Age of Iron (15 page)

He’d planned to sit outside with his beer, since it was a warm day. But, now he thought about it, he’d spent far too much time outside of late. He decided to take the chair facing the bar at the table by the door. It happened to give him a clear view of the beautiful archer.

“How you doing, all right?”

Dug jumped. It was a young prostitute with big blue eyes, a round nose and lips like a fledgling’s beak. Her prematurely silver hair rather complimented her lightly tanned skin, but it was her figure, Dug guessed, that kept her in business. It looked like her white flax shirt and leather shorts had been sewn on and then shrunk. Firm, tanned flesh burst from leg holes, arm holes and particularly the broad neck hole. Dug guessed she was in her late teens. He glanced at the beauty in the corner. She was watching them. Or perhaps looking past them, at the door.

“No thanks, hen. I’m waiting for a friend,” he said.

“All right,” said the girl and headed off. She’d looked relieved, like someone visiting a disagreeable relative’s hut out of duty and finding they weren’t there. That rankled. Surely if you
had
to shag someone, he wasn’t that bad? He remembered his earlier look in Ulpius’ mirror. He had looked a lot older than he’d thought he did. He decided to sell the mirror. Just a bite to eat first.

He finished his beer and headed to the bar with a world-weary but capable swagger that he thought might impress the archer.

“Another of those, please.” He dropped his mug lightly onto the bar. And a large piece of mutton with fresh bread.”

“We don’t do mutton.”

“What do you have?”

“Stew.”

“With bread?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of stew?”

“The kind you eat.”

“Has it got meat in it?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of meat?”

“The kind you—”

“Eat. Yeah, OK. I get it. What made you want to be a barmaid? Was it your desire to serve or your love of people?”

“Do you want the stew?”

Dug looked for a flicker of humanity in her eyes.
Nope, not a spark
. “Do you know,” he said, “I’ve always thought that people are about as happy as they decide to be.”

“What?”

“Nothing. I would like some stew, please. And another beer.”

The stew was gristle all the way. He took it back to the bar, half-finished despite his hunger, and got another beer. Beer was basically vegetable soup, he reasoned, so enough of it should slake his hunger. He thought he caught the archer looking at him again on the way back, which cheered him a little.

As he reached for his beer he noticed blood on his hand. He’d managed to get a huge splinter between his thumb and index finger while leaning on the bar. He was so focused on digging it out that he didn’t notice anything awry until a man shouted, “Arthur! Tristan! Any of Zadar’s! To me!”

A big Warrior, bald but for a black mess of waxed hair falling from the back of his head, had the beauty pinned against the wall with a sword.
What stupid hair
, thought Dug. Why did the young these days go to so much effort to make themselves look like such tits?

Soldiers stampeded into the pub, knocking Dug’s table on their way to surround Lowa and her captor. One of them then left, leaving a gap in the throng for a moment.

She was looking straight at him. Her eyes widened just a little, asking for help. It wasn’t a panicked plea, more an “If you’ve got a moment, I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind…?” She was cool this one.

And he would have loved to have helped her. He really would. Unfortunately, helping damsels in distress was the sort of thing that got you killed, especially when the damsel was surrounded by half a dozen competent-looking Warriors.

Badgers’ hairy bollocks
, he thought, looking back to his beer and shaking his head.

“W
ait!” shouted Drustan. Ragnall didn’t hear him. The fort’s outlying village was deserted but for mutilated dead. People and sheep and parts of people and sheep lay about. Flies buzzed, animals scurried over bodies and birds flapped and hopped among the corpses. A raven flew by with a bloody strip of flesh hanging from its beak.

What the Mother had happened?
Driving his heels into his mount, Ragnall sped forward, praying to Her that he’d find the hillfort’s gates barred, defenders alive inside.

The path up to the fort was littered with more bodies. He had to slow so that his horse could pick a path between carcasses. Mostly the blood was dried black-brown, but in some places it still pooled red, shining in the sun. One of the bodies was moving. Ragnall jerked his reins and leaped off. It was Mungo Strawhair, a horse breeder who’d taught Ragnall to ride. He was propped up against a corpse. His face was red and black with blood.

“Mungo! What happened? Where are my parents? What happened?”

Black blood bubbled from Mungo’s mouth. He seemed to recognise Ragnall. He smiled.

“What happened?!”

The muscles in Mungo’s neck slackened and his head fell to the side. Ragnall shook him but got no response. He dropped his dead riding instructor and ran on up the steep track. A cart lay on its side, dead oxen next to it, sliced open as if by an axe.

The hillfort’s gates were closed, but next to them, where the chalk-carved ditches were shallowest – the fort’s weakest point, which his father had always said must be fixed one day – the palisade was smashed, and the chalk scarred with hundreds of hoof prints.

Ragnall clambered over the wrecked palisade.

The village inside the fort, his childhood home, was gone. Not one hut was left standing. As a toddler he’d run from the bigger children through the narrow gaps between the stilts of the rectangular grain stores. The stores were all smashed to the ground now, stilts poking into the air like mooring posts in a lake of rubble. Some of the larger huts were still smoking. Flames licked around the remains of the longhouse.

Ragnall walked along the fort’s main street, the road he’d walked every day for most of his life. He stepped over corpses of dogs and people. There was Rumo the falconer lying awkwardly across a quern stone, an arrow in his chest. His kestrel was lying dead next to him, also spitted by an arrow.
Arrows.
Not many armies used arrows.

Ten paces further in, Navlin Breadmaker, the fat cheerful baker who’d always given Ragnall scraps of cake, was sitting propped against a fence. She looked uninjured, eyes and mouth wide open. Her chest heaved as if she was struggling for breath. He ran over and shook her shoulders. A small rat squeezed out of her mouth and leaped onto his arm. He jumped up, roaring and flailing, sending the rat flying. Navlin fell forward. Her back was one gaping wound, crawling with several little rats and one big one.

A family, thought Ragnall.

He fell to his knees, where he was sick through his mouth and nose until there was nothing left, but his stomach wouldn’t stop convulsing and he carried on heaving and coughing. Finally he finished retching, got to his feet shakily and walked further into the fort, into his father’s fort, into the fort where surely somewhere he’d find his family and his true love hiding, all unhurt and glad to see him.

But here was his eldest brother. The face that had mocked him so many times was frozen in a purple scream. The hands that had ruffled his hair so often then later been thrown up in mock despair as he’d lost another game to his little brother now clutched at the arrow in his stomach. The higher arrow, the one through his heart, had clearly been a mercy shot, like you might give a fatally injured dog.

Ragnall walked on, his head screaming like a million horses driven off a cliff into a stormy sea.

His second-eldest brother was further into the fort, next to the smouldering remains of the longhouse. There were a lot of bodies here, the scene of a final stand perhaps. His brother was cloven in two diagonally, from neck to hip. It looked as if he hadn’t died straight away. His head was propped on a corpse, looking wide-eyed at his own separated legs.

Ragnall searched the fort. He found more people that he knew, so many childhood friends. All dead. Killed in so many ways. Whoever had done this – Zadar’s army, for sure – had enjoyed themselves. But others were missing. He found no trace of his father, mother or Anwen. His search ended back at his eldest brother, knocked down by a gut shot, killed by a heart shot. He sat next to him.

Drustan walked up a short while later, white hair bedraggled, eyes narrow in his uncharacteristically dirty face.

“I’ve tied the horses outside.”

“Right.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yup.”

“I thought I’d leave you while I said the rites for the dead outside the fort.”

“Good idea.”

“Anwen?”

“No sign. Nor of my father and mother. Zadar’s taken them. He’s taken a lot of people of slave age by the look of things – there are no dead children, and fewer corpses of young people than there should be. The old and the brave he killed. Anwen will earn a good slave price. My father and mother … I’d guess they’re hostages, but there’s nothing to pay a ransom with, no one to gain political leverage over. We’ll follow Zadar’s army and take them back.”

“We may … A different course may be…”

Ragnall looked at Drustan.

“All right,” said the older man. “Help me give the rites. Then we’ll get out of here. Then we’ll talk.”

It was almost dark when they left Boddingham along the Ridge Road. They rode all night under the stars.

Dawn was rising over a wood of scrubby trees when they came across a hedgehog sitting in the middle of the road, looking at Ragnall. It scooted to the side, looked at him again, then disappeared into an old flint mine, now just a steep-sided hollow in the chalk.

Ragnall dismounted.

“Ragnall?” said Drustan.

“Wait.” He walked to the edge of the pit and looked into it.

At the bottom of the slope were three bodies held together by a triple slave collar – three iron hoops connected by two pace-long iron rods. Even in the semi-darkness he could tell they were dead. Even after five years the figure at the front looked familiar. Even before Ragnall had dismounted, climbed down the bank and turned her over, he knew he’d found his mother.

“G
ot the rope.”

“Where’s Tristan? Who are you?”

“I’m Dug. Here’s your rope.” Lowa saw that it was the shy glancer. Was he going to help her? Odds were he was just another chancer trying to ingratiate himself with Zadar.

“Here, Arthur, take over here.” Weylin kept the sword pressed into her neck as Arthur, a fit-looking fellow with tousled hair and a chin like a fist, took the hilt from him. Lowa knew Arthur. He was one of the Fifty. Not a friend as such, but someone she’d chatted with amiably enough. He was a charming man. She was pretty sure Aithne had shagged him. Possibly Maura too.
Why were they doing this?

“Got her, boss,” said Arthur.

“Right.” Weylin turned, walked over and thrust his face at Dug’s. “I said, where is Tristan?”

“Have you been eating onions?” Dug turned his head away.

Behind them the rest of the pub had cleared, apart from the barmaid. She was leaning on the counter, watching impassively.

“What?”

“Aye, nothing, but can you take a step back? I’m on your side. You’re Zadar’s troops, right?”

Weylin moved back a little. “Right.”

“I’m a Warrior looking to join the Maidun army. I was sitting over there and I heard you ask for rope. So I got some. I don’t have a clue where your man Tristan has gone. Thought maybe if I helped you, you’d help me join.”

“Do I look like a recruitment officer?” Weylin turned to one side and then the other as if to bask in the appreciative laughter of his companions. None came.

Dug looked Weylin up and down, then leaned to look round at his ponytail. “I’m not quite sure
what
you look like.”

A couple of the soldiers snorted.

“What!” Weylin reached for his sword. His fingers scrabbled at air. He remembered he’d handed his sword to Arthur and turned the scrabbling into scratching his hip.

“Hey, I’m just joking.” Dug smiled. “Calm yourself. I just thought I’d get you a rope, and maybe you could tell me how to join up and perhaps put in a good word. So here’s your rope.”

Dug held up a thin pile of light brown hairy lime-bark rope. “I’ll tie her up. I used to be a sailor. I’ve a knot she’ll never escape.”

Lowa looked at Dug. He didn’t have the salt-, wind- and sun-cracked face of a sailor, nor the springy, bow-kneed walk that came from years of moving about on deck. He was no sailor. Did the lie mean he was going to help her? Possibly. More likely he did want to join the Maidun army and was simply a liar.

She silently pleaded with the big Warrior to help. If he didn’t, she was caught and she’d die. That was bad enough on its own – knowing Zadar and Felix, it was unlikely to be quick – but what she really couldn’t stomach was the idea of dying without avenging Aithne, Realin, Cordelia, Seanna and Maura.
Make him help me, please
, she begged the gods that she didn’t believe in.

“Is that rope thick enough?” Weylin asked suspiciously.

Dug looked surprised. “Oh aye. I’ve used thinner rope to tow a clinker-built schooner from a lee shore in a complete hooly.”

“Um … all right,” said Weylin. “Tie her up.”

Weylin shifted his large frame aside so Dug could get through. “Clear a space everyone. You, Flynn, stand up. Arthur, don’t let the pressure off.”

Lowa stood slowly, the sword jabbing uncomfortably into her trachea. It was a typical medium-length iron blade, made for slashing and hacking, not stabbing, so it had sharp edges but a dull tip. Pushed into her neck it was unpleasant but by no means incapacitating. It pained her that these men called themselves Warriors but didn’t realise that.
If the lunk is on my side,
she thought, edging round the table,
this is going to be my best chance.

She tightened her neck muscles and pushed, driving the sword and Arthur’s arm back. He countered by thrusting the blade into her, as she’d expected. She dodged to the right, bringing her left hand up to grab the sword by the hilt. With all the power of her bow-drawing arm, she thrust her right hand, fingers pointed, into Arthur’s windpipe. He went down with a strangled “Glurk!” and the sword was hers.