Age of Iron (48 page)

“Guarding what?” Our bridge has a troll.”

Lowa wriggled out of the little cave. She’d been found and she had to come out. Not to fight – she didn’t have a chance – but to save some face. Better to climb out than to be discovered curled in a pathetic ball with worm juice on your chin.

C
onsciousness crept over Dug like a regretted but persistent bedfellow. He refused to open his eyes and he’d be buggered by a horse before he lifted his head off the pillow.

He remembered that he was staying at a tavern in Forkton. He remembered that he wasn’t with Lowa any more. He remembered fragments of the night before as if somebody was holding up blocks of wood etched with pictures of his evening and whacking his head with them.

Lots of cider, a failed pass at a girl, then lots more cider and becoming increasingly annoyed by the casual ignorance at the table next to his. Then, what? A fight, no doubt.

He let his arm fall off the bed. His hand found his hammer. So he still had that.
Good.
He tried moving both legs and the other arm. It wasn’t fun, but they all worked. He probed his face with his fingers. Nothing broken there.

He screwed his eyes more tightly shut. It was probably too early to start drinking again yet. He’d try to sleep until it wasn’t.

“H
ello.” The woman chained to the other wall had waited until the soldiers had gone to speak. “Who are you?”

Lowa yanked at her chains, then gave them a long hard pull. No good. Here they’d made less effort to disguise the hut’s metal frame, the iron uprights standing out from a thin, broken wattle and daub. A short, heavy chain linked her ankle shackles.

“My name’s Lowa Flynn.”

“I’m Vasin Goldan. Of Barton. You’re the one they were looking for that night they took Barton. The night they took me and Elliax.”

“Yes.”

The two women were quiet for a while. They were in one of the Eyrie’s large holding cells. As cells went, it wasn’t too bad. Being chained to the wall wasn’t exactly comfortable, but there was a slops bucket, and two large holes in the roof high above let in plenty of light and air. Not so great in winter, Lowa thought, but OK for now. And there was no way she was going to live until winter.

“Have you got any food?” said Vasin. It sounded to Lowa like it had taken a while for her to suppress her dignity enough to ask. Her skin was sallow and her eyes shone with pathetic pain, but she held her chin high.

“Sorry, I haven’t.”

“They don’t give me any food.”

“I’m sorry.”

“They cut me as well.” The woman held up a bandaged arm. “They do clean the wounds, but that’s only to keep me alive for longer. I suppose we must be grateful for small things.”

“That’s one way of looking at it.”

“Yes. They moved me here yesterday. It
is
much better than where they had me before. Funny, how one’s expectations change. If you’d told me a moon ago that I’d think of this cell as an improvement in circumstances, I would have laughed in your face.” Vasin looked up, blinking back tears.

“I really am sorry.”

“That’s kind, but it’s hardly your fault. And it looks like we’re in the same boat now. Same cell, anyway.” She smiled grimly.

Lowa felt tears at the corners of her eyes. Suddenly she felt very heavy. Here was one more of the thousands whose lives Zadar had ruined, all in the name of preparing Britain for the Romans. But that wasn’t why he did it. He did it because he could. And people not only let him do it, they helped him because they got something out of it. And few had helped him more, and got more out of it, than her.

“You mustn’t look so worried.” Vasin interrupted her thoughts. “My mother always used to say that where there’s life, there’s hope. And we are alive.”

Wow,
thought Lowa.
I think I hate myself.
“I’ll get you out of here, Vasin,” she said.

“That would be kind, dear. I don’t like it much here.”

“I will get you out.”

Lowa sat and thought. Her mission to kill King Zadar was short-sighted. She had to free everyone, not just Vasin. She needed to undo the chaos she’d helped Zadar wreak. That meant taking control of Maidun’s tribes and its lands, restoring wealth and health to the people, and preparing to repel the Romans rather than welcome them. Yet her girls were all dead. She’d driven Dug, Ragnall and even Spring away. She was caught and chained. An objective observer might argue that she wasn’t in the best position to conquer and succeed a popular, powerful tyrant who commanded an army of thousands.

T
he wheels had arrived, finally, so they had a hard day ahead of them attaching wheels to axles and axles to carts. The day would be all the more difficult because the wheels weren’t nearly as well made as had been promised and paid for. It was as if Will the wheelwright had put all his effort into making sure that no two were the same size. Perhaps that’s why it had taken so long. It was less a case of pairing up the most similar, more a job of finding the least different.

Silver and Jorth were sorting the wheels into size order when Miller arrived.

“They’re here!” he said, rubbing his hands.

“They might as well not be. This is the worst batch yet. That’s why they dropped them off in the middle of the night. Nita’s headed over to Will’s now to get some money back.”

“Good luck to her.”

“Good luck to Will the wheelwright.”

“Yes.” Miller caught sight of Silver and grimaced. “Mal, we need to have a word.” He took Mal’s elbow and directed him to the far side of the yard.

“What?” said Mal. There was much to do, and if this was one of Miller’s amusing observations …

“You have to be rid of her. Immediately.”

“What? Silver?” Mal looked over at the girl. Jorth was carrying the wheels from place to place while Silver sat on the fence directing her.

“Of course Silver,” said Miller. “The tavern last night…”

“That was just pub banter. The cider talking.”

“And the beer. But I’ve never heard everybody damning Zadar’s rule so openly and loudly. We’ve seen people do it more closed and quietly though, haven’t we, and we’ve seen them die in the arena. Remember Torok? Eenfill? Anstees? Simac? By Bel’s breasts, Simac put up a fight, didn’t he?

“But they were ringleaders.”

“As Silver was last night.’ But she was even worse than them because her points made sense and they were well argued. Most dangerous of all, I think she was
right
. They’ll think she’s too young to have thought of all that herself, and so, my chum, you are in serious peril.”

“Miller, she might be young, but she is freakishly intelligent.”

“Yes, we know that, but they won’t. They’ll assume that it all came from you and Nita. Do you know that Nita and Silver went over to Crabtree’s place after we’d left last night and carried on with the rant?”

“She’s not even ten.”

“Exactly my point. They’ll be
certain
that her views came from you and Nita. You might already be doomed. Me too probably, just for knowing you. You have to get rid of her, now.”

“She’s a little girl!”

“Mal, your kindness is a great gift, but she’ll get us all killed if she stays.”

“I’ll ask her to keep her views to herself.”

“Does she seem like the type to follow orders? And anyway, she’ll be fine anywhere else.”

They looked across the yard. Jorth was carrying a large wheel, back bent, with the quick short steps of someone at the limit of their weight bearing capacity. Silver was looking at seagulls flying overhead. As they watched, Silver looked down and noticed Jorth.

“Roll it along the ground, don’t carry it,” said Silver.

“Good idea! Thanks!” said Jorth, putting the wheel down.

Silver looked back up to the seagulls.

“You have a point,” said Mal.

“I do. Send her away. It may already be too late. Tadman and some of the Fifty might be on their way here right now. At least if she’s gone, you can say that you heard about her bad-mouthing Zadar and told her to leave.”

“You’re right, but it shouldn’t be like this. We should be able to think and say what we like.”

Miller laughed. “Yes! And winters should be warm, boars should be plentiful and Chamanca should be on her way here right now to ask me to bed her … Come on, Mal! Things don’t change. All that happens is people like you and me get put in the arena for saying that they should.”

“Maybe things should change.”

“Mal, you have a young wife. A business. Jorth. Me!”

Mal shrugged. “I suppose you’re right. I’ll get rid of Silver. But not until this afternoon.”

“Why wait?”

“Nita will be back any moment. This afternoon she’ll be over at her mother’s for a few hours. By the way she was talking about Silver when she got back last night, she won’t let her go without a fight.”

“Fair enough. I’d pick the arena over an angry Nita any day.”

T
he open-air court filled quickly. Elliax hadn’t seen it so popular since they’d killed that boy Weylin. So it looked like there was going to be another killing! That was good. He liked a bit of murder. He particularly enjoyed watching Chamanca go about her work. If he ever had to be executed himself, he thought with a slimy grin, he wanted Chamanca to do it. Nice and slowly. But he wasn’t going to be executed. Any moment now Zadar would tell him that the test was over, he’d passed, and he’d be freed. In preparation for his position-to-come he went through the names of the most important people who’d gathered that morning.

There was Atlas, the bandage finally off his face. The wound looked odd on his nearly black skin, like purple wax had bubbled out of his mouth and set. People said that dark-skinned southerners were skilled fighters, but somebody had clearly got the better of this one. Unless of course his face had been ravaged by some exotic southern disease. They had diseases in the hot lands, the bards said, that made your insides liquefy and leak out of your holes.

Carden was next to Atlas, looking manly as usual, then there was a pretty girl whose name he hadn’t caught yet. Next was Felix the oily Roman druid, Tadman the huge bodyguard, King Zadar of course, and Drustan the new old druid. Chamanca wasn’t there.

Ah, here she was. She was pulling an iron rod and walking backwards out of one of the cell-huts – the one they had Vasin in, if he wasn’t mistaken. At the other end of the rod was a collar fixed around the neck of the blonde woman that Carden and Drustan had brought in earlier. The woman shuffled forward, head bowed. A heavy chain linked her ankles. A lighter one held her wrists behind her back. She was wearing dirty white winter pyjamas.

Chamanca drove her forwards on the rigid metal leash. She was a marvel, Chamanca. She seemed even more vibrant than usual, next to her plodding captive. She bounced with every step, vital as a young deer. Her white pointy-toothed grin was ablaze with the joy of being alive. It was too much to hope that Zadar might give him Chamanca for his bodyguard when the test was over.

The blonde straightened and faced the king. She may have been through a rough time, but she stood straight-backed and prideful, raising a pert chin and bringing cool blue eyes to bear on her captors like a heroine levelling her sword at a clutch of demons. Elliax liked to think that he cut a similar figure: down on his luck but full of spirit and ready to rise again.

“Hello gang,” said the chained woman. “Good to see you, Drustan. Haven’t seen you since Mearhold. You must be feeling pretty good about repaying the people who saved your life with betrayal and death? All those children. You must be proud of yourself.” She winked.

Zadar looked at her with the same bored, superior stare he treated everyone to.

Felix laughed his fake laugh. “Well done yourself, Lowa. I think that that might be the most hypocritical statement that anyone has ever made.”

Lowa seemed not to hear him. “And Carden, Atlas, you’ve both recovered since the evening you murdered your friends.”

The big African and the large black-haired Warrior looked back at her, then at each other.

“What happened to you? You used to be decent. There was some honour in both of you. Where did that go?”

Felix laughed again. “All this from the coldest killer I’ve ever seen.” His eyes narrowed. “Chamanca, quieten her.”

Chamanca smiled and twisted the rod. Lowa fell to her knees with a choked gasp.

“Stop.” Zadar raised a hand. “Let her speak. Let her amuse me one last time.”

“Going somewhere are you, Zadar?” Lowa managed as Chamanca loosened her grip.

Zadar’s mouth smiled at Lowa, but his eyes didn’t.

Lowa looked at the girl next to Carden, seemed to pause for a moment, then fixed her gaze on Felix.

“And you, Felix,” she said calmly, “are the most odious glob of mucus-streaked shit that was ever squeezed out by a diseased formori. I don’t know what you’ve got on Zadar, or what he owes you, but you’re more responsible than anyone for the amoral depravities handed out daily by his evil army.”

Felix looked at her pityingly. “You’re a brainless soldier, Lowa. You can’t understand the complexities of preparing Britain for Rome’s rule. Sacrifices must be made. And you’ve hardly held back in making them. How dare you lecture us?”

“You’ve enslaved half the south and murdered the rest. The sacrifices have been the poor and the weak – our own poor and weak – and for what? To prepare for Roman rule you say? That’s self-serving bullshit. If you used this army to unite the country rather than destroy it, we could repel Rome.”

Felix shook his head. “You haven’t seen the Roman army, have you? It’s a shame you never will. But let me tell you, Lowa, the Romans will destroy any resistance like a herd of boar ripping up a flower garden. The
only
way this island can survive is by bending and absorbing their onslaught like tall grass in the storm. Your bow won’t penetrate Roman shields. The Romans have bows so large they need to be mounted on wheels and pulled by horses. Where is your bow, by the way, Lowa?”

“The Roman army is made of men, Felix, and men can be killed. With our numbers, our knowledge of the land and our iron, we can beat any army. But we need to prepare now, not destroy ourselves to save them the job.” Lowa looked from person to person like a bard trying to engage a whole audience. Her eye even caught Elliax’s. “The point is that Felix and Zadar are disingenuous. The motives that they tell you are not their real motives. They are not enslaving, killing and raping for the sake of Britain. They’re working purely for their own—”