Age of Iron (8 page)

Aithne was kneeling behind him. She looked up at Lowa, brown eyes full of pleading and terror. She tried to say something, but blood spilled from her slit throat like water from a kicked bucket and she pitched forward.

Lowa whipped a dagger from Atlas’s belt. A slingstone whistled past. Armed men and women were coming at her from all directions – apart from where Keelin Orton stood blinking in shock. There was her only way out. Lowa ran at her and whacked the stool backhanded into her chin. The girl crumpled. Lowa leaped over her onto a table. She sprinted along it, stamping through plates and drinking horns, kicking clay amphoras in all directions. People clutched at her legs, but she was too strong and too fast.

She jumped from the table, grasped the edge of the minstrels’ platform with both hands and swung herself up. The musicians shrieked and fled, leaving Lowa among their instruments. She grabbed the nearest, a horn with an end twisted and hammered into a horse’s head. The entire throng was coming at her, swords and daggers raised. She knew them all. Many, she thought, had been friends. They were all in it. They’d all known it was going to happen, and they’d all been happy with that. They all enjoyed Zadar’s safe and lucrative patronage and they did what he said.

“What are you
doing
?!” she shouted at them.

She brandished the trumpet. They faltered. A bronze trumpet was no match for an iron anything, but her reputation bought her a couple of breaths. She threw the trumpet at her attackers, spun round, gripped the top of the palisade and somersaulted over it.

Lowa tumbled down the wall and thudded hard into scree at the bottom of the ditch. She was winded, but it should have been much worse because there should have been spikes down there. She scrambled up the other side. Thank the Mother it was a single ditch. She was very near the top when—

“Stop or we’ll shoot!” She stopped. She didn’t need to turn to know that several slings were aimed at her back. Her red dress wouldn’t be much protection.

Fuck it
, she thought,
m
aybe they’ll miss
. She dived over the top of the outer bank, slingstones fizzing past her heels. She tumbled and bounced down the steep grass scarp, not trying to stop. Every time her feet made contact with the rushing ground she sprang more into the fall. It was the quickest way down the six hundred or so paces of hillside. The slope evened out, one of the tumbles landed her on her feet, and she pelted away across the long grass at a full sprint. She hurdled a low fence. She dared a glance back.
Shit.
They were already pouring down the hill towards her. Some were carrying torches.

A path led into the woods. Lowa followed it, running full tilt into the evening warmth of the trees. She didn’t know the land. The woods were dark. She could trip or fall into a mire at any moment. Her only advantage over her pursuers was that she had nothing to lose. She saw a faint light ahead and ran for it, passing through a clearing and scattering a sounder of wild boar from their starlit grazing. Two boar ran ahead of her, groinking, then peeled off along tracks she couldn’t see. But her night vision was improving. She could make out the way very slightly now. She slowed from a sprint to a fast run.

The path split; Lowa chose left. She held her breath for a moment as she ran. There was no sound but the pounding of her own feet. The path split again. She chose left again. Wrong choice. That way ended in another small clearing, maybe ten paces across, surrounded by thick brambles. There was a dark regular shape in the centre – a forest altar.
She could hide behind it.
No, they’d find her. She spun and ran back towards the fork. Torches were bobbing towards her through the trees.

Reaching the fork, she wrenched the shawl with the badger-or-dog design from her waist and hurled it back up the left track before running up the right one, hoping it wasn’t a dead end as well.

It was.

She smelled the river before she saw it. The path ended at a low, short jetty. The river was way too broad to leap and she couldn’t swim. She listened. Something scurried nearby, an owl hooted, and, not nearly as far away as she would have liked, her pursuers called to each other.

“Here’s her shawl! It was round her waist earlier.” That was Dionysia Palus, formerly Deirdre Marsh. Trust her to notice what another woman was wearing. “It could be a decoy. Let’s split!”

She didn’t have long. The brambles were impenetrable in both directions along the bank. To her right, upstream, the river stretched into the distance. An eagle owl flew lazily along the centre of the channel. To her left the river ran around a wooded corner. The only route was back along the path towards Danu knew how many former friends intent on murdering her. She had a knife. They’d have slings and swords.

She dashed out onto the jetty.
How hard could swimming be?
She’d seen children do it and children were idiots.

She crouched to throw herself as far into the water as she could and spotted the coracle. The tiny circular leather and wood boat was tied under the end of the jetty. She lowered herself gingerly but quickly onto the bench that bisected it. The crazily small craft – surely meant for a child – rocked alarmingly and sank until it was two fingers’ breadth clear of the surface, but it didn’t capsize. She cut the flax painter with Atlas’s knife and pushed off downstream. There was a stout paddle under the bench. She rowed frantically. Calls came from the woods. More voices, getting closer. She heard thudding feet.

The boat moved out into the current but Lowa’s paddling was just spinning it around. The curve in the river that would take her out of sight was a long way off. She could hear their panting now. They’d be on the jetty any moment. They wouldn’t miss her on the starlit water. In a few seconds slingstones would smash her skull. She slowed her rowing to firmer, more purposeful strokes, one side then the other. That was the way. The strange little boat picked up speed.

It was too late. She heard feet thud onto wood. She crouched into a ball.

“A river.” She recognised the voice. It was Carden’s brother and Dionysia’s husband, Weylin Nancarrow, the man who’d killed Cordelia.

“Well spotted, genius.” That was Deidre/Dionysia.

“She’s swum across or she’s hiding back in the woods,” said a voice she didn’t recognise.

“I’m surrounded by geniuses.” Deidre again.

“She can’t swim. She told me.” That was Weylin. They’d talked about swimming not long ago. Fenn’s teeth! Never admit your weaknesses.

“Wait a minute,” said Dionysia. “There would have been a boat here. Look, there’s a cut rope. What’s that!?”

“What?” said Weylin.

“There, downstream. It’s … I … I can’t see it now.”

“Couldn’t ever see it, more like. She’s hiding back in the woods.”

“Then why is the rope cut?”

Their voices were quieter. Lowa risked looking up. The jetty and her pursuers were out of sight. She sat up and quietly paddled on. In the darkness ahead she saw Aithne’s eyes pleading for help that she hadn’t given. She saw Cordelia chop her way out of the mêlée only to be hacked down herself. She wondered if it was Maura or Realin’s hand that she’d seen fly up into the air. A shudder of anger, sorrow and disbelief lurched though her. She dropped her oar and doubled over with grief.

No!
She sat back up.
Crying could come later.
She would find out why Zadar had killed them, and tried to kill her, and she would have her revenge. First though she’d go back to Barton and get her bow and arrows. They wouldn’t expect that.

She paddled on. The silvered black water was still, save for the gentle splash of her paddle. The silent woods watched her pass.

“W
eylin, Dionysia! My favourite couple of the Fifty! Welcome!”

They were the only couple in the Fifty, so it was a stupid thing to say. Felix’s Roman accent made his cheeriness seem all the more false. Weylin did not like Romans, especially Roman druids as creepy and powerful as Felix.

King Zadar’s chief druid and second in command stood from his chair on the raised dais with a grin on his smooth face and his short arms raised in greeting. He wore his usual sleeveless blue leather jerkin and purple glass necklace. The necklace’s glass beads were each inlaid with a whorl of white, and it was said to be worth more than its weight in gold. Weylin wasn’t convinced. Glass was much easier to smash than gold, so how could it be worth more?

Zadar wasn’t there, which was a relief. Even though he didn’t like Felix, Weylin much preferred the idea of explaining Lowa’s escape to him. Felix might be a cruel and unbending druid, uninterested in anyone’s welfare but the king’s and his own, and capable of conjuring up a formori that would bite your head off, but firstly he wasn’t Zadar, whose audiences had a much higher mortality rate, and secondly he was the height of a child and looked ridiculous. His light brown hair was thick but receding, his fringe a good ten fingers’ breadth from his eyebrows, like a furry hood pulled halfway back over an egg. He wore his sleeveless jerkin in an attempt to look like a Briton, but his haughty, unmistakably Roman face and flabby arms made him look like a bard dressed up for a role.

Weylin was in fact dressed very similarly, and his hair had receded almost as much even though he was still in his late teens, but this didn’t faze him. He shaved his remaining hair back to a straight line across his skull so it looked like his hairline was a choice. What remained hung down his back in a thick, matted, manly tangle. The arms sticking out of
his
jerkin were thick with muscle and already badly scarred,
and
he was a good two heads taller than Felix. Some said he had a big nose, but he knew it was a strong nose. The difference between him and Felix was that
he
looked good. And he
was
British.

Felix sat back down between Zadar’s two bodyguards.
Why does such a powerful druid need bodyguards?
wondered Weylin. To the Roman’s right, small wooden and iron shield in one massive hand and short curved wooden-handled blade in the other, was the giant German Tadman Dantadman. He looked like he’d taken a much smaller man’s head but kept his own face, so he was all chin, nose and deep-set eyes protruding from a comically small skull. A blond moustache the size of a small broom head and a tussle of blond hair tied into a topknot added to the effect. As always, he was wearing a heavy fur jacket. Unsurprisingly, given the heat, his pale face was shining with sweat. Weylin shook his head.
Take your jacket off, you idiot!
he thought.

To Felix’s left was Chamanca the Iberian, the much smaller but more dangerous of Zadar’s guards. Tadman could stand and smite effectively enough, but Chamanca whirled through the foe’s ranks like a greased weasel, leaving a trail of confused and mortally wounded enemies. She looked at Weylin now as if counting the ways she could kill him. He looked back. Her hair was like dried black grass, a soft frame around her hard eyes, shining gold-brown cheeks and lower-lip-heavy pissed-off pout. She wore epaulettes, elbow protectors, gauntlets, greaves, leather shorts and a double-cupped iron chestpiece inlaid with bronze swirls. Weylin looked from her metalled breasts to her muscled stomach, over her tight shorts which gathered into her crotch like an invitation, to her thighs glowing smoothly in the candlelight. He looked back up her body to her face. She was still looking into his eyes. He gulped. She grinned, revealing teeth filed into sharp points.

Weylin managed to look away. If Dionysia noticed him gawping for any longer, there’d be trouble.

“These,” said Felix, “are Elliax and Vasin Goldan.” Felix gestured to a bench where a man and woman sat, both dressed in Roman-style purple togas which suited them about as well as a hat suited a dog. Vasin’s white arms were circled by too many bronze armlets. Some of them looked painfully tight, with mauve flesh bulging on either side.

“They’re from Barton. Elliax is a fellow druid.”

Elliax greeted Weylin and Dionysia with a rodent grin, eyes flashing like a startled horse’s. Vasin appraised Weylin and Dionysia fatly, seemed to find them unworthy of her attention and returned her gaze to the middle distance.

“So,” said Felix. “Where is Lowa Flynn?”

Weylin looked at Dionysia. His wife narrowed her annoying green eyes at him. It seemed that he was to do the talking.

“She got away.”

Felix’s little eyes bulged and his lips retreated into a humour-free sneer. “Did she? You’re telling me that she escaped from a fort full of soldiers? From skilful highly rewarded soldiers such as you, who were all
ordered
to kill her?”

Weylin breathed in, then explained what had happened. Dionysia filled in the details that he missed. He was pretty sure he couldn’t be blamed for her escape, and anyway he’d brought down the Bullbrow girl where others had failed.

“So. She either swam the river or took a boat from the jetty.” Felix looked around as if seeking an answer.

“There is a boat at that jetty!” Elliax Goldan piped up from the bench. “Just a coracle but…” He noticed that all the Maidun people were looking at him in surprise. “Oh. Sorry. I shouldn’t have spoken unbidden…”

“Elliax, Elliax. A
druid
can always speak.” Felix smiled at him like a wolf smiling at a lamb with a broken leg, then back to Weylin. “She’s not a swimmer, so it’s plain she escaped in the coracle. If I’m not mistaken, that river flows past Barton village. It’s the same river we met by this morning. Geography, you see. The secret to success, Weylin and Dionysia, is knowing the land better than your foe. Geography makes history. And, of course, you have to know your enemy better than he or she knows him- or herself. So, knowing Lowa and knowing Barton, where would she go first?” Felix looked around like a teacher druid at a group of seven-year-olds.

“As far as she could?” piped Dionysia keenly.

Felix shook his head. “Good thing you’re a fighter, not a thinker.”

Weylin was pretty sure he could feel the heat from his wife’s blush.
Ha!
he thought.