The waters settled in a heartbeat, and a shudder ran through Náith as he watched their glistening surface fall still and silent. Though whether it was from that, or that place Béchu had named… both, maybe.
Gólga.
The Death Pits beyond the western glens, beyond the cursed stones of Crath Gulfáil. Ancu would choose to make such a place its home.
Its feeding ground, Náith thought, pulling his sword from the mud. He shook off uneasiness and turned his back on Béchu, making for the reed-wall. A warrior burst through it in a rustle of seed-heads, splashing down in the mud in front of him with sword and shield levelled.
Náith stepped back, sword raised between them. ‘Lower that blade if you want to keep your arm, nonny-boy.’
‘Someone so fucked as you shouldn’t be making threats,’ the warrior said, squelching forward a step. ‘Stay the fuck right there, Náith.’ Another warrior stepped from the reeds to Náith’s left then, a long-bladed spear lowering as he waded ankle-deep through the marsh’s latrine-waters. Yet another came ghosting through them from the right, sword and face daubed with peat. All of them bore the whorl of Aodhamar’s eye on their shields.
Fuck. He was surrounded by the Enkindled’s arseholes – had walked straight into their midst like a fucking nonny-boy.
Náith glanced about him, subtly shifting the weight of the shield on his back so it could slip easily onto his arm. Dark shapes were moving through the reeds, through the marsh at his sides and back, closing on the earthen bank. Closing on Béchu. The crone seemed oblivious, staring out at the marsh and singing her inane little ditty as though a ring of blades was not about to snap shut upon her.
‘If you’ve come for Béchu, then take her,’ Náith called out. ‘I’ve no wish to step on the Enkindled’s toes. The old fart is his, if he wants her.’
‘Take him!’ one of Aodhamar’s fools roared.
The warrior with the spear shot in, haft swinging for Náith’s head. Náith ducked it, kicked him the small of the back and sent him sprawling into the marsh water on the other side of the earthen bank. The warrior floundered, clawing gnawers from his face and body as the other two came charging, screaming as one.
Náith’s shield was on his arm as the first warrior swung for him, its rim sparking white as the blow landed. Náith countered with a punch to the gut with his sword-hand, his weapon’s cross-guard tearing through the fanny-boy’s guts and dragging them out into the stinking air as he splashed down shrieking into the mud.
The other with the peat-blackened sword lunged with a roar from Náith’s side. Náith swerved the blade and spun, tangled entrails trailing like pink ribbons from his sword’s cross-guard, shield crunching into the warrior’s mouth and slamming him into the mud in a mess of blood and teeth. Náith let him gibber upon it for a moment before pulling it free, turning with its bloody face raised as the shadows wading through the marsh closed tighter on him. Close enough for him to see the peat-smeared hollows of their faces.
‘What have you done?’ shrieked Béchu.
Náith cast a glance back at Béchu as her hiss nipped at his shoulder. The crone stood staring aghast at the three men bleeding into the marsh water, filth dripping from her dress, skeletal fingers biting the sagging skin of her cheeks.
‘Killing fools who oppose me,’ Náith spat, hunkering back down behind his shield as another trio of arseholes burst from the reeds, Aodhamar’s eye bold upon their marsh-eaten shields.
‘You’ve spilled blood in these sacred waters!’ Béchu screeched. Behind her, the bog grew restless again, waves lapping at the reeds, spilling over the earthen bank.
‘Piss off, woman,’ Náith snarled, turning and putting a boot into the gut of the man that came splashing through the bog waters at his side. The arsehole fell back with a grunt, swallowed by a brown wave, swarmed immediately by gnawers. ‘I’ve more important troubles right now!’ He gutted one of the warriors that had charged from the reeds, sent him pitching into the bog to bleed and wail while the others fanned out, their circle of peat-stained shadows closing.
‘Stop! Stop, you stupid, stinking idiot!’ Béchu came clawing at his sword arm, tried to pull him back from the advance of Aodhamar’s men.
‘Get off me, you old bitch!’ Náith gave Béchu a shove with his elbow, slightly harder than he intended, and she splashed down in the mud with a cry, weeping piteously.
‘You don’t know what you’re doing! You don’t understand! Stop!’
‘Shut up, crone!’ Náith blocked the lunge of a warrior that came wading through the waves to his side, lopping off the top half of his head and kicking him back into the bog. The waters swallowed him, the bog waves frothing red, whipping into a frenzy upon a mass of slithering, glistening gnawers. Náith glanced down from the next fool who dared try his luck – the earthen bank was shaking faintly.
‘Oh, no…’ Béchu found her knees, clasped her hands before her, genuflect and pathetic. ‘No, no! Please! Sleep! Sleep, my dear!’ Her singing barely cut through the crashing of stinking waves as they battered the reeds and bank. ‘Sleep in the waters, watcher true, and find how solace waits for you. Away from the world now, you must go…’
The earth lurched, sending Náith stumbling to his knees, brown, reeking waters cascading over him. The warriors went down beneath it, cries turning to screams as some found gnawers burrowing into their flesh. But Náith had no mind for them now – something monstrous burst from the heart of the marsh.
In a plume of befouled water, it rose to the fume-razed sky, its screech sending rings of putrid waves to blitz the shoreline. A serpentine body towered over the marsh, glistening, mottled black and brown. At its end, an inner jaw protruded from its sphincter of a mouth, the rotting teeth of a man bared as it hollered and bellowed and screeched. A beard, dozens upon dozens of feet long, trailed from beneath its mouth, clumped with something that looked like ancient tar.
The old beast those villagers had spoken of. It was a leech – a giant, fucking leech. Slime and poisonous-looking filth poured from its skin into the marsh, hissing foully into green-tinged mist as they met the waters.
‘You’ve wakened him!’ Béchu wailed. ‘You’ve wakened him, you silly, smelly bastard! He won’t sleep! My song is useless, now! Look what you have done, you stupid, fat prick!’
She beat her fists and wept in the mud as Náith stared up at the beast, now fallen silent, save for its resonating, shuddering breaths. It’s rotting maw swung slowly toward them, tilting as if listening. One of the warriors cried out at Náith’s side, scrambled back into the reeds, shapes splashing through mud and mire, plucking gnawers from their arms and legs as they went.
The beast screeched again, its monstrous bellow managing to sound almost like a man’s. Its jaw retracted and its glistening body slammed into the water, sending another putrid wave crashing over bank and shore. It came slithering, screaming toward them. Náith backed off behind his shield, froze, trapped between Aodhamar’s men and a slithering, screeching monstrosity.
‘You’re fucked now, Cu Náith!’ Béchu cackled, muddy finger pointing at him. ‘Fucked! Fucked! Fucked!’ She rolled in the mud like a pig in a pile of shit, laughing mindlessly beneath the oozing, squelching and rumbling of the marsh beast.
‘Ah. There you are, Crofan,’ a voice declared behind Náith.
Náith spun, sword poised to strike over his shield, cold horror snatching at his insides. ‘Aodhamar!’
The Enkindled King stood behind him, golden robes billowing beneath the leech’s roaring, hands folded in the sleeves. Not a speck of mud nor filth on the gilded bastard, as his flaming eyes followed the creature’s slithering path. His face turned toward Náith, eyebrows raising as if he’d forgotten he was there. Náith adjusted his shield, eyes darting about him.
‘Don’t worry, Náith, I am not here for you,’ Aodhamar said, his gaze turning to the beast as its shadow fell over them. A spear darted out of the reeds a way off to the left, stuck in its oozing underbelly and rotted im
mediately into nothing. It shrieked its fury, sphincter-mouth peeling back over its man-teeth before it crashed into the reeds and gouged a thirty-foot wide hole from the earth. It reared again, bellowing at the rusty sky.
‘What the fuck is this thing?’ Náith hissed, shield lowering. Aodhamar chuckled, sweeping past him, golden and magisterial.
‘It’s Crofan Tarbeard, my old friend,’ he said, ‘all these years, he eluded me. Him, and his ancient beast, the Watcher of the Marsh. What a thing to find that they are one and the same. I always had my suspicions, mind. No wonder he clings so desperately to this land.’
Aodhamar threw a hand out to the side, Srengbolga bursting into being in a cloud of flame. Náith flinched back from him, sank back into his fighting stance. ‘I told you, I’m not here for you, Cu Náith.’ Náith blinked. So much for being a new man, if the Enkindled already knew. Tarbeard slammed into the shoreline again, rising with grey limbs twitching between the teeth of his rotting maw, beard trailing blood, soil and bog water.
‘My hunt today is for this one,’ Aodhamar called over Tarbeard’s shrieking. Spear and arrow whistled from the reeds. ‘I have to thank you for drawing him out for me, though. I could never have reached its burrow beneath the marsh, not with the gnawers and the other beasts. Like all leeches, I reasoned that Tarbeard couldn’t resist the taste of blood, and I counted on you spilling enough to draw its attention.’
‘You callous, scheming pig,’ Náith spat, looking at the gnawer-swamped corpses he’d made. ‘So much for the days of leaving no comrade to die eh?’
Aodhamar shrugged, watching Tarbeard’s oozing beard turn toward them. ‘I find that I am unwilling to let this old beast taste my own, unfortunately. Might make him harder to kill.’ His burning eyes fell upon Náith. ‘Help me slay this creature. I will consider rescinding your exile.’
‘Go fuck yourself.’
Aodhamar pursed his lips and turned away. ‘As you wish, Cu Náith.’
For a moment, watching the Enkindled King charge weightless and glorious across the marsh with Srengbolga held against his back, Náith was filled with old memories. The ones of war, when he and Aodhamar were but young upstarts from the north with a band of madmen at their backs. But then the fires of Aodhamar’s eyes trailed brighter, spreading through his robes until he wore flames as though they were armour, and the memories shattered.
Náith spun away as Aodhamar leapt for Tarbeard’s roaring mouth, sprinting for the reed wall. A warrior’s cry went up, and a line of men stepped through it with shields raised, more rising from the reeds with spears ready to hurl, bows drawn tight. Náith leapt straight toward them, twisted in the air about a stabbing blade and kicked off from a raised shield, the ball of his foot putting a hole through the symbol of Aodhamar’s eye. He somersaulted over the heads of the Enkindled’s men to the cracking of bows and shrieking of arrows. Spear and shaft went wide, darkening the air as Náith squelched down on the cramped trail. He broke into a sprint before Aodhamar’s warriors managed to clear the reeds, aiming north.
Tarbeard was screeching in the marsh’s heart as Náith ran, while Aodhamar’s sorceries split the air with the crack of thunder and roar of fire, and the warriors on the trail hurled limp curses and threats with their spears and arrows. The runes upon the skull of Luw’s hound awoke, flaring blood red as missiles pelted the earth, turned aside by whatever magicks Síle had worked through it. He didn’t bother looking back. Gólga was calling to him, and death was waiting.
Chapter 18
Maebhara
Ogmodh’s hammer rang, nudging Luw from his repose beneath the storm-stripped limbs of a caílu tree. He pulled fallen thorns from his hair and rubbed sleep from his eyes. He’d been dreaming of running with Bann, happy, unfettered through the Southern Forest, as they had been in the days before Náith had come to shatter that fragile sphere. He made his way across the dawn-lit hill to Ogmodh’s home with a leaden heart.
The heat of the forge greeted Luw even before he rounded the corner of the smith’s home, coiling around the building like a blazing serpent. He held a hand to his eyes as he peered about the corner, tears already streaming down his cheeks. He flinched as the hammer clanged, bright and sharp, sending sparks bouncing between his feet.
‘Good morning, Master Sprite!’ called the smith. His hammer beat white sparks from something that glowed atop his anvil. ‘There’s oats for my breakfast, water on the boil, and iron to be beaten!’ Clang! ‘A good day for me! A good day for smithing! Ha!’ Clang! ‘How does it find you, Master Sprite?’
Luw let a grunt be his answer and squinted through the heat. Ogmodh was examining his work – a crude, glowing blade, held a half-foot from his scarred face. ‘Doesn’t look like much, just now, especially without the haft,’ the smith muttered, examining the other side of the blade. ‘But when I’m done… there’s not a thing that walks that won’t feel the bite of this spear.’
Luw squinted, forced his watering eyes to pierce the shimmering, scalding air around the spearhead, and thought he could see it there already, the ghost of what was to come. A weapon the equal of Srengbolga, and the blade that would tear Ancu from this earth.
The smith’s hammer rang through the night, into the dawn and then night once more, before it finally fell quiet. ‘Look, Master Sprite!’ Ogmodh cried, waving Luw toward him. He pulled the spearhead from the quenching trough with his forge-tongs, steaming and black as night. ‘Not a warp, bend, crack nor crease in her!’
Luw nodded, but in the forge’s red glow the blade seemed… uninspiring. Rough, even.
‘Still looks like nothing, I know,’ the smith said, as Luw’s silence stretched. ‘Tomorrow, she will have her true shape. I will make her shine, make her sharp. Once the detail-work is done, I shall craft her runes, fit her haft, and you shall wield her as she deserves.’
‘She?’
‘Aye. She. A thing of beauty like this deserves a woman’s name. A pretty name. But that’s not for me to decide, is it!’ He barked out a laugh and set the blade aside to cool. ‘Now come, sprite, call me inspired, for I’ve a forge-thirst on me!’
The smith moved from the forge, warrior rings glinting in his beard. Luw lingered, staring at the steaming blade. The smith was right. She did deserve a name.
‘I remember when I made him that spear,’ Ogmodh muttered, spooning warm oats tenderly into his mouth. ‘Aodhamar, that is. Sreng had just taken Sá Tailteann with his horde of arseholes. Grim days, those. I made Aodhamar promise me he’d use it only to kill Sreng.’ He swallowed a mouthful, rubbed at his temples, the dark circles under his eyes belying the night’s indulgence. ‘Looked at me, he did, straight in the fucking eye. Told me he’d free Sá Tailteann, rid all Luah Fáil of Sreng and his Fomonán maggots. He did neither.’ He gulped down another mouthful of oats. ‘Sreng was wounded and allowed to escape, and Sá Tailteann was absorbed into that little empire of Aodhamar’s. I wonder, sometimes, if he let that thing live just so he could hold on to that bastard spear. ’Twas all just an excuse for power, as if he didn’t have enough already.’ His spoon scraped at the bowl irritably. ‘Never should have made it.’
‘History is what it is,’ said Luw, sipping at water as he crouched in the shade. ‘It cannot be undone.’
‘Just as death can’t be killed, Master Sprite,’ Ogmodh said about a last mouthful. ‘Think on that when Ancu is standing before you.’
Luw nodded as the smith fell quiet, the pair of them staring at the polished blade in Ogmodh’s hand. The smith had been shaping and honing it upon his grindstone before the dawn came, determined to work through it. The spear’s blade was a beautiful thing now – shaped, sharpened and polished into a glittering shard of silver. Almost long enough to be a sword blade, Luw thought. Sunlight caught upon the faint ripples trapped in the iron, sparking from its flared edges and the Nuankin runes engraved on each side. Incredibly fine work, and done so quickly. All the more spectacular considering how much the smith had drunk last night. He truly was the legend
men spoke of.
It was strange, being sat in the presence of one so ancient and famous as he. There were even tales of how the man had forged weapons for the first kings of the Nuankin. Luw thought to ask him the truth of those legends, but Ogmodh’s face grew troubled as he looked upon his most recent work, turning the spear blade by the socket.
‘Reminds me of it. Srengbolga.’ He shook himself, flicked drying oats from his beard. ‘Just need to inlay those runes with the Earthblood, and she will become the weapon she is meant to be. Go fetch us that amber, if you would, sprite. Let’s be about this.’
Luw grunted, and scurried away through the late morning sun, back to the caílu tree, and prised the amber free from the hollow between its roots. Ogmodh was already at his workbench when he returned, his tools slipping from his hand as he turned to look upon the treasure before him. There was a hunger in the smith’s eyes that Luw could not abide. It was greed, lust, birthed from the Earthblood’s whispering and baring its teeth at his wounded heart – at his chance for a future with Síle. He pulled the amber back, smothering a sudden urge to bare his teeth and lash out at the smith.
‘Take what you need for the spear,’ said Luw, ‘whatever is left… do with it as you will.’
Ogmodh nodded, straightening. His ancient face grew troubled. ‘Tell me, sprite,’ he said, tugging at his beard. ‘You tore this thing from your forest… what will become of that place without it?’
Luw raised the amber to his face, the black imperfection at its heart staring back him. He could feel the Earthblood’s warmth through the amber. Full of life. Full of sorrow. He looked away before the guilt buckled him.
‘It will fade,’ Luw said, ‘it will wither and rot. And it will be no more.’
Horns of the Hunter: Tales of Luah Fáil Book 1 Page 13