Sláine raised his hand, scratching his ear.
"Good, keep it like that," Ukko said. "I'll be back in a while. Got to go see a man about a cow."
"From anyone else that would be an odd sentence."
"Ah, but I'm not anyone else," Ukko said, grinning as he backed out of the room. Sláine didn't like the look on the little sneak thief's face one bit.
Sláine waited for the outside door to close before he lowered his arm. He stood up. He walked over to the door. He pressed the bandage against his arm but it did little to staunch the bleeding. He stood there for a moment, counting to eleven before he cracked the door open an inch. Blood dripped, a few drops pattering around his feet as he peeked through the crack in time to see the dwarf skipping around the corner of a low longhouse fifty feet away. Ukko cradled the tankard of Sláine's freshly drained blood to his chest. Sláine shook his head. The better he got to know the dwarf the less he trusted the little runt. He was up to no good, of that Sláine was sure, and it had something to do with his blood.
There was only one way to find out. He followed Ukko.
Weak from his wounds and the constant bleeding, Sláine moved slowly, all too aware that the world was precariously balanced and wanted to roll away under him every third step. He kept close to the buildings as he walked. He used them for support when his legs threatened to undo him. The streets were empty, which was far from ideal. A few more people moving around would at least have offered something approximating cover. Still, beggars couldn't be choosers. He inched up to the corner and peered around it. Ukko was whistling and looking far too happy with himself as he ducked into a doorway. The sign above it was of a hammer and anvil.
Sláine crept closer, pressing up against the wall, beneath the window so that he might eavesdrop on the dwarf's clandestine business.
"Excellent," said a voice he didn't recognise. "More of the warped one's blood. This will temper War-Flame, making her the most fabled of my creations, worthy of the Lord Weird himself."
Sláine stiffened at the mention of Slough Feg. It took every ounce of restraint he had not to throw himself through the window and choke the life out of the two-timing double-dealing backstabbing dwarf. He seethed.
"Five bits I think we agreed." He heard the clink of coins being counted out and Ukko's strangled cough.
"I think you'll find it was nine, Domnall."
"Nine, nine, of course, yes. Never try to grift a grifter, eh? Nine bits it is."
Four more coins rattled out of the pouch and into Ukko's greedy hands.
"Sure you can't make it say thirty bits? I mean this is hero's blood, not some shoddy guttersnipe's. It's the good stuff. You said so yourself, Sláine's was the best blood you'd ever come across. Perfect for quenching swords."
"Did I? Well, it isn't bad but it is hardly perfect. It will do. It will be used to forge a mighty sword, the match of any ever wielded by giants, dwarf: a true hero's blade. Slough Feg will reward me greatly for War-Flame when I offer it up to him to wield."
"Soth!" Ukko exclaimed. "You mean the sword is for the horned priest? Sorry, I'll be needing that blood back, and much as it pains me to say it, you can have your coins."
"You think so? The way I see it you aren't in any kind of position to try and bargain. We struck an honest deal. I have upheld my side, and you have upheld yours. That's what we call business."
"You dirty rotten cheat. Give me that blood back or I'll set Sláine on you."
"Really? You don't think he'd have your guts for a hero harness for stealing his blood?"
Sláine didn't wait to hear anymore. He barged through the smithy door.
Ukko and Domnall, the smith, had each other by the throat. Both turned, furtively, to look at the door as he stormed in. Domnall let go first, dusting his hands off on his apron. They were standing beside a huge black iron block that the smith obviously used as an anvil to beat out the red hot metal.
"Sláine!" Ukko gulped. "I can explain! It isn't what it looks like."
"It looks like the smith is trying to throttle the life out of you," Sláine said coldly.
"Well, maybe it is what it looks like then."
"Welcome to Domnall's, armourer to the great warriors of old. What can I interest you in? A beautifully crafted gáe bolga perhaps? Or a razor-edged shield? Your companion here tells me you are one of the fabled warped ones. It would be an honour to craft the mightiest of hero harnesses for you."
"Have you been stealing my blood?" Sláine asked. He cracked his knuckles.
"A helmet, perhaps?" the smith went on, ignoring Sláine's question. "I guarantee anything I craft would make even the most timid of warriors strike fear into the hearts of their enemies."
"Women wear helmets," Sláine spat. "Now, I'll ask you again, have you been stealing my blood? Take your time and think about your answer, both of you. I'll try to ignore the coins in your hand, Ukko, and the tankard of blood in yours, smith, giving you the benefit of the doubt."
"Well," Ukko mumbled, looking down at his feet, "just a drop. Nothing you'd miss, and it was for your own good, Sláine. Domnall here's making you a sword, a hero's weapon tempered in-"
"Don't lie to me, you dirty little rat bastard. You've been bleeding me white for bloody coins!"
"I was going to give you a cut," Ukko said, and then realised what he had said and closed his eyes. "You know what I mean."
"Now's the perfect time to shut your mouth, Ukko, before it gets you in more trouble." Sláine rounded on Domnall. "And you, master smith, have been using my blood to temper a blade for the scum that murdered my mother. This stops now. I will have my blood back. Ukko will return your coins."
"Like I said to your friend, I think not. I bought this blood and now it is mine. It's business. Now, if you don't mind me saying, you look a little pale. Perhaps you should go and lie down?"
Sláine grabbed the iron ring on the side of the anvil and heaved, upending the huge block. Beneath it was a gaping black hole. He sent it bouncing across the floor of the smithy, cracking the stone wall.
"You shouldn't have done that," Domnall said, shaking his head. He moved with surprising speed, stepping back and grabbing a long iron poker from the forge's fire and swinging it around. Sláine barely managed to get his head out of the way but stumbled, his foot falling into the hole in the floor. "Now I've got no choice but to kill you and your damned fool friend."
Unbalanced, Sláine fell forwards, arms windmilling desperately as he tried to catch himself on nothing. His head cracked off the lip of the hole with a sickening thud. He tumbled lifelessly into the pit.
"I know you're going to blame me for this," Ukko said, "but it really isn't my fault, not when you think about it."
"Shut up, Ukko."
"I mean as soon as I knew he was evil I tried to back out of the deal."
"I don't want to hear your voice again before I die," Sláine said.
"That can be arranged," Domnall the smith said, stomping up the stone steps from the midden back up to the forge proper.
The dwarf had strung them up by the hands. Sláine's feet dangled inches above the ground. Domnall's lantern cast a guttering light around the cramped pit. It revealed enough to hint at the horrors that had taken place beneath the smithy. Bleached white bones: skulls, femurs, fibulas, tibias, mandibles and ribs were scattered across the floor. Slick-bodied rats crawled over the bones and under the bones, looking for scraps of meat to be picked clean.
The walls had been scratched with short marks, as if one of the unfortunates before them had counted off the days before he joined the pile of bones.
"Ogham," Ukko hissed.
"I said shut up."
"No, no, listen Sláine. Those scratches, they're Ogham."
Sláine wriggled around, trying to see them better but it was useless and pointless since he couldn't read the old script. "Can you read them?"
Ukko didn't say anything.
Sláine twisted to look at the little dwarf, trussed up like a side
of boar waiting to be thrown into the smoke house. "I said can you read it?"
The dwarf wiggled his eyebrows.
"Oh for Lugh's sake! Just tell me if you can read it."
"I'm allowed to talk now? I don't want you to beat me for impertinence or anything."
"What does it say?" Sláine asked, patiently.
Ukko twisted around on his ropes to get a better view of the curious letters scratched deep into the wall. "Hmm, well, that first one says, 'Why me?'"
"Helpful."
"And the next says, 'I don't want to die here', and 'repent, the Ragnarok is coming'. That one's quite big next to the others. And that one there says, 'all dwarfs are'... okay, I'm not reading any more. That's just plain crude, and untrue. We aren't miniature everywhere."
The sound of Domnall beating out the blade of his sword drifted down from above.
Impotent anger welled inside Sláine. Anywhere but this blighted land he would have had Danu to draw on, and then all the evils in the world wouldn't have been enough to protect the toad, Domnall, from his wrath. He twisted around angrily on the ropes, trying desperately to wriggle an extra inch or two of give out of the bonds, but the ropes were having none of it. Domnall had done a grand job of trussing them up.
The steady clang-clang-clang of the hammer on the blade haunted him. He could feel it - or imagined he could - each hammer blow ringing through his flesh because the smith was tempering the blade with his blood. They were bonded, just as he was bonded to Danu, her weapon tempered with the blood of the earth. He hung there picturing all sorts of grizzly fates for the dwarf smith. Sláine heard someone rap on the door, and then there was silence. It was unnerving. He strained to hear what was happening, but only caught fractured voices and the occasional word. He couldn't be sure but he thought the second speaker was Blind Bran.
"Down here!" he yelled, ratcheting his body around sharply. Fire burned down his left side as the muscle there twisted unnaturally. "Down here!"
Sláine heaved himself up and pulled down hard on the rope binding him, wrenching the hook an inch out of the wooden ceiling. He dropped far enough for his toes to graze the bones strewn across the midden floor. He nudged them around but couldn't quite grip any of them.
The door slammed and Domnall came stomping down the stairs shaking his head like a disappointed parent. "Now, now, Sláine, surely you understand your shouting just killed that poor blind man, don't you? You as good as stuck the knife in his throat yourself. Of course, I let him leave, but I couldn't let him live, not if he suspects you are down here. Was that really necessary?"
"You're scum, dwarf," Sláine said.
"Well of course I am. It's my nature. Ask the wasp why it stings and it'll tell you because I am a wasp, it is what I do. Now, come on, time to bleed for the nasty dwarf." Domnall came in close. "The blood's all gone to your feet. This is good, Sláine. This is really good. You'll be like that hero, the one who bled to death when they cut his ankle. Gah! I can't remember his name for the life of me. Oh well. Let's get this over with, shall we?"
"Over my dead body!"
"Well, that is kind of the idea, yes." The smith pulled a wickedly curved blade from the belt of his apron and pressed it up against Sláine's inner thigh. "Just one little cut, that's all I need. Open up the artery and that sweet red warped blood of yours will flow like there is no tomorrow. Well, of course, there isn't for you or your pet dwarf."
"Hey!" Ukko protested, "We're equals, Sláine and me. We're a team."
Domnall turned, laughing. "Of course you are, little naive Fukko, of course you are."
Sláine knew he had one chance, and that was barely half a chance. He closed his eyes, trying to touch whatever dregs of power might still reside in this dark pit, and jerked down hard on the rope, gaining another inch of give from the hook. He felt a long jagged spur of a broken femur with his feet, gripping it between his toes, as he would have a gáe bolga. As the smith turned Sláine lashed out with his leg and launched the splinter of bone just as Murdo had taught him to throw the deadly bellows spear.
Shock registered on Domnall's face as the makeshift weapon tore into his chest, the bone ripping out of his back in a spray of blood. His piggy little eyes bulged wide as his hands flew up to the bone piercing his chest, and then rolled up into his head as he fell, his body dead a moment before his brain knew it.
"See how I helped there, Sláine? I distracted him so you could kill him. That's got to be worth something, right? I mean I saved your life, technically."
Sláine stood on the dwarf's corpse, using the extra height to get the leverage he needed to work himself free of the knots.
"Shut up, Ukko. I don't want to hear another word from you if I cut you down."
"You won't-"
"I said if," Sláine cut him off.
"I didn't mean any harm. I was trying to do a good thing. I was thinking about you, Sláine. I thought you needed a hero's weapon."
"Every word out of your mouth is a lie, isn't it?"
Ukko looked around sheepishly as if checking to see who might hear. Satisfied they were alone with the dead, he said, "Not every word."
"Take it, it's yours. It always was," Ukko urged.
Sláine stared at the damned blade, War-Flame.
He shook his head.
"No, let the Lord Weird wield it. I'd rather swing Brain-Biter than some perverted blood forged blade." He tossed the sword into the cooling off barrel. "Besides, for all its so-called magnificence, it's untempered. Only a fool would wield an untempered blade in battle."
"Ah, good thinking, let's hope Slough Feg finds it and uses it eh? And that it shatters in battle when he most needs it, when he comes face to face with you! I knew this would happen," Ukko said brightly. "That was my plan all along. Give the horned High Priest a dodgy sword. I told you I was looking out for you, Sláine. We make a great team."
Sláine cuffed Ukko across the head. "What was it the smith called you? Sukko? No. No. Pukko? No that wasn't it. Fukko, such a great name. I should start calling you that!"
"Don't you dare."
"Fukko," Sláine said with a wink.
Ukko stormed off, slamming the forge door behind him.
"Temper, temper," Sláine chuckled, opening the door.
Three stunningly beautiful, three-quarter naked women waited for him on the other side. An intricate constellation of spirals and swirling tattoos was daubed across their bare flesh. They wore a sash across the cleft of their sex but were otherwise bare. He couldn't help but stare at the curve and sweep of their bodies, the swell of breasts, and the Gordian tattoos coiling around the dark, puffy, aureoles of their nipples and disappearing beneath the pendulous curve of their breasts. Sláine followed each and every swirl of ink with his eyes. The illusion was so perfect that he could have sworn they actually moved. Their muscles were taut, honed, lithe, their bodies like the finest works of art, worthy of the utmost devotion.
He looked up, shaking his head.
"Now this is what I call a welcoming committee," Sláine said, grinning widely. "If I'd known you were coming I'd have made an effort." None of them were smiling. He stopped talking. Something reeked. The smell assailed him. It was like rotten fruit. It well and truly shattered the illusion. He tore his gaze away from the feast of flesh and for the first time he saw beyond the three women: a circle of masked skull-swords stood, blades pointed at him. Behind the skull-swords, the source of the vile stench, a daemonic horned Drune priest cackled.
Ukko was on his knees, begging not to be hurt.
Blind Bran was on the floor, unconscious or dead, it was impossible to tell which.
"Seize him!" the horned priest hissed, and the women came at him.
Sláine wanted to laugh. They were naked, what could they do?
He said as much.
They quickly beat that misogynistic notion out of his head.
Nineteen
The Wicker Man
Sláine raised his hands to defend himself as the first
of the women launched a blistering open-handed attack, slamming him quickly once, twice, three times in the chest, face and throat. The third hit had him choking. The second woman sprang, hammering a two-footed kick into his groin. A final blow from the first woman jabbed into his neck. He felt the needle's sting and knew he had been poisoned even before the third woman tumbled forwards. She used one hand to cartwheel around him acrobatically, bounced back to her feet and chopped down savagely on the back of his neck as he fell, sending stars bursting across his eyes.
It was over in seconds.
Sláine shook his head groggily.
He could hear Ukko begging not to be hurt but he couldn't see the little runt. He couldn't see anything beyond his own nose.
"Nuh..." he managed, slumping forwards.
The world was black.
There were no sounds in the blackness, no shapes, no forms and no shadows, at least not at first.
They came - or returned - slowly.
First there were sounds, desperate words: "Mercy! Help! Murder!" and other words, more seductive, promising: "That's what I want, yes, yes, yes. Scream for me little dwarf. I want to hear your screams as I give you the blood-eagle."
"No need for torture, priestess! Please, I'll tell you everything! There will be no secrets between us. We'll be like lovers well not like lovers that way, I mean unless you have a thing for dwarfs. Arrrrghhhhh! That hurt!"
"It was supposed to. That's why it is called torture."
Sláine opened one eye. A Drune priestess - at least that is what he assumed she was, with her macabre tattoos and bare flesh taunting him with the promise of just how enjoyably exhausting devotion could be with her - bent over Ukko, her bare breasts grazing the back of the dwarf's neck. Ukko was bound to a table, trussed up like the Sunday roast ready for the spit. The priestesses must have dragged them to their reclusium, a chamber deep within the bowels of their temple. There was no sign to suggest any form of worship took place this deep in the temple but plenty to suggest that torture and other unsavoury practices were the norm.
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