Reign of Iron by Angus Watson

by the others, arrow still sticking from his head.
    “Rabbits?”
    “The small fat hares. They’re animals called rabbits. We don’t have them in Britain. They’re reasonable eating – nothing compared to boar, mind you – but they ruin crops, so nobody’s brought them over the Channel.”
    “Are you a ghost now then?”
    “No, just in your mind still.”
    “I see, hang on. Walfdan!”
    The druid stopped his description of the excellent Tengoterry cavalry mid-sentence. “Yes, child?”
    “Are those animals with long ears back there called rabbits?”
    “Yes.”
    “Different from hares?”
    “Yes.”
    “Can they swim?”
    “Spring, that’s enough,” said Chamanca. “Don’t interrupt again unless we’re under attack.”
    “OK!” said Spring, then, silently to Dug, “I’ve got you, you big cheat. You are a ghost! I didn’t know those were rabbits, and you did, so you can’t be part of my mind. Ha! What’s it like being a ghost? Tell me about it! What happens when you die?”
    “I’m not a ghost. I am in your head. Look a little deeper and you’ll remember that your mother told you about rabbits when you were a wee girl.”
    It was possible, Spring conceded. Her mother had told her a lot of things.
    “And, anyway, if I was a ghost I wouldn’t be walking around with this stupid arrow sticking out of my face.”
    “I suppose not…”
    “How about you get rid of it?”
    “All right,” said Spring, and the arrow was gone.
    “See, part of your imagination. Nothing more!”
    “That proves nothing. You could have done that. And another thing—”
    But Dug had disappeared. Spring tried to conjure him back but he remained stubbornly invisible – proof, if proof had been needed, which it wasn’t – that it was Dug, the real Dug, happy and thriving in the Otherworld and not just a figment of her mind. Her steps sprightlier, Spring returned to investigating the passing countryside for further Gaulish aberrations like rabbits and gangs of gullible Romans.
    The following day they commandeered horses and rode on across Gaul. Spring saw no new animals, which was a disappointment. She saw more rabbits and was increasingly charmed by their sniffing and hopping, but they were hardly the man-eating lizards or birds the size of cows that she’d been hoping for, and she didn’t see Dug again. Atlas and Chamanca were fairly rotten company, all wrapped up in each other and hardly talking to her at all.
    The Gaulish people were even less impressive than the animals. It was like they were all sulking. Atlas told her that they were ashamed at letting the Romans beat them so easily. Chamanca said they’d always been miserable.
    Finally, they arrived in eastern Gaul. The vast camps of the newly invading German army were easy to find. Chamanca had said that Germans wore nothing but tiny fur pants, so Spring had been looking forward to seeing them, but disappointingly there were no hairy tackle-pouches to be seen. These Germans dressed, looked and sounded much like Britons, with some differences. They were, on average, taller and blonder; Spring saw a couple who looked like Lowa, which made her growl. Many wore ornate armour, there was more fur than you’d have seen in the Maidun army (draped over shoulders and wrapped round legs, not cupping genitals as she’d been led to expect) and more people were on horseback. They didn’t seem to have any chariots. It was quite unnerving, she thought, this same but different world. When things were completely different, like in the merchants’ town of Bladonfort compared to Maidun’s army camp, for example, it was fun and exciting. When things were just a bit different from the norm, as they were here, it disquieted her. It was like she’d woken up one morning in a fake world, which the gods had built to trick her but got a few details wrong.
    They rode through the slightly odd masses of Germans to the temporary court of Senlack and Brostona of the Ootipeats and