Clash of Iron Read Free

about to charge? Dug and the rest of the Maidun army tensed as one, but the chariots wheeled round to display a couple of naked, mooning posteriors, and returned to the Dumnonian lines.
    Now, where was I? thought Dug. Oh yes, he’d been thinking that he should have gone to the war council and pointed out how rubbish the plan was, and not chickened out of it because he didn’t want to see Lowa and that woman-stealing arsehole Ragnall together. Whatever advice Drustan, Carden, Atlas and the rest had given her, it had either been crap or she’d ignored it. He could see three glaring mistakes.
    First rule when fighting a larger army was to find somewhere narrow to fight, like a valley or, better, a cliff-lined gorge, to ensure that fighting was never more then one on one. Yet Lowa had decided to meet Samalur on an open plain, where he would surely encircle her much smaller force and attack every soldier of hers with ten of his.
    Second rule with a smaller army was surprise. Hit the enemy when and where they didn’t expect it. Yet the Dumnonians had been camped in the same place for three days, and Lowa had announced that she would attack them there. It couldn’t have been less of a surprise.
    The third, and biggest, error was meeting Samalur in battle at all. An army that size would be able to feed itself for only a matter of days in enemy territory, so, had Lowa pulled her people up into impregnable Maidun Castle and closed the gates, the Dumnonians would have gone home soon enough.
    The only good thing he’d heard that she’d done was to tell the Dumnonian king that they were going to attack the night before. With any luck he would have kept his troops awake in readiness, while the Maidun forces had slept. And, Dug admitted to himself, he didn’t know everything. There might have been more to the plan than immediately met the eye. Whatever, it didn’t matter. He just had to follow orders, give orders, and fight.
    Down by his feet were two long spears and a large, hefty shield. They’d been sneaked forward once the ranks were already in place so that the Dumnonians wouldn’t know they were there. That was pretty tricksy and should really muck up a chariot charge, so it was possible, he supposed, that Lowa had other schemes in place.
    Another positive was that the breeze was an easterly on the Maidunites backs, rather than the more common south-westerly. That was a spot of luck, since their projectiles would go further than the enemy’s, but it was hardly a gale, and there was no way Lowa could claim credit for the direction of the wind.
    Dug’s thoughts were interrupted by a rattling blare of bronze trumpets with wooden clackers in their mouths. They rang out first from the Dumnonian army, then from their own. The Dumnonian front line shuddered as one, then rolled forwards. Here we go. Dug felt the contents of his stomach lurch and asked Makka the god of war to ensure, if nothing else, that he didn’t shit in his leather battle trousers. If he was going to the Otherworld today he wanted to arrive clean-arsed.
    “Ready!” he shouted, looking around at his men and women, then added, “Arms’ length between you all!” more for something to say than anything else – they were already well spaced. They looked back and him and nodded; some were wide-eyed with their lips parted in fear, some serious, some wild-eyed and froth-mouthed. They were mostly armoured in leather like him, a few wore iron helmets like his. Most were armed either with hefty iron swords or stout spears. He was the only one with a hammer. Very few, thank Toutatis, looked like they were going to flee before the fighting had begun, so that at least was a great improvement on some battles he’d been in. He looked back to the Dumnonians and spotted a large dragonfly, flying between the armies as if it was just another day.
     
    From horseback in the centre, atop one of the burial mounds that clung on to Sarum Plain’s uplands like a well-spaced