arm. Somebody strong. Dug whipped round the dented, blood-covered shield boss to beat away the hindrance. He needed that arm. But something grabbed his left arm too.
“Stop!” came the annoying shout again. He tried to shake off his captors, but the little voice in his head which had been struggling to make itself heard for some time finally got through and persuaded him to desist struggling for the briefest of moments and take assess the situation.
Dug shook his head. His ears popped. It felt like a bandage was ripped off his eyes as reality whooshed back to him. Mal was holding one of his arms, Atlas the other. “Um?” He said.
“Thank Sobek for that,” said Atlas. “It’s over, you great fool. Look.”
Dug looked around. The fighting had stopped. Some Dumnonians were heading back to their chariots. Many from both sides were sitting on the bloody grass, nursing wounds. Others, less fortunate, were screaming in pain, trying to hold their guts in or staring at their severed limbs. Others were bubbling their last. An awful lot were dead. Dug looked at his blood-smeared hammerhead.
“What happened?” he managed.
“Lowa,” said Mal. Atlas was already off, shouting at the beaten Dumnonians not to stray too far.
“Lowa?”
“Lowa.” Mal shook his head in exhausted wonder.
“Could you give me a wee bit more detail?” asked Dug.
“Sorry, battle took it out of me. We’re not all Makka-driven madmen like you, Dug. We were fighting away, when there was this unholy scream and there was Silver – Spring, I mean – on horseback, next to Lowa.” Now Mal mentioned it, the northerner did find the memory of a weird scream somewhere amongst all the rage. “And Lowa was holding up the Dumnonians’ king’s head,” Mal continued, “shouting that the battle was over. Almost all the Dumnonians said fair’s fair and put their weapons down. And that was that, more or less. A few idiots like you fought on for a short while, but most of them gave up like men who never wanted to fight in the first place. Lowa galloped off southwards, presumably to halt the battle over there.”
“She’s gone?”
“She’s one of that lot.” Mal pointed at a flock of cavalry galloping across the plain to the other side of the battlefield.
“Badgers’ cocks,” said Dug.
Chapter 4
Ragnall had drunk way too much alcohol once before. He’d behaved like a chump, been beaten up and woken the next day feeling as if he’d been poisoned and that everything he’d done or ever hoped to achieve was worthless. So he’d made the sensible decision to never get very drunk again, in much the same way, he reckoned, that a dog might pull apart a wasps’ nest only once.
So he didn’t understand, the evening following the battle, why all the people around him, Drustan included, had drunk so much beer and cider that they were telling the same stories over and over and wagging fingers at each other as if they’d discovered the secret of life, when in fact their observations were to philosophy what farting was to singing. Ragnall decided that he’d rather lie on his own looking at the sky than listen to another half-remembered story or quarter-cultivated pearl of wisdom, so he headed off.
He was nearly clear of the impromptu outdoor inn’s rough tables and benches when a tough looking but cheerily drunken man grabbed him.
“Have a drink!”
“Thanks, but I’ve already got two over there,” he lied.
“I see! You know when I knew that Lowa would be queen?”
“I don’t.” Ragnall tried to pull away, but the man held his arm. It seemed that he had a story and was determined to tell it. Ragnall decided it would be easier and quicker to listen than try to reason his way out of the situation.
“You know when I knew that Lowa would be queen?” the man repeated.
“OK, when did you know Lowa would be queen?” Ragnall asked.
“Boddingham,” said the man.
“What?” said Ragnall.
“Boddingham,” the man repeated, nodding his head vigorously. “When we sacked it. That’s when I knew Lowa would be queen one day.”
The peaceful summer night and the victorious laughter of the revellers melted away as Ragnall remembered riding home to Boddingham. His dead friends. The smashed palisade. His slaughtered brothers. Slaughtered by arrows …
He shook his head. “But Lowa wasn’t at Boddingham. She told me she was off scouting that day.”
“Wasn’t at Boddingham? Lowa? Scouting? Lowa? Nah, nah, nah. You got that very wrong, mate. First over the palisade, that was her, moving as if she and that horse were