Age of Iron (31 page)

“No.” Ula looked like someone who’d made up their mind.
Shit
, thought Weylin. “Perhaps you’re telling the truth about her, but—”

“I
am
telling the truth.”

“Fine. Will your story still be true tomorrow?”

“Yes…”

“And the next day?”

“Yes, by Fenn, of course.”

“Then you’ll stay here until Lowa comes back. Then we can test your stories against one another’s.”

“You let me go now, and I’ll stop Zadar from killing all of you.”

“No. You’ll wait.”

“He’ll kill every fucking one of you! And worse!”

“If Lowa comes back, and you’re right, then we’ll take her captive, and Zadar will be grateful. Surely that would be better for you too? Unless of course you’re
not
telling the truth.”

Fuck.
This was why he hated lying.

“All right, all right, but she’s not coming back.”

“We’ll see.”

D
rustan woke in the early afternoon. He scorned Ragnall’s litter, stood up and collapsed. Ragnall dashed forward and knelt next to him, holding his head as his body pulsed with racking coughs.

“Ah,” Drustan said when he’d recovered. “Perhaps the litter is not such a bad idea. Since you’ve already made it.” He coughed again.

Ragnall dragged the litter over to him.

“I am sorry,” said Drustan.

“I’m sorry you’re ill. I just want you to get better.”

“Yes. Well. I have to be kept warm.”

“But you’re—”

“Sweating, yes. Still, need to be kept warm. I bought some barberry jam in Bladonfort. Find that and I will try to eat some.”

“OK, I’ll get—”

“Wait.” Drustan coughed up sputum. It was more light grey than yellow now. “There is more. It is possible my mind might … slip. Important that I keep drinking boiled water and eating barberry jam. And warm. Use all the blankets on the litter, as many below as on top. And I will need boiled water to drink.”

“Right.” Ragnall stood and began to unstrap the packs that he’d just strapped to the sullen little packhorse. “And if,” he said over his shoulder, “well if … Where are we going?”

“South-west. Place called Mearhold.”

“Right.”

“But you can’t get there … Swamp … Head for Gutrin Tor. It is the highest place for miles around, with a square tower on the top. Ask for Maggot – Mearhold’s druid. He’ll help. For now barberry jam, water, rest … is what I need.”

“OK. One more thing.”

Ragnall paused. Drustan nodded weakly.

“Why don’t you use magic? To cure yourself?”

The druid shook his head and muttered incoherently. Ragnall layered wool blankets on the litter and rolled Drustan onto it, piled more blankets on top, then secured him with hemp ropes. Shortly afterwards Ragnall led the three-horse procession up the road: the two mounts with the litter first, then the packhorse. He’d decided to walk next to the horses rather than ride to keep the pace calm and slow. As they passed the hole in the hedge that led to the henge, Ragnall found himself silently asking the ancient gods to restore Drustan to health.

A
t sunset, Lowa was still running but she was immeasurably less chipper. To begin with she’d pumped her arms, arrows in one hand, bow in the other. Now the wooden weapons felt heavy as granite, and it felt like her hip bones were grating directly on her pelvis. Her underarms were chafing painfully and the insides of her leather boots were slick with what she hoped was sweat, could be blister fluid, but was probably blood.

Judging by where the sun had been when she left and her normal speed, she’d come around thirty miles, a good ten miles further than she’d run before and a good fifteen more, she’d decided, than was pleasant. She’d stopped briefly only to gulp water from streams and four other times, three times at villages and once to talk to a man driving an ox cart. People at two of the villages and the carter had seen Ogre. At the last village, about a mile back, a woman had said that an earless man riding with a pack slung over the back of his horse was half an hour ahead of her. None of the villages had had horses for her to borrow, or at least they’d said they hadn’t, and she hadn’t seen any. They had, however, given her food, for which she was grateful.

She wanted to stop, a lot. The girl means nothing to you, said a weaselly internal voice. Just think how nice it would be to stop, it said for the thousandth time. How about a lovely sit-down on the grass? You could rest a while, wander back to Kanawan and get on with avenging Aithne and the girls. This is not helping.
The girl is dead
. You’re following nothing. That bundle on the horse isn’t Spring, he dumped her body in the woods miles back. You’re running for no reason. Just stop.
Rest
.

But another voice, a stronger voice, told her to keep going. She ran on, fording streams, speeding down hills and schlepping thigh-burningly up them.

It was dark when she finally slowed to a walk, cloud cover blocking the stars and moon. She told herself that Ogre would camp for the night to rest the horse, and she didn’t want to overtake them. Her relief at stopping was short-lived. Spasms cramped through her legs. She leaned on a tree stump and pulled a foot up to her bottom to stretch her aching leg muscles, but it didn’t help. She walked on, the pain in her thighs so intense that it made her giggle. She jogged for a few paces, but that was sore in a different way and she soon stopped. She had to walk. She didn’t want to miss …

Something told her to stop and listen. She did, holding her breath. Nothing. But then …

A horse’s whinny, faint, off the track and back a few paces. She stopped, closed her eyes and strained her ears. Nothing. She walked back in stealth gait – feet wide, hands splayed, palms facing down – the pain in her legs ignored. There wasn’t much point trying to be stealthy though. It was so dark that she couldn’t see where the road stopped and the woods began, let alone spot snappable twigs or other potential alarm raisers. For all she could see, she might have been approaching a precarious stack of bronze cymbals.

She held her breath. She heard only the swish of bats taking advantage of the cleared track to swoop for insects, the skittering of timorous beasts in the undergrowth and the far-off scream of a fox.

And then, there! Definitely a horse’s gentle nicker. She walked slowly back along the track, cursing silently when she kicked a stone and it clicked lightly into another one. Yes, there it was. A flickering light a hundred paces away through the trees. She looked away, but the fire still flickered on her retina. It couldn’t be them, could it? Surely Ogre wouldn’t light a fire?

She crouched and closed her eyes for a hundred heartbeats to optimise her night vision. She opened them.
Better
. She crept along the road, trying to pierce the night with her eyes and find a path into the woods. She looked at the trackside, resisting the temptation to glance at the fire and ruin her night vision again.

She found the gap, a blacker circle in the black vegetation. In a perfect world she’d have waited there until dawn, or at least until the clouds cleared, rather than stumble blind towards a possible enemy camp. But that was the point, annoyingly. It was only a
possible
enemy camp. It might be any other traveller or forest dweller, and Ogre might be making good his escape, or even bedded down for the night just a few hundred paces further up the road. She had to check.

Slowly, as gingerly as a child with a tyrannical father coming home hours after curfew, she edged forward. The ground, sheltered under a roof of leaves, was still soft from the recent rain. Hands outstretched, she could feel foliage either side. It was a trappers’ or foragers’ path, she guessed, used just enough to keep it from growing over. She could smell horse and man. She moved on, slowly, slowly, breathing shallowly, bow searching the ground and air in front of her like a blind man’s stick, testing for traps. If she was Ogre, she would have left a few surprises on the path for any pursuers.

The light from the fire crept into her peripheral vision.

She stepped on a twig.
Crack!
In the quiet night it sounded like rock split by frost.

“Who’s there?” came a rough voice from the fire.

“Choppy-chup-chop!” squeaked Lowa, shaking a bush. Her badger impression was, she liked to think, good, but she crouched down anyway. Slowly, firmly, she pushed her three arrows into the mud, then bent her bow into the ground and slipped the leather string into the notch on the horn tip. She heard the soft steps of a worried horse, the soothing whispers of a man, then nothing. She looked up. The fire was perhaps twenty paces away, around a bend in the path.

She counted a hundred breaths, heard nothing more from the camp and decided that her badger ruse had worked.

She crept along the path until it turned towards the camp. Carefully, she poked her head around the corner. The brightness of the fire made her eyes water and she blinked away tears. The camp was in a small clearing. To the left was a small forest altar. It wasn’t a hunters’ track then, but the path to a little-visited shrine.

Sitting on the far side of the fire, staring into it, was earless Ogre. To the right of the fire was the horse, standing placidly and breathing deeply, perhaps asleep. There was no sign of Spring.

W
eylin leaned against the arena wall in the night, surrounded by his dead troops and javelins. He was cold, even in his leather and ringmail. His broken wrist stung, his head throbbed, he was as hungry as a stepchild in a famine and he was miserable. He’d failed Zadar again. Some people believed that the path to success was failing over and over with a smile on your face until you got it right. Zadar didn’t. Most people failed the king of Maidun only once then spent the short remainder of their lives regretting it.

He looked up. Half the sky was bright with stars, but a line of clouds was gradually covering them like a slowly shutting roof hole. Soon it would be very dark. If it rained, he thought, he might very well use one of the javelins on himself. Or maybe two. He could put the points up his nose then slam the butts into the ground. But there was no need. He’d be all right. Death, he’d observed, was something that happened to other people.

“W
hy the fire?”

Ogre jumped up. She was a few paces into the black woods, on the other side of the campfire. The bandit peered through the flames like a half-blind dog looking for its tormentors.

He bent to pick something up. “Ah ah,” she said. “I’ve got an arrow on you. Make another move and it’s in you. Now tell me, why the fire?”

“Bears.” Ogre’s voice was deep, from somewhere further north, but not as far north as Dug’s strange accent, nor from across the sea like hers.

“Bears?”

“Bears.”

“Why bears?”

Ogre stayed silent. He looked like he might burst with rage.

“Answer me, or you’ll never speak again.”

“I’ve seen what those nasty fuckers can do.”

“But there are no bears around here.”

“Wolves, then.”

“I guess. But still … lighting a fire that can be seen from the road by anyone looking for the girl? Was that sensible?”

“What girl?”

“Spring. The girl you took from Kanawan.”

“I’ve never been to Kanawan.”

“I know who you are, Ogre. You used to be Spring’s boss. You used to have five dogs. Very soon, if you don’t tell me where the girl is, I’ll send you the way of your hounds.”

“I haven’t got her. She ran off.” He looked down to the left. “I stopped for water and she legged it.”

“No, she didn’t. You put a spear in her back. She won’t be running anywhere for a while.”

“All right.” His head slumped. “You’re right. I dumped her body miles back.”

W
eylin walked up the broad ramp to Maidun Castle’s upper area, the sacred part where Zadar lived. Few were allowed up there and Weylin had never been before. The world was awash with golden light because everyone was wearing golden clothes, and their cheering was like golden noise in his ears.

“
Wey
lin!” they chanted. “Wey
lin
!” They were all there – Atlas, Lowa, Dionysia, Ula, Carden – all cheering, all cheering
him
. Zadar was waiting with arms outstretched. Felix, a genuine grin beaming from his streamlined face, was clapping and nodding admiringly.

Weylin turned to wave to the crowd. The lower expanse of Maidun was packed with thousands of cheering admirers, almost all of them attractive women. All around the great castle, stretching for miles, the farmland was filled with all the people in the world, all there to cheer Weylin. Babies were held aloft, women bared their breasts, men wept at his magnificence.

He turned to head up to Zadar, to join him as an equal. As he lifted his foot, he felt a great rumbling in his stomach, precursor to a huge fart. There was no holding it in, but nobody would hear it above the noise of the crowd.

Still smiling and waving, he strained, pushed, and
Oh fucking Bel!
His arse cheeks flapped like wet lips blowing a raspberry and a great glob of shit exploded from his arse.

He looked around the crowds, trying to keep the look of horror from his face. Nobody had noticed anything wrong. He reached around and put his hand on the back of his bare leg. What? Why wasn’t he wearing trousers? He pulled his hand up. Lumpy brown turd ran down his fingers, palm and wrist. How could there be so much of it?

“He’s
shat
himself!” squealed Felix gleefully. Zadar looked disgusted and turned away. All the people in the world laughed at his shame, apart from one boy who ran up and grabbed his arm. “Pssst!” Weylin flailed at the child with his sword but missed.

“Pssst!” said the boy again.

“Pssst!”

Weylin woke and looked up. A head was silhouetted against the dark sky, looking down at him from the arena wall. Weylin remembered where he was and sighed with relief.

“Hello,” he said.