Age of Iron (55 page)

Finally
, thought Elliax.

The girl didn’t respond. She was focused on Dug.

“Zadar, you must kill Sabina now,” said Felix through tight lips.

If the idea of killing his own daughter caused Zadar a moment of internal debate, it didn’t show. He whipped out a blade and slashed it across the girl’s throat.

“A
re you all right?” His brown eyes bulged with concern as if her well-being was the most important thing in the world. It was an awful lot more than she deserved.

“Dug. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t fuss, Lowa. Things happen. Are you injured?”

Lowa reached her hand to her neck then looked at it. It was covered in blood. She showed her bloody hand to Dug with a questioning eyebrow.

“Aye. OK. Are you injured badly? Are you going to die if I don’t get a druid to you immediately?”

“No, I’m all right for now.”

Nita looked about herself and nodded. Mal followed her gaze. Yes, she and her followers had subdued all the Warriors who’d been guarding the crowd, but they were just a fraction of the troops that Zadar commanded. What would come next? What had she done, by Toutatis? And surely, whatever it was, she could have involved him in it a little more? At least told him
something
was going to happen.

Ragnall climbed the arena wall. As he’d watched Dug defeat Tadman it had struck him yet again that he was hardly the hero. Dug had defeated the giant. He had fetched Dug and found the service route into the arena, so he had been useful, vital even, but in the bard’s tale of the day he’d appear as sidekick at best. Not even that probably. Useful ally perhaps. Quirky friend.

And now it was time to face Anwen.

When Raynall reached the top of the wooden wall, he saw a small man with receding hair holding Anwen by the chest with one hand and a skinny man in the same way with the other.

To the left was Zadar and, next to him, Spring.

“Anwen!” he shouted.

She didn’t respond.

He started up towards them.

The small man said something to Zadar.

A blade flashed into Zadar’s hand and he lashed out at Spring, slashing the blade across her neck. Spring didn’t seem to notice. Zadar looked at his hand. Where the dagger had been was a long, brown duck feather. He threw it away and looked disgustedly at Spring. Spring looked back at him, enough disappointment for a hundred lifetimes on her young face.

Zadar turned to the small man, said something, and the latter … disappeared. One moment he was there, the next he was gone. The man he had been holding and Anwen collapsed, thumping down onto the seats.

“Anwen!” Ragnall cried. Next to her, Drustan and two large Warriors struggled to their feet.

She was face down on a bench. He turned her over. Her eyes were open and beautiful and sad and dead. He felt her neck. No pulse. Ragnall stared at her, waiting for the tears to come. They didn’t. He called on the gods to breathe life back into her. Nothing happened.

“Hold Zadar!” he heard Drustan say. The Warriors pushed past him.

“The bleeding’s stopped. Nothing vital nipped.” Dug stood back and looked at Lowa expectantly. She felt very tired. She did not want to fight any more.

She looked up at the posh seats. Drustan and Spring were smiling at her. Atlas and Carden were holding Zadar by one arm each. He looked calm as ever. Felix was nowhere to be seen. Keelin was standing next to Spring, looking from the captured Zadar, to the crowd, to Lowa, in open-mouthed wonder.

“Dug,” Lowa said, “would you mind…”

“Looking for these?” He held the bow, strung, in one hand, a bloody arrow that he’d pulled out of somebody in the other.

“Yes. Thanks.”

She took the bow, nocked an arrow and tried to draw. She couldn’t. She was spent.

Zadar looked back at her, contempt shining from his eyes, as if, somehow, after all he’d done, he couldn’t see what an evil shit he was. He still thought he was better than her, better than her sister, better than her girls, better than everyone. She held his gaze and felt power flow into her limbs. She drew a full draw and loosed.

Zadar looked down at the little feathery rosette protruding from his chest, and died.

The crowd cheered. Lowa raised one arm and turned slowly as the chant – “Queen Lowa! Queen Lowa!” – washed over her like storm waves.

“Dug…”

“Got you,” he replied, putting an arm around her as she fell against him.

S
pring caught up with Dug on the north road near where she’d run away from Lowa and Ragnall. He was silhouetted in the silver light of the waning moon, a small pack on his back, valuables bag and hammer hanging from his belt. The night was so still she could hear the tramp of his feet on the road ahead and, from behind her, the shouts, squeals and music from Maidun Castle.

It was Lowa’s coronation and the end-of-Zadar party. Spring had been looking forward to it but then hadn’t enjoyed it at all because Dug hadn’t been there, and she’d left the moment Ragnall told her he’d seen Dug heading away. She’d kicked herself for being so stupid. Of course he’d been planning to leave during the party when she wouldn’t notice and try to stop him. That was why he’d tried to give her Ulpius’ mirror earlier, and insisted she look after it for a while when she wouldn’t take it.

“Hi,” he said when she caught up to him, without looking down or slowing his stride.

“Where are you going?” She took his big rough hand in hers. She pulled on it a little. She’d slow him down without him realising.

“North. Back home.”

“That’s silly. All your friends are here.”

Dug stopped and crouched down in front of her so their heads were level. He took her shoulders in his hands. He smelled of warmth and beard. His eyes shone with a thousand years of sadness. He looked up behind her, as if thinking what to say.

“There’s a lot to be done here,” he said eventually.

“So stay and do it.”

“It’s not my sort of place. I thought it might be, but—”

“It’s Lowa, isn’t it?”

“Maybe. A little.”

“Dug.” She felt tears swell. “It was my fault. On Mearhold—”

“Don’t be silly. I loved our fishing and our hunting. I wouldn’t change a second of it. Spending time with you didn’t make Lowa—”

“No, but
I
did it. I made her go off you.”

“What do you mean?”

Did he look angry? She hoped he wouldn’t be angry. He had every right to be angry. She shouldn’t have done it.

“You know what I did in the arena?”

“I really don’t, but, by Makka—”

“I don’t know what I did either, or how. But I know I did it, and I know that I did the same thing to make Lowa go off you.”

“What?” He let go of her shoulders. He was angry.

“I didn’t do it on purpose. I didn’t think it would work. But I told her to go off you. It was the same as when I helped you and Lowa in the arena, the same feeling. But I didn’t think it would work! I was just jealous and I didn’t like her after she wanted to leave me behind in Kanawan and I didn’t think she was good enough for you and I
swear
I didn’t make her like Ragnall instead. I really didn’t! I didn’t think she was good enough for you, and I was jealous. I’m sorry. But I didn’t make her full for Ragnall. That wasn’t me! I’m
so sorry
.”

“I see.” Dug nodded, not angry any more. He looked disappointed but accepting, as if a thatcher who’d let him down before had just told him he couldn’t do his roof repairs that moon as promised.

“I didn’t mean it to happen!”

“It wasn’t you, Spring, even if you thought it was. These things happen. Love is complicated. Sometimes it’s not love, it’s just physical. And people do go off people they liked before, immediately and irreversibly. It’s annoying when you’re on the wrong side of that, but it happens and you have to accept it.”

“I
know
it was me. And it’s good that it was, because it’s worn off! I’ve seen the way she looks at Ragnall now, and you! It’s back to how it was! You can come back and I won’t do anything this time! I
promise
. I like Lowa now. I didn’t like her because it was her fault that they were after us in the first place, and her friend Farrell was a total dong, and it was her fault you had to fight the Monster and I was
so
worried you’d die and—”

“Shush.” Dug smiled. “Spring. I’m grateful for what you’re telling me.”

“So you’ll come back?”

“I will not.”

“But I need you!”

“You don’t need anybody. They need you. Lowa faces some big problems. She’ll be a good queen, but there’s trouble in the west, there’s trouble in the north, Danu knows what in the east, and all the druids say that the Romans are coming…”

“They are coming.”

“How do you—?”

“I don’t know. But they are coming. Won’t you stay and help?”

“Spring, I’m just one man. I’m old. I’ve been fighting for so long. Before that I lived off the sea. I’m ready to go back to that. I can’t do anything here. But you could be the difference between defeat and victory.”

“I’ll come with you!” She’d dreamed of wandering from place to place with Dug, getting into adventures and helping people in trouble. There wasn’t anything she’d rather do.

“I’d love that, I really would, but you’re needed here.”

“So are you! I need you!”

She was frustrated that he wouldn’t believe her about Lowa, but she could understand. She knew for certain that she’d killed Lowa’s love for him, but she wouldn’t have believed her if she’d been him. She also knew, if she was honest with herself, that he had to go. She told herself to grow up and accept it.

Dug closed his eyes and opened them. It must have been her imagination or a trick of the moonlight, but his eyes looked wet.

“You don’t need me,” he said. “You’ll come to see that you don’t. I’m going. You’re staying. Goodbye, Spring.”

He stood and turned and walked away.

Spring watched him go, being grown-up about it for about four heartbeats, but then tears burst from her treacherous eyes and her shoulders heaved with sobs. He disappeared over the next rise and she was still crying. And he was gone.

After a long while, she decided that standing on her own in the night crying wasn’t helping anyone. She pressed a thumb into each nostril, blew out snot, wiped her eyes, turned and headed back to Maidun Castle. She’d help Lowa, kill all the Romans, and then she’d find Dug.

She was almost at the western gate when she heard the shout. It was still a good four shouters away, so it was too faint to make out. She stood still to listen to the next one. The words were clear this time: “Dumnonian army. One hundred thousand strong. Three days from Maidun.”

One hundred thousand Dumnonians. What had Lowa said Maidun’s army was? Twenty thousand? One hundred thousand against twenty thousand. Like ten against two. That didn’t sound too good.

“Big badgers’ bollocks,” she said, quickening her pace.

B
ecause the British Celts didn’t write, and because the period was followed by four hundred years of Roman occupation, almost nothing is known about the British Iron Age. That is why the period is rarely taught in schools, and why most people couldn’t even tell you when the Iron Age was (800
BC
to 43
AD
), let alone what took place during it.

Pre-historians’ descriptions of life in the Iron Age are based on four sources: archaeology, comparison with other Celts at the time, comparison with modern primitive cultures and a few written sources from the Romans and Greeks. The most important of the written sources is Julius Caesar’s primary account of his invasions in 55 and 54
BC
. However, basing our history of Iron Age Britain on Caesar’s diary is like basing our history of Germany’s last thousand years on the account of a xenophobic Englishman who travelled to Germany in 1951 to see a football match which England lost, and who was beaten up several times, yet claims that he had a marvellous time and that England won the game 10-0.

The archaeological sources – hillforts and pottery, mostly – have been analysed by fine historians like Barry Cunliffe and Francis Pryor, and from such men and women we do have a picture of what an Iron Age Brit ate, what he or she wore and what their homes were like. However, it is just a picture. Very few man-made objects have survived from the Iron Age. For example, historians are certain that Caesar did lead two huge invasions into Britain in 55 and 54
BC
though there is no archaeological trace whatsoever of either invasion.

While we’re not certain about how they dressed and other details, we have absolutely no clue at all about what they actually did. We know nothing of their kings and queens, love affairs, wars, intrigues, disasters and so on. It’s slowly emerging that Iron Age Britain was much more sophisticated than previously believed, with towns and roads established well before the Roman invasion. Historical population estimates vary, but it’s likely that the population in 61
BC
, when
Age of Iron
is set, was about the same as it was in 1066 (between 1.5 and 4 million, depending on what you read). So Iron Age Britain was a busy, thriving place, with a lot going on. But what?

I became interested in the Iron Age when writing an article for the
Telegraph
about a management consultant called Allan Course who makes Stone Age tools (it’s on my website,
guswatson.com
, if you’re interested). He took me to Cissbury Hill, a Stone Age flint mine that became an Iron Age hillfort. Standing on this hill’s Iron Age ramparts, you can see another hillfort. It struck me for the first time that Britain’s hillforts were linked. I’d seen loads of these massive fortifications all over Britain, and briefly pondered what people might have got up to in them, but I’d only ever considered then individually.

Now you can look at, for example, Warwick Castle, as an individual building and it’s pretty interesting. But it’s much more fascinating if you consider
why
the thick-walled, multi-towered edifice was needed, how it fitted in with the rest of Britain, and what adventures took place there, both known and unknown.