Reign of Iron (15 page)

“Are we going to fight them and beat them and send them back across the sea to tend their wounded and warn the rest of the world not to fuck with the British?”

“Yes!” shouted everyone.

“Good. But do know that the fight will be hard. It will be worth it – and we have no alternative – but many of us will lose our lives. Never fear, we can win! But not if we fuck up and do things like fire a scorpion bolt too early. So everyone pay attention,
be careful with the details
and we will win!”

There were a few “Woos!” and “Yeahs!” and Lowa realised her little speech had not finished as rousingly as it had started. Be careful with the details – what had she been thinking? If any bards lived to tell the tale, they’d be leaving that bit out. On the bright side, nobody was staring at her in horror any more, they were all patting each other on the back and looking cheery and excited, so she’d rescued the situation.

She helped Taddy to her feet. The woman pressed a hand to her bleeding mouth, looked at it, then smiled. “I deserved that, my queen, I’m so sorry. Is there anything I can—”

Lowa put a hand on her shoulder “Don’t do it again and fight well when the time comes.”

Taddy nodded. Lowa turned to Mal and opened her mouth to say she didn’t know what.

“Don’t even apologise,” he said. “Just remind me never to approach you from behind without warning. You and a horse – same awareness required.”

“Thanks. Now, I think it’s trumpet time.”

He nodded, took a few paces away and shouted through cupped hands: “Trumpets ready!”

Shouts of “Trumpets ready” echoed around and everybody produced short, variably sized bronze horns, each with a wooden clacker in its mouth, mass-produced under Elann Nancarrow’s directions. Mal handed one to Lowa. She held it to her lips and blew. Some ten thousand Britons in the countryside around did the same. The resultant noise was astonishing. It wasn’t as piercing as baby Dug’s wails, but it was so much louder, the largest sound that Lowa had ever heard, shaking the very earth.

She found she could only blow for a few heartbeats before the vibrations made her lips tingle horribly, but she rubbed her mouth, reapplied the trumpet and blew again. All around her people were doing the same, so the terrible trumpeting became quieter and louder, and colossal waves of sound rolled around the land and out to sea.

Music. So music was the first weapon they were using against the Romans, and shit music at that. Yilgarn Craton the Haxmite could have shown them how to get much a better tune from a horn – they were just blowing any old note and it was a mess – but nobody had asked him. The beautiful, the wonderful Jocanta Fairtresses had been right. The Maidunites under Queen Lowa were ignorant, arrogant and childish – like their queen. Fighting the Romans with music! The Maidunites were doomed. But Yilgarn wasn’t going to let them drag the Haxmites down.

Undermine them when you can, then, when the moment comes, use the Haxmite soldiers well.
He would heed Jocanta’s words. He closed his eyes and pictured himself fighting Lowa and beating her in front of them all, Jocanta included. He’d punish her for cutting his chief’s hair. She’d bested him before, yes, but it had been dark and she’d tricked him by putting a hand behind her back. He’d whip her next time, of course he would. Were her arms anywhere near as mighty as his? They were not.

Then, surely, Jocanta would see him by a different torchlight. She’d notice, finally, how much of a man he was and – no! no! no! He mustn’t think like that. She was his queen, he was her guard. He was noble and heroic and must squash his grubby thoughts. But she’d never taken a man, he was certain of it. She kept companions, the old lady and the boy, but they were just that; companions and nothing more, no matter what the loudmouths said. Perhaps Yilgarn was the fellow she was waiting for? If he did well here and brought glory to the Haxmites, then surely he’d become more than her guard?

“W
hat,” thought Ragnall, “by Toutatis’ trumpet is that?” Everyone on the ship was looking about themselves, eyes wide.

The throbbing, pulsing wave of sound was astonishing. He’d heard war trumpets before, but nothing like this. The reverberating wail made his ears vibrate. Surely it must be thousands of horns? If Lowa had, what – twenty thousand trumpet blowers – how many soldiers did she have? Two hundred thousand? Four? Where had she got the troops? Perhaps it wasn’t Lowa … he’d never been there himself but he’d always heard that Britain’s south-east corner was a muddle of weak, peaceful trading tribes. That was why they’d done nothing to stop Zadar apart from give him gold. Perhaps he’d heard wrong?

The praetorians rowing the general’s ship were obviously making similar calculations. Several were looking about worriedly. Even the super-tough-acting ones, who’d always given an air that they’d rather chop their arm off with a rusty sword than look weak for an instant, weren’t looking as eager as usual. He saw one reach to his ears as if to block them and then seem to realise how pathetic it would look, and turn the manoeuvre into a double-handed scratch of his chin.

Only Caesar remained unperturbed, standing at the stern and looking ahead as if the blare of trumpets was birdsong.

A while later the coastal cliffs gave way to a wide estuary. Three of the rowing ships, including Caesar’s ship with Ragnall aboard, swung into the broad channel to investigate while the others waited on the open sea.

The banks were deep mud, busy with seabirds strutting about like newly made senators then poking pointy beaks into the filth like longer-serving senators, thought Ragnall, pleased with his satirical comparison. The northern shore, to their right, was flat and featureless. Presumably there was a salt marsh or another estuary beyond the mud shore. The south shore, beyond the mud, was tussocks of grass then woods. The air was sharp with the salt stink of summer-rotting seaweed.

Ragnall could feel eyes watching him from the trees. By the look on everyone else’s faces, they could too. But the only noises were the screeches and chucks of birds, the creak of the oars and the slap of water against the hull.

The river narrowed. Much further and the ships would be in range of projectile weapons from the trees on the south shore. The mud looked too deep on both banks to land the soldiers, so they wouldn’t be able to do much in response to a missile attack other than duck. The praetorians rowed on. The channel narrowed. It felt like every Roman was holding his breath, waiting for the arrows or the slingstones to fall.

A whistle from the captain and that breath was exhaled. Backing on one side and pulling on the other, the rowers spun the ship.

Phew, thought Ragnall. There was nothing for them along this river and finally they’d realised.

“Danu’s tits,” said Lowa. The Roman boat was going about well outside everyone’s arrow range – apart from hers, that was. It was easy to see which one was Caesar. Even from six hundred paces you could tell that the little red-and gold-clad figure standing proud on the ship’s stern was in command.

Lowa strung an arrow and stepped from the trees. She aimed and loosed. Caesar bent over at the last moment. The man beside him threw his arms up and fell into the brown estuarine water with a splosh. There was a shout and the rest of the Romans ducked out of sight.

“Bel’s cock,” she said to herself. It had been too much to hope that the Romans would get trapped in the mud in range of her cavalry archers, but she was unlikely to get a clear shot at their leader again. The archers around her were muttering about the gods’ favouring Caesar. She scowled at them, then ordered them to follow her and jogged back through the trees to the waiting horses.

Evening found Lowa, Chamanca, Atlas, Mal and Adler standing among the high littoral gorse, looking at ninety Roman ships anchored a good way out to sea, beyond the range of even Lowa’s bow. Behind the three Warriors were the Two Hundred and Lowa’s cavalry, with the rest of the army camped around the village of Taloon, a few thousand paces away.

It would be a good place to land – a spit of stony sand and a grassy salt flat wide enough for a large camp, with a marsh at one end and backdropped by a muddy estuary – but a bad place to advance from, the only access to the rest of Britain being across a river or through a marsh. If they wanted to land here, Lowa would let them. Then she’d keep them there.

“Why aren’t they landing?” asked Chamanca. “I’m thirsty.”

“Because they’re waiting for their demons to do their work for them,” said Maggot, riding up with Walfdan and Spring. Spring dismounted and helped Maggot from his horse. The druid was pale and looked half dead, but he walked over unaided.

“Welcome back,” said Lowa. “News?” She nodded at Spring and the girl nodded back. It was the first time Lowa had seen her since the day of the wave – the Spring Tide – a year before. She was wearing leather shorts and a sleeveless cotton archers’ shirt, swinging Dug’s warhammer in one hand with her bow scabbarded on her horse. She’d grown in height and stature. She was a little taller than Lowa now, and there was a new sway to her hips.

“The demons’ ship has returned to Gaul,” said Walfdan. “Maggot crippled it and it was sinking when we last saw it, but still afloat.”

“So they’ll find another ship and head straight back?” asked Atlas.

Walfdan looked at Maggot, who nodded weakly. “We don’t think so,” said the Gaul. “Caesar has used every boat of any size in his invasion. We are somewhere between fairly and very sure that there are no boats left in north-west Gaul capable of carrying one fully armoured Ironman, let alone all of them.”

“How did Maggot cripple their ship?” asked Lowa.

“Never mind that,” said Maggot, his voice quiet. “Walfdan has something to tell you about the demons.”

“Yes,” said Walfdan. “Now, would you say I was a fast runner? Say you had to catch me, Lowa, and we started running from where we both are right now. How far would you say I’d get before—”

“Can you get to the point, please?” Lowa wasn’t in the mood for a bardish recital.

“Ah, yes. I’m now fairly certain that the demons derive their power from the life-forces of others, which they take by killing them. I don’t know how long the energy gained from another’s death lasts, but Maggot agrees it’s likely that it’s not for long, and also that they get more and more energy the more they kill. Spring here says that, after a killing frenzy, a Leatherman caught an arrow that she shot, yet before the killing frenzy, she was able to shoot two of them.”

Spring nodded.

So did Lowa. It was useful information, but it only reinforced what they’d already guessed. Drustan and Felix, she knew, had been able to take power from killing and Maggot said that he also could, but that he never did. It was why Lowa had twelve chained men and two women – ten rapists and four murderers – ready for Maggot to kill and produce magic to combat the demons as a last resort. He hadn’t agreed to do it, and Lowa had never liked the idea, but it was preferable to seeing all her people slaughtered by Roman monsters.

“It’s possible they might have found another ship,” she said, “or repaired theirs, and be on the way back already.”

“That is indeed possible, although I consider it unlikely,” said Walfdan. “Your shouters will see their ship in good time if they do return.”

“I will keep the prisoners, just in case.”

“What prisoners?” asked Spring. She had one hand on her hip with a look on her face that reminded Lowa of what she’d been like at that age – amazed at how badly adults ran the world and convinced that she would do an immeasurably better job.

“For Maggot to use if the demons land.”

“Use?”

“As you used Dug.”

“You’ll kill our own to fight the Romans?”

“I’ll kill murderers and rapists to save thousands more who aren’t, yes.”

“I see.” Spring took a step towards her. “Good at sacrificing other people, aren’t you?”

Lowa’s mind went back a year. She saw Spring’s arrow fly and Dug fall. She felt again the crushing weight of the sudden, overwhelming knowledge that the man she loved, the father of her unborn child, was dead. And here was the girl who’d killed him; no longer a girl, a woman now. The woman who’d killed her love, here with the nerve to suggest that it was Lowa’s fault. She pulled her sword a hand’s breadth from its scabbard and took a pace towards Spring.

The girl stood her ground, chin jutting, holding her gaze.

“Spring, go away, now.” Maggot lifted a hand.

“I will not,” said Spring, hefting Dug’s hammer. “If this woman wants a fight then she may have one. I—”

“No, no, you will go.”

“Oh,” said Spring, looking confused and lowering the weapon. “You’re right, I will. I’ve got things to do. Where’s my horse?”

Lowa felt her anger dissolve as Spring mounted and trotted away.

She raised an eyebrow at Maggot. He shrugged.

S
pring stood on a hill above the village of Taloon. Nearby Pigsy was rootling around in a bramble bush while Sadie barked at it. Below her the majority of Lowa’s army cooked and sparred and sharpened and did the myriad other tasks that prepared them for battle. She took none of it in. She was narrow-eyed and unseeing, debating with herself whether to go back down the hill and join them. She had a good mind to take herself and her dogs back to the farm, see how the army got on without her bow.

They were all idiots and Lowa was the biggest idiot of the lot, planning to kill Britons to stop the demons. Spring had stopped three of them without killing anyone.

“She doesn’t want to kill anybody, you wee turnip brain,” said Dug, walking towards her. As he spoke the trumpets blared from the army below – they were still all blowing them every now and then to persuade the Romans out to sea that they were more than they were – but she could still hear him. “She’s doing it to save you all. All of it. She wants nothing more than to be with her son – and you, to a degree, she does love you – but she’s devoted her life to making sure that you, and all the other ungrateful shites like you, aren’t slaughtered by the Romans. And she didn’t kill me. I walked down that hill and you fired the arrow. The only other person who knew what was going on was Maggot. But he’s not to blame either. Nobody’s to blame, least of all Lowa.”