one, shooting those arrows into man, woman and beast. I said to myself right then, she’ll be queen one day, that one. She was like a goddess. You would not believe how many she killed that day. I told myself then and there that she’d be queen. Moving like she and the horse were one, she was. First over the palisade.” The man was nodding enthusiastically.
“How many?” Ragnall managed.
“How many what?”
“How many people did she kill?”
“At Boddingham?”
“Yes!”
“I don’t know. Maybe fifty? Maybe ten. Probably more than ten, less than fifty. A lot. Maybe fifty.”
“I see. I have to go.”
“Have a drink! I’ll go and get you one. You look like you need a drink.”
Ragnall stopped. “All right, I think I will have another drink.” He found a space on a bench and sat down to wait. The man tottered away.
After a while Ragnall realised that the man wasn’t coming back and he got up to find his own drink.
Away from the noise of celebration, Lowa spoke to Bruxon the Dumnonian for a long time. Lowa asked most of the questions and Bruxon did most of the talking. She heard how Samalur’s father, Vidin, had been a tyrant very much in the Zadar mould, perhaps worse, ravaging Dumnonia to enrich the few and win favour with the coming Romans.
Bruxon and a few others had plotted, rebelled and killed Vidin. They’d replaced him with his up-until-then studious son Samalur. It had been a mistake. Samalur was a good deal more intelligent than his father, but the moment they’d put him on the throne he’d turned his keen mind to merciless persecution. As well as all the druids, he’d killed anyone he perceived to be a rival, including three of his own brothers, two sisters, his mother and a slew of uncles, aunts and cousins. Anyone who wasn’t a threat but had some power, he’d bought off with gold, land and slaves. Bruxon and the original plotters, those of them left alive, had been looking for a way to be rid of the young oppressor when Lowa had kindly done it for them. He apologised profusely for the battle, offered food, weapons and gold as reparation, and swore that Dumnonia would join Maidun as a more numerous but junior ally in battles against the Romans, or anyone else for that matter.
He also asked Lowa’s permission to become king of Dumnonia. The tribe’s leadership had always been rigidly hereditary, but Samalur had murdered his relations so thoroughly that Bruxon, a distant cousin of the royal line, had as good a claim to the throne as anyone, as well as the support of the more morally upstanding survivors of Samalur’s rule. He swore that he’d treat his people well and prepare his armies for the Roman invasion.
Lowa was convinced. She considered telling Bruxon to wait for her decision, intending to discuss it with Drustan and Atlas. But some decisions had to be made quickly. It was for decisions like this that tribes had a sole ruler. So she sent Bruxon off, demanding that he and his army return home immediately and that he report back to her in four moons with the promised reparations.
Chapter 5
Nearly a moon after the battle on Sarum Plain, Lowa was walking down from Maidun Castle, bow in one hand, arrow-stuffed quiver bouncing on her back, on her way to win the archery competition. She’d considered the long-distance running race, which she might have won, and the mêlée scramble, in which she might have learnt something while not winning, but in the end she elected to enter the one event in which she’d definitely triumph. Now that she was queen, winner was a more appropriate look than plucky loser.
Lowa had organised a few days of competitions, eating and drinking to mark the victory over the Dumnonians and the beginning of her reign with something that people would remember. More than that, she wanted her newly appointed captains – Atlas Agrippa, Carden Nancarrow, Mal and Nita Fletcher and more – to see others’ abilities and choose their own officers.
Even more than that, perhaps, she wanted a break from the mind-knottingly tiresome and convoluted arse ache of running a realm. Zadar had left her with a thousand problems, not least how to reduce the crippling taxes that he’d claimed from tribes under his boot and free all the slaves he’d collected, while still feeding, housing and arming the army. The obvious answer would have been to disband the army, for a few moons