Clash of Iron (The Iron Age Trilogy)

by Angus Watson

  A balding, sharp-featured man stood forward, a blacksmith’s hammer in one hand and a heavy bag in the other. A surfeit of chest hair garnished the upper edge of his leather apron and short, thick arms sprouted from his wide torso. Below, on both sides of the walls, onlookers Gaulish and Roman strained to see the action. Ragnall’s view was unimpeded.

  The aproned man took a square-cut, foot-long iron nail from his bag. He felt Galba’s son’s wrist, looking for the right spot presumably, placed the tip of the nail, and raised his hammer. Galba’s son, finally realising that something bad was happening, wrenched his arm away with an animal squeak of fear. He looked at his arm. The nail’s tip had scored a red mark. Beads of blood bloomed all along the scratch. The Danu’s Child looked at his wounded arm, eyes wide, chewing his jaw like a cow on the cud. Ragnall had seen the Danu’s Children on the Island of Angels chewing like that when they didn’t understand what was happening.

  The aproned man cursed the soldier, who gripped the arm again.

  A heavy sickness grew from Ragnall’s stomach into his throat as the aproned man hammered the nail though Galba’s son’s wrist. Phlegmy roars from the child tore right into his heart. He almost rushed forward to free the boy. Almost.

  The aproned man nipped round to the other wrist and repeated the action, barking orders at the legionaries to leave some slack in the arms. The boy’s roars had become sobbing chokes. The aproned man secured the second wrist with two well-practised hammer strikes, then instructed the legionaries to lay the boy’s feet one over the other, so that he might hammer one nail through both arches.

  The cross was lifted and fixed into place. Galba’s son was alternately screaming in fear and pain and sobbing in sorrow. Blood dripped from his fingers and toes on to the stone of the wall. Ragnall looked at the crowd. Most of them, Roman and Gaulish, looked horror-struck but fascinated. Some watched with unconcealed glee. Others, both Romans and Gauls, walked away.

  “Do you want to hear something funny?” said a voice behind him. A voice that he knew. He turned. His hair was a little more receded than when Ragnall had last seen him, but his small-toothed grin was the same. So, Felix had caught up with them again.

  “Guess how he’s going to die, the – um – Danu’s Child?” He grinned, as if impressed with himself for remembering the British term.

  “From crucifixion?” Ragnall replied.

  “More specifically,” said Felix. “Is he going to bleed to death perhaps? Or die of thirst?”

  “I don’t know. I hope it’s quick.”

  “Quick? Oh no, no, we don’t want quick. Had you a hundredth of the understanding of magic that your pathetic old mentor mistakenly saw in you, you’d understand that quick is no good. Which reminds me – you!” he called to a legionary, who nodded. “Make sure I get this body. You’ll be up there next if I don’t.” The legionary paled and nodded.

  “No,” Felix continued, “crucifixion is nastier than it looks.” Ragnall raised an eyebrow. How could it be nastier? “Our boy here will drown.”

  Ragnall looked up at the nearly cloudless sky. Despite himself, he was interested. “Are we in for some rain?”

  Felix laughed. “Drowning is when your lungs fill with fluid and you can no longer breathe. That’s going to happen here, with no help from rain. But not for a long time, and therein lies the magic of crucifixion. Soon, the muscles in his chest will twist and cramp and become so agonised and weakened that he won’t be able to breathe. With no breath entering the lungs, the body’s fluids seep into them. Every single person you crucify will do the same thing next. The need to breathe will override all, and, despite the agony, he will push upwards on his feet – scraping those little foot bones against the iron nail – to try and lift himself and catch a breath. With no power in his arms and very little in his legs, he will be able to gasp only the smallest morsels of air, but it will be enough keep him alive.”

  Ragnall wanted to get away. He turned to go.

  Felix took his arm. “Here’s the clever bit. That little gulp of air will bring on a transformation. I must confess I’m not sure how it happens, but strength will return to his arms and chest. He will be able to lift himself and breathe again, as easily as you and I stand here breathing. As he breathes, his lungs will clear and the pain will return.

  “That sequence,” continued Felix, raising his voice above the Danu’s Child’s wails, “will repeat again and again. Each time the strength returns it will return a little less, until, perhaps a couple of days later if he’s strong, he will no longer be able to fill his lungs with air. The fluids of the body will fill them and he will drown for a final, fatal time. Throughout it all, the panic and the pain will grow and grow. They tell you that being stabbed in the gut is the most gruesome death. They’re wrong. Crucifixion is immeasurably more … excruciating.”

  “I’m going.”

  Felix stiffened the grip on his arm. “After smashing Spartacus’s slave revolt a dozen years ago, Crassus, Caesar’s friend whom you will know from Rome, crucified six thousand slaves, one every forty paces from coast to coast across Italy. Can you imagine this,” he raised a palm at the boy, “multiplied six thousand times?”

  Ragnall shook his head.

  “The exercise was very … useful to me. But that’s not why he did it. Do you know what made him visit agonising, fatal horror on six thousand people?”

  “I don’t.”

  “Pride. Nothing more than personal rivalry and the need for fame. Marcus Licinius Crassus defeated the slaves and killed Spartacus, but Caesar’s other good friend, Gnaeus Pompeius Maximus – Pompey – tried to steal Crassus’s glory. He arrived late in the day, chased down some fleeing rebel slaves and put five thousand of them to the sword. The shock of the massacre rang through Rome, thrilling the citizens, and everyone began to say it was Pompey, not Crassus, who had beaten Spartacus. So Crassus, purely so that he and not Pompey would be remembered as the hero who’d vanquished the slaves, crucified six thousand of his captives. He did this,” Felix nodded up at the screaming boy, “to six thousand men and women simply to bolster his own reputation.”

  Felix’s eyes hardened. “Understand this, Ragnall. Those two men, Crassus and Pompey, who will torture and kill thousands as easily as you might swat a fly, are now in league with Caesar – a man who has already slaughtered tens of thousands and not considered it too many. The three of them share power in Rome, with no challengers worth mentioning.”

  “So?”

  “So, if Britain resists Roman rule, it’s going to go very badly for the British. There are some in Rome who see such large-scale slaughter as distasteful, which is why Caesar tempers it here. In Britain, Caesar will be far from sensitive Roman eyes. He will be free to indulge his desires, one of which is to outdo Pompey and Crassus’s cruelties and be more celebrated than them in the histories of generations to come. Britain is a great deal wider than Italy, Ragnall, and forty paces may seem too large a gap between crucifixions. I can see the entire Maidun army and all its people – the old and the very young – hanging on crosses stretching the breadth of the island, with only ten paces between each one. Can you picture it?”

  Ragnall could. He swallowed.

  “That is why Britain must not resist. You, pathetic as you are, might still hold some sway there. Look at the Danu’s Child.”

  Ragnall tore himself from Felix’s grip. He left the wall and headed back to the Roman camp. He wanted to run, but he kept himself to a walk, speeding up when he heard the bang of the hammer and the cries of Galba’s second son.

  On the way to his tent he came upon Caesar, walking briskly to some new business in the camp and dictating to his scurrying scribes on the hoof.

  “Caesar showed mercy to the town,” he said as Ragnall passed, “taking two of Galba’s sons hostage to ensure peace. Caesar took the boys into his tent and treated them as if they were his own.”

  Chapter 40

  “Dug! Spring!” said Mal, as they approached. He was sitting in
the command area of the Eyrie with Nita, alongside few other high-up Maidun men and women and, Dug was surprised to see, Queen Ula of Kanawan.

  “Ula!” said Dug. She was as beautiful as when they’d met her in Kanawan before Dug’s battle with the Monster, but her eyes were harder now, as if she’d had a difficult few years. “What are you … actually we better tell you our news first. It’s not good. The deputation north has been slaughtered. Lowa and Spring were the only survivors. They have Lowa captive and intend to burn her in their wicker woman. I don’t know when, possibly the next full moon.”

  “Miller…?” asked Mal. He and Miller had been good friends for a long time. Dug did not know what to say.

  “He took a good number of them with him,” said Spring, “and he died well and quickly. Neither Lowa nor I would be alive if it weren’t for him.”

  “Damn,” said Mal, putting his head into his hands.

  “We have other bad news,” said Spring. Dug was surprised. She was talking like a well-informed, intelligent, diplomatic ruler. Was this the same girl who’d just pleaded with him for the story of the war with the halfmen? “Dumnonia has turned traitor and invited Manfrax of Eroo to bring his armies across the sea from the west to Britain. Grummog of the Murkans is gathering an army to attack us, too. So, Dumnonians included, Maidun is about to face three armies, each one substantially larger than its own.”

  “But not so well trained!” said Nita.

  “Manfrax’s army is ferocious,” said Ula. “That’s why I’m here,” she added, turning to Dug and Spring. “After I left you at Mearhold, I travelled with the Kanawans through Dumnonia. We found no welcome and no free land, so we went to Eroo. Everywhere we went on that beautiful but terribly sad island we saw destitute people and heard of Manfrax’s evil deeds. His army torture for fun. We were lucky to escape back across the sea to Kimruk, where we’ve been living not far from the Island of Angels. A few days ago fishermen from Eroo told us that Manfrax’s army is on the move again, this time bound for southern Britain. It’s tens of thousands strong. There can be no holding against it.”

  “There can,” said Nita. “Zadar’s army was formidable. Lowa has enlarged it and improved it beyond measure. It’s meant for fighting the Romans but it will serve well enough against Manfrax.”

  “And Grummog’s Murkans, and Bruxon’s Dumnonians?” asked Mal.

  “Yes,” said Nita, “but we will need Lowa leading it. The question is, how much of the army do we take north to retrieve her from the Murkans? There’s always the risk that the Dumnonians will attack the instant they know we’re gone.”

  “Which is why…” said Spring, then outlined her plan for her and Dug to rescue Lowa while the army stayed put.

  Her listeners were sceptical initially, but Spring won them round with arguments that Dug couldn’t follow. Shortly afterwards, after stopping only to provision on their way through Maidun, he found himself riding north with Spring and no one else, her leading one spare horse, him leading three.

  Chapter 41

  Over the next few days, Grummog and Pomax paraded Lowa around the Murkan lands. Grummog and others were on horseback. Pomax followed behind on foot, then it was Lowa, naked save for bandages over her injuries, wrist and ankle shackles and an iron hoop around her neck, attached to a chain held by Pomax. The Murkan queen hadn’t hurt her since the tit grab and, thank Danu, none of her wounds had become infected. The twins who guarded her in the evening had applied poultices – they’d actually been gentle and kind – and the poultices had worked. Her puncture wounds were sore, very sore, but movement had fully returned to the fingers on her left hand and the pain was not nearly as severe as it would have been had the cuts become infected. So there were a couple of positives, thought Lowa.

  The Murkans – teenagers, toddlers, Warriors, weaklings, the sick, the old and afraid, the young and confident, even a few Danu’s Children – all left whatever business they were going about to run up and mock the Maidun queen. Some of them hit her before Pomax stopped them, but most of them spat on her, which Pomax allowed. Some of them flung pots of urine at her. One young man splashed Pomax’s legs with his piss and Pomax dropped Lowa’s chain, chased him, caught him with a whip around the neck, stabbed her nails into his lower back and pulled out a chunk of bone – a vertebra, Lowa guessed, but it was hard to tell with all the blood. Lowa, to her shame, stood and watched this, waiting for Pomax to come back and pick up her chain. She could have tried to escape, but the slim chance of getting away was massively outweighed by the terror of what Pomax might do to her next.

  All along their route, Grummog and his cronies would crow to the people about how he’d bested the queen of the south, and how they could join him to do the same to her army. Walking behind, Pomax would shout that they should all come to Mallam for sunset on the next full moon, so that they might see Lowa burnt to death in the wicker woman.

  Chapter 42

  For the first time since they’d returned to Gaul, Atlas was in a good mood. Finally, in the Nervee and their allies, he’d found a relatively coordinated and obedient army. Finally, in the Nervee’s king Bodnog, he’d found what he called an intelligent ruler – in other words, a ruler who listened to Atlas and accepted every suggestion that he made. King Hari the Fister had been like that for a while, but had always seemed flighty and it had not been a massive surprise when he’d gone against Atlas’ advice and got all his people killed. Bodnog appeared to be a much more solid ally.

  Atlas told Chamanca that the thing that really pissed him off about the embarrassingly easy Roman conquest was that the Gauls had so much information about Roman movements. The key to winning any war, and, to an extent, any battle, was information. The Romans were invaders in a strange land, so just about anybody in Gaul could ride up to the Roman army, take a look, talk to the cooks, most legionaries and even some of the centurions, then ride away. Thanks to scouts, and as much to travelling merchants, prostitutes and bards, the Gauls always knew exactly where the Romans were and where they were going. Yet they had done nothing with this knowledge. So many times the Romans were vulnerable. So many times the Gauls could have annihilated them. So many opportunities had been pissed away, Atlas had ranted, by this dunderheaded shower of morons more interested in settling local rivalries than staying alive. Hopefully, things would be different with Bodnog and the Nervee.

  As they helped prepare the Nervee army, they heard tales of more and more Gaulish tribes surrendering without a fight, as Atlas had predicted. They heard that the Romans had arrived at Galba’s Soyzonix capital, a well-fortified citadel, the largest town in Gaul, surely capable of repelling any attack and lasting through any siege. The next day they heard that Galba had opened the gates without a struggle and ushered the enemy in.

  Finally, they heard that Caesar’s army was about to march west, into Nervee land. From around a hundred sources they heard the Romans’ route and marching order. Atlas, Chamanca and Carden had already scouted the area, and the plan was clear and easy. An hour’s walk from the Nervee capital was the perfect valley. One side was densely wooded. The other side was steep grazing land. The flattish bottom of the valley contained a broad road, along which the Roman army would march. The neck of the valley that the enemy would reach first was narrow, broadening out towards the Nervee capital. It was the perfect location for a very large ambush.

  Bodnog, on Atlas’ advice, set his people to clearing the undergrowth from the forest, so that the Nervee might move through it freely. They piled the removed scrub and debris on the edge of the woods facing the Roman advance, so that it would be impenetrable to their scouts.

  Two days before the estimated Roman arrival, the Nervee prepared food, sharpened swords, axes and spearheads and carried bag loads of slingstones, buckets of drinking water and other supplies into the forest. The evening before, they all moved into the trees and found places to try to sleep. There were no fires.

  Atlas, Carden and Chamanca sat in the darkness. They were near Bodnog, at t
he east end of the valley. The Romans would come from that direction in standard marching order – cavalry, an advance guard of one legion, then the surveyors and engineers, then Caesar and his retinue, then each legion followed by its baggage. The plan was to wait for the advance guard, Caesar and the first legion to pass. When the baggage of the first legion behind Caesar passed Bodnog’s position, the entire Nervee army was to surge from the trees and attack. On the other side of the valley, high up and hidden by hedgerows, were people waiting to push huge boulders and burning logs down into the valley at the moment of attack. This might kill a good number of Romans, but more importantly it would obstruct the valley’s narrow neck and hamper the following legions’ advance, hopefully for long enough to enable the slaughter of the two advance legions and Caesar himself. After that, it didn’t matter what the remaining two legions did. They could flee, in which case they’d be harried all the way back to Rome and destroyed, or they could attack a strong Nervee position in the valley and be cut down.

  “Of course something can go wrong,” said Atlas, “but I can’t see what. Even if certain elements go awry, the Nervee will still win easily. The Romans will be spread out along the road. The Nervee coming from the woods will have ten fighters to every one of theirs. Surely we will win victory tomorrow? It can’t be that simple, though. What have I missed?”

  “You’ve missed two things,” Chamanca said. “One, the Romans might find out that we’re here and halt before they get to the valley.”