Clash of Iron (12 page)

Four spadefuls of earth hit their legs. The spades were capacious. Already their feet were buried.

“One!” shouted the crowd.

Ragnall pulled Drustan into an embrace. Drustan looked up at him, fear and pain in his never-before flappable eyes.

Ragnall wanted to weep. “You have been the best tutor you could have been. I hope you will continue your instruction—”

“Two!” More soil whacked against their legs. It was heavy and stone-filled, and it hurt.

“—in the Otherworld.”

Drustan looked up and smiled. “You are too good and too young, Ragnall.”

“Three!”

“You would have had a good life, but it has been ruined by others. Several are to blame – Zadar, Lowa, me.”

“Four!”

“Not you.”

“I should have never brought you here. We did not need to do Lowa’s bidding. It was my foolish sense of adven—”

“Five!”

The slaves were skilled, their spades were massive and the wet sand and earth mix was effective. Already Ragnall could not move his legs.

“But above all, you must blame Felix. He was at the heart—”

“Six!” The soil reached the top of Ragnall’s legs.

“—of all of this. It is he who made Zadar what he was.”

“Seven!”

“I can see now that he has always been working with Caesar.”

“Eight!”

“I can’t see how or why – somehow Felix is blocking me.”

“Nine!”

“Or perhaps Caesar’s working for him. But he made Zadar—”

“Ten!” The soil was over Ragnall’s midriff, nearly at Drustan’s neck.

“Difficult to talk. You must kill Felix. Have our venge—”

“Eleven!”

The soil felt unbearably tight about Ragnall now. Drustan was silent, the soil around his neck. Ragnall strained to lift him, but couldn’t. He started to cry.

“Be … brave. Kill Felix,” wheezed Drustan.

“Twelve!”

Clods of soil whacked Ragnall’s head. Drustan’s mouth was buried. Ragnall sobbed. He wasn’t brave. He’d never been brave. The world of heroes and great deeds wasn’t for him.

“Thirteen!”

It was up to Drustan’s forehead, nearly at Ragnall’s neck. This was it now, it wasn’t a joke, there would be no reprieve. Drustan would be dead in a few heartbeats, Ragnall not long after that.

“Fourteen!”

The earth was over his chin. Breathing was almost impossible now. He looked up. Felix was staring with what looked like lust in his eyes. Cato was grinning like a bully watching a smaller kid taking a beating. What a shit, thought Ragnall. That stopped his crying. Danu give him strength, he wasn’t going to cry in front of that man. Not any more, anyway.

He was surprised to see Clodia push to the front of the balcony about them. She caught his eye. She shook her head and a tear ran down her haughty cheek.

“Fifteen!”

Soil cascaded on to his face. There were a few stones in it. He spat out soil. He closed his mouth tight.

“Sixteen!” His face was covered.

He felt Drustan move the dagger. He’d forgotten about the dagger. He held his breath. Would Drustan be able to …

He felt the knife point move away from his chest. There was a jerk. Even under the soil, he felt Drustan going limp. Drustan had killed himself. His tutor was dead. He was next, but there would be no knife to the heart for him.

“Seventeen!” came the muffled shout from the world above the ground. Ragnall felt oblivion spreading through his mind, sooner than he’d expected, then no more.

T
he Monster bent down for another bite. Dug tried to lift his arms but they were held by an impossible strength. Teeth popped through flesh, pushed through fat and drove into muscle. The Monster clamped its jaws and pulled its head back, stretching ribbons of elastic, blood-dripping flesh. The ribbons twanged free and the Monster slurped them up through rubbery lips, splattering blood over its face. Then its hair disappeared, its muzzle retracted, its teeth shrunk and it was Lowa, looking down impassively, face smeared with blood. Her tongue poked from her lips and he thought she was going to lick them, but instead she said “Wake up, you shite,” in a man’s voice. “Wake up,” she repeated.

Dug realised that he was dreaming. He pulled himself into wakefulness, increasingly unsettled by the flickering firelight that filled his eyes. He never lit a fire in his room, even on the coldest nights.

“That’s right, wake up so you can see yourself die,” said the same voice. Dug blinked a couple of times and saw that it was the chicken thief. He was holding a primed but laughably small bow and arrow and shivering with nervous energy. Next to him was a man that Dug didn’t recognise, holding a torch. This latter fellow was around Dug’s age. His wavy dark hair was swept back from a clean-shaven face that would have been heroically handsome, had it not been strangely narrow. He was well-dressed. He looked more like a king’s advisor or a moderately successful merchant than your average burglar’s mate. By the look on his face, he wasn’t much happier with the situation than Dug was.

“You’re going kill me because I caught you trying to steal my chickens and I let you go?” Dug said.

“Is that what happened?” said the torch-holder. “You said—”

“Shut up, Dad,” said the chicken thief.

There you go, thought Dug. The failed chicken thief’s told his dad a tale and dragged him along. If he was careful and sensitive, he’d be able to talk his way out of this.

“Is that a toy bow?” he said, realising as he said it that it was neither careful nor sensitive. He cursed silently.

“It’s not a toy!” the chicken thief shouted. “It’s a special bow for close-quarters work, and these are close quarters and it will kill you just as well as the biggest bow in the world. So get ready to meet the gods.” The chicken thief pulled the string back further.

“Hang on.” Dug raised a hand, thinking that it would probably stop the little arrow if necessary, and wondering why Sadist and Pig Fucker hadn’t heard the man shouting and come running. “You can’t kill me just because I caught you thieving from me. If anything, I owe you an arrow.”

“He’s right, you fool,” said the torch-holder, slapping his son over the back of the head.

“Ow!” The chicken thief opened his hands in surprise. The arrow loosed and flew to where Dug’s head had been an eyeblink before, but thwocked into wood because Dug was already leaning over the edge of the bed to grab and hurl his hammer. The heavy metal hammerhead hit the chicken thief full in the forehead with a soggy crack. His head snapped back and he toppled. The father squatted down next to his son, then stood, glanced at Dug, and ran from the room.

With the torch gone, it was dark. Dug threw the wool blanket back, swung off his bed, took a step and tripped over the clothes that he’d dumped there the night before. He fell and landed on a knee and two hands. He groped about and found lumpy wetness. He guessed that it was the chicken thief’s brains. His throw had been quite a bit harder than he’d intended.

He found the hammer, clambered to his feet, and walked swiftly through his spacious hearth room, knowing his way in the dark. He strode out of the front door and stopped.

“Ah,” he said to the four people who stood in his yard in a semi-circle. As well as the torch-holder, there was a useful-looking young woman bouncing from foot to foot and aiming an arrow at him, a nervous looking boy with a sword and a bare-armed man with a swinging sling. The latter had possibly left his arms bare to display his arm muscles, which were certainly large enough to shoot a slingstone with lethal velocity. This lot were the chicken thief’s family, Dug supposed.

He stood. He’d been striding so purposefully that he’d come too far from his door to duck back in. That would teach him, he thought. Where were his dogs? On his own he didn’t stand much of a chance against four of them, particularly when two of them had projectile weapons. He’d have to talk his way out of this. He was thinking what to say – just blurting out the first thing hadn’t helped much before – when the woman piped up.

“Are you sure Wim’s dead?” she said, looking at Dug, but presumably not directing the question at him. She had a firm intelligence and air of command about her. Dug guessed she was the chicken thief’s sister and the torch-holder’s daughter, but effectively the head of the family.

“Yeah, Ruthanna, sorry. This man knocked Wim’s brains out,” the torch-holder said matter-of-factly. It he was upset about his son’s death, it didn’t show.

“Look,” said Dug, “this has gone further than it should have. Your man Wim stole my chickens, so I taught him a lesson. I didn’t even hurt him.”

“You punched him and your dogs humiliated him,” said Ruthanna.

“Aye, but he deserved it. Like I said, he was trying to steal from me. And I only hit him because he tried to hit me. Then I got my dogs to chase him just to scare him a bit. I knew they wouldn’t hurt him. It seemed a fair return for trying to nick my chickens and attacking me when I caught him.”

“He’s right,” said the torch-holder. “That’s a fair return. More than fair. That Wim…”

“Good!” said Dug. “Some sense finally on this difficult night! So if you want to all be on your ways, I’ll—”

“Dad, we’ll never know if this man’s telling the truth. Frankly I’d believe any stranger over Wim but—”

“Exactly,” Dug butted in. “I’m telling the truth. I did nothing wrong.”

“But,” continued Ruthanna, pulling her bowstring, “the truth about earlier on is neither here nor there. He’s killed Wim, and for that he must die.”

“My name’s Dug,” said Dug. He’d heard that people were less likely to kill you if they knew your name. “I don’t have to die. Haven’t we established that it was all Wim’s fault?” He glanced at Spring’s shutter. It was open, but hopefully she was sleeping through this. She’d be bound to try to intervene and he didn’t want them killing her, too.

“I’m sorry, but we do have to kill you now,” said the man. “I know it’s Wim’s fault, but that is the way. Ruthanna?” He nodded at the woman, who drew her bowstring further back and aimed at Dug’s chest.

“Aye,” said Dug, torn between dropping to the ground or charging. Where the big badgers’ bollocks were those dogs? There was a buzzing sound. Was that death coming?

Spring was on the edge of a clearing in the woods. In the middle of the clearing were four big bears standing around a little bear, threatening it with their claws. That’s no good, she thought. She looked about and saw that the trees’ branches were packed with bright-feathered yellow and black birds, all looking on silently. She wondered whether they might help the little bear? As if in reply, the birds, thousands of them, leapt from the branches with a great whoosh and attacked the big bears. The bears disappeared in a cloud of birds. A few heartbeats later the birds flew back to their perches. The big bears had gone and the little bear was left, blinking in bewilderment.

Ruthanna yelled as if stung, the torch-holder bellowed, Ruthanna yelled again, loosening her bow and swinging it about over her head. The other two yelped, slapping at themselves. The buzzing became a roar. The attackers were enveloped in a throbbing, shifting shadow. They screamed and screamed. The torch fell. Dug stood, mouth open, unable to see anything other than the odd flailing limb briefly flapping free of the cloud. The screams stopped. Dug was about to dart back into the house and close the door, but the bees lifted with a buzz that made his bones shake and flew away.

Dug picked up the torch. They were all dead, tongues swollen and protruding, their faces red from countless stings, bloated beyond recognition. The muscular lad’s arms looked like hammered, rotten meat.

He peered in through Spring’s open window. She was snoring gently.

He found the dogs asleep by the chicken house. He nudged Sadist with a toe to check he was alive. The hound woke up, grumbled and went back to sleep. Pig Fucker responded the same way. He guessed that they must have been drugged by some druid-made potion. They seemed fine, just sleeping, but he resolved to check on them after his unpleasant chores were done.

He loaded the five corpses on to a cart and wheeled it along the valley. As the powdery orange of dawn glowed through sea mist, he hurled the bodies from the cliff.

Back at the house he cleaned up the worst of Wim’s brains and put a rug over the rest. He listened outside Spring’s door and heard her snoring still.

He decided not to tell her or anyone else about the visitors in the night. Hopefully the sea would take the corpses off to become someone else’s mystery, but if they were found at the bottom of his cliff and reported to Lowa, he’d claim ignorance.

R
agnall woke. He was lying on his back, on a cool, hard surface. The stars were brilliant above him in the clear, moonless night. He remembered. Drustan was dead. He himself was dead. So where was he now? There was only one place he could be. The Otherworld. He gasped in fear, but at the same time felt a thrill of excitement. What would he find here?

He lay still, listening, and looking at the stars. The stars were very similar to, if not the same as, the stars in the living world, but here, if he wasn’t mistaken, they were brighter. Chances were it was always night in the Otherworld. Or perhaps day and night here were geographical entities? Perhaps you arrived in the dark places and had to find your way to the lands of the light? Perhaps the better the life you had led, the more and brighter the stars to guide your path to the light? In which case he could pat himself on his ghostly back. He’d been awarded barrel-loads of stars.

All around was silence, but … there! A soft cough. Could it have been the snuffle of some great beast prowling on huge, soft paws, its wide head crammed with poison-drooling teeth? Ragnall thought it could. Was the Otherworld a wild land, where giant animals preyed on people? That seemed likely, at least in the Dark Places, before you fought your way to the Land of the Light. The idea didn’t scare him. It galvanised him. He’d slay the evil beasts.

Slowly, so as not to alert any predators, he turned his head from side to side to get his bearings. Soil tumbled from his hair on to his stone bed. Nearby were towers and angular piles of rock, and single-branched trees with what looked like ropes … they looked more like hangmen’s gibbets than trees. He shouldn’t be surprised, he told himself. This was the Otherworld. There were going to be surprises. And adventures. And reunions.