by Gavin Smith
Of the warband about seventy were warriors, half from the Cirig’s cateran, the other half from the Fotlaig and the Fortrenn. The rest were landsmen and women, spear-carriers. Those too old to fight and the children had gone to the broch on the Hill of Deer. There the youngest of the old and the oldest of the young would stand guard.
Cruibne and Feroth were wearing stiff leather jerkins with overlapping scales of iron sewn into them.
‘Nervous?’ Britha asked, meaning the armour. Both the older men visibly jumped; Cruibne reached for his spear.
‘Woman! Don’t you know that sneaking up on a warrior like that will get you killed?’ the mormaer demanded in a hissing whisper when he finally recognised her. Britha was naked and covered head to foot in woad the blue of midnight. In shadow she became part of the night itself. The woad was working its mysteries on her. The air seemed alive all around; she could see further; her hearing was sharper; she could smell the sweat and the metal and the meat from the fire of their enemies.
‘Or the warrior will get killed,’ Feroth whispered, smiling.
‘Aye, when my heart bursts. My wife asked me if I was nervous as well.’
‘You should have told her you were too fat to fight dressed only in woad. There are enough sickening sights in battle as it is,’ Feroth suggested. Britha grinned, white teeth in a midnight-blue face, but she knew this talk was a sign of nerves.
‘What are you talking about? I’m a fine figure of a man. For my age.’
‘You’re a fine figure of a man for a boar,’ Britha suggested.
‘There’s still time for one last rite,’ Cruibne suggested, winking. Britha sighed.
‘Leave the poor woman alone, man,’ Feroth said. ‘He’s in armour because he’s the mormaer,’ Feroth said seriously.
‘I didn’t want to,’ Cruibne said. She largely believed him. Cruibne felt safer wearing armour but would rather have fought clad in the sky like his warband.
‘I’m wearing it because I’m frightened,’ Feroth said in jest. But Britha knew he was armoured because he needed to focus on directing the battle. He was also frightened, but for his people, and he would master that fear.
‘Nechtan’s wearing armour,’ Cruibne told her.
Britha cursed under her breath. The fight in the fishing village must have shaken him more than she thought. It was not good for the champion to show fear. Even if she went to him now and shamed him into fighting skyclad, the fear would have already done its damage among the warband.
‘They follow gods. They are slaves. Nothing more,’ she told them. The two men regarded the much younger blue-painted woman trying to reassure them. Feroth glanced at the sickle she held in her right hand. It would go ill for someone tonight if they fell under that blade, he thought.
‘Aye,’ Cruibne said, ‘but there’s a lot of slaves.’
‘Will you not fight with us?’ Feroth asked Britha. ‘It would do the warband good to hear you, see you.’
Where you can watch over me, Britha thought to herself.
‘I’ll harvest this Bress’s head,’ she told them.
‘Bring me his cock and balls so he can have no more children to plague us,’ Cruibne muttered.
‘He won’t be able to father children if we have his head,’ Feroth pointed out.
‘That’s not what I’ve heard,’ Cruibne said. Britha thought back to the fishing village. He was right. They would not want to harvest these heads.
It was a long crawl but the living night kept her company. She heard insects crawl with her across the sand. Listened to owls and bats hunting in the woods. She saw a seal breach out in the distant dark sea and thought of Cliodna. Ghost light traced patterns in the darkness, showing her hints of the Otherworld just out of sight. All of which she could have embraced had it not been for the smell of people living in their own filth and the sounds of whimpering that came from the black-hulled curraghs.
She slithered past charioteers lying flat on their stomachs as they crawled across the sandbank removing stones. They nodded to her but she continued on towards the flickering flames, the dark hulls of the ships and the eerily quiet and still shadows of the people around the campfire.
The spearman was standing just across a shallow channel, a run-off from the burn that ran down towards the sea. Britha was lying in shadow as close as she dared. In the groves they had taught her that it was movement that gave you away. She was waiting for the spearman to move, but he had remained still for a very long time. Britha was worried that if she didn’t move soon the attack would start before she could do anything.
She tried to study the spearman, get an idea of him, but his features were shadowed and he just looked like a normal man. His weapons and armour seemed of high quality but it was difficult to tell in this light. Why are you doing this? she wondered.
Caught up in her wonderings, it took a moment to register that he had turned to look at a sound behind him. Crouched low, Britha was across the channel, sickle in one hand. Hearing her or just sensing the movement, the man started to turn.
Britha leaped onto his back, wrapping her legs around him, relaxing her weight, overbalancing him, making him fall to the sand on top of her. Her hand covered his mouth. He immediately bit, and she felt his teeth against the bones of her hand. It was all she could do not to scream. Turn the pain to anger. Turn the anger to viciousness. With her free hand she arced the sickle towards his stomach. The curved bronze blade went through his chainmail and into his stomach as if it was hungry. The man didn’t scream, but as she tore the sickle up towards his chest cavity he bucked violently on the sand. Thousands of strands of what looked like living red-gold filigree whipped around the wound she was making. With her legs clasped around him, muscles screaming from the exertion, she somehow managed to keep hold of him. His struggles lessening, the strands seemingly started to die. She saw the tiny insectile fires in his flesh fade. She felt his death in her core, in her cunt, feeling the pleasure from the blade in her hand, wanting more.
The spearman lay still. Britha took time to smear herself with some of his blood. Then the shaking started.
She hid between the furrows made when the curraghs had been brought ashore and the black hide hulls of the craft themselves. She did not like it here. There was something wrong with the hulls. They seemed to move of their own accord. As if they were breathing or maybe trying to crawl back to the sea.
From inside the ships she smelled the rancid reek of frightened people forced to live in their own muck. She heard sobbing, whimpering and whispered prayers to uncaring, malevolent gods long forsaken by the Pecht. That will not help you, Britha thought. Only strength can help you.
From where she was half-buried in the sand she could see their fire. It was like a mockery of Cruibne’s gathering of the tribes. They sat round the fire like Cruibne’s guests had, five deep, but it was as if they were dead, all so still, all so quiet. To Britha’s eye all their armour, shields and spears looked exactly the same. The men had identically vacant expressions on their faces. Despite herself, Britha felt fear rising in her like a tide. This was potent magic. Regardless of how strong she had become, she couldn’t hope to fight this. The only thing that made her feel like she was still in the same world she had always lived in, and not ghost-walking, was the smell of the wood burning on the fire.
On the other side of the fire was what looked to be some kind of temporary hut made from sewn-together skins. Britha had never seen the like before. Through the opening in the skins, the interior of the hut looked very dark indeed.
He . . . it – Britha wasn’t sure – came stalking out of the tent. He looked very different to the others, a hulking squat brute, his hairless head shining in the moonlight. It was the head that was wrong, or in the wrong place. It was off to one side, almost growing out of his right shoulder, making him look grotesquely lopsided. He carried a heavy-looking axe with surprising ease.
Britha fought down the urge to bolt. It looked like he was making straight for her,
but instead he climbed up into the curragh she was hiding next to. She felt it rock slightly, heard scrabbling, then screaming, then begging and a brief struggle.
A young man landed on his side, winded, in the sand worryingly close to her. Britha did not know him but recognised him for what he was by his dress. He wore the rough-spun blaidth and trews of a Pecht landsman. One of the Fidach, she reckoned.
She felt the impact through the sand as the lopsided axeman landed next to the landsman. Britha got a closer look at the deformed man. She didn’t think she had ever seen anyone so heavily built. Corded muscle was layered on corded muscle. He wore a stained leather jerkin; a variety of knives hung from a belt. The blades looked stained as well.
Gasping for breath, the landsman tried to scrabble away from the axeman, who quickly caught him and started dragging him towards the fire. The man was screaming, begging to be let go. The axeman dragged him into a kneeling position by the fire. He was still begging. Britha watched, knowing that there was nothing she could do.
Britha watched as Bress – somehow she knew he was Bress – came out of the skin hut. He was tall and had nearly bent double to get through the slit in the animal hides. Bress was slender but there was undeniable power in his movements. He was the most attractive man Britha had ever seen, handsome to the point of effeminate beauty. He had smooth white skin, surprisingly delicate long-fingered hands and long pale-blond hair which was practically silver. It was only the eyes that spoilt the picture. They were grey, cold, devoid of emotion, almost devoid of life.
Britha stopped breathing for a moment. How could she make out the colour of his eyes in this light? She looked again. Even with only the flickering light from the flames playing over him, she could make out the colour of his eyes. Again she felt the fear rising. It was as if she was becoming someone else. Was one of the old gods looking through her eyes from their home in the sky of the Otherworld? Was she becoming their slave? Was she by demons ridden? Beneath Bress’s skin she could see the fire that burned in his blood.
Britha forced herself to be calm, to focus on what she was doing, to look back at the beautiful Bress and gauge him as a victim. His boots and plaid trews were of the highest quality. The stiff leather armour looked like it had somehow been moulded to his body. There was a circlet of red gold around his head. Across his back he wore a massive sword that would take both hands to wield. Britha had heard Brude and the warriors in the cateran talk about such weapons in the past. Brude had always said that iron would bend too easily at that length and it would be too heavy to wield quickly enough in battle or single combat.
The malformed axeman looked at Bress. The tall man’s nod was almost imperceptible. The axeman reached into the fire, his flesh blackening and blistering; sweat beaded his skin, teeth gritted, the pain written across his face. From the flame the axeman pulled a chalice of red gold. Inside the chalice was the same red metal heated to a molten state. The kneeling man was screaming and struggling, but the axeman held him with his other hand with ease. As Britha watched, the axeman’s burned hand started to heal itself in front of her.
The axeman brought the chalice to the captive’s mouth, who clamped it shut, but the molten metal surged out. The man screamed as it touched his face, and the metal crawled into his mouth, lighting it up through his skin. He dropped to the ground writhing and jerking. Britha watched the fire course through his body. Finally he lay still.
Britha had to force herself to look away. All attention was on the man who’d drunk from the chalice. Now was the time to move. She kept to the shadows. The night matched the blue of her skin as she willed herself to be nothing more than a shadow and moved as quickly as she could towards the skin hut. It was difficult to influence someone unseen and unknown but she kept her thoughts on Bress returning to the hut alone.
Britha waited. Her eyes adjusted much faster than she thought they would. But even before she could see, she knew that she was not alone. The skin hut did not feel empty. Her hearing, now seemingly more sensitive, like her other senses, picked up the sound of breathing. She smelled sweat on flesh, mixed with the scent of recently extinguished burning oil in braziers and some kind of incense. The smell of the sea, carried on the gentle night breeze, was the only reassuring scent.
Slowly she could pick detail out of the darkness. She saw the bent tree branches lashed together with leather to provide the framework for the hut. She saw the pallet with fresh ferns and a clean woollen blanket, the urns of wine and very little else.
They were asleep in the corner, piled on each other the way a dog or wolf pack sleeps. The way her people slept if they were caught out overnight during the winter months. It was difficult to make out what they were at once, to even recognise them as human, as children. They were hairless, pale, like they lived in the darkness. It took a moment to realise why. Their physiology was all wrong. These children were built like dogs. They looked like they could move at speed on all fours. Their finger- and toenails ended in sharp black claws. Their hands and feet were all red, marking them as creatures from the Otherworld.
One of them stirred as she watched. Yawned and opened his eyes. They were completely red. He looked straight at her and hissed. The others began to wake. Britha gripped her sickle but she had no stomach for this sickness. They began to move about, growling and hissing. She shrank back as one of them lunged at her. The thick chain around the creature’s neck brought her up short. The other end of the chain must have been buried deep in the sand.
Britha backed into the corner of the hut, into the deepest shadow. The pack of children was going mad. All Britha could hope for was that the noise would draw Bress in.
It was the axeman who appeared first.
‘Quiet!’ he shouted in a language Britha was sure she didn’t know but somehow understood all the same. His accent was similarly strange, his voice sounding like it was made for anger.
‘Stranger,’ one of the children said bestially, pointing into the corner. The fact that one of them had spoke just seemed to make it worse. The axeman turned towards her. Britha readied herself.
Bress ducked into the hut. The axeman was moving. For someone of such bulk he shifted with surprising speed. He was a blur as he grabbed two bronze blades from the front of his leather jerkin. Somehow she was moving faster. The point of her sickle headed straight towards Bress’s head. Bress just seemed to reach out and casually catch her wrist.
‘No,’ he said quietly. The axeman’s blade stopped against her skin. A drop of her blood ran down the surprisingly sharp bronze blade.
Britha knew she was going to die. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she took Bress with her. She kicked out, connecting solidly with his leg. He shifted slightly but showed no other sign of even feeling the blow. She struck out at the axeman, who cursed and grabbed for her other arm.
Suddenly she was lifted high, Bress’s fingers wrapped around her neck. She panicked. She could no longer taste the air. There was a sharp pain in her wrist and she felt the sickle tumble from her numb fingers. Bress pushed her down onto the pallet. She fought him, kicking, punching, scratching but never once screaming. His grip never faltered. Her nails drew red lines on his pale flesh, but the wounds quickly closed.
He loomed over her, holding her down, ignoring her attacks, staring down at her like he was confused, as if he was studying her. The pack was pulling at its chains in a frenzy as it tried to reach her to tear her apart. The axeman appeared at Bress’s side. He was drooling.
‘Let me hurt her,’ he demanded. ‘I’ll wear her head and make her talk.’
‘We’re about to be attacked,’ Bress said. Britha’s heart sank even as she fought on. ‘Take the pack outside, Ettin.’
‘What?!’
‘Now.’ He said it quietly, but even over the sound of her struggles his authority was unmistakable. The axeman glared at him but grabbed the pack’s chains, cuffed a few of the feistier ones hard and dragged them outside.
‘If I let you go will you
calm down so we can talk?’ he asked calmly. Slowly Britha stopped fighting; finally she nodded. Bress relaxed his grip from around her throat. Britha dived for her sickle. Bress let her get her fingers round the grip and then kicked her so hard in the stomach that it lifted her off her feet and sent her flying across the hut. It wasn’t the pain of the blow. It was the momentary sensation that she would never be able to breathe again that frightened her, but again she was surprised by how quickly she recovered.
Britha swung at him. He swayed backwards; the curved blade just missed. Britha tried to bring the sickle up into his groin. It was the closest she had got to an expression out of him. Bress stepped back quickly, brought his palm down to block the blow and then cried out, more in surprise than pain, when the sickle bit hungrily into him, the point appearing through the back of his hand. Britha kicked him with all her might. He staggered back crying out, this time in pain, as the movement tore the blade out of his hand. Britha swung at his head. Bress stepped to the side and punched her. She felt sick and the ground seemed to fall away from her as the force of the blow lifted her off her feet. Bress walked quickly over to where she had fallen. Britha was trying to get up. Something in her head felt broken. Her vision was blurry. Bress stood on her hand. He knelt down, warding off her blows, and tore the sickle from her grip. Examined it.
‘Where did you get this?’ he asked quietly, turning to look at her. The deadness of his eyes aside, his beauty and the intensity of his stare caused Britha suddenly to find herself struggling to breathe for all the wrong reasons. She didn’t stop fighting, however. Bress flung the sickle into the corner of the hut and grabbed her around the neck, easily picking her up and laying her on the pallet again.
‘You can’t hurt me,’ he told her. ‘Talk to me, just talk to me.’ His voice remained quiet and calm, but Britha thought she could hear just the slightest hint of pleading in his voice. She stopped fighting, but decided that if there was to be rape she would not make it easy for him.