Age of Iron (36 page)

Beyond the trees, a good few miles beyond, low hills loomed. Off to the left was a long lozenge of a mound which presumably led to Gutrin Tor, but he couldn’t see that far from his sickbed.

It was his third day of lying flat on his back being chewed by a chestful of worming horror. Much of the time he distracted himself. He watched the birdlife on the water – fowl swimming, swifts dipping, kingfishers plopping. Ducks landing was his favourite avian spectacle. They came down panic-faced with mad flapping wings, looking like they were going to land with all the grace of a horse thrown off a pier. But instead they slid onto the surface with a musical splash and sailed off as if they’d planned it that way all along, eyes forward and beaks haughty.

Often the splashes and quacks of the ducks lulled him to sleep, but mostly he lay awake, thinking. Sometimes he mulled over memories of his wife and daughters, for the millionth time fantasising about what would have happened if he’d got home in time to meet the raiders who’d murdered them. Mostly, however, he fantasised about life with Lowa. He’d kill Zadar and they’d go north, maybe back to his old broch or, even better, to one of their own. He’d always get stuck however on
how
he was going to kill Zadar. To kill a king, you have to get close to him. How were they going to do that?

Maggot changed the maggots every morning and dropped by throughout the day. “If I don’t take ’em away and put new ones in, they’ll turn into flies and they’ll fly you away, man, across the sea,” he’d said that morning before telling Dug about the land of giant leaf-eating bears that lay on the other side of the ocean. “Two, maybe three moons in a boat, man, you’ll be there. I might go myself if this Zadar ruins the peace any more.”

Spring hadn’t been around in the day at all, but Lowa had popped in a few times. Always with the young man Ragnall. Ragnall, he’d found, was polite and intelligent. He was interested in Dug and had interesting things to report about Mearhold. He was a decent, charming, well put-together young chap who was helping to keep Lowa from boredom. Dug didn’t like him at all.

King Vole had visited the previous evening. He was prematurely balding with a haughty bearing, but, half shitfaced as he was on Maggot’s medicinal cider, Dug hadn’t paid him much attention. Reasonably enough anyway, the king had been more interested in Lowa than Dug. So it looked like Lowa was being courted by a king and a young lord, which wasn’t ideal.

“Hello.”

His reverie was broken by a visitor. He hadn’t seen him before, but Dug knew who he was. In the evenings, while Lowa was out with Ragnall or sitting on her bed quietly fletching arrow shafts, Spring had told him at great length about everyone in the village. She’d said the wisest-looking druid she’d ever seen was ill next door. With his long white beard, wrinkled face and brightly inquisitive eyes, this had to be the guy.

“Hi. You’re Drustan the druid. I’m Dug. Good to see you up. How are you feeling?”

“I am surprised and pleased to tell you that I am almost fully recovered. Do you mind?” Drustan gestured towards a three-legged wooden stool.

“Please do. Before you sit though, could you grab me that cider off the side, please?”

“A pleasure.” Drustan handed the cider to Dug and sat down.

“Aye, it’s meant to be this evening’s dose, but I’ve drunk the afternoon ration already and I can still feel the wee buggers. Anyway, you’re looking well? Spring said you had a lung sickness?”

“I did. But that Maggot is a talented healer.”

“And a strange one?”

“Perhaps. Ragnall told me about your maggots. I have heard the idea, but it is intriguing to see it put into practice. You are very brave.”

Dug laughed gently.

“What?” asked Drustan.

“Bravery is jumping into a storm sea to save your dog, something like that. Tolerating treatment for illness or injury isn’t bravery. It’s life.”

“Yes, yes. I had never thought that through, but you are right. What an interesting fellow you are. Perhaps you could tell me what you are doing here, if it is not too troubling for your chest?”

Dug liked the old man already. “The pain’s almost gone. It’s my last day with maggots. But I am fairly drunk?”

Drustan chuckled. “The best stories are told after a drink or two.”

“Or six or seven?”

“Or indeed, six or seven. Perhaps you could tell me the story of how you met Lowa, and how you came to be on Mearhold? She is intriguing. I’d like to know all about her.”

“I bet you would.”

Drustan chuckled. “Not like that. One’s skin is not the only thing that droops with age. It is her story, and yours – and Spring’s – that I am interested in.”

“OK, I’ll tell you how we all ended up here.” Dug closed his eyes. “It was a sunny day and I didn’t think there was going to be a battle…”

W
eylin held his breath, light-headed with anticipation. After all those boring, boring miles, finally it was coming, it was coming … He crested the ridge. He kept his head lowered and screwed his eyes shut to tease himself. He waited, waited, then opened his eyes and boom! There it was. Maidun Castle burst from its brown surrounds like a giant molar tooth, bright white against the blue sky, a giant fist raised in defiance of people and gods. He felt joy bloom from his stomach and almost cheered. He’d pictured it so often, he’d dreamed about it every night, but every time he came back, the first sight of Maidun always struck him like a bucket of cold water to the face.

It was so awesome. Even from this distance, just seeing its triple chalk walls topped with a stout palisade would put a wobble in the stride of any attacker, no matter how great his courage or his army. Get up close, and all hope would flee like hares from a wolf. Oh, would hope flee! Get up close, and the most courageous strutting hero would feel his mighty balls shrivel into rotting hazelnuts and his bowels churn with slurry.

They said that people had started to flatten the top of Maidun hill and carve out walls from its flanks thousands of years before, before even the end of the Great Winter. Over hundreds of generations, thousands upon thousands of men, women and beasts had dug and cut and carried the chalk rock to create today’s magnificent, impregnable fortress. Thinking about the time it must have taken, the amount of work that must have gone into it, hurled Weylin’s mind into a spin.

It made all the other hillforts look like ambitious badgers’ setts.

It was more than a thousand paces long and four hundred paces across. The outer wall was fifty paces high, with a tall palisade on top angled flush with the slope’s vertiginous incline, so that if some gods-blessed fool managed to make it up the near-vertical chalk wall without being killed by slingstone, spear, boulder or arrow, he’d have nowhere to hide and nowhere to go. Maybe he’d be lucky then and get a boulder on his head. More likely he’d be doused in burning oil and fall screaming down the slope. He’d crash flapping into his comrades below, splashing them with oil, and they’d catch alight and fall too. Weylin rubbed his hands together with glee at the thought.

And that was just the outer wall. There were two more inside that. They were even more formidable. The inner one was a hundred paces high. All three had palisades, linked to each other and the fort’s interior by wooden bridges which could be burned if the outer walls fell. The bridges made the defence of the fort a total doddle. A blast on the trumpets and everybody could be on the outer wall in moments. In between the walls were ditches so steep and deep that the sun seldom shone on the spikes spread along their depths. Weylin almost wished it was possible for an attacker to gain the palisade of the first wall, just to see the look on his face when he looked down into the ditch, then up at the second and third walls. Then there was the western gate, with its twisting, wooden-walled entry passage overlooked at every step by heavily armed sentries. An army attacking the gate would wish it had tried the walls.

But, and Weylin thought this was something of a shame, no attacker would ever get near the gates or walls because first they’d have to get through the army. Blighting Maidun’s surrounds and sprawling towards him was a mess of a camp, containing – they said – more than twenty thousand soldiers, plus another ten thousand cooks, grooms, smiths, carpenters, wheelwrights, coopers and so on. On top of those directly employed by the army there were innumerable hangers-on – merchants, druids, bards, thieves, wives, husbands, children and a few ropey prostitutes operating in competition with the whorepits to the south of the castle. The camp stretched for miles, covering all the land that he could see north and west of the fort. Its buildings, roads and people blended into a dirty landscape, brown except for the odd green hummock of an untouchable ancient burial site.

A couple of times he’d heard Felix refer to everyone who lived outside Maidun’s walls as plebs. He liked the word. Weylin wasn’t a pleb. He was one of the Fifty. He was better than them. The pleb soldiers were farmers most of the time, just soldiers for a few moons in the summer. Weylin was always a Warrior. He suddenly remembered Dionysia. Was he sad to be returning home without her? He looked at the sky and thought. Nope, not a twinge of grief. The opposite, if anything. A hero like him was much better off striding solo through life, free to do whatever, and whoever, he wanted.

He kicked his horse and was soon passing through the smoke of countless pleb cookhouses and forges. The yelling of pleb babies, the hollers of pleb men, the bleats of pleb women, the blaring of pleb goats, shouts coming in from all about the country, the clang of forges, the bang of carpenters’ hammers and a dozen other sounds all melded together into a buzzing camp clamour which made him smile.

He passed a few men, tough army grunts by the heavy iron swords slung on their shoulders. But not Warriors. They nodded manly greetings at him and he nodded generously back. They’d know he was one of the Fifty, a Warrior – in case they didn’t, his boar medallion was out and dangling. They might even know him by name, and that evening they’d show off to their friends that he’d acknowledged them. They’d say that he was on his way to
The Castle
– that’s what the plebs called it. “We saw that Warrior Weylin Nancarrow on his way to
The Castle
. Good bloke that one, got time for the little people.” That’s what they’d say. Then they’d swap tales and rumours about what it must be like up there. Only the Warriors of the Fifty, the elite cavalry and charioteers, and a few more of Zadar’s closest were allowed through Maidun Castle’s gates. And all the cooks, cleaners, delivery people, guards and others like them of course.

Oh, it was good to be home. His journey back had been mildly soured by concerns about how Zadar would react to what had happened at Kanawan. But it hadn’t been his fault, he knew that, and he shouldn’t worry, but still … He’d sent a shout from the first village he’d come to after fleeing Kanawan, saying they’d been ambushed and all killed save him, and that he was on his way back. As far as he could see, the rational reaction to that would be to congratulate him for surviving and give him a couple of days’ leave – much of which he would spend down at the whorepits. But Zadar wasn’t always rational.

Looking at Maidun Castle though, all those concerns evaporated like water flicked onto red-hot iron. A big grin leaped onto his face, he gave his horse some heel.

He looked over to the left and saw the arena – ranks of wooden seats rising up the fort’s outer wall, above the huge, enclosed display area.

“Ohhh!” He slapped his forehead.

“Are you all right?” said a passing pleb.

“Yes, thanks.”

He wasn’t all right though. He should have
known
that the construction in Kanawan was an arena. OK, so the Kanawan one was much smaller than this and wasn’t built onto a hillside, but all the bigger settlements were building them and he should have known not to go in there. Spectators aside, nobody ever went into an arena for a good reason. He’d seen almost as many people killed in Maidun’s as he’d seen dispatched on the battlefield.

Still shaking his head at his stupidity, he dismounted and handed his horse over to one of the grooms. He patted her farewell.

“Put her in a good field,” he said, handing the groom a small bronze coin. “I’m not sure when I’ll be needing her again.” The boy bowed his head a few times, muttering obsequiously. Weylin smiled magnanimously at him, then walked on with a jaunty version of the rolling, unsteady gait of a man who has spent several days in the saddle. It was great to be back and nothing was going to shake his good mood. The first gate opened as he approached it. He nodded thanks to the guards. Someone had once told him to be nice to the little people as his fame increased. Sometimes he remembered. There was more to the advice, he couldn’t help thinking, but he couldn’t remember it.

He walked between the heavy plank walls built over steep earth banks, turning left and right through the labyrinthine entrance. The track was wide enough for carts, but the wooden walls on each side, well over even his head height, were oppressive. Slingers and spear-holding guards looked down at him, faces hostile even though they knew who he was. He knew better than to try to talk to them. He’d been on duty on these walls himself, before he was promoted to the Fifty. Look hard, talk to nobody, be ready always. Those were the rules. Breaking them meant pain.

Another gate swung open as he approached and he didn’t break stride. A few more turns and he was on the bridge that spanned the ditch in front of the main gate. The hefty oak doors ahead remained stubbornly shut. A figure appeared on the palisade to the right of the gate, anonymous in a black leather hood and iron helmet.

“Weylin,” said the figure. “You’re expected. Go straight to the Eyrie.”

The Eyrie! The western end, the upper part, the secret section, the elite zone! Weylin’s efforts and sacrifices were finally being rewarded. Ever since he’d been allowed into Maidun, he’d ached to know what was up there, on the other side of the palisade that bisected the hillfort’s enclosure. Everyone who went in, including Carden and Atlas, was strangely cagey about it. Weylin had always pretended that he didn’t give a crap. If they wanted to have childish secrets, then they could. But really he was
dying
to see what was up there.