Clash of Iron

by Angus Watson

  Fuck, thought Lowa. “Atlas?”

  “I haven’t seen him. He was leading the force on the beach. Knowing him, I suspect he held the enemy back while the others escaped, if he hadn’t already been killed.”

  “OK,” said Lowa. Things were not going to plan. New plans were needed. “Any idea how to beat these Fassites, Maggot?”

  “Same as you beat anyone,” Maggot cocked his head, “find a soft bit, stick some metal in it.”

  “Thanks, useful.”

  “…and,” Maggot’s eyes bulged hugely, “it so happens some druid or other persuaded them a couple of years back to always go into battle bareheaded, for religious reasons, don’t you see? Danu made your body but Bel made your head and he don’t like to see it covered. So, although they’ve skulls that make oxen look brittle-headed and most slingstones’ll just bounce off them, an arrow to the face’ll slow them right down.”

  “Good, Maggot, thanks. Adler, how many arrows do we have here?”

  “Hardly any.” Adler shook her head. “We hadn’t planned—”

  “Oh yes you had,” said Maggot, gesturing over his shoulder with a thumb. On the central road through the hillfort, standing peacefully with no drivers to be seen, were eight oxen and four large carts. The carts were packed with quiver after quiver of arrows and sheaves of bows.

  Lowa looked at Maggot. He smiled. She looked at the arrows again, then back to the weird druid.

  “You’re very deeply involved with all this, aren’t you?” she said. “Tell me everything you know. Quickly.”

  Maggot paused, then said in a rapid staccato voice: “Fresh eggs taste nicer, the biggest fish have to come to the surface to breath air so they’re not really fish, if you feed a dog you’ve got a friend for life, but if you kick a cat—”

  “For fuck’s sake,” said Lowa. She turned to look for Adler, but found Mal standing there.

  “Nita?” he asked.

  Five years before she would have lied or let someone else deliver the bad news, but five years of leadership had taught her that if you treated people how you’d want to be treated yourself, you got it right most of the time. She took a deep breath and looked Mal in the eye.

  “Nita saved Spring’s life but died doing so. Then Spring killed the Warrior who killed Nita – it was the same one who killed Miller.”

  Mal’s face fell.

  “I’m sorry, Mal. We’ll grieve together when we are done here. When we’ve killed the rest of these bastards. Now, will you arrange distribution of these bows and arrows, and the manning of the walls to repel three armies?”

  He nodded, once.

  “Thank you. You’ll need to be quick, focusing resources to the south-west at first. I’m going to meet the chariots and the cavalry—”

  She kept her instructions brief, then galloped back northwards.

  Chapter 34

  “Up Frogshold, follow the chariot in front of you, form a circle fifty paces below outer hillfort wall, spike chariots! Bring horses into hillfort!” came the shouted order. Dug repeated the shout to the chariot behind.

  “What?” asked Spring.

  “Follow the chariot ahead,” said Dug. “When it stops, you stop, we get out, I smash a wheel so the chariot becomes an obstacle, we take the horse up to the fort.”

  Spring nodded. Dug wondered if she knew what the order meant. They were giving up on chariot warfare and preparing for a siege. The horses’ role had changed from draught animals to food. So Eroo must have landed successfully, defeated Atlas’ infantry and the Dumnonian army on the beach, and the entire remaining Maidun force was piling into the nearest redoubt – Frogshold.

  They stopped and Dug smashed a chariot wheel with his hammer. He went to help the charioteers behind disable their vehicle while Spring unbuckled the horse. He wanted very much to stop and look out over the land to work out exactly what was happening, but there were things to do, first of which was to get Spring safely into the fort.

  They headed up the hill with the other light and heavy chariot crews, Dug with his hammer in one hand and the horse’s rein in the other. Spring had her recurve in one hand, her longbow in the other, with her quiver slapping on her back. There was a press at the gate, so they had to pause and Dug took the opportunity to survey the scene.

  Badgers’ balls, he thought. The land stretched out huge to the south and east. He could see Gutrin Tor clearly, across fifteen miles of reclaimed fields and marshland. The coastline to the west was fringed with beached ships. Between them and the hill were what must have been the Eroo army, thick on the land and countless in number. South of them, crawling slowly towards Frogshold, was another army. Dumnonia, he thought. So they had turned.

  Nearer, at the foot of the hill, were Maidun infantry, running like men and women who’d run a long way but were determined to keep going. As they should be, because three hundred paces behind them, the tail of infantry was being hard pressed by some very large Eroo warriors. Very large – and so broad! Dug had heard they made them big in Eroo, but these were stupidly big. Perhaps, he thought, his eyesight was finally failing. Many people his age were in permanent bad moods because they couldn’t see what the Bel was going on most of the time.

  He and Spring jogged in through the entrance with a flow of other charioteers and cavalry and their horses. Inside the gates were two loud-mouthed Two Hundred riders screaming at everyone to press on through into the centre of the hillfort. As he jogged, Dug nodded his appreciation. Someone was organising things well. The last thing you wanted in a situation like this was the sort of idiots who stopped as soon as they’d got though a gate and blocked it for everyone following.

  There were more screamers stationed along the road, hurrying people along. At the crossroads in the hillfort’s centre stood a couple more, handing out quivers and arrows, shouting for those with bows to head left and right to the walls and for those leading horses to carry on ahead. Next to them was Mal, directing it all.

  Dug was surprised and pleased to see that Mal had taken the news about Nita so well. If it had been Lowa, Dug would have been among the Eroo, fighting until he was cut down. Mal was doing the sensible thing and contributing more constructively to the battle effort. He was clearly made of stronger stuff.

  Spring handed Dug her recurve bow, and Dug passed their horse’s leading rein to a woman who already had two others. Dug took a quiver from Mal, and nodded at him, trying to convey condolences and respect in one motion. They had to get to the walls, there was no time for chat.

  Mal nodded back, his chin set, his eyes filled with all the sorrow in the world.

  On the wall, they were directed leftwards. They jogged along with other archers until they came to a woman directing people to their allotted places, shouting at everyone to line the walls tightly, but not to crowd. Each archer was to have enough space at the palisade to arm and shoot their bows, with a gap left behind for movement and supplies. Dug attempted to pass her by. She put a hand on his chest, looked up, saw who it was and let him go. He took Spring’s hand and pulled her with him.

  They found Lowa next to the gate, looking out to the south-west, bow in her hand, arrow-stuffed quiver on her back. Dug nodded a greeting, then followed her gaze.

  The front-running Maidun infantry had reached the circle of chariots. A gap had been left clear to give them passage. It was hard to estimate, but behind them were perhaps five thousand Maidun infantry, which meant that fifteen thousand more had not made it back from the beach.

  Still a good distance away, but hard pressed on the tail of the Maidun infantry were the huge Eroo warriors …

  “They are giants!” Dug heard himself saying out loud.

  “Yup,” said Lowa. “Fassites.”

  Fassites, thought Dug, staring at them, still not quite believing his ears or his eyes. It was like whales had mated with humans and produced offspring sized somewhere between the two species.

  “Wow,” said Spring next to him. “This isn’t good.”

  “N
o,” said Lowa, “but I’d say they’re just coming into our range.”

  Spring nodded, craning her head forward to peer at them. “They’re wearing thick armour, but no helmets, so it’ll have to be head shots. Armour-piercing arrows will be best.”

  Lowa nodded.

  On either side of Dug, Spring and Lowa reached into their quivers, plucked out arrows, drew, aimed and loosed. He felt the air vibrate. Those longbows of Elann’s were truly amazing. It was just a shame that she’d made only three and that Chamanca had broken one of them. Not that anyone other that Lowa and Spring were capable of drawing them. Dug had tried. He could draw it all the way, but not more than a couple of times before his muscles were spent. Spring had reassured him that it was much more to do with technique than strength.

  The arrows disappeared off and the three of them watched. A mile away, a Fassite fell.

  “Mine,” said Spring and Lowa, at the same time. They glanced a “you’re wrong” look at each other, then strung their bows again.

  Dug looked at his recurve bow, then back to the rest of the Fassites. It would be a good while before they were in his and everybody else’s range.

  The Fassites stopped their pursuit well before the range of normal bows, after Lowa and Spring had taken down four of them. The rest retreated out of longbow range. The Eroo army caught up with them, and fanned out to encircle Frogshold.

  Dug, Lowa and Spring stayed on the wall by the gate and Dug listened as reports came to Lowa. The Murkan army had arrived and were spread out to the north. The Dumnonians had indeed turned, although they hadn’t yet attacked anyone, and their army was occupying the causeways and islands in the marshes to the east. The Murkans and their giant Fassites had the south and west covered. So they were surrounded by three armies, each of which was much larger than their own, more than half of which they’d already lost to the Fassites and Eroo.

  “Not what we planned,” said Dug.

  “Plans only ever last until you meet the enemy,” Lowa said.

  That sounded good, thought Dug, but it wasn’t true. The battle on the plain at Sarum, for example, had gone pretty much exactly according to plan. But they’d been lucky there.

  They watched the enemy armies set up their camps as the evening drew on. All around Frogshold, Dumnonian, Murkan, Fassite and Eroo cook fires stretched off into the distance. If you forgot for a moment what it signified, it was rather beautiful.

  Lowa stationed watchmen, sent parties to make and light small fires all along the ring of chariots so they might see any attacks in the dark, then they left the walls for the night.

  Chapter 35

  “We all know about Tans Tali and great Queen Sara,” said Maggot to Lowa, Dug, Spring and the others gathered around their fire. He jumped and spun about as he spoke, ornaments jangling, eyeing each of his audience in turn. “But at the same time, hundred of generations ago, there were other great lands, tribes and cities that have since been covered by the sea.

  “Think about it!” he cried. “Of course there was other shit going on. The whole world was frozen! All the water that is now the sea was ice, and the ice was sitting on what is now the land. The people walked around, planted crops, raised animals and built their towns on what is now the bottom of the sea. Hard to get your head around! But it’s true. And this land was vast. Vast! Dug there is from the north tip of Britain so he knows how big Britain is. Well, the land back then, in the time of ice, was a hundred times the size! Bigger!” Maggot waved his arms in circles.

  “And so, of course, there were many more types of animal – loads of big weird ones and weirder small ones, you often see their remains in rocks by the sea – and, here’s the clincher, there were different types of people. We know about the halfmen, who got massacred by the humans just after the age of ice, but there were loads more. Little tiny people who ran along on their hands. Hairy people. People with only one leg who could hop over trees. And, of course, giants.” Maggot stood on tiptoes, raising his arms high above his head.

  “One group of giants was the … Fassites! Our friends from today. There weren’t many of them, thank Danu, because they are about the most violent, cruel people that ever lived. You think humans are bad? Manfrax? Caesar? Zadar? Kittens compared to the Fassites.

  “When the great flood came, like loads of other animals, including us, the surviving Fassites found themselves on a new island. In their case, it was Eroo. Luckily for everyone else in Eroo, the waters kept rising, Eroo was split in two and the island that we now call Fassent was created.”

  A few people nodded. The mysterious island, to the south of Eroo, was known about and avoided.

  “Ever wondered why we know nothing about Fassent even though it’s only a bit further than Eroo? ’Cos nobody goes there. And why does nobody go there? Because anyone who does gets killed by the nasty Fassites. So the Fassites stayed secret, known about only in Eroo. They grew in number and the danger from them grew. They had no boats, but, as Manfrax realised, it was only a matter of time before some exploratory idiot from Greece or Rome landed on their shore and the Fassites thought ‘oh, look what you can do with wood’, built a fleet and invaded the first place they came to, which would have been Eroo, because you can see it from Fassent.

  “So when Manfrax had finished shitting all over the rest of his own island, he looked about for a way of dealing with the Fassite problem. Bruxon, the deluded king of Dumnonia, asked him to invade Britain, and Manfrax found his answer. He went to Fassent and stood in a boat twenty paces from shore and shouted his plan to the Fassites. He’d build them boats, they’d sail to Britain and have all the people to kill and all the land that they could ever need. The condition was that they would never come to Eroo.

  “The Fassites agreed, and Manfrax set in motion something that was always going to happen when the Fassites got off their island – the next stage of life, in which Fassites kill all the humans, just like the humans killed the halfmen. There are enough Fassites here to be a problem, but now that they know about boats, many more will come. They’ll kill everyone in Britain, they will multiply like rats in a deserted grain store, then they will kill everyone else. They may leave Eroo until last, due to their agreement with Manfrax, but I doubt it.”

  Fire-lit Maidun faces stared dumbly at him.

  A familiar voice came out of the darkness: “The question is, how can we kill them before they kill us?” The voice’s owner walked into the firelight. It was Atlas.

  Spring leapt up with the rest of them, crowding round and asking what had happened. Even Lowa had a genuine-looking smile. On this day of bad news, everyone was overjoyed that somebody they thought had died was alive.

  Spring saw Lowa nod to Dug.

  “Quiet everyone, quiet,” shouted Dug, “let Atlas tell his story.”

  Atlas told them how they’d killed the first five giants. When the second wave of dozens of them appeared, he’d ordered half the army to hold the shield wall and the other half to retreat. So half the army had fled, and the others had stood to die so that the rest might get away. The giants had struck, then he remembered nothing. He’d woken as the sun was setting and made his way through the enemy camps to Frogshold.

  “With skin like mine,” he finished, “it is easy to creep through the night.”

  “Unless you smile!” said a wag.

  “I wasn’t in a smiling mood,” snarled Atlas. She couldn’t see him in the dark, but in Spring’s mind the wag curled up like a salted slug. Atlas continued: “The immediate question now is how can we beat the Fassites? I cannot see a way. We also face the Dumnonian, Eroo and Murkan armies. Unless the Gauls have upped their challenge or Chamanca and Carden have pulled off a miracle, the Romans will be here any day, though I fear that they won’t find anybody from Maidun left to oppose them.”

  “I know what we need to do.” Everyone turned to Maggot. “The gods planted the idea in my head before I was born and it’s grown into a tree. I know exactly what we need to do.” Spring thought the
use of “we” was odd, for Dumnonia’s chief druid talking to the Maidun leaders. He smiled at them all.

  “What then?” asked Lowa.

  “We send someone to talk to their three kings. That’s all I can see. I don’t know what he should say. But I know it will work.”

  “He?” asked Lowa.

  “Oh yes, I know who the gods have chosen as our envoy. It’s Dug Sealskinner.”

  Everyone turned to Dug.

  “No,” said Spring. “Not him. I’ll go.”

  “No, I will,” said Lowa.

  “Think, Spring.” Maggot put a hand on her shoulder.

  Spring closed her eyes but she didn’t need to. She didn’t need to think. She knew Maggot was right, as surely as she knew that she had two feet. Dug had to talk to the three kings. She didn’t know how she knew, but she did.

  “He is right. Dug has to talk to them. It’s our only hope. I think he’ll be OK. I don’t think they’ll kill him,” she said.

  Maggot smiled sadly at her.

  “I’ll do it,” said Dug, as if agreeing to get the next bucket of water from the well. Thinking of water, Spring had a sudden flash of her nightmares in which Dug was dead and bumping along the bottom of the sea.

  “Hang on.” said Lowa. “There’s no point—”

  “I see it too,” said Dug. “I’m meant to go. I don’t know how I know, but I do. Don’t you fuss, it’s all going to be all right.”

  Chapter 36

  Grummog had refused Manfrax’s summons, so the Murkan force was not represented. Army administration was the excuse, but Bruxon had heard that the northern king was catatonic with grief after the death of his queen, Pomax. His weakness appalled Bruxon. He had physical urges himself, which he satisfied with ambitious, unscrupulous women, but the idea of caring for another person to the degree that their death prevented you from going about your business was utterly alien to him, as perverse as the existence of the Fassites. He suspected that such silly, useless bonds were the preserve of the unintelligent.