Age of Iron (42 page)

Spring reached into the reeds. There was a
snick
, then another, and she handed him a newly cut reed. Dug leaned in to peer at her, to see why she hadn’t delivered the reed with a quippy reproof for losing the first one. She was clenching her jaw tight to stop her teeth chattering. The girl was freezing. He crossed the channel and prodded Lowa. She and Ragnall emerged together,

“This is no good,” he whispered.

Lowa looked from side to side. “Yes. They know I’m here. They might widen the search but they won’t call it off. And we can’t stay in the water. So we go through the reeds.”

“They’ll see the reeds moving from a mile off. We need to take a boat,” whispered Ragnall. “There were three in that last boat, two with paddles at either end, one with a torch in the middle. If we can overpower them quietly while somehow keeping their torch, we’ll look like another search boat and we should be able to paddle away unchallenged. But I don’t know how we can take one…”

Dug looked at Lowa and nodded. The boy was right.

“Spring, give Ragnall your knife,” whispered Lowa. “Dug, you have your hammer?”

“Aye.”

“We’re set then.”

“What will you use?” Ragnall asked.

“I’ll manage,” said Lowa.

Dug tested the channel’s bed with a foot. It was firmer at the edge and hopefully he’d be able to get some purchase. “You two go on the other side and get underwater. When they’re on us, I’ll surface first and take the middle one. That should turn the heads of the paddlers. Lowa, you know what you’re doing. Ragnall, don’t mean to patronise, but in case you haven’t done this before, grab him or her by the hair, or even better get an arm round their head to muffle their mouth, and draw the blade across their neck with a sawing motion. Hard as you can, mind. Don’t worry, you won’t go all the way through. And grip the knife tight. Blood’s slippery. I’ll try to grab the torch, but if I miss don’t let it fall in the water. Got it?”

“Sure.” Lowa put the reed into her mouth and sank.

“Ye-es,” said Ragnall, following her.

“You just stay under, aye?”

“Aye,” said Spring.

Dug stood tall to look for boats. He didn’t see any but he heard someone say, not far off, “What’s that, in the reeds?”

The nose of a boat entered their channel. Dug sank, lower than before, not bothering with the reed. The boat glided through spangled torchlight into view above, the shadow of its nose, then the nose itself, then the first paddle …

Dug leaped like a salmon.

There were four in the boat. They all turned towards him. He whacked his hammerhead into the leftmost of the central heads, then into the right one, as if ringing a great bell. That was the joy of the hammer over other weapons. In group situations it was much more effective to whack than stab or slice. Blades could get caught in things; hammers tended to do their damage then bounce off. As the hammerhead cracked into the second head, a spurt of blood slapped into Dug’s face and open mouth. He swallowed some and fell back gagging, then gulping marsh water to follow the blood. He fought to get back on his feet, managing to grab the edge of the boat and pull himself up, a nasty metallic taste in his mouth.

His two were out cold in the centre of the boat. Ragnall’s was at the front, pouring black blood from his slit throat and convulsing like a dying fish. At the back Lowa had hers, a young man, by the back of the neck with one hand, strong archer’s fingers holding him in an eye-bulging, paralysing grip. In her other hand she held the torch.
Ah
, thought Dug. He’d completely forgotten about keeping the torch alight.

“Um…?” she asked. Dug cracked his hammer onto her captive’s head. He felt the necks of his two: both dead.

“What’s happening there!” shouted a gruff voice. The shouter was close but shielded from view by the reeds.

“Squeeeeeee!” squealed Spring. They all looked at her, bobbing in the water by the boat. “Squeeee?” she said.

“We startled some otters,” called Ragnall in a gruff voice. “Little bastards almost capsized us.”

“Fucking otters!” said the voice.

“Yeah!” said Ragnall. “Fucking otters! We’ll catch them and make hats for everyone!”

“Ha ha! Nice one!” The boat paddled away.

Dug sat in the back with a paddle. Then it was Spring, Lowa with the torch, then Ragnall on front paddle. They followed the channel to the main river, then south past the hulking shadow of Gutrin Tor, keeping to the edge to avoid detection and to stay in the slackest part of the contrary current.

They saw only one of the Maidun attackers, a man on the far bank.

“Any luck?” he asked.

“No!” Lowa replied. “You?”

“Not a sign. She’s a slippery bitch, that one.”

“She sure is.”

Dug could see Spring’s shoulders rocking in a silent giggle. He leaned forward and pinched her. She started and slapped his hand away. Dug smiled and paddled on. Soon Gutrin Tor was a memory behind them. They were away, heading for Maidun Castle.

Out of the pan, thought Dug, but charging straight to the blacksmith’s and leaping head first into the furnace.

A
metalled road ran from the south side of the great marsh, through the town of Forkton and on to Maidun Castle. It would have been two days’ hard walking or a day’s riding to reach Maidun on the road, but they couldn’t risk it. Forkton was Zadar’s town, so not only would the road have been thick with people who might have recognised Lowa, but there was a massive likelihood of meeting the force that had attacked Mearhold on its return journey.

So they travelled a few miles to the west, keeping to the woods. Dug and Spring scouted ahead with a tin whistle that the Mearhold hunters had given Spring. If they encountered anybody suspicious, the plan was for Dug to play the whistle and Spring to sing.

“Are you sure we’ll hear that?” Ragnall had asked.

“Oh you’ll hear me,” Spring had said, then launched into song with a voice that was at least half scream.

“Aye.” Dug interrupted her with a shout. “The giant beasts on the other side of the Great Ocean’ll hear you too, and rip their own ears off and eat them so they won’t have to hear any more.”

Other than the odd forager and hunter, however, they saw nobody and Spring’s song remained unsung.

Ragnall offered to take over the scouting a few times and Dug accepted, but Lowa pointed out each time that Dug had more experience with this sort of thing, and he’d be better at dealing with any trouble. So Ragnall stayed back with her. She couldn’t scout herself, of course, since she was the fugitive. She was disguised to a degree, with her hair piled up into a leather hat taken from one of the dead on the boat, but anybody who knew her would have recognised her immediately.

The weather had cooled a little, mercifully, and the walking was easy. There was the odd fallen tree to negotiate, a few bogs to tussock-hop or circumnavigate and a small hill to climb every now and then, but there was nothing like the miles-wide sucking morasses, slippery, wet cliffs, aggressive wolf packs and easily upset bears that Dug had regularly encountered up north. In the busy south, the only wolves and bears left were those that had learned to avoid human contact. They did happen upon a large, disgruntled-looking wild boar, which stood on the track barring their way, but Dug put Spring behind him and stared at the beast until it ran off into the woods with a groink and a toss of its head.

“And that, Spring, is how you out-ugly a boar,” said Dug.

“You’re not ugly,” said Spring.

Dug was happy in the girl’s company. He told her stories and expanded on his theories about life. Talking to Spring was like plucking his thoughts from his head, laying them on the ground, sorting them and slotting them back in better order. She was, he thought, a unique girl.

Ragnall and Lowa seemed content too. Whenever he and Spring waited for them for a break or to discuss the route, they’d appear deep in conversation, or laughing together, or they’d just be sauntering along in happy silence like an old, devoted couple. In the evenings they would all talk together, but they usually covered subjects in which Dug had no interest and no view. So mostly Ragnall and Lowa talked while Dug listened and Spring slept.

The first night they sheltered in a derelict hut. With the animal droppings, bones and leaves swept out and a few branches interwoven across the door hole, it was cosy and secure. When it was time to sleep, Dug lay on the floor next to Lowa and put an arm over her. She rolled so she was facing away from him and was soon snoring softly.

The next evening they slept in the woods. Spring pleaded with Dug to lie so that she’d have him on one side and the fire on the other, so that any bears would eat him first and give her a chance to get away. He was, after all, used to being chewed by animals and she wasn’t. He acquiesced and kicked the twigs and nutshells away from a spot next to hers, while Lowa found a place on the other side of the fire, next to Ragnall.

That second night Dug lay awake, listening to the cracks of the fire, the shrieks, barks, rustles and clicks of the woodland animals and Spring’s porcine snufflings.

He couldn’t sleep.

He couldn’t ignore it any more. Lowa’s apparent indifference towards him and her contrary interest in Ragnall was so heavy on his mind that he was having one of his very rare sleepless nights. When Lowa and Ragnall had laughed together earlier, their merry sounds had shaken him horribly and he’d had to admit to himself that he was jealous. He’d felt like this as a boy a few times, when he’d been achingly in love with a friend’s mother or older sister and had to watch them enjoy the company of a lover who wasn’t him. He remembered childhood emotions well – it perplexed him that most other adults didn’t seem able to – but he’d thought this kind of infatuation had disappeared along with the belief that he was the centre of the world.

If he’d been talking to Spring, she’d have made him go through it in a detached way, as if he were looking from the outside rather than an irrational participant. He tried that. Yes, he’d found Lowa attractive, but he had by no means become obsessed like some old saddo. He’d been content with the traditional decent older man’s undertaking of only ogling her when he was absolutely certain he wouldn’t get caught. He’d never have tried anything. Then
she’d
kissed
him
. So, logically, she must have fancied him even more than he fancied her. Then that morning in Mearhold she’d leaped on him when he was half asleep. Then she’d suggested that they go for a “walk” with a saucy arch in her eyebrow. He hadn’t gone, but it had been clear what would have happened if he had. Then, when he’d suggested a similar walk a few days later, she’d been busy with Ragnall. Since then there’d been nothing: no suggestion at all that she had any interest in him whatsoever, sexual or otherwise.

The training with Ragnall had seemed like a genuine excuse. Dug had been spending every day with Spring, so it had been reasonable for her to assume that he was going to do that again. And every night in Mearhold Spring had been there in the same hut. The two nights on the road, Spring and Ragnall had been there, in the hut and now by the fire. So she shunned physical intimacy when others were around. Nothing wrong with that. He wasn’t mad on shagging in public either. Maybe, on top of that, she just wasn’t in the mood. Women were like that. Brinna had been. Sometimes she’d been up for it every day – more than once a day at the beginning – and sometimes there would be long periods of abstinence, particularly for the few moons around the birth of the girls. In fact, he himself could go for days at a time without feeling like sex. Maybe, of course, it was her time of the moon. He wasn’t squeamish about riding the red horse, but he knew some women preferred not to.

Aye, any objective observer would agree that he was being wet. If you were a lovesick young fool, Lowa’s apparent indifference might reasonably upset you. But they were adults. He and Lowa were embarking on a lasting, adult relationship. They didn’t need to shag ten times a day to prove their affection for each other. There’d be plenty of time for that once Zadar was dead.

That was another point. What he knew of Lowa’s plan to kill Zadar – Drustan’s plan – seemed plausible, but it was still terrifyingly risky, and he’d never heard how she was going to get away afterwards. With that on her mind there was little wonder she wasn’t offering herself up like a seal in season. He must, he thought, talk to her about her escape plan. Killing Zadar was a noble goal and a useful one for the land, but it wasn’t worth dying for. Nothing was worth dying for.

He felt happier.
But
, a nagging internal voice asked,
what about Ragnall?
He and Lowa did look good together. Their ages were much closer. And Ragnall had more in common with her than he did. But no. Lowa had pulled Dug, not the other way round. Like many women, she preferred older men. Ragnall was a friend, and it was good that she had friends, but he was far too young for her to find him attractive.

No, he decided, there was definitely no need to worry about anything. Besides, he’d seen her picking and eating wild carrot flowers that very evening when she’d thought nobody was watching. Wild carrot flowers stopped babies. She must be planning, he thought, to jump back on him as soon as the opportunity arose. That thought left him smiling peacefully up at the leaves above.

So he was surprised, still awake some time later, to realise that he was no longer listening to woodland groans and grunts, but to the sounds of Lowa and Ragnall having sex. He lifted his head quietly. Ragnall’s white buttocks were carefully rising and falling. Lowa’s gasps became louder and closer together until she came with a sigh. Ragnall pumped on a little longer, said, “Oof!” slowed down, stopped and rolled off.

Dug lay on his back, eyes closed. He pinched himself. He was definitely awake.
Big bald badgers’ bollocks,
he thought.

“W
here
is
he?” Spring came back up the hill from the stream. “I’ve been shouting for ages. He’s not down there.”