Reign of Iron (4 page)

Lowa resolved to send someone over with her bow right away to show the girl that she was thinking of her and didn’t blame her for Dug’s death, then to head out that way herself as soon as she got a chance. Much as she’d liked to have gone that very moment to console her friend – her surrogate daughter, really – she simply couldn’t. She was queen and she had people to feed and house and an army to rebuild.

The merchant ship bumped alongside the quay at last. Chamanca saw that the wave had struck in Britain, too, at least as hard as it had in Gaul. The stone quay had survived, as had some of the boats, but the town itself had been gouged from the earth. The seafront had been testament to the success of slave trading under Zadar’s reign, lined with a row of towering, ornate wooden buildings and a gigantic wooden carving of the sea god Leeban, all of which screamed “Look how prosperous we are!” And all of which was now gone. A few stone warehouses and a few disused iron slave pens survived, although the roofs were destroyed on the former and one had a large boat sticking out of it. The coasters had begun to rebuild their town around these more doughty buildings. So far it was a tumbledown collection of lean-to shelters with the odd leather sail stretched between them. The coin had stopped flowing when Lowa had banned slavery, so it was unlikely that the town would ever look as well-heeled as it once had. Probably a good thing, thought the Iberian. She had no sympathy for slaves – fools who found themselves enslaved deserved everything they got – but displaying the proceeds from selling fellow humans like cocks showing feathers was Fenn-cursed vulgar.

“Captain? Captain Jervers?” shouted a nearby crewman. “Where’s the captain?”

“I think he’s in his cabin!” shouted another.

Chamanca took that as her cue to vault the ship’s rail and melt away. It wouldn’t take them long to find Jervers. He
was
in his cabin, unconscious, missing several teeth and a couple of pints of blood. She’d gone in there once she’d sighted the port to give him coin for her passage, but the fat fool had tried to demand more, and come at her with a cutlass when she’d refused. Chamanca had been glad for it. She’d been hungry.

She didn’t bother looking for a horse. It was a bright, fresh-aired, late summer’s day, she was full of energy from her feed and the walk to Maidun after the day and night at sea appealed.

On the way out of town a boy tagged along with her for a while. He was a verbose little fellow, determined to tell her all about the battle of Frogshold and the Spring Tide that had destroyed the evil armies and saved Maidun.

“Spring Tide?” asked Chamanca.

“That’s what they’re calling the giant wave. A great magician named Spring made it.”

She listened to the boy’s tale then gave him a coin to bugger off. She wanted to be alone with her thoughts as she walked the final few miles to Maidun. She was torn. She was not looking forward to reporting Carden Nancarrow’s death. He’d been popular, and with reason. He was a good man and he’d died so that she might escape. His mother, the blacksmith Elann, would be deeply upset, even though she was sure not to show it. Chamanca had killed her other son Weylin – on Zadar’s orders, so it wasn’t her fault – but she was empathetic enough to see that a mother might blame her for both his and Carden’s deaths. The wrong-headed wrath of a bereaved mother usually wouldn’t have fazed Chamanca one jot, but there was something about Elann. She hardly ever spoke, showed emotion even more rarely, yet she made the finest weapons and other iron works that the Iberian had ever seen. And there was more, a quiet power emanating from the woman like warmth from one of her forges.

So she wasn’t looking forward to talking to her. On the other hand, she’d found herself missing Atlas Agrippa more and more. It had been just her and Carden on the most recent trip to Gaul and initially she’d been glad to be in charge, free from the African’s boringly pragmatic command. But she’d found herself wishing that he’d been there. Not for help against the Romans – she was quite capable of fighting those little men on her own – but … well, she wasn’t sure what it was. She just missed him being there.

T
he birth was apparently a quick one, but it hadn’t seemed that way to Lowa. Most women she’d spoken to had warned her that childbirth was no fun, but a few had claimed that it was inspiringly natural and that the pain was life-affirming. She’d hoped the latter few had been right, but now she knew they’d been either lying or deluded. There had been nothing good about pushing the little bastard out of her splitting vagina and the only thing that it had affirmed was that she did not like being in agony. It hadn’t been as bad as the torture when she’d been a captive of Pomax the Murkan, but it hadn’t been far off.

Not as bad, but still seriously irksome, was that she’d been through it all in front of Maggot. There was nobody she would have preferred to help her through the birth, but now that he’d seen her at her worst, her most abuse-screamingly bestial, she wasn’t sure that she’d ever be able to look him squarely in the eye again.

The baby on her chest shifted, and for a dreadful moment she thought he was going to wake up and yowl, but mercifully he didn’t.

“All happy?” said Maggot, ducking into the warm, well-lit hut. It was freezing outsize, but Maggot was still clad only in his habitual tartan trousers, leather waistcoat and enough jewellery to sink a small merchant ship.

Lowa thought for a moment. No, she wasn’t happy. She was sore and she felt no great affection for the tiny human tucked up in blankets on her chest. That was something else the life-affirming lot had told her – that she’d be immediately overwhelmed with all-encompassing love for her child. Well, maybe
they
weren’t lying about that, maybe they had immediately fallen for their babies, but the only emotion she felt was frustration that she was cooped up in her hut when she could have been out training the army.

“I cannot remember being more cheery,” she replied.

Maggot winked. “You did well. Squeezed him out good and quick with minimum fuss. I’ve seen a lot of babies and he’s a beauty, too. Any idea what you’ll call him?”

“I have a name in mind,” she said.

R
agnall walked through the crowds on the Sacred Road, gawping up at temples and the painted statues looking down at him from their roofs. There was a bounce in his step. “Nobody in Rome looks up any more, and they’re all missing out,” someone had said to him at Clodia Metelli’s house a few nights before, so now he looked up whenever he remembered, and he was glad for it. There was a great deal more ornamentation on the buildings than he’d realised, stretching up to the highest roofs, and that ornamentation was amazing. The more basic sculpture on the least showy building was more impressive than any artwork he’d seen in Britain. The most ornate and humungous designs – crowd scenes of gods and men and mythical animals all entwined – made him stop and blink and forget to breathe.

Rome filled him with happiness. He’d lived in Britain for his first twenty years, but this city was his natural home. The moment he arrived it felt like his soul was lowering itself into the warmest bath and sighing with pleasure. It felt right, it
was
right. The sooner the rest of the world learnt Roman ways, the better for everyone. There were bound to be people who’d say that they didn’t want to live like the Romans, but they were the sort of thick, older people who didn’t like any change. “Shall I take that half-decayed squirrel off your face for you?” you might say to one of them. “No, thanks very much, I like things just the way they are,” they’d reply.

He scooted around a woman with a hairstyle like a precarious pile of powdered peacocks and jinked his way through a crowd of fashionably bearded young men, effortfully casual togas roped with loose belts in emulation of their hero Caesar. Ever since the city had been flooded with loot and been granted a twenty-day holiday in celebration of his successes in Gaul, Julius Caesar’s name was on everybody’s lips and his distinctive belt style was on all the young men’s hips.

“Oi, Ragnall!
Wan-kar!
” The good-natured insult was hurled by a knot of legionaries who Ragnall knew from Gaul, men who’d been shipped into town by Caesar to help ensure that his cronies Pompey and Crassus won that year’s consular election. The soldiers would vote for the candidates themselves and anybody else who didn’t could be sure of a beating.

Their attention pleased Ragnall. Out in the field of Gaul, soldiers wouldn’t bother to shout a greeting at a clerk like him. Back home, however, campaign camaraderie bubbled out like water from squeezed sponges and men were the best of mates simply because they’d once marched to the same place at the same time.

“You’re looking insufferably cheerful. I’d say
denarius for your thoughts
if I didn’t disdain clichés,” said a mellifluous voice behind him. Ragnall turned. It was Marcus Tullius Cicero, known to all as plain Cicero. Ragnall had met him with Drustan on the night that Drustan had been killed. Cicero had been one of the two ruling consuls a few years before, he was Rome’s leading lawyer and was often cited as the most intelligent man in the empire. Since Ragnall had met him he’d been exiled, called home, then fallen out and back in again with Caesar. Ragnall knew all this because they often talked about Cicero in Clodia’s house, where Ragnall had been welcomed back with opened arms (opened everything, in fact). Clodia was somewhat in awe of Cicero, despite the fact that, or perhaps because, Cicero had unsuccessfully persecuted her brother Clodius for incest with her. It was Clodius who’d had Cicero exiled, as revenge.

“I’m happy to be back in Rome,” said Ragnall.

“I understand. I was driven almost to suicide during my forced sojourn to Greece, although that says more about Greece than it does about Rome.” Cicero spoke loudly, so that passers-by might hear, and he smiled a “Haven’t I just said a clever thing?” smile. Ragnall wasn’t sure whether to laugh or nod, so he did both. “However, I’m surprised to find you enjoying Rome quite so much,” Cicero continued, in a less public voice. “But then again you are a contrarian, are you not, Ragnall?”

Ragnall was both flattered and unnerved that such a famous character should not only remember him after only one meeting years before, but also deign to have an opinion about him. “I don’t think I’m a contrarian…?” he offered. He wasn’t sure what the great man meant.

“You were a barbarian, now you’re a Roman. Your new master is the man who murdered your old one, the druid Drustan. I’d say there were few more contrary.”

“Caesar did not murder Drustan. It was Felix. And besides,” Ragnall looked around. None of the pedestrians filing past seemed interested in their chat and the soldiers were long gone, “he wasn’t entirely wrong to suspect that we were spies.” It was more perhaps than he should have said, but he did not like Caesar to be called into question.

Cicero smiled and swallowed, his Bel’s apple ascending and falling like a mouse in a sausage skin in his long, scrawny throat. “I see you are under Caesar’s spell,” he said. “No matter, most are. I don’t expect you to heed these words, Ragnall, but you should realise what’s happened to you. You and many young men like you have been whipped up in the new hero’s wake like autumn leaves behind a galloping chariot. Perhaps, before you fall back onto the hard road, you should fly away?”

A few years before, maybe even the year before, Ragnall would have nodded obsequiously, but he wasn’t going to accept this nonsense, not even from a man of Cicero’s standing. Perhaps war had toughened him? Whatever it was, he shook his head and said: “Caesar is the greatest man in the world and I am proud to serve him, as you should be.”

Cicero smiled warmly. “Well said, young man, well said! Why don’t you walk with me for a while and tell me what’s next on the campaign for you and the great leader?”

Ragnall was confused by the elder statesman’s mercurial standpoint, but he didn’t want to miss an opportunity to boast about Caesar’s achievements, nor to be seen in the company of such an eminent figure.

As they passed the blackened remains of a freshly burnt shanty swarming with destitute wretches picking about for anything valuable or edible, Ragnall began: “Gaul is all but conquered. Everybody said that it was last year, but it wasn’t. It would have been impossible to conquer it in a year. It should have been impossible to conquer it in two, but Caesar did it. The last tribe to hold out, the Armoricans, are beaten, and the tribes to the north of them – the Menapii – are more or less vanquished. We haven’t actually beaten them in the field, but most of them fled. They might still cause trouble, but it’s unlikely to be anything significant. If they do manage to muster a decent force, Caesar will triumph as he always has against much greater foes.”

“That is what has happened already,” said Cicero, jinking to avoid a gaggle of senators wearing red leather sandals and togas with broad purple stripes, “but tell me, what will be the next conquest for the great general?”

“Britain,” said Ragnall. “As soon as the ships are rebuilt, I mean built, the army will cross the eastern sea and bring the wonderful gifts of Roman life to Britain.”

“And will you have a role in the new Britain?”

Ragnall looked around, then back at Cicero. The man was almost as tall as him, which was unusual for an Italian. “I am going to be king.”

The orator’s eyes widened. “King? That’s marvellous. I’m sure you’ll be an effective and just ruler. But do tell, why you?”

They walked on through the afternoon crowds. Ragnall told Cicero his life story, then found himself telling the former consul everything that people in Rome weren’t meant to know – about the great wave, about Felix’s rumoured dark legion, about Caesar’s necessary massacres and tortures of the Gauls. It couldn’t matter, Ragnall told himself. Cicero was such a decent man and, even if he’d sounded a little negative initially, surely he’d been playing Hades’ advocate? Of course he was on Caesar’s side. How could he not be?

It was early evening when they came upon a gladiator battle, set up in a broad street as part of the holiday festivities. Two fighters were squaring up at the bottom of a wide set of marble steps crammed with spectators. One gladiator was dressed in the leather and metal armour of a legionary, including helmet, and armed with the standard short sword. He was little fellow, wiry with lean muscle, maybe thirty-five years old. The other was much larger and younger, but enormously fat, even for a Roman civilian, with a round, shining stomach and pendulous, hairless breasts. He was mocked up as a German Warrior, wearing the fur groin cloth and armed with a wooden club. Ragnall had seen more than his fair share of German soldiers and they’d got the outfit spot on, but he’d never seen one armed with a club. He guessed it was artistic licence on the part of the fight’s organisers to accentuate the Germans’ barbarism, which was fair enough. Ragnall had never met a more barbarian shower than King Ariovistus and his bone-headed tribes.