Reign of Iron (28 page)

“This wind must be changed.” Caesar didn’t say why – he would never confess a weakness – but Felix knew that supplies were being consumed faster than their supply lines were replenishing them.

“I cannot reverse it,” answered the druid. “It is a magic wind, created by the great British druid. I have sacrificed dozens of Gauls to no avail. Perhaps if I could slay the British girl, the more powerful magic—”

“The girl will stay alive. Caesar remains suspicious of your motives.”

“Caesar, whoever is creating this wind is the great British druid, not her. It cannot be her, because women lack the wit to control magic. I can see a solitary figure on a hill looking towards us creating the wind and the current, but I cannot see his features and my magic does not have nearly the range to reach him. I want the girl purely because I have known her for a long time, so the magic gained from her death might enable—”

“She is to be queen of Britain.”

“Fine.”

“Fine?” The temple vein pulsed and the general’s hand closed on his sword hilt.

“I meant no disrespect. Frustrated by our delay and my own impotence I grow complacently familiar. I apologise.”

Caesar relaxed. It felt to Felix as if a large plug had been pulled to let the tension and terror flood out of the room. The general had his own magic even if he didn’t know it, Felix was certain. The power emanating from him at the moment that had just passed was astonishing, and when Felix had tried to control his mind in the past, back when he’d been able to control most people’s minds, he had been unable to.

“What else can be done to reverse this weather?” said the general.

There was one other thing Felix could do, but he was going to wait until the last possible moment to try it, because it might well kill him.

“Nothing,” he said. “I would have a Maximan row me across. Properly fuelled, I am sure that one of them could—”

“But the British are watching the sea so you will be shot or sunk before you reach the shore. Do you think that Caesar is an idiot that he hasn’t thought of—”

A scream cut him off. Both men jumped round, Caesar drawing his sword as he spun.

It was just Apiapandus, still slumped on the chair and holding in his own guts, some new agony visiting him as he died.

“It’s a nasty way to go,” said Felix.

“Indeed,” said Caesar.

L
owa found Maggot sitting cross-legged at the apex of the hill where she’d left him the evening before, looking out over the sea. He looked like a corpse. His skin was like century-old leather, even more wrinkled than it had been the day before, as if all moisture had been sucked from his body. His feather-strewn hair danced lightly in the wind that was still holding back the Romans.

Maggot was using his own life-force to hold the Roman invasion fleet in Gaul. The extra preparation time was invaluable to Lowa, but what she really hoped was that the massive force would run out of supplies and be forced to retreat. Maggot had said from the off that he considered that unlikely, but that the delay was worth giving his life for.

“Have the Romans gone home?” she asked.

“They have not.”

“Will you accept sacrifices now? A soldier attacked a girl last night so he’ll be dying whatever happens and I have two murderers who need executing. Take their lives.”

“I’ve already got a sacrifice, thanks.”

He meant himself. For twenty days now Maggot had made the wind blow as a strong north-westerly and the sea current flow in the same direction by slowly killing himself. The wind was a doddle, apparently; it was the current change that was sucking the life from him. Lowa had offered sacrifices every day and he’d refused, saying he’d tried killing and didn’t like it, and, besides, he needed the life of someone he loved deeply and utterly to make magic this powerful, and the only person who fitted that description was himself.

“How much longer?”

“Before I die?”

“Yes.” It was a callous question but she needed to know.

Maggot looked up at the sky and smiled. “Some time around the next dawn.”

Lowa closed her eyes and shook her head. “And then the Romans will come?”

“Yup.”

Lowa wanted to scream and shake him. “Stop now then! Save yourself!”

“Every moment I hold the Romans, the weaker they become and the better our preparations.”

“But one day…”

“Will save some British lives. Lowa, I’m a lot older than I look, and I’ve done some … bad things. I want to die now, and I want to die doing this.”

“Nothing I can say to change that? Like how useful you’ll be when the Romans come?”

“No, it’s my time now. I can’t change that, but I can decide how I die and this is what I have chosen. It is the most use I could have been to you. From tomorrow, the Romans are your problem.”

She saw that he was resigned and there was nothing she could do, and, in truth, the delay he’d already created had been very useful.

“Shall I stay with you? Or send…”

“No, I want to be alone, but before you go … I’m the last like me, and I want to tell someone what I know about magic, or at least what I’ve guessed, before I die. Might as well be you.”

“I’m flattered,” said Lowa, sitting next to the druid.

Maggot was so silent for a while that Lowa thought he’d died already, but then he began, his voice as clear as ever but the mockery now gone from it.

“Magic comes from the link between people. Flocks of birds move as one because their minds are all linked, right?”

“Are they?”

“Yes. Think of the way a flock of thousands of animals speeds up, slows down, swoops, climbs and changes direction at exactly the same time, again and again, all while flying faster than a horse can gallop. It would take years to teach a crowd of humans to make just one of those manoeuvres, but birds do thousands every day. Fish, too. They can do it because they share a group mind.”

“OK…”

“Animals’ minds are linked in another way, too. Take your son. He could be the brightest toddler alive but put him alone in a wood and he’d be dead before sunset.”

“True.”

“He needs to be taught not to kill himself. But animals don’t. They’re
born
knowing not to fall into rivers. They know which mushrooms are safe and which aren’t. Dug’s only just learnt to walk and he’s very bad at it. Cows know how to walk as soon as they’re born.”

“I guess.”

“So animals’ minds are linked in two ways; to all other living animals of their type, and to their ancestors through their mothers. The source of this link is life and the link is destroyed by death. Got it?”

“I think so.”

“Good, because here’s the important bit. Hidden away behind all our bullshit, behind our jealousies, our fears and our endless fucking
competition
, we humans have the same link. Human minds are linked in exactly the same way as animals’ minds, but we’re so very fucking clever that we worked out how to speak. We needed the link less and it withered. Writing made the link even more unnecessary and finished it off in most places, which is why British druids destroyed everything written and banned writing a couple of thousand years ago, and why a few of us can still use the link.”

“To change the direction of the wind and kill people?”

“Yeah, well, it’s more than just moving around in a pleasingly synchronised group and knowing not to hurl yourself into a river, isn’t it? It’s the magic force, for want of a better word, that underlies and connects everything. This magic is all around. We see it in people in two ways. For some it’s passive, and it’s busy the whole time without them knowing. Magic is strong in you, for example, which is why you can pull a bow that few big men can pull and slot an arrow up a bee’s arse from a thousand paces. It gives Chamanca her speed and more.”

Maggot coughed and swayed. Lowa raised an arm to hold him up but Maggot pushed it away. His touch was cold.

“So that’s passive magic,” he continued, “but for some it’s active – as in they can use it a bit to change the world around them, like I can. So could Drustan, a little bit, and there was Reena, queen of Eroo, who I don’t think used it as much as she could have done, and then of course there’s Felix who’s pretty adept, unfortunately.”

“But using it kills you bit by bit?”

“Pretty much, which is why you use someone else’s life-force. When someone dies, a whole wash of magic is released. Some people can redirect that force to, for example, kill an infection in a big African. The stronger their link with the person who died, the more of the power that they can use.”

“But apart from Walfdan…”

“I haven’t killed anyone? Well, that’s not true, you didn’t know me when I was younger, but you have a point. I can use quite a bit of my own life-force because I’ve got a lot more than most people. I used some to encourage those whales to attack Felix’s boat – quite a bit, actually – and now I’m finishing myself off with this wind and tide.”

“What about Spring?”

“I think she has some passive magic that gives her strength, so she can use a bow like you can, but the big magic, the real magic, wasn’t ever Spring. It was Dug. He had more magic in him than I thought was possible, much more, but no connection to it. He was like a giant wooden barrel of whale oil sitting in a deserted hut for forty years. Spring came along with a tap and used his oil to light a couple of lamps.”

“And when she killed him?”

“It was like she’d thrown the torch into the barrel. The greatest explosion of magic for a long time, perhaps ever, was unleashed. It destroyed a mountain and created the wave.”

“How did they know what to do?”

“I helped.”

“I see.”

“And when you’re dead?”

“Then Felix is the only one left alive who can actively use magic.”

“There’s nobody else?”

“Not that I know of. There is one more magic, vastly more powerful than Dug’s, that makes the mountains and knocks them down, a magic which will obliterate the Romans and scrub away every trace of their existence.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s called time.”

“I see, clever. But not so helpful.”

“Yeah. Now I’ve talked too long. Today is the end of my extremely long life and I’d like to spend the rest of it alone with my favourite person – me.”

“Is there anything else you want?”

“Only solitude.”

“All right. Goodbye. And thanks. This delay should save thousands of lives.”

“Yup.”

Lowa nodded and walked away across the springy grass, leaving the druid staring at the sea.

A
tlas rode alone to the forest of Branwin and the Aurochs tribe to fetch the cavalry of armoured aurochs to the east coast. He could have sent someone else, but he was keen to see the anti-elephant modifications that Elann had made to the giant cattle’s armour, and, more than that if he was honest, he was keen for some time away from Chamanca. He liked her a lot, perhaps even loved her, but, he told himself, every man needs some time alone, particularly when that man has spent nearly every moment for the last half a year with a manically energetic Iberian who seems to have taken his near-death experience as a cue to cram as much living as possible into every waking heartbeat, and quite a few of the heartbeats when they should have been sleeping.

After three days of blissfully peaceful riding he found Queen Ula of Kanawan waiting for him at the edge of the forest, also on horseback. Atlas had met her on Maidun before the battle with Eroo and the Spring Tide. He’d been struck by her beauty then and she was much as he remembered. Her black hair was longer, and her simple but well-made brown dress was more like a woodlander’s garb than what she’d worn at Maidun, but she still had the same unblemished, pale skin, full red lips and invitingly arched eyebrows. She was a very attractive woman. As, he reminded himself, was Chamanca.

“We got the shout that you were coming,” she said. “Elann asked me to send someone to meet you and show you the way. I thought I’d come myself because I…”

“Felt like some time alone?”

“Yes!” Her blue eyes sparkled and she smiled the mischievous “You might be able to have me if you only gave it a go” smile that he remembered.

“I understand the sentiment,” he replied.

As they rode along the woodland track, Ula explained how she and the Kanawan tribe had moved to spare land belonging to the Aurochs tribe. The Aurochs people had been greatly reduced by plague and welcomed the extra numbers. She’d intended for her own tribe to remain separate but allied to the Aurochs, but she’d got on so well with their new queen and their people had melded so easily that the tribes had united and the two women now shared the rule.

“There’s a new queen of the Aurochs?” asked Atlas, leaning to flick a horsefly off his mount’s neck.

“Relatively new. She’s called Manfreena. It’s a bit of an odd story really.” Ula looked around as if to check whether anyone was eavesdropping, then put a hand on his bare forearm. “She was a traveller from Eroo who settled in the forest a couple of years ago, after the Spring Tide and before the plague struck. The old ruler and all his heirs died in the plague and the Aurochs asked Manfreena to rule. You’ll understand why when you meet her.”

Manfreena … thought Atlas. A woman called Reena had been queen to Manfrax, the king of Eroo who had invaded Britain and whose force of Fassites had killed most of Atlas’ infantry, and she’d died with the rest of the Eroo under the great wave. Shortly after that, it seemed that someone with a name that was a mashing together of Manfrax and Reena, also from Eroo, had turned up in the forest of Branwin and become a queen. There, thought Atlas, was a coincidence.

“And you rule happily together?”

“Oh, we’re very happy together.” Ula’s smile was, if anything, more mischievous. “Did you ever meet Farrell, my old husband and former king of Kanawan?”

“I never had the pleasure.”

“It wouldn’t have been a pleasure. If there’s a special area of the Otherworld reserved for the smarmiest, most self-obsessed wankers then he is now king of that area. Had you met him you’d understand why I’m so particularly happy to have met someone like Manfreena. Now, tell me. Is Lowa going to beat the Romans?”