Clash of Iron (33 page)

Even among this coalition of contrasting clans, Atlas, Carden and Chamanca attracted attention as they rode by. The Germans had spread word of the attack that Atlas and Carden had led into the Roman’s base. The sacking of the Roman camp had been the only part of their battle that had been a success, so the German storytellers focused on it. Meanwhile, Gaulish bards had written several songs about Chamanca’s stirring attempt to free Kapiana at Wesont.

Since they were easy to pick out – Atlas being one of very few massive African men and Chamanca the only Iberian woman wearing just a little more than the Germans themselves – everyone knew the British heroes by sight. Chamanca winked and waved at her admirers. Carden rode along looking at his hands, his ears burning red. The only acknowledgement that Atlas gave to the whoopers, cheers and invitations to join them for a drink or six, was to mutter that notoriety was not exactly what they needed.

On the other side of the valley, Caesar’s army, which Atlas had proclaimed as a tenth the size of the Gauls’ but more than ten times as useful, was enthroned in an untouchable camp. It was on a gentle slope, facing the enemy. Its flanks were protected by deep, staked ditches. At the near end of each ditch was a small fort, each bristling with scorpions – giant bows which shot arrows the size of palisade posts. At the base of the valley, in easy scorpion range, was a boggy marsh which would be impossible to cross at anything faster than a half-crushed snail’s pace. Bisecting the marsh was a river, too deep to wade and no bridge in sight.

The Gaulish army, massive though it was, could not even consider an attack. They could have done a few days before, as Atlas had pointed out then and more than a few times since. However, the Gaulish chiefs had been mired in an irresolvable argument, each of them saying that they wanted to lead the attack while none of them actually did. Meanwhile, Caesar had manoeuvred his army to their near-perfect position.

The only non-suicidal way of attacking the Romans would have been to circle round behind them, which they couldn’t do because the river was in the way and the Romans had smashed all the bridges. The nearest feasible ford was a few miles downriver. While the Gauls had been arguing over who might cross it first – again all pretending that they wanted it to be them – Caesar had built fortifications there, too. When, finally, one of the tribes had become bored with waiting and attacked the ford off their own bat, they’d found that the Romans had deepened it and used their magical liquid rock to fix metal pikes into its bed. The attackers had charged into the water, been stopped by the subsurface spikes as quickly as a riled guard dog reaching the end of its chain, and been minced, skewered and knocked senseless by Roman scorpions, mercenary Cretan archers and Balearic slingers. The river was easier to cross now in the vicinity of the ford because it was clogged by a dam of swollen Gaulish bodies, but the Roman fortifications and their potent array of projectile defences remained.

So the Gauls could not use their whopping army. Nor could they feed it. Several clans had already peeled off and headed home. First it was a rumour, then as they rode further and heard it more and more, it became the official plan. The Gauls were to return to their own tribal lands and wait until Caesar attacked one of them. Then they were going to reunite and counter-attack.

“That,” said Atlas “is a very bad idea.”

“Do you have a better one?” asked Carden.

“A much better one. Let us talk to Queen Galba.” Atlas reined his horse around and headed for the top of the hill.

S
pring fell.

She caught a glimpse of the huts nestling in the valley under their innocent coils of cook smoke. She thought of the happy little dog that she’d seen that morning and was sad that she wouldn’t see any more dogs. And thinking of dogs, what about Dug?

The moment Dug appeared in her mind, she paused in midair. Everything shook. Her body twisted in on itself and she felt as if she were a damp rag being wrung out by strong, determined hands. Pomax’s hands? Then she was crouching on the ground.

She was perched on a stone wall at the head of the valley that opened up on to the limestone pavement above Mallam Cliff. She was maybe a hundred paces from where Pomax had thrown her, higher up the slope and further north.

So finally she’d found some magic, but too late to save anyone but herself. And she was far from saved. She hadn’t fallen to her death, but she did seem to have landed on the wrong side of the enemy, in full sight of the Murkans.

“What the Bel! It’s the Maidun girl!” a shout from the cliff top rang out, as if to confirm just how useless her self-deliverance had been.

She leapt off the wall and ran up the valley. It was flat-floored, perhaps thirty paces wide. Its grassy verges were strewn with grey boulders, collected around rocky outcrops. Small, solitary brown sheep munched at the grass, spaced out regularly along the valley sides as if they hated each other. As Spring ran past, each sheep looked up dolefully then returned to its friendless grazing. She had never seen such desolate looking animals.

In the centre of the valley, where there would normally have been some sort of watercourse, there was a well-used path, firm and dry despite the recent rain. This, thought Spring, is what they call a dry valley. It suited her. She’d spent the last four years regularly running long distances with Lowa and more recently on her own, so, with a hundred paces headstart, she was confident she could outrun anyone on this benevolently flat and unimpeded surface. So she’d get away, assuming that there were no adversaries in front of her, that she didn’t come to a high wall or any other obstacle, that the Murkans didn’t have any horses nearby, that she didn’t trip and hurt herself … Her escape did slightly depend on several unknown variables working out in her favour, she admitted to herself, and wasn’t perhaps as certain as she might have first thought.

She looked over a shoulder. Pomax was sprinting up the valley, Grummog’s guards following. Spring ran on, not quite at a full sprint, fast enough to get away and slow enough to conserve energy for the long slog ahead.

The valley narrowed then ended in a steep upward slope. She had never seen a landscape like it. It was a lot more craggy and severe than the undulating south. The path continued, up steps dug into the left side of the valley head. Spring was confident that she could keep ahead of her attackers, even if she had to climb, but if she slowed down too much she’d come within sling range. She cursed the loss of her bow. She could have put three arrows in each of her pursuers before they were anywhere near sling range.

Spring was breathing hard by the top of the slope, but still full of energy. Here the path split. Ahead was another dry valley. To the right, the path curled round a scarp edge. She chose the right-hand path. It looked the most used, and therefore, she reckoned, the least likely to be a dead end.

Around the scarp was another dry valley. She glanced back and down. Pomax had pulled ahead of the rest and reached the end of the first valley. She paused, looked up at Spring, grinned, put her head down and thundered up the slope. Spring didn’t like the look of that grin. It was the grin of somebody who knew something that she didn’t.

She ran on.

Big badgers’ cocks! The path led to a busy little village.

“Stop her!” squeaked what she assumed to be Pomax’s voice from much closer behind her than she should have been.

Spring hoped for an instant that the villagers might be too surprised or stupid to work out what Pomax wanted before she was past, but no, the three nearest villagers were annoyingly ept. They spread into a line. Two of them, young men, were unarmed. The woman had a wooden pole with an iron hook on the end.

Spring unsheathed her sword. The villagers didn’t flinch. Annoyingly, they didn’t know that Spring had been training hard and could have gutted all three of them and hardly broken stride. The thing was, she wasn’t going to kill them. The guards, yes, she would have offed them without another thought because the chances were that they were death-dealing meanies who deserved it. But these villagers? They were probably perfectly nice people working hard to feed their families. She had no right to end their lives to save hers.

She slowed. Pomax yelled “Ha!” behind her. The valley opened into the village, but there were fences and huts and no way around the three villagers. On her right was a strangely active little pond. A bouncing stream came rushing out of the village and into the pond, and went no further. The stream went into the pond but didn’t come out. The surface of the pond roiled and rolled and Spring knew what was happening, and what she had to do. She took a deep breath, held her sword above her head and dived into the dark, churning water.

G
alba, queen of the Soyzonix, had been elected overall chief of the agglomeration of northern tribes. They were keen on elections in Gaul, Chamanca had noticed. She didn’t like them – far too Roman.

Galba must have been nearly forty years old, but she was tall and graceful with a youthful vim, dancing blue eyes and the largest white-polished teeth that Chamanca had seen outside a horse’s mouth.

Carden’s and Atlas’ status as the only people to lead a successful charge against Caesar’s forces gained them an audience, but they had to dismount a good distance away. Galba, apparently, believed that horses were devils, and didn’t allow them anywhere near her. Quite an irony, thought Chamanca, for a woman who looked so much like one. Or maybe not? Maybe you despised the thing you resembled? But that couldn’t be right, Chamanca thought with a smile, because she liked beautiful women.

They walked alongside Galba as she headed between tribes. Atlas explained his plan. He told Galba to have each tribe select its best warriors, comprising more than a quarter but less than a third of their number. The remainder should return home, shore up fortifications and gather food into storage.

The chosen warriors should be spilt into two forces, each of which would still be more numerous than Caesar’s army. One force should march east and south to get behind the Romans. The Romans would no doubt move rather than allow the Gauls to encircle them. At this point, the other force, which should comprise mostly cavalry, could cross the river and harry their retreat. If the Romans kept going south, they’d be under such harassment that they’d have to fight, in which case the two Gaulish armies would launch a synchronised pincer attack before they’d dug in, and smash them. If the Romans somehow evaded them and headed north, they’d be trapped between the small fortified towns of northern Gaul – none of which they could hope to take without a few days’ siege – and a Gaulish army which would destroy them soon after they stopped.

“What a fantastic plan. Marvellous,” said Galba, smiling broadly and touching Atlas lightly on a hefty bicep.

“So you’ll carry it out?”

“Yes. We will follow every word. It’s such a good idea. I’ll start right now with the next tribe. ‘More than a quarter, less than a third.’ Marvellous. What an excellent plan. Simple, easy for all and it answers all my questions about supply and attack. I cannot believe I didn’t come up with it myself. You may return to Britain knowing that a great victory is taking place behind you.”

“We’ll stay and help if you like. If each of us took command of a cavalry section—”

“No, no. No need for that. I’m very grateful for the plan, which we will definitely use, but I’d like Gauls commanding every section. They think the Romans are unbeatable. I’d like to show them that they’re not. You head home, we’ll be fine.”

“But—” One of Galba’s guards put a hand on Atlas’ shoulder. Their audience with the queen was over.

S
he tumbled, water roaring. Her back whacked something hard, she paused, then zoomed along again, spinning. She dropped her sword. She was part of the rushing water now. Hands scraped stone. Feet, back and head bumped rock.

She’d hoped that the pond might lead swiftly and smoothly to a waterfall that spilled into an underground lake in a chamber lit by a million luminous mushrooms. She’d swim to the side, where she’d find a glowing fungi-lined path leading to the surface. And perhaps a bundle of food – why not?

But no, she was in a tunnel. It wasn’t going to surface anytime soon. Chances were it did go into some cavern, but the cavern was full of water with no way out. She’d been a fool. She was going to drown. She began to panic for breath. She tried to calm herself. Perhaps, she thought, this was why she’d been having all those nightmares about Dug being dead under the sea. It was her who was set for a watery death. Well, good, she thought. She was glad it wasn’t Dug.

Dug … Dug …

Then she knew, and it was as if she’d always known.

Her magic didn’t come from the earth or the air or the gods. It came from Dug. Yes, she felt it when he wasn’t there, and had even used it a little before they’d met, but it only surged and charged when she was with him, from that time she’d stopped Ulpius from killing her to when she’d beaten Felix.

But he hadn’t been there in the arena, when she’d given Lowa the power to defeat the chariot and Chamanca … but he had been nearby, and they’d shared a purpose. Having the same goal, she reasoned, must be their link as much as a physical one. Maybe more so? Who knew? What she was suddenly certain of was that her magic came from Dug.

What a shame, she thought, that she should realise that now, as she died, as the water swirled and she ran out of breath. She felt at peace, though. They said that this happened when you drowned. Although how the badger’s bum beard “they” knew what drowning was like, she did not know.

She bumped along. The current slowed. She felt herself rising. She opened her eyes. Blackness. Her shoulder bumped rock. It seemed to be above her. She kicked to turn herself, then pressed face and hands against it, searching for an air pocket. There wasn’t one. It was as she’d dreaded. The underground stream hadn’t led to some open, underground cave. Instead it had widened and the current had slackened. So this was it. Get ready Otherworld, she thought, here I …