Reign of Iron (55 page)

The Iberian took a step back, leapt, and two-foot-kicked her foe in the chest. The final Leatherman collapsed like a sackful of dead eels.

Well, there you go, thought Lowa.

She looked about for Felix and saw him running towards the legionaries, who’d been watching agog. Chamanca had told her what had happened on the wall at Wesont where she’d been captured by Caesar, when Felix had sliced the praetorian’s throat to give himself power, so she guessed he was about to try the same here. She wasn’t worried. She felt more than strong enough to deal with a thousand magic-powered Felixes.

“Chamanca, Atlas, make sure Caesar doesn’t go anywhere,” she said, and strolled after Felix, ready to face his magic.

But she wouldn’t have to. The legionaries knocked him back with their shields and sent him sprawling. She walked up, put her iron foot on his neck and he was trapped.

Felix’s gaze moved up the iron leg and torso to the iron face looking down at him. His Celermen and Maximen had all been destroyed and Lowa was about to crush his neck under her boot. He closed his eyes and waited.

And opened them again. Lowa was regarding him calmly and inquisitively, like a child looking into a rock pool. From one corner of his vision he could see the legionaries staring. From the other corner he saw a familiar figure approach, hips swinging.

“Lowa. I would like him, please.” The iron Iberian’s voice echoed strangely.

Lowa lifted her foot off his neck. Chamanca grabbed him by the hair and pulled him to his feet. She switched her grip to his neck, her iron fingers so tight that he could only just breathe.

“Do you remember all those children you killed when you were Zadar’s druid?”

What a hypocrite she was. “You’re worse that me.” He struggled to speak. “You’re a blood drinker. Are you going to drink mine?”

Chamanca shook her head. “I don’t want your blood in me. This is for the children of Britain.”

Holding his neck with one hand, she took his elbow in the other and squeezed. It popped and blood sprayed between her fingers. He screamed. He couldn’t do anything else. The pain was incredible.

“And this,” she said, “is for a girl called Autumn.” Felix remembered her. The limping blacksmith’s daughter. He did deserve punishment for what he’d done to that girl. And he got it. Chamanca dropped to a crouch, took his knees in her hands and crushed them both. He fell, then screamed and screamed and screamed, vaguely aware that he was being dragged along by his one good limb. He wondered where to.

L
owa hadn’t known that Chamanca was so inventive, but she was glad of it. The punishment she’d worked out for Felix herself didn’t come to close to what Chamanca did to him. It took a long time and it was nasty. Even though it made Lowa feel so queasy that she turned away, and some of the legionaries who continued watching vomited, she was sure that anybody who knew the man would agree that he deserved every bit of it and more.

When Chamanca had finished and was wiping the blood, bone chips and brain from her hands on the grass, Lowa looked towards iron Atlas, standing next to Julius Caesar. The general was staring at something behind her in the sky.

It was Spring, floating through the air towards them like a goddess, carrying little Dug. The boy was grinning. Spring alighted gently on the hill. Lowa felt the iron flood from her body, through the soil and back into the rock below.

The girl walked over, holding little Dug by the hand as he toddled next to her. The little boy lifted his arms to Lowa. She took him up and hugged him tightly. He clasped her, burying his face in her neck. She breathed in deeply and he smelled of warmth and love – he smelled like big Dug.

She put the boy down and spoke to Spring. “Would you mind looking after him a moment more? I have something to do.”

She walked over to where Atlas was standing next to Julius Caesar. Chamanca and Spring followed. On the way she passed the woman and the two black-clad Romans who’d helped to rescue Spring. All three were bruised and bloodied but smiling. She was glad that they’d survived their tussle with the demons. She smiled back at them and gave them a nod that she hoped conveyed welcome and gratitude.

Caesar coolly watched her approach.

“I retract my surrender,” she said.

Atlas translated, Caesar said something and Atlas said: “He’s querying whether a surrender can be retracted.”

“Tell him it’s my island and I make the rules here. And besides, it was the Romans who restarted the battle. I retract my surrender and I demand that he surrenders.”

Atlas did, Caesar nodded then spoke at some length.

“He apologises for the behaviour of his druid,” said Atlas. “But he sees no reason to surrender. He has most of your army in chains, and even if they were free he still outnumbers you.”

“He’s seen what my druid can do. Does he want me to kill every legionary now or would he rather take them home? He does not have to formally surrender, but he must promise to leave Britain this moon with all his legions.” Lowa turned to Spring. “Spring, who are these three who saved you from Felix?”

“Tertius, Ferrandus and Clodia Metelli. They’re two of Caesar’s elite guard and … Clodia.”

“All right. All his legions will go but one. We will keep that legion here for two years to tidy up the mess that he’s caused. If the three of them agree to it, this legion will be commanded by Clodia Metelli, with Tertius and Ferrandus as her deputies. And here’s the important part. No other Roman legionary will set foot again on British soil for a hundred years. If they do, British druids will kill every one of Caesar’s family.”

“Why not kill Caesar?” asked Chamanca. “He’s done terrible things and he will do more if you let him go.”

“Evil shit he may be,” said Lowa, “but I trust him. I think we can count on him to remove his men, and not to come back.”

“Why only a hundred years?”

“Because forever doesn’t mean anything. A hundred years, they might actually stick to. If Britain hasn’t learnt its lessons and made itself ready to repel invaders by then, it deserves to be conquered.

“Atlas, translate my demands, please, although not that last part.”

“Can I?” asked Spring.

“I don’t know, can you?”

“Yup.”

“Then go for it.”

Spring spoke in what sounded to Lowa like confident, flowing Latin. Caesar looked surprised initially, then listened, then spoke, at one point questioning Clodia, Ferrandus and Tertius, who looked like they all replied positively.

“He agrees to everything with two conditions,” said Spring. “First one is easiest. He’ll write the story of the invasion – I’ve heard him write his journals, he makes it up as he goes along – and he wants you to agree that neither you nor any of your agents will go to Rome and deny what he writes.”

“Fine. Next?”

“He will leave a legion behind, on the condition that it’s made up of volunteers from his legions as far as possible, that the men are treated well, and, most importantly, that after two years are up, they should be given land in Britain and remain here. I guess he doesn’t want them flooding back to Rome and spoiling his story.”

Lowa nodded, pleased to see that Spring’s year with the Romans didn’t seem to have caused any harm, in fact the opposite. She seemed more assured, and, most importantly, she didn’t seem to hate Lowa any more.

Caesar’s first condition she couldn’t have given the smallest of craps about. He could tell whatever stories he liked as long as he buggered off. The second rather suited her. The Spring Tide had depopulated Dumnonian and Murkan land, and more men had been killed than women, so it would be no hardship to accept five thousand immigrants. She would have Spring, Atlas, Clodia and the two praetorians vet the legionaries and she’d send any they didn’t like to Eroo, but Caesar didn’t need to know that.

“Tell him I agree to his conditions.”

Spring translated. Caesar nodded and wordlessly held out his hand. Lowa held out hers. He gripped her elbow, she gripped his and they shook.

Lowa looked around. Chamanca was holding Atlas’ arm; the African was looking at her, a rare half-smile on his scarred face. It seemed Lowa hadn’t stopped running since the day she’d given him that scar. Maybe now, finally, she could just sit down for a while, watch her son grow up and teach him to avoid people like Zadar – and herself, she supposed.

As if to confirm her resolve, little Dug stamped up to her, arms in the air, demanding to be picked up. She complied and he squealed with joy. Behind him, Spring was beaming.

“What will you do now, Spring?” Lowa asked.

“Thought I might come back to Maidun for a while and help you out? If you’ll have me?”

“You’ll be very welcome. But only for a while?”

“I’ve seen Rome, I’ve seen Gaul and I liked them, but both were too full of Romans. I want to see what’s in the other direction.”

C
aesar left with all but one legion, within the moon as Lowa had demanded. He wrote that he’d crossed to Britain with five legions, won every battle and returned to Gaul with hostages and tribute promised. However, in reality, no hostage crossed the Channel and no tribute was ever paid. Nevertheless, to celebrate Caesar’s marvellous adventure in Britain, twenty more days holiday was proclaimed on his return to Rome that winter.

After 54
BC
no Roman legionary set foot on British soil for ninety-seven years. They couldn’t quite manage the full hundred.

A
ssuming you haven’t just turned to this page because you’re one of those people who reads the back of a book first in case they die before they finish it, congratulations for reaching the end of the Age of Iron trilogy. I hope you liked it. If you didn’t and you got this far, then you’re some kind of masochist and have only yourself to blame.

Right now, as I sit at my desk writing this, it’s 2 April 2015.
Clash of Iron
will be released two weeks from today and
Reign of Iron
, which I’m finishing
right now
, will come out in six months (probably. You can be even less certain about the future than you can about the past). I don’t know what I’m going to write next. I have some vague ideas, some of which include characters from Age of Iron. If you want to know what’s coming, you can sign up to my newsletter at www.guswatson.com. If you want to tell me what should come next, I’m on Twitter as @GusWatson.

Anyway, since this is officially a historical note, let’s get on with the history. I’ve covered the main points in the historical notes at the back of the first two books, and probably banged on enough about how I think that Caesar’s diary is fabrication, and how it’s unlikely that he crossed the Channel twice with two massive armies with the intention of returning to Gaul after a couple of months. There’s a bibliography in
Clash of Iron
if you’d like to read more about the period. Here, I’ll focus on how this third book does and doesn’t tally with official history.

We don’t know much about Iron Age Brits, but I’ve stuck largely to what we do. Throughout the trilogy, their huts, hillforts, clothes and so on mostly agree with the archaeologists. Those weapons and devices that I’ve invented – Lowa’s bow, the T-shaped anti-tortoise poles, multistorey huts, giant carts full of war dogs – would all have been feasible. However, all the British characters and tribes are my own creation (almost – you’ll find Dumnonia in the official list of tribes around at the time but that’s it). There were almost certainly plenty of druids in Britain, but we don’t know what they did.

The aurochs is an extinct species of giant cow, the last of which died in Poland in 1627. Officially aurochs died out in Britain about a thousand years before
Age of Iron
is set, but they really could have lived on as late as 54
BC
. Just because we have no evidence for something doesn’t mean it didn’t happen (see “Numbers” section).

According to Caesar, he brought two legions (ten thousand men) across the Channel in 55
BC
and five legions (twenty-five thousand men) in 54
BC
. To put that in perspective, William the Conqueror’s successful invasion in 1066 was between five and seven thousand strong. I’ve used the same number of ships that Caesar describes for both invasions, but have added one legion to the second invasion, which is left behind in Britain on Lowa’s demands (and therefore, in my reckoning, was left out of Caesar’s diary).

“Do we have any other evidence?” you might ask. “For example, what does archaeology tell us about the size of his armies? Perhaps from the remains of his camps we can work out how many—”

Let me stop you there. Quite interestingly, I think, archaeologists have found no physical evidence whatsoever that Caesar’s massive invasions of Britain in 55 and 54
BC
took place at all. Not a shield, not any part of a boat, not a pilum point, not a Roman sausage. The invasions are mentioned by a couple of other Roman writers, but pretty much all our facts come from Caesar’s diary of the invasion.

The Romans I’ve mentioned mostly did exist. Cicero’s younger brother, for example, actually was a renowned twat who hated his wife Pomponia and threw someone into a river in a bag of snakes. Cornelia Metella was married to Publius Licinius Crassus, and she was beautiful and good with a lyre. We don’t see Publius Licinius Crassus after Ragnall and Spring’s wedding for a good and (I think) interesting reason – google his name to find out why. Clodia Metelli was a glamorous socialite, but there’s no evidence that she came along on the invasion of Britain. The only Romans I’ve totally made up are Felix, a few minor characters like the legionary who enjoyed giving directions to Spring, and the two main praetorians. Ferrandus the praetorian is the only character in any of the three books based on a modern person. He is Luc Ferrand, my friend who died in January 2014. He’s in the book as a tribute, not because dead people can’t sue.