The Age of Scorpio

by Gavin Smith

  ‘Not if you share with us your ability to harm them,’ Rin said.

  ‘Which we won’t,’ Teardrop said with finality.

  ‘We cannot defy the will of the gods,’ Eurawg said. ‘We should do what they ask.’

  ‘Eurawg, shut up,’ Rin said. ‘So you would leave us here to die?’

  ‘You’re dead anyway,’ Teardrop answered.

  ‘We have no choice. The gods, our gods have spoken.’ Eurawg was pleading.

  ‘Eurawg, shut up! Have we not sacrificed enough, shed enough blood, drunk for you, feasted for you enough?’ Morfudd shouted at Britha, though it was clear that she did not entirely believe she was the daughter of their goddess. ‘You repay us by leaving us to die!’

  ‘How many times must I say it,’ Teardrop asked, letting anger creep into his voice, though something told Britha that was for show as well. ‘The people here are dead anyway. The only question is whether or not your warband dies at the same time or confronts your real enemy.’

  ‘The Cigfran Teulu serves the people. We have no choice but to stay,’ Morfudd said with finality.

  ‘Then you are cowards who may as well beg Crom Dhubh for death,’ Britha said.

  ‘And you will fare even less well without the blessings of your goddess,’ Teardrop added.

  ‘We have seen nothing from you to suggest you are who you say you are,’ Morfudd said.

  ‘Were you not at the gates last night? Did you not see their power?!’ Eurawg screamed at the warband leader.

  ‘And if we heal your king and make your warriors stronger and faster, and if we empower their weapons to wound those from the Otherworld, then will you summon your courage to stand with us?’ Teardrop demanded.

  ‘It would go some way to proving you are who you say you are,’ Morfudd said.

  ‘You are thinking that once we have done all this, you will simply take our power and cower behind these walls,’ Britha said. ‘It’s what I would think,’ she added.

  ‘If we give our word, we will do what we have promised,’ Rin said. He looked troubled, deep in thought.

  ‘How will you do this thing?’ Eurawg asked, his hunger for power and knowledge written all over his face. Teardrop stared at the boy, who cringed under his inhuman eyes.

  ‘Blood magic,’ Teardrop pronounced.

  Morfudd snorted in derision. ‘You would turn us into little more than Goidel blood-drinkers! You would make us Baobhan Sith.’

  ‘Enough,’ Rin said quietly.

  ‘You can’t be—’ Morfudd began.

  ‘Then what?’ the king asked her. ‘We know that the Corpse People are connected to what is happening on the Isles of the Moon. We cannot harm them. The only reason our walls did not fall last night was because of these strangers’ display of power. What would you have me do? If they do not aid us tonight then we are dead.’

  ‘But abandon our people?’

  ‘Your landsmen must wear the armour that the warriors do not take with them, and must man the gate and the walls. They must try and hold out as long as possible,’ Britha told them

  ‘While we sneak away,’ Morfudd said bitterly. ‘Will you at least arm them with weapons that will harm the Corpse People?’ Britha hated to hear the tone of pleading in the proud, strong woman’s voice.

  ‘No,’ Teardrop said emotionlessly.

  ‘Why?!’ Now desperation.

  ‘Because there is only so much magic, and it always comes at a cost.’ Teardrop had a faraway look on his face as he said this.

  ‘Swear to me that this is the only chance that any of my people have of living,’ Rin said. Teardrop opened his mouth. ‘Not you, demon, her.’ He nodded at Britha.

  ‘The warband are probably all dead as well, but they will die trying to protect everything there is. I swear this by blood and bone and all I value,’ Britha said. She meant it, but it was an easy oath to swear. It cost her little but the king seemed to believe her.

  ‘There is one other thing.’ The silver-eyed man continued. ‘You must hold a feast in honour of the goddess.’

  ‘This is too much!’ Morfudd would have said more but Rin held up his hand.

  ‘I feel sore used by Andraste, for whom I have taken many a head,’ the king told them. ‘We will feast, we will feast in the face of death so that our enemies know that though our iron will not kill them, we do not fear them, but to Annwn with your goddess.’

  ‘What is the Hungry Nothingness?’ Britha demanded as they walked away from the circular stone temple.

  ‘Just play your part if you ever want to see any of your people again,’ Teardrop told her. Britha bit back an angry retort. Something told her that it would do no good and that Teardrop, or whatever he was now, was serious.

  As they started preparing for the feast, Tangwen saw the argument. Britha remained quiet while Teardrop spoke in a low voice to Fachtna, who raged. He raged in his language, the language of the Goidel traders who claimed they came from an island in the west. She did not speak the tongue but she knew some words. One word she had learned because it was useful when dealing with traders was that for falsehood. Fachtna shouted it a lot.

  Tangwen watched as the three walked along the track to the circular building that the hunter knew to be a temple. Then they were gone for a long time. Tangwen wondered what the Corpse People must be thinking as the smell of beef, pork, mutton and chicken started to fill the air. The feast was going to be mightier than any she had ever been to before. So this is how rich tribes ready themselves for death, she thought.

  Some time later, bored with watching the Corpse People swarm over the opposite hillside like maggots, she went looking for the others. If they didn’t want her in their temple then the dryw could chase her away.

  Tangwen walked into the temple to see Fachtna and Britha hanging upside down from a drying frame. Both of them were naked, both of them pale. Both had been cut and bled. Underneath, cauldrons collected their blood. Teardrop was sitting next to them.

  Teardrop looked up as she entered and stared at her impassively. Tangwen could not take his staring eyes on her. She turned and fled.

  After the warband had drunk their fill, reddening their chins on Fachtna and Britha’s blood. After Teardrop had worked his magic. After weapons had been washed in the blood until there was no more of it. After the king had drunk of the blood and then been dipped into the cauldron and they had watched the blood disappear into his skin. After ruined legs had been healed and the king walked again. After all that, Britha’s eyes flickered open. He had not taken all her blood. There was still some left inside her, but so little. She was so hungry, so weak. It had felt like death and there had been nothing there.

  Tangwen watched as they carried Fachtna and Britha to where the feast was laid out. Weak though they were, they grabbed for the food, coming close to knocking over trestles as they gorged themselves on whatever they could shovel into their mouths. Many watched them in disgust. They ate so much it shamed Tangwen to be associated with them, but as they ate she saw their colour come back and meat return to their bones in front of her eyes. She found herself making a sign to protect herself against evil.

  The warband did not attend the feast; they ate sparingly and drank little. Instead they walked the walls. This was for the folk. Rin spared nothing in terms of drink. There was a desperation to the drinking. The feast had seemed forced, but soon there was singing and dancing. Good, Tangwen thought, glancing over the walls. Throw it in their faces. But there were tears and embraces as well. Few had any doubts as to what was happening, but Rin wanted everybody to be drunk when they met their end.

  Morfudd had asked to stay. She had been told no. Eurawg had asked to go. He had been told no. When the Corpse People came it would be his job to kill the youngest children so they did not fall into the hands of fiends.

  The tears and the fear only kicked in when the warband gave away their armour and shields and it became apparent they were to leave the fort. Shame was written all over the tear-stained faces of t
he men and women of the Cigfran Teulu. They could not even look at those they had sworn to serve.

  There would have been panic among the folk except for their king. They loved their king. It surprised nobody when he refused to leave.

  Before they sneaked into the night, Rin spat in Britha’s face. Anger coursed through her – she came close to running him through with a spear – but in the face of her anger, despite the demonstrations of power that he’d witnessed, Rin held his ground. ‘That’s for your mother,’ he told her. Britha managed to control her anger.

  They slipped over the darkest part of the walls at dusk before the Corpse People closed on the fort. A long drop by rope into the ditch, down to the treeline and then they crept away. Every one of them bar Britha, Teardrop, Tangwen and Fachtna felt like the basest betrayer and coward. Though Fachtna understood them and felt a little of what they felt.

  They pushed hard, skirting west to avoid the Corpse People’s pickets. Then they turned south-east. They pushed hard because they did not want to hear the sounds of battle, though there wouldn’t be much of one. They weren’t quick enough to escape the screams.

  They saw its head first. Morfudd told them that she had never seen such a thing before and that it had not been there when last she had been this way.

  ‘It’s too big,’ Britha said, appalled.

  ‘Things of that size cannot be built,’ Morfudd said firmly. It had to be more than five hundred feet tall and stood in the channel between two smallish islands close to the coast. Much further out was a third and considerably larger island. They had been cresting a large hill that ran parallel to the coast for some time now, walking through acres of what had once been woodland. Most of the trees had been felled. Britha couldn’t imagine how many people it must have taken to remove this many trees. But the trees were quickly forgotten when she saw the small fleet of black curraghs surrounding the structure in the water.

  ‘And yet . . .’ Teardrop said. Britha did not like the sly smile on the face of the stranger wearing her friend’s form.

  ‘It’s a wicker man,’ Fachtna said, no life in his voice.

  27

  Now

  Beth spent the night on the streets just outside Waterloo Station. She woke up the following morning feeling fine, no aches, no pains and aware of her surrounding to a surprising degree. She wasn’t sure what was happening, but she felt different. She was worried that the insane old woman in the interrogation room had infected her with something. Or maybe du Bois had, and the bag lady spitting blood was a hallucination. Whatever it was made her feel stronger, faster, much more aware and very, very hungry. Of the money that du Bois had given her, she’d spent a surprising amount on food.

  On the train from London to Portsmouth, Beth was impatient. She wanted to deal with McGurk. If he knew anything about her sister he was going to tell her this time. After all, how many monsters could he have?

  She walked quickly from Portsmouth Central across the common to the garish plastic and concrete of the amusements. Without all the light and the noise there was something distinctly depressing about them, even on a fresh and sunny day like today. She waited. It was still early. It would be a while before anyone turned up. She watched a ferry make its way through the Solent’s mild chop, the wind blowing her hair. The Isle of Wight looked far away today.

  The main thing on Ted’s mind as he cursed the old key refusing to turn in an old lock was having a nice sweet cup of tea. He didn’t feel like he could face the day, and he certainly couldn’t cope with punters, until he’d had his second cup of tea.

  ‘Ted?’

  The voice made him jump, and he didn’t like the way his heart felt in his chest at the fright. He’d been on edge since McGurk had come to visit. McGurk had been right: it was a long time since Ted had been someone in this city. He turned to look at her.

  ‘Thought we’d seen the last of you.’

  ‘I need to know something,’ Beth said.

  ‘Be a love and pick that up, will you?’ He nodded to where he’d spat his cigarette. Beth bent down and gave it to him. He took another drag. ‘Well, you’d better come in and have a cup of tea.’

  They sat up in the concrete saucer above the arcades. The cafe might have been nice in the 60s. Still, it looked out over the Solent towards the Isle of Wight. She watched as the hovercraft left its nearby terminal and headed out over the water.

  Ted shuffled over to the table and gave her a cup of tea with far too much sugar in it and a chocolate bar that she devoured almost immediately.

  ‘Hungry?’ She just nodded. ‘So? You looking for your old job back? Because I know I don’t pay much, but I need reliable people.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said through a mouthful of chocolate.

  ‘You had trouble?’ She nodded. ‘McGurk?’ She nodded again. He sighed. ‘Maybe this ain’t a good city to live in?’ Beth finished her chocolate and took a sip of the tea. It was so sweet she was mildly worried about getting diabetes if she drank it all.

  ‘I need to know where I can find him.’

  Ted gave a short bark of laughter devoid of humour. ‘You fancy yourself as someone who can look after themselves, don’t you? For a bird, I mean.’

  Beth could see where this was going. He was going to try and impart some chivalrous for-her-own-good, street knowledge to her.

  ‘Look, I know how it looks, but I know what I’m do—’

  ‘No! You really fucking don’t. Beth, he runs the drugs and prostitution in this town. He’s supposed to have his grubby little fingers in human trafficking, dog fighting, bare-knuckle boxing. He rapes anyone who comes to work for him so they know the score.’

  ‘He thinks I’m too ugly to rape.’

  ‘Then he’ll carve you up, and if he doesn’t he’s got boys with fists, big boots, clubs, knives and even shooters. Stay the fuck away from him.’

  ‘He’s got my sister,’ Beth said quietly.

  Ted stared at her. ‘Shit,’ he finally said and looked down. Suddenly he wished he was thirty years younger or even had just looked after himself properly. You messed people up, you had to if you wanted to carve a piece for you and yours, but McGurk didn’t know when to stop – no decency, too greedy. The hard girl in the leather looking at him from across the table, eyes full of emotion, made him feel guilty. ‘He got her hooking?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Ted leaned in close, not quite willing to believe what he was about to say, pleased that nobody else was there. ‘Look, you ever say that I told you this then I’ll deny it, but go to the plod.’

  ‘They get close to him, he’ll cut his losses, deny it. They can’t do the things that I’ll do to him to find out where she is. Besides, I think there’s someone else after her, someone bad, fucked-in-the-head bad.’

  ‘Beth, before you even get close to him he’ll have one of his lads shoot you. And they’ll do it and go inside for him without even mentioning his name. I’m sorry for your sister. I can make enquiries – see if she’s on the streets – but I’m not having your death on my conscience.’

  She sat back in her chair. He could see how desperate she was.

  ‘Ted, pick three of the hardest guys here and I’ll fight them . . .’ He jumped when she slammed an antique bayonet down on the table.

  ‘He’s fucking tried carving me up before. It got him nothing. They’ve got shooters, they best use them quick, and frankly I don’t give a fuck if they do. I went inside for beating some cunt to death for what he did to my sister. I nearly did it again to . . . some monster he chose to do for me. I fucking promise you, Ted, it’s him who’s got to be scared now.’

  It took Ted a while to realise that the prickling sensation he was feeling in his spine was fear. He put off saying anything by lighting another cigarette. She shook her head when he offered her one.

  ‘What about me? He’s a tasty geezer. Beth, I like you but I don’t know you. We’re not close and I don’t owe you anything.’ Beth stared at him. He saw her knuc
kles whiten around the hilt of her bayonet as disgust crept across her face. He sagged in his seat and told her what she wanted to know. Beth turned and looked out the window. It wasn’t even far away.

  Du Bois hated eating in the car. It wasn’t just the crumbs; it made the car smell as well. He was parked on Broad Street in Old Portsmouth looking at the old defensive wall on the waterfront. It amused du Bois that this area, now so desirable, had once been known as Spice Island and been a hotbed of vice. Some things just didn’t change that much, he decided, bearing in mind what he was here to do.

  There was still a huge police and military presence in the city, though the latter had been played down. The roadblocks and some of the other more draconian precautions that had been taken had been relaxed. It seemed that the authorities knew they were little more than window-dressing.

  He was still injured, slow and weak. There was new-growth skin where the bag lady had partially flayed him, hence the eating. He did not feel anything like at his peak.

  He had reviewed McGurk’s file. He seemed to be a particularly nasty version of your standard provincial UK gangster: small-minded, short-sighted and vicious. So where had he got the servitor from?

  His ability to think was being severely hampered by loud bass-heavy music. On the other side of the road a little further up, a van was parked, its side door open, a large sound system pointing out of it. There were four men in hoodies and clown masks putting on what du Bois could only speculate was some kind of dance exhibition. Though what the gyrations, gymnastics and spinning on their backs had to do with dancing was beyond him. He’d only worked out it was supposed to be dancing by the music. A surprisingly large group of tourists had gathered around the dancers – so large they were starting to block the road to the most westerly point of Old Portsmouth. Du Bois felt like calling the police but decided that he was being petty.

  Elizabeth Luckwicke passed along the walkway on the top of the wall. Du Bois was not pleased to see her and had hoped that she would stay in Bradford. What really surprised him was that she appeared to have a blood-screen, and a powerful one. He could make out the representation of augmentation in his vision. He could see fire burning through her veins.