The Exile

by Steven Savile

  The King of the Sessair faced him down, a look trapped between anger at his temerity and sympathy for his pain etched onto Grudnew's face.

  He shook his head. "This is why I can't bring you, lad. You're a liability. You're angry. You aren't thinking. If another man raised his hand to me I'd have it cut off. I can't trust you not to do something stupid."

  "It's my right!"

  "Aye, lad, it is, and I'm taking it away from you. There's no easy way to do this. You're stuck between the Mountain and Crom himself. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. I understand your need for retribution. I truly do, lad, but I cannot put it first. Your anger won't help the others fighting with you, not on this hunt. This one requires a cold heart. We cannot surrender to fury. Most importantly, lad, we cannot let you surrender to your anger. A warp spasm taking you at the sight of Macha's killers could damn every man around you. Would you want that?"

  "Why should I care?" Sláine said, petulantly. "Just as long as the skull-swords die miserably, vengeance will be mine. I can live with that."

  "Well, I cannot. So, you can either back down and stay home of your own will, or I can have Gorian place you under house arrest. Just know that wasting good men to keep you locked up will no doubt jeopardise what little chance of success the rest of us have of avenging your mother."

  Sláine's face twisted. "You hate me so much?"

  "I do not hate you, lad. In any other fight I would have no other stand at my side, but in this brutality is not what I need. I need ruthless cunning, stealth, the prowess of the hunter not the strength and brave heart of the warrior. So what will you do?"

  "What choice do I have?" Sláine asked.

  "I will give you justice, Sláine Mac Roth. You have my word," Grudnew promised.

  "Well that makes me feel so much better," Sláine muttered. He turned his back on his king and walked away.

  He knew he lost sight of the path to his higher soul in a fog of bitterness and anger. His head swam with a swarm of dark thoughts. Justice demanded an eye for an eye, a cut for a cut, no more, no less. He wanted more than that. The need that coiled around his heart craved it. It wanted to exterminate the skull-swords, every last one of them. It thought of nothing beyond purging Tir-Nan-Og of their taint. Sláine saw visions of himself reaching in and ripping their spines out from their shuddering corpses, cracking their skulls open and playing ballgames with their brains, and taking bites out of their warm hearts while they still beat. He breathed deeply, savouring the vision even as it shattered beneath Grudnew's refusal to allow him his vengeance.

  He thought about following them, but knew it wouldn't work. The Red Branch had men capable of picking up the faintest spore. They would know he followed, and what then? Would Grudnew have him beaten? Imprisoned? Exiled? Killed? To defy the king of the Sessair was treasonous and for all the understanding Grudnew spoke of, the man was still king. He would brook no more defiance from him.

  It wasn't a foregone conclusion that the trackers would pick up his scent; even dogs lost the scent in water. The answer lay in the River Dôn and its fast flowing current. The mighty river and its white water rapids were not the unbreachable defence Grudnew imagined them to be. Sláine had mastered them once. He could do it again.

  He knew that they would be watching him, expecting him to do something reckless, so he walked, pacing every street and alley in Murias, visiting old ghosts. He stood on the corner where Macha had died, looking for her blood in the hard-packed dirt but already the rain had washed it away or the earth itself had leached it up, feeding on her as it would any other nutrient offered up to it. He visited the croft where she told him Roth had first pledged his troth, a stone where she sat him on her knee and told stories of Finn and Llew Silverhand, the legendary heroes of their people. He dug up a handful of dirt and cast it over his shoulder, as any dutiful son in mourning would, mouthing a silent prayer for Macha's soul.

  He visited the places she loved, seeing her there even though she was not, and knowing she never would be again. He did everything they would have expected a grieving son to do.

  His actions were a charade, but even so he began to hate the game for the emotions it stirred within him. Every new landmark added fuel to the fire that burned inside him. Only vengeance would quench it.

  They were buying him time to think, to plan.

  He thought about one thing and one thing only: crossing the river and following the hunters.

  Dian found him an hour after the scouting party had ridden out.

  The young druid was sombre as he settled down beside his friend. The riders had finally disappeared from sight.

  "How are you doing?"

  "How do you think?" Sláine asked, still staring at the spot where the last of the riders had been just moments ago.

  "I think you're planning on doing something stupid. You've got that look on your face."

  "That's why I love you, Dian. You know me so well," Sláine said, picking at the dirt with his fingers.

  The young druid shook his head. "What are you going to do?"

  "You mean apart from the obvious?"

  "The obvious being hunting the skull-swords down and killing them, I take it?"

  "That would be the obvious, yes," Sláine conceded.

  "Don't do it, Sláine, please. Grudnew's been good to you, you know that, but you are putting him in an impossible situation. If you go against him like this he'll never be able to forgive you. He isn't just Grudnew the man, he is King Grudnew. The man might understand your grief but the king cannot countenance such an insult from his warriors. The Red Branch is unquestioningly loyal. He won't be able to forgive you, Sláine."

  "He won't have to."

  "You're not thinking straight. Just wait, please, for me. Wait.

  "The king made you a promise. Give him a chance to honour it."

  "You mean sit here and twiddle my thumbs while they chase around like headless chickens without the slightest inkling as to what they are hunting?" Sláine shook his head emphatically. "No. Do you know why?" He didn't wait for his friend to answer. "I'll tell you why. Because I can feel them out there, Dian. I can feel the skull-swords feeding off the Goddess's body. When I dare give my anger its head I can feel all sorts of things crawling across Danu's dirt."

  "That is your grief talking."

  "No, it isn't. I can feel them. They are parasites. They leach away at the earth power, their poisons feeding back into it, tainting it. Their presence is a canker eating at her flesh. I know that now. I could follow them to the ends of the Land of the Young and beyond if I wanted to. There is nowhere they could hide. All I have to do is surrender to the anger, let the earth power rise within me, and then I would be able to give the Goddess what she wants."

  "What does she want?"

  "Vengeance," Sláine said.

  "That is not Danu's way, my friend," Dian said, sadly.

  "You think not? You forget that it is the Morrigan's way, and that she is an aspect of the Goddess. You doubt me? Then tell me why she led me back in time to see my mother die? Why she said it was necessary for me to see it if it wasn't to cut that canker out? Answer me that if you can."

  But Dian had no answers.

  They sat side by side in silence, each of them thinking about the other's words and the implications they held.

  "I want to be alone," Sláine said after what seemed like an age.

  Dian studied his friend's face. "Nothing I've said has gotten through, has it? You're still dead set on some stupid crusade of self-destruction."

  Sláine looked his friend in the eye. "We've both grown up a lot haven't we? Both changed. There was a time when you would have been the first to raise your fists and fight, now look at you."

  "And there was a time when you would have lis... Who am I trying to kid? There has never been a time when you listened to anything I had to say. Just don't ask me to lie for you, I can't do that, not anymore."

  "Like I said, things have changed."

  Sláine ch
ecked the knotted rope for the third time. It was secure. He cast one last look over his shoulder towards Murias, knowing even as he turned his back on the wattle and daub houses that he was turning his back on the only life he had ever known. The moment he launched himself into the water he knew there could be no turning back. Still, well aware of the consequences, he dived, submerging beneath the awesome crush of the white-tipped rapids.

  The sudden shock of cold slammed the breath out of his lungs and left him gasping and swallowing water.

  He was in trouble in seconds.

  He floundered, trying desperately to claw his way to the surface but the undertow dragged him down. He flailed and splashed, coughed and spat, and swallowed water as he opened his mouth to scream and the river came rushing in to suffocate him.

  He was drowning.

  He lashed out at the water, clawing at the riverbank even as the undertow relinquished its hold on him and the river sent his body tumbling end over end through the rushing water, playing with him. It bounced him off protruding rocks even as he choked on the air and water in his lungs, sucked him back under the surface and bullied him deeper, down and down and down. The mud had turned the water black, blinding him so thoroughly that it was impossible for him to tell if his eyes were open or closed. Sláine felt himself spinning and tumbling. He couldn't tell if he was upside down or the right way up. He had no idea where the air was, which way to strive for. He groped out trying to catch something - anything - of substance but the river had him.

  It wasn't about to let him go.

  Instead of fighting it, he surrendered to it, accepting death's cold kiss.

  Instead of those icy lips he felt something else brush against his skin, something solid, fleshlike - a leg? A hand? It was impossible to tell what through the muddied waters. He flailed out for it blindly, suddenly desperate not to die.

  He felt it again, whatever it was, like hands guiding his back, pulling him around.

  He rolled with it, helpless to resist as he felt a delicate hand slip into his. His eyes stung as he opened them. Suddenly, through the muddy darkness a wide-eyed alabaster pale face swam into view. A face quite unlike any he had ever seen before. The eyes were bright with a sickly greenish luminosity; and the skin hideously translucent - he could see the blood in the veins beneath the surface, pumping. It had a mouth, but beside the mouth were three short slits, cut horizontal to each other: gills. The creature bared its teeth, sharpened fangs like jagged rusty nails hammered into its jaw. Its gills flared.

  Sláine struggled to pull away but the delicacy of the creature's fine-boned hand belied its vice-like grip.

  The thing had him and it wasn't letting him go.

  He twisted and kicked, but the creature refused to relinquish its hold on him. Instead, it grinned a raffish grin, and leaned in as if to kiss the young warrior.

  He swallowed more water as he screamed into the river.

  Its lips closed around his but there was nothing erotic in the gesture. Sláine was powerless as the creature breathed him in, sucking the water up from his lungs and taking it into itself before expelling it through its gills. His body shuddered violently beneath the punishing kiss. He felt the strength drain out of his limbs. He tried to turn his head away and break free of the kiss but he couldn't.

  The creature had him.

  The creature kicked back against the current, dragging him easily with it. It was a thing of the water. He had heard talk of such creatures, mermen and selkies. Half man, half fish, and seal like creatures of the deep capable of shedding their skin and walking beside men in the air. Tall Iesin spun wondrous tales about them. They had lured Grymm Wavestrider to his death with their siren call; he remembered that suddenly, a brilliant hallucinatory fragment of memory. The pirate's ship had floundered on the sound, lured into the shallow waters by the selkies' seductive crooning.

  Then suddenly he was choking on air - beautiful fresh air - as the creature dragged him out of the river and up on to the riverbank.

  "Not your time. No no. The mistress will not let you leave her, little manling." The selkie's voice was a sibilant hiss as it drew out the "s" of mistress, the word rushing with all the melody of the river itself.

  Sláine collapsed onto his back and sucked in huge gulping gasps of air as the creature slipped beneath the white water and disappeared with virtually no splash.

  It took him what felt like forever to master his breathing, longer still before he felt strong enough to look around and see where the current had dragged him. He was disorientated, dizzy. He rolled over and was violently sick. After another minute of retching up brackish water he drew his knees underneath him and forced himself up into a crab-like crouch. As he looked up and saw the wattle and daub walls of Grudnew's roundhouse a single thought passed through his mind: Niamh.

  Vengeance and lust were both passionate aspects of the Goddess.

  The selkie had dragged him out of the river less than fifty feet from the king's home, behind the barricades and the guards.

  Niamh: heaven.

  She had only ever said four words to him but still she had placed her claim on his heart. Sláine remembered his promise to Brighid and knew, even as he did, that there was no way he could keep it. He had to see her again.

  Niamh, heaven, Grudnew's chosen bride - the girl who would be Queen of the Sessair when she finally came of age and the king took her.

  Surely this was why the Goddess had sent her selkie to save him? Danu herself had brought him to Niamh's door.

  "It would be rude not to go in," he said to himself as he stood, and what was worse, he believed it. His body ached where the river had battered it. Sláine moved tenderly, favouring his right side. He felt out his ribs. A dart of white-hot agony lanced through his side as his fingers pushed at a splinter of broken rib. He pulled his hand away quickly. "Just to say hello."

  He crept up to the side of the roundhouse, crouching beneath the shutters. He listened at the window for a full five minutes, trying to make out any sounds of movement from inside.

  He knew what he was doing, of course, at least in part. He was angry at Grudnew for robbing him of his revenge, angry at himself for being beaten by the river, angry at the world for his mother's death. He wanted to hurt the world, the king, and most of all himself.

  He couldn't hurt the skull-swords any more. Instead he wanted to hurt the king in the same way that Grudnew had hurt him, by denying him the right to something that was his.

  He cracked open the shutter and clambered through. He dropped to the floor silently, looked around the empty room and called, "Hello, gorgeous. Guess who?"

  She knew who he was even before the clumsy oaf was halfway through the window.

  No one else had ever dared invade her prison.

  It was Sláine Mac Roth.

  Niamh had heard her betrothed talk of him often. According to Grudnew the warped one was the future of the tribe, although watching the brute spill into the bedroom it was hard to see exactly why. There was something special about the young man, it was in his ice-blue eyes and reflected in his smile. He had a dangerous smile. It was the kind of smile that could get a young woman into trouble, and a young man for that matter.

  He looked up, as if sensing her scrutiny and flashed her that roguish grin of his. He was attractive in his own way. His skin was dark with a weather-beaten tan, his cheeks shadowed with two days' worth of stubble, and his eyes, oh but his eyes were something else, the penetrating ice blue of a bird of prey. They were ruthless and paradoxically swollen with a world of hurt. She felt as if they stripped back every layer of her flesh to get to her soul as he looked at her. He was, she knew suddenly, more than he seemed to be.

  "Ah, no fair, Niamh, you're cheating."

  "You're a fool, Sláine." She couldn't help herself; she smiled. "He'll kill you if he knows you've been here."

  "I'm sure, but between you and me, how could he ever find out it? I mean, I am certainly not about to tell him, and I can't imagine you'd
want to confess to my clandestine visits, would you?"

  He moved towards her, and winced, his hand cupping his side protectively.

  She saw that he had taken a battering from the river.

  "You risk a lot being here, Sláine," she said softly, enjoying the truth of her words. He risked more than a lot; he risked everything. And why? For her? How could it be? He had barely set eyes on her. She had no idea how she was supposed to fathom the inner workings of a man's mind. They were unpredictable, vain and violent creatures given to extremes, brooding introspection and cock-like strutting and preening.

  "I didn't have a lot of choice," he said. "The river brought me here. I was hell bent on pursuing your husband-"

  "He's not my husband," Niamh interrupted, more forcefully than she intended. She couldn't help it. Grudnew was a powerful man, but in the years she had been the king's "prisoner" she had come to despise her gaoler. She hated being beholden so completely to him for her existence. She hated the fact that her life had been lived so removed from the rest of the tribe. Calum had picked her out when she was eight, and had her taken away from her parents so that she might be pure and unsullied when the new king claimed her. She had no friends. She hadn't seen her mother or father for nine years. She remembered the last time she saw her mother, Brighid. She had knelt, cupping Niamh's face in her hands and placed a tender kiss on her forehead.

  It is a great honour our king is giving you, dear heart. That's what she had said, and she had meant it. Her mother never would have lied, not knowingly, but it was hard not to resent that "great honour" as it had turned her into just as much a prisoner as any common criminal - more so in that she never came into contact with other people apart from her husband-to-be.

  That was until this clumsy warrior had stumbled into her prison.

  She felt something then: a rush of blood to the head as he smiled at her. Niamh couldn't help but return it. For the first time in years she felt like someone, a living breathing young woman, vital and full of life, not simply a ghost trapped inside her shell living a non-life like one of the half-dead.