Reign of Iron (29 page)

Atlas wondered for the briefest of moments whether to tell Ula about Felix’s demons but elected not to. Everything about Ula was normal and fine – very fine – but he did not like the sound of Manfreena. He didn’t like coincidences.

“Lowa is as well prepared as she could be, given the limits.”

“And her plan is…?”

There was no harm in telling Ula the outlines. If Caesar himself knew the outlines it wouldn’t have helped him.

“She wants Caesar to come, she wants him to find there’s nothing here for him but fierce resistance, and she wants him to leave. She wants him to appeal to Rome to fund another invasion, and she wants them to reject his appeal because there was nothing to show for the first two. Simple as that.”

“But surely the Romans will return at some point? It’s what they do, isn’t it; fight and fight until they get what they want?”

“Possibly, but if Lowa’s plans come to fruition, they will return to find an increasingly unified and determined Britain.”

“And how will she achieve that?”

“There’s a lot of detail. Simply put, she is a good queen and she is doing well. I am more interested in the aurochs. Are the adaptations to their armour complete? Have the cavalry learnt the new skills I suggested to Elann?

Ula answered and Atlas kept asking questions about the giant cattle as they rode on through the woods. All around them birds sang and squirrels leapt from bough to bough.

F
elix shook his head. It was weird, transporting yourself like that, and it was much more dangerous than he would have liked. Chances of appearing in front of a galloping horse or similar were high, plus the process always left one blind for a moment, so if you arrived near an enemy they had plenty of time to ram a sword into your spine. After twenty-five days of contrary winds, however, the Romans were nearly out of food. If they didn’t cross more or less immediately they’d have to give up the invasion for another year, and Felix simply could not have that. He wanted Britain.

He shook his head again and his vision cleared.

Good. Nothing charging at him and the British druid was sitting cross-legged a dozen paces distant, facing away from him. Felix pulled his knife from its scabbard. The plan was perfect in its double-headed simplicity. He killed the druid, the wind and tide returned to normal. It had taken the lives of two dozen Gauls to send him to Britain, but this druid, Felix reckoned, was powerful enough for his death to fuel his journey back. He’d cleared a wide field in Gaul and left his legions to guard it to make his return safer.

“You’re too late, you nasty little shit, I’m already dead,” said the druid, weakly, without turning.

“You will be.”

Felix strode forwards, lifted his knife … and the man’s head slumped forwards into the ground. A trick? Felix stood motionless. The British druid didn’t move. The Roman took a step back and looked around. Nobody. He darted in, stabbed the point of his knife into Maggot’s lower back, then darted away. No movement. And no blood. The knife had gone in far too easily, as if he’d stabbed a pile of ash. Oh no, thought Felix.

He flipped the corpse over with his foot as easily as if it were made of dried leaves. The British druid was completely desiccated, all fluid gone, his eyes like raisins, lips like black, salted anchovies curled back from yellow, ovine teeth. He looked as if he had been dead for a thousand years.

Felix stamped on his face and it collapsed with a pouf! like a dried-up wasps’ nest. He felt for life-force but there was none.

Fuck! he thought, but then the wind died. All was still for a few seconds, then the wind began to blow again, in the opposite direction. He ran to the cliff edge. The water below was aswirl with eddies as the natural currents re-established themselves. He looked across the sparkling sea to Gaul, so far away. Soon, very soon, that view would be full of ships.

He tramped off down the hill, grinning. He’d done it! It hadn’t gone exactly to plan, but one thing he’d always congratulated himself on was his adaptability. If there was nobody around with enough life-force to transport him back to Gaul, then he’d simply find somewhere to hide until the Romans arrived.

Lowa felt the wind change. She told Adler to take over the infantry training, leapt on her horse and headed for Maggot’s hill. Her inability to help Maggot through the pains of stopping the Roman fleet had upset her more than she would have liked, but by being first to his body and carrying it down the hill, at least she’d be honouring his life. She was still no great fan of the gods and was unconvinced that there was an Otherworld, but seeing what Spring had done, the wave in particular, coupled with Maggot’s words the evening before had forced her to accept that there was more to the world that she could immediately see.

She dismounted, told her horse to stay and walked to the pile that had been Maggot. She’d expected it to be bad, but not this bad. He was no more than dried slivers of skin and flesh among his clothes and … were those footmarks? His body had been stamped on! She looked around and saw the trail of someone’s recent passage across the dewy grass. She followed them to the cliff edge, where they turned and led away downhill, in the opposite direction to the one she’d come. She whistled for her horse.

“Good evening!” said Felix to the guard. It was the first time he’d spoken British for an age and was glad to hear it coming out correctly.

The guard spun. He was a nervy-looking fellow, not much taller than Felix himself, with white hair and moustache. “Wha— what? What you doing?” he asked.

Felix smiled. “I’m here to relieve you, friend.”

Lowa saw a figure that couldn’t be Felix, but looked an awful lot like Felix, talking to a guard. She reached for an arrow in her back-slung quiver.

“W
here is Ragnall the Briton?” demanded Quintus Cicero, speaking like a man with a mouthful, presumably on account of his bruised jaw. He glanced at Spring, chained to the bed, back to Tertius and Ferrandus, then, seeming to realise what he’d seen, his eyes swivelled back to Spring like deck-mounted whaling scorpions spotting a juicy target. His gaze slithered down her body and came to rest on her legs and Spring wished that she hadn’t worn her riding shorts that day. She crossed them in an attempt to show him less, but his eyes bulged all the more.

“I don’t know, do you know?” said Tertius, seemingly unfazed by Quintus’ demanding tone. “Ragnall, you say…”

“A Briton, huh?” said Ferrandus. “Seems unlikely. Perhaps you’d like to go back to your own tent and leave Caesar’s prisoner be?”

“Ragnall assaulted me and will face trial. I know he is billeted here with his barbarian whore, so I will wait.” His slimy eyes were still fixed on Spring “You two will wait outside.”

“Generally,” said Tertius, “we don’t like to ruffle feathers.”

“Calm-water men, that’s us,” said Ferrandus.

“However,” continued Tertius, “those words that you just said, the ones that you intended as commands? Well, they’re not commands to us. Each word is interesting, and you do have a pleasant speaking voice, but for us, all those words together, they’re just noise. Certainly not commands, is the point. What we did hear was you insulting Caesar’s prisoner. That, we cannot allow. You will leave, now.”

“What sort of insolence is this?” spat Quintus. “I am Caesar’s legate, I was governor of Asia. My brother—”

“What my comrade is trying to say,” said Ferrandus, “and he’s right for once, is that we are praetorian guard. We take orders from the praetorian centurion and Caesar, nobody else, and both of them have told us to guard this young lady. So that’s what we’ll do until either of them tells us to stop.”

“You will do what I tell you!”

Tertius shook his head. “No, that’s just the thing. We won’t. You can try to order us about until your cock falls off, but nothing will happen. It’s almost, sir, as if we didn’t give the slightest fuck about who you are and what you’ve done.”

“Oh, I see.” Quintus seemed unfazed by what Spring thought was impressively tough talk. “And are you family men?”

“I’m not,” said Ferrandus, “but Tertius here has two children. And another one on the way, isn’t that right, Tertius?”

“Oh, Ferrandus,” said Tertius, shaking his head.

Quintus smiled like a snake finding a nestful of unguarded chicks. “I am a very, very rich man with a vast network of clients. There are many men who owe me big favours and other men whom I can pay to do whatever I want. If I wanted to find a praetorian’s family, for example, it would take moments. Now, I’m not one to harm children, nor, Juno forbid, visit horrors upon a pregnant woman. But, having said that, I am probably more used to getting my way than I am to not finding people’s families, ripping foetuses from wombs and torturing the rest of them to death.”

“Oh dear, Tertius, I think he’d gone too far now.” Ferrandus took a step towards the legate. Quintus took a step back.

But Tertius put a hand on Ferrandus’ arm. “No, Ferrandus. Thanks to your tittishness, he’s gone exactly far enough. We’re leaving him in here.”

“But—” Tertius silenced Ferrandus with a look.

Quintus beamed. “I’m glad we could come to an agreement. Let’s be clear. If I think that either of you is closer than fifty yards to this tent any time in the next hour, I’ll set my network in motion and next time someone asks you if you have a family, you will weep.”

“Very well. Let me check her chains before we go,” said Tertius, walking over to Spring’s bed. “You wouldn’t want her getting free.”

Felix heard galloping hooves and saw the guard’s eyes flick upwards. He dropped. An arrow thumped into the guard’s chest and knocked him backwards.

Ha! thought Felix to himself as the dying man’s energy flowed into him. Take me, he thought, take me – the world fell away and a new one rushed up towards him.

That, thought Lowa, looking down at the dead guard and sighing, answered one question. It seemed that magic users didn’t need to kill the person themselves to take their life energy. The last she’d seen of Felix, he’d ducked the arrow meant for him and it had taken the unlucky soldier instead. Thank Danu, thought Lowa, that she was queen. A murdered guard with one of her arrows sticking out of his chest might have been hard to explain. Then she felt bad for thinking of herself first, and not this poor man whom she’d murdered by mistake. The knowledge that Felix would have killed him anyway was some consolation.

She’d approached the body cautiously, but had already known that Felix had disappeared. She hadn’t seen it herself, but everybody said he’d vaporised into thin air after she’d killed Zadar. She had no idea how far he was capable of flying, or whatever the Bel it was that he did, but she presumed it was at least across the Channel because that was how he’d presumably got past her guards watching the sea and her sentries guarding Maggot.

The dead guard had a well-trimmed, freshly combed moustache. The thought that he’d never groom his facial hair again almost brought tears to her eyes. She wondered if he had children and pictured her own death and little Dug playing on, not knowing where she was …

She stamped her foot, cursed this mawkishness that seemed to be worsening with age, and called her horse. The new wind would bring unwelcome visitors and she wanted to be ready for them.

Felix shook his head, blinked, heard somebody say something, shook his head again, and opened his eyes.

“I asked you what kind of demon you are.” It was a blacksmith, a tall man with a narrow head, pointily arched eyebrows and such a double bush of nasal hair that Felix thought for a moment he had a moustache although he was clean-shaven. He was standing next to his anvil and forge, hammer in one hand, in the entrance of a lean-to attached to a large rectangular hut. His accent was British, not Gaulish. Felix had not expected to cross the Channel but it would have been nice. Still, this was better than landing in the middle of the ocean, inside a mountain or any other number of places even crappier than right next to a weird-looking British blacksmith.

“I’m no demon, friend, just a weary traveller.”

“You’re no traveller.” The man’s eyebrows jumped as he talked, like two tethered falcons making repeated, simultaneous attempts to take off. “I saw you appear out of nowhere. Just then!”

“No, no, you’ve got it all wrong, come over here and I’ll show you what happened. You’re clearly a decent fellow and I mean you no harm.”

The blacksmith’s eyebrows danced in crazy disapproval, but he came. He walked as if he had no knees, with a backwards lean of his body which allowed him to swing his straight legs forward. Felix was working on a ruse but decided not to bother. This lunk had the speed and gumption of a half-brained cow. As soon as he was close enough, Felix whipped out his blade and leapt forward to slit his gut open.

But the lunk proved to be fast. He grabbed Felix’s sword hand with one great paw and swung the other fist into his face.

Felix’s head reeled. “No,” he cried, “stop! I saw a big spider on your—” The man punched him again and the world spun, then blackened.

Lowa dragged on her reins. Chamanca, galloping in the opposite direction, did the same.

“Maggot’s dead, wind’s changed,” said the queen. “You’re going the wrong way. We’ve got an invasion to see off.”

“I know, but … I feel something. I think Felix is here. I can’t explain it. Back in Zadar’s day I always knew when the nasty little shit was near, and then in Gaul his magic made me stronger—”

“He is here.” Lowa told her the basics as quickly as she could. This was no time for storytelling. “So, where do you feel that he is?” she finished.

“Along this road.”

“How far?”

“I don’t know. A few miles maybe.”

“Go, but be careful. You will be needed in the coming days.”

“He cannot harm me.”

Lowa nodded. “Then go and kill him.”

The two women kicked their horses and galloped off in opposite directions.

“Now, my little darling. You just stay there a moment.” Quintus turned away to pull his toga up over his head. It was an odd display of modesty, Spring thought, for a man who, she was pretty sure, intended to rape her. She thanked Danu – and Jupiter, too, why not? – that Tertius had unchained her wrists. She jumped into a crouch.