"Ah, your muscle-bound friend is awake, perfect. I do hope he'll be more sport."
The tip of a red-hot blade sliced into the muscle of his back, parting the skin and the meat. Sláine clenched his teeth, biting back against the pain. It was the first of four cuts that together made a blood eagle. The pain of it was excruciating but he refused to give the woman the pleasure of showing it. It was a savage reawakening. He closed his eyes waiting for the second cut. If the priestesses were to finish the blood eagle all they would need to do was pull and his body would rip open, disgorging his heart, liver and guts out of his back. He would be dead before then, although that was only a small mercy.
Ukko screamed again, a gut-wrenching shriek. Sláine didn't want to imagine what they were doing to the dwarf.
"Oh, shut up, you miserable little wretch! I didn't even touch you!"
Sláine wanted to laugh but a second cut ripped the sound from his mouth.
"Drop the knife, witch!" a masked skull-sword bellowed, barging into the sanctity of the reclusium.
"How dare you invade our sanctuary!" the priestess cried, wheeling round on the soldier only for the next sentence to die in her mouth as a sough-skinned Drune Lord came in behind him. The stench from the Drune was overpowering. Sláine gagged. The Drune stood head and shoulders taller than the skull-sword, wrapped in a huge bear pelt. Withered branches took the place of antlers on his hood. Sláine could see the rich red of rancid meat where the pelt fell open on the Drune's skinless flesh. It was like something plucked out of his worst nightmares.
"He dares because I commanded it, priestess. Dare you stop him? No, I thought not. You will relinquish these prisoners into my custody. They are to be fed to Crom-Cruach as part of his bridge's dowry of blood. The Lord Weird has commanded it."
"They are mine," the woman said, but there was no conviction in her voice.
"You know better, priestess. They belong - just as we do - to the Lord Weird. If he would have them burn, they will burn. Now, we both know there is little you can do about this other than hand them over, so shall we dispense with the pretence. You," the Drune Lord turned to the skull-sword, "see that they are taken to the wicker man."
Twenty skull-swords dragged Sláine between them. He didn't make it easy for them. Two more carried Ukko. The dwarf kicked and twisted and howled but the soldiers didn't take a blind bit of notice of him.
The fields around them were parched and dusty, like so much of the Sourland, dead where they should have been vibrant with life and renewal. They passed a farmer bent over a young calf, slaughtering it so that the animal might offer up a few decent meals rather than leave the poor creature to die of malnutrition. Everyone they passed wore the same look of defeat beaten into their weathered faces.
The air was hot, burning his lungs as he breathed. There was only the faintest breeze. The rolling hills shimmered with a heat haze rising off the dead ground.
The wicker man was as tall again as the great dolmen, the Watcher of Er-Grah. It loomed, a giant sentinel on the horizon, towering over the village and the hills that rolled away beneath its feet. The construction was incredible. It really was like a giant man come striding out of myth. He had never seen anything like it in his life. The torso and limbs of the giant wicker man were a patchwork of black holes. As they came closer Sláine could make out the desperate clawing hands of prisoners trapped within the huge wickerwork figure reaching out through the holes. Kindling was banked up around its feet.
It was all too easy to imagine the flames being lit and the wicker giant blazing like a beacon against the night sky.
The skull-swords pushed Sláine forwards, sending him sprawling prostrate at the feet of the towering figure. It was bigger than he had first thought, easily one hundred and fifty feet, each leg thirty feet in diameter and crammed with men condemned by Feg's regime. The figure was so huge that it straddled dry land and foul swamp, one massive leg rooted firmly in each.
"Crom-Cruach cherishes the death of thieves, liars, cheats, murderers, outlaws and other misguided fools who commit crimes against his benevolent rule," The Drune Lord explained. "The Lord Weird has proclaimed that your place is in there, warped one, with the dregs of society, to make up the blood dowry of the bride to be. There are one hundred and nine; with you it will be one hundred and eleven, a sacred number. There will be blood for the wyrm god." The Drune Lord cackled, thoroughly enjoying himself. "Chain them with the others. It's time for the living to burn."
Two skull-swords bullied them in through the base of the huge construction, up the ladders of the wicker man's skeleton until they were high inside the structure. The Drune Lord drove an iron bar into the base of Sláine's spine, driving him to his knees. "Now, chain him. The Lord Weird is coming. The fires will be lit soon. It wouldn't do to be trapped in here with this scum."
The core of the wicker man was filled with a near constant babble of noise: men begging and crying out, shuffling feet and crazed laughter as fear collapsed beneath manic rage, sour air, sweat, dirty hair and the piss stink of urine. That malodorous melange clung to the air around the antlered Drune Lord, the rot of his flesh plain to see where decay had eaten through his lips and cheeks to expose a cracked and broken row of tombstone-like teeth. The putrescence was nauseating. Flies buzzed around the sorcerer, drawn to the filth of his flesh.
Sláine fixated on the flies as they settled on the Drune Lord's cheek and crawled over his eye. The sorcerer gave no indication that he even noticed the parasites crawling over his face.
The Drune Lord left them, climbing back down the rickety ladder and taking the worst of his rotten stench with him. One of the two skull-swords followed silently.
The remaining skull-sword pulled on the chains, threading them through the wicker frame of the giant effigy, and around Sláine's torso and arms. He set six locks on them, joining the huge metal links. As the last lock clunked into place, Sláine spat in the face of his gaoler.
The skull-sword moved slowly, rising up to his full height. He craned his head as if examining a bug that had settled on his outstretched hand and he didn't quite know what to do with it. Then he drove a clenched fist into Sláine's balls, hard enough to fold Sláine in two, only the chains prevented it from happening, just as they prevented Sláine from protecting himself as the skull-sword grabbed him between the legs, squeezed and twisted savagely. Then again, enjoying the agony it caused.
The skull-sword relinquished his hold and turned to leer at the prisoners chained to the wicker ribcage around Sláine. "Anyone want to feel some real pain before they die?" He clenched his fist, mimicking the vicelike grab he'd performed on Sláine's testicles. The skull-sword had underestimated Sláine Mac Roth, as so many others had before him. Ignoring the screaming pain Sláine arched his back and wrapped his legs around the skull-sword's waist, squeezing mercilessly.
"I die, you die," Sláine rasped. "I can keep you here while they burn us all alive. Not laughing now, are you?"
The skull-sword writhed desperately trying to break Sláine's hold but it was no good.
"Kill him," one of the other prisoners shouted from across the wicker man's torso. "Rip the bastard in two! Him and his kind killed my son!"
"Do him!"
"Show 'im the mercy 'e'd show us!"
"Aye, snap him like a bleedin' twig!"
Sláine raged, his anger seething wildly but no matter how black it became he couldn't tap the earth's power and warp spasm. The land here was dead.
The skull-sword struggled against his grip, which only served to madden him more. Sláine crushed the life out of him mercilessly with his thighs, contorting his spine so that a loop of metal chain wrapped around the skull-sword's neck. It was an ugly suffocating death but no less than the skull-sword deserved.
When the dead man's shudders stopped Sláine let go. The skull-sword fell at his feet.
"Good on you, lad. Give the bastards an account of yourself before you die."
"I'm not going to die here," Sláine s
aid. "Living's far too much fun." He looked out through a hole in the wicker man's chest. The sky was darkening but that wasn't what caught his eye. It was thick with a murder of crows cawing hungrily as they flew above the heads of the spectators. Crows: Morrigan's pets. It took a moment for the importance of this to register with Sláine. If Morrigan's influence could reach this far into the Sourland so too could the other aspects of Danu. He felt a surge of hope. "We aren't damned just yet boys. Trust me."
"We ain't got much of a choice," another prisoner groaned pitifully.
"What did they get you for?" one of the others asked.
"I killed their damned smith, Domnall."
"Sláine? Sláine? Is that you?" Sláine recognised the voice, it was Blind Bran's. He couldn't see the old hermit but there was no doubt it was him.
"Aye, Bran, it's me."
"Ah, boy it's good to hear you! I'm sick of listening to all these cowards warbling on about dying."
"And you, old man. Now let's think about getting out of here, shall we? Ukko? Can you get out of these chains?"
"What chains?" Ukko asked, grinning widely as he stepped away from the wicker wall, the chains in a pile at his feet. He held up a small lock pick and waggled it. "There isn't a lock made that can keep me in or out."
"There are one hundred and eleven in here."
"More," another prisoner said.
"And don't forget the girl they've trussed up in the wicker man's head, Medb. The whole point of this huge bonfire is so that she can become the Bride of Crom."
Someone cried, "Feg! It's Slough Feg!"
Then the Lord Weird's mocking voice damned them all, "Oh, Crom-Cruach, Great Wyrm, welcome on this dark night between living and death. We offer you these sinners who by their crimes have turned their backs on your majesty. We know their suffering will delight you. Accept them as the blood dowry for your bride, Medb, Warrior Princess of the Badb!"
"The bride! The bride!"
"The bride of Crom!"
"The bride is come!"
"Light the pyre!"
The cry of "Fire!" came up from below.
Then the heat of the fire reached them and they knew the wicker man was burning.
One hundred and eleven hearts beat faster.
"You can't leave us here!" Senoll the Scavenger pleaded, shaking his chains in front of the dwarf's face.
"Why not?" Ukko asked, turning his back theatrically on the beggar.
"We'll die here!"
Ukko nodded. "Bound to happen sooner or later, anyway, why worry about it?"
"Untie them, Ukko," Sláine said, holding out his own chains for the little thief to pick apart.
"Oh and you, I seem to remember you were going to leave me in the broch not so long ago. Shoe's on the other foot now, eh? You need Ukko, now."
"Yes, I do," Sláine said. "We all do. Please."
"Ooooh, did you hear that? Sláine said please! Well in that case, don't go anywhere guys. I'll be right back." Ukko scooted up to Blind Bran and pulled the rusted lock down low enough to get to it with his long pick. The pick snicked against the metal tumbler and sprang the lock in a couple of seconds. Next he undid the chains holding Tamun the Stump and Kes the Murk Dweller. Each one stepped forwards, rubbing his wrists as the chains fell away. "See what happens when you say please?" Ukko said, working his way through another row of locks.
"Time to think about getting out of here," Tamun the Stump said, "before things start heating up."
"Where can we go?" Senoll moaned. "We go down there, we walk into an army of skull-swords and Badb priestesses. I'd rather take my chances with the fire."
"Oh, quit your belly aching, boy," Bran said. "I may be blind but I can see a coward right here. Why don't you just sit here and burn then, Senoll? Eh? Would that make you happy?"
"You know," Ukko said, popping another lock to free a young poacher, "I'm starting to like that old man."
"I say we make a stand here. Let the Badb laugh when they see us come streaming out of the belly of this beast. Let's see if they are still laughing when we cut them down!"
"With what?" Senoll spat. "Your tongue's sharp, blind man, but the only thing it'll cut is pride."
"Use the chains, use the wicker as spears, use whatever you can find," Sláine said. "Use your fists and your head. Make them rue this day. Who wants to live forever anyway, eh? Come on, boys, let's grab ourselves some glory!"
"I do," Ukko said, stepping back to let yet another prisoner step out of their manacles. "Well, maybe not forever but certainly until the world runs out of fat women for me to bounce on."
"Go, go, go!" Sláine roared, spurring the others into action.
The heat from the flames was fierce. Black smoke filled the wicker man. As the others ran down, Sláine began to climb up the wicker scaffold, higher into the giant effigy.
"Sláine!" Ukko yelled over the commotion of stamping feet, grunting and the cries of pain as the prisoners forced themselves through the flames and out of the wicker monstrosity. "The fight's down here!"
"I know that," Sláine called over his shoulder, reaching up to haul himself up to the next platform, "but I can't let an innocent girl burn!" He didn't waste any more words. Sláine forced himself higher, gripping a thick wooden spar and swinging his legs up so that he hung from it. He heaved himself up onto the spar and used it to climb higher, beyond the wooden infrastructure of the limbs and support joists and into the effigy's neck.
He couldn't save his mother but this was one woman he could save.
Ukko looked up at Sláine's backside as it disappeared above him, and then down at the thick choking black smoke coming up from the legs of the wicker man.
"How did I get myself into this mess? Soth! Well, it's too late to worry about that. Time to find out just how lucky I am."
"Gaaahhhhhh!" Tamun cried, throwing himself into the fray. Without a sword he was cut down in a matter of seconds, but not before he had torn the mask off the skull-sword he faced and clawed the man's eyes out. A second skull-sword sent his head bouncing across the soured earth and raised his wretched blade defiantly. Four more prisoners took the arrogant swordsman down, tearing the flesh from his bones with their bare hands. It was the same all across the field. The prisoners paid for a few minutes of freedom with their lives, but in those few minutes they won victories that the Drunes would not soon forget.
By sheer dint of numbers the prisoners succeeded in overwhelming some of the skull-swords, claiming their weapons in the frantic scramble that followed their streaming out of the blazing wicker man. The horned Drune Lord and the Lord Weird himself hopped and twisted madly, directing their skull-swords to kill every last man for defiling this most sacred of rituals to Crom. It was bloody and ugly. Fists slammed repeatedly into the masks of the skull-swords until blood sprayed and cartilage ruptured, and then again and again until bodies went limp. Steel flashed and cut, tearing into flesh and bone with impunity. The prisoners were doomed but that didn't stop them fighting with every last scrap of their strength, making the skull-swords pay a price beyond any reasonable expectation for their victory.
Ukko ran out of the burning effigy, saw three towering men going at it in front of him, and ducked and rolled to the left, dodging beneath a swinging blade. He ran a few more paces forwards and threw himself face first into the mud to avoid being decapitated.
"No place for a dwarf," he muttered, scrambling forwards as another sword thrust speared the ground where his rump had been a second before.
The smoke gave him cover enough to hide as more skull-swords came charging towards the fighting. Unfortunately it couldn't hide the reek of their master's rotten flesh. He tried not to look at the wickedly embossed shields with the faces of snarling demons and blades embedded like hooked teeth. It was butchery. The escaped prisoners were weak from malnutrition, desperate with fear and undisciplined.
"Make the moon shine through their bodies, boys!"
"Grease your blades on their foul blood!"
&n
bsp; Chains lashed around, slamming into skulls. Swords opened up guts and throats.
Ukko rolled away, scurrying off beyond the fringe of the fighting.
He looked up in time to see Sláine's silhouette crawl spider-like across the face of the wicker man a hundred and fifty feet above him, while the effigy blazed, its legs beginning to buckle as the fire ate through them.
"Now this might be worth a meal or two," Ukko said appreciatively. "Just don't fall off and bugger it all up."
The wood was weak.
Sláine scrambled up hand over hand, his feet slipping and falling into the gaps where the wicker was woven in on itself to form the giant man. He didn't dare look down. The distance was dizzying. The screams of the dead and dying reached him.
The smoke stung the back of his throat.
Sláine coughed, hacking up a lungful of catarrh.
He felt a cold black anger welling inside him.
This was a perversion of all things holy.
Morrigan's black birds circled, flying in close to him, feathers beating at his back and the side of his head as he tried to find a way around the outside of the giant head. Sláine tried to beat them off but they just kept coming, flying at him, trying to dislodge him from his precarious perch. He twisted, lashing out at them but they just flew in harder, their wings flashing at his eyes, making it impossible for him to hold on to the wood. His hand slipped and he dropped six feet, catching a broken spar of wood and dangling perilously over the huge drop.
It took a massive surge of strength to claw his way back to the relative safety of the wicker man's jutting jaw. He hung there, gasping, gathering his strength for one final surge upwards. He couldn't fail the woman trapped inside the head. He would save her. He had to, for himself.
He should have been down there with Blind Bran and Tamun, and Senoll and Ukko, and the others. His battle skills might have meant the difference between life and death for some of those men. Their lives were in their own hands now. There was nothing he could do about it. He needed to concentrate on breaking into the wicker head and rescuing Medb.
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