Free Age of Iron by Angus Watson Page B

jacket. Unsurprisingly, given the heat, his pale face was shining with sweat. Weylin shook his head. Take your jacket off, you idiot! he thought.
    To Felix’s left was Chamanca the Iberian, the much smaller but more dangerous of Zadar’s guards. Tadman could stand and smite effectively enough, but Chamanca whirled through the foe’s ranks like a greased weasel, leaving a trail of confused and mortally wounded enemies. She looked at Weylin now as if counting the ways she could kill him. He looked back. Her hair was like dried black grass, a soft frame around her hard eyes, shining gold-brown cheeks and lower-lip-heavy pissed-off pout. She wore epaulettes, elbow protectors, gauntlets, greaves, leather shorts and a double-cupped iron chestpiece inlaid with bronze swirls. Weylin looked from her metalled breasts to her muscled stomach, over her tight shorts which gathered into her crotch like an invitation, to her thighs glowing smoothly in the candlelight. He looked back up her body to her face. She was still looking into his eyes. He gulped. She grinned, revealing teeth filed into sharp points.
    Weylin managed to look away. If Dionysia noticed him gawping for any longer, there’d be trouble.
    “These,” said Felix, “are Elliax and Vasin Goldan.” Felix gestured to a bench where a man and woman sat, both dressed in Roman-style purple togas which suited them about as well as a hat suited a dog. Vasin’s white arms were circled by too many bronze armlets. Some of them looked painfully tight, with mauve flesh bulging on either side.
    “They’re from Barton. Elliax is a fellow druid.”
    Elliax greeted Weylin and Dionysia with a rodent grin, eyes flashing like a startled horse’s. Vasin appraised Weylin and Dionysia fatly, seemed to find them unworthy of her attention and returned her gaze to the middle distance.
    “So,” said Felix. “Where is Lowa Flynn?”
    Weylin looked at Dionysia. His wife narrowed her annoying green eyes at him. It seemed that he was to do the talking.
    “She got away.”
    Felix’s little eyes bulged and his lips retreated into a humour-free sneer. “Did she? You’re telling me that she escaped from a fort full of soldiers? From skilful highly rewarded soldiers such as you, who were all ordered to kill her?”
    Weylin breathed in, then explained what had happened. Dionysia filled in the details that he missed. He was pretty sure he couldn’t be blamed for her escape, and anyway he’d brought down the Bullbrow girl where others had failed.
    “So. She either swam the river or took a boat from the jetty.” Felix looked around as if seeking an answer.
    “There is a boat at that jetty!” Elliax Goldan piped up from the bench. “Just a coracle but…” He noticed that all the Maidun people were looking at him in surprise. “Oh. Sorry. I shouldn’t have spoken unbidden…”
    “Elliax, Elliax. A druid can always speak.” Felix smiled at him like a wolf smiling at a lamb with a broken leg, then back to Weylin. “She’s not a swimmer, so it’s plain she escaped in the coracle. If I’m not mistaken, that river flows past Barton village. It’s the same river we met by this morning. Geography, you see. The secret to success, Weylin and Dionysia, is knowing the land better than your foe. Geography makes history. And, of course, you have to know your enemy better than he or she knows him- or herself. So, knowing Lowa and knowing Barton, where would she go first?” Felix looked around like a teacher druid at a group of seven-year-olds.
    “As far as she could?” piped Dionysia keenly.
    Felix shook his head. “Good thing you’re a fighter, not a thinker.”
    Weylin was pretty sure he could feel the heat from his wife’s blush. Ha! he thought.
    Felix continued: “Lowa won’t stop until she has her revenge. She’ll need her bow for that. So the first thing she did, knowing that she was being chased by dullards, was to get her bow from her hut.”
    “Shall we…?” Dionysia asked,