Age of Iron by Angus Watson Page B

he said, but he wouldn’t mind too much as long as Ulpius had the respect to do it out of his sight. Quietly, Ulpius drew the same little paring knife he’d used to kill Sulpicia all those years before, and headed back towards his tiny antagonist. As he passed the riverside reed bed, a glint caught his eye. Was that perhaps a richly clad dead Warrior lying half-hidden in the muck? It was a nice day and he was feeling generous. Spring could live a few moments more. He headed into the reeds.
    The big, bearded ringmail-clad Warrior was dead or out cold. He had a heavy warhammer in one hand. Jupiter’s bollocks , thought Ulpius. Here was a vicious-looking one. Not a fellow you’d like to meet on the battlefield. Better make sure . He gripped the man’s hammer arm in one hand and swung his knife at his neck.
    The man’s head moved as fast as a snake’s, and the knife shattered on his helmet. Something blurred in Ulpius’ peripheral vision and crashed into his head. He tasted iron in his mouth. He reached up, then pulled his hand away. He was holding a clump of his beautiful hair, far too big a clump, sticky with too much blood, attached to what looked like a large part of his head. Blood ran into his eyes. He blinked miserably and saw through a red blur the man he’d thought was a corpse stand and swing something at him.
    That’ll be the hammer , thought Ulpius as his world slowed down. If only he had stayed in—
    Thunk.

Chapter 11
    D ug woke.
    Oh, his head hurt. His everything hurt. That was mud in his mouth. He must have got drunk and fallen asleep outside again. But the last thing he remembered was facing two chariots, about to die. They must have hit him on the head and left him for dead. Seemed unlikely, but here he was. Good thing they didn’t have dogs. They’d have smelled him out and bitten his face off. He’d seen it happen. Nasty way to go.
    He was lying in the reeds, cushioned on the muddy earth. He was comfortable and not too cold, although his head felt like it was being crushed in an apple press. He watched a small red spider crawl along a broken reed. He thought about the story of Cran Madoc, the northern king. Cran Madoc’s army had been defeated and he’d fled, friendless. He’d sat in a cave and watched a spider build a web, then destroyed the web with the tip of his spear. Then the spider had rebuilt the web and Cran Madoc had broken it again. And on and on, until Cran Madoc realised that no matter how many times he destroyed the web, the spider would always rebuild. So perseverance was the moral of the tale. Cran Madoc took heart, rebuilt his army and retook his kingdom. Dug had always thought the story was a crock of badger shite. Surely the real moral was that no matter what you build, some vicious bugger will always destroy it?
    He lay still, in no hurry to sit up and make his head feel worse. He wondered if he was dead. Plenty of people died with their eyes open. Maybe the dead could see? He’d never heard them deny it. He’d never seen the dead blink though.
    He blinked. Alive then.
    He remembered his dream and wished he were dead, looking out through sightless eyes from a southern funeral bed. Up north they gave the dead to the sea. In the south, miles from any sea, they left the dead on funeral beds so animals could strip them to bones. Then they used the bones for all sorts. He’d seen babies with rattles made from ancestors’ teeth, and thigh bones of dead husbands used to stir the stew. A wee bit tasteless, he thought. Better to put the dead in the sea, he reckoned. He drifted back to sleep.
    “Wake up!” Something poked him in the bottom. He spun round. Nothing but thousands of seals swimming through the land towards a hillfort … “Wake up!” The seals struggled up into the air like a flock of overweight birds, quacking like ducks. They whirled in a circle, zoomed up to him, stopped quacking and all shouted, “Wake up, you big fool!” His vision rushed away, came back