Age of Iron Read Online Free PDF

them apart from Spring of course. Ulpius looked around. Yes, there she was, lying on the grass and staring at the sky while a once-in-a-lifetime spectacle took place below them. How could she not watch? Some people had no idea how to enjoy the world.
    There’d be rich pickings tomorrow. But not as rich as – Mars! Where was it? Ulpius patted himself like a man with a wasp down his toga. Ah, relief. His mirror was exactly where he’d put it, like it always was.
    Aulus Ulpius Galba had been known as Ulpius for so long that he hardly remembered his full Roman name. He was a short man with a triangular, pox-cratered face which rose from a minute goateed chin into a broad forehead crowned with a voluminous, flowing display of lustrous, excellently coiffed, obsidian-black hair. Unlike any other outlaw he’d met since leaving Rome, he owned a mirror. Wealthy people, some Warriors and some druids had mirrors, but nomadic bandits, as a rule, were not so vain.
    Ulpius’ mirror, until recently at least, was the most important thing in his life. Much of his leisure time was spent gazing into its polished silver surface and styling his hair. He spent hours formulating the finest styling creams and lotions. Current favourite was a few gobs of his own saliva mixed with a smear of clay, a squirt of beery piss and plenty of blood. Didn’t matter what kind of blood; human was the easiest to find, so he used that mostly. He’d lost his sheep’s bladder, so now he stored his hair goo in a girl’s bladder that he’d picked up after another of Zadar’s actions.
    When he wasn’t perfecting the peaks and troughs of his bouffant halo, Ulpius liked to polish his mirror. The repetitive circular movement with the metal cradled in his lap calmed him, even if some jealous onlookers likened it to masturbation. One ill-mannered fool had paid for a wanking jibe with a cut that she’d be reminded of if she ever saw a mirror.
    Ulpius reckoned he was about thirty-five years old, although he told everyone he was twenty. (The truth, for him, was what he thought other people would believe.) He saw his existence as two lives separated by the incident caused by the mirror. The first was, by a long shot, the happier.
    He was the only child of a couple who owned an upmarket butcher’s shop in Rome. Had owned, at least. He didn’t know whether either was alive still. They were first cousins, both single children who’d felt neglected by their own parents and envious of others’ siblings. They wanted nothing more than to marry early, trot out a multitude of children and lavish love on a happy brood. So they’d married at sixteen and taken over the butcher’s shop left to Ulpius’ father by Ulpius’ paternal grandfather, who’d died, wailing in despair at the unfairness of it all, when a Cimbrian spear severed his femoral artery during the Roman defeat at Arausio. The shop had been one of the best in Rome, pandering to the tastes of the rich with a bewildering range of animal flesh. Ulpius’ parents improved it and were justifiably proud. But they still, more than anything, wanted children.
    After seven miscarriages and most of the profits of the business going to Rome’s wide range of fertility experts – from sensibly bearded Greek bloodletters to raving barbarian chicken-wavers – Ulpius had been a gift from the gods. Tiny, sickly Ulpius with his funny-shaped head. When he’d almost died of smallpox, they’d almost died of worry. When he recovered, they focused on making him the happiest child in the world, despite his pox-scarred face. It was no surprise to their few friends when total indulgence and no discipline turned a mildly eccentric capricious child into a nasty self-centred oddball.
    At fifteen, when most Romans were as good as married, Ulpius showed no interest in girls. He liked only his own company. His parents didn’t push him. He spent long hours learning how to butcher the various animals whose parts they sold: goats, sheep,