Age of Iron (47 page)

He pictured Anwen’s loving look, grateful and joyful on the beach where he’d proposed marriage. He groaned with guilt. Anwen wanted him. He was enough for her. Could he forget Lowa, find Anwen and start again where he’d left off?

He decided to find somewhere to sleep. Perhaps things would be clearer in the morning. He stood, glancing over at Spring.

“A wise man called Dug told me,” she said to her audience, “that an evil king tells his people that his evil deeds are for their own good. And they’ll lie to themselves that he’s right because that’s the easiest thing to do. But soon the evil king will run out of enemies, and the people who helped him will become his victims. Then they’ll regret it, but it’s too late!”

Ragnall walked away.

L
owa’s feet hit the slope of the wall. She grabbed the support beam and wrapped her arms around it and managed to scrabble onto it. She gripped the beam. Her body was ruined. She would never, she decided, lift her shoulders or arms again. She’d just lie here until she died. Maybe she was dead already. She didn’t mind at all if she was. As long as she didn’t have to move.

Slowly she recovered. The dogs had stopped barking and she hadn’t been discovered. Her impossible mission to kill Zadar, which was bound to fail at some point, hadn’t failed yet. But she still had the final, inner palisade to negotiate. She raised her head. Down below, the dogs and the fires were undisturbed. She was convinced briefly that a dog was staring at her, but it turned away. Above her, where the bridge met the wall, there was scoop in the chalk – a mini cave. She climbed up into it. It was more than big enough to hide her, narrow and deep enough that she wouldn’t be seen. She lay down and fell asleep.

A
huge dead dog had come to talk to Zadar. Even with its legs folded under it, it was the biggest dog Elliax had ever seen, big as a cow, and indeed others might have thought it was a cow, but he’d spotted its pert little ears and furry dog’s pelt. No dead animal was going pretend to be a cow and fool Elliax! He giggled quietly.

The beast was prostrate in the open-air court, facing the king. Zadar was on his throne, Felix next to him as usual, the old man who’d turned up a couple of days before sitting on Zadar’s other side, holding his bandaged staff. Elliax was famished. He knew Felix would soon offer him more “special meat” and he knew he’d say yes. Maybe it was the dead dog making him hungry. He liked a bit of dog. Although, now he thought about it, at least half the pleasure of eating dog meat back in Barton had been eating it in front of whoever’s dog it had been.

The big hero with the limp bent over the dog, poking at it. Carden Nancarrow was his name – the man’s, not the dog’s. Elliax was trying to memorise the names of everyone important for when the test was over and Zadar made him quartermaster. People liked it when you remembered their names. It looked like this new old man, the one sitting by Zadar, was going to be important. He’d have to learn his name too.

Carden stood, pushed back his long dark hair and eyed his king darkly from under his overhanging brow. Here, thought Elliax, was a powerful man – physical strength-wise. Perhaps Elliax might be allowed him as part of his quartermaster’s bodyguard? It would be some compensation for suffering this hideous test. He missed his guards from Barton. Although they’d been bugger-all use when he’d needed them most, come to think of it.

“The dog was killed by strikes with a thin knife – most likely two thin knives – to either side of its head,” said Carden.

“Or iron climbing spikes?” said Felix.

“Possibly,” said Carden.

“The dog was found between the gate and the nearest northern bridge, in the outer ditch?”

“Correct.”

“So she came,” said Zadar. “Where is she now? Drustan?”

Drustan. That was his name.

Drustan paused for a long time before saying, “The ditch has been searched?”

Zadar looked at Carden.

“Thoroughly,” said the Warrior.

“Hmmm,” the old man continued. “What will you do with her if you find her?”

“The arena,” said Felix.

Drustan nodded as if that made good sense, then spoke slowly, as if taking care to get each phrase just right. “She scaled the first wall successfully. She killed the dog at the bottom of the first ditch. She climbed the second wall, came over the palisade. She saw the inner ditch’s guard and realised she could get no further. There she had three choices. To hide and wait, to return to Maidun Camp to plan an alternative approach, or to abandon her scheme and flee. Which did she do? That is the question.”

Felix rolled his eyes. “Yes. We’d managed that much.”

Elliax rather agreed with Felix. This Drustan fellow had taken a long time saying what they all already knew. He wouldn’t be around for long if he carried on like that.

Zadar looked at Carden. “Go. Take the Fifty into the camp and search for her. Torture people if you need to.”

“I won’t need to torture anyone,” said Carden, not quite managing to meet Zadar’s gaze.

It was possible that something flashed in Zadar’s eyes, but his big sulking fish expression didn’t change. Felix, however, leaped out of his chair like a wasp-stung weasel. “You will do what Zadar tells you! Go to the camp. Find Lowa Flynn, Dug Sealskinner and the child Spring! Now!”

“Sure.” The Warrior was unimpressed by Felix’s rage.

“The child is nine years old, pretty, with long mousy hair. Dug is around forty, big and northern. You will find them.”

“Got it.” Carden turned to go.

“A moment. As I was about to say, I know where she is,” said Drustan.

“Yes?” Felix looked at him as if daring him to lie. Zadar lifted an eyebrow.

“I’d like Carden to show me where the dog was found.”

“What could you
possibly
see that a search team hasn’t?” Felix’s forehead wrinkled above his unimpressed sneer.

Drustan looked at Zadar. The king nodded. Felix shrugged. “All right. Carden, take the druid to the wall and show him where the dog was found. When he doesn’t find her, search the camp.”

Drustan strode out with Carden limping behind. Elliax wondered if Drustan even needed that staff. Zadar and Felix remained, quietly talking to each other.

Elliax could hear Zadar’s low voice but not what he was saying. He heard Felix’s reply though: “I’m sorry, finding people is not my … speciality. I tried with a full sacrifice and got nothing. It’s almost as if something is stopping me, or shielding her, although that would be impossible. But having failed once with a full sacrifice, I don’t think it would be wise to try again.”

Zadar spoke, again inaudibly. Felix listened, then nodded, stood and came over to Elliax.

“Are you hungry?” he asked.

“I am.”

“Good. Can you hear that?”

Elliax listened. He heard a
yelp
from one of the huts behind where he was chained. He swivelled around. There was another yelp. It came from the third hut along, he thought.

“I can hear a woman.”

“Yes. Do you know who she is?” Felix’s eye widened.

“No.” He did know.

“She’s your wife. We brought her here while you were sleeping.”

He looked at his feet.

“Are you still hungry?”

He nodded.

“Good,” Felix said soothingly.

S
he woke at dawn in her tiny cave at the end of the bridge. She felt like a lump of meat that a blind but mighty blacksmith had mistaken for an iron ingot. She peeled and ate the two boiled eggs she’d brought, then found that her water skin had split. Very soon she was so thirsty it hurt. She found a flint nodule and sucked it. That helped, but she didn’t know how she was going to make it to sunset. Danu curse summer’s long days, she thought.

She listened to the sounds of business as usual in the camp and castle. She could hear the clang of iron on iron from workshops, the odd whinny of a horse and, from closer by, the movements of the wall guards, one of whom had a death-heralding cough. The smell of frying pork wafted into her hiding niche, making her stomach rumble so much she thought someone above must surely hear it.

It reminded her of being ill as a girl, lying on her parents’ bed in their hut, hot and thirsty, troubled by muffled everyday village noises from outside. How could things carry on with such insulting normality without her, she’d wondered. Now she wondered if this was how things sounded from the Otherworld – familiar but muted and intangible? She was likely to find out soon enough. She remembered that she wasn’t meant to believe in an Otherworld. Was being near death persuading her that there might be one?

The guards above changed. The new lot spotted the dead dog. It started calmly enough with people calling to each other about some stupid dog asleep in an inconvenient place. Swiftly though they realised it had been killed – “Murdered!” shouted one hysterical fool. There was a flurry of commotion.

A short while later, she heard Carden’s voice on the bridge. Her mind was flung back to being held by him while her friends and her sister were killed in front of her. The urge to emerge from her hiding place and stick him with her climbing spikes was strong. But she held back, and even smiled a little when she realised from his irregular tread that he was walking with a serious limp.

She heard Carden say her name and knew for certain that they were looking for her specifically, and that she had been betrayed. Could it have been Drustan? She’d been pretty free with her conversation on Mearhold, discussing her plans with several people she had no reason to trust. Any of them could have shouted to Zadar that she was at Mearhold and reported her plans. It wasn’t necessarily Drustan. Next time I plot to kill a king, she thought, I’ll share the details only with people I’ve known for longer than a day.

Carden directed a search, during which Lowa found a worm and ate it. She needed the moisture and she’d need energy later. The hunt continued and she heard dogs barking along the ditch below her. It was slightly satisfying that all this effort was for her. She didn’t expect to be found. Her little niche was invisible from any distance and deep enough for the soil to mask her smell. The search dwindled away, everyday sounds returned and she lay and waited, planning her route that night.

Zadar would know that she’d tried to break in. How would he react? Surely he’d think she’d given up on seeing the second ditch and buggered off? Surely the security would be laxer that evening, and she’d be able to nip over the palisade? She had nothing to do but wait and see. She looked around for another worm, as much for something else to think about as for sustenance. The previous worm had been the first one she’d ever eaten. It hadn’t been awful, but she couldn’t see why badgers went quite so nuts for them.

She heard voices above and froze.

“So, assuming she climbed up over there, as you reckon—” it was Carden Nancarrow again, standing on the bridge almost directly above her “—she would have dropped over the palisade about there and seen our welcome. At that point, options were to commit suicide by carrying on, to commit suicide by staying put or to retreat. She’s gone. I know her. She’s not stupid. She’ll have left the camp too.”

I am stupid
.

“Have you searched inside Maidun?”

That was Drustan’s voice! She was certain. That traitorous old fucker. He must have sent the shout and told them her plan. The shit. Why? Well that wasn’t hard. He’d done it for selfish reasons, the same reasons anybody ever did anything. The person loved by Zadar was fortunate and he wanted some of that love. Why not? She’d basked in it for long enough.

“We have. Although she didn’t get past the guards.”

There was a long pause.

“Yes. I think I know where she is.”

Do you, you old twat?

“She would have taken two hours to approach the first wall and scale it.” There was a long pause.

“And?” Carden’s voice, impatient.

“You cannot rush genius, boy.”

“Nor senility,” Carden muttered. They really were right above her.

Another pause. A sneeze crept into Lowa’s nose. She pinched her nostrils.

“She spotted the lone dog in the first ditch, dropped down from the outer wall onto it and killed it.”

Well, you got that wrong, genius.

“But by then the moon was too bright. Do your guards walk the walls constantly, as they’re doing now?”

“Most of them.”

“Yes. There was a flaw in my plan.”

“Don’t you mean her plan?”

“No. It was my plan.”

“Right.”

I’ll do my own planning from now on.

“The flaw was assuming the sentries always look outwards. Walking along, they have a peripheral view of the inner wall.”

“Yes…”

“So, given the brightness of the moon, Lowa would have been seen as she scaled the upper part of the wall. She would have realised this and looked for another way in. So. Let us have a look at the outer ditch.”

Their footsteps faded, Carden’s limping, Drustan’s accompanied by the thump of a cloth-bound walking stick. The stick was new. Perhaps he’d been tortured? That would excuse him spilling the plan – everybody broke under torture – but not his happy complicity now. Carden and Drustan stopped at the other end of the bridge. They were still talking, but she couldn’t make out what they were saying. After a few minutes they wandered back.

“And this,” Drustan said, “is therefore as far as she could have got. What is under here?”

Oh fuck.

“A ditch. Stakes.”

“No. directly under here.”

“The underside of the bridge.”

Drustan sighed. “I’m glad you weren’t my pupil. You! You! You!” Lowa heard people running over.

What would Dug have said?
Badgers’
cocks
, she decided.

“Over there, facing this way, slings ready.”

“What?”

“Do it,” said Drustan. “You, fetch a crowbar. Elann Nancarrow will have one.”

The problem with very good hiding places, thought Lowa, is that they also make very good traps.

“And you and you, stand guard here.”