Reign of Iron (10 page)

They reached the gate. It was overelaborate, twice the height of the surrounding palisade, with slinger towers at each side. Three slingers stood atop each tower, all looking at her and Mal, leather thongs loaded. A dozen spear holders stood between them and the gate.

Here we go, thought Lowa. She was ready. As soon as the stones flew, she’d leap in among the spears and see how many she could take down before one managed to stick her. She considered fleeing. After all she’d been through, she thought, she did not want to die at Jocanta’s hands. She reckoned she’d be able to outrun the gate guard and vault the palisade, but she doubted that Mal would be able to, and she couldn’t leave him. He was a skilled fighter. Perhaps the strength of both their swords might …

The spear holders parted and the gates swung open.

They walked out and onto a track that curved across a field dotted with sheep to a forest. After a hundred paces they saw Adler waving from the trees, where she was waiting with the Two Hundred. Lowa was overall head of her five-hundred-strong cavalry, but she had made Adler captain of the elite squad and had so far been impressed by the woman’s refreshingly humourless dedication to the task.

Lowa turned. There were no archers rushing out to shoot them, no riders galloping out to spear them. “Well. They let us go. I would not have done that.”

“No,” said Mal. “So what are we going to do now?”

Lowa looked into his dark, questioning eyes shining from his tanned and increasingly wrinkled face. The spark of happiness had been replaced by a melancholy gleam of constant sorrow since his wife, Nita, had been killed in the battle before the great wave. Dug’s death had left Lowa angry. Nita’s death had left Mal sad.

“It’s a tricky one. In theory, we should wait until nightfall, then set fire to Haxam and kill every Haxmite man, woman and child that comes running out.”

“Is that necessary?”

“If we ride away without the promised troops, every other tribe will hear of it and none of them will give us soldiers. On the other hand, if we make an example of the Haxmites, it should make recruitment easier elsewhere and give us all the more chance of beating the Romans. So, for the sake of the future of every generation of every tribe in Britain, we should do to them what Zadar did to Cowton and Barton. Nobody messed with him after that.”

“Apart from you. Surely we don’t need to kill them all? Certainly not the children. I agree we need to do something, but surely there’s something else?”

“Yeah, don’t worry, I don’t want to kill them either and there is something else. It’s a bit more risky for us – actually, a lot more risky – but it means, with some luck, that we won’t have to kill any adults, let alone their kids. Don’t worry, Mal, I’m not Zadar.”

“Don’t become him.”

“I’m not planning to.”

After a quick check back over her shoulder that there were no cavalry streaming out of Haxam to chop them down, Lowa outlined her plan.

S
pring held her breath as the cavalry charged the demons. The drumming of German hooves shook the very air, its thundering rhythm speeding up as they approached the armoured giants. The Leathermen had spotted the attack and fallen behind their iron-clad allies.

“This is going to be interesting,” said Chamanca.

“Surely not,” Walfdan shook his head. “It will be a massacre! Surely nothing can stand for a moment against a charge like that. Watch, watch, my friends, and remember. Few have been or will ever be lucky enough to see such a thing.”

Thirty paces away, in precise unison, the cavalrymen and -women howled a shiveringly rousing battle cry and lowered their spears. The horses, already galloping as fast as Spring thought horses could gallop, sped up.

They struck.

Spears splintered. Not a single Ironman fell. Several grabbed German horses by their necks and hurled them in the air, riders and all. Beasts and people flew up, then tumbled and landed behind the Ironmen, shy of the Leathermen, who dashed about and chopped their swords into struggling people and animals.

As the Leathermen hacked the fallen Germans into chunks of meat, the heavier Roman demons went to work with their arm blades, leg blades and swords on the remainder of the cavalry, butchering horses and men.

“Spring?” said Atlas. He was standing next to her, still holding Chamanca around the waist even though she’d been unconscious only for a moment and looked fine now.

“Yes?”

“While they’re distracted?” He nodded at her bow.

It was a good point. Spring plucked an arrow from her quiver, nocked it, drew, aimed and loosed. Her target, a Leatherman who was holding a German rider by the shoulder with one hand and twisting his sword in his stomach with the other, looked up at the last moment. An arm flashed and he
caught
the arrow. He smiled and hurled it back. Spring stepped to the side. The arrow whizzed by and thwocked into the ground behind them. If she hadn’t moved, it would have hit her.

“They didn’t do that before,” she said.

“I suspect,” said Walfdan, “that their power comes from killing, as with much druid magic. The more they kill, the faster, stronger and more skilled they become. It is horrific.”

“So you’d better burn their route to us.” Atlas nodded at the bridge. He was
still
holding Chamanca. She had one palm flat on his chest and the other hand on his big bicep. Spring had seen Lowa and Dug stand like that.

“Yes, good point.” Walfdan held a torch to the pitch-soaked wood and flames raced along the bridge. And not a moment too soon. Already the famous Tengoterry cavalry were no more and the Roman demons were looking for something else to kill.

W
ith a leg up from Mal, Lowa vaulted the palisade. She landed in the shadow of one of Branwin’s bone towers and held her crouch. All was quiet. As intended, she’d crossed the fence into the town’s industrial area. Halfway between sunset and sunrise, there wasn’t a sound from the blacksmith huts, retting pool or wheel yard.

Movement caught her eye. Danu’s tits, she thought to herself. Never congratulate yourself too early. A hundred paces away along the wall, a perimeter patrol – a man and a hunting dog – were walking quietly towards her.

They’d discussed this possibility and planned for it. Lowa had said it was regretful, but if a guard had to die, so be it. But Mal had come up with another idea, which seemed even more stupid now that Lowa was about to try it.

She slipped one of the arrows he’d prepared from her quiver and nocked it, feeling foolish and shaking her head. She could only draw three-quarters because tied behind the arrowhead was the freshly butchered rib of a pig.

She shot the meaty arrow into a palisade post next to the guard. The dog yipped once then leapt at the rib, trying to wrench it out of the fence while the patrolman tried to pull him away.

Lowa tiptoe ran to them. The guard turned at the last moment and Lowa cracked him across the temple with her bow staff. He collapsed. She took the tailbone of a calf from her pouch, gave it to the dog then gagged and bound the Haxmite. She crouched for twenty heartbeats next to the guzzling dog, stroking it. Well, it had worked. If Lowa hadn’t believed that the gods were human inventions for teaching morals to children, keeping the masses in line and giving succour to the dying, she would have thanked them.

There was no sign of other guards, so Lowa left the happily gnawing hound, jogged back to where she’d leapt the palisade and coughed twice. Some splintering wrenches and a couple of snaps, and three poles were dislodged while Lowa kept guard, arrow ready. No more Haxmites came and Mal, Adler and four more of the Two Hundred crept in.

Lowa led them through the sleeping fort to Jocanta’s longhouse. Mal had thought it wouldn’t be guarded at night; Lowa had been sure it would be. She was right. Torches burnt either side of the entranceway, lighting up Jocanta’s floral throne and shining dully on the iron helmet of her champion, Yilgarn Craton. He stood peering out into the darkness, war axe in one hand.

He was big, thought Lowa, but not bright. Any useful guard would have been in the shadow, looking out into the light. Lowa waited and watched until she was sure that Yilgarn was the only sentry then gestured to the others to stay put, handed her bow to Mal and strode towards him.

“What the—?” said Yilgarn, but Lowa put her finger to her lips, unsheathed her blade then beckoned him to approach. He smiled and came. She dropped her sword onto the grass, put her right hand behind her back and tucked her fingers into the waistband of her leather trousers.

Yilgarn’s brow knitted, his lips pursed, but then he seemed to understand that she intended to take him on unarmed and one-handed. He grinned and nodded. “If that’s what you want…” he said. He danced on his toes, hair bouncing from shoulder to shoulder, flashed the axe around in a series of complicated arcs, then charged.

Lowa leant back. A decapitation blow swished through empty air and Yilgarn stumbled. He regained his footing and lifted his axe high. Lowa darted in and drove the straightened fingers of her left hand into his armpit. The Haxmite champion’s eyes flew open and he dropped the axe onto his helmet with a clang. His right arm fell to his side, useless. One hand still behind her back, Lowa chopped his windpipe with the edge of her left, then balled her fist and jabbed him on the nose, one, two, three times. He flailed at her with his remaining good arm. She grabbed it, used his momentum to bring it across his body, leapt, and powered her knee into the dead arm spot between bicep and tricep.

He stood, both arms useless, blinking at her in pain, disbelief and rage, trying to cry out, but unable to make a sound through his damaged throat.

She jabbed him twice more with her left. He staggered, blinking as she wound up a mighty uppercut then powered a fist into his jaw. He went down, out cold.

Rubbing her sore left hand, Lowa walked into the candle-lit longhouse and found Jocanta Fairtresses on a large, fur-covered bed with an older woman and a younger man. All were naked, all were asleep.

Adler and the Warriors from the Two Hundred bound and gagged them before they were fully awake. They tied the chief’s friends to the bed and the chief herself to a chair. She struggled and glared hatred.

Lowa gripped her by her lovely locks and rested the sword blade on her throat. “Jocanta, you promised me two hundred and fifty men and women, armed and armoured. Tomorrow we leave. If three hundred – yes, three hundred – good Haxmite men and women have not reported to me at Maidun by the next full moon, fully equipped, then I will return, burn your fort and slaughter your tribe – man, woman, child and sheep. Nod if you understand and agree.” Jocanta nodded. “Good. And because I don’t want you to think I’m all kindness…”

Lowa pulled the hank of hair tight and sliced through its roots with her sword. She repeated the manoeuvre until there was a carpet of golden hair on the floor and only a scrub of short, uneven stubble on Jocanta Fairtresses’ outraged head.

F
elix stood in the meadow. Only pillars of stone remained of the bridge, jutting from the heaving, muddy water like charred bones. The river was five hundred paces from bank to bank, fully in spate with logs and whole trees bobbing along briskly on filthy mountain snowmelt. They would not be swimming across.

Standing next to him, half his height again, was Gub, leader of the Maximen. Felix had originally called them Herculeses and Nymphs, but Caesar has said he disliked such fey Greek appellations, and renamed the giants Maximen and the speedy ones Celermen. Felix thought those names were exceedingly boring, but he didn’t care enough to argue. He hadn’t argued with Caesar yet and, if he did, it would be about something that mattered. “Pick your battles” was one of the very few things he remembered his father telling him.

“Yus, Suh, four Celerman kill, all by same. Big dark man, sexy woman and archer woman,” said the Maximan, finally, in answer to Felix’s question about who’d killed the four Celermen.

“How can you know who killed them? If you were there, why didn’t you kill their killers?”

“Duh?”

“Oh, for Jupiter’s sake,” said Felix, stamping his little feet. The magic that had increased his Maximen’s size, strength and speed had unfortunately decreased their intellect. Felix guessed that the growth of their skulls had squashed their brains. The thicker the bone, the thicker the man, it seemed.

“Jupiter’s?” said the Maximan, the deep flesh on his meaty brow coalescing in confusion.

“Forget Jupiter. This dark man – in what way was he dark?”

“Guh?”

“Dark man. Dark clothes, dark hair or dark skin?”

“Dark clothes.”

“Ah.”

“And dark hair. Dark skin, too.”

“I see. And did the sexy woman have a mace and a sword?”

“Little mace. Little knife.”

“And the archer, was she a blonde-haired woman?”

“She had hair.”

“Blonde?”

“Guh?”

“Never mind. Where did they go, these three?”

Gub looked over to where the bridge had been, his face a picture of gormlessness. “Don’t know. Was different before.” He looked back to Felix. The druid swore he could see through Gub’s dark eyes right to the back of his skull.

“OK. Now get back to the others.”

“Guh?”

“Back. Home! Find Kelter and send him to me.”

“Guh?”

“Send. Kelter. The. Celerman. To. Me.”

“Gub.”

The Maximan waddled away, back to the nest or whatever one wanted to call the sordid filth holes that the giants had dug themselves amid the corpses and dereliction of the Ootipeat and Tengoterry camp. The Maximen were little more than the basest animals, until they started killing, when they became beautiful, marvellous acrobats. The Celermen also killed wonderfully well, but if anything their intelligence had been increased by their metamorphosis. It was odd, because Felix applied the same dark magic process to produce both Celermen and Maximen. He never knew which he was going to get until it was done. Usually he got a corpse. Sometimes he produced one of his mutants. So far he had forty Celermen and twenty Maximen. Caesar had banned him from making any more, and so he wouldn’t for now. It was another battle he wasn’t going to pick, not yet.