Read Online Age of Iron by Angus Watson - Free Book Online

but she couldn’t be both friend and leader. Yes, they’d been together for years. Yes, they’d become Zadar’s most favoured fighters – right now more favoured than the Fifty. And yes, she loved Cordelia, Maura, Seanna and Realin like daughters. But that was exactly it. Lowa loathed mothers who got drunk and shared smutty jokes with their daughters. Too much familiarity cheapened and weakened the bond. So, even though she was younger than at least two of them, she kept a maternal distance.
    Looking around at the chatting, laughing throng, it was odd to think that these people had spent the morning up to their armpits in gore, slaughtering the massively more numerous but woefully inferior foe. Ah, not all of them had fought . There was Keelin Orton, Zadar’s latest mistress, standing on her own because none of the men dared talk to her and none of the women wanted to. She was a beautiful girl, about fifteen years old, with come-and-get-it eyes, a two-handspan waist, an equine rump, tits the size of her head and a pout pettish enough to sour milk. Her white linen dress and broad leather belt would have looked virginal on most other girls. On Keelin, it had Lowa questioning her usual preference for men. She was typical Zadar fodder. When Zadar announced that she would open the morning’s battle by driving the gruesome man-drawn chariot, Keelin had squealed with delight. Once the draught-men were mad with the agony of a thick piece of metal hammered through each shoulder, she’d teased them coquettishly. She was no sweetie.
    Lowa could see a little smile playing on Keelin’s lips as she looked at Mylor. Next to the fire, where all could see, stood a wooden-fenced pen of pigs. Barton’s king was inside, chained to a wooden upright. The former ruler didn’t seem to mind. He was sucking his thumb and stroking a big hairy boar. The boar was enjoying the attention and grunting encouragingly. It looked like it was thinking about mounting Mylor. That would please the spectators.
    She saw Keelin stop smiling as the druid Felix oozed up to her. He’d clearly finished the sacrifices quickly, or maybe he was saving some for later. He stood too close to Keelin, took both her hands and looked up at her like a half-bald puppy. If Felix noticed her cringe, he didn’t show it. He barked out a joke and laughed roaringly as she looked over his head for a rescuer. Lowa was not going to help.
    The party was in the lower section of the hillfort, where buildings were sparse and livestock should have been corralled in times of danger. Long tables had been piled with Barton’s food reserves. Near the fire the revellers’ cheeks were bronzely aglow with health and happiness. Further away, soft starlight painted people gentle silver in the moonless night. It was vastly more pleasant than Zadar’s usual hellishly smoky hall-based shindigs. On summer evenings like these it was impossible to remember the winter.
    But still Lowa couldn’t shake her unease. What the Mother was it? Booze and food hadn’t helped much. She thought about going back to her hut, but she couldn’t face the inevitable door-hanging, arty dickheads, whose role was to drunkenly and belligerently demand where you were going and why, take personal offence that you could think of leaving, then splatter you with spittle as they demanded that you stay. She didn’t want to talk her way past them just yet, and she couldn’t kill them. Even in Maidun’s army wanton murder was frowned upon. Unless it was Zadar’s idea.
    She turned her attention to the band. Five men in brightly patterned outfits were playing brass instruments on a platform extending from the rampart at the side of the enclosure. The blaring of bronze instruments died in a long, ugly blast, and the men sang unaccompanied in a rumbling bass,
    There was a mad king called Mylor
    Who took Zadar on in a war.
    As they were routed,
    Mylor’s people all shouted,
    What a stupid old king to die for.
    “The weakest