Age of Iron (2 page)

On Mylor’s left was the druid’s wife, Vasin Goldan. Her skin was shiny and mottled. Big eyes sat wide apart, far up her forehead, very nearly troubling her hairline. Frog-face, Dug had heard her called earlier.
Spot on
, he mused. Seal-head, Rat-nose and Frog-face. Right old menagerie.

Behind Elliax and Mylor were four Warriors in ringmail. It was never a great sign, Dug thought, when rulers needed protection from their own people.

Elliax silenced the hubbub with a couple of claps, interrupting Dug’s explanation to a young woman of how he’d improve the hut’s roof. “The meeting is convened!” he said in a surprisingly deep voice. Dug had expected him to squeak.

“Could we not do this outside?” asked Dug, pulling his mail shirt away from his neck to get some cooler air down there. Spicily pungent body odour clouded out. The woman he’d been talking to shuffled away. Blooming embarrassment made Dug even hotter.

“Barton war meetings take place in the Barton Longhouse!” Elliax boomed, also reddening.

“Even when it’s hot and there’s plenty of room outside? Isn’t that a bit stupid?” Several people around Dug nodded.

“Hot-t-t-t-t!” shouted King Mylor.

Mylor, it was said, had lost his mind along with Barton’s wealth and position ten years before, when he’d bet his five best against King Zadar’s champion. The champion, a massive young man called Carden Nancarrow, had slaughtered Barton’s four best men and one woman in a few horrifying moments. Barton had paid painful taxes to Maidun ever since.

By persuading Mylor to accept the five-to-one combat rather than defend the highly defendable fort, Elliax claimed he’d saved Barton from annihilation. Over the following decade he’d continued to serve his town as Zadar’s representative and tax collector. Zadar’s taxes would have starved Barton in a couple of years, said Elliax, but he was happy to mislead Maidun about Barton’s assets and collect a little less. All he asked in exchange were a few easy gifts like land, food, ironwork or the easiest gift of all – an hour or so with a daughter. While others became steadily malnourished, Elliax thrived, his wife fattened, and unmarried girls bore children with suspiciously rodent faces. Anyone who complained found themselves chosen by Elliax’s druidic divinations to march south as part of Zadar’s quarterly slave quota.

“We have nothing to fear,” Elliax continued, ignoring Dug and King Mylor. “I have seen it. We pay our dues and it’s in Zadar’s interest that we keep paying them. He will not attack.”

“But Zadar can’t be trusted to act rationally!” shouted a young woman at the back. “Look what he did to Cowton last year.”

Dug had heard about Cowton. Everybody had. Zadar had wiped out the entire town. Men, women, the elderly, children, livestock … two thousand people and Danu knew how many animals had been slaughtered or sold to Rome as slaves. Nobody knew why.

Elliax looked sideways at King Mylor. The king was picking at the crotch of his woollen trousers.

“Who is your chief druid?” Elliax asked. Nobody had an answer. Elliax smiled like a toad who’d caught a large fly. He held out his arms. “This morning, on the wood shrine, I sacrificed a seabird from the Island of Angels to see its tales of the future. As the bird quivered in death, I was distracted by a sound. I looked up and saw a squirrel hissing at a cat. The cat passed by, leaving the squirrel unharmed.” Elliax looked around smugly, eyes finishing up on Dug’s.

Most people looked at each other and nodded. More often than not the gods’ messages were too cryptic for Dug to grasp immediately, but he got this one.

“Can’t argue with that!” said a stout man.

“Yeah, if it was true. Ever heard a squirrel hiss?” muttered a woman behind Dug.

“No one would dare lie about something like that!” whispered a man who, by the frustration in his voice, Dug took to be the woman’s husband.

Elliax continued. “I looked into the bird’s viscera and found Danu. She told me we had nothing to fear from Zadar. Next I found Makka. He outlined our strategy. The weather has been dry, so Zadar will leave the Ridge Road and take the quicker lowland road, as he did on the way to Boddingham. Makka told me that we should gather everyone on the valley floor and form a spear and shield line between the two curves of the river on the other side of the bridge. Cavalry and chariots cannot charge a spear line.”

“Unless the spear line breaks,” said Dug. He wouldn’t have usually challenged any god’s proclamations, especially Makka’s, but these people didn’t know battle and needed to be told. A few older voices murmured agreement, which encouraged him to continue: “In which case you might as well have a row of children holding wet reeds. Why not bring everyone up into the fort? Do a bit of work on the walls overnight – sharpen the angles, tighten the palisade, few spikes in the ditch – and they’ll never get in.”

“And leave all our farms, homes and crops to the whims of Zadar’s army!” Elliax spat, his voice becoming steadily higher. “You’re as stupid as you look, northman! You shouldn’t be in here anyway. You’re not from Barton. There’s no reason for a spear line to break. I think two gods know a little more than some shabby has-been Warrior. And actually I have the advice of three gods, because further into the guts of the bird, I found Dwyn.”

“Pretty crowded in that bird,” said the woman behind Dug. Her husband shushed her again.

Elliax ignored the interruption. “That cunning god perfected the plan. He told me to send a rider to Zadar to tell him that we’ll be lining the route to celebrate his passing with a ceremonial battle line. We’ll defend our land with something that looks like a show of respect. That’s the sort of strategic thinking you won’t have seen much of where you’re from.”

“Are you sure that’s what Dwyn told you?” Dug had never questioned a druid before, but Elliax’s plan was madness. “Forewarned, as most kids where I’m from know, is forearmed.”

Elliax sneered. “We have slings, many more than Zadar can possibly have. His troops will be on horseback and in chariots, we’ll be behind shields. If Zadar tries to attack, our shields will protect us and we’ll send back a hailstorm of death. Zadar is not stupid. He will not attack! He knows how futile it would be. Besides, the gods have spoken to me. Perhaps if you’d listened to them more, you wouldn’t be walking the land begging for work. At your age too. It’s shameful.”

Dug’s ears were suddenly hot. Elliax turned away from him and outlined his plan in detail. Irritatingly, thought Dug, the jumped-up prick’s idea made some sense. Charging a line of spears on horseback or in a chariot was indeed suicide. Horses knew this too, so it was also near impossible. He was right about projectile weapons as well. Barton’s more numerous slingers and shields should neutralise any projectile threat.

Geography also favoured Barton. To get from Zadar’s likely route to most of Barton’s land, you had to cross a river. The only bridge for miles was in the centre of a long bend. The best way for cavalry to beat a line of spearmen was to gallop around and take them on the flank or from behind. With the army bracketed by two loops of the river’s meandering course, that would be impossible. But there was still one big, obvious flaw.

“Why don’t we stay this side of the bridge?” Dug asked. “We can hold the bridge with a handful of soldiers, protect most of the land and you can still have your wee procession. If Zadar attacks and your long line of bakers and potters doesn’t hold, which it probably wouldn’t, then we’re trapped between him and the river and in all sorts of bother.”

Elliax grimaced as if someone had just urinated on a relative’s funeral bed. “Still you challenge the gods? They know, as you don’t, that there’s valuable property just the other side of the river.”

“This property wouldn’t happen to be yours, would it?”

“Why don’t you shut up and stop embarrassing yourself? We share property. It’s
everyone’s
land, you northern fool.” Elliax stared at him furiously, but then, as if recalling a pleasant memory, smiled. “Or maybe you’d like a stronger reading? Why don’t you come up here and we’ll see what your spilled entrails say about Zadar’s intentions? We’ll see the next ten winters in your fat gut! Bob, Hampcar, why don’t you find out just how much this know-it-all knows about fighting?”

Two of the four guards stood forward and slid swords a couple of fingers’ breadth from scabbards. They were both big men. One had a long face with a pronounced muzzle and drawn-back lips showing uncommonly white teeth. The other was beardless, with a scar soaring redly from each corner of his mouth into his shaggy hairline. That injury was caused by making a small cut at each corner of a person’s mouth, then hurting them; an iron auger screwed between wrist bones was one method Dug had seen. The victim would scream, ripping his or her flesh from mouth to ears. If the wounds healed and they didn’t die of infection, they were left with a smile-shaped scar. Way up north this was called a Scrabbie’s kiss, after a tribe keen on handing them out. Men generally grew beards to cover the scars, but this guy had shaved to show them off. It was, admittedly, quite effective, if you were going for the scary bastard look. His mate looked even tougher.

Dug decided not to take them on.

“Are you coming? Or are you a coward?” Elliax sneered.

Dug stared back in what he hoped was a cool, Bel-may-care manner. He didn’t need to take on four Warriors to prove a point. Or even two. Besides, if Dwyn, god of tricks, Makka, god of war and Danu, mother of all the gods, had all been involved in the planning, who was Dug to argue? He might as well negotiate a decent fee for standing in the line, then leave the following evening a richer man with his guts still in his belly.

“Are you coming, I said?”

“I’ll stay here.”

“Stupid, fat and cowardly too. Some Warrior!” Elliax looked around triumphantly and seemed to grow a little. “Ignore this oaf’s ignorant comments. I have been shown the way. The plan is made and King Mylor agrees.” Mylor looked up and smiled at hearing his name, then returned to plucking at his genitals. Elliax continued: “Have no fear. Zadar hasn’t got where he is today by attacking against impossible odds. We are completely safe.”

So the following dawn everyone who wasn’t too young, infirm or important to hold a weapon, around four thousand men and women in all, wandered at first light across the bridge to the big field and gathered between the two river bends. The mixed bunch of farmers, crafters and woodspeople from Barton village and its outlying hamlets and farms shuffled about confusedly but good-naturedly as Dug and others formed them into an as effective a line as possible, putting those with relatively decent shields and spears at the front. Dug herded a few people with longer spears to the rear, going by the theory that if those in front were engaged in a hand-to-hand mêlée, the back rank could still thrust their long weapons at the enemy. He knew it was futile – if this front line engaged with even half-trained troops then they were all fucked – but it kept him busy and showed that he knew his game.

The children and the elderly crossed the river and gathered behind them, standing on carts, boxes and barrels to watch Zadar’s army pass. The chief families arrived last, dressed in well-worn finery. Mylor, Elliax and his wife Vasin arrived last, with their chairs from the longhouse mounted on the biggest cart.

As the day warmed, a carnival atmosphere developed behind the spear line. The crazy druid stopped shouting, children played less frantically and the elderly forgot their gripes as they drank and talked of battles past. Puppies scurried between feet. Older dogs padded around looking for pats and scraps. The line grew ever more ragged as its members left to grab a drink, find somewhere to squat or just wander about.

Dug was pushing back through the line to say hello to some old boys with a gigantic barrel of cider that he’d spotted earlier when Zadar’s army rode into sight from behind a stand of trees some four hundred paces away. A few shouts got everyone’s attention and silence spread through the crowd like blood soaking into sand.

“Lift me up, please?” It was a small, skinny boy with huge brown eyes and a tuft of hair the red-brown of freshly ploughed earth. He stared up at Dug. “Please?” The boy’s eyes widened ever further.

Dug sighed and hoiked the boy onto his shoulders. He hardly weighed a thing.

“Is that Zadar?!”chirped the child.

“Probably. Yes.” A lone rider headed the procession. He wore a huge, golden, horned helmet, a shining black ringmail jacket and black leather trousers. His black horse – by far the largest Dug had ever seen – was similarly attired in a golden-horned pony cap and a draped sheet of black ringmail protecting its rump.

“What’s he wearing on his head?”

“Can’t you see?”

Dug felt the boy slump a little. Dug could see well over long and short distances, but he knew that a lot of people had trouble with either or both. As a young man, he’d made no allowances, convinced that everybody could see just as well as him but pretended not to be able to for perverse reasons. Age had made him more tolerant.

“His helmet has horns on it.”

The boy perked up. “Why?”

“Maybe to make him look scary, or maybe he’s trying to persuade people that he’s Kornonos, the horned god of animals. Probably he’s not very tall and he thinks people will think he’s taller if he wears a big hat. But of course people will think he’s just a wee man in a big hat.”

The boy giggled. Zadar in fact looked like quite a big man, but Dug was never one to let truth get in the way of belittling people he suspected to be puffed up.

“That coat he’s wearing – and that rug covering the arse of his horse – is ringmail. That’s hundreds or thousands – probably thousands in this case – of rings of iron all linked together. It’ll protect you from slingstones, a sword slash, that sort of thing. But it’s not much use against this.” Dug raised his warhammer. The boy jiggled with glee. The hammer was an effective but simple weapon, no more sophisticated than the rock-tied-to-a-stick design that had been popular for aeons. An iron lump the size and shape of a large clog was moulded around a shaft of fire-hardened oak a pace long and held in place by a tight criss-cross of leather strips. Both ends of the handle were sharpened into points.