The Exile

by Steven Savile

  Whatever it was didn't come as long as the sun was up.

  Ukko rolled over, coming awake quickly.

  He didn't know what he'd heard, only that it had dragged him abruptly from sleep with its wrongness.

  He lay on his side, listening to the night sounds hoping - and more than half actively not hoping - that it would repeat itself. He looked up at the full silver moon hanging low in the cloudless sky. The stars were bright.

  "Sláine? Are you awake? Come on, Sláine, wake up. I'm fed up of being the hero to your sleeping ugliness." The young Celt didn't stir. His sleep was disturbingly unnatural. It had been almost two days since his collapse on the hill overlooking the great stone Watcher of Er-Grah where the horned man had levitated.

  Ukko had done all he could; he had dragged, kicked and bullied the warrior to shelter, had tended his visible wounds, a cut on his forehead where he had fallen and cracked it off a rock, made him warm, and kept the small fire going. None of it made the slightest discernible difference to the warrior's condition. He knew some kind of internal struggle was going on within Sláine. The young man tossed and turned, mumbling names in his sleep: Niamh, Danu, and Bedelia, although most often it was Niamh's name on his cracked lips. He was in the grip of a fever. Cold sweat peppered his entire body. Ukko knew that it could go one of two ways. The fever would break or the man would.

  Ukko stoked the fire again, throwing on a fresh branch.

  "Come on, Sláine. I don't deserve this. I've always been a good companion."

  He shivered, moving closer to the fire, but it wasn't the cold that had his skin crawling. He had often joked that as a thief by nature he had an uncanny sixth sense for when things were just wrong. This, here, was wrong. His nerves were firing off warning after warning and had been doing so for almost two days. Someone - or something - was out there in the darkness, watching them.

  Then, a few minutes later, he heard it again: the baying of a wolf at the moon. It was a savage sound. He had always imagined that wolves were noble beasts, kings of the wild, their calls swollen with longing and sadness. The only longing in this beast's howl was for meat. The animal was hungry.

  Ukko had the uncomfortable feeling that the beast had chosen them to break its fast.

  He scurried back to where Sláine lay and pushed the warrior hard in the chest, "Come on, you great lump of meat, time to wake up." Sláine grunted but didn't show any other sign of coming back to consciousness. Ukko tried to lift the barbarian's huge stone axe but it was no use, he could barely get the head off the ground.

  "Bloody stupid thing, and why haven't you got smaller weapons, you know, daggers and stuff. Even magic acorns that'd grow into a tree I could climb up and hide in instead of this manly 'look at the size of my muscles' rubbish." He kicked the axe.

  He heard the beast padding around them in the darkness. The slobber of its tongue and the huff-huff-huff of its breathing gave it away.

  Ukko scrabbled away from Sláine, grabbing a gnarled branch and thrusting it into the fire. "Come on, come on. Catch." He shook the branch, stirring up the flames, trying to get the branch to burn. After a moment it began to smoulder. He cast a fretful glance over his shoulder. It was impossible to tell whether the beast was coming or not. Staring at the fire had all but blinded Ukko to the night. He cursed himself for a fool. "You're going to get yourself killed here, you idiot," he said, loud enough for it to sound as if he was talking to Sláine - had he not been unconscious.

  The beast came out of the black in a fury of snarling, snapping teeth and raking claws. Ukko launched himself into a backwards tumble, rolling on his shoulder and coming up in a crouch, brandishing the burning branch as if it was the mightiest sword. He brought it sweeping round in a tight arc, the flame making a low whumping noise as it was almost snuffed out. The wolf circled the fire, hackles raised, never for a moment taking its hungry eyes off the dwarf.

  "Come on then, let's be done with it shall we?"

  The beast inclined its head as if it understood his request. It lowered its nose to the dirt almost as if it was nodding.

  "Okay, I mean, I wasn't serious. It was a rhetorical question. No need to be hasty."

  The beast sprang, covering the distance between them in a single bound. It hit Ukko high in the chest, barrelling him off his feet. Ukko screamed as its yellow-stained teeth snapped an inch shy of his throat. He threw up his arms, trying desperately to batter the creature away, and then a sickening howl tore from the wolf's slack jowls as the burning branch scorched its fur.

  The animal rolled off him.

  The stench of burned fur soured the air.

  Ukko thrust the burning branch at the beast again, ramming the end of it into the animal's muzzle. A glowing twig snapped off the main brand, piercing the wolf's eye. Its cry was terrible. Ukko sprang to his feet, pushing home the unexpected advantage. He jabbed the burning brand into the animal's face again and again, until the stench of burning was overpowering. With his left hand he drew the stabbing dirk from his belt while thrusting the firebrand into the animal's face again. The beast rolled over onto its back, exposing its soft belly. Without thinking, Ukko threw himself forwards, jumping on the huge wolf and rammed the tip of the dirk deep between its ribs.

  The beast stiffened, snapping its jaws around and sinking its teeth into Ukko's arm.

  Ukko's answering scream was louder and more anguished than anything the beast had managed. The teeth sank deep into the bone and tore. Ukko dropped the firebrand and dragged the dirk out of the wolf's chest with both hands, ramming the short blade in again and again, with a shocking display of naked savagery until he hit and pierced the creature's heart. The animal bucked and writhed, howling, and then suddenly the fight fled from its body and it lay in the dirt, still.

  Ukko flopped onto his back, gasping for breath. He lay beside the dead beast. The heat coming off its corpse was incredible - so much so he thought for a moment that the dead animal was lying on the brand and its entire pelt was going up in smoke - but the brand had died and lay blackened ten feet from where they were. No, the heat was coming from within the dead beast. Ukko scrambled away from the creature.

  The wolf's face shifted in the flickering firelight, its snout truncating, and its brow narrowing.

  Ukko put the fire between himself and the dead animal, far from happy with this latest turn of events.

  Through the flames it was impossible to tell what was happening. He tried to see over them but the corpse had fallen into shadow.

  "Just leave well enough alone, Ukko," he told himself. He still clutched the bloody stabbing dirk in his right hand. "Of course you can't can you? Oh no, curiosity killed the stupid thief," Ukko muttered, creeping around the fire.

  Instead of finding the beast he saw a young boy lying naked by the fire. He had been a good-looking lad with a nice open face, a scruff of blonde hair and... and his body was soaked with blood. Standing over the corpse Ukko counted twenty-seven stab wounds in the boy's chest. He felt sick. He hadn't been able to stop himself once he had started stabbing. The dirk had just kept going in and in and in, even when the beast was dead.

  "Soth! What have I done?" he moaned. The answer was obvious. He had killed the boy. Only he hadn't. He'd killed a wolf, a wolf, not a boy. He wouldn't have killed a boy.

  His left arm hung loosely at his side, shredded where the wolf's teeth had torn into his flesh. The wound was very physical proof that he had fought a savage beast, not some wide-eyed boy drawn to the comfort of the fire.

  It was only Ukko's blood on the lad's teeth that stopped the dwarf from thinking he had gone mad.

  He shivered.

  "It's going to be a long night," Ukko grumbled, digging around in his pack for something to bind his wounds, before he settled down to wait out the darkness.

  Ukko heard something else grubbing about in the darkness less than an hour after sunrise. His heart skipped a beat. He held his wounded arm protectively to his side. "Please no, not again," he moaned. He peered in
the direction of the sound but he couldn't see anything. That didn't make him any more relaxed. The fire was dead. It had burned out during the night despite his best efforts to keep it fed.

  The corpse of the young boy was an ugly reminder of the sorts of danger that could be out there.

  Ukko crept over to where Sláine lay. He knelt and pressed his lips up to the unconscious man's ear. "Sláine? Sláine?" he whispered urgently. "Wake up, will you?" He nudged the young Sessair, and then again, quite a bit harder. "There's something out there again and I'm not up to fighting off another shoggy beast so just bloody well wake up will you? You're supposed to be the hero, not me. I'm just along for the ride."

  The scuffling in the bushes got louder. Ukko looked up sharply. He heard a grunt. "Definitely human," he muttered to Sláine. "Let's hope that means it's an improvement on a shoggy bugger."

  His heart stopped in his chest as an old man blundered into the clearing a few moments later. He burst out laughing with relief. The old man was dressed in rags and his eyes were bound with another filthy strip. He used a long stick to feel his way, sweeping it around in front of him so that it hit anything in his path and he worked his way around it. It was slow going with roots and stones sticking out of the ground every few feet.

  Ukko watched the blind man negotiate his way to the centre of the clearing and look up, look around, sniffing and turn to look directly at him. "How many injured?"

  "Two, one dead."

  "How bad?"

  "Well the dead one was very dead the last time I looked," Ukko offered, puzzled by the question. "I don't think he'll be getting up in a long time."

  "That's usually the way with the dead. I was more interested in the wounded. How badly are they wounded?"

  "Ah," Ukko said. "Not good really. In fact you could say badly. I myself have a dreadful bite I sustained wrestling off a damned shoggy beast. That's the dead one, in case you are wondering, although he just looks like a dumb boy now. My companion, the erstwhile hero of our partnership, was unconscious the whole time. Something happened to him at the stones. I've been trying to get him as far away from them as possible but as you can see he's about three times my - ah no, you can't see can you. Well, you'll just have to take my word for it."

  "Ahhh," the blind man said, as if that explained everything.

  "Look, I don't mean to be rude, I mean, you are obviously, ah, erm, hmm, well, blind. So I mean how could you know we were wounded? I mean... it isn't as if you can see or... well... can you?"

  The old man smiled. It was a rather lopsided facial expression. Ukko doubted he even knew what a smile was supposed to look like so he didn't correct him. "I can smell the blood, lad. It's a pretty special smell. It's acrid, like iron coming out of the smith's smelting pot, only more alive."

  "Remarkable," Ukko said.

  "No more remarkable than being able to see blood... Come on then, lad, let's get you and your friend back to my hut, shall we, before night sets in. I've got some stuff you can use to tend to your wounds."

  "Is there a village nearby?"

  "Well, it ain't much of one any more. It used to be, maybe a score of years ago. I used to work the flint mines. They're long gone now of course. The whole place has been dying a slow death for years. Domnall's about the only one who gets any business done."

  "Domnall?"

  "He's a smith. He makes some mighty fine weapons, or so folk say. Warriors come from miles around for one of his creations. Even the Drune priests pay the dwarf a pretty penny."

  "Dwarf, you say? Curiouser and curiouser. I might have to go pay old Domnall a visit, make acquaintances and all of that."

  "Well, he isn't the friendliest of fellows," the blind man said cagily.

  "Ah, but I am sure he'll be happy to see a kinsman."

  "Aye, maybe you're right, lad."

  Eighteen

  Temper

  Ukko nursed Sláine for the best part of three weeks, feeding him dubious delicacies like rat's liver and fried toad.

  Sláine put up with it just as he put up with the dwarf bleeding him regularly.

  "It's for your own good, Sláine. Trust me, I know what I am doing."

  "I'm not so sure," Sláine said. He felt his strength slowly returning but for all that he still felt as weak as a newborn babe and he knew Ukko was taking advantage of that. The little rat was up to something, and it was almost certainly no good.

  "It's the only way to be sure we get all of the poisons out of you, your warpishness. We don't want you coming over all funny again next time you are beside the dolmen, now do we?"

  "I suppose not," Sláine said, grudgingly.

  Sláine offered up his arm.

  The dwarf drew the tip of his stabbing dirk to open up a fresh cut. The wound was shallow but bled freely, filling the tankard that Ukko held under it.

  The dwarf disappeared a moment later.

  Sláine stared around Blind Bran's hovel. It was simple. None of the furniture had any sharp edges and it was all within easy reach of the low wooden cot. There was an intricate piece of scrimshaw on the table beside the bed, an effigy of Carnun, the Horned God. The detail on the piece was exquisite. Sláine picked it up, turning it over in his hands. It was impossible to imagine a blind man capable of such craft.

  "That piece has taken me three months," Bran said, pushing through the curtain. He didn't have his cane. He didn't need it in his own home. He had memorised the position of every bit of furniture and every ornament so that he could move around as confidently as any one with sight.

  "It's beautiful," Sláine said, the surprise all too evident in his voice. He put the small statue back on the low table.

  "Thank you."

  The pair had sat together regularly, Blind Bran telling the story of his village. It was distressingly similar to the Brianna's tale. The Drunes had come with their perverted rituals demanding sacrifices, animal at first, and then young women, to sate the hunger of their wyrm god, Crom-Cruach. For every mile they had come south Sláine knew of a dozen similar tales. The land was being laid to waste by the depravities of these Drunes in the name of their false god. Nothing grew hereabouts. There hadn't been a bountiful harvest in over a score of years, perhaps even longer.

  Slough Feg himself had driven the final nail into the coffin of this small, unimportant settlement, promising to solve their hunger and make food plentiful once more.

  "We took him at his word," Blind Bran said. "I mean, why wouldn't we?"

  "What happened?"

  "He promised us that there would be an end to our hardship, that there would be food aplenty. All we had to do was bend the knee to Crom and our needs would be seen to."

  "And were they?"

  "Not in any humane way, warrior. The Drunes rounded up the young of the village, all under twenty summers, and butchered them."

  "Soth!" Sláine said, realising even as he said it that he was beginning to sound more and more like the pesky dwarf.

  "That was more than half of us. He laughed in my face as I challenged him. What are you upset about, miner? Now there is food enough for everyone! You should be happy. I have saved your life. That's what he said to me. He expected me to be happy that he had killed my friends, my son, and the future of our village. There are no children now. Our little place in the world is dying. None have the heart to bring new life into this wretched world. In that Feg and his vile wyrm god have been our damnation."

  "I am sorry, Bran. I don't know what to tell you. I am here to prevent this fate befalling my people."

  "Then I pray you succeed, Sláine, for the sake of the children."

  "I cannot fail." It wasn't arrogance; it was a statement of fact. To fail was to damn the Sessair to the same fate that had befallen these nameless villages all throughout the Sourlands.

  "I thought the same once. I was a proud man. I am not so proud today. I haven't always been this way, Sláine. It wasn't just my son they murdered that day, I died as well. This life is a half life. Feg took my eyes becaus
e I had the gall to challenge him. 'Perhaps being blind will help you see better', that's what he told me as the branding iron did its work. I remember it so vividly, my boy lying on the floor, this tiny broken thing, and all of the others piled up around him. I can't stop seeing the looks of betrayal on their faces. It's funny how the last thing I saw has stayed so fresh in my mind's eye, almost as if Feg trapped it there deliberately to taunt me. I wouldn't put it past the monster."

  "He will pay," Sláine promised.

  "I hope so lad, but I have long since past believing it will happen."

  "I refuse to live in a world where it doesn't."

  "Ah, then don't let Slough Feg hear you say that or he will twist your words and you will be the dead one lying on the stone slab as an offering to Crom."

  "I'd like to see him try," Sláine said.

  "Again?" Sláine grumbled, holding out his arm for Ukko to cut.

  "This hurts me more than it does you, Sláine, believe me. I wish you'd just get better."

  "I'm sure you do."

  "Oh, I do. Believe me, I do. Nothing would please me more than to see you up and about and back to your old warpish ways."

  "Well, of course you don't want me to croak here. I'm not an idiot. I know that stories about the great warped one, Sláine Mac Roth dying in a blind man's hovel won't get you a halfway decent meal in any inn we've been to, now will it?"

  Ukko tied off the wound with a strip of cloth. The blood quickly soaked the rag a rich crimson.

  "You wound me." Ukko grinned. "Hold your arm above your head, there's a good man. I think I might have cut a little deep this time."