Age of Iron by Angus Watson Read Free Book Online

liked beautiful things.
    Her longbow leaned against the wall of the hut next to the shorter, less powerful recurve that she used on horseback. The longbow was no affectation. It was the culmination of years of learning, practice and experimentation – mostly Elann Nancarrow’s and her ancestors’. Elann had air-dried and cured a whole yew tree for five years, then rasped and sanded it into a two-pace-long bow limb. Stiffer heartwood made the bow’s belly so the draw was more resistant, adding more power. Springier external wood made the bow’s back, making the release quicker, adding even more power to the arrow. Most men couldn’t draw the bow properly, but after years of practice Lowa could shoot an arrow from a fully drawn bow every three heartbeats. Each arrow could pierce iron a finger’s breadth thick at close range or, at eight hundred paces, knock a ringmail-clad man off his horse.
    The bow’s tips were fire-hardened aurochs horn, its string rawhide, the handle soft but tough foal’s leather. It had no decoration. It was gnarled and knobbed like a freakishly long badly stuffed sausage. Drawing it fully was an inelegant manoeuvre of squeezing the shoulder blades together and wrenching the chest open. Ballistas and other horse- or ox-drawn weapons aside, it was probably the most powerful bow in existence. Equal most powerful anyway. Its twin sat proudly in Elann Nancarrow’s hut on Maidun Castle, and she was making more. Many said that these longbows must have been made with magic, and that Lowa herself must be a powerful druid to be able to use one. That annoyed her. The bow and her skill were the product of a lot of hard work and nothing else.
    Looking at her longbow now, then down at the beautiful iron arrowhead, its deep contoured hues even more lovely in the flickering light of the fire, didn’t give Lowa its usual warm pleasure. They were just things, she found herself thinking. She cursed and tossed a slingstone at the toy dog. The stone ricocheted off a wall upright and skittered into a dark corner.
    Unlike her to miss. What the Mother was up? Must be hungry, she told herself. If Aithne hadn’t forgotten to collect their lunches from the food wagon that morning, or if she could be bothered to head to the main camp to forage, then she’d feel fine, she told herself. Much more importantly than hunger or paranoia, what was she going to wear to the after-battle party?
    She rifled through a chest of clothes tucked into an alcove. Peasant threads. She lifted out a leather waistcoat. It still smelled of the dog shit it had been tanned with. You’d expect people with a well made hut like this to have better clothes. But Barton had been crippled by Zadar’s taxes for ten years. The structure of its prosperous past remained, but the luxuries were gone. She tossed the waistcoat back into the chest and pulled a crumpled red linen dress from her own leather bag. It was all she had for the evening’s festivities, but she’d worn it two nights ago. It had a mild body odour hum and a grass stain on the bottom. She smiled in memory of the grass stain.
    She’d only planned for one victory party on this sortie. The red dress would have to get a second outing. In her teens that might have upset her. Now she’d reached her grand old mid-twenties, it still worried her, but she knew it shouldn’t. Men didn’t care if you wore the same thing ten times in a row, as long as you looked good. There were women who would notice, but the opinion of women who cared about shit like that meant almost nothing to her. Besides, as she’d decided years ago, and almost convinced herself, most people would be far too busy worrying about themselves to notice her outfit.
    Ducking into the porch and reaching for the door, she remembered how cold she’d been the other night. She dug her leather riding trousers out from her pile of battle clothes and pulled them on under the dress. So what if she wafted an equine aroma at the party?