Clash of Iron (4 page)

A grin split his face and he screamed with joy. He smashed spears out of his way with hammer and shield. He swung the hammer, felling three of them. A sword came down. He whacked it aside with his shield and drove his hammer’s top spike into the underside of the sword swinger’s jaw.

Mal shook his head as he jogged towards the Dug-shaped breach in the enemy line. He’d seen it before, but it always amazed him when Dug, who was possibly the most workshy man Mal had ever met, burst into this rampaging ball of fury on the battlefield.

“Stay behind me!” he shouted to Nita as he knocked the first spear thrust aside and smashed his sword into a Dumnonian head.

“Will I fuck!” shouted Nita, pushing past him, her slim sword flashing in one hand, wheel iron whacking down in the other.

“Don’t get too close to Dug!” Mal shouted at her unheeding back.

Chamanca licked blood from her lips. She was soaked in Dumnonian gore from her brief foray into their lines, but it wasn’t nearly enough.

“Not so fast!” she shouted at her charioteer, cuffing the girl. The Dumnonian infantry had slowed its charge and the Maidun chariots were getting too far ahead. Chamanca wanted to be ready for any overzealous and speedy Dumnonians who ran clear of the main group. Killing a dozen or so had only enhanced her appetite. She yearned to champ her teeth into someone’s neck. It had been ages since she’d sucked Weylin’s life away, and Queen Lowa’s rule wasn’t going to provide as many blood-drinking chances as King Zadar’s. Not that she didn’t like Lowa. What wasn’t to like about the brave, king-toppling, hot-bodied beauty whose blood had tasted so silky and skin felt so smooth when they’d fought on Mearhold and in the Maidun arena? But Lowa had rejected the Iberian’s offer to prove her loyalty by biting the throat out of anyone who opposed her, and made it clear that she wasn’t going to ask her to drink anyone’s blood. Chamanca was going to have to take her sanguineous dining opportunities when she could. So it was somewhat annoying to be running away from tens of thousands of racing-pulsed Dumnonians.

The enemy kept coming in their annoyingly regular line, and her chariot bounced on. The shaking and jolting was doing nothing to improve her mood. If Chamanca had been commanding this side of the line she would have ordered a charge, despite Lowa’s orders for this retreat, and despite the fact that she could see the insanity of attacking the multitudinous Dumnonians. Unfortunately, Lowa had not only put someone else in charge, but also told the other charioteers not to listen to Chamanca.

The only person Chamanca was allowed to be in charge of was her young driver. She cuffed her again, then hooked her blonde hair aside and ran her fingers down the back of her slender neck. The girl knew better than to complain or even turn round. Chamanca licked her lips.

Dug’s shield was reduced to an iron hub, fringed with splinters of smashed wood. It still worked for slamming into Dumnonian faces. His hammer swung and smashed bone. A sword clanged into his helmet. He lashed out with his hammer and another Dumnonian fell. A face screamed. A backhanded hammerblow silenced it.

A small voice scrambled up from deep in his mind and timidly suggested that he was tiring, that he couldn’t possibly keep this up. Soon he’d make a mistake or meet someone stronger, better or luckier than he was. He’d done his bit, for now at least, and it was time to take a breather.

Dug snarled at the little voice to bugger off. He was busy. He ducked a sword-swipe, crunched the handle of his hammer into someone’s bollocks and his hammerhead into possibly the same person’s face. He waded on, deeper into the Dumnonian ranks, hammer flailing, shield boss punching.

Ragnall galloped out of the smoke. Already there were arrow-stuck bodies on the ground and riderless horses panicking on the burial mound. The remainder of Samalur’s guard were tightening around their king, swords aloft. Lowa was up ahead, drawing her bow, shooting down one of the guards, reaching into her quiver then nocking another arrow, drawing and shooting another guard, again and again. The movement reminded Ragnall of a waterwheel on a stream in spate.

Spring was trotting behind the queen, slinging out stones almost as quickly as Lowa’s arrows, smiling like a girl on a pleasure ride. Ragnall heard an incongruous noise. Was Spring singing? She was.

A remaining slinger aimed at Lowa, but a stone from Spring send him tumbling from his horse with a surprised squawk. Ragnall wondered why Samalur’s guard didn’t contain more slingers and archers, then realised that it probably had done but Lowa and Spring had targeted these first.

Lowa reined her horse to a halt ten paces from the man-high mound. Ragnall drew up next to her. The two hundred others of the Maidunite cavalry arrived behind. There were perhaps ten Dumnonian guards left, concealing the young king somewhere in their midst.

He couldn’t see any of the rest of the other hundred thousand or so of the Dumnonian army. They were all off chasing the two split horns of Maidun’s forces. The plan had been a simple one, and far from original. With a few tweaks like the burning straw bales, it was roughly how Alexander the Great had beaten Darius of Persia’s much larger force at Gaugamela. Ragnall had learnt about it on the Island of Angels. He’d been surprised at the war council when nobody else, other than his old teacher Drustan, had heard of the battle. Then he’d swelled with pride when Lowa had decided to use his plan. He was perhaps even more glad that Lowa had allowed him to take charge of her equivalent to Alexander’s Companions – the cavalry who charged through the gap to take Samalur. He felt a little glow in his stomach, remembering that Alexander had taken one of his Companions as a lover.

Lowa turned to Ragnall and the other riders, smoke whirling around her. “Surround the mound.” She said, then, louder. “Bruxon! Give us Samalur now, or you all die.”

“You don’t have a hope, Lowa! My forces … Aaaark!” Samalur’s voice was cut off, the horsemen parted, and a severe-looking black-clad man whom Ragnall took to be Bruxon marched down the mound, dragging the king by the collar.

Lowa dismounted and headed towards them, bow in one hand, sword in the other.

Bruxon thrust Samalur forward.

Dumnonia’s king stumbled toward Maidun’s queen and fell to his knees. “Lowa…” he stammered, arms outstretched and palms upward. “We need to be allies. It’s like you said. Together we can—” Lowa pulled her sword arm back. Samalur raised a protective arm and screamed: “No! Don’t!!”

Lowa spun in a whirling blur. Samalur’s hand and head flew up in the air. His body fell forwards, severed neck and wrist spurting. The gasp from his guards was overwhelmed by cheers from the Maidun cavalry.

Lowa snatched up the boy’s head, leapt on her horse, shouted “Follow me!” and galloped away.

Ragnall looked round at the others. If they were surprised as him it didn’t show. They heel-kicked their horses and sped after the queen.

“Stop!” someone was shouting at Dug.

The cowards were running!

“Stop!” They were getting away. He swung his hammer and missed.

“Dug, you arse! Stop!” Somebody grabbed his hammer arm. Somebody strong. Dug whipped round the dented, blood-covered shield boss to beat away the hindrance. He needed that arm. But something grabbed his left arm too.

“Stop!” came the annoying shout again. He tried to shake off his captors, but the little voice in his head which had been struggling to make itself heard for some time finally got through and persuaded him to desist struggling for the briefest of moments and take assess the situation.

Dug shook his head. His ears popped. It felt like a bandage was ripped off his eyes as reality whooshed back to him. Mal was holding one of his arms, Atlas the other. “Um?” He said.

“Thank Sobek for that,” said Atlas. “It’s over, you great fool. Look.”

Dug looked around. The fighting had stopped. Some Dumnonians were heading back to their chariots. Many from both sides were sitting on the bloody grass, nursing wounds. Others, less fortunate, were screaming in pain, trying to hold their guts in or staring at their severed limbs. Others were bubbling their last. An awful lot were dead. Dug looked at his blood-smeared hammerhead.

“What happened?” he managed.

“Lowa,” said Mal. Atlas was already off, shouting at the beaten Dumnonians not to stray too far.

“Lowa?”

“Lowa.” Mal shook his head in exhausted wonder.

“Could you give me a wee bit more detail?” asked Dug.

“Sorry, battle took it out of me. We’re not all Makka-driven madmen like you, Dug. We were fighting away, when there was this unholy scream and there was Silver – Spring, I mean – on horseback, next to Lowa.” Now Mal mentioned it, the northerner did find the memory of a weird scream somewhere amongst all the rage. “And Lowa was holding up the Dumnonians’ king’s head,” Mal continued, “shouting that the battle was over. Almost all the Dumnonians said fair’s fair and put their weapons down. And that was that, more or less. A few idiots like you fought on for a short while, but most of them gave up like men who never wanted to fight in the first place. Lowa galloped off southwards, presumably to halt the battle over there.”

“She’s gone?”

“She’s one of that lot.” Mal pointed at a flock of cavalry galloping across the plain to the other side of the battlefield.

“Badgers’ cocks,” said Dug.

R
agnall had drunk way too much alcohol once before. He’d behaved like a chump, been beaten up and woken the next day feeling as if he’d been poisoned and that everything he’d done or ever hoped to achieve was worthless. So he’d made the sensible decision to never get very drunk again, in much the same way, he reckoned, that a dog might pull apart a wasps’ nest only once.

So he didn’t understand, the evening following the battle, why all the people around him, Drustan included, had drunk so much beer and cider that they were telling the same stories over and over and wagging fingers at each other as if they’d discovered the secret of life, when in fact their observations were to philosophy what farting was to singing. Ragnall decided that he’d rather lie on his own looking at the sky than listen to another half-remembered story or quarter-cultivated pearl of wisdom, so he headed off.

He was nearly clear of the impromptu outdoor inn’s rough tables and benches when a tough looking but cheerily drunken man grabbed him.

“Have a drink!”

“Thanks, but I’ve already got two over there,” he lied.

“I see! You know when I knew that Lowa would be queen?”

“I don’t.” Ragnall tried to pull away, but the man held his arm. It seemed that he had a story and was determined to tell it. Ragnall decided it would be easier and quicker to listen than try to reason his way out of the situation.

“You know when I knew that Lowa would be queen?” the man repeated.

“OK, when did you know Lowa would be queen?” Ragnall asked.

“Boddingham,” said the man.

“What?” said Ragnall.

“Boddingham,” the man repeated, nodding his head vigorously. “When we sacked it. That’s when I knew Lowa would be queen one day.”

The peaceful summer night and the victorious laughter of the revellers melted away as Ragnall remembered riding home to Boddingham. His dead friends. The smashed palisade. His slaughtered brothers. Slaughtered by arrows …

He shook his head. “But Lowa wasn’t at Boddingham. She told me she was off scouting that day.”

“Wasn’t at Boddingham? Lowa? Scouting? Lowa? Nah, nah, nah. You got that very wrong, mate. First over the palisade, that was her, moving as if she and that horse were one, shooting those arrows into man, woman and beast. I said to myself right then, she’ll be queen one day, that one. She was like a goddess. You would not believe how many she killed that day. I told myself then and there that she’d be queen. Moving like she and the horse were one, she was. First over the palisade.” The man was nodding enthusiastically.

“How many?” Ragnall managed.

“How many what?”

“How many people did she kill?”

“At Boddingham?”

“Yes!”

“I don’t know. Maybe fifty? Maybe ten. Probably more than ten, less than fifty. A lot. Maybe fifty.”

“I see. I have to go.”

“Have a drink! I’ll go and get you one. You look like you need a drink.”

Ragnall stopped. “All right, I think I will have another drink.” He found a space on a bench and sat down to wait. The man tottered away.

After a while Ragnall realised that the man wasn’t coming back and he got up to find his own drink.

Away from the noise of celebration, Lowa spoke to Bruxon the Dumnonian for a long time. Lowa asked most of the questions and Bruxon did most of the talking. She heard how Samalur’s father, Vidin, had been a tyrant very much in the Zadar mould, perhaps worse, ravaging Dumnonia to enrich the few and win favour with the coming Romans.

Bruxon and a few others had plotted, rebelled and killed Vidin. They’d replaced him with his up-until-then studious son Samalur. It had been a mistake. Samalur was a good deal more intelligent than his father, but the moment they’d put him on the throne he’d turned his keen mind to merciless persecution. As well as all the druids, he’d killed anyone he perceived to be a rival, including three of his own brothers, two sisters, his mother and a slew of uncles, aunts and cousins. Anyone who wasn’t a threat but had some power, he’d bought off with gold, land and slaves. Bruxon and the original plotters, those of them left alive, had been looking for a way to be rid of the young oppressor when Lowa had kindly done it for them. He apologised profusely for the battle, offered food, weapons and gold as reparation, and swore that Dumnonia would join Maidun as a more numerous but junior ally in battles against the Romans, or anyone else for that matter.

He also asked Lowa’s permission to become king of Dumnonia. The tribe’s leadership had always been rigidly hereditary, but Samalur had murdered his relations so thoroughly that Bruxon, a distant cousin of the royal line, had as good a claim to the throne as anyone, as well as the support of the more morally upstanding survivors of Samalur’s rule. He swore that he’d treat his people well and prepare his armies for the Roman invasion.