Clash of Iron (40 page)

“You lot!” shouted Atlas at a gang of them. “Head back up the valley, and you lot … oh, fuck.”

Chamanca saw it at the same time as Atlas. They were both far too late. A burning landslide was roaring down the valley side, directly at them. She’d forgotten that the Nervee intended to block the valley. Seems they’d let it go a little late.

She turned to face it. The world slowed down for her. She pushed Atlas out of a flying rock’s path, but a moment later an apple-sized stone bounced and struck him square in the middle of his broad forehead. He tottered, stupefied. She dodged a flying stone, leapt and kicked him on the shoulder, sending him stumbling towards a ditch.

She looked about for Carden as she sidestepped a tumbling boulder the size of a hut, but couldn’t see him. The boulder landed, crushed two Gauls, and bounced on while the Iberian dived sideways to avoid a spinning, burning tree trunk which had already squashed several Nervee and set others ablaze. She landed on her feet, looking for the next projectile to dodge, but it was over.

And there she’d been, marvelling how quickly things had changed. Now they’d changed again and she was the only person standing for a hundred paces around.

“Carden!” she shouted.

“Over here!” A smouldering branch tipped up and Carden appeared. “Found a hole,” he explained. “Where’s Atlas?”

Atlas was out cold in the ditch where she’d kicked him, a trickle of blood leaking from a half-egg-sized bruise on his forehead. Carden pulled him out while Chamanca appraised the situation. The landslide had been devastating, but only for a relatively small section of the Nervee army. Behind them, it looked like the Nervee were holding in the neck of the valley and there were still many, many more to come from the trees. Below them, the Roman counter-attack had been checked, and Nervee were advancing there as well. Up ahead, Bodnog and more Nervee were pressing Caesar’s position. The landslide had simply dented the Gaulish army. They were still very much in control of the battle.

“Wake up, Atlas!” Carden shook him.

Chamanca pushed him off, sat on Atlas and pulled open one of his eyelids. “He’s not waking up for a while. Come on, let’s get him out of here.”

“But the battle?” Carden looked up the valley, towards the thickest fighting.

“We have played our part. It looks like the Romans will be finished soon.”

“I don’t get it. You don’t want to see the battle out? There’s a lot of Roman blood that isn’t going to drink itself.”

“I know,” Chamanca sighed, “but if we leave him here unconscious, someone will probably come along and kill him to get his armour. We won’t make a difference to the end of the battle, so we take Atlas to safety.”

“OK!” said Carden, smiling. “I’ll put him on my shoulder. You take his axe.”

Chamanca led the way as they retraced their steps back to the trees. She had Atlas’ massive axe over one shoulder, her ball-mace in the other hand and her sword scabbarded. They were in a no-man’s-land scattered with dead and dying between two outward pressing fronts and it looked safe, but you could never be too careful in a battle. She told Carden to keep his distance from the bodies where possible – she’d seen plenty of people badly wounded and even killed by the final, spiteful sword flails of the dying.

As they neared the treeline, Atlas said, “Put me down.”

“Oh, hello,” said Carden, dropping the Kushite on to his feet. “Nice nap?”

The bruise on Atlas’ head had grown to something resembling a young deer’s horn. Carden laughed.

The African ignored him. “With the numbers still left to come from the trees, the Nervee—” He was interrupted by screams from the treeline. The Nervee were still running from it, but while before they had been brandishing weapons and singing battle cries, now they were unarmed, several were injured and bloodied, and all were fleeing in terror, screaming: “Demons! Monsters! Run! Run for your lives!”

S
pring and Dug rode north through the fine morning. Dug was just reaching a state of oneness with the swish of the winds, the chatter of the birds and the very language of the landscape when Spring announced that, up here, many more of the roadside huts were made of stone than you’d generally find further south.

“It’s because the people have a stonier character up north,” said Dug.

“They’re more like stones? They sit around all day doing nothing? They can’t speak? Can you skim the flatter ones across lakes?”

“They’re tougher.”

“Tougher?”

“Aye,” said Dug.

“Remember that time you killed a duckling by mistake with your sling?”

“Aye.”

“And you cried?”

“I did not. My eyes were already watering because the wind was cold.”

“I wish I came from somewhere so tough that they cry when they kill baby birds.”

“Come up north, you’ll see.”

“I’d like to. Can we go?”

“Maybe when you’re a big bigger and can look after yourself around all those tough people. The animals are even tougher. Their favourite food is soft southern girls.”

“I can look after myself.”

“What would you do if a pack of wolves attacked? And we’re not talking your spineless southern wolves. These are mean, big buggers that’d eat you up in one swallow.”

“I’d put an arrow in your leg and run away.”

“Aye, well that would work, but it doesn’t make me any keener to travel up north with you.”

“I wouldn’t really shoot you, I’d shoot the wolves.”

“All of them?”

“All of them.”

Dug looked at the girl. She was staring ahead, mouth set, no doubt fantasising about shooting a whole pack of wolves. Well, if anyone could do it, he thought, it would, in fact, be Lowa. But going by the way she’d spent much of the journey skewering game from horseback at several dozen paces, Spring wasn’t far behind.

Shortly after lunchtime they passed two men who said they were walking to Mallam for the burning of the wicker woman.

“Yes,” said the smarter and elder looking of the two. “There’re burning a full house of criminals at sunset, and that fabulous queen of Maidun in the head. Not that we have any chance of getting there on time. Someone had to make a pair of shoes before we left the farm!” He glowered reproachfully but affectionately at the younger-looking one, who had a complicated beard and woad patterns painted on his thick neck and brawny arms.

“Yeah, but look at my Branwin-kissed new boots!” said the youngest, but Spring and Dug were already away, speeding up to an uncomfortable canter.

“I thought we had plenty of time?” said Dug once he’d worked out again how to sit on the stupid animal without feeling like he was going to tumble off with every stride.

“She must have annoyed them,” said Spring.

“I guess it was a bit much to expect meek compliance from that one.”

They passed more and more people, but didn’t stop to chat. Spring said they’d make it in time but only if they didn’t fuck about. Dug marvelled at how her language had changed after living with Lowa, then returned to concentrating on not falling off. It wouldn’t help their cause a great deal if he came from his horse and staved his head in.

They had to dismount at Mallam town and push through a throng of carnival-spirited revellers. It seemed that the imminent burning of a couple of dozen men and women in a huge person-shaped wicker cage put the Murkans in fine fooling. Nobody paid any heed to Spring and Dug, no doubt thinking that they were daughter and father come to see the fun. If anybody thought that their long, straight but gnarled walking canes were a little odd, they didn’t mention it.

A
few injured Nervee staggered from the trees then there were no more. One of the last stumbled up to them, bleeding life-endingly from a neck wound, eyes wide. Atlas grabbed him as he fell.

“What happened? Where are the rest?”

“Monsters faster than hares … Giants in iron … killed everyone.” The man’s eyes closed.

Atlas hefted his axe on to his shoulder, said, “Come on!” and headed for the woods.

“Wait!” said Chamanca. Atlas carried on. “Look.” This time he did stop.

“Bel’s big bruised bollocks,” said Carden.

Looming in the shadows at the edges of the trees were a dozen huge figures, motionless, watching. They were surely too tall and too broad to be men, clad in thick iron armour that looked impossibly heavy. Their helmets were like great inverted metal buckets with no adornment but slots for mouth and eyes. One of them lifted a sword longer than Carden was tall and swished the air.

Chamanca felt herself taking a step back, then another. It was more than just their size; she could feel some foul power surging from them. Was it evil?

“What are they?” asked Carden. “I thought Fassites were a children’s tale?”

“Fassites?” asked Chamanca

“Mythical giants from an island near Britain,” said Atlas. “These aren’t Fassites. They are Felix’s dark legion. Some of them anyway. Shall we see how powerful they are?” The big man hefted his axe.

“No, let’s go,” said Chamanca.

“Perhaps you’re right,” said Atlas, “I think we—”

“They’ve gone!” said Carden.

Chamanca looked to the trees. All was darkness.

T
he wicker woman was a collection of cages, two for each leg, a two-storey cage for the body, then one for each arm and one for the head. Lowa was glad that they’d put her alone in the head cage. Below her, maybe fifty people were crammed and chained into tight spaces. A fight had broken out at one point in one of the arm cages, but the whole structure had rocked precariously and they’d stopped. They didn’t want it to topple because it might have fallen off the cliff. Instead they were all waiting to burn to death.

The agony from her broken fingers had subsided somewhat, but they looked bad – a mess of twisted red and purple digits protruding from two hands swollen up like blue-black inflated bladders. Even if she were going to live a full life, rather than just until sunset, she wouldn’t be using her fingers again. She sat still, holding her hands in front of her like a squirrel, looking forward to dying.

She’d been so stupid to come to the Murkans with such a small force. And to bring Spring! She was certain that Spring was alive, but she’d been certain that Grummog would accept her offer of allegiance against the Romans. She’d been an arrogant fool. They’d all warned her about enemies at her back, but she’d been obsessed with beating the Romans. And now she was going to die. And Spring probably was dead. And there were three armies that were going to crush the people she’d tried to save before the Romans even reached the Channel. They would have been better off under Zadar, they really would have been.

And Dug. She did not want think about Dug.

Lowa closed her eyes and tried not to listen to the moans and pleas to the gods coming from below. She wished they’d hurry up and light the fucking thing because even in her agony she couldn’t think of anything but Dug and it was driving her mad.

D
ug and Spring finally escaped the crowds of Murkan town, remounted and rode west along a wide road. They were against the tide of pedestrians heading for the bottom of Mallam Cliff, but the people were perplexingly polite about moving to one side as they approached so they made swift progress. They turned north off the road and galloped up a valley with a bouncing stream and messily rock-strewn sides. The valley narrowed into a gorge, wound round a couple of corners and ended in two waterfalls, one above the other, each one about ten Dugs high. They hobbled the horses and left them at the edge of the stream.

Dug tied a length of rope around both of their waists – “So you can hold me if I fall,” he said – and they headed up the waterfall.

“It’s much easier when it’s dryer,” shouted Dug as he helped Spring across a section with slippery rock underfoot and the entire force of the cascade on her.

“Glad to hear it!” she would have said, if there hadn’t been a waterfall in her face.

They reached the top, stripped, wrung out their clothes, re-dressed, packed up the rope, then headed along the widening gorge.

“Wait!” Spring whispered. She took a bow twine from an inside pocket, unwrapped it from its greased leather holder, used all her weight to bend her bow staff and strung it. Dug had insisted that this route wouldn’t be guarded, but she wanted to be careful.

“Oi, you!” came a Murkan-voiced shout at exactly that moment, as if to prove just how much Dug knew about the ways of the Murkans. Above them was a lone spearman.

“We looost a sheep doon eeeer…” cried Dug in what Spring guessed was an attempt at a Murkan accent.

“What was that meant to be? Who the fuck are you?” said the spearman, “Wait there, I’m going to—”

Spring’s arrow hit him in the mouth. Dug nodded his thanks and congratulations. She was shaking a little. Finally she’d killed someone. She’d known she was going to have to at some point. What a strange feeling it was though.

As she pressed her palm against the dead man’s forehead to pull the arrow from his mouth, she saw a flash of his life. He lived – had lived – in a stone hut in the town with his wife and two children, but the person who had been on his mind the most recently was a friend’s eldest daughter, with whom he was obsessed. Before he’d spotted the two strangers coming up from the waterfall, he’d been planning what excuse he might use next to visit his friend’s hut. He had no plans to hurt or molest the girl, or even to seduce her, he just wanted to see her and hear her voice, and he hoped against hope that his infatuation might one day be reciprocated. He dreamed that she’d come to him in the night and that they’d leave together and find a peaceful, beautiful land, where the two of them would live out their days. He’d been glad that he’d been sent to guard the top of the waterfall, because it had given him time to be alone and think about her. It was the next best thing to being with her.

Beneath his pathetic longing, Spring saw that he wasn’t a bad man. And she’d killed him because he’d been in her way. She’d decided that Lowa’s life was more important than this man’s, that her desire to rescue Lowa was more important than his life, and killed him without a moment’s thought. In tribal courts, rapists and murderers got more consideration than that.