Reign of Iron (19 page)

Spring had crept up onto the dunes and dug herself and the dogs in behind the marram grass. It hid them and gave her a good elevated view of the camp. Now, walking towards her along the shingle, some way from the gates, were three figures. Felix, one of his Leathermen and a tall (for a Roman) balding man with shining gold armour and a red cape. Unless Spring was very much mistaken, the third man was Julius Caesar. He certainly fitted all the descriptions she’d heard.

She reached for her bow, drew, aimed and loosed. Instantaneously the Leatherman shoved Caesar out of the way and the arrow zipped harmlessly by. Felix and Caesar looked about for the would-be assassin. The Leatherman’s gaze zeroed in at her hiding place. He leapt like a startled horse and came flying towards Spring at an astonishing pace, sword flashing from its scabbard and into his hand as he ran.

“Bollocks,” whispered Spring, leaping round and running. She’d gone maybe ten paces before she heard the Leatherman behind her. She tossed her bow to the side, dropped and spun, whipping her hammerhead at his knee. He danced a step, avoided the blow and kicked her in the face. As she fell she saw Sadie leap. The Leatherman dropped into a crouch, thrust his blade upwards and opened Sadie’s stomach. Guts burst out and the dog yelped horribly as she fell.

“Nooo!” roared Spring, thrusting the sharpened hammer end into the man’s midriff. He batted it aside and punched her in the face.

She came to with the Leatherman straddling her, his hand in her hair and a blade at her neck. She struggled but his iron thighs had her gripped.

“I recognise the flight of your arrow,” said the Leatherman, in Roman-accented Gaulish, muffled by his mask. “You killed my friend by the river.” His tone was strangely chipper and matter-of-fact. He took the knife from her neck and gripped her by the chin. “They will want you alive, but I am going to kill you, to avenge him.” She tried to shake her head but she couldn’t budge. “But I cannot leave a mark, or my lie that you died of terror will not pass. So.”

“Wait!” she managed before he shifted his hand to cover her mouth and pinched her nose shut with thumb and forefinger. She tried to suck in a breath but could not. She struggled, but he was immovable, so she stopped, saving her air and wondering what to do. She could hear Sadie yipping somewhere near her feet, quieter and sadder with each yip.

Lowa galloped north from the village, sick with worry. Nobody had seen Spring all night, but Maggot had said she’d gone north, and two others had seen a girl and two dogs heading for the marsh.

She rode on, cursing herself for not going to see Spring after Dug’s death – surely the reason for her surliness, which, if Lowa was reasonable, was not totally impossible to understand. But fuck reasonable! Lowa had a land to save, an army to rebuild, an invasion to prepare for … After this, after the Romans were gone, she swore she would make time for the people she loved. Which pretty much meant little Dug and Spring. She would delegate her powers and spend at least half her time with her son. She would rebuild the relationship with Spring … if the girl lived through whatever damnfool scheme she’d embarked on.

Spring heard a bark and had time to think “Stupid dog, you shouldn’t have barked before you attacked!” before she sensed Pigsy leap. The Leatherman took his hand from her face and she gasped in air as his blade flew back to meet the new threat … and there it stayed. Sadie had slithered up, thrown herself forward with her final efforts and grasped the Leatherman’s arm in strong jaws. He lifted his other hand from her neck to deflect Pigsy’s leap, but it was too late. Pigsy clamped his teeth into the man’s throat, puncturing the leather as if it was cotton, snarling and chomping. Blood gushing from his ripped hood, the Leatherman tried to pull his arm from Sadie’s jaw. It held. Sadie growled and shook her head. He wrenched again and his arm came free, minus a hand.

The Leatherman screamed, grabbed Pigsy by the scruff with his remaining hand and pulled. His strength, Spring thought through all the horror, was amazing. He wrenched Pigsy from his neck. Half his throat came away in the dog’s jaws. Spring saw vertebrae and the pipe of his trachea for an instant before blood cascaded and obscured the gore. He wasn’t done, though. Holding Pigsy with his good hand, the demon, proving how just how far he was from human, stabbed the splintered bone of his other wrist into the dog’s side, again and again.

“No!” shouted Spring. She heaved. As the Leatherman fell back she swung the hammer into the side of his head. He crumpled. Pigsy fell away, limp. Spring bounced to her feet and slammed the hammer down on the demon’s forehead, denting it with a horrible crunch. Two-handed, she lifted the hammer above her head, as high as she could, and brought it down with everything she had. The Leatherman’s head exploded like a rotten cabbage. She staggered backwards, blinded by his brains and blood. Someone gripped her from behind and said something in Latin as she passed out.

“H
ave you seen Spring?” demanded Lowa, sliding from her horse before it had stopped, longbow in hand.

Chamanca looked at Atlas. “We haven’t seen her,” he said. “I’ll ask around.” The Iberian and the African were guarding the path through the marsh, along with Adler, the Two Hundred and the most capable of Atlas’ infantry.

“Has anyone seen Spring!?” Lowa shouted.

Nobody had.

“Atlas, find me everyone who guarded the marsh last night,”

“They will be asleep.”

“Wake them. Chamanca, help him. Find out if anyone saw Spring.”

“Wait,” said Atlas. “I sent some men through the marsh to look at the camp. One of them approaches now.”

A slight, big-toothed, grey-stubbled man jogged up. Plaxon was his name. Lowa had fought next to him once shortly after joining Zadar’s army. She’d progressed and he’d remained a simple soldier because, although he was a kindly, happy fellow, he was seriously thick.

“Have you seen Spring?” she said.

“I found her dogs,” he said, looking at his feet.

“Yes?”

“In the dunes, near the demons’ camp. They’re dead. One’s got its stomach slit, the other’s been stabbed a lot. I checked, and they definitely are dead.”

Lowa felt a ball of sickness rise from her stomach into her throat. “Any sign of Spring? Or anyone else?”

“No.”

“No footprints, tracks?”

The man looked blank. “I don’t know what—”

“Take me to where you found them, now.”

The man nodded, turned round and started trudging back towards the marsh.

“We’re going quicker than that,” said Lowa, running past him and pulling his arm.

“Can I have the girl?” asked Felix, trying to sound like he wasn’t more desperate to have her than he’d been to have anything ever before. “Keep her if you like, of course, but she’d be useful to power the Maximen for the row back from Gaul.”

Caesar looked at Spring, held firm in the praetorian’s arms. She’d already sent another praetorian to the medic’s tent by pretending to be unconscious then smashing his knee with her hammer. Now she was tightly bound and actually unconscious after the knee-smashed praetorian had punched her. Another praetorian held her hammer.

The general looked the girl up and down. Felix followed his gaze. She had changed a lot. It was hard to tell with her head lolling and bedraggled hair obscuring her face, but when he’d last seen her she’d been on course to becoming a beautiful woman. Her figure had certainly developed well. Leather shorts revealed cleanly muscled legs – more like an athletic Roman boy’s than a Roman woman’s but Felix didn’t consider this a bad thing, and under her archer’s shirt she had a narrow waist and a well-shaped chest. Would Caesar want to keep her to himself? In Rome he generally preferred the wives of powerful men for bed mates, but in Gaul he had taken into his tent a few of the more attractive captives, both male and female, but generally young and physically fit like Spring. Or he could be planning to sell her as a slave. Like all fabulously wealthy men that Felix had encountered, one of Caesar’s favourite leisure activities was making even more money. A fresh, attractive barbarian, captured on British soil, would fetch a high price in Rome.

“I can’t see that you’d have any use for a British girl,” tried Felix, “we already have all the information we’ll need from Yilgarn, and she’ll fetch no great price since Rome’s awash with British slaves from Zadar’s days. The first generation of British slave children are about her age now, so there is a glut of girls exactly like her, but they’re well-trained and won’t require breaking.”

Caesar ignored him, his eyes lingering on her thighs.

Ah, thought Felix, it’s not a slave thing. “If you do keep her for … yourself,” he tried, “please let me check her for disease first. They start them young here and women are passed round the elders of the tribe. When I lived here I found, by her age, almost all of the women were nastily diseased, with pus-filled, stinking—”

“Enough, Felix! Take her with you to Gaul and do what you will with her.”

Felix tried not to show his excitement. As soon as they were at sea he’d eat her heart and take her magic. He’d collect his legion from Gaul and that would be the beginning …

“Praetorian,” commanded Caesar, “follow Felix to his ship and restrain the girl on board.” He turned as if to walk away, then turned back. “Actually, hold for a second. Why was she armed with a hammer? A very strange weapon for a woman … is there a story there? When she is revived, be sure to ask her, Felix.”

“There’s no need. Many British women use hammers. They are brutes.”

“I’m not so sure, this one also fired an arrow, a long way and very accurately. That’s a good point – where are her bow and quiver?”

“Got the quiver here, sir,” said a praetorian, “it was on her back.”

“And the bow?”

The praetorians looked dumbly at each other.

“It must be where you found her. Go back and get it.” The praetorians set off at a jog. “And I will keep the girl so she can show Caesar how she managed to shoot an arrow further and more accurately than any of his Cretan archers.”

“You don’t need the girl to show you how it works,” said Felix, trying not to sound desperate. “It’s a bow. You slot the arrow, pull the string and let go. The simple fact is that British bows are better than Cretan bows. This one is probably made from Iberian yew. I can show your engineers how.”

Caesar looked at Felix for a moment as if considering having him boiled in olive oil, then deflated a little and said: “Oh, very well. Caesar has more pressing matters. Take her. Interrogate her before you kill her. Caesar wants to know anything useful that she knows.”

“Of course.” Felix tried not to beam. “Follow me!” he said to the praetorian, setting off for his ship and the beginning of a wonderful new chapter in his life.

“We’re here,” panted Plaxon as they arrived in a steep dip in the dunes, shielded from all around by sand and marram.

Lowa nodded, struck dumb by a sadness heavy as iron. Dug’s dogs Pig Fucker and Sadist, who had been her dogs, too, for a time, were dead. Both had their guts spilled and were abuzz with fat, black flies. The hounds were next to each other, but Sadist had crawled some way and left her entrails trailing five paces behind her. One of Pig Fucker’s paws rested on Sadist’s shoulder.

“Go,” she said to Plaxon.

“Do you want—”

“
Go
.”

He went.

Danu, the dead dogs were a heart-breaking sight. That stupid girl! She circled the dogs, analysing the sandy declivity.

By the quantity of brain matter spattered about the sand and stuck to the wide grass blades, one person had been killed, possibly by Spring’s hammer. By the tracks leading up the dune, towards the camp, he or she – no, he, since the Romans didn’t have “she” in a military capacity and the trail came from someone heavier than Spring – had been pulled away first, then somebody else the size and weight of Spring, wearing iron-heeled boots, had been dragged away by a large man holding her under the arms and leaving heel marks in the sand. So they’d taken her, unconscious or dead. She looked about for further clues and found Spring’s bow, still strung.
Stupid girl!
she said to herself again.

She was alive, she knew it, she just knew it, but the Romans had her. She crept up the dune and peered through the grass.

On the far side of the camp she saw a ship’s mast wobble, jerk and shift towards the sea. They were refloating one of their oared warships. Why? To take Spring away? Surely not. Why would they do that?

Nearer than the ships and more pressingly, two black-clad legionaries were walking towards her hiding place. She thought she was hidden, but one of them spotted her, touched his companion on the arm and pointed. Both came at a run. For the briefest of moments, Lowa considered fleeing. She didn’t want to give them any reason for taking revenge on Spring. Then she thought, screw it. Killing so many of them when they landed had already given the Romans all the reasons in the world to kill any captives, so two more wouldn’t make any difference. She had her own bow on her back, but since Spring’s was already strung she used that. The leftmost one fell. She waited while the other wrestled with the age-old decision when facing a ranged weapon – charge or flee? He charged. Brave man, thought Lowa, and shot him through the neck. She would also have shot him if he’d fled.

Her plan had been containment. The Romans must be aware by now that advancing from the spit was going to be so costly that their only chance was to relocate or return to Gaul and come back next year; probably the latter, given the fact that summer was nearly over and launching a successful invasion would be all the harder once the weather turned. Over the winter, Lowa could prepare further and the Gauls or Germans might just deal with the Romans for them.

But now they had Spring? Screw them, screw their tortoises and screw their ship-mounted scorpions, she thought as she ran back to the marsh. She was going to come back with her army, rescue Spring and kick the fuckers off her island.

“H
eave, heave! You, fool, get off the deck! Are you fucking stupid? Stop making the boat heavier and help push it into the water, you arse! Heave the rest of you! Heave!”