Clash of Iron (16 page)

L
owa spotted the messenger when she was still a good way off along the valley. By the way she sat on her horse as stiffly as a haughty virgin princess passing a tavern late on a summer feast day, it was Adler, one of her staff from Maidun. Adler must have ridden several hours to find her a good thirty miles east of Maidun Castle, so something interesting must have happened. Lowa shuddered with excitement at the idea that the Romans had landed. But they probably hadn’t, if three years’ experience was anything to go by. Much more likely, somebody had overreacted to some trifling event or was covering their arse or had just wanted to show off that they were able to send a messenger to the queen.

“Excuse me,” she said to the knot of tribal leaders and farmers, and walked off to meet the rider. She was happy to leave their agrarian discussion. She’d managed to squeeze more tribute from the south-eastern farming tribes with flattery, generosity and gentle menace, and now her standing army numbered thirty thousand men and women, but, by Danu’s tits, the careful negotiation was boring. There were days that she was seriously tempted to return to Zadar’s more direct murder-and-enslavement methods of tax collection. That she didn’t do so, that in fact she was doing her best to ensure everyone under her rule had the food, shelter and warmth that they needed, gave her a bit of a kick. She hoped it also went some way towards making up for the misery that she’d caused on Zadar’s orders.

She walked along the track, high up on the valley side, looking down over the fertile fields that fed her army. She wore leather iron-heeled riding boots, as always these days, with a pale cotton skirt and a light leather jerkin. She’d taken off her tartan woollen poncho and left it draped over her horse, since the day was unseasonably warm. Her bow and quiver were on her back, and one of Elann Nancarrow’s finest thin swords scabbarded on her waist. Since she’d been beaten twice by Chamanca in mêlée fights, she’d taken to training with the sword most days, and now she was at least a match for the strongest and most skilled men, like Atlas and Carden. Annoyingly, Chamanca still whipped her every time with her unnatural speed.

Adler swung off the horse and stood, all sinews taut, a muscle twitching on her handsome face, as if awaiting inspection. A bit too formal this one, perhaps, but she’d lose that with age.

“What’s up?” asked Lowa.

“The Romans have burst from their territory, massacred tens of thousands of Helvans and are moving north through Gaul.”

So, thought Lowa, here they come. Finally.

“Have Ragnall and Drustan returned?”

“No. The news comes from the Helvans themselves. They’ve sent messengers, I presume in all directions.”

Lowa nodded. It was more than two years since Ragnall and Drustan had left for Rome. She heard nothing from them since and suspected that they were dead.

“Any other details?”

“Sure.” Adler nodded. “The Helvans have long planned a migration from their lands in the Alps to western Gaul. The Helvan king Ogotor had arranged it all with the Gaulish tribes. They were to have safe passage to a new territory on Gaul’s west coast. A moon or so ago, a huge number of them – half a million, the messenger claims – set off, burning their towns behind them to prove their resolve.”

“Yup.” Lowa knew all this from merchants. “What went wrong?”

“One of the Roman consuls of last year, Gaius Julius Caesar, has command of the Roman province in southern Gaul. He also has north Italy – or toga-wearing Gaul as they call it – and Illyricum, but it’s from southern Gaul that he’s marched. He raised a large army, moved north out of Roman territory, and blocked the Helvans’ passage. They asked him to move. He told them he’d think about it for three days. In those three days he cleared the farms and forest for miles around, and built a wall across the Helvan route. The wall is the height of three tall men, stretching further than the eye can see in both directions. The Helvans say that mere people couldn’t have made such a wall so quickly and are convinced it was built by the gods, monsters or witchcraft. Some of the Helvans approached the wall, asking for passage, but the Romans have hired the best archers and slingers from Crete, Numidia and the Iberian islands. They cut the Helvans down in their hundreds. When their families tried to collect the bodies, the mercenaries shot them too.”

“I see.” The lovely spring day seemed colder.

“It gets worse. The Helvans tried to divert around the Roman wall. They headed north, then swung west to cross the Suconna River. They’re disorganised, so their marching order is fastest first, slowest last and they became more strung out the further they went. Three-quarters or so had crossed the Suconna River, but still tens of thousands of elderly, infirm, families with children, farmers with herds and so on were trailing on the eastern side of the river. The Romans attacked this slower group at night and killed them. All of them. The messenger said that the Helvan dead were countless.”

“They killed the children?”

“Everyone.”

Lowa nodded. So it had begun. She’d been right to believe Spring and prepare an army. The Romans would murder their way through Gaul, cross the Channel and attempt to take Britain. Anyone who didn’t capitulate would be enslaved or killed. That would be their intention, anyway, but they hadn’t factored Lowa and the Maidun army into their plans.

If they were in southern Gaul at the beginning of the year, it was unlikely that they’d be in Britain until the following year at the earliest, but that was still far too soon. There was too much to be done. But she’d been right. Still there were people who said that she should worry about internal foes – the Murkans and the Dumnonians, there were even rumours of a vast army that had taken all of Eroo and was looking for new land to conquer – but she’d been right: the only significant enemy were the Romans. Anybody else they could deal with afterwards.

“Thanks, Adler,” she said. “Ride hard back to Maidun. Find Elann Nancarrow, Carden Nancarrow, Atlas Agrippa and Chamanca the Iberian and tell them to meet me at my hut at sunset.”

C
hamanca and Atlas watched from the branch of an oak tree as Roman helmets bounced along below. Atlas, crouched on the broad bough in front of the Iberian, was in dark clothes, his skin was dark and he’d muddied the blades of his axe, so that Chamanca could hardly see him from half a pace away. Carden was well hidden in a ditch at the base of their tree. Provided none of them did anything stupid, like sneeze, the passing Romans would never see them. Which, thought Chamanca, was something of a shame. She needed a fight. The wet voyage and the long ride to the south of Gaul had been boringly blood free. What’s more, Roman blood had been the first she’d ever tasted as a child in Iberia, and she was looking forward to trying it again it with warm nostalgia. It was her favourite, although that was possibly less to do with its flavour and more because the Romans had killed so many of her friends and family and taken her land. Also, she was aching to see how the beautiful little sword that Elann had given her combined in combat with her dainty but deadly ball-mace. She suppressed an urge to kick Atlas off his perch into the stream of quick-marching soldiers below and get the blood flowing.

The soldiers had been passing for some while now at a jog, silent in tight-arsed, dreary discipline. Their pace was irregular, but that wasn’t, she knew, down to slackness. Their strides were deliberately uneven to prevent the sound of their beating feet travelling to the Helvan camp a couple of miles away. The Romans were boringly good at soldiering.

The Helvans, on the other hand, were fools. Their king of kings, Ogotor, had died, or been killed more likely, shortly before their migration across Gaul had begun and they were now led – if you could call it being led – by a gaggle of squabbling tribal leaders. That was why they’d given the Romans time to build the wall that had checked their exodus in the first place, it was why the Romans had slain a quarter of their number without the rest of them even knowing it was happening, and why they were now gathered in a sprawling camp and, although a vicious army was nearby and keen to kill them all, they had no patrols in the outlying countryside. Lowa would have posted a network of shouters like a spider’s web for at least twenty miles around, but, even though Chamanca and Atlas had suggested it to every leader they could find, they hadn’t even put watchmen on the fringes of the camp. Atlas said that none of them wanted to lose face in front of the others by seeming to be afraid of the Romans. Idiots. They were going to lose a lot more than their faces.

It was with pure luck, and some intelligence, that she, Atlas and Carden had found the marching Romans. The Helvans knew from a captured patrol that the Roman army was short of food, although none of them seemed to have worked out that this meant the Romans would launch an attack before they had to retreat south to their grain supplies, because it would be better to beat the Helvans quickly and take their food instead. Atlas had said that if they were to try anything that night, then the best thing would be to split their forces and come at the Helvans from two sides at dawn the next day. The main Roman army would lure the Helvans away from their camp, then a subsidiary force would sweep down, probably from the unpopulated, wooded hill behind the Helvan camp, and kill the young, old and sick who were left in the camp, and capture their stores. It was an evil, shitty, utterly dishonourable plan and exactly what Chamanca would have done had she been in command of the Romans.

The final soldiers passed below and, very quickly, all was silent. She was glad. Her leather shorts and her narrow iron chest guard had been warm enough when they were moving around, but she had become cold sitting immobile in the tree.

“Was that all the Romans? What shall we do?” asked Carden, climbing out of the ditch with his stupidly long iron sword in one hand, looking about himself like a bear coming out of hibernation.

Chamanca, Lowa and Elann had tried to persuade Carden to replace his sword with one of Elann’s excellent little blades, and to get Atlas to leave his axe behind and do the same. They were going to be doing a lot more travelling, sneaking and hiding than open-field fighting and their weighty weapons would be an encumbrance. Both men had refused. She understood. She would never have given up her usual tools, her ball-mace and her teeth, and it was easy for her, even useful, to add the little blade that Elann was so proud of. For the men with their two-handed weapons, it would have been pointless.

“It was two legions?” she asked Atlas.

“I counted two eagle standards and around eight thousand men,” replied the Kushite, “so, yes, two legions. You also saw, I’m sure, that they were carrying only weapons and small rations. It’s as we suspected. That was the force that will sweep into the back of the Helvan position tomorrow after their army is drawn out by the rest of the Romans.”

“What’s our plan?” Chamanca asked.

“Surely we check that the Romans have gone where you said they would, then tell the Helvans?” said Carden. “If it’s only eight thousand Romans on the hill, the Helvans could march a convincingly big army out to the main Roman force, and leave forty thousand or so behind to surprise the surprisers.”

“That would work,” sighed Chamanca, “if the Helvans had any sort of command structure. As it is, if we tell them that there’s a force of Romans hiding on that hill, they’ll run up there in drabs and drips trying to prove how much braver they are than the others and they’ll be killed. Then, when the main Roman army attacks, the Helvans will get excited, forget about the Roman pincer plan, and all turn to attack the new big shiny army with its waving banners. The forgotten force on the hill will sweep down and kill everybody from behind. So, if we tell them, the only effect will be to weaken the Helvans and put them in even more disarray before the Romans launch at them.”

“Surely they’re not that stupid?” said Carden.

“Have you seen children playing football?” asked Chamanca. “They all run around following the ball, all together in a big group. They all want to be right in on the action and have no patience or concept of strategic positioning. The Helvan army is like that. Basically, a bunch of fucking idiots.”

“Indeed,” said Atlas. “We need to prevent the Roman attack from taking place at all, and chivvy the Helvans along to their new territory. Once our Helvan friends are happily ensconced in a sensible network of hillforts, the Romans will find them a tougher target and their march to Britain might take long enough for Lowa to assemble an adequate defence.”

“Oh,” said Carden, “sorry, I should have realised that it’s up to us to stop several thousand Romans. Silly me. Do you want to jog down to the Roman camp and tell Caesar not to attack or will I? Atlas, really, our best plan—”

“Shush, Carden, for Fenn’s sake,” snapped Chamanca, “let us think.”

They stood in the night. The nocturnal animals, scared into silence by the passing Romans, returned to their chupping and chirruping and were soon making so much noise that it was almost too late when they heard the sound of sandalled feet running towards them.

“You two, hide now.” Atlas sprinted down the road, away from the approaching footsteps. They were coming from the direction in which the Romans had gone. Chamanca and Carden jumped into the roadside ditch. Poking her head up carefully, Chamanca saw Atlas stop forty paces away, take his axe from his back and stand, legs spread, weapon ready. She ducked as the Romans swished by.

“Contubernium, halt! Three-line square!” The footsteps scuffed to a halt. Chamanca hadn’t heard Latin spoken since she’d left Iberia. It was such a flat language, no song to it. By Makka, she wanted to kill a Roman.

There were nine of them, stopped on the road just up from her and Carden’s hiding place. Iron helmets shone dully on eight of them. The leader wore a ridiculous black plume sprouting from a well-polished bronze helm. All sported metal-reinforced leather armour, a skirt made of thick leather flanges, bare legs, metal greaves and leather sandals with criss-cross straps. They were armed with medium-length broad swords. A nasty weapon, Chamanca remembered, used mostly for the gut-stab, to slice into the soft vitals, leaving the recipient screaming in incapable agony and dying slowly.