Horns of the Hunter: Tales of Luah Fáil Book 1

by Frank Dorrian

  ‘It knew much,’ Náith muttered, watching the sun’s reflection flicker across brown, scummy ripples. ‘And whispered more.’

  ‘They say death whispers to every man at some point in his life.’

  ‘I heard its voice, though. It spoke to me.’

  Síle said nothing to that. She dipped a wash jug between the canyon of Náith’s legs, rinsing the filth from his hair with the filth from the bath. He caught her by the wrist as she made to fill it again – light enough not to hurt, firm enough to impart meaning.

  ‘Who is Tárchan?’

  A moment of silence, just a bare fraction too long for her to conceal her unease. ‘He was the warlord who fought Nuan the Coldhanded upon the Hill of Tán. Everyone knows that, my heart.’ She made to move from his grip, gasped as he held her firm.

  ‘I know the tale,’ Náith seethed, ‘but who is Tárchan to you? Do not deceive me further, woman.’

  Another moment where her silence stretched just a little too long. ‘Release me, and I will tell you. You’re hurting me.’

  A light like the sparking of the sun flashed across Síle’s eyes. Náith’s hand fell immediately from her wrist, plopping down atop a wet thigh as white-hot pain lanced through his temples and shattered thought.

  ‘That’s better,’ she chirped, filling the jug between his legs. Náith’s head felt hollow, thoughts creeping back in with the thrumming of his blood, slow as spilled syrup. He hadn’t meant to let go of her… he’d meant… he couldn’t remember what he’d meant to do. It felt like the time when they had first argued over Luw. The sudden emptiness of mind. But…

  The thought died – searing claws were digging at his temples, buried so deep they burned behind his eyes. A faint memory of jealousy, of patience frayed beyond worth, imprinted itself upon the moment before, but seemed suddenly… ridiculous and unnecessary. Síle was talking again, her voice dragging Náith’s attention back toward her.

  ‘I do not know what that creature told you. But I can imagine, and probably be close enough to know how many truths were twisted. Tárchan… my Tárchan…’ She poured steaming, filthy water over his head. He blinked vacantly as it stung his eyes, her sigh blowing cold over the back of his neck. ‘My Tárchan was nothing like the one from the old tales. He shone so brightly that he made everyone else seem so dull. So boring. He was fire.’ She squeezed the water from Náith’s hair. ‘He was lightning.’ She twisted it painfully to his scalp, water sloshing down his back. He winced but found himself too empty to do little else.

  ‘He showed me that I did not need to be the nurturing field and the sheltering bough anymore, not if I didn’t wish to be so. He destroyed me and my little world and made us both anew, and all the greater for it.’ Her fist was knotted tight in Náith’s hair, shaking so her small knuckles knocked furiously against his skull. ‘And I loved him hard for his kindness. Who couldn’t have fallen in love with someone like that?’ she said gently, fingers combing Náith’s hair. ‘Someone who comes and… rips you out of the mundane, miserable little hole you put yourself in, and then burns it so you can never bury yourself in a lie again. It’s in that moment, dear Cu Náith, when the illusion of the self is torn apart. You find nothing is ever quite the same again. Like trying to fix a mirror someone else has kicked to pieces.’

  Náith thought he knew what that felt like, but whatever sparked the feeling took too long to rise and sank beneath Síle’s voice.

  ‘My beloved Tárchan refused my name, even. Aráne, he called me… his little, proud, powerful Aráne.’ She sighed, working warrior braids steadily through Náith’s hair. ‘I miss that name. But no other has a right to call me it. I won’t let them. Aráne had Tárchan, and no other.’

  She rest her arms upon Náith’s shoulders, wet hands dripping, birthing ripples between his legs. His eyes followed them for a few heartbeats, each one taking forever to fall from her fingertip and cast its gentle circles. Her fists slowly clenched, wrath turning knuckles white.

  ‘And then came that bastard Nuan, with his hand and arm all made of ice,’ Síle hissed. ‘My Tárchan was not like your kind – our kind – the pigs squealing at Nuan’s heels. His spear took Tárchan from me, and I cried until there was nothing left of Aráne. Only Síle.’ She huffed. He felt her head shaking. ‘Quiet little Síle, who tends her garden and grows her plants and dreams no more of fire and lightning.’ She rest her forehead against the back of Náith’s head, wet hair scratching. ‘There’s your tale, dear-heart. That’s who Tárchan was to me.’

  She rose and left him, the door of her house thudding. Náith watched the water shifting with his breath, thoughts congealing through the silence. Aráne… the sorceress that had helped Tárchan butcher old Crath Bloodsinger? Such a thing couldn’t be, surely, but even as volition knitted back together, Náith felt utterly hollow and confused. Her words tore at him, made him fragile as cold ashes. He was still pondering it all as she returned, standing silhouetted against the sun with the bees and the butterflies that always flocked to halo her.

  ‘Up you get, my heart,’ Síle said brightly, offering him a clean cloth to dry himself. Náith rose, let her drape it about his shoulders as he stepped out of the filthy tub. ‘We’ve a brace of hares for tonight, I thought I’d make us a stew of them. I can dig up some potatoes, cut some herbs from the garden –’

  ‘Aráne the Spearmaiden,’ Náith muttered, squinting at her. She wore a proud look.

  ‘I was. I carried Tárchan’s spear as he rode his chariot across a hundred battlefields and crushed his enemies beneath its iron wheels.’ She closed her eyes, breathed deep as if recalling the scent of some long-buried memory. ‘I bent the earth to his aid and made him swifter than the northern winds. Together, we were unstoppable. Or so we thought,’ she sighed, squeezing the rag about a dripping lock of hair. ‘But those days are over now.’

  The fragments of Náith’s mind wandered as she spoke again of dinner. It was ridiculous. She had to be having him on. Síle, his Síle, was the reaving Spearmaiden from the old, bloody tales of Nuan’s rise to power? Ludicrous, and yet… it became so brutishly apparent, then, just how little he really knew of her. He rubbed at the ebbing pain in his temples, forcing the scattered pieces of his mind back together. It felt like the blood-scourging of another’s Earthbond.

  Had she used it upon him? Surely she wouldn’t dare.

  ‘I’ll put some tea on the boil, and we can talk about what we will do tomorrow. I want to go –’

  ‘You think me a fool,’ Náith rumbled. ‘You think I will believe any of this.’ Síle’s pleasantness faded.

  ‘You know I do not. We both know Ancu spoke of me, and you know it spoke true. Why would such a being lie? It knew why you were there. Let’s not be silly, Cu Náith.’ She stepped away from him, making for her home. ‘Come, dry yourself beside the fire.’

  Náith’s hand shot out and took her by the arm before she could slip away. ‘And why was I there, Síle?’ The questions were bubbling through as volition returned, the nipping edges of resentment and jealousy riding suspicion’s crashing wave. Síle regarded him, expressionless. ‘Was it to avenge your kin? Or to find some lost trinket of your old lover’s?’

  ‘Those are one and the same, I think you’ll find,’ she said, with the ghost of a smile.

  Náith felt himself deflate swiftly as a struck lung, pierced by her words, his arm sagging as he held onto her. He suddenly felt so immense a fool. Worse. He’d let himself be played, let her lead him blindly onward by the cock while he clung to the memory of something that never was. Not for her, at least. Aodhamar. Béchu. That putrid monstrosity, Ancu. They’d all warned him.

  No, Náith scolded himself, this is Síle. My Síle.

  ‘And what of… what of what you said,’ he breathed. ‘Do you love me, Síle, now I have proved myself to you? Is your heart mine?’

  Her head tilted. ‘Aráne the Spearmaiden loved no other than Tárchan Stormheart. But she is gone. I am Síle of Mael Tulla, and yes, I love you
, Cu Náith. My heart is yours.’ She stepped into him on her toes, kissed him hard and pulled away. ‘For you are the one who conquered death for me and will give Aráne the storm she has longed for.’

  Náith frowned. ‘You said she was –’ Síle pressed something to his face, stifling his words. It was Ancu’s faceplate. Náith made to grab at her wrist, her games chafing his temper. Instead, he screamed, the back of Ancu’s faceplate running like scalding liquid over his own. He fell to his knees, nails splintering as he clawed at it, tearing gouges through his cheeks. Through its eyeholes he saw Síle watching him, smiling gently as he reached for her legs. She crouched, eye-level with him, cupped his burning face as he convulsed.

  ‘Goodbye, Cu Náith. Thank you for bringing me my storm.’

  The Stormheart flashed white in her fist as she stood.

  Náith fell forward into her shadow, her ankle slipping from his grasp as the pain made a ruin of his mind. ‘My love…’ He reached for her blurred back. ‘Don’t… leave me…’

  Pain sank its hooks through flesh, bone, and dragged him down into darkness.

  Chapter 22

  Abandonment

  Scalding heat woke Náith. A rush of fire through his veins, consciousness riding pain. He gasped, convulsed in wordless agony and inhaled a mouthful of grit. A boot thudded into his ribs and flipped him onto his back to face an ugly dawn. A circle of shadows stood beyond the blur of awakening.

  ‘Get him up.’

  Two detached from the circle, stooping to seize Náith’s arms against his feeble protesting. They hauled him onto his feet, a horrid chill prickling his naked flesh as an autumnal wind slithered out of the gloom. The pain buckled him, made him sag almost to his knees, but a cruel hand wrenched Náith’s head back, and dragged him straight as a spear.

  Aodhamar stood before him, the Enkindled’s radiance scouring away the last bleariness of new-found consciousness. A line of grim-faced warriors stood at his back, their bared swords and vengeful glances a dark stain across the rolling flowerbeds of Síle’s garden. Náith squinted at them all, too confused to feel anything else. What were they doing here? He’d been with Síle but a moment before and –

  ‘Where is she?’ Aodhamar swept toward him, eyes pouring fire above bared teeth. Náith recoiled, the men on his arms tightening their hold on him, his heels tracking dirt. Caught, he winced, shook his head against the fist still wound in his hair.

  ‘What –’

  ‘Síle!’ Aodhamar demanded, a wisp of flame escaping between clenched teeth. ‘That serpent of a nymph! Where is she?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ The fist tightened in his hair and ripped a grunt from him. ‘I don’t know!’

  ‘Then think, fool!’ Aodhamar roared, his eyes spewing fire. Srengbolga suddenly blazed into being, runes glowing with hidden fire as its searing edge was laid across Náith’s throat. ‘If you dare defend that deceitful worm further then our friendship will mean nothing to me, Cu Náith – I swear it on the earth’s oldest blood.’ Srengbolga’s blade bit, hissing against the skin of his neck like a cattle brand. ‘Think. Where is she?’

  Náith gritted his teeth, tried to think as his skin blistered and his nose filled with the stink of its burning. The last moments before awakening were disjointed, fragmented. They’d argued. She’d done something to him – pressed something into his face that brought a wicked agony.

  Ancu’s faceplate. The Stormheart.

  Memory came flooding back in a cold gut-punch of realisation, the flashing of the Stormheart scattering disparate fragments. ‘My face…’ Náith muttered. ‘She abandoned me. She betrayed me!’

  His voice almost broke at that last. Aodhamar snarled, eyes flaring brighter. ‘Where did she go?’

  ‘I don’t know!’

  Náith waited for Srengbolga’s scouring blade to sweep across his throat, put him out of his misery, but Aodhamar turned away with a snarl, dismissing the spear in a burst of flame. ‘You just couldn’t stay away from her, could you?’ The Enkindled regarded him over a gilded shoulder. Náith kept quiet. ‘Have you any idea what you’ve done, you braggart’s arse?’

  ‘I conquered death for her.’

  ‘You’ve given her Tárchan’s heart! You’ve damned us all, you fucking fool!’ Sparks billowed from the Enkindled’s mouth as he rounded on Náith, his head wreathed with pale, lashing flame. Náith grunted, turned his face from the heat of Aodhamar’s rage, sparks whipping his skin. ‘Do you know who that lying bitch really is? What she’s done?’

  Náith swallowed, watching the grass dry and blacken beneath Aodhamar’s boots as shame ran cold down his spine. An unwelcome truth came creeping over it on prickling legs. ‘Aráne the Spearmaiden.’

  ‘You knew?’

  The Enkindled’s hand shot out, seizing Náith’s face with fingers that burned like a bonfire’s embers. ‘You knew, and still you gave it to her!’

  Náith grunted, jaw clenched tight, his skin blistering beneath Aodhamar’s grasp. He tried to twist away, but Aodhamar’s men tightened their grip, the fist in his hair ripping more from his scalp. ‘Give me a reason I should spare your life, Cu Náith,’ the Enkindled snarled. ‘Tell me why I shouldn’t burn your traitorous stain from the earth!’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ Náith hissed, ‘not until she betrayed me!’

  Claws drove themselves into Náith’s skull, grinding at his temples, a white line of pain lancing across his vision. He felt himself scream – his hearing devoured by a piercing whine – and found himself slumped on his side, shivering atop the scorched grass amid the ebbing of pain. The hem of Aodhamar’s golden robes shifted nearby.

  ‘You deserve that mask she has deformed you with.’

  Mask?

  Náith stood, staggering to where Síle’s bathtub sat forgotten, a trail of snickering following him from Aodhamar’s men, their ridicule nothing beside the frigid horror that had gripped him. Soul quivering, he hauled himself over the edge and stared into the still, filthy water.

  Ancu stared back.

  ‘No.’ Náith clawed at the death-god’s face, his fingers unable to find any gap or ridge to prise it free. Smooth bone ran even with warm flesh, his eyes peering out from shadowed eyeholes like the death-god’s own. ‘No!’

  Broken nails tore bloody gouges down his scalded cheeks, his panicked cries lost beneath the howling laughter of Aodhamar’s men.

  He had suffered for her. Bled and killed. Faced down death itself and splattered its head across the pits of Gólga. Now numbness was all that remained. She’d taken everything that was left to him. His pride, his honour, his love – and now his fucking face. Ancu watched Náith from the mirror of Síle’s dressing table, the death-god’s faceplate dotted with his bloody fingerprints, the skin of his cheeks savaged and weeping. The sight filled him with self-loathing, with the cold sting of abandonment. And yet he couldn’t look away from it.

  All this for a dead lover’s bauble, and disfigurement as a sorry reward. The magnitude of it was… overwhelming. Numbing.

  The back door swung open, rattled as it struck the wall. Aodhamar stepped through. The flames of the Enkindled King’s eyes pushed back the gloom creeping through Síle’s empty home, and a prickling sensation crept across Náith’s temple. He turned away with a grunt, facing the shadows that clung to the far corner. Gilded bastard was using his Earthbond on him again, thumbing through the pages of his mind.

  ‘Betrayal is a torturer’s thorns beneath the nails,’ Aodhamar rumbled. ‘And I have tasted it more than once.’ He clomped across the rushes, plucked a stool from beside the bed and dropped down on it at Náith’s side, silver chin resting upon his fist. He breathed deep. ‘I warned you to stay away from her, old friend.’

  Náith’s lip curled. He turned away again, found Ancu watching him from the corner of Síle’s mirror, and stared at the ground between his feet.

  ‘You don’t want to hear it, I know,’ said Aodhamar. ‘No man wishes to know just how deep his foolishness runs, but you must u
nderstand the terror you have unleashed upon us, Cu Náith. Had I not grasped your ignorance of it when I scoured you with the Sight, I would have burnt you to ash where you stood.’

  Náith caught sight of his reflection – Ancu’s reflection. ‘I would welcome it.’

  ‘Self-pity does not suit you, warrior,’ muttered the Enkindled. Thick fingers combed his beard, something anxious underpinning their repetition. ‘She must be found. She must be stopped before she kindles the Stormheart.’

  ‘That petty gem,’ Náith huffed. ‘All this over a lump of old glass?’

  ‘Do you think that Nuan himself would have entrusted Ancu with some meaningless trinket? He ripped out Tárchan’s dead heart and gave it to a being who Aráne the Spearmaiden could never conquer.’ Aodhamar snorted then. ‘It seems he didn’t account for her sending a champion, or at least not one of your skill. Quite the feat, besting death. I find myself envious.’

  A horrid feeling crawled swiftly down Náith’s spine, the death-god’s whispers brushing the wilted fronds of memory. I touched his dead heart when he fell… I felt the storm that boiled within… I will not let her unleash such a travesty again.

  Aodhamar rose, moving before Síle’s empty hearth. He swept a hand over it, and flames raced across the cinders in a wash of discomfiting heat. Náith raised a hand against the glare as it set the Enkindled’s golden robes aglitter, a sweat breaking out on his brow.

  ‘Tárchan was a lord of fire and storm,’ said Aodhamar, his left hand tracing a pattern over the hearth. ‘A beast like no other – a warrior that ripped lightning from the skies, and with it laid waste to the armies of Nuan.’

  The hearth’s flames swirled as Náith watched, their wavering patterns condensing into something that held form and yet still was everchanging. A figure wrought of red flame – waving a tiny, burning spear over its flickering head. Other forms rose from the flames before it, dwarfed and puny in comparison, but countless in number as they swarmed across the cinders. Aodhamar’s hand twisted, clenched, and the figure’s spear plunged into the ash at its feet. Jagged ropes of fire whipped through the encroaching army, scattering them in a cloud of bright sparks that spiralled up toward the smoke hole. Just briefly, it seemed as though a faint chorus of tormented howls followed them beneath the whooshing of the flames.