Reign of Iron (16 page)

“Lowa is a dick.”

“No, she is not. She’s commanding a disparate army against the world’s most powerful force and you’re sulking because she didn’t come and visit you when she was ploughing every single heartbeat of her life into building this army. Of course she wanted to see you. She wanted to spend more time with her baby, too, but she is the one person standing between the Romans and the destruction of Britain. She knows that, so, while she has the tiniest chance of saving you and all the other ungrateful badger turds, that’s what she’s going to do, all the time. You’re thinking only of yourself, making stuff up, and irrationally hating the one person left alive who loves you. Have an objective mull through those positions and see if you can work out which one of you is the dick.”

“Oh, just fuck off,” said Spring.

Disappointment glowed in Dug’s deep brown eyes and he vanished.

“Come back! I didn’t mean it! COME BACK!”

But he was gone and she was alone. She sat down and hugged her knees. Both dogs lolloped up and nuzzled her. They smelled odd – disgusting in fact – but Spring was too miserable to wonder what they’d found in the bushes.

She’d show them all, she thought. But how … Well, it was simple. She’d stop the invasion. There was a way. But this time she wouldn’t need to kill thousands, just one man.

“No, no,” said Dug, looming over her again, hands on hips, “don’t be so silly. There’s no way you can do it and you’ll die trying. You should listen to Lowa and—”

Spring closed her eyes. When she opened them he was gone. She stood up and looked about for her horse.

The trumpet salvo died as Lowa, Atlas and Chamanca arrived in the middle of the village. Mal, Adler and Maggot were waiting for her next to the village’s centrepiece – a three-man-high carving of Epona, the horse goddess. Lowa was glad to see that Maggot was looking a lot more like one of the living.

“Right,” she said, sliding from her horse. “Here’s what’s going to happen next. We are going to—”

“Lowa, before you start,” interrupted Maggot, “this codger here would like a word.”

Maggot’s bangle-ringed arm jangled as he indicated an elderly man. The decrepit fellow shuffled forwards and lifted his head with obvious effort. Intelligent eyes looked out over a hooked nose in a leathery face. Behind him, Lowa noticed for the first time, were a gaggle of villagers staring at her with fearful defiance, and moon-eyed children clasping parents’ legs. She recognised the old man; she’d met him the previous winter on a recruitment tour. He was chief of the Taloon tribe, and a cantankerous old fucker. He’d been reluctant to offer troops, and even more hostile to the idea that his village might be used as an base for Lowa’s army in the likely event of the Romans landing nearby. He’d only reluctantly agreed when she’d reminded him that she was accompanied by two hundred heavily armed Warriors who didn’t like it when she didn’t get what she wanted. His name was …

“Hardward,” she remembered. “What do you want?” She was inclined to dismiss him; she had a invasion to fight off, but her army was in his village. As he cleared his throat, she looked about. She’d been so focused on briefing her commanders that she hadn’t noticed two smashed grain stores, several villagers with bruised faces and a hulking, sour-faced infantryman with his hands tied by rough rope.

Ah
, she thought.

“Your soldier,” Hardward indicated the bound man, “killed a Taloon man and badly beat his wife and sons – his very young sons – who tried to save him. One of the sons may die. Then he injured several more people who ran to the boys’ defence.”

Shit
, thought Lowa. “I’m sorry.”

“Other Maidunite soldiers have pillaged our stores and livestock. Three dogs defending property have been killed and four cats are missing, presumed eaten. I agreed – under duress – to supply you with troops, and I agreed that you might use Taloon as a base – again only because of your politely couched but clear threat of violence. You defeated Zadar and everybody said that a tyrant had been replaced by a good queen. It’s now clear that you are no better.”

Lowa sighed. She was standing next to the carving of Epona. Epona had been the name of her horse when she’d been in Zadar’s army, when, under his orders, she’d sacked villages and shot countless arrows into people like Hardward and the farmer types cowering behind him. But she’d been following orders and she’d renounced that past. As a ruler, she was not anything like Zadar.

“I am sorry for your losses and, although I know it will mean little to the murdered man’s grieving family, I apologise,” she said, “particularly for the man who was killed and the violence to his sons and others. What was his name?”

“Jostan.”

“And his badly injured son?”

“Erca.”

“Maggot, will you tend to Erca?”

“Already have.” The Druid waggled his fingers. “He will be fine.”

“So you say.” For an older man, Hardward did petulance very well.

“So I know.” Maggot waited.

“You,” said Lowa to the accused man, “did you kill Jostan and beat his family?”

“They tried to stop me taking rations for the men.”

She recognised his accent, then the man himself. He was a Haxmite, one of the men whom Jocanta Fairtresses had unwillingly relinquished under Yilgarn Craton’s command. That was annoying, since they were already reluctant allies, but there was only one possible course of action.

“Did you kill Jostan and beat his family? Yes or no?”

“Yes.”

Lowa sighed. “Adler?” she said, nodding at the stern young captain of the Two Hundred.

Adler nodded in reply and strode over to the Haxmite, unsheathing her sword as she came.

“No!” the murderer stammered. “They were just peasants getting in the way. You can’t—”

Adler held her sword aloft. The murderer lifted his tied hands and shifted from foot to foot, watching her blade. She kicked him in the knee with her iron-heeled riding boots, cracking bone. He fell into a kneel, roaring with pain. Adler grabbed him by the hair, pressed the tip of her sword into the nape of his neck then thrust down, severing his spine. He flopped forwards, jerking, and was still.

“Right,” Lowa said as Adler dragged the dead Haxmite away by his feet. She wanted to get this finished. “Everyone, make sure that everyone else knows that this man was executed and why it was done. I will talk to his commander, Yilgarn Craton. When we have repelled the invader, I will investigate the theft of grain and destruction of property myself and make sure that any surviving perpetrators are punished, reparations paid and damage repaired. Now, if you wouldn’t mind, there’s the matter of the large invasion of merciless killers who could make landfall at any moment.”

“What will we do for food until you’ve finished mucking about with the Romans? Your army took it all.” Hardward was unappeased.

“My quartermaster will ensure that nobody starves. Talk to her.”

“It was not your food to take!”

Lowa was running out of patience. “Look, Hardward, I have over twelve thousand soldiers here and near that number again in cooks, blacksmiths, healers and others. With that many gathered, there will be crimes. There will be murders. That’s because we are human, and, Danu knows why, that is how humans behave. I am sorry that you and Jostan’s family have borne the brunt and I advise the rest of your people to stay clear of my troops as much as they can, and to report any problems immediately to me or my generals. That’s the best I can do other than leave, but if I leave, the Romans would invade unopposed. If that happens, they will kill or enslave all of you.”

“So you say, but that’s not what we’ve heard. We have a merchant who visits yearly from Rome, so we know all about them. They have gallons of wine, a surfeit of delicious food and fine clothes. They heat their giant, stone-built huts with hot water running from room to room in bronze channels. They have farming innovations which means they spend less time toiling in the fields and more time bathing in their hot water, gorging on piles of food and making love to each other. I could go on.”

“Please don’t.”

“All these things they will bring here.”

“Yes, for themselves. We Britons they will kill. You younger people,” Lowa spoke up so the rest of the village could hear, “if they don’t slaughter you, they’ll enslave you. You’ve heard they have innovative farming methods. What do you imagine these are? Magic seeds? Crops that harvest themselves? Nope, sorry, the innovation is slaves. Slaves do the work while the Romans sit idle. They don’t even whip you themselves – they have other slaves to do that. And when the slaves realise they shouldn’t have let themselves be taken in the first place and rebel? They kill them, in their thousands.”

“Queen Lowa, you are wrong. The merchants tell us of a life in Rome—”

“They have told you only half the truth, and barely that. They will tell you that Rome is a place of idleness and decadence. It is, but only for Romans. Slave markets all around their empire process tens of thousands every day. Caesar has marched through Gaul and left unimaginable horror in his wake. Hundreds of thousands of corpses rot in the fields and trains of slaves that would stretch from here to Maidun have been marched from their homes. I’m sorry my army does not behave perfectly, but raided supplies and one murdered man are the price you pay for us to repel the invader. A great many of my men and women are likely to pay for your defence with their lives.”

“What you’ve failed to grasp, Queen Lowa, is that we do not require you to repel the invader. For us,
you
are the invader.”

He had not listened to a word. Danu’s tits, she hated people who didn’t listen. She drew her blade. “All right, if that’s how you feel. Everything else still stands – investigation, reparations and so on – but if you and your Taloons aren’t out of this square in twenty heartbeats I’ll kill the lot of you.”

The old man looked at her sword, then into her eyes. “I’m afraid that you’re rather proving my point.”

“Nineteen heartbeats.”

The chief shuffled away, shaking his head. His villagers followed him, flashing reproachful glares at Lowa. Here was proof that she was no Zadar. People who crossed him never got the chance to look reproachful. If he’d been commanding the army, the Taloons would have looked terrified, then they would have looked dead.

Lowa turned to Atlas, Chamanca, Mal, Adler and Maggot.

“Right,” she said. “Here’s the plan. Given how far south Felix was sailing, Maggot is sure that Caesar doesn’t know yet that the demons have returned to Gaul.”

“Sure as I can be of anything, but how can we know anything for sure?”

“Indeed. Thanks. So, my guess is that Caesar is holding off and waiting for his demons to attack us tonight, either to destroy us or freak us out so much that we’re a pushover when he lands tomorrow. We’re going to convince him that’s what’s happened. We’ll keep it up with the horns, then, immediately after sunset, we are going to fake the noise of a battle. After that we’ll blow no more trumpets. He won’t see his own troops arrive on the shore, so Caesar will assume we’ve defeated them or that they’ve retreated, but he’ll think that we were weakened fighting them and the legions will land at dawn. We will be ready.”

“Why aren’t we landing?” said a praetorian near Ragnall at the bow of the flagship. It was the middle of the day and they’d done nothing but look at a beach for most of the morning. The only excitement had been a few tiny figures appearing on the shore – most Romans’ first sight of the exotic inhabitants of this wild, distant isle – and the regular wall of sound from the Britons’ horns blaring out across the waves. “They haven’t got an army,” the praetorian continued, “they’ve just got a fuckload of trumpets.”

He was not alone in the sentiment. For a good while everyone out of Caesar’s earshot had been griping about being stuck on a ship when there was a perfectly good place to land right there. Ragnall had heard somewhere that all soldiers were whingers, but he was amazed how quickly they called into question the judgement of a leader who had not made one tactical error in nearly three years of campaigning. Ragnall didn’t know why Caesar was holding, but he knew that there had to be a good reason for it.

“Ragnall!” called a praetorian from the stern. He made his way back and found Caesar scanning the coast, looking, oddly for him, less than utterly confident.

“Ah, Ragnall, good,” said the general. “Say an army landed twenty miles to the south. What impediments might prevent them marching cross-country to the shore that Caesar is regarding right now?”

Ragnall didn’t have a clue, he’d never been to this part of Britain, but that wouldn’t be an acceptable answer for Caesar. “Ah, well, there’s a wide river – the Tems – and several woods.” He had no idea where the Tems was, but was pretty sure it wasn’t far, and there were always woods.

“Mountains?”

“There are no mountains in southern Britain.”

“Marshes?”

“Marshes … yes, some. I haven’t really—”

“All right, all right, thank you.” Caesar looked along the boat. Praetorians and legionaries looked back expectantly. He contemplated the shore. You could feel the impatience of the men, keen to disembark these crammed and unusual transportations.

“Give the signal to land,” Caesar told Labienus.

C
hamanca and Atlas walked away from Lowa’s briefing. Chamanca quite liked Lowa’s plan. It meant she’d have to wait until the morning for blood, but she’d waited so long now that a little longer couldn’t hurt, and besides she could do things with Atlas that were almost as good as the joy of blood. Yes, she thought, taking his arm in her hands. They’d go back to their commandeered hut now and—

“ROMANS COMING IN!” came the shout.

“Fenn!” said Chamanca. They ran back to the centre of the village. Lowa was there, giving orders.

“Adler, all cavalry including the Two Hundred will go to the beach.
Now
.” Adler ran off.

“Mal, the scorpions will form up to defend the path through the marsh, but be ready to move if the Romans carry boats over the spit, or swim, or cross the water between here and the spit.”