Reign of Iron

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Authors: Angus Watson
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will return, burn your fort and slaughter your tribe – man, woman, child and sheep. Nod if you understand and agree.” Jocanta nodded. “Good. And because I don’t want you to think I’m all kindness…”
    Lowa pulled the hank of hair tight and sliced through its roots with her sword. She repeated the manoeuvre until there was a carpet of golden hair on the floor and only a scrub of short, uneven stubble on Jocanta Fairtresses’ outraged head.

Chapter 14
    F elix stood in the meadow. Only pillars of stone remained of the bridge, jutting from the heaving, muddy water like charred bones. The river was five hundred paces from bank to bank, fully in spate with logs and whole trees bobbing along briskly on filthy mountain snowmelt. They would not be swimming across.
    Standing next to him, half his height again, was Gub, leader of the Maximen. Felix had originally called them Herculeses and Nymphs, but Caesar has said he disliked such fey Greek appellations, and renamed the giants Maximen and the speedy ones Celermen. Felix thought those names were exceedingly boring, but he didn’t care enough to argue. He hadn’t argued with Caesar yet and, if he did, it would be about something that mattered. “Pick your battles” was one of the very few things he remembered his father telling him.
    “Yus, Suh, four Celerman kill, all by same. Big dark man, sexy woman and archer woman,” said the Maximan, finally, in answer to Felix’s question about who’d killed the four Celermen.
    “How can you know who killed them? If you were there, why didn’t you kill their killers?”
    “Duh?”
    “Oh, for Jupiter’s sake,” said Felix, stamping his little feet. The magic that had increased his Maximen’s size, strength and speed had unfortunately decreased their intellect. Felix guessed that the growth of their skulls had squashed their brains. The thicker the bone, the thicker the man, it seemed.
    “Jupiter’s?” said the Maximan, the deep flesh on his meaty brow coalescing in confusion.
    “Forget Jupiter. This dark man – in what way was he dark?”
    “Guh?”
    “Dark man. Dark clothes, dark hair or dark skin?”
    “Dark clothes.”
    “Ah.”
    “And dark hair. Dark skin, too.”
    “I see. And did the sexy woman have a mace and a sword?”
    “Little mace. Little knife.”
    “And the archer, was she a blonde-haired woman?”
    “She had hair.”
    “Blonde?”
    “Guh?”
    “Never mind. Where did they go, these three?”
    Gub looked over to where the bridge had been, his face a picture of gormlessness. “Don’t know. Was different before.” He looked back to Felix. The druid swore he could see through Gub’s dark eyes right to the back of his skull.
    “OK. Now get back to the others.”
    “Guh?”
    “Back. Home! Find Kelter and send him to me.”
    “Guh?”
    “Send. Kelter. The. Celerman. To. Me.”
    “Gub.”
    The Maximan waddled away, back to the nest or whatever one wanted to call the sordid filth holes that the giants had dug themselves amid the corpses and dereliction of the Ootipeat and Tengoterry camp. The Maximen were little more than the basest animals, until they started killing, when they became beautiful, marvellous acrobats. The Celermen also killed wonderfully well, but if anything their intelligence had been increased by their metamorphosis. It was odd, because Felix applied the same dark magic process to produce both Celermen and Maximen. He never knew which he was going to get until it was done. Usually he got a corpse. Sometimes he produced one of his mutants. So far he had forty Celermen and twenty Maximen. Caesar had banned him from making any more, and so he wouldn’t for now. It was another battle he wasn’t going to pick, not yet.
    Initially he’d found the Celermen better company. You could have a conversation with a Celerman. But now he preferred the Maximen. Felix had never much enjoyed conversation and the big ones were easier to control.
    He looked across the river. So,

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