Reign of Iron (45 page)

“I’m sorry to have been ungrateful to Nan, but I have been very ill and I need to—”

“Shits always try to blame their shitty behaviour on anything but themselves.”

“All right, I’m sorry. But can you help me get those aurochs and their armour to Lowa?”

Elann paused for so long Atlas wondered whether she was going to answer him at all. Finally, she said, “I have made some modifications to your axe which will enable you to defeat Manfreena, if you don’t fuck it up. But we cannot do anything until you are stronger. Eat more of Nan’s stew.”

“I will. Do you know what’s in it?”

“I do. It’s best that you don’t.”

Mal crouched in the trees a hundred paces from the demon camp. An eye-wateringly foul odour filled the air around like a thick fog. Originally he’d thought it came from the corpses of the Two Hundred which had been left to rot above the tideline, but he knew now that the gag-inducing reek came from the camp itself. If anything confirmed that the demons needed to be exterminated, it was their monstrous stench.

His volunteer fifty were hidden along the treeline. Almost all had lost friends or lovers at Big Bugger Hill to the demons, were itching for revenge and unafraid of consigning themselves to the Otherworld. Mal was looking forward to seeing Nita again. No doubt she’d ask him quite why he’d taken so long to join her and who the Bel was this Taddy he’d been chasing after. But he’d still be glad to see her. And Taddy too … how was that going to work?

A large, dark cloud obscured the moon and the time had come. Mal hooted like an owl. He felt shapes rise in the darkness all around him.

They ran from the trees, silent in their soft leather foot covers. He willed his feet to stay light, praying he didn’t step on a twig, or, worse, run into a demon sentry.

They reached the tents unimpeded. As planned, men and women peeled away, some ducking into the first tents they came to, some running on with him. He was heading for the newly built hut which reconnaissance had identified as Felix’s, taking care not to trip on guy-ropes.

There was a scream, a shout, another scream. Mal sprinted, all pretence at stealth gone, sword in hand. A shape blocked his way – a giant man. Mal thrust with his blade, but the shape melted to the side, flailing a backhand punch which Mal sensed more than saw. He ducked and stabbed and was surprised when his blade struck home, into flesh. So the Ironmen did take their armour off, he thought, as he thrust, up under ribs and into the creature’s heart. It fell with a sigh. Mal ran on, to Felix’s hut. The door opened as he raised his arm to push it. It was Felix. Mal slammed his blade into the druid’s chest.

Felix ran down the hill, then he sprinted into Rome’s forum. He couldn’t find anyone. They’d all gone. He was the only person left in the world! Finally he had power but they’d all gone! He knelt on the marble tiles, looked around and it was an empty Maidun Castle, spinning around him. He screamed.

His scream morphed into another scream and he was awake. And people were screaming, in his camp.

He leapt from the bed, tripped on his blanket, untangled it from his feet and rushed out, naked into the night air. He saw the man and the sword at the last moment and turned, but the blade sank into his chest.

“This is for Taddy,” said the man. “And you didn’t kill Nita, but it’s for her, too. Wouldn’t want her to feel left out.”

Felix wondered why the man’s face was dirty, then realised that the camp invaders must have muddied themselves as camouflage. He gasped, the man smiled and pumped his blade in and out. Felix could feel the metal inside him, tearing his lung to pieces. Then his attacker’s head was gone, replaced by a stump spouting blood. The headless assassin fell back and the sword went with him, sucking out of Felix’s chest. He would have fallen too but strong hands held him up. It was a Celerman.

“You all right, boss?”

“Get me…” He coughed blood. That wasn’t good. “Set me down, gently.” He sucked in the life-force flowing from his attacker, but it wasn’t enough. “Get me live captives, quick as you can.”

For the next two days Spring told Clodia everything. The Roman was infinitely more interested in Britain than Spring had ever been in anything. She questioned and probed and theorised as her eyes danced with the joy of knowledge. Spring rather regretted not making more of her time in Rome. She should have found out much more about the city and its people, she realised, not so that she’d know how to defeat them, but simply for the satisfaction of knowing. She resolved to be as inquisitive as Clodia from then on.

While Clodia took her daily rides up and down the coast – the ones that her guards had told her were too dangerous but that she went on anyway – Spring sat with Ferrandus and Tertius, questioning them about their own lives. They seemed surprised at first, and hesitant, but soon they were gabbling away and Spring realised that she’d be able to learn pretty much everything about Rome without going back there, which was a relief.

For now the whole Roman army was holding on the coast, being supplied from Gaul, repairing the few ships that could be repaired and rebuilding the camp. They were enlarging it so that the new ships and the mended ones could be
taken out of the sea and kept safe within the camp’s walls
. Spring had thought they must be joking or exaggerating, but Ferrandus assured her that, no, this was exactly the sort of crazy project that Caesar liked to undertake every now and then. The gates were widened and heightened and such mighty gate towers built that five hundred men guarded each gate, all the time, with thousands more ready armed and on call. Spring was rather proud that the Romans were going to so much bother to keep out little old Lowa.

Caesar’s tent complex, next to Clodia’s compound, was to stay in the same place as the whole camp was rebuilt, still the hub. However, on Spring’s second day there, two toga-wearing legates marched in and ordered Clodia to dismantle her temporary home and move it to a site that had been cleared for her, next to the stables by the new north wall. Clodia, smiling all the while, asked the legates to follow her into her tent. Shortly afterwards, they’d walked quickly from the compound, both red-faced. Clodia’s box stayed where it was and nobody else came to tell her to move. Spring asked, but Clodia wouldn’t tell her what she’d said to the legates.

Spring was enjoying herself a great deal in the mini camp. She was mindful that she needed to escape at some point soon, but Clodia insisted that her ankle was chained to something the entire time and her guards were permanently on watch. They weren’t as useless as they looked. There was no massive rush, though, as the army wasn’t going to move for a while. They were still waiting for the transports to fully resupply the army, and work was ongoing in the gigantic camp.

Then, in the middle of possibly her most fun chat with Clodia yet, on the morning of the fourth day, Ragnall and Quintus arrived.

C
lodia’s flamboyant guards might have guarded Spring effectively, but they were no match for Quintus’ squad of ten legionaries and six Cretan archers. Swords to their necks, the guards stood aside as the toughs kicked open the gate and ran in.

Ragnall followed. Quintus limped in behind him.

Tertius and Ferrandus brandished swords, ready to fight, but the Cretan archers’ bows were drawn and aimed.

Spring held up her arms and gestured for the praetorians to stand down. She glanced at Ragnall and he felt his resolve shake. He looked away. No, she had to die. She was bent on ruining him and he had to stop her. He would make his own destiny from now on. In memory of his parents and for his own sake, Zadar’s daughter had to die. He knew he was right. It had been difficult, but spending the last few days drinking heavily and talking to Quintus had helped. Alcohol opened the mind, and Quintus had helped him see his predicament from a Roman man’s point of view. The Britons were fools to allow women so much power, because they twisted it and used it against decent men like Ragnall. It had been happening all his life and it had to stop. He had to harden his heart and stop treating women as equals. Spring had to die.

“Give me your swords,” said one of Quintus’ toughs. The praetorians looked at Spring. She nodded. In unison they flip-tossed their swords, caught them by the blades, and handed them to the legionary.

“Hands on your heads,” he said.

They complied as Clodia emerged from her tent, looking, Ragnall had to admit, fantastic. She spotted him.

“Oh, Ragnall, you poor thing, you look simply awful. What has happened to you? Why don’t you ask your fellows to leave, and rest here for a while. You’ve had a terrible time, it’s clear. You need to recuperate. Stay here. I will make you feel better.”

Her lovely smile and the invitation in her voice might have stopped a charging elephant, but Ragnall’s days of being wowed and pushed around by evil women were over. Over! From now on he’d be tougher than a charging elephant.

“I don’t need to feel better,” he said, “I need a Roman man to see justice visited on his barbarian attacker.”

“Ragnall, she is your wife. You know what happened.”

“She’s not my wife. We didn’t marry properly.” Tougher than a charging elephant, he told himself. “But even if she was my wife, she is a barbarian who attacked a Roman and she must face justice.”

“If I might cut in here,” said Quintus with a smile, his voice as quiet and calm as a giant wave heading for shore, “Ragnall, I’d like you to leave. I don’t want you to see this.”

Ragnall looked at Spring, for the last time he hoped, and strode from the compound.

Atlas walked from his bed, out of the hut and sat in the chair. Nan smiled and nodded. “You’ll be right soon!” she said, reddening as she did so.

The short journey had exhausted him, but it was encouraging nonetheless. It was only that morning that he’d stood unaided for the first time. After Elann’s talk, he’d been wolfing down Nan’s stew and he did feel a lot stronger. He felt sick most of the time, too – the stew was vile – but definitely stronger.

As he mustered the strength for the return journey to the bed, Elann appeared.

“Manfreena has enchanted twelve Maidunite cavalry who came looking for you,” she said without preamble. “We will move against her as soon as you are able.”

Atlas looked at Elann. She was stocky but child-height, with black eyes bulging from a head almost as large as her torso. Her disproportionally massive hands were flecked with countless pink burn scars. Her dark hair wasn’t cut short, it was burnt short by constant forge accidents.

“Why will you help me?” he asked.

“Get better. I’ll be back every day until you’re ready.” She turned and walked away, leaving Atlas confused in his chair.

Spring’s first thought, once she’d stopped Tertius and Ferrandus from sacrificing themselves, was how awful Ragnall looked. In the few short days since he’d fled their tent, he’d lost much of the fat he’d gained in Rome. His usually pristine toga was wine-stained and hanging off him like a cloth draped over a pole. His eye sockets were so sunken and black that it looked like he’d found Clodia’s make-up trunk and used all of it in one go.

She was about to say something to him, something kind, something helpful, but Clodia came out and did it herself, in a much better way than Spring could have. But Ragnall rejected Clodia’s offer and called Spring a barbarian, which was just weird, considering they came from the same place so if she was a barbarian then so was he.

When Quintus sent Ragnall out, things got scary. Ragnall had had the chance to kill her before, when he’d been in a rage, but she’d never thought for a second that he would. Quintus, she was certain, would not think once, let alone twice, before chopping her head off or crucifying her or something else horrid. The only bright lining was that he wouldn’t be able to rape her first. Although, of course, he could get someone else to do it.
Oh no
, she thought,
that’s probably what he’s going to do
… Surely Clodia wouldn’t let him? But what could she do?

Clodia stood in the entrance to her tent. Quintus regarded her calmly, legionaries at each shoulder. His six archers still had their bows drawn and arrows nocked, one of them pointing at Spring, one at Clodia and the other four at Tertius and Ferrandus. The praetorians were glowering with rage, alert and ready to leap into action, but they were unarmed with their hands on top of their heads, so she hoped they weren’t going to try anything.

“Why don’t you come into my tent for a moment so we can talk about this?”

“Thank you, no,” said Quintus. “Can you go into your tent and stay there, please? I’d like to have a word with young Spring here.”

“But surely—” Clodia tried.

“Now,” interrupted Quintus.

Clodia looked at the legionaries and the archers, sighed and ducked into her tent.

The legate turned to the praetorians. “You two, sit on the ground.”

“And keep your hands on your heads while you do it,” snarled a legionary. They looked about as far from happy about it as Spring had seen anyone ever look, but she nodded frantically at them, trying to look confident, and they did as they were told.

Quintus turned to her for the first time and looked at her with his incongruously avuncular eyes. Spring felt like she had spiders running all over her skin. He beckoned her over. She went quickly, keen to prevent Tertius and Ferrandus from trying anything. He walked to Clodia’s summer seat, an ornate iron bench with room for two, sat down, and tapped the cushion next to his. Spring sat. Quintus took her hands and looked into her eyes.

“I want to thank you, Spring,” he said, “from the bottom of my previously black heart.”

Spring peered at him. She could see no duplicity. He looked sincere.

“Um?” she said.

“I know you can’t understand me, but I’m going to tell you this anyway. I didn’t like what I was. I thought about sex all the time, and I took it whenever I wanted it. I always hated myself immediately afterwards, but I couldn’t stop. I had dozens of comely young slave girls and boys in Rome and I used them horribly. Some of them pretended to like it, possibly some of them even did, but mostly I could see that they hated it and they hated me. I’d feel so, so bad afterwards, but I’d soon forget and I’d do it again. All men get these urges.”