Clash of Iron (30 page)

Manfrax laughed. Bruxon didn’t know if this was a good sign or not.

“I do like this one!” shouted the Irish king to his empty hall. It was morning, and the revellers who’d filled the hall last time were off doing whatever they did during the day. The king’s shouts echoed. “Go! Admire the cliff, see the villages nearby, and come back tonight and feast with me!”

“Thank you, majesty,” Bruxon managed. He turned to go.

“But while we’re here, and before you have all those other excellent conversationalists to enthral you late into the night,” said Maggot, “how is your invasion army coming together? When should we expect you?”

Manfrax’s eyes narrowed. He reddened with anger, then seemed to relax. “To be honest,” he said, “I’m not totally sure.” He sounded reasonable and calm. Reena was looking at him, mouth open, as surprised by the change in character as Bruxon. “It depends on a few factors,” Manfrax continued, “none of which can be predicted with any accuracy. But, rest assured, I’m putting together the sort of army that will provide terrifying bedtime stories for hundreds of generations of children. And it will cross. The soonest? This coming year, late summer. The latest? Two years. It will definitely be on your shores within two years. It’ll be worth the wait. I’ve got a wonderful surprise for you.”

“You’ll have to let us know a good few moons before you’re coming, so that we can prepare,” said Maggot.

“That seems reasonable.” Manfrax stroked his chin.

“What have you done to him?” screeched Reena, standing up.

“Quiet, you.” Maggot raised a hand at her. She fell back in her chair, mute.

Manfrax did not seem to notice, and said, “I’ll send you a messenger three moons before we’re coming, and another two moons before, in case the first one doesn’t make it.”

“Right, thanks. Come on Bruxon.”

They turned and walked from the cave.

“What did you…?” Bruxon asked.

“Me? Nothing,” Maggot stumbled. Bruxon grabbed his arm, and the druid slumped into his grasp. “Now get us out of here.”

“But if you used magic on him…”

“He and she will forget that we were there. But he will remember what he agreed to do, and he will send a messenger. But we have to go. Now. I need to be on the cart before I pass out, or you’ll have to carry—” Maggot passed out.

Bruxon slung him over his shoulder and was amazed by how little he weighed. He walked from Manfrax’s hall, wondering for the thousandth time why he’d invited an invasion from Eroo in the first place.

N
ow that Ragnall was a free citizen, Caesar told him to do what he wanted in the winter break from campaigning. So he returned to Rome with the general and most of the army, and strode across town to Clodia Metelli’s palace. She welcomed him like a long lost pet and he spent the winter there, pirouetting between paroxysms of pleasure. The house was even more fun because Clodia’s husband Metellus Celer’s invisible but nevertheless looming presence was gone. He’d died shortly after Caesar had appropriated Ragnall.

Everyone said that Clodia had poisoned her husband, but nobody accused her directly. Her reputation for having detractors gang-raped in public was an effective buttoner of lips. Ragnall didn’t think she’d done it anyway. She had no reason to. The massive beneficiary of Metellus Celer’s death had in fact been Caesar, who’d inherited the governorship of Transalpine Gaul from the dead proconsul, to add to his other two provinces of Illyricum and toga-wearing Gaul to the south of the Alps. Caesar had launched his attack on the rest of Gaul from Transalpine Gaul, so none of his previous year’s victories could have happened if Metellus hadn’t conveniently carked it. But nobody was pointing the finger at Rome’s latest and greatest hero.

If there were any whispered allegations, they were drowned out by bellicose and jubilant shouting in the Senate, at the Forum, in houses, shops, inns, restaurants and on the streets of the magnificent city. Julius Caesar had won two wars! In one year! Everyone was saying that Caesar had pissed all over the Helvetians, and kicked the Germans so hard up their arses that they’d flown across the Renus river and would never be heard of again. This, if anyone had doubted it before, was proof that the Romans were the greatest people who had ever lived. The Senate, Tribunate and other ambitious types saw advantage in agreeing with the citizens, and granted an unprecedented fifteen days of public holiday to celebrate Caesar and Rome’s marvelousness.

Everybody, including Caesar, was claiming that Caesar had conquered all of Gaul. Ragnall knew that this was a massively premature declaration. Gaul was a rough square, bounded by the Alps and Pyrenees mountains to the south, the Renus river to the east and the ocean and the British Channel to the west and north. Thanks to Caesar, Rome now controlled more or less the south-east quarter. The south-west was already so loyal to Rome that it might as well have been a province – again more or less, you never knew where you really were with those two-faced barbarians.

The north of Gaul remained free and pissed off. Even as Caesar was marching on the Germans, the armies of northern Gaul and Belgium had begun to gather. Now, slowly assembling was a larger army that the Romans had ever faced before, the sort of eye-poppingly huge force that hadn’t been seen since the days of Alexander and the Persians.

Caesar persuaded the Senate, consuls and Tribunate that this mass of ravage-minded barbarians, left unchallenged, would sweep south any day, destroying Roman interests in Iberia and Gaul, killing virtuous farmers and raping beautiful girls, before crossing the Alps like Hannibal, slaughtering Italians by the thousand and, most unthinkable of all, sacking Rome. Caesar said that even the wild, brutal British were sending legions of mercenaries into Gaul to fight the Romans, so the threat was more terrifying and severe than anyone in Rome could imagine. Moreover, Ariovistus, the conquered German king, was just one German king. There were plenty more who might cross the Renus any day and turn south to pillage their way through bountiful Italy and into Rome itself.

Caesar’s doom-filled prophesies played perfectly on Rome’s favourite fear of invading barbarian hordes. It was three hundred and thirty years since the Gauls had sacked Rome and a hundred and sixty since Hannibal had routed Roman armies on Italian soil, yet Ragnall was amazed at how often people mentioned those disasters, and argued that they were due for another one. At the battle of Cannae, Hannibal’s Carthaginians had killed sixty thousand Roman legionaries in a day, yet there were statues of the general all over Rome. It was as if they enjoyed being reminded about it.

He remembered Drustan telling him that all people like to create a preventable doom to give importance and urgency to their existence. Drustan had been talking about a tribe who thought the sky was falling on their heads, but the same applied here. They were on the brink of catastrophe, everyone said, and something had to be done!

Luckily, Caesar knew exactly what that something was. They needed a buffer to defend their territories and soak up any invasion before it could pillage and rape decent people. For the sake of all those who relied upon Rome for protection, it was Rome’s duty to bring northern Gaul under its control.

Ragnall knew this was disingenuous, Caesar knew it was disingenuous and everyone in Rome who wasn’t a chest-thumping jingoist knew it was disingenuous. You might use the same “buffer” argument to occupy your neighbour’s house. Moreover, where would and could it end? If northern Gaul became Roman territory, wouldn’t they need to conquer a new buffer to protect the Roman soil of northern Gaul? And once that next buffer became Roman soil, a new buffer would be needed, and so on.

So the dupable populace were convinced by the threat of barbarians to the north. Something needed to be done, and Caesar was the man to do it. Had not Alexander swept aside the impossibly numerous Persian armies? Had not Caesar already shown that he was Rome’s Alexander? So Caesar was ordered to do what he would have done anyway, and march into northern Gaul to stamp out all threats to Rome.

If Ragnall knew that Caesar’s’ justifications were dodgy, it didn’t stop him being swept up by the joyous fervour of the times. When Julius’ summons came for him to accompany the army again, Ragnall bade Clodia goodbye and headed north with a spring in his step.

C
hamanca was pleased to return to Maidun, but she was far from happy with the weather. Iberia had been cold at this time of year, but she remembered childhood winters as dramatic and bracing, with brilliant-white snow piled paces high under dazzlingly blue skies. It had been a time to play, sleep and eat the supplies they’d amassed in warmer times. There was no snow in Britain, brilliant-white or not, and it was, as Carden had put it, cold enough to shrivel the bollocks off an iron aurochs. And so miserably wet! The trees, the bushes, the very hills were depressingly, soddenly, soaked through. The people were much the same. Chamanca was so cold that it hurt, even wrapped as she was in the double wolf-pelt cloak that she’d liberated from a Roman patrol when the weather had turned. None of the people they rode past had anything nearly as warm. People recognised them and greeted them on their way north to Maidun, but you could have counted the smiles on one hand with all its fingers eaten off by frostbite.

Finally they arrived at the Castle. Lowa met them in the main body of the fort and led them up to the Eyrie. She was limping, but said she’d almost recovered from a stupid running injury. It’s why she’d walked out to meet them. She was going on it a little further every day. Even half hobbled and wrapped in so many furs that she looked like a small bipedal bear, she still strode along full of life and purpose. Her exposed face was clear-eyed, smoothly radiant and blemish-free. She had developed none of the eye bags, wrinkles, grey hair, spots and other atrophies that had afflicted all the other rulers that Chamanca had known.

Spring greeted them at Lowa’s hut. The girl was now taller than both Chamanca and Lowa; she’d morphed into a grown woman over the year. She had almost fully changed from pretty into beautiful, but like Lowa’s it was an odd beauty, a striking kind that would appeal only to some – very unlike Chamanca’s beauty of course. Everybody fancied the leather shorts off her. Not that they could see them in this cursed weather.

“How much older are you now?” asked Carden, reaching to pinch Spring’s cheek.

“Half as young as twice the age I was before, plus a year.” Spring ducked his hand.

“What?” said Carden. Atlas chuckled.

The girl led them into the cavernous but cheerily warm queen’s hut. As she brought them stew and bread and stoked up the two fires, Miller, Mal and Nita, Lowa’s generals, welcomed them and quizzed them about their journey. Bruxon, king of the Dumnonians, was also there, but he greeted them with about as much warmth as the winter sun. That was his way, but Chamanca didn’t trust him. He clearly didn’t fancy her, which made him downright odd, bordering on insane and certainly untrustworthy.

Atlas told them all that had happened in Gaul, with interjections from Carden and Chamanca. The others asked questions throughout, particularly on Roman battle tactics, Felix, and his rumoured dark force. There would have been more questions on the latter, Chamanca was sure, if they’d known more. One thing she had been able to confirm was that the druids had been right – Britain was the Romans’ target, or at least that’s what someone very close to Caesar had told her when she was their captive. The conquest of Gaul was useful for amassing wealth and boosting Caesar’s prestige, but its main function was as the launchpad for the British mission.

“Why Britain?” asked Bruxon.

“I don’t know, but, given their interest in magic, I’d be surprised if it wasn’t something to do with that. Perhaps some source of magic that will give them even greater powers?” Chamanca glanced at Spring. The girl got up to tend a fire.

“So,” said Lowa, “when will they get here?”

“According to Chamanca’s source,” rumbled Atlas, “they intend to come this summer. But they need a fleet, and they need to defeat the army mustering in northern Gaul.”

“They could make peace with Gauls, buy or steal a fleet and be here by Beltane.”

“They could, but I don’t think—”

“So, we’ll continue to focus on mobile warfare, cavalry and chariots, we’ll continue to drill our infantry and—”

“Should you not,” said Atlas, “shift your focus from the Romans for a moment and have a look around?” He raised his dark eyes until they met Bruxon’s. Bruxon held his gaze, but Chamanca saw an artery in his neck pulse unnaturally.

“At what?” asked Lowa.

“Three and a half years ago, Maidun was attacked by a very large Dumnonian army, much bigger than Maidun’s. Well led, that army could still defeat Maidun, especially if Maidun—”

“That would not happen,” interrupted Bruxon, “We have sworn—”

“Let him finish,” said Lowa.

Atlas treated Bruxon to one of his looks that always made Chamanca feel about five years old, then continued. “So that army could defeat Maidun, especially if Maidun was fixated on looking in the other direction, towards a potential invasion across the Channel. Now, we also have the Murkans in the north, with whom we don’t have a pact, and, potentially, have a larger, more powerful army than Dumnonia. As well as that, I’ve heard talk that King Manfrax of Eroo is looking for new victims.”

“Bruxon has a pact with the Murkans and with Eroo. Britain and Eroo are united against the Romans,” said Lowa.

“Are you certain? Caesar would not have beaten the Germans so easily, perhaps not at all, if the Skawney tribe hadn’t aided him. That is how the Romans succeed. Spiteful tribes see a chance to defeat a hated neighbour, so they help the Romans. It is like a pig having his revenge on a fellow pig by opening the sty door to let the wolf in.”

“My pacts are solid,” said Bruxon, “and I can personally guaran—”

“Quiet, Bruxon,” said Lowa. “You do have a point, Atlas. I trust Bruxon, but, now we know that we have some space before the legions land, I’ll ensure the bonds are as strong as possible. As soon as the weather allows I’ll lead a delegation to the Murkans.”