. For the first time since their mission had began, she felt that her points were being heard and considered, rather than pre-emptively dismissed.

  When she was done, he sent them away and consulted his Warriors and druid, before calling them back that afternoon to say that he agreed. He conceded that they had been foolish to give up hostages so readily in the first place. They would capture the Roman envoys and keep them until their own people were returned. Vastivias had
already sent riders to other chiefs to suggest they did the same. His own men, said Vastivias, would have a better chance of persuading them than a pair of odd-looking foreigners.

  That made sense, so, with little else to do, Chamanca and Carden settled in at Sea View to wait for the Romans and help with the hostage taking. As usual, Carden made friends easily. He spent the days with Bran and Modaball, hunting boar, eating boar and drinking. Chamanca envied his effortless sociability, but only to a degree. She didn’t need or want to make friends all over the place. She had a self-imposed rule about not drinking friends’ blood, so the fewer friends the better. She spent the time assessing the town’s constructions, evaluating its defences and talking to its people to try to understand their military capabilities.

  Every evening there was a feast on long tables in the central clearing. There wasn’t room for all the townspeople, so they took it in turns to come, but, as Vastivias’ guests, the Britons were invited every night. Carden tucked into the food like a man who’d been told that he wouldn’t eat again for a year, and even Chamanca had to admit that the Sea View’s chef’s roast boar was almost as good as blood.

  Chapter 6

  Publius sent three delegations of three envoys, each accompanied by a century of legionaries. Ragnall did not take to his two fellow envoys, Titus Sillius and Quintus Velanius, or, more accurately, they did not take to him. Officially, he was in charge, but Titus and Quintus didn’t accept that a former Briton could be in change of a man born Roman, so they did their best to undermine him at every turn, disobeying his orders even if it put them out to do so. If he ordered a stop, for example, they’d carry on and halt in a less favourable place a mile up the road. He tried to talk to them about it, about anything, but they ignored him.

  He tried talking to the legionaries but that was almost as difficult. Eventually, their centurion took him aside and quietly explained that someone as high ranking as an envoy was not meant to converse with the common soldiery.

  So it was a drudgeful trip and he missed Publius’s company, but this envoy duty was still at least a thousand times better than riding along that valley into Hari the Fister’s camp on his own.

  The Armorican leaders, thank Makka and Mars, were nothing like Hari the Fister either. All of them capitulated immediately to all demands, and already food wagons were rolling towards the Roman camp at Karnac. Sure, there were surly faces among the peasantry, and a shouted insult here and there when the odd brave shouter was absolutely certain that he or she couldn’t be identified, but, for the most part, the tribal leaders greeted them like deeply indebted Roman restaurant owners welcoming a pissed party of purple toga-wearing diners.

  There was something he didn’t like about this next town, though. Its name, Sea View, was unimaginative at best. There were no roads leading to it, apparently because the inhabitants went everywhere by boat and didn’t see the need for one, so for the last few miles they had to march single file along a path, which felt exposed; he expected a Gaul to pop out of the scrub and stick a spear in his midriff at any moment. When they arrived at the town, they had to wait for the tide to go out so they could cross the sand causeway that led to it.

  All these difficulties added together to produce something that felt a lot like defiance; exactly the sort of defiance that might make them refuse an envoy’s demands and cook him alive in whale blubber.

  Hundreds of Armoricans gathered on Sea View’s wall as the Romans approached. Ragnall told the century to hold and rode to the gate with the two envoys. He scanned the impudent Gaulish faces poking up behind the palisade. And saw Carden Nancarrow. Carden ducked as soon as Ragnall spotted him, which made Ragnall all the more certain that it had been him. He was about to tell Titus and Quintus what he’d seen when an inner voice bade him remain silent, at least for now.

  He explained to the gatekeeper what they wanted and promised that the soldiers would remain a hundred paces away. The gatekeeper disappeared. They sat on their horses, Ragnall squirming slightly under the hate-filled glare of the several hundred Gauls. He had no idea what to do. He was certain that it had been Carden. Carden and Atlas had advised the Germans how to fight the Romans, so the chances were that they were both here, doing the same again, and Sea View was preparing to attack his delegation, or at least capture it.

  So all sense said that he should warn Titus and Quintus. They could all have ridden on and sent a legion to destroy the town. But for some reason he stayed quiet. It wasn’t because Carden had saved his life by choosing him to catapult into the lake – he was pretty sure that Carden’s competitiveness had been the sole reason he’d tried so hard to ensure Ragnall survived his flight – and it wasn’t because he wanted to undermine the Roman mission. He wholeheartedly and unreservedly believed that Roman conquest would benefit Britain immeasurably. It was, he decided, purely because Titus and Quintus had been such pricks to him. He was going to get his own back.

  When the gatekeeper returned and said that Chief Vastivias would grant them an audience, Ragnall said: “Jupiter’s bollocks!”

  “What is it now?” asked Quintus, voice dripping with contempt. That resolved him.

  “I’ve left my purse where we were waiting for the tide to go out,” he said. “I remember where I put it. I went into the bushes to … well … I had to stash my purse somewhere safe and I forgot to pick it up.”

  “You can get it when we’ve finished here,” Titus snapped.

  “Sorry, I must go back now. That purse contains coins given to me by Caesar himself. I’ll catch up with you in the town. Surely you’re capable of beginning negotiations without me? You know how close I am to the general. He’d be upset if I lost his gift.”

  Quintus and Titus looked at Ragnall then at each other. He could tell they were unconvinced, but what could they do? He’d called their competence into question and he’d rolled the unbeatable friend-of-Caesar dice.

  “All right,” said Quintus. “But Publius will hear of this.”

  “I will tell him myself,” said Ragnall, pulling his horse around.

  The two envoys rode through the gate. The heavy wooden doors closed behind them. Ragnall rode back to the legionaries. They parted to let him through and he rode away along the beach.

  What had he done, he thought? He felt both thrilled and ashamed that he had betrayed Rome. Not Rome, he corrected himself, just those two cocks who deserved everything they got. Being boiled alive in whale blubber? They deserve that for being a tad uncivil? asked yet another little internal voice. Oh piss off, he replied.

  Chapter 7

  Dug lay on the wonderfully wet, cold ground, eyes closed, panting like a dying dog.

  “Come on, Dug,” Atlas’ voice said from somewhere above him.

  “I’m dead. Leave me alone.”

  “Up, Dug. It was your idea that I train—”

  “I know, I know.” Atlas was right. If they could whip every soldier to the peak of physical fitness, their chances of beating any army would increase massively. And leaders, annoyingly, had to lead by example. He clambered to his feet.

  “Come on! Next time I won’t be so gentle. Do you want to let your badgers down?” Atlas had split the army into companies, each comprising a hundred men and women. Every company had been given a name and a capable or well-known leader. Dug hoped he filled both of those categories, but he hadn’t been impressing himself much recently with his capabilities. Everything was more tiring than he remembered it being last time he’d trained for war, a decade and a lifetime before. He’d been given the command of the badger company, which amused everybody for some reason.

  Dug didn’t give the tiniest crap if he came last in a long-distance running race, but he knew that his company would be upset if it lost, so he clambered to his feet.

  Atlas set off at a run, following the hundreds of men and women who were already halfway up the hill. At the top, ahead of everyone else, was an unmistakeable blonde figure, jumping on the spot and shouting at the rest of them to catch up.
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  “Should have stayed on my farm,” panted Dug as he lumbered up the slope.

  Chapter 8

  “They have done what?” shouted Publius.

  “Sea View has taken Quintus and Titus as hostages.”

  “How dare they!”

  “They’re saying that we have some of them hostage, so it’s only fair that they take some of ours as collateral.”

  Publius looked like he might hit Ragnall, but instead he shook his head.

  “And why didn’t they take you?”

  “I had to go back along the beach. I’d forgotten something.”

  “Forgotten what?”

  “A purse of coins. We had to wait for ages for the tide to go out before we could get to the town. I’d had to … visit the bushes, so I stashed the purse, forgot it, then remembered it as the gates of the town opened.”

  “Convenient. Can you show me this purse?”

  “Here you go.” Ragnall reached into his toga pocket and took out his purse. It hadn’t been left behind in a bush but nobody knew that, and he had visited the bushes while they waited, and was sure that witnesses could be found to say that. He surprised himself with his skill at deception. Giving Publius a hurt look. “I’m sad that you needed to see it.”

  Publius seemed to deflate. “I’m sorry, old man. You’re right. It’s just that six more envoys have been taken by two other towns and we don’t have nearly enough food yet.”

  Ragnall gripped his shoulder. “That’s all right, I understand. What are you going to do?”

  “There is only one thing to do. That’s what’s put me in such a bad mood, I suppose. I’m going to have to kill some of our hostages.”