Reign of Iron (13 page)

Squatting alone in a bush at the edge of the beach and counting the dark druid’s demons had been the most frightening thing Walfdan had ever done. He’d always understood that the gods lent courage to people in preposterously dangerous situations. Apparently the gods were busy elsewhere that evening and Walfdan had found himself shaking like a chilly child, his guts heaving and threatening a impromptu evacuation. When he’d become briefly convinced that a Leatherman had spotted him, he’d nearly been sick.

So he was glad to be away and headed for the relative safety of Maggot and a small boat, but he would be a lot happier once they were safely out to sea.

Watching the inept attempts to right the giant, a feeling that he was being spied on crept up Felix’s spine. He turned and saw Gub, leader of the Ironmen, standing nearby and staring at him, mouth open. Felix
hated
being stared at.

“Go away!” he commanded.

Gub looked around at the sea, the rocks, the beach and the trees, as if seeking somewhere to go. Not finding anywhere, he turned back to Felix and resumed his gormless vigil.

“Oh, just go up the path into the woods and see if you can find any wild boar or Gauls spying on us or something. Anything! Just go away and stop staring at me!”

“Sure thing!”

The huge man jogged away, armour clanging. Felix watched him go, hoping he’d have the nous to come back in time to get on the ship.

A sound made Walfdan turn. Just another rabbit, surely? But, no, this time it was really one of the huge demons – an Ironman – walking along the track towards him, its shoulders touching the trees on both sides. The druid was almost relieved after all the suspense. Finally, here was death and he could have a rest.

“Come here,” said the beast in Latin.

“I will not,” he stammered in Gaulish, staggering back on jelly legs.

The demon lifted its sword, a slice of iron not much shorter than Walfdan’s boat.

The elderly druid spun round and pounded away along the track faster, he reckoned, than anyone his age had ever run before or would again. He’d seen the demons’ speed and was sure he wouldn’t get away, but by Toutatis he was going to give it a go. He expected a huge hand on his shoulder at any moment or a heavy metal blade through his neck, but he crested the top of the slope and pelted on, down the other side of the headland. Still not looking back, he tore along like a hare who’s woken up and realised that the insufferably smug tortoise is miles ahead.

He left the road, crashed through the trees, tumbled down a bank and into the boat.

“Hello!” said Maggot.

“Demon … coming…”

“I see.” Maggot shoved off with a foot, hoisted the sail in a moment and they were away, out onto the water just as the sun peeked over the horizon.

Walfdan looked over the stern. There was no sign of pursuit. He panted hard, then realised he was going to faint. He tried to calm his breathing but that made him feel fainter. The world swung in woozy circles. He’d run too fast. He wondered if his heart was about to give up. The irony of being killed by his flight from death pleased him. Then he wondered if that was, indeed, ironic. He’d never quite understood exactly what irony was, and secretly suspected that nobody else ever had either.

Maggot slapped him on the back. “Stay alive there! Or at least tell me how many demons there were before you die.”

The slap seemed to help. Walfdan told Maggot what he’d seen, as the boat glided north-west towards Britain on a rolling run, the wind dead astern.

“That many, huh, and all in the one ship?”

“Indeed.”

“Hmmm.” Maggot pushed the tiller away from himself and the boat swung north-east. He pulled the sail to catch the perpendicular wind and the boat heeled over.

“What are you up to?” asked Walfdan, scrambling to join Maggot on the starboard gunwale and trim the dinghy. “The demon ship will set sail soon. On this course we’re headed right for them. They’ll surely see us.”

The Briton ignored him.

“Maggot! You’re taking us straight towards the monsters!”

Maggot winked, his grin brilliant in the morning sun.

“T
hey are not racing,” said Chamanca, swinging off her horse.

“They’re not,” answered Lowa. The Roman fleet had been in sight since the middle of the night. Standing on the cliff top as the sun rose, you’d swear the mass of ships wasn’t moving. Some had oars which they were hardly using, but most were sailing leadenly on the light south-easterly puff.

Chamanca nodded at the armada. “Atlas reckons it’s two legions.”

That tallied with what Lowa had heard from merchants and fishers. She’d know a more exact composition when Walfdan and Maggot returned.

“Ten thousand legionaries,” she said. From this distance, the ships looked tiny and it was hard to imagine that they contained so many people.

“Same as we have,” said Chamanca nodding, “but of course they’ll have archers and slingers on top of that, cavalry, too, I should think, so they’ll probably outnumber us.’

“Yes, and of course they’ll have an unknown amount of powerful monsters, possibly powered by dark magic.”

“True. But they don’t have a Chamanca!”

“Thank Danu for her great mercies.” Lowa regarded the grinning Iberian. She remembered when Chamanca had joined Zadar’s army, soon after Lowa herself. So much had changed since then, but Chamanca looked the same. She still filed her teeth into points, still wore the same leather shorts and iron chest piece that seemed to expose more skin than they covered, and still made heads turn and jaws drop whenever she passed. Her flesh was as lean and firm as it had ever been, untroubled by a wrinkle or the tiniest patch of bobbled fat … Chamanca had been a good ten years older than Lowa when they’d met, but now she looked the same age. Perhaps a blood diet was good for the skin? Or perhaps there was something more?

“We still got no magic then?” asked Chamanca.

“Not … that I know of. Mal went to see Spring and she swears she remains magic free.”

“Mal went to see her?”

“Yes.”

“Not you?”

“I had a war to prepare.”

“Sure you did.”

“She could have come to me.”

“She could have done.”

Lowa sighed. “Chamanca, I have not had the time to repair the wounded feelings of a sulky child who blames me for something I didn’t do. If she loved Dug so much that she’s going to be this irrational about his death, she should at least have come to greet his child.”

“Unless she hates the baby’s mother so much—”

“Chamanca.”

“Lowa?”

The Iberian didn’t seem to have grasped to any degree that Lowa was her queen. Her other leaders spoke to her freely, interrupted her even, but she still felt that they respected her position. Chamanca’s lack of deference was all-encompassing. Lowa usually didn’t mind – the opposite in fact. Most times, it was refreshing to have someone she could talk to as an equal. But this wasn’t one of those times. “If Spring wants to see me to discuss whose fault it was that Dug died – or who fired the fucking arrow into his head for that matter, or who knew in advance it was going to happen – then she is welcome. I am not going to chase after her for the joy of being accused of killing the man I loved.”

“Spring is as skilled as you with the bow and will be nearly as useful as me in the battle to come, but she is young, so she is stubborn. I saw her yesterday. She is here, with the light chariots. You should visit her.”

Lowa looked along the scorpions, hunched in a row a few paces back from the cliff edge, ready to shoot their giant bolts at the Roman ships. Mal, the scorpion commander, was walking towards her and the Iberian, inspecting his line. His hair and beard, she noticed, were freshly trimmed. She ran a hand through her own, probably wild, blonde hair, thinking that it was funny what people considered important on the day before a fight. She looked out over the approaching armada. It seemed larger now that the sun was up, or perhaps it was simply closer. Lowa nodded towards the ships. “You’re right. I have nothing better to do today than to seek out a stroppy child and bang my head against her unshakeable bullshit. Where did you say she was? I’ll go right now. If you could just stay here and ask the Romans to wait?”

The Iberian smiled, leapt onto her horse and galloped away.

“You all right?” asked Mal, reaching her at the end of his scorpion inspection.

“Never better,” said Lowa.

“I don’t want to tempt fate but, touch wood,” Mal tapped his head and pointed out to sea, “it looks like our visitors might oblige and come right up under the cliff.”

The Roman invasion had been heading straight for them ever since it had appeared and showed no signs of deviating. If the course was held, the vulnerable wooden fleet would be in range of the scorpions’ heavy bolts well before it landed, and the legionaries would have to wade ashore on to a narrow strip of beach underneath a high cliff. The Maidunites had long, iron-tipped poles, chocks and heavy mallets ready to send a large part of said cliff down on to them.

“He’s not going to land here. He can’t have defeated all of Gaul and half of Germany in two years if he does things like that.”

“True, but you never know.” Mal tapped his head again. “He’s never invaded by sea before.”

“It is just possible that he’s an idiot,” Lowa conceded. “So make sure you keep your people back from the edge, and shoot only when they’re within archers’ range.” She nodded at the archers massed inland, downhill from the scorpions, waiting for the order to run up and send a rain of iron onto the Romans below. There were well over a thousand of them, from the cavalry and the light and heavy chariots, their mounts and vehicles left on the road at the bottom of the hill. She wondered if Spring was with them. “If they do change course, I don’t want it to be because some idiot shot his bolt early. And, of course, if they change course and they’re in scorpion range but not archer range, see how many you can sink.”

“Don’t worry,” said Mal. “My crews know what they’re doing and so I.”

Lowa nodded, mounted and rode away. Fully aware that she’d told Chamanca she didn’t have time for anything but commanding her troops, she decided to go and see her son. The Romans were still half a day away at least, she had shouters all along the coast ready to tell her if anything changed, she’d been preparing for this for years and everything that could be in place was in place, so there was little else she could do. If Caesar turned north, as she suspected he would, and made a sensible landfall, it was possible that she’d be leading an army into battle before the end of the day. It wasn’t what she planned, but planning and warfare did not often go hand in hand. And, if she did ride into battle and these demons were half as effective as she’d been told, chances were she wouldn’t ride out again.

And if she was going to die later, she wanted to see her son first.

Ragnall yawned. By Jupiter and Bel, the crossing was a dreary drag. The warships could have rowed to Britain and back ten times by now, but they were held back by the turgid progress of the overladen sailing boats. They looked to Ragnall like a fleet of obese men floating on their backs and holding up handkerchiefs, hoping to be blown to lunch. At times he was sure they were going backwards. Why hadn’t Caesar learnt from the battle against the Veneti that sailing boats were useless? Gaul
was
shrinking behind them and up ahead the white cliffs of Britain
were
growing, but only at the pace of a trodden-on snail making for cover.

Caesar, Labienus, other generals and a couple of top legates were at the stern of the boat, conversing importantly. Ragnall wandered back to listen in. Everybody but Caesar was saying, couched in polite terms and flattery, that their current course was crazy. Judging by similar cliffs in Gaul, there would be only a narrow beach at its foot, if the enormous tides that plagued this part of the world had left a beach at all. Moreover, any landing would be overlooked by the cliff, from which any amount of missiles might be hurled. Merchants spoke of a network of channels and beaches to the north. It was there, said Labienus, that they should be heading.

Ragnall could tell, however, that Caesar was frustrated by the glacially slow pace of the sailing transports and focused solely on getting to Britain as fast as possible. He said that the men did not like being afloat, that most of the boats had enough supplies only for the half-day that they’d expected the crossing to take and that already the hindmost ships were sailing through clumps of bobbing turds from the foremost. It was undignified. Caesar’s legionaries should not sail slowly through shit. The sooner they landed, the better. If there was no beach, they could sail along the coast until they found one. The Britons had no idea they were coming. The only missiles they’d face, said the general, might be the odd stone from a shepherd boy’s sling.

“But Caesar,” said Labienus, “they
do
know that we’re coming and I am certain that they are watching us right now. We have hardly made our preparations in secret and the merchants—”

“We keep THIS COURSE!” shouted the general, face flushing and knuckles whitening. Nothing fazed Caesar, so what was this? Was he afraid of water? He’d said once that boats were beneath his dignity. Was he in fact scared of them? It was the only reason Ragnall could think of to make him behave like this.

Labienus spotted Ragnall eyeing the general and shot him an unequivocal “piss off” look.

So Ragnall pissed off back to the bow of the ship to plan his first couple of years of kingship. He’d reinstate the slavery that Lowa had banned. He understood the starry-eyed arguments disagreeing with human bondage, but the point that the well-meaning but naïve idealists missed was that everyone benefited from slavery. Without slavery, the stupid, uninspired and low-born would still have to work the land and fight in armies in exchange for food and a roof. With slavery, it was the same but better; their nutrition and lodgings were superior since people looked after things more carefully if they owned them rather than hired them (as you could easily tell by the condition of rental chariots in Rome). When there was no work or when they fell ill, the slave was still lodged and fed, while wage labourers were left to freeze and starve. From the slave’s point of view, he or she was part of the family – part of that small circle of loyalty – so it was in his or her interest to constantly improve the position of the owners. Wage labourers owed no loyalty, so were more likely to steal a family’s gold or spill their secrets. So slavery was good for everyone and it would be the foundation of Ragnall’s Britain.