Do you hear them, little one? Ancu’s whisper crept through the chaos. The voices of the dead. The tiny lives you snuffed out in the name of your pathetic infatuation. They have no tongue to speak their pain. But I will make you understand, child.
Darkness crashed down upon Luw, its coldness stealing the air from his lungs and flinging him about as if caught by an undertow. Voices pierced that black flood, screams and shrieks in a void lined with savage teeth, a lightless maw. Luw cried out and thrashed, rot flooding his mouth, forcing its way down his throat like insidious, reaching fingers. Head swimming, terror piercing him, he twisted Maebhara’s haft about against the snatching currents of Ancu’s abyss, fighting to get both hands on her. With a silent roar, he heaved against the darkness, and Maebhara’s shining blade awoke, cleaving a bright arc around him.
Ancu hissed, its darkness falling away in a cloud of drifting ashes. Luw hit the floor, landing on one knee, clutching at his throat as he sucked down beautiful, stinking air. Ancu rose before him from a puddle of corruption, man-shaped and graceful, its arms a pair of curved, dripping blades.
It has been many lifetimes since I last felt the kiss of a Bondblade, it uttered, stepping toward him. So much life, sacrificed to forge something that shines so undeservedly bright. But it will not save Tárchan, little one. It will not save you.
Ancu came at him in a burst of unnatural speed, blades sweeping wide. Luw dodged, rolled under a spinning slash and thrust Maebhara at Ancu’s side. The death-god flowed liquid about the spear, an arm distending about the haft to strike with an overhand stab. Luw threw himself forward, Ancu’s blades snapping shut just behind his heels. He rolled onto his feet, turning immediately into a wide cut, the spear’s blade shearing through the death-god’s jabbing arm.
Snarling, Ancu whipped its remaining arm about to split him skull to groin. Luw stepped off, catching the blow on Maebhara’s blade, looping it about to shove Ancu off balance, scoring a slash down the death-god’s side that sizzled and frothed, flecks of ash spiralling skyward. The death-god snarled, turned, black filth bursting from the end of its severed arm, slamming into Luw’s chest and sending him flying backwards beneath a geyser of rot.
He smashed into a tree’s crumbling corpse, white light dancing across his sight as Ancu’s ichor pinned him. Its discharge flowed, moulding itself into an enormous claw about Luw’s chest. The dead tree groaned, cracked as the claw tightened and squeezed a gasp from him. Ancu’s neck distended, its pale face snaking out across a distance of twenty or more paces, spiralling about the tree to peer at the side of Luw’s face.
Accept me, little one. Its whisper brushed his skin like the tattered ends of a grave shroud. I am inexorable. Its claw tightened, Luw’s ribs creaking. Your witch’s mind is of the hungering ice. She does not understand that I am what waits at the end of all roads, no matter how she struggles against me. No matter who she sends to best me. I am fate itself, and Tárchan is mine. Its grip crushed harder. Accept me.
Luw’s mouth shaped a scream he could give no voice to, the trebled pounding of his heart beating his ears like fists. The tree gave a sudden groan and burst into a cloud of splinters and dust. Luw hit the ground, slipping through Ancu’s grip as if greased, swallowing down a burning lungful of dusty, spore-laden air. The death-god shrieked, the black serpents of its neck and arm spiralling about the dust cloud, snapping shut to squeeze the last dregs of life from him. Luw swung Maebhara high, wheezing and staggering through the blow. Her blade burst through Ancu’s constricting coils, scattering the death-god’s body in a cloud of hot ashes. It screamed, falling in pieces, ichor splattering the ground as it landed man-shaped once more, its arms glistening blades.
‘I accepted you long ago,’ Luw gasped, chest burning with every breath. He held Maebhara low, ready for the thrust. ‘There’s nothing more you can take from me.’
Then I will bring you cold tranquillity.
Luw’s roar drowned out Ancu’s as they clashed again, leaping across the distance to bind blades. Maebhara sheared through Ancu’s curved weapons only for them to reform instantly and strike again from a lower angle, biting into the spear’s haft. They danced back and forth over the dusty corpse of that tree, hacking at one another, spinning and weaving under and about blows. A maelstrom of black ashes billowed about the edge of their fight, whipped up by the shrieking force of weapon and body, growing thicker with every strike Luw landed upon Ancu.
Luw traded blows with death given form, ceaseless in his attack, relenting only to block and slip past its rending arms. His body was a mess of pain, white-hot along his ribs where it had tried to crush him, the searing edge of exhaustion dragging scalding wires through every muscle. And yet he did not stop – refused to stop – even as death’s blades snatched and bit at his skin, as cuts wept freely on every limb. A battle lust was upon Luw, the pulse of the Earthblood caught in Maebhara’s runes thrumming against his own reaching Earthbond, their threads joined and pushing back against the tiredness and pain.
Ancu grew tired of their dance, lunged, its left-hand blade scoring a red line across Luw’s chest as he pivoted away from it. He swung Maebhara about, her scarred haft splattering both of the death-god’s blades across the stained earth. It roared, leapt high as its blades reformed, bringing them down in a two-handed strike. Luw stepped off at the last moment, Maebhara sweeping skyward as Ancu crashed down in a cloud of dust and ash. Its right arm arced over their heads, crumbling as it was caught upon the wind.
I cannot die! Ancu hissed, wheeling about, a black tendril bursting from its severed shoulder with the lashing of a whip. Luw spun under its next cut, stepping about it and slashing Maebhara’s blade down its back. Shrieking, it spun through a backhanded blow, the shot going wide as its shoulders burst apart into ash. Luw shot through the opening, and rammed Maebhara’s blade up through its chin, black ichor spraying as the point burst through the top of Ancu’s head.
Silence fell. The death-god hung still, frozen upon the spear’s blade, corrupted flesh bubbling around it. Ash drifted about them, falling like black snow. You… Ancu whispered, the lights of its eyes flickering, dying. There is only pain for you, little one. Only death for your people. The constant oozing of Ancu’s body finally fell still, its glistening fading into dullness. A web of cracks spread out from around Maebhara’s blade, the death-god’s flesh flaking away into ash. She will never have Tárchan back.
Ancu’s final whisper ebbed as its body crumbled beneath a westward wind, scattering and spiralling over the forest’s desolation. The pale bone-plate of its face clanged from Maebhara’s blade and landed in the ashes at Luw’s feet. Numb, he stared at it, shoulders heaving as his mind absorbed its meaning, his spear’s weight suddenly tenfold.
It was over.
Luw dropped Maebhara and fell to his knees, ash billowing about him. Every cut, bruise and graze screamed now his Earthbond had retreated, the exhaustion twice what it had been. With shaking hands, he scooped up Ancu’s face, brushing black flakes from it. He held it aloft to the grey sun, and sour light glowered through empty eyeholes. Ancu was gone, and only its ashes remained.
Luw stood, laughing as he shed his soiled cloak of pain and tiredness. He looked at the forest, at the rotting carcass and chaos of what had once been his home. It didn’t matter, not one bit – for the first time in what felt like an oak’s eternity, victory was his, and Síle’s heart was a step closer at last.
‘Death falls to the Hunter,’ Luw chuckled, considering the trophy in his hands. Turning Ancu’s face about, he pressed his own into the back of it. ‘And the Hunter becomes Death!’
His skin suddenly prickled, seared as if he’d shoved his face against hot iron. The rear of Ancu’s faceplate flowed liquid and scalded his features. Burning splinters drove through his flesh, into his skull, bone grinding bone. He screamed, clawed at the mask, bent double with the agony as it refused to be prised from his face, only to find a heartbeat later that the pain was gone as swiftly as it had come. Fingerin
g the edges of his face, he could feel the flesh of his jaw, giving sharply over to the cold bone of Ancu’s faceplate. Panicking, breath hissing against the inside of the death-god’s mask, Luw snatched up Maebhara, turning her blade in the weak light to try and catch his reflection.
Heart and breath plummeted into silence. Ancu stared back at him from beneath a crown of antlers. Shadows pooled heavy within the mask’s eyeholes, and Luw’s eyes peered out from their nadir, mere specks of light. His nails could find no gap or crack where it met his flesh to rip it free. And yet, instead of a scream, a whimper of terror – he found himself laughing again.
His voice ringing from the dead trees, from the black chasm within, Luw thrust Maebhara into the ash-clogged air. At the hands of the Hunter, Death had been uncrowned, and Síle would be his again. No matter the cost.
Chapter 21
Aráne the Spearmaiden
It was growing dark when Náith reached the western boundary of Síle’s home. He paused as her gate slipped into sight from behind a copse of sighing fir, his eyes following its snaking path toward the waiting shadow of her home. Before he’d left to find Béchu in the marshes of Iarma, the sight of it would have kicked his heart into a childish flutter and set hunger stirring in his loins. Yet, now, all it did was loose the stinging swarm of questions he’d suffered on the journey back, like slapping a hornets’ nest and calling its queen a cunt.
He grunted, shook his head and cursed himself for a dainty-boy, making for the gate. He was Náith, Cu Náith, the warrior who had bested Ancu, and the last thing he was frightened of was to confront his lover over another man’s name.
Náith told himself he believed that as he set foot on her path, laying a hand to the pouch at his side. The hair on his arm prickled with static.
He found her at the northern end of her garden, radiant as ever with the red sun sending waves of fire pouring down her long hair. She was watching the Southern Forest sway black against the sky. ‘My heart,’ Náith called, flatter than he’d intended. Síle gave a start, glanced over her shoulder at him and looked back to the forest.
‘You’re back,’ she said, the distraction in her voice tearing a hole through Náith’s confidence.
‘I am.’ He went to her, his hand faltering as he reached for her shoulder. ‘What’s the matter, true-heart?’
Síle’s head shook. ‘Something’s wrong with the forest.’
Náith followed her stare, squinting across the distance. Shadowed treetops and waving boughs, their edges tinged gold by the whisper of autumn. ‘I don’t see anything.’
‘The animals are gone,’ Síle muttered.
‘Probably sick of that nonny-boy’s crying.’
Síle looked at him then, as if only just noticing he was there. She blinked hard, rubbed at her temples. ‘Forgive me,’ she said, ‘my mind wanders.’
‘Too much pollen in the air,’ Náith said. He forced himself to spread his arms, drawing her into an embrace that felt… stiff, unnatural. ‘I have missed you, dear-heart.’
‘And I, you,’ she murmured into his chest. He tried to enjoy her warmth, but his questions began buzzing again. She stirred against him. ‘Is it done? Were you victorious?’
Náith hesitated. ‘I was…’ Try as he might, the question seized his tongue. ‘Síle –’
Her kiss silenced him, the hands that cupped his face full of that same old warmth Náith had longed for in the days since he had left her bed. In the years since he had left her side. Her lips left his after a heartbeat he wished would never end, and they hung there together in that moment, heads resting one against the other, enfolded in each other’s arms.
‘I knew you would do it,’ Síle breathed, her voice shattering that brief moment of solace.
‘It was a bastard of a fight,’ Náith muttered, in no mood for boasting. The scabbing wounds on his arms told tale enough for any man. Síle’s hands followed their wandering trails, passing over the bunched muscle beneath. Her nails bit gently between the cuts, just suggestive enough to kindle his passion.
‘Did you find anything?’ she asked, hands moving to play with the tatters of his tunic. ‘When you killed Ancu, was there… anything left behind?’
Náith went rigid, his lust quenched by suspicion’s cold hand. Did she know about the strange stone? How could she? The pouch at his side knocked against his thigh as if to remind him of its contents. He thought to lie for a moment and cursed himself for ever being easily led by the prick.
‘There was,’ he conceded. Síle’s eyes lit up like a child as he untied the pouch from his belt. He fished inside it. ‘This.’ He offered her Ancu’s mask, holding a shudder in check. Something about the way it felt, the way its weight sat in the hand, just… felt wrong. There was a heaviness and coldness that felt too similar to the death-god’s oozing corruption. Even the empty eyeholes of it seemed to still glare, as if it were still quietly observing him.
Síle took it without comment, turned it over in her hand, her disappointment plain to see. ‘Is this it?’ she sneered. ‘Its face? Nothing more?’
Náith’s teeth clamped his tongue in place. ‘No,’ he mumbled. He pulled a small wrap of cloth from the pouch and tipped the flashing gemstone into his palm. Síle snatched it from him the moment it landed, turning away with it near-buried into her nose.
‘I can’t believe it,’ she muttered to herself, pacing in circles. The storm trapped inside the gem flashed white across her face, pulled a fit of titters from her. ‘You did it! You really did it!’
‘I did,’ Náith rumbled, eyeing her warily. ‘That thing was beneath its face after I killed it.’
Síle laughed again, clasped her hands over the stone and held it against her heart. ‘Finally. After so many, many years.’ She rocked it like a babe upon the tit.
‘I thought it might fetch a good price if we took it to market,’ said Náith.
‘Market?’ Síle’s fury made him wince, made his mind paw over flimsy excuses for his stupidity. ‘There’s no market that could afford something so precious as this!’ She marched toward him, gemstone held between thumb and forefinger as she thrust it in his face. ‘Do you know how long I have searched for this stone? How deeply I have yearned for it? More years than you’ve walked upon the earth, warrior, and a lifetime besides! No man alive could pay a price for this that I would take!’
‘What is it?’ Náith blurted, turning his cheek to the raging of its tiny storm. It made the stubble on his jaw prickle. Síle blinked, reddened, as if suddenly aware of her outburst. She pulled it back from him, cradling it against her breast, her palms and face lit by its flashing.
‘The Stormheart,’ she said.
Something about that name rankled with Náith, plucked at the threads of memory. I want to see a storm, she’d said. That calamity he’d glimpsed behind the clouds over Gólga… Tárchan.
Tárchan Stormheart.
What game was this woman playing with him? With all those other fools she sent to die by Ancu’s hand? ‘Síle… what is this about? This stone… is this what you sent me against Ancu for? I thought –’
‘Not now,’ she hissed, pressing a finger to his lips. ‘Not just yet. Tomorrow, true-heart. Tomorrow, I’ll tell you everything. But for now, let us celebrate.’ She kissed him lightly, taking his hand with a smile that left little else to be said. ‘You’ve made me a very happy woman.’
She led Náith into the familiar warmth of her home, and for a moment, the questions that gnawed at his soul fell silent.
‘Tell me of it,’ Síle said, dumping freshly heated water into the tub Náith reclined in. He jumped, startled both by her sudden appearance and scalding water upon the plums.
‘Tell you of what?’ he muttered, shifting himself to protect his vitals. Síle smirked at her cruelty, silhouetted against the morning sun.
‘The fight, of course, you great nonny-boy,’ she laughed. ‘You’ve said nothing of it yet. I’d expected you to be boasting every other breath of such a victory.’
>
‘Oh.’
An image of Ancu rose past his languid thoughts – towering, roaring, its claws sundering corpses by the hundred, a voice like grave fumes hissing of death and futility.
Of secrets. And lies.
‘It was…’
He was back there for a moment, spread upon a mound of death, Ancu’s knee digging into his spine, the edge of its blade touching the skin of his throat.
‘Close,’ Náith said, shuddering. ‘I fought it in the deepest Death Pit of Gólga, in many forms. I will wear the scars with pride. Never have I tasted my own death so close at hand before that.’
‘But here you are,’ Síle observed, ‘you won.’ She moved behind him and poured water over his filthy hair, skilled fingers working through the tats. ‘How does it feel to kill a god?’
Bitter. Unsettling. Victory had done nothing to silence the disquiet of Ancu’s whispering and the questions that slithered from it.
‘Like my cock grew another six inches,’ Náith said, rolling his shoulders so his chest popped. Síle giggled behind him, and for a moment her mirth warmed him. It soon faded though, those same questions rising through the contentment to stain it like wreckage upon a golden wave.
‘You’ve not told me your tale yet, dear-heart,’ he said, more to distract himself than any actual desire to hear it.
‘There’ll be time for that tonight,’ Síle answered, teasing loose his matted braids. ‘I don’t want to know what you’ve got in your hair. Or how long it’s been since you bathed.’ That was fair, the water was steadily turning brown. ‘Tell me more of your fight with Ancu.’
Horns of the Hunter: Tales of Luah Fáil Book 1 Page 17