Reign of Iron (6 page)

Atlas said a few consoling things about the Romans’ military training and the Gaulish tribes’ lack of cohesion, but Chamanca stayed quiet. She agreed with Walfdan. Ducklings with their beaks removed would have given ravening wolves more of a challenge than most of Gaul had offered the Romans. Walfdan’s own tribe, the Fenn-Nodens, had almost all died in the struggle against the invaders so at least, she thought, he had that rock of pride to cling to.

Atlas finished by telling Walfdan that the Britons sang the praises of the Fenn-Nodens and toasted their valour, then asked, “So what can we do?”

“My plan is to go helmet in hands to the Germans to see if they can help. A vast German army has crossed the Renos river. They are the best chance of defeating the Romans, or at least delaying their invasion of Britain.”

“Your information is a year old,” Atlas said. “Caesar massacred a huge host of Germans under Harry the Fister last year.”

“These are different Germans – two tribes from further east, the Ootipeats and the Tengoterry. They were all set to wage glorious war and conquer Harry the Fister’s territory in Germany and Gaul, but they arrived and found nobody to fight apart from the old, the young and the few blind Warriors who had survived the Romans’ torture. Now they have a gigantic army which they’ve never used. I do not think it will be hard to persuade them to march against our common foe. I suspect that Caesar knows this, and is already on his way north to meet them.”

Atlas grunted his assent. It did seem like the best option; the only option in fact. They walked on, Atlas and Chamanca leading, Walfdan and the girl behind.

A short time later they were surprised by a Roman patrol. Chamanca cursed herself for not hearing or sensing them, but when the cheating bastards hid in woodland, downwind in the dark, there wasn’t much you could do. As soon as legionary silhouettes appeared on the road ahead she reached for her weapons, but Atlas put a hand on her arm. He was right, they couldn’t fight. Dozens of Romans emerged from the trees all around them, many holding aloft previously concealed torches which shone off their weapons and armour.

They held their hands up in submission as the legionaries parted to let through a centurion. He was possibly the tallest man Chamanca had ever seen; certainly the tallest Roman. He had a cheery face and the stoop of a man who had banged his head on many doorframes.

“So!” he said in broken Gaulish. “What do you?”

“These two are a merchant and his daughter,” said Atlas in Latin, pointing at Walfdan and Spring. “We are their guards, escorting them back to Soyzonix land.”

The centurion laughed and replied in Latin. “Can I buy something then?”

“We have no wares.”

“Exactly!” he chuckled, shaking his head. “Of all the terrible excuses! You really should have carried a cauldron and a ladle or two if you’d wanted me to believe that you’re merchants. You don’t even have a donkey! Oh, it’s too much. You are morons. Men, take—”

“We sold all our wares to the Romans at Karnac,” said Walfdan.

“Including your donkey?”

“We sold our cart and two oxen. As you know, you are building a fleet so demand there is high and they are selling nothing. It is what we merchants call a sellers’ market. Only my daughter’s protestations stopped me from selling our clothes and having us walk home naked.”

“Hmmm, well that’s a tiny bit more plausible.” The centurion rubbed his chin and Chamanca thought that they might get away with it. “But it’s still pretty thin. I’ll send you back to the garrison and—”

“You will send us nowhere,” said Spring, in faultless Latin. Everyone turned to look at her, Chamanca more surprised than the Romans.

“You’re very astute,” she continued, “although any fool could see through my guard’s idiot tale. We are not merchants.”

“Well, you’re a cocky one,” said the centurion. “And I knew you weren’t merchants. You can explain exactly who you are back at—”

“You will let us pass now, unmolested, or you will regret it,” said Spring. “I am Persomanima, daughter of Queen Galba of the Soyzonix. This is my adviser and these are indeed my guards. We have been in Karnac, in secret talks with your commander there. Now, tell me your name so that I can tell him how helpful you’ve been, letting us pass. I’ll tell my mother, too, and perhaps she’ll pass it on to Caesar, who is, after all, a great friend of hers.”

“I see!” said the Roman. “Well, if you’ve been in secret talks with the commander at Karnac then you’ll know his name.”

“This is your last warning,” said Spring. “Let us through now, or your family will rue your decision for generations to come.”

“The commander’s name first.”

“Let us pass.”

“It’s a simple thing. Perhaps your talks were secret, but the name of the commander is not. If you can tell me that, I will let you go. Unless your talks were so secret that he didn’t tell you his name?” The centurion chuckled and beckoned his men to seize them.

“All right, if I must accede to your insolence – the commander at Karnac is Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus.”

“Oh!” The centurion held up a hand to stop the legionaries, looking surprised and suddenly nervous. “Very well. Be on your way.”

They legionaries parted and they walked on.

“Well done, Spring,” said Atlas a little while later.

“Indeed,” said Walfdan. “Where did you learn Latin?”

“Maidun Castle, from a Roman girl. My father took her from a merchant he killed, and told her to teach me Latin.”

“I am glad he did. You saved us all then.”

“She taught me how to write it, too. We were friends.”

“What happened to her?”

“She wanted to go back to her mother in Rome, so I tried to help her escape. But we were very young and we mucked it up and we were caught. Zadar gave the Roman girl to Felix and he killed her.”

“Oh.”

“I left Maidun shortly after that.”

Chamanca stayed quiet. She was a little impressed. She’d mentioned the name of the Roman commander only once when telling Spring about her time with the Fenn-Nodens. Moreover, she was reminded that a privileged childhood did not necessarily mean an easy one.

As the sky morphed gently from rich, star-studded blue to delicate pink, Walfdan told them about the Ootipeats and the Tengoterry in his careful, measured way. Spring listened with about a quarter of her mind. The rest of it watched out for more Romans and investigated the sights, smells and sounds of the new land. This was the first time she’d left Britain. She expected Gaul to be completely different – purple clouds, black trees, orange grass perhaps – but it was almost exactly the same. Same smells, same trees, same birds. The only odd thing she’d seen – bar the Roman patrol – were some small, rotund, overly fluffy hares. She’d thought they must be leverets, but they were very fat for baby hares and you never saw those in groups.

“They’re rabbits,” said Dug, ambling along next to her, apparently unseen by the others, arrow still sticking from his head.

“Rabbits?”

“The small fat hares. They’re animals called rabbits. We don’t have them in Britain. They’re reasonable eating – nothing compared to boar, mind you – but they ruin crops, so nobody’s brought them over the Channel.”

“Are you a ghost now then?”

“No, just in your mind still.”

“I see, hang on. Walfdan!”

The druid stopped his description of the excellent Tengoterry cavalry mid-sentence. “Yes, child?”

“Are those animals with long ears back there called rabbits?”

“Yes.”

“Different from hares?”

“Yes.”

“Can they swim?”

“Spring, that’s enough,” said Chamanca. “Don’t interrupt again unless we’re under attack.”

“OK!” said Spring, then, silently to Dug, “I’ve got you, you big cheat. You are a ghost! I didn’t know those were rabbits, and you did, so you can’t be part of my mind. Ha! What’s it like being a ghost? Tell me about it! What happens when you die?”

“I’m not a ghost. I am in your head. Look a little deeper and you’ll remember that your mother told you about rabbits when you were a wee girl.”

It was possible, Spring conceded. Her mother had told her a lot of things.

“And, anyway, if I was a ghost I wouldn’t be walking around with this stupid arrow sticking out of my face.”

“I suppose not…”

“How about you get rid of it?”

“All right,” said Spring, and the arrow was gone.

“See, part of your imagination. Nothing more!”

“That proves nothing. You could have done that. And another thing—”

But Dug had disappeared. Spring tried to conjure him back but he remained stubbornly invisible – proof, if proof had been needed, which it wasn’t – that it was Dug, the real Dug, happy and thriving in the Otherworld and not just a figment of her mind. Her steps sprightlier, Spring returned to investigating the passing countryside for further Gaulish aberrations like rabbits and gangs of gullible Romans.

The following day they commandeered horses and rode on across Gaul. Spring saw no new animals, which was a disappointment. She saw more rabbits and was increasingly charmed by their sniffing and hopping, but they were hardly the man-eating lizards or birds the size of cows that she’d been hoping for, and she didn’t see Dug again. Atlas and Chamanca were fairly rotten company, all wrapped up in each other and hardly talking to her at all.

The Gaulish people were even less impressive than the animals. It was like they were all sulking. Atlas told her that they were ashamed at letting the Romans beat them so easily. Chamanca said they’d always been miserable.

Finally, they arrived in eastern Gaul. The vast camps of the newly invading German army were easy to find. Chamanca had said that Germans wore nothing but tiny fur pants, so Spring had been looking forward to seeing them, but disappointingly there were no hairy tackle-pouches to be seen. These Germans dressed, looked and sounded much like Britons, with some differences. They were, on average, taller and blonder; Spring saw a couple who looked like Lowa, which made her growl. Many wore ornate armour, there was more fur than you’d have seen in the Maidun army (draped over shoulders and wrapped round legs, not cupping genitals as she’d been led to expect) and more people were on horseback. They didn’t seem to have any chariots. It was quite unnerving, she thought, this same but different world. When things were completely different, like in the merchants’ town of Bladonfort compared to Maidun’s army camp, for example, it was fun and exciting. When things were just a bit different from the norm, as they were here, it disquieted her. It was like she’d woken up one morning in a fake world, which the gods had built to trick her but got a few details wrong.

They rode through the slightly odd masses of Germans to the temporary court of Senlack and Brostona of the Ootipeats and Tengoterry tribes. Senlack had been king of the Ootipeats and Brostona queen of the Tengoterry, Walfdan told them. Each had murdered their spouses and united both themselves and their tribes.

Queen Brostona rose from the double throne and greeted the Britons. She did not look like a husband killer. She looked to be in her twenties with a big, even-toothed smile, light tan, high cheekbones, shiningly clean blonde hair and a sleeveless cream dress embroidered with a pattern of blue and red-petalled flowers. The dress’s material was taut over firm little breasts and a narrow waist, but then exploded out over a disproportionately large bottom half. It looked as if a person as slim as Spring had been chopped in two and stuck onto the arse and legs of Danu, the marvellously fat earth goddess. Brostona’s bare arms were slender like a young woman’s but she
waddled
. Spring thought initially that she had a wooden framework under her skirts to flounce them up like that, but, no, further subtle investigation confirmed that it was all bottom and limbs under there. It was hard not to stare.

Senlack, watching from his chair, seemed older, from what Spring could see of him. His hair was a spongy black ball of curls and his beard separated into two curly balls with little rat’s tail ends. His long, knobbly nose stuck out of this mass of hair like, Spring couldn’t help but think, the penis of a wild-pubed monster. At the top of his cock-nose, shadowed beneath his fringe, she could just make out two black eyes peering out. She smiled at them.

Walfdan congratulated Senlack and Brostona on their ascension as rulers, then said that he, Atlas, Chamanca and Spring were from the Fenn-Nodens tribe, come to help the Ootipeats and Tengoterry to wage war on the Romans. They had witnessed and studied Roman methods, he said, so would be invaluable advisers.

“Well,” said Brostona brightly, in an accent that sounded like a bard doing a parody of Lowa’s voice, “thanks so much for coming all this way, with such good intentions, however…”

She raised a small pipe to her mouth and blew out a piercing note. A moment later there were twenty spear tips levelled at Spring and the others. More men and women rushed in, slings twirling.

They were caught.

“The thing is,” Brostona continued, in the same chirpy tone, “we don’t intend to fight the Romans, you see? We’re going to tell them that the land west of our new territory is theirs, and our new territory is ours. We won’t interfere if they leave us alone. Lovely plan, don’t you think? Both empires gain a long, peaceful border. And since you’re Fenn-Nodens and therefore enemies of the Romans, we’ll be handing you over to them.”

Spring felt Chamanca tense beside her, as if about to leap and bite Brostona’s throat out. Atlas held out a hand, shook his head and the Iberian relaxed.

“The Romans will lie to you,” he said. “They will accept your treaty, then strengthen their position in Gaul. When they are ready, they will cross the Rhenus and they will crush you. You must strike now, before they are too powerful and while you have your army gathered.”

“NO!” Brostona screamed and Spring finally saw evidence of the person who had murdered her husband so she could have more subjects. “They’re boring me now. Take them away. TAKE THEM AWAY!”

T
he miles-long army train was marching through green mountains, next to a bright river boisterous with snowmelt, when a rider came galloping from the north. He brought news that more than four hundred thousand men, women and children from the German Usipete and Tencteri tribes had crossed the Rhenus river. Caesar nodded as if he been told that his chef had run out of pork so it would be beef for supper, called in the centurions and rearranged the marching order and direction.