by Gavin Smith
‘Why are they here?’ It was unusual for Bress to hear nervousness in Ettin’s voice.’
At Crom Dhubh’s behest. They harvested the crystal,’ Bress said emotionlessly.
‘But then why does the dragon remain?’
‘It feeds from her while poisoning her like a parasite. It wants to ride her corruption when it comes. Besides, it is a little added security.’
‘These primitives are no threat to us.’
‘Some of these primitives have the blood of the gods in them.’
Ettin stared at Bress for a moment, trying to fathom him. ‘Watered down,’ the two-headed creature said, turning away.
‘Not all.’
‘Your woman. The one you spared.’
‘She is not my woman, but she is coming south with two others.’
‘As I said, primitives.’
‘They are from the Eggshell.’
Ettin turned to Bress again. ‘That is a myth.’
Bress could not be bothered to respond. If it was a myth then where had the warrior and the swollen-headed demon come from? He looked at what they had grown. It towered high above the ships and the wading giants. He tried to ignore the smell, the screams. They were allowed to scream now as they were feeding her. He thought of the dragon burrowing into her flesh like a venomous tick and he tried to ignore the feeling that he had just betrayed his entire species.
Dead men writhed on the ground before the fire. They looked like worms, grubs, their movements a mockery of dance. The dead men averted their eyes and cowered as a figure formed in the fire. Formed of flickering black flame, the figure was warped, twisted and difficult to see, as if parts of its shape made no sense. The horses whickered, whinnied and stamped nervously where they had been tethered. It was not the sight and smells of the corpse-studded ground that made them nervous.
Those prostrate on the ground felt the power of this mere shadow of their charnel god. The Dark Man in the flames, Crom Dhubh, the man the witch folk fire-danced with, was just a more powerful messenger of oblivion than they themselves.
‘Carrion warriors, continue to drive the weak before you, take your fill of their flesh and drive the rest to the sacrifice.’
Cadwr was nervous, but the young warrior knew he had led his small part of the warband well. They had ranged along the south-western banks of the river of the Grey Father. They killed those they caught, let the rest flee to be herded to the south by the larger bands led by Ysgawyn. They burned the land and slaughtered the cattle. There would be famine when winter came. Only the dead gods would feast, as would their servants, those who ate the flesh of heroes blessed by the gods themselves.
‘What would you have us do?’
The warped, living black flame turned to look at the young warrior covered in lime and blood.
‘When you meet Ysgawyn, go to the Crown. Slay this Rin; he is old and weak like the blood of the god within him. Bring the rest of his people to my servant, the tall man. I will send beasts from the Otherworld to aid you.’
Britha stood in the darkness just beyond the light of the fire and the circle of lime- and gore-crusted warriors. She knew that simply by being still they would not see her for looking. It was movement that gave away the hidden.
The figure in the fire was making her sick. She could feel it in the air somehow. She felt the violation of the natural order of things, a connection between the living fire and wherever this dark figure actually stood. The Cirig knew that you never looked too hard into a fire as you risked attracting the attention of callous gods who lived in burning places.
As sick as it made her, she felt its call. Was this shadow Bress’s master? she wondered. The figure spoke to the same parts of her that the dreams of Bress did. The dreams were more frequent and intense now. But perhaps it was just the thought of battle that was making her wet.
They were in the northern lands of the Atrebates, the tribe whose king they sought. What the black curraghs had left, the Corpse People had despoiled. Tangwen said that the Corpse People had been one of the many tribes that made up the Durotriges, a confederation of peoples from the far west. They had been expelled from the confederation for their dark practices. They lived on the plain where many of the other tribes placed their dead in barrows or left them for the crows to carry to the Otherworld. The plain bordered Annwn, the land of the dead, and the Corpse People were thought to have strayed too close to that border.
They had been travelling for ten days now. The last Britha had seen of the People of the Snake had been the little girl holding one of Fachtna’s arm torcs. The Will of Dagon had carried them west up the river until Hanno had finally refused to take them further despite there being plenty of loot for the Carthaginians from deserted and destroyed villages. Tangwen had led them on foot from there. The young hunter and warrior had taken them deeper into the ruined landscape. They had gone west first, skirting areas that had been raided, trying to avoid bands of warriors from further north seeking to protect their lands. Then they headed south. Britha did not trust the land here – its flatness seemed unnatural – but she had to admit that before its despoliation it must have been very rich.
‘What have you brought for me?’ the warped figure in the living flame asked. Its inhuman voice made Britha’s skin crawl. Bress must be his slave. This monster must have forced him to drink from the chalice she had seen. She had to push down these thoughts, focus, forget about Bress. All that mattered was her tribe. Regardless of this thing’s hold on Bress and her attraction to him. Bress still had to die.
The boy they brought forward was too terrified to cry. Pale and naked, there were cuts on his head and face where hair and eyebrows had been shaved off. The smile on the face of the warrior who’d asked about Rhi Rin told Britha that he took pleasure from this. She’d seen the look before on the face of blood-drunk warriors and black-robed sacrificers who relished what should have been no more than their duty. The boy shook like a leaf. They were not a strong people, Britha thought.
They made the boy kneel before the fire. Cadwr crawled behind him, averting his eyes. He put the stone blade into the small of the captive’s back. He would destroy the bone there so the boy could not move and then feed him to the fire so the Dark Man could drink the weakling’s suffering. The smiling lime-covered warrior wanted the smell of blood boiling in blackening skin so that Crom Dhubh would know his devotion. He was looking forward to the ragged feel of the rough stone blade tearing through soft skin and hard bone. He savoured the boy’s fear as stone touched flesh.
An arrow grew from Cadwr’s head. He felt the impact. Knew something was wrong.
Across the fire he saw Edern staring at him. Behind Edern the darkness parted, revealing a strange man with skin like wood and a swollen head. Not a man but a demon! The demon had a black knife in his hand. The blade had somehow captured the flames from the fire within it. A red smile appeared on Edern’s neck as the demon drew the blade across limed flesh with no more effort than a man slicing butter. Then the darkness came for Cadwr. Confused that he could die again, he hoped he was travelling to his reward.
Two of their number were dead before the Corpse People even started to reach for spears and swords and climb to their feet. Even hardened warriors who thought themselves dead jumped at the horrible keening noise. Britha seemed to fall from the sky. After all, they hadn’t seen her leap off a nearby moss-covered boulder. Her face contorted as she made fear magics with her voice. She landed behind one of the Corpse People; the head of her spear exploded out of the man’s chest. Part of the haft followed as Britha’s momentum pushed it through and rammed the point into the ground. Rather than try and tear the spear out, Britha pulled her sickle from her belt and turned to face the closest warrior.
Teardrop had insisted that their weapons, including Tangwen’s arrowheads, were first soaked in the blood of either himself, a reluctant Fachtna or Britha. Teardrop had then burned some kind of sweet-smelling plant to make smoke and chanted at the weapons. He said tha
t he was telling them what to do. Britha thought this nonsense. Iron knew how to kill before it was forged. The heat in the pregnant metal of the belly of the forge was just the pain of birth.
The warrior had drawn his sword. The pitted blade shone in the firelight. Southron warriors polished their blades rather than leaving them blue from the forge as they did in the north. He swung the sword two-handed at Britha, who parried, also using both hands, catching the blade in the curve of the sickle. Surprise flashed across the warrior’s face. He had not been expecting Britha to be strong enough to stop the force of his blow.
Behind Britha another of the Corpse People swung a carved stone and bone club at the back of her hooded skull. Fachtna emerged out of the darkness behind him. His angry-sounding, singing, ghost-bladed sword made a cut through the warrior from shoulder to deep in the man’s stomach.
Britha kicked the swordsman back, again surprising him with her strength and staggering him. Then she swung the sickle two-handed up into the warrior’s groin. A long way from dead, he collapsed to the ground clutching his ruined manhood. This time she used his high-pitched screams to cast her fear magics. Her first victim was still sliding down the haft of her spear.
Two warriors charged Fachtna’s back. Two arrows appeared in the back of one, Tangwen firing from the trees, her snake mask high up on her head to give a clear view as she shot. The man hit the ground, sliding in the dirt as Fachtna spun around, lifting his leg over the fallen man. The second warrior had been going for a low strike with his spear, hoping to push it into Fachtna’s bowels. The Gael brought down his leg with incredible speed and stamped on the haft of the spear, splintering it. He swung the large oval shield strapped to his left arm into the charging spearman, lifting him off his feet and then slamming him to the ground. Fachtna pulled the shield up and then drove his sword through the man’s chest and deep into the earth beneath him.
Tangwen sprinted through the woods illuminated by the beams of moonlight the thick branches of the burned trees let through. She kept the flames from the campfire to her left, trying not to look directly at it as she changed position. She knelt down, dropping the two arrows she had already taken from her quiver to the ashen earth next to her. She watched as three warriors advanced on Teardrop, two with spears and one with an axe. The swollen-headed man was holding his own, parrying the spears with his crystal-tipped staff, but the axeman had his weapon held high and was waiting for just the right moment to strike.
It didn’t matter that he had trained as a warrior as well as a shaman. It didn’t matter that he had been in battles before. Whenever he was attacked, Teardrop was always aware that he was fighting for his life. Fachtna never let the thought of defeat enter his mind, so he said, but Teardrop always felt he was one mistake from death. He always felt the rise of panic within him and had to fight not to succumb to it.
The axeman was cagey, biding his moment as the spearmen pressed him. The sound of wood and metal on wood filled the air. Both spearmen thrust at once. Teardrop swept both spearheads to the side but they pushed against the staff, trying to force his guard down. Then the axeman charged.
Tangwen had one of the arrows nocked. She loosed and then grabbed the other arrow, nocked and loosed that before the first arrow had even reached its target.
The arrow caught the axeman in the side of the head with sufficient force that the arrowhead burst out of his skull on the opposite side. The momentum of his charge kept him moving forward even as he collapsed to the ground. Another arrow appeared in the back of the neck of one of the spearmen. He hit the ground before he was aware of what had killed him. The final spearman made the mistake of glancing towards his dead friend. When he looked back at Teardrop he saw the butt of Teardrop’s staff flying towards him.
Tangwen heard the crunch of Teardrop’s staff caving in the final spearman’s face. He turned and raised a hand to her in thanks.
‘Oh, Teardrop!’ Tangwen moaned as one of the lime-covered, gore-streaked Corpse People charged him, sword raised high. Tangwen nocked another arrow but she had her own problems. Three of the enemy were sprinting into the burned forest heading straight for her. How they could see her so well she did not know, and they were running in with the fire directly behind them, which would affect her aim.
Teardrop only just managed to spin out of the way of the swordsman’s blow. He continued to spin in a full circle, and his staff caught the man in the back of his head with sufficient force to lift him off his feet. Teardrop quickly closed with the swordsman as he rolled over. All but standing over him, Teardrop slammed the butt down towards the warrior’s head. The swordsman parried the blow two-handed. Teardrop slammed it down again. The swordsman rolled to the side and then smacked the staff out of the way, knocking Teardrop off balance. The man rolled to his feet and grinned at Teardrop, drooling. Teardrop knew he was outclassed.
Teardrop pointed the staff at the swordsman and called upon the crystal. He felt it creep further into his head. He screamed as it went directly to the pain receptors in the soft matter of his brain. Suddenly he saw things in a different way, in a way that mere humans were not meant to see. He reached out with impossibly long limbs only notionally attached to him and made a tiny change before he snapped back into his own body with its agony-filled mind. The swordsman’s scream drowned out Teardrop’s. It looked as if the hilt of the enemy warrior’s sword had slipped through his hand to fuse itself into the man’s arm. Fighting the pain and the seemingly inexorable advance of the crystal tendrils in his mind, Teardrop spun again, using his staff to sweep the man’s legs out from underneath him. The agonised warrior hit the ground. Teardrop stood over him, raised his staff and put the man out of his misery.
An arrow flew through the fire-blackened wood. It took the first man in the throat. Tangwen loosed the second arrow from a standing position in a hurry. She barely had time to curse as it hit the man in the leg. The third was almost on her. She tried to distract the charging warrior by throwing the bow at him. This gave her time to grab the hatchet from her belt as the man batted the bow to one side and charged. Tangwen had long ago learned the pointlessness of trying to fight much larger opponents head on. As he reached her she sank to one knee and swung her hatchet hard at the side of his knee. She felt the blade bite deep into flesh and hit bone. The man screamed even as his sword sliced into her wood and wicker snake’s head helm and opened the side of her head. She lost hold of the hatchet as the man barrelled into her.
Tangwen found herself lying on the floor fighting pain, nausea and unconsciousness, the side of her head wet, sticky and covered in dirt. She managed to push herself up as the man rolled towards her. She threw herself on him, grabbing the stone dagger from his belt and ramming it into his mouth, breaking teeth and, with a scream, pushing it up into his brain. The corpse bucked under her and then was still. She caught her breath.
The kick caught Tangwen in the side of her chest, picked her up off the body of the man and slammed her into a tree, burned bark crumbling under the impact. Then he was on her, hands around her throat, bestial look on his face as he squeezed the life out of her. It was the one she had shot in the leg. She dimly wondered why he hadn’t run her through with sword or spear. As things got darker, as she lost the fight for breath, as she clawed at him, she was horribly aware of his stench – of decay and the corpses he tried so hard to emulate.
The blade of the sickle dug deep into the warrior’s stomach as Britha wrenched it upwards. His war cry choked out and was replaced by the screams of the eviscerated. Britha yanked the sickle out. She staggered back as another of the Corpse People seemingly appeared out of nowhere, charging her, axe held high. Sidestepping, she fish-hooked the axeman in the face with the sickle and used his momentum to guide him into the fire. There was an explosion of sparks as the screaming man rolled around in the flames, his hair and trews catching fire. It looked like he was writhing around in the shadow of the Dark Man. As if his own god was consuming him. Good, Britha thought.
; Wetness sprayed her face and the fingers around her throat fell away. Tangwen opened her eyes and saw Teardrop standing over her. The black-bladed knife he held in his hand was dripping. He raised a foot to kick the now-dead strangler off her.
Fachtna moved the shield rapidly between the blades of the two swordsmen. The shield shook with each impact. A third warrior stabbed at him with a spear. He turned the point with his sword and then swung to counter-attack. The spearman brought the haft of his weapon up to block. The singing sword cut through the wood and sliced the warrior open diagonally from hip to shoulder. Fachtna sidestepped rapidly, knocking the falling man towards the swordsmen. Fachtna bisected one of the warriors’ heads as he tried to move out of the way of his dead companion. As the other one charged him, Fachtna ducked behind his shield and rammed it forward, putting all his force behind it, battering the man’s sword strike out of the way and knocking him back. Fachtna reached around the front of the shield with his sword and slashed the blade across the man’s legs. Flesh just seemed to open up at the touch of the ghostly blade. The man fell into Fachtna’s shield and the Gael braced as he slid down it. Fachtna finished him by running the blade through the back of his neck.
Britha’s blood was up. Breathing hard and covered in blood, she wanted to fight more. Kill more. She looked around. All were still or almost dead, their fight long gone. Disappointed, she let the dripping blade of her sickle hang at her side. The burning man launched himself out of the fire, axe held high. Britha started to turn. Something passed her face, brushing against it. An arrow appeared in the burning axeman’s mouth, and he fell to the ground. Britha became aware of the smell of burning flesh mixed with the coppery tang of blood and the smell of ruptured bowels. She turned and looked into the woods. Tangwen was lowering her bow. The blood that caked the other woman’s face looked black in the moonlight. Teardrop was standing next to her. Britha could make out both perfectly despite the darkness. She nodded to the hunter.