The Shadow of the High King

by Frank Dorrian

  It did with Sten, anyway, she could already make out a bulge in his pants.

  ‘Poor wee thing,’ she said, pouting. She moved across the room and climbed onto her bed on her knees. ‘Come over here and tell me about it.’ She saw him gulp as he always did and come to her shyly. She thought he would have been more confident about this now, the amount of times he had come to her for this.

  ‘W-Well,’ he stammered, as he stood before where she knelt, looking up at him with suggestive eyes. She knew how to play her part.

  She had too, if she wanted to eat.

  ‘Rus has, er… well, well he –’ he mumbled, mouth working as she unlaced his pants.

  ‘Mhm,’ she said, nodding up at him, lips full, slightly pouted.

  ‘Well, h-he booted… two of the other lads off the farm last week, for stealing cider from the stores. And… and… w-well, it’s me picking up the slack, as usual, ain’t it.’ She nodded, pulling his pants down, listening to his nervous, utterly pointless small talk.

  ‘You’re a hard worker,’ she breathed glancing downward at his member. ‘Very hard.’ She smiled up at him, amused at her own pun. He smirked stupidly down at her and laughed awkwardly.

  ‘Your accent is so…’ he said, fumbling his words.

  ‘Thick?’ she said, arching her eyebrows in time with it – again, pleased with her own pun, a smirk on her face. The men here loved her accent, its island twang so broad that some had trouble understanding her. Her pillow talk was especially popular because of it, they seemed to think it filthier for some reason, though she often amused herself by spouting meaningless noise while they rutted on her and observing the effect it had on them.

  ‘Captivating,’ he said quietly, face flushed. ‘I –’ he started, but gasped instead as she took him deeply in her mouth. She winced slightly as the taste of sweat. He’d rushed here from his farm work, she supposed. She didn’t mind. Sweat was pleasant compared to some of the things she’d tasted in her time as a whore.

  Sten groaned and swore, twitching and staggering backwards. Ceatha laughed, wiping her mouth, free hand letting slip her thin garment, revealing modest breasts. She ran her tongue wetly up the palm of her hand to the tips of her fingers, biting her lip for effect as she slipped the hand up between her legs. Sten’s eyes widened predictably as he watched.

  It was for her benefit, really. Fucking Marchers all day left Ceatha dry between the legs at the sight of them, even sweethearts like big, stupid, cute Sten. She didn’t fancy being sore after he was finished. The day wouldn’t be over with her even when he was, unfortunately.

  Ceatha turned her back to him, giggling as she knelt on all fours before him. She hitched up her skirt, exposing herself. It still amazed her how his mouth fell open at the sight, despite the amount of times he’d already seen it.

  With his typical youthful, over-eager lust, he took her like that. He was fumbling, inexperienced, hasty, lacking in rhythm and proper attentiveness. Ceatha groaned and sighed for him regardless, as she was supposed to, drawing him on with a mouth full of filthy, encouraging words, clutched tightly at the bed and arched her back as though taken in throes of pleasure, gasping shuddered curses and compliments.

  He ate it up as he always did, and, as always, he didn’t last long. With a curse, he withdrew, and spent himself over her backside with a shuddering gasp. He was kind like that, Sten – she’d asked him after his first few visits to keep his seed out of her, enough men already insisted on throwing theirs up there she didn’t need another increasing the risk of getting her fat with child.

  She was already tired of having to brew fluxleaf tea regularly to make sure her womb stayed empty. The taste of the concoction was foul and gave her awful stomach cramps as though her blood was due.

  Sten sat on the bed, sighing loud and long, gratified, as Ceatha cleaned her rear and legs with a dry cloth. She felt his eyes following her as she fussed about the room. Innocent wee fool, she thought affectionately, her back turned to him. Your father should have taught you not to think too fondly of whores. She knew he was going to say something stupid. He always did after he’d finished fucking her.

  ‘I could take you away from this, you know.’

  She smiled again at that. Simple, innocent Sten. He was so inexperienced he genuinely thought there was something between them other than service and payment.

  ‘Don’t be silly now, a muirnín.’

  ‘I’m not!’ he protested.

  ‘Yes, you are,’ she chided, sitting down next to him and blowing a lock of red hair from her face.

  ‘I would be good to you,’ Sten said with a frown, looking his age. ‘Not like the arseholes you get coming in here.’ That was true, she supposed. She did have to deal with many an oaf each day. More on her days off when Genson made her work the tavern downstairs.

  ‘I know you would, Sten,’ said Ceatha, smiling faintly at the young lad. ‘But you’re just a wee lamb. It doesn’t work the way you think.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Well, for one, Genson would beat me within an inch of my life if I tried to leave. I make him too much coin.’

  There was more to it than that, but she didn’t feel like sharing it with the boy. He wouldn’t understand. She doubted anyone would. He wanted to be her white knight, like in the children’s stories the Marchers told their children.

  ‘If he touched you I’d beat him to within an inch of his own, the gluttonous bastard,’ Sten said, eyes aflame. She knew he meant it, the stubbornness of Sten’s youth made him blind to all but what he wanted.

  ‘Oh, Sten, don’t be a fool, what do you know about fighting?’

  The farmhand’s eyes flashed.

  ‘They say on the farm I’m strong as the mountain beasts,’ he snapped. Ceatha smiled again.

  ‘I know you are, Sten. You’ll meet a nice little lass someday who’ll set your heart and britches afire, believe me, and you’ll forget all about me and those silly dreams in your head. You’re still a boy yet, Sten, I’m a whore and I’ll only lead you astray.’

  ‘I’ve seen seventeen summers, I’m hardly a boy these days,’ Sten said, his face like thunder, arms crossed defiantly and childishly. True, she realised, he had grown into more of a man since he’d started coming to her. She doubted she could ever look at Sten as a man, though.

  ‘Aye,’ Ceatha said, touching his hand affectionately, ‘and I’ve seen twenty and five. I know what I speak of.’

  ‘And so? I’m a man grown, I could take care of you.’ She giggled at that.

  ‘Where I come from, Sten, you’re not a man grown till you’ve bloodied your sword for your clan and have golden rings on your braids.’

  He scratched at his own scruffy mop of hair, frowning. ‘I could still take care of you,’ he grumbled. ‘I could take you away from here, a few days from now. Just let me gather what we will need and we can go in the night.’

  Ceatha laughed softly. ‘And where would we go?’

  ‘I don’t know… south? Away from here. I’m going to be leaving anyway. They say Lord Fullen hasn’t returned from Farrifax, nor any of the men that went with him. They’re saying that there’s graves along distant roads, warrior’s graves. Signs of battle everywhere, fields burnt black, crows circling the northern skies.’

  That was true. She’d heard the same from conversations overheard whilst working in the tavern below. There was trouble in the north, from what she’d gathered. Something about an attack on some towns northeast of here, she couldn’t recall their names, or the details. The lands of the Marchers meant little to her. Less than that, for what they’d done to her people in her lifetime. She’d heard men saying that Lord Fullen had been headed to one that had been attacked and there had been no word since. What that meant for Haverlon, though, she had no idea, other than it was probably defenceless now its fighting men were gone.

  It seemed she could not escape dark days in Caermark anymore than she could in Luah Fáil. She sighed, felt her shoulders slump. Maybe she shoul
d try and get away, start anew one more time. Hadn’t she done that enough though? Genson would not exactly let her up and go, either, the horrible bastard.

  The Marchers had always viewed the clans as slaves. They would come to the island in their horrid ships, with their men in steel armour riding fearsome horses and swinging bludgeons joyously. They always seemed to find it amusing, for some reason. They herded the clansmen like cattle, like sheep, and took them away in fat-bellied ships across the horizon to a land no one knew.

  She had counted herself lucky once that she had never been taken in a raid. But now? Here she was. Forced to fuck the locals of Haverlon town if she wanted to eat, to have a roof over her head and shelter from the dark of the night. If she wanted to keep her teeth. Was she paid? No. Genson took every penny she made, that fat pig. She thought it was probably another way of his to keep her here. If she had no coin she could not travel, could not provision herself for the road. It made her dependent on him. Realising that made her feel physically sick.

  Ceatha was a slave to Genson, just as much as any who had been taken on those ships, so long ago.

  ‘I’m sure things will be fine,’ she said to Sten eventually, shaking her head. ‘If you’re going to go, just go, don’t worry about me – you don’t grow up in the clans without a lick or two on how to look after yourself.’

  ‘I won’t go without you.’

  ‘Then you’re a daft wee boy.’ She touched his cheek, removing his frown. ‘Now go on, out with you, you know Genson doesn’t like customers lurking round – bad for business and all that.’

  She ushered him to the door. ‘I’ll be back soon,’ he said, dropping a handful of copper coins on her dresser as they passed. She scolded him for it, as he always left more than he owed.

  Bless him, she thought gently, closing the door behind him. He’ll make some young stripling happy, so he will. She would only break the poor lad’s heart.

  Sten had left three copper coins for her on top of Genson’s fee, she saw. Ceatha hated him leaving her extra money that he had worked for, but at the same time was grateful – for she had none of her own, and fluxleaf wasn’t free.

  She went to her bed again, sat – and wept silently.

  She could leave if she wanted too. It would be easy. She had ways. She had been raised to be one of the Sí Druí of Luah Fáil. They called them witches here in Caermark, though the name in her tongue actually meant ‘she who weaves’. That was more akin to what they actually were – but then she did not expect Marchers to understand that.

  Weavers. They were guides mostly, they nurtured the clan they watched over, worked in unseen ways, steered the clan chieftains on the right course, like the helmsman of a ship. Their power over a clan was immense, some of the greatest clan wars had been started at the suggestion of a chieftain’s Weaver.

  They could do other things, too. Clan legends spoke of Weavers who could call fire from the sky, lightning from the clouds, make the earth tremble and shake as though giants rattled its very foundations and split its stones asunder.

  Ceatha had never met another Weaver with any such power. But the years she had spent in the nemeton had not all been spent practicing the arts of foresight and lovemaking. They were in tune with nature, the Weavers of Luah Fáil. Part of it, like roots in earth. She knew the ways and doors of the land and its forces. She was no defenceless maiden.

  Or at least she hadn’t been, not till recently.

  They called it witchcraft here, sorcery, or magic. It didn’t feel like that, when she used it. In Luah Fáil, they simply called it druaigh – ‘weaving’. It felt more like an innate oneness with things, a union with the spirits of nature, a sharing of souls with one another, a borrowing of strength or wisdom. Back home it was respected, revered even. They were a part of the clan, as necessary for them to survive as it is for the body to have blood flow through its veins. Here, it was feared. She had seen townsfolk burn young women tied to a stake for practicing this witchcraft.

  She still remembered the screams, but the laughter had been the worst part.

  Ceatha wasn’t even sure why, or how, the townsfolk had came to the conclusion those young girls had practiced witchcraft. They seemed to accuse them of all kinds of silly things – animals dying strangely, spouses cheating, children being struck down with disease. It was baffling. They said it was unnatural and insulted their gods, who were the only ones who should be able to wield such powers. The gods of Caermark were jealous, it seemed, to demand vengeance upon women who were born in tune with the earth itself. If they actually were, that was. She doubted any of the poor girls she’d seen die had even a trace of the Weaving in them.

  But it had been enough to scare her, terrify her, actually, and make her keep her head down. Ceatha hadn’t used her Weaving in a long time now. It was a living thing, the Weaving, a thing that stirred of its own accord at times. Now it was mostly silent. She had thought to summon it at times and found herself shaking, trembling and weeping as it reared and stretched within her being, saw images of those wretched girls’ as they burned, skin blistering and peeling, eyes melting and sloughing from their twisted, gaping skulls. Now she had simply stopped trying. It left her a shivering weakling when she did.

  It was a cruel, cruel thing to fear your own Weaving.

  These days she tried to convince herself that her clan had not hailed her as the greatest Weaver of their time. Tried to forget her arrogance. Her glory. Her pride. And she felt only sorrow in the wake of it all, for here she was, far from home, far from the remnants of her people – a failure.

  Setting out on her own had been a foolish idea, she knew that now. Ceatha had been mugged along the road to Haverlon by a group of common footpads, her Weaving the only reason she was still alive, though it hadn’t solved her lack of food and silver. She had never intended to stay here as a whore. A few nights’ food and lodge and some coin in her pocket for a few nights of… work, Genson had said it would be.

  She should have known better, should never have done it, not in a land like Caermark, not amongst the Marchers, most of whom only wished ill upon her people. Almost all of them did, the more she thought upon it. Especially here in Haverlon, a town so pointless it was probably not even on the Marchers’ maps. They were cousin-fuckers and bog-farming bumpkins, slow of wit, ignorant and backward. She hated them so much it hurt, made her want to scream and tear her hair out.

  Well, apart from Sten, that big bumbling bashful fool was the nearest thing to a friend she had left these days, and even he paid to fuck her.

  She dried her eyes. And there was a knock at the door.

  It was a hard day for her, it turned out. How many men had come to take a turn at her after Sten? Seven? Eight maybe? She stopped counting and simply lay back and let them have her. Well, the ones that didn’t demand more specific service. She was expected to please them, of course. She didn’t mind with Sten, even made an effort to please him – he was the only one who showed her as much as a stroke of kindness and dignity here.

  Maybe she should try to run away with him? She’d done stupider things before. Coming to Haverlon, for example.

  Ceatha brewed some of her fluxleaf tea in the inn’s kitchen downstairs and took it to her room with her, her day done, her whole body aching, her privates tender and sore. The tea tasted foul as always, and she gagged as she forced herself to swallow it. The warmth of it was welcome, but she knew she would wake with cramps as always. She nestled down to sleep, a hand between her legs to soothe her red-raw mound, and nodded off, exhausted.

  Ceatha dreamed that night. A Weaving dream. The first one since it had fallen silent.

  The Weaving was a strange thing. It could give strange dreams some nights, put peculiar images in your mind. Sometimes there was a method to it, it would show you what it thought was to come, or hint at an answer to a problem that you dwelt upon. Often Weavers would use what they saw to guide their chieftain and his clan.

  Sometimes, it even made you dream of gods.
Or things that seemed like gods, at least. Ceatha had never been certain if she had ever truly dreamed or spoken to one of her gods, they always seemed to change, seem a bit different from what the sagas said of them. Those dreams in particular though always seemed to hold some deeper meaning, some hidden guidance.

  That night, she dreamed more vividly of gods than ever before.

  She was in the nemeton of her hometown, Corchú, the carved stone circle in the woods where the local clans came to offer tribute to their gods. She knelt in prayer before the effigy of Béchu – the goddess of wisdom and foresight.

  The night was dark and shadows were many about her. Shapes moved through them, skulking and gliding. Things all long of limb and of claws that clutched and snatched, things with no faces save for pale masks with empty eyeholes that leered at her hungrily like toothless maws. Bodah Duhn, servants of Corrom Duhn. She shuddered, their gaze prickling her skin sickeningly.

  She could feel their mockery, their cruel, victorious smirking. And their accusation.

  Show me a way, Béchu, she pleaded silently, hands clasped, show me what you would do. The Marchers have taken everything from me, from my people. Help me. Please, help me. I can’t take it anymore, I can’t live like this.

  The effigy gave no answer to that, save to tower in crumbling glory, stone eyes blackened with shadow, Béchu’s wizened face staring solemnly down at her. Bodah Duhn moved about it in a black swarm, their echoing, skittering laughter washing over Ceatha like a torrent as they climbed over Béchu’s carved form.

  Béchu’s mouth moved then, cracking and splintering as it moved, dust and crumbled stone tumbling from those ancient, moss-flecked lips and yawning cavern beyond them.

  Hathad Camoraigh, it said like the shattering of stone, as the shadow-bodied Bodah Duhn eclipsed her form, their echoed snickering drowning out the effigy’s voice.

  From behind Ceatha there then came the creaking, splintering sound of stone breaking, cracking, tumbling away. Spinning, she saw the effigy of Cu Náith rise to its feet, stepping over its stone sword and shield. It flexed its joints as she sat rooted, unable to move, unable to scream as it stepped towards her, empty eyes leering behind cloying, impenetrable shadows. Long stone braids clattered upon a broad, chiselled chest, thick with muscle, and atop its right shoulder, worn like a knightly pauldron, was the skull of the gigantic hound once belonging to Luw the Hunter.