Reign of Iron (14 page)

Something caught his eye. Was that a glint of metal at the top of the cliff?

“Get that scorpion BACK!” shouted Mal. The fools had pushed their giant bow right to the edge of the cliff for gods’ knew what reason.

“Sorry, sorry!” said Gale Cossach and Taddy Ducktender, the scorpion operators responsible. They heaved the scorpion back into place five paces from the cliff edge.

Taddy’s head was the shape and her hair the colour of a hazelnut, and her nose was wide and flat with a bobble tip. But she knew what she was doing. She operated the scorpion and carried out other orders with brisk efficiency. She was certainly not a typical beauty and her figure was different from Nita’s – lean and defined while Nita had been soft and curved – but Mal found her breath-shorteningly attractive and she was the only woman that Mal had
almost
asked out for a drink since Nita had died. It would be a while before he did, though. Every time he thought about suggesting a liaison, Nita appeared in his mind, one hand on her hip, the other wagging a no, no, no finger at him.

Gale Cossach, on the other hand, was one disappointment after another. She was a big woman with a strongly boned, clear-skinned face that shone with confidence. However, contrary to her capable countenance, she always mucked things up. He wasn’t sure if she forgot orders, lost interest in what she was doing or if she was just an idiot. She was always getting her scorpion stuck in ruts or gateways. Twice, she’d loosed one of the massive arrows by mistake and come within a sword’s breadth of killing someone. He kept hoping she’d improve, but, as he’d realised in his years as a cart maker, people didn’t change. The only reliable thing about unreliable people was that they remained reliably unreliable.

“It’s my fault,” said Gale, confirming Mal’s suspicions. “I thought we’d get a better angle from the cliff’s edge.”

“You’re right,” said Mal, “you will get a better angle, but don’t move until the ships are below us, got it? If they see us they’ll never sail within range.”

“You’re right, I’m sorry.”

“I did tell her,” said Taddy, walking from the cliff edge, carrying one of the oversized arrows over one shoulder, “but she said she—”

Taddy tripped. She stumbled forwards, caught her foot behind her own ankle and fell. The metal head of the giant arrow she’d been carrying hit the scorpion’s firing mechanism. With a THRUMMMMM! the loaded and primed arrow shot off into the sky, over the edge of the cliff and towards the Roman fleet

Mal watched it rise and fall in a graceful curve, the content of his gut performing a similar manoeuvre.

“Look!” shouted Ragnall. They all saw it. A huge arrow rose from the cliff top, flew towards them then plunged into the calm water a few hundred paces ahead. Ragnall saw Caesar talk to the ship’s captain. The boat changed course to the north, parallel to the shining white cliff, still a good half a mile out to sea. The rest of the ships followed.

Little Dug was outside her tent sitting up on a rug, opposite a cross-legged Keelin Orton. The baby was waggling a three-legged, one-eyed wooden dog in one hand, slapping the ground with the other and giggling throatily at his nanny. She was singing a song about a spider in a sweet, melodious voice that the little boy clearly adored.

Little Dug spotted his mother and scream-shouted with joy, bouncing on his fat little arse, flapping his short arms and laughing like a maniac. It was pleasing that he recognised her. As she was thinking how unusually big and round his head was and wondering if that would make him more intelligent, the boy managed to whack himself on the chin with the wooden dog. He stopped laughing and bouncing, looked at the toy in his hand and pushed out a low moan that grew quickly into a stunningly loud wail. Was there any other creature throughout the wilds of the world as loud as the human baby, Lowa wondered? As the volume increased, Dug’s skin blossomed from pink to red.

“Your son, Graciousness!” said Keelin in the refreshing calm as the boy sucked in another lungful. She scooped up Dug and handed him to her. Lowa held him to her chest. Instead of screaming again he ground his face into her shoulder, rubbing saliva and snot into her cotton shirt. If any of Britain’s Warrior queens had faced an invasion before with baby yuck on their battle threads, thought Lowa, then the bards kept quiet about it.

“Are you ready to go?” Lowa asked.

“As soon as you give the word, we’re out of here on a fast horse with another couple of mounts in tow. But we won’t need to flee, Lowa. You’ll beat the bastards. The swanky shits will be corpses bobbing in the sea by the end of the day, you’ll see.”

“Why don’t you check on the horses and do anything else you need to do? I’ll look after him for a while.”

“OK! He likes playing with that dog. Maggot gave it to him this morning.” Keelin walked away, bottom swinging hypnotically.

Lowa sat on the rug, plonking Dug in front of her. She picked up the three-legged wooden dog. She’d seen it before, she was sure. Dug chortled, holding out his hands for it. She handed it over, the baby snatched it and she remembered. The same toy dog had been on the shelf in the hut in which she’d washed and changed on the day they’d massacred the tribe at Barton, before she’d gone to the party where Zadar had had her sister and her archer women killed. It was definitely the same one; she remembered throwing a slingstone at it and missing. How by Danu had it got here? She didn’t believe in omens, she reminded herself, and did believe that the world would be a weirder place if freakish coincidences never happened … Still, if this freakish coincidence was an omen, it was not a good one. Or maybe it was? Omens were confusing, which was another reason for paying no heed to them.

She played with little Dug but he soon became whiney and Lowa’s chief method of cheering him up – looking away then looking back – which had hitherto reduced him to fits of giggles – was no longer effective. She tried hugging him, but he arched his back and squirmed as if she were coated in poison. She waggled the dog, but he batted it away and howled.

“I am not good at this,” she muttered to herself, and was about to yell for Keelin when the shout came.

“Romans changed course for the north!”

“Pissflaps” said Lowa, standing up with the boy. Dug stopped crying and poked a finger into her nostril. She prised his hand free.

Keelin came running as the shout was repeated.

Lowa kissed the baby on the top of his head, handed him to Keelin, leapt on her horse and galloped for the coast as Dug’s howls grew fainter behind her.

W
alfdan shook his head. What had he let himself be talked into this time? He’d never claimed any mystical abilities – his druidic powers were limited to treating wounds and illnesses with stitches, splints and herbs – but he could feel evil radiating from the sailing ship like the stink from a rotting carcass, ever stronger as they approached, making him nauseous and terrified. Yet he held course. And why? Because Maggot had told him to and, for some unknown reason, following the orders issued by his strange new friends from across the sea was what he did these days.

The British druid was kneeling in front of the mast with a hand gripping either side of the little boat’s bow, motionless, nose in the air like a dog, eyes closed.

The ship came closer and closer. Walfdan could see them now, huge heads in iron helmets and others encased in leather, watching them approach. He felt like a minnow swimming towards a circle of sharks.

Still he held the tiller firm, waves lapping the hull, sail taut in the mild but constant breeze, Maggot unmoving. Did he even know how close they were to the Roman ship?

They were fifty paces away. The only bareheaded person on the ship was a small, balding man, grinning at them hungrily. This was madness; they were sailing to their deaths.

“Maggot?” he murmured.

The British druid raised a finger, bidding silence. Walfdan shook his head again but held his tongue.

Felix smiled as the sailing dinghy approached his ship on a collision course. Its crew was two elderly men. At first Felix had thought they must be druids seeking coins for blessing the ship. But then they’d kept coming, even when they must have seen the Maximen and the Celermen. Why? Was their eyesight so bad that they didn’t see that there were monsters crewing his ship? They didn’t seem to be sinking or in any other obvious trouble, so it wasn’t desperation that made them hold the course. Perhaps they were simply insane, two mad old men out for a jolly in their boat and coming over to say hello? It didn’t matter. Whatever their intentions, Felix had his own plans for them. The journey thus far had been yawningly boring. A spot of torture would liven it up a little.

He could see them clearly now. The elderly man at the bow must have been freezing, dressed in only a leather rag and a silly amount of necklaces and other ornaments. The helmsman looked even older, with long white hair and beard. He stared back at Felix, terror in his eyes. The others’ eyes were tight shut.

Eyes shut, as if …

“Helmsman, hard to port!” he shouted at his helmsman. There was something very fucking odd about that man and suddenly Felix was filled with an urge to flee from him. Their little boat was faster than his ship; there was no way they could outrun them, but …

Whump!

Felix staggered and gripped the side to keep his feet. They’d hit something in the water.

Whump!

The second blow came from the hull below him. They hadn’t hit something, something had hit them! He looked over the side and saw a huge dark shape swimming down into the abyss. A whale?

WHUMP!
The third, harder blow was followed by a splintering crack. They were holed. Miles out to sea and their ship was holed.

“Kelter!” he shouted, “get below deck, find the hole and plug it with—”

WHUMP! CRACK!

Again? Felix beat his hands against the side in frustration. He looked about for the little sailing boat but couldn’t see it. What he could see was a whale, just below the surface of the water, swimming directly for his ship.

WHUMP! CRACK!

“Hard to starboard, back the way we came for a bit, then to Britain,” said Maggot, before tumbling backwards to lie still on the bottom boards. Walfdan dragged the tiller towards himself and the boat slice-turned through the water, the boom slamming across, over the prone British druid.

The sail filled and they whizzed away.

“Maggot?” said Walfdan. “Maggot?” He prodded the druid with his foot and got no response. He’d stop and tend to him soon. He didn’t want to let go of the tiller with the wind so brisk and changeable, and he didn’t want to stop sailing until they were well away from the monster ship.

He glanced over his shoulder. The ship was where they’d left it, sail flapping, and, it might have been his imagination, but was it listing? Just before he turned back to focus on sailing, a gigantic whale, far and away the biggest Walfdan had seen in a lifetime at sea, leapt almost clear of the water then splashed down on its side, sending a cascade over the demon ship.

Lowa reached the chariots on the road at the same time as Mal arrived back from the cliff edge. Behind him, the horse-drawn scorpions bounced down the broad field with their crews striding next to them.

“How many ships did you sink?” asked Lowa.

Mal shook his head, looking miserable.

“Don’t blame yourself,” said Lowa, “so long as you didn’t actually do anything to prevent them landing under the cliffs.”

“That’s exactly what we did.”

“How?”

“It was me,” said a spry young woman striding bouncily up to them – she was called Taddy something, if Lowa wasn’t mistaken. “I tripped and let off a bolt by mistake. I’m sorry.”

Lowa had a sudden vision of a Roman soldier holding little Dug by the feet, lifting his sword and … Rage boiled from her stomach into her eyes, her world darkened and narrowed until only Taddy’s stupid ugly fucking bolt-loosing face remained, smiling at her. Lowa drove her right fist into the woman’s jaw, then a left into her ribs. Mal reached for her, but Lowa sent him flying with a kick to the stomach. The bolt looser was still standing, so Lowa punched her chin again. She went down.

The queen unsheathed her sword. Taddy was moaning, bloodied and crawling away. Lowa jumped onto her back, knocking her arms out from under her, grabbed her by the hair, pulled her head back and pressed the blade into her throat.

“Lowa!” she heard someone say. It was Mal. “Lowa!”

She turned to advise him to fuck off unless he wanted to die as well. He was clutching his stomach. Where she’d kicked him. She’d kicked her friend. A veil seemed to lift. Lowa took her sword away from Taddy’s neck and laid the woman’s head down. She stood. They were all staring at her, Mal, the scorpion crews and half a hundred assorted charioteers. The only person not staring at her was Taddy Ducktender, who was face down and sobbing.

Buggerfucktwats
, thought the queen.

“Sorry,” she said. “I … may have lost it a little there. But understand, all of you, this is not a speculative late summer raid by a tribe after your winter stores. The Romans will destroy our land. The men in those ships intend to kill us and enslave our children, and they are very good at it. In two years, outnumbered a hundred to one, they have conquered
all
of Gaul. They have sacked towns, massacred tribes and raped countless women, men and children. They are determined to do the same to us. If we let them, our children, their children, their children and on, for ever, will be lackeys of the Romans. They will dig and die in mines, slave on ships, fight and be killed in arenas, or – if they happen to be pretty girls or boys – be fucked a hundred ways until they’re split apart and dying, all for the pleasure and amusement of Roman men. I see some of you turning away. You may be shocked but not I’m exaggerating. If anything I’m playing it down. These men are the nastiest bastards who ever walked the earth, and the best fighters. Now. Do you want the Romans to kill you and take your children?”

“No!” shouted a few of the onlookers, raising their weapons.