by Gavin Smith
Possession by the spear was a definite threat. Fachtna activated protective programs, mystic sigils that would look after his internal systems; he dropped calming narcotics into his augmented systems to try to suppress the psychotic rage spillover into his consciousness. He ran through calming mental and physical exercises taught at warrior camp and later by the technomantic dryw.
The spear returned to Fachtna’s hand, its haft receding. Fachtna tried not to hurry as he sent the various codes designed to make the AI sleep. He placed it in the case and with a pronounced sigh of relief closed it.
The foot caught him dead centre in the back with a force that would have snapped a non-augmented spine. Instead it sent him sprawling across the soiled boards.
Bress let go of the framework he’d used to swing in and dropped down onto the floor behind the prostrate Fachtna. Behind him the framework that had opened for him with a thought was growing shut.
‘You’re a long way from your Eggshell, little man,’ he said evenly. Fachtna rolled over to face him. He felt a little thrill of fear. He wished he hadn’t used the riasterthae frenzy to kill the giant. He couldn’t withstand another frenzy today. He wished his arms and shoulders weren’t still in agony despite the best efforts of his augmentations to repair them.
‘I thought we were a myth to the likes of you?’ he asked for the sake of something to say.
‘Long gone perhaps, but Crom has a long memory.’
Besides fear, Fachtna also felt excitement. He really wanted to kill this man. He was less happy when Bress leaned down and picked up the case with the spear in it.
‘What’s this?’ he asked.
Fachtna skipped up onto his feet, sword in hand.
It was warm in here. Her internal breath felt like the dry desert wind from a hundred lives ago. Except in her breath was moisture. He stood in a cave of bone and flesh, his hands and the side of his head sunk into the wall. He shared the thoughts and feelings of a creator. He was perverting them. He had fed her pain and fear and hatred, and she had given that form. From her womb they had grown like blisters through her skin. Skin that was strong enough to survive the deepest abysses the oceans had to offer. Slowly she was waking. Unlike her sisters, her creator had not driven her irrevocably insane, but the pain of the sacrifices would be enough to harm her mind. That would allow him to influence her to open the way.
The pain and the fear lessened significantly. She could still feel it, even asleep, but it was not being fed directly to her via the transmissions of crystal parasites. He had felt the interference but thought nothing of it. Small people with small minds. They could not be allowed to stop the sending, however.
Smoke poured up through the planks in the floor of the fourth level, obscuring most of their view and the people waiting by the steps. They were just coughing, sobbing shadows now, cursing those who moved so slowly beneath them.
Teardrop was a bleeding mess, still sitting cross-legged, his arms held out, no part of him unwounded. If his skin was not cut then it was burned. His gibbering had long ago ceased to be language, and blood came from his mouth as crystal oozed from his eyes. He was now just making a rasping rattling noise.
The first thing she noticed was that the cursing, sobbing and coughing had stopped. The captives came through the smoke towards them, arms outstretched, enslaved by the magic of the crystal seeds in their heads again. Britha moved in front of Teardrop. She heard him coughing and spitting out blood behind her. Crom apparently wanted Teardrop and Britha dead more than he needed the captives’ fear.
Fachtna and Bress stared at each other. Fachtna held his sword two-handed in a mid-guard; Bress, his bastard sword in one hand, the spear’s case in the other, was much more relaxed.
‘You have done a lot of damage by coming here,’ Fachtna said. Bress’s laughter was devoid of humour.
‘Have you painted yourself the hero here?’
‘I’m not trying to kill thousands of people.’
‘Not here perhaps, but tell me how you live outside the laws of causality. Because you have decided that you are a good man? Your actions as much as ours, well maybe not as much as ours, have rewritten the future. What you left is no longer there, not that either of us would ever remember what has been.’
‘Assuming that time/space does not crack.’
‘Time/space is more rugged than you give it credit for, believe me.’
‘What you’re doing is monstrous.’
‘Only from a very limited and selfish perspective. What we are doing is speeding up the inevitable. If you had really wanted to stop us, then you should have sent more than two.’
‘Limited resources,’ Fachtna told him. ‘Are we going to fight?’
‘This isn’t a fight, it’s a murder.’
The tiny part of Teardrop’s psyche that was alive no longer resembled anything even remotely like a sane human mind. The crystal parasite was a kaleidoscopic spider’s web, straddling planes of existence and non-existence, trapping the suffering of the vessels of pain and feeding it back down into the electric signals that surged through biological existence.
Then the pain stopped. What had been Teardrop struggled like a broken thing in his own fractured and hellish mindscapes filled with impossible things that humanity had not evolved enough to perceive without their minds shattering.
The crystal network reached out for an instinctive understanding. What it found instead was darkness surging back, feeding down to the pain vessels, controlling them, enslaving them. The darkness was a tiny part of something immense, but its power nearly overwhelmed the parasite’s web. Then the parasite shifted until it found the right path and started to tentatively taste the dark thing.
Crom Dhubh could not even remember pain. He savoured a sensation that to him was as new, but he still screamed as he tore his hands and face from her flesh. He could destroy the parasite, he knew that. After all it was the creature’s unfertilised eggs, or at least what they could make of the eggs in three-dimensional space, that they had at great expense harvested to put in the heads of the pain vessels.
He could destroy the parasite, of that he had no doubt, but he needed his power and he did not want to give it any more access than it already had. Let him block the fear. There was blood in the water now. It would mean expending more of his power than he had wanted, but he could force her to open the way now. He could induce the horrible birth.
Blades flickered out at a bewildering speed: strike, parry and counter-strike. Bress had a bad mixture of speed and strength; his blade had more reach, and he defended himself too well for Fachtna to get inside that reach without losing significant amounts of flesh.
Smoke billowed up through the planks as if they were over a volcanic vent. Every swing of a blade caused eddies in the smoke. No blood had been drawn, but Fachtna was the one being forced back. He felt his back hit the framework of the wicker man. Bress swung. Fachtna ducked under the blade and threw himself into a forward roll. He felt Bress slice a layer of flesh off his back, the other man’s sword going straight through his armour. Bress’s sword cut through the wicker man’s framework and swung through the smoke-filled air outside the cage.
Fachtna rolled to his feet. He knew that the wound on his back would not be healing any time soon, as the nanites that impregnated Bress’s blade attacked the nanites that would normally knit his flesh together again.
Bress hit Fachtna with a back kick that he had no business trying in a sword fight where incredibly sharp implements were being waved around at speed. The kick took Fachtna off his feet and sent him flying over the planks. Bress stalked after him. Fachtna scrabbled to his feet and turned just in time to parry a powerful strike.
‘I could make the metal come alive and hold you down,’ Bress told Fachtna.
The massive two-handed strike that almost forced him to his knees shouldn’t have been so fast, Fachtna thought. With just enough strength to hold Bress’s blade away from him, Fachtna kneed the taller man. Bress showed no sign o
f having felt it. He threw Fachtna back and kicked him in the stomach, causing him to stumble. The arc of Bress’s sword somehow looked lazy to Fachtna but he knew that he could not get his blade up to parry it. Bress opened up Fachtna’s thigh but did not sever anything vital. That was when Fachtna realised that he was being played with.
It had gone quiet below but then the screams restarted. Sounds of true panic. Moments later, the smell of human flesh cooking. Fachtna knew that the bottom level had caught fire.
Britha fought like she had never fought before, her spear striking at any that got too close. Then there had been too many and they had pulled the spear from her. Then she had fought with the sickle. Then she had fought with her hands, feet and forehead, and finally nails and teeth, desperately trying to keep them away from Teardrop. But they were all over her. They were going to tear her apart with their bare hands and they were going to do the same to Teardrop.
Then it was over. Then they were people again, not demon-ridden slaves. They dropped her, confused and frightened, many of them wounded. They dropped her onto the soiled planks and she curled up into a ball, sobbing. They backed away from her.
‘Ban draoi?’ The words spoken in her own language, the familiarity of the voice, made her open her eyes. She recognised the child despite her soot-covered face and red-raw eyes. A girl from Ardestie, a daughter of one of the landsfolk families. What made her cry harder than anything was that she could not remember her name.
Through the grief and the panic, the girl’s concern made her remember why she was there. A monstrous force was fostering fear and pain in her people and drinking it to poison a goddess. She sat up and looked over at Teardrop. His mouth was moving but he was beyond language now.
Panic. Screams from below as the lowest level of the wicker man’s torso caught fire.
The massive bronze crescent of one of the great axe’s blades bisected Teardrop’s skull. He collapsed sideways, well and truly dead.
‘You fucking whore!’ Hanno screamed at her in Carthaginian. ‘You did this to me! You soiled my luck with your blood sacrifices on a ship holy to Dagon!’ His was the second head on Ettin’s lopsided and broad shoulders.
‘I’ll mount you up here so you can watch me rape your corpse,’ Ettin told her. ‘You’ll learn to stay dead when I kill you.’
Grief and fear was gone. Ettin swung Kush’s axe down at her. Britha rolled away, grabbing her hungry spear as she came up onto her feet. Cold anger had replaced everything.
‘Come and die,’ she told the monster. He stalked through the smoke towards her.
Fachtna was grinning, laughing. It was easy now. He knew he was going to die. He stopped caring about winning, stopped caring about getting hurt. Any blow that didn’t look like it was going to kill him immediately, he took.
Bress opened up his upper left arm from shoulder to elbow, severing tendons, making it useless. Fachtna spat blood at him and laughed as he screamed in pain and made a reckless backhanded upwards cut. The hot ghost-like blade cut through Bress’s armour, piercing flesh and carrying on up to cut into his face.
Bress lurched back. Fachtna side-kicked him, staggering the tall thin man, though he lost some of his right leg doing it. He moved forward after Bress, but his leg gave out under him. That didn’t matter. He left himself open as he chopped down at his opponent’s head. Bress got his blade up barely in time to parry, but the force of Fachtna’s blow brought the tip of his blade down onto Bress’s head, opening it up. Blood poured down his pale face. Bress had finished humouring Fachtna.
She felt the force of the axe blow reverberate down her arms as she blocked it with the haft. Had the spear not been Lochlannach magic, the axe would have cut straight through. Britha kicked out under the spear. It was a solid blow, but Ettin barely felt it. Instead he brought the axe back for a two-handed sideways blow. Britha hit him with the butt of the spear in the face. Except it was Hanno’s face. The Carthaginian’s eyes rolled up into his head but he did not lose consciousness. Instead he drooled blood as he continued screaming obscenities at her.
She needed to put distance between her and Ettin so she could use the spear. Ettin swung at her. Britha leaped, bringing her knees up. The axe swished under them. She landed and moved to the side and away from Ettin, through the smoke.
The captives were trying to give them as much room as they could, though from the screams they knew that all that waited for them below was fire and death.
Britha stabbed out with her spear. Ettin parried it with the haft of his axe, knocking it away so hard Britha almost lost her grip on it. She went with the momentum of the parry and swung the spear around her head as she backed away from Ettin’s approach. She turned the circular movement of the spear into a thrust. He was ready for her. He caught the spear with the axe and, one-handed, yanked it out of her grip, dragging her forward. He dropped the spear and punched her in the face, sending her staggering back to the sound of Hanno’s cheers. Britha grabbed for the sickle still hanging from her side by the remains of her rope belt. Ettin side-kicked her and took her off her feet. She hit the floor hard as he raised the axe above his head to Hanno’s exultant shouting.
Bress caught Fachtna’s sword hand at the wrist. He smashed the warrior in the face with the hilt of his sword, then brought the blade down on Fachtna’s sword arm, severing tendons. Fachtna’s sword fell away from unfeeling fingers. Fachtna spat at his foe, and Bress flung the Gael away from him. Fachtna landed on the edge of the still-hot area that had been destroyed by the dragon. He tried to get to a kneeling position but now both his arms were useless. Bress helped him to kneel by pulling Fachtna up by his hair. Bress took several steps back. The wind caught the smoke and Fachtna saw clear blue sky. It’s a really nice day, he thought, and I have accomplished much.
Bress swung his sword.
The two halves of Fachtna’s body tumbled out of the wicker man into clear blue sky, only to be swallowed by smoke.
Even as she grabbed for the sickle, she knew it was too late. The axe fell. Ettin was yanked back, the head of the axe biting into the planks just in front of Britha. Kush and Germelqart each had one of Ettin’s arms and were dragging him away from her. Hanno screamed at them to stop.
With one arm, Ettin threw Kush off, sending the large powerful man flying into the framework. Kush bounced off and hit the floor. Ettin grabbed Germelqart with the other hand, lifted the Carthaginian off the floor by his head and then started to squeeze. The navigator screamed.
Britha was searching around desperately for her spear.
Tangwen jumped high into the air behind Ettin and buried her dirk deep into his real head. Ettin roared and tossed Germelqart away. He turned. Tangwen was backing away. Ettin cuffed the hunter so hard that she too was flung into and bounced off the wicker man’s framework.
Ettin turned back to Britha, who rammed her spear into his fat stomach and drove it up into his ribcage, all the while staring straight into his eyes. She wanted to watch the light go out.
With a roar Kush brought his axe down on Ettin’s shoulder, driving the bronze blade diagonally into his chest, where it met the metal branches growing out her spear’s head.
‘It’s my axe!’ he screamed.
As Ettin sank to the floor, Britha knelt down with him to watch death come to his eyes.
Satisfied, she stood up and went to check on Tangwen. Kush put his foot on Ettin’s body and wrenched his axe free. Then he lifted it high and cut off Hanno’s head.
‘I’m sorry, old friend. You deserved better.’ Then he decapitated Ettin just to be on the safe side.
Tangwen was in tears.
‘I’m so sorry. The swim, the climb . . .’ She stared at Teardrop’s body, guilt all over her face.
‘It’s okay,’ Britha said.
Germelqart was getting unsteadily to his feet, aided by Kush. Both of them bore the ravages of their captivity.
‘I told you I heard Hanno,’ Kush told the navigator.
‘Do you still want my
power?’ Teardrop asked, though his voice sounded wrong. All of them turned to stare. His lips were moving; the rest of his body looked very dead. The muscles on his face were slack, making the movements of his mouth all the more obscene, particularly as his head had been cut in half and one set of lips was slightly out of synch with the other. Inside his swollen skull they could see the crystal moving like it was alive, or rather like it was many living things.
‘That should not be happening,’ the normally taciturn Germelqart said. ‘I do not like Ynys Prydein and will not come back here.’
It took Britha a moment or two to realise that the odd rasping noise was Teardrop’s laughter. Kush raised his axe.
‘The dead should be still,’ the tall black man insisted.
‘Wait,’ Britha said, though she almost completely agreed with him.
‘You so wanted my power,’ Teardrop said. He was right. Now she could not think of anything she wanted less. ‘It’s a heavy price. You have no idea, but you are not done yet.’
Britha felt tears spring into her eyes but knelt down by Teardrop. The crystal tendrils that reached for her from his ears, nose, mouth, eyes, that flowed from the grisly split in his head, did not look wholly real.
As they pushed into her head, touched her mind, shattered it, rebuilt it so she could at least perceive – though never understand – she screamed until her throat bled, then they felt very real.
She became a border. She saw the rest of everything that was this tiny space. She drooled blood as the meat part of her mind tried to shut down. Her mind grew beyond the stinking sweet prison of her flesh into other space beyond the ken of the people around her, who cowered away as her cranium bulged and the crystal parasite consumed the meat of her brain and forced its tendrils into her veins and arteries, making them swell.