Age of Iron by Angus Watson Page A

lap and pressed pointed fingernails into her fleshy throat.
    “Get off!” shouted Vasin, swinging a fist. Chamanca caught her wrist and twisted her arm back to her side. She pressed her nails harder into the woman’s podgy neck, then opened her filed-tooth mouth and leaned slowly towards the other side of her throat. Vasin’s eyes bulged.
    “All right, all right,” Vasin deflated.
    “Thank you, Chamanca. No need to hurt her,” said Felix. “Now there’s an experiment I’ve been meaning to try for a while. You are the perfect candidates for it. It’s a good one. We are going feed you, Vasin, to Elliax. Bit by bit. Another druid will treat your wounds, and you are going to be very surprised to see just how much weight you can lose without dying.”
    Vasin made a choking sound.
    “I know, doesn’t it sound interesting ? There is a greater purpose to this experiment, however, than entertainment, which will become clear. Meanwhile, you are what you eat, so we will watch as Elliax becomes his wife. It will be fascinating.”
    Felix held up his small hands in triumph and looked around the room nodding, encouraging the others to show their appreciation.

Chapter 10
    U lpius’ pox-ruined face narrowed and the tip of his tongue crept out between his lips like a cautious little pink slug. He took aim. He swung, his hair tossed in a glorious arc framing his head and … Whack! The hand dropped away and the chunky bronze bracelet fell into the long riverside grass.
    There were plenty of excellent pickings here on the edge of the field, without getting too close to Zadar’s camp. Ogre thought the Maidun army had moved out, but it was better to be safe than tortured to death for bodyrobbing. There was nobody left from Barton to join in the scavenging and they’d scared off a few punters from neighbouring settlements, so they were getting rich second dibs plundering the bodies. First dibs had gone to the battle winners, but there was always still plenty to find afterwards, when you could search without the worry of a spear in the back.
    Red-faced and round-cheeked with exertion, her usually neat long hair tangled into a scraggly clump on top of her head, the girl Spring was trying to drag the spoils cart over some obstruction – probably the range of molehills that Ulpius had noticed but not warned her about. The cart was for big finds like ringmail, swords and helmets. Smaller spoils – the more valuable glass and gold kind – went into the men’s own bags. Ulpius had enjoyed watching Ogre tell Spring she was on cart duty. He’d said it was because she was too delicate to pull rings from death-swollen fingers and heave bodies about, but the real reason was so she wouldn’t get a proper share of the booty, because she was small and annoying. But somehow the look on Spring’s face when she’d been told, in particular the toss of her hair while wrinkling her nose and glancing in Ulpius’ direction, had left him feeling stupid.
    But now look at her, kicking molehills apart to clear the cart’s path. She was all knees and elbows that girl, weak as … well, weak as a nine-year-old child. It was a superbly shoddy cart to boot, with bent axles and mismatched wheels. It looked like it had been assembled in the dark by a drunken carpenter, then rammed repeatedly into a wall.
    Spring was getting left further behind, not just because of the cart, and not because she was doing anything useful like searching bodies, but because the wrong-headed little minx kept stopping to stare at everyday objects like herons and trees. She was always gazing intently at things that she’d seen before, like some kind of dimwit. Ulpius snorted out an involuntary giggle. If she carried on like this, it would only be a matter of heartbeats before she was out of the other men’s sight.
    A short while later Ogre and the others disappeared behind a copse and Ulpius saw that his moment had come. Ogre would know that he’d killed her, no matter what