Clash of Iron (37 page)

“Caesar showed mercy to the town,” he said as Ragnall passed, “taking two of Galba’s sons hostage to ensure peace. Caesar took the boys into his tent and treated them as if they were his own.”

“D
ug! Spring!” said Mal, as they approached. He was sitting in the command area of the Eyrie with Nita, alongside few other high-up Maidun men and women and, Dug was surprised to see, Queen Ula of Kanawan.

“Ula!” said Dug. She was as beautiful as when they’d met her in Kanawan before Dug’s battle with the Monster, but her eyes were harder now, as if she’d had a difficult few years. “What are you … actually we better tell you our news first. It’s not good. The deputation north has been slaughtered. Lowa and Spring were the only survivors. They have Lowa captive and intend to burn her in their wicker woman. I don’t know when, possibly the next full moon.”

“Miller…?” asked Mal. He and Miller had been good friends for a long time. Dug did not know what to say.

“He took a good number of them with him,” said Spring, “and he died well and quickly. Neither Lowa nor I would be alive if it weren’t for him.”

“Damn,” said Mal, putting his head into his hands.

“We have other bad news,” said Spring. Dug was surprised. She was talking like a well-informed, intelligent, diplomatic ruler. Was this the same girl who’d just pleaded with him for the story of the war with the halfmen? “Dumnonia has turned traitor and invited Manfrax of Eroo to bring his armies across the sea from the west to Britain. Grummog of the Murkans is gathering an army to attack us, too. So, Dumnonians included, Maidun is about to face three armies, each one substantially larger than its own.”

“But not so well trained!” said Nita.

“Manfrax’s army is ferocious,” said Ula. “That’s why I’m here,” she added, turning to Dug and Spring. “After I left you at Mearhold, I travelled with the Kanawans through Dumnonia. We found no welcome and no free land, so we went to Eroo. Everywhere we went on that beautiful but terribly sad island we saw destitute people and heard of Manfrax’s evil deeds. His army torture for fun. We were lucky to escape back across the sea to Kimruk, where we’ve been living not far from the Island of Angels. A few days ago fishermen from Eroo told us that Manfrax’s army is on the move again, this time bound for southern Britain. It’s tens of thousands strong. There can be no holding against it.”

“There can,” said Nita. “Zadar’s army was formidable. Lowa has enlarged it and improved it beyond measure. It’s meant for fighting the Romans but it will serve well enough against Manfrax.”

“And Grummog’s Murkans, and Bruxon’s Dumnonians?” asked Mal.

“Yes,” said Nita, “but we will need Lowa leading it. The question is, how much of the army do we take north to retrieve her from the Murkans? There’s always the risk that the Dumnonians will attack the instant they know we’re gone.”

“Which is why…” said Spring, then outlined her plan for her and Dug to rescue Lowa while the army stayed put.

Her listeners were sceptical initially, but Spring won them round with arguments that Dug couldn’t follow. Shortly afterwards, after stopping only to provision on their way through Maidun, he found himself riding north with Spring and no one else, her leading one spare horse, him leading three.

O
ver the next few days, Grummog and Pomax paraded Lowa around the Murkan lands. Grummog and others were on horseback. Pomax followed behind on foot, then it was Lowa, naked save for bandages over her injuries, wrist and ankle shackles and an iron hoop around her neck, attached to a chain held by Pomax. The Murkan queen hadn’t hurt her since the tit grab and, thank Danu, none of her wounds had become infected. The twins who guarded her in the evening had applied poultices – they’d actually been gentle and kind – and the poultices had worked. Her puncture wounds were sore, very sore, but movement had fully returned to the fingers on her left hand and the pain was not nearly as severe as it would have been had the cuts become infected. So there were a couple of positives, thought Lowa.

The Murkans – teenagers, toddlers, Warriors, weaklings, the sick, the old and afraid, the young and confident, even a few Danu’s Children – all left whatever business they were going about to run up and mock the Maidun queen. Some of them hit her before Pomax stopped them, but most of them spat on her, which Pomax allowed. Some of them flung pots of urine at her. One young man splashed Pomax’s legs with his piss and Pomax dropped Lowa’s chain, chased him, caught him with a whip around the neck, stabbed her nails into his lower back and pulled out a chunk of bone – a vertebra, Lowa guessed, but it was hard to tell with all the blood. Lowa, to her shame, stood and watched this, waiting for Pomax to come back and pick up her chain. She could have tried to escape, but the slim chance of getting away was massively outweighed by the terror of what Pomax might do to her next.

All along their route, Grummog and his cronies would crow to the people about how he’d bested the queen of the south, and how they could join him to do the same to her army. Walking behind, Pomax would shout that they should all come to Mallam for sunset on the next full moon, so that they might see Lowa burnt to death in the wicker woman.

F
or the first time since they’d returned to Gaul, Atlas was in a good mood. Finally, in the Nervee and their allies, he’d found a relatively coordinated and obedient army. Finally, in the Nervee’s king Bodnog, he’d found what he called an intelligent ruler – in other words, a ruler who listened to Atlas and accepted every suggestion that he made. King Hari the Fister had been like that for a while, but had always seemed flighty and it had not been a massive surprise when he’d gone against Atlas’ advice and got all his people killed. Bodnog appeared to be a much more solid ally.

Atlas told Chamanca that the thing that really pissed him off about the embarrassingly easy Roman conquest was that the Gauls had so much information about Roman movements. The key to winning any war, and, to an extent, any battle, was information. The Romans were invaders in a strange land, so just about anybody in Gaul could ride up to the Roman army, take a look, talk to the cooks, most legionaries and even some of the centurions, then ride away. Thanks to scouts, and as much to travelling merchants, prostitutes and bards, the Gauls always knew exactly where the Romans were and where they were going. Yet they had done nothing with this knowledge. So many times the Romans were vulnerable. So many times the Gauls could have annihilated them. So many opportunities had been pissed away, Atlas had ranted, by this dunderheaded shower of morons more interested in settling local rivalries than staying alive. Hopefully, things would be different with Bodnog and the Nervee.

As they helped prepare the Nervee army, they heard tales of more and more Gaulish tribes surrendering without a fight, as Atlas had predicted. They heard that the Romans had arrived at Galba’s Soyzonix capital, a well-fortified citadel, the largest town in Gaul, surely capable of repelling any attack and lasting through any siege. The next day they heard that Galba had opened the gates without a struggle and ushered the enemy in.

Finally, they heard that Caesar’s army was about to march west, into Nervee land. From around a hundred sources they heard the Romans’ route and marching order. Atlas, Chamanca and Carden had already scouted the area, and the plan was clear and easy. An hour’s walk from the Nervee capital was the perfect valley. One side was densely wooded. The other side was steep grazing land. The flattish bottom of the valley contained a broad road, along which the Roman army would march. The neck of the valley that the enemy would reach first was narrow, broadening out towards the Nervee capital. It was the perfect location for a very large ambush.

Bodnog, on Atlas’ advice, set his people to clearing the undergrowth from the forest, so that the Nervee might move through it freely. They piled the removed scrub and debris on the edge of the woods facing the Roman advance, so that it would be impenetrable to their scouts.

Two days before the estimated Roman arrival, the Nervee prepared food, sharpened swords, axes and spearheads and carried bag loads of slingstones, buckets of drinking water and other supplies into the forest. The evening before, they all moved into the trees and found places to try to sleep. There were no fires.

Atlas, Carden and Chamanca sat in the darkness. They were near Bodnog, at the east end of the valley. The Romans would come from that direction in standard marching order – cavalry, an advance guard of one legion, then the surveyors and engineers, then Caesar and his retinue, then each legion followed by its baggage. The plan was to wait for the advance guard, Caesar and the first legion to pass. When the baggage of the first legion behind Caesar passed Bodnog’s position, the entire Nervee army was to surge from the trees and attack. On the other side of the valley, high up and hidden by hedgerows, were people waiting to push huge boulders and burning logs down into the valley at the moment of attack. This might kill a good number of Romans, but more importantly it would obstruct the valley’s narrow neck and hamper the following legions’ advance, hopefully for long enough to enable the slaughter of the two advance legions and Caesar himself. After that, it didn’t matter what the remaining two legions did. They could flee, in which case they’d be harried all the way back to Rome and destroyed, or they could attack a strong Nervee position in the valley and be cut down.

“Of course something can go wrong,” said Atlas, “but I can’t see what. Even if certain elements go awry, the Nervee will still win easily. The Romans will be spread out along the road. The Nervee coming from the woods will have ten fighters to every one of theirs. Surely we will win victory tomorrow? It can’t be that simple, though. What have I missed?”

“You’ve missed two things,” Chamanca said. “One, the Romans might find out that we’re here and halt before they get to the valley.”

“Yes, but then we still a have a large, ready army and we think again. What’s the second thing?”

“The unknown. The unknown will always nip round behind you when you least expect it and fuck you in the arse.”

D
ug and Spring rode hard, eating in the saddle and stopping neither to sleep nor rest. The only times they dismounted were to swap horses, so that each of Dug’s horses spent only one hour in four carrying him.

Spring thought about her magic a great deal. She tried to make her horse’s ears turn blue, trees burst into flame and giant hares fly overhead. Surely, she reasoned, now that she was with Dug magic should be hers to command? Apparently not. Her horse’s ears remained stubbornly horse-coloured, the trees waved their unburnt leaves cheekily as she rode by and only the standard set of birds passed overhead. It frustrated her almost to the point of fury.

Perhaps, then, her magic wasn’t connected to Dug? Perhaps she could use it only at time of massive peril? But that didn’t work. She’d used it to make Lowa go off Dug and that had been only an annoying situation, not a dangerous one, then she’d been unable to save Miller and the rest at a time which was definitely majorly perilous. And besides, she just knew it was tied to Dug. So why were the badger-bumming horse’s ears still brown?

Maybe magic can only work when the right god is looking at you, or bothering with you, she thought? Maybe each god had a whole gang of people to whom they gave their magic and couldn’t be everywhere at once? After all, they were only gods. Or maybe magic had only worked before puberty? Plenty of idiots had told her that all sorts of changes happened inside to accompany the annoying body hair and pointless tits. But then again Felix and Drustan had magic. But they were men and maybe that made a difference? But she’d used magic to survive the water tunnels without breathing, well past puberty. Maybe puberty just altered one’s abilities…?

Whatever it was, unless something changed, they were going to have to get to Mallam and rescue Lowa using conventional means, which was a massive bugger, since she’d assumed that her magic would just kind of come back and they’d use that. It wasn’t, admittedly, a great plan. As it was, they didn’t really have any strategy worked out for sneaking past the whole Murkan army, rescuing a no doubt well-guarded Lowa and then escaping through enemy territory.

In two days and nights of riding, the only plan they came up with was to skirt the cliff and approach from the east, which Dug reckoned would offer the easiest access to the wicker woman.

T
he head scribe had decided that Ragnall had not been pulling his weight recently, which was true, so he’d told Ragnall to work late on his own on the scribes’ bench in the command tent, copying the day’s accounts from another scribe’s work. Ragnall could have refused probably – he wasn’t really under the head scribe’s jurisdiction any more – but he’d been troubled almost constantly by images of the crucified Danu’s Child of late, so it was a relief to have the taxing and immersive chore of writing to smother his imagination.

He heard someone come in, but couldn’t see them from behind the writers’ screen. By the way he was moving about, he guessed it was Caesar. He was about to make himself known with a forced cough – he didn’t want Caesar thinking he was alone in the tent and doing something embarrassing like farting or, worse, singing – when he heard someone else come in and Felix’s voice say: “The Nervee are planning an ambush.”

“When, where, how do you know? In that order,” Caesar replied.

“Tomorrow. In a valley which has one wooded slope and one grassy slope. They plan to wait until the van, including your retinue, are in the valley, then attack from the trees. I know because I performed a ritual which allowed me to transport myself into the mind of Bodnog, king of the Gauls. He has an easy mind to enter.”

“Is this ritual the reason for the blood on your toga?”