Age of Iron (22 page)

“Tell me what you want out of this—” Weylin leaned down and spoke directly into Ogre’s puckered earlump “—or I’ll cut you down here.”

Ogre stepped back, palms spread in supplication but still smiling smugly.

“All right. I want the girl who’s with them. She’s my daughter. I’d let her go – cocky little bitch she is, more trouble than she’s worth – but the wife wants her back.”

So he wanted the girl that Zadar wanted. That was decided then. He’d definitely have to kill Ogre when he’d served his purpose.

“All right, my friend, I will trust you.” He put a hand on Ogre’s shoulder. “Lead the way.”

D
rustan bought them places on a guarded caravan heading south-west to Dumnonia. They joined around twenty merchants and ten guards. The latter were swivel-eyed men and women, armed and armoured as if they were expecting the war with the gods to restart at any moment.

Despite the good roads, with several wagonloads of wares that had to be unloaded and displayed wherever anyone might have a coin or two, progress was halting through the strangely mixed landscape of southern Britain. In the first few places they passed, Drustan told Ragnall that little had changed since his last time on this road a decade before. Children and dogs ran out of prosperous villages and towns to greet the convoy, and the merchants laid out their wares for well dressed healthy-looking inhabitants. In other places Zadar’s destructive tentacles were obvious. In the afternoon they passed several shattered, deserted farmsteads and then a village where they were stared at by moon-eyed peasants only a few missed meals from starvation. The wagons rolled straight on through these shabbier places while the merchants carried on conversations and looked at the road ahead.

“So go the whims of Zadar,” said one of the merchants called Simshill when a particularly grim village’s last broken hovel was safely behind them. Simshill was an even-featured woman about thirty years old, with tight leather trousers. She had the sleekest black horse and the most alluring come-get-me eyes that Ragnall had ever seen.

He’d heard of this new class of tradespeople. There had always been itinerant merchants, but they tended to be eccentric lone operators, trundling about the country with a wagonload of goods for barter. They were travellers foremost, keen to see the world or escape a particular part of it. The exchange of goods was a means to that end. Ragnall had heard that nowadays merchants were less travellers and more horders, as obsessed with the accumulation of gold as dragons. Melancholy after his string of tragedies as well as prejudiced against these coin grubbers, Ragnall didn’t seek their conversation, but it was unavoidable. He was surprised to find that, for the most part, they were decent men and women whose motives seemed to be a mixture of enjoying themselves and improving the lot of their families. There was one unpleasantly opinionated man who thought he knew best and spoke over everyone else, but that was heartening because, as Drustan pointed out, every group needs its twat, and if you’re in a group of people and there isn’t a twat, then it’s you.

He’d heard plenty of tales of far-off places on the Island of Angels, but the tales the merchants told were different because they were from an adult world and because most of them were about Zadar. On their first night at an inn the merchants outdid each other with tales of Maidun army atrocities. Some of them were truly horrific. Ragnall’s resolve to bring the tyrant down was stiffened. To Ragnall’s surprise, Simshill’s glances and smiles were having something of a stiffening effect on him too. For the first time ever he was tempted to be unfaithful to Anwen, just days after finding his brothers and parents dead.

“Ah yes,” said Drustan when Ragnall told him about his unbidden lust. “Grief is not as simple as we would like. Before we experience it, we imagine it will be as sluice gates that drop, shutting off all flows of joy and turning us into woe-weighted living dead. In fact, after grief bludgeons its way into their lives, everyone apart from the most self-indulgent posturers who don’t need to work every day to provide food – kings, druids and bards, for example – find themselves carrying on very much as before. The mundane acts of existence temper grief more than kind words or fine philosophy.

“So, despite ourselves, very shortly after bereavement we laugh, enjoy food and yes, develop carnal fantasies. The latter is particularly common. I suspect it’s because emotions have been stripped raw, allowing previously suppressed, baser instincts to surface. If I had a sheep for every grieving girl who had offered herself to me after I said words for her dead father … I would have four sheep. Perhaps four and a half.”

The old man was right, he was sure, but Ragnall was determined to be neither happy nor horny. He was an iron-jawed hero out for revenge, with no time for frivolous humour or giddy fantasising. But his thoughts kept returning to Simshill.

“Of course that is one way in which we will be better off once the Romans get here.”

Drustan was still talking.

Ragnall perked up. “The Romans?”

“Yes. In Rome and in their empire, woman have a subservient role to men. They are treated in a similar fashion to our horses or dogs.”

“What?”

“Women’s lives are better under Roman rule. They don’t have to fight in armies. They don’t have to train as smiths or jewellers. They don’t have to face the same challenges as our women do.”

“Don’t have to?”

“Well, are prohibited from.”

“They don’t fight?”

“There are women neither in the Roman legions nor among the auxiliaries taken from the people they conquer.”

“So men do all the work?”

“Men do the mentally taxing and dangerous work. Women do other tasks. They work the fields and dig for minerals, but men oversee building, govern every settlement, run all martial matters and so on.”

“Wow.”

“Yes. It is a better system.”

“I’m not sure…”

“And of course men marry, but in Rome it’s laughable that a man should be faithful to one woman. They can sleep with any woman they find attractive – friend’s wives and daughters, slave girls, and prostitutes of course. Under Roman rule you could enjoy three days of lust with Simshill, and nobody would think that it diminished your love for Anwen. Anwen included.”

“That’s outrageous,” said Ragnall. But he did see some benefits in the Roman approach.

On the third day, when they’d travelled only about fifteen miles in total, they arrived in an idyllic-looking village. Ragnall particularly liked the ancient bench that encircled an even more ancient oak tree in the centre of the green. The merchants set out their wares around it. He sat on the bench for a while, watching the villagers file past the trestle tables of goods. As the morning passed, he found himself taking a look at his travelling companions’ merchandise for the first time.

He’d expected lucky charms, hair-growth potions, statues of gods, woollen scarfs and so on. In fact, it was mostly second-hand, everyday belongings. There were weapons, farming equipment, an ivory comb with several teeth missing, a three-legged wooden dog with nails for eyes, several rusty daggers, a great blade on a pole and other mixed oddments.

He wandered away and found Drustan lying on a grassy bank by their horses, studying the blue sky. His white hair and beard were bright in the sun. Ragnall shooed away the horsefly that was circling his old teacher’s head and sat down on the grass.

“Have you seen the merchants’ wares?”

Drustan started up onto one elbow and blew air out between his teeth. He looked troubled. “You are wondering where the merchants find their goods.”

“What?” Ragnall looked at Drustan. Drustan looked back. “Where do they get them?’’

“The merchant’s wares come from battlefields and sacked villages,” Drustan said in exactly the same tone he’d used earlier that morning to explain why only an idiot would build a windmill when a watermill was possible.

“They’re bodyrobbers!”

“And?” Drustan was frustratingly calm. “It makes sense. The dead do not need these things.”

Ragnall balled his fists and ground his teeth and spoke slowly. “They are making profit from the dead. That cannot be right.”

“When a tree falls it is eaten by the forest.”

Ragnall stared at Drustan and saw his eyes flicker away. He turned.

“Hi, Ragnall. Drustan.” It was Simshill, heading back to her stall of murdered people’s belongings.

“You know I can’t travel with these merchants any further?” Ragnall said when she was out of earshot.

“Yes. There are other routes.”

Ragnall turned to pack, then stopped and turned back. “You knew I wouldn’t want to travel with them when I found out what they were selling, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“But you were happy to let me travel with them?”

“The situation has changed only because you know. Think of a woman who is unfaithful to her husband in the first year of marriage. Their son is another man’s. The husband does not know. Ten years later he finds out. That is when the situation changes, not before.”

“Oh for Danu’s sake.”

“Come on. We will go.”

T
hey dismounted at the edge of the village and Lowa led them to a hut. It was the standard circular wattle and daub construction, but a strikingly large and tidy example. A low stone wall surrounded the straight-sided hut and a well kept space that was part agricultural workshop, part flower garden. A bare-chested young man was doing press-ups outside the hut’s porch, apparently oblivious to their arrival.

“Eighty-six, eighty-seven, eighty-eight!” he counted as he pumped up and down. His arm muscles shifted like stoats racing through a haggis skin.
I don’t like you
, thought Dug. He glanced at Lowa. She was eyeing the young man appreciatively, in much the same way, Dug realised with a sinking stomach, as he’d eyed her when she’d come back from washing in the river the previous day.

“Bet he just started when he saw us coming,” he whispered to Spring. “He’d be sweating if he’d really done that many.”

Spring was staring open-mouthed at the man and didn’t seem to hear him.
Not her as well? thought Dug. Surely she’s too young?

Lowa pushed open the low gate into the garden. “Farrell.”

The man leaped up and swept blond shoulder-length hair from his eyes. He was medium height, about Lowa’s age. His square jaw was beardless. Welcoming blue eyes shone from a tanned, effeminate but handsome face that radiated relaxed confidence and decency. He wore clean woollen trousers and leather boots. His lean, hard, lightly tanned torso was unscarred by battle. He wore a jewelled gold bracelet on each wrist. Dug found himself clasping his one remaining plain bronze bracelet as if to cover it up.

“Lowa!” The young man strode over and embraced her manfully for far too long, before looking up at Dug and Spring. “And who are these?” he asked, his ruling-class accent tinged with the laughter of happy welcome. Lowa told him their names and said: “This is Farrell Finda, King of Kanawan.”

“Come come!” boomed Farrell. “You must have been travelling for hours. Enid!”

A girl about Spring’s age with straight eyebrows, a high forehead and a freckly nose walked out of the hut, wiping her hands on a white apron. “Dad?”

“Put the horses out please darling, for Lowa, Spring and Dud. This is my daughter Enid.”

Spring giggled.

“That’s Dug,” said Dug.

“Sorry, old man! Come in, come in and meet Ula! We’ve enough food for all. You must sit and rest and tell us what brings you to our humble village.” Farrell swept a woollen coat from a hook on the wall and pulled it on. It was the reddest coat Dug had ever seen. Farrell fastened it with five bone toggles carved, if Dug wasn’t mistaken, into the shape of mice.

He looked down at his own tatty, brown, unadorned outfit, then followed Farrell into his big round hut. Inside it was clean and neat. There were tartan rugs draped over furniture and furs on the floor. A section of the conical roof had been folded back, so all was bright and airy. Shelves were lined with swirl-decorated pots, long-necked jugs and a few of the smaller, patterned Roman wine amphoras. Along one wall was a display of long-handled, short-toothed, antler-carved wool-weaving combs, decorated with circles and lines. Arranged teeth up, they looked to Dug like a row of dandy dogs’ paws. Up north, the kind of time devoted to producing such fancy goods was channelled into making better weapons.

The home was large enough for the sleeping quarters to be two separate little rooms, shielded from the main chamber by heavy leather curtains. A pot bubbled gloopily over the central hearth. A large oval shield leaned against one wall. Its polished bronze boss was surrounded by an elaborate design of what was meant to be two dragons with their tails in each other’s mouths but looked more to Dug like cannibalistic tadpoles. He curled his lip at it. That lovely piece of kit had never deflected a spear blow, and, with that soft bronze boss, wouldn’t last long if it tried.

But it did look good. The whole hut did. Expensive and unnecessary decoration aside, the hut was exactly the sort of place Dug would have loved to have lived in. In fact, replace the poncey decorations with functional kit, swap the cow leather for sealskin, change the mud and wood walls for stone, and it wasn’t that different from the broch he and Brinna had so lovingly and enthusiastically done up when he’d been a little younger than Farrell, before it had all gone wrong.

A woman emerged from one of the sleeping chambers.

“This is my wife, Ula,” said Farrell, chest swelling as he pointed at her. “I’ll leave you here for a while. You’re in good hands!” He ducked out of the hut.

Ula was a svelte young woman with black hair falling sleekly over her shoulders onto incongruously large breasts. She had questioning eyebrows, large blue eyes, a sharp chin and plump, almost bruised-looking pink lips with a mischievous curl of smile. Her only adornment was a heavy blue-glass bracelet – no gold – but the way she held herself suggested that she had a hoard of riches packed away and didn’t feel the need to show it.
Old money
, thought Dug. Her woollen dress was simple but well made, lighter than Dug had seen wool spun before, with braid edging and a woollen belt that accentuated her narrow waist.