Age of Iron (38 page)

Ahead was another palisade, sprouting at right angles from the one that separated the Eyrie from the main body of the fort. A chalk path led to an open gate. Chamanca the Iberian stood on one side of the gate, bouncing from foot to foot like an excited child, clad, as always, in not very much. Tadman Dantadman, in his usual fur jerkin, stood immobile at the other gatepost, looking even larger than normal next to the diminutive Chamanca. His eyes swivelled to meet Weylin’s, but he didn’t move.

Chamanca splayed her hands extravagantly to indicate that he should go through. He couldn’t help but steal a glance down at her toned thighs. Oh, they were lovely. He looked up. She’d seen him looking. She licked her lips. Weylin felt his cock raise its head and shuffle about for room. Chamanca, huh? He’d never considered he’d have a chance with her, but now he was on the ascendant …

He smiled as he passed through the gate and into an enclosed square. To his immediate right were three large, conical huts. Chained to a rail next to one of the huts was Elliax, the guy from Barton that Zadar had set to eating his own wife. Had he lost weight? Weylin wondered with an inner grin. The wife was nowhere to be seen.

To his left was the spiked wooden fence that hid the Eyrie from the rest of Maidun Castle. Up ahead, on a platform protruding from the base of Maidun’s outer palisade, were Zadar and his crew, sitting beneath a high sunshade suspended with twine ropes from the palisade. It was the same set-up as Zadar used for his travelling court. There were three chairs in the centre: a large, carved throne padded with stuffed vellum for Zadar, and two smaller chairs, one for that terrifying greased turd Felix and one for hot young Keelin Orton. Chamanca and Tadman walked past him to take their places behind Zadar.

Stretching out from Zadar on two long benches were the usual onlookers, gathered as if awaiting a bard’s show. Over to the left Weylin spotted his big brother Carden, sitting with the foot that Lowa had smashed propped up on a stool. Next to him, holding his hand, was a young woman in a plain V-necked woollen dress. Her dark hair was cut in the same style as Chamanca’s, long and even, on the straighter side of wavy, with a fringe almost brushing her eyes. But where Chamanca was deeply tanned, exotic and usually as approachable as a stoat with its tail on fire, this girl was paler and homely-looking with eyes the innocent blue of a baby wildcat’s.

Weylin had seen her before. She was one of the captives from Boddingham. The hottest captive. He remembered at the time mentioning to Carden that she was too good for the whorepits. His big brother had said nothing, only given him that look that made him feel like he’d shat himself. Typical Carden. You had to admire him. He’d had Lowa in his grip and let her go, but while Weylin had been having a crappy time charging around the country after her, Carden had been lounging back at home with his foot up, looked after by a fresh beauty. Weylin smiled, nodded hello and lifted a palm in greeting. Carden condescended to raise an eyebrow.

Atlas Agrippa was sitting along from Carden. His face was still bound from where Lowa had stabbed him with the deer bone, and his dark eyes smouldered with a look that might crumble granite. Weylin liked the large Africa. Now that Weylin was in the Fifty, the Kushite treated him like an equal. He was glad to see Atlas and his brother alive. When he’d made up the story that Lowa had killed them, he was worried that the gods might have really killed them to punish him for lying. You had to be careful with that sort of thing.

Next to Atlas were a few of the more favoured Warriors, male and female, and some young men and women who’d been chosen for Zadar’s court for their looks.

Finally he turned to Zadar.

Zadar’s big, blue, darkly quizzical eyes bored into him. The king was clean-shaven and clad in excellently crafted new leather armour. A thin black leather headband held his blond hair in a centre parting. He was an average-sized man, much smaller and less muscled than, for example, both Carden and Atlas, but he seemed to exude more power than the rest of the group put together. He leaned and said something quietly to Felix.

Felix nodded, listened, then looked up at Weylin. The onlookers seemed to hold their communal breath.

“Tell us,” said Felix, a smirk spreading across his streamlined face, “what you’ve been doing since we saw you last.”

Weylin breathed in, ready to start his long, plausible tale. He’d worked it out while riding home. If featured him as the hero, and everybody else as workshy traitors whose laziness and avarice had spoiled his clever plans to capture Lowa. He looked at Felix. Felix smiled back, eyes twinkling. Oh, Cromm Cruach, he thought. Felix knew. He’d known last time and he knew this time. Sweat trickled from his armpits. Clouds of confusion rushed into his head, he wobbled on his feet and thought he might faint. They were all staring at him.

He looked at Carden.
Help me!
He tried to send the message to his brother by thinking at him as hard as he could. It didn’t work. His brother looked at Felix then hung his head, shaking it sadly. He felt water bulge in his eyes, then the tickle of a traitorous tear trickling down his cheek. This was not how he had planned things.

“Tell us what happened,” Zadar said, his eyes iron. “You have nothing to fear.”

Weylin sniffed, then told his tale.

He started with Ogre in the market. He told them about the ambush at Kanawan and how he’d tricked them into letting him go. He explained how he’d hidden and watched Lowa ride past with a girl on her horse, but, being unarmed and her having her bow, been unable to do anything. He told them about the pinned Ogre, and how he’d confessed to betraying them to Kanawan.

Zadar asked questions about Kanawan, about Lowa, about Dug, about the girl and about Ogre’s confession. Weylin answered as fully as he could.

“Have you anything else to add?” Zadar asked finally.

“No.” Weylin had stopped sweating. He’d stopped worrying. He just felt sad.

“You weren’t the man for the job.”

“I wasn’t.”

“Your desires are greater than your means to fulfil them, although your desires are meagre.”

Weylin didn’t know what he meant. He just wanted it to be over. He nodded.

“And you failed me.”

“I did.”

“So you know what will happen.” It wasn’t a question.

He did know. He’d been lying to himself all the way home. He’d known all along what he was coming back to. He sighed. After everything, it was a relief. Finally he could stop trying. He looked at Carden. Carden looked back. Was there a hint of sorrow in those deep-set eyes? Weylin closed his own.

“Yes. I know,” he said. He wasn’t going to make love to Chamanca after all. Zadar wasn’t going to give him Lowa’s hut. His constant fantasising had been his way of ignoring dreadful reality. He was never going to sleep with a woman again. He didn’t mind. Again it was a bit of a relief. Finally he’d be able to rest.

Eyes still on Weylin, Zadar beckoned Chamanca forward. “Make it quick,” he said.

Felix rolled his eyes, disappointed.

Chamanca was small, not much more than half Weylin’s height and less than half his weight. He watched her come. She was holding a small mace, a plain ball of iron attached by a chain to a fired wooden handle. It was a neat little weapon. One of his mother’s, no doubt.

Weylin raised his fists, more out of habit than anything else. There was a flash of movement from Chamanca. Pain exploded in his right knee and he was pitching forward. Something smashed into his head. He heard a
gouff
noise, like the cry of a speared ox, and realised as he fell that it had come from him. The ground rushed at him, the world collapsed into his eyes and all went dark.

He was kneeling, head swirling. Faces swam, Zadar’s in the centre, then Felix’s, then Carden’s. He wanted to fall onto the grass but something was holding him up. Arms snaked about his head, across his face. He lifted his hands and grasped them. They were bare, firm, comforting. He stroked them. They were smooth, strong, nice. Tight. They smelled of warm hay. He smiled, closed his eyes and leaned his head into their embrace. He felt an erection growing. My last stand, he thought.

“Am I dead?” he mumbled. It was difficult to open his mouth.

“Not yet. You will be soon.”

“Oh. I don’t feel too bad.”

“That’s good.”

“Chamanca?”

She didn’t answer him.

“Chamanca?” he said again. No reply. But he couldn’t remember what he wanted to ask.

“W
here have you been?” Ragnall helped his mentor out of the boat and bent to tie the rope to the dock.

“I have been walking on Gutrin Tor. I am grateful to Maggot for his ministrations, but the wet air of the marshes hampers the clearing of the final sputum from my lungs. So I have been over on the Tor, coughing like a diseased donkey.”

Ragnall stopped mid-knot and looked up, brow knitted. “How odd. I’ve just come back from there. Lowa and I were practising with swords and helping to rebuild an old sheep pen. ‘Double-fencing,’ she said.” Ragnall laughed and Drustan chuckled politely. “We must have missed you somehow. But we shouldn’ have done, with you making so much noise?”

“Not odd necessarily.” Drustan pressed his fists into his back and stretched. “Sound does travel in strange ways. Sometimes you can hear a whisper from a mile away, and sometimes you cannot hear a shout from a matter of paces. The wind, the shape of the land, these will affect the spread of a sound. Whereabouts on Gutrin Tor were you?”

Ragnall pointed. “About halfway up on this side.” We were clashing swords and using a hammer—”

“That would explain it.” Drustan set off away from the dock. “Come! Let us go and see how the Warrior’s marvellous recovery is progressing.”

M
al Fletcher sat up, but that didn’t help either. It was like his guts were wound round an ever-tightening capstan pushed by strong and relentless sailors. He held his breath to kill the pain. It was those half-rotten turnips. Nita had said they’d be fine, and indeed
she
was still snoring happily despite his best efforts to wake her with his trumpeting farts. Zadar must have heard his massive parps up in the Castle, but Nita slept on. She hadn’t eaten nearly as many as him of course. She’d watched him eat his, then given him half of hers! She’d poisoned him.

He had to sleep. There’d be much to do the next day, getting the carts finished. Or at least putting the wheels on, hopefully. Carts he had, plenty of beautiful carts – the best they’d made yet, Nita reckoned. The problem was that that Bel-cursed weasel Will the wheelwright hadn’t delivered the wheels.

He’d ordered the wheels, oh yes, and Will had given him a delivery date. And he’d left it at that. He’d trusted the man. He’d assumed the wheels would arrive when Will had said they would, and planned around that. And that was the problem. He should have known. Again and again he’d trusted carpenters, farriers, wheelwrights and the like to do what they said they were going to do, and again and again he’d been let down. Every single time. Someone who seemed perfectly decent would say something like, “Don’t worry. You’ll have all the wheels by the full moon. They’re nearly done; I’ve just got to get them to you. And it’s not hard to move wheels!” And Mal would trust them. After all, when Mal said he was going to deliver something, he delivered when he said he was going to. But every Makka-cursed time, when he asked where his order was, it was all “Well I would’ve had ’em to you, but what with the rain the other day and my gammy leg and my aunt being ill…”

And now he wasn’t going to be able to deliver his carts on time, and Maidun’s quartermaster would curse him, or worse.

A new spasm gripped his insides. He sat up and massaged his gut. That relieved the pain a little, but there was no denying it any more. If he was going to sleep at all, he was going to have to visit the crap huts.
Toutatis tread on all turnips.

He pushed open the tent flap and clambered out into the night. The camp slept around him, including Nita. Above, the full moon was brilliant. To the south Maidun Castle shone unnaturally, like a ghost hill.

It was ten minutes’ walk to the riverside latrines. That’s what had put him off getting out of bed until he was certain he had no choice. Back in the day, he would have risked it and squatted behind someone else’s tent. But that’s what Moli had done. He’d been seen by someone watching from the walls. They were always watching. He could see them up there now, silhouetted against the starry sky. They’d seen Moli shit and they’d seen what tent he’d gone back to. The next day they’d put Moli in the arena.

Mal had gone to watch with hundreds of others. Tadman had broken him, bone by bone. It had taken a good hour. Mal didn’t want to end up in the arena, so he set off for the river.

He walked past rows of shelters, men and women sleeping outside, gently smoking blacksmiths’ fires, stilled woodworkers’ lathes and motionless potters’ wheels. The journey seemed longer at night, without people to talk to and look at.

He was nearly at the latrines when the shout came in.

“Lowa Flynn at Mearhold…”

He tripped over a tent rope. By the time he’d got back up, the shout was over and he’d missed the rest of it. Never mind, he thought. They were never anything to do with him anyway.

D
ug woke up hangover-free for the first time in a while and felt warmly at peace with the world. Lowa suggested that she accompany him on a recuperative walk on the dry land to the north and raised a saucy eyebrow at him. Spring, however, had been badgering him to go fishing with her for days.

The night before he’d felt well enough to get into bed with Lowa for the first time since Kanawan, but Lowa had pointed at Spring and shaken her head. Which was fair enough. There was something a bit grim about shagging in the same hut as a pre-pubescent girl. Although Bel knew he’d had sex with Brinna enough times with Kelsie and Terry sleeping nearby. But family was different.

So he very much wanted to go for a walk with Lowa, but Spring was bouncing on the island’s springy surface chanting, “Please please please please please.”