Age of Iron (Iron Age) by Angus Watson

Book Preface

“Mind your spears, coming through!”

Dug Sealskinner shouldered his way back through the ranks. Front rank was for young people who hadn’t learned to fear battle and old men who thought they could compete with the young.

Dug put himself halfway in that last category. He’d been alive for about forty years, so he was old. And he wanted to compete with the young, but grim experience had unequivocally, and sometimes humiliatingly, demonstrated that the young won every time. Even when they didn’t win they won because they were young and he wasn’t.

And here he was again, in another Bel-cursed battle line. Had things gone to plan, he’d have been living the respectable older man’s life, lord of his broch, running his own seaside farm on Britain’s north coast, shearing sheep, spearing seals and playing peekaboo with grandchildren. He’d been close to achieving that when fate had run up and kicked him in the bollocks. Since then, somehow, the years had fallen past, each one dying with him no nearer the goals that had seemed so achievable at its birth.

If only we could shape our own lives, he often thought, rather than other bastards coming along and shaping them for us.

Satisfyingly, the ragtag ranks parted at his request. He might not feel it, but he still looked fearsome, and he was a Warrior. His jutting jaw was bearded with thick bristle. His big head was cased in a rusty but robust, undecorated iron helmet. His oiled ringmail shone expensively in the morning sun, its heaviness flattening his ever-rounder stomach. The weighty warhammer which swung on a leather lanyard from his right hand could have felled any mythical beastie.