‘Do you have a name?’ the Monk asked.
The man gave this some thought, his facial muscles twitching. ‘Why would I have a name?’ he asked.
‘This is really important. Where did you get the eyes from?’
The man considered the question. ‘God.’
The Monk leaned away from him. Retrieving the information she wanted would require interrogation by people and systems much more adept at that sort of thing than she was. She didn’t think he was being purposefully obtuse, and she was pretty sure he knew something, but his mind was fractured. She would take him back to the Cathedral. They could do something for him physically, as well.
Then she realised what was wrong with the picture. The wounds, the viral ravages, the frigid, shitty atmosphere: he should be dead. And he had no nano-screen. She went cold.
‘There’s no way you can still be alive,’ she said.
A tear trickled out of the corner of one of the man’s cloudy eyes. ‘I am a vessel,’ he told her simply.
She drew one of her blades – black hilt, long silver blade, like an old pre-Loss bayonet. She grabbed a handful of his stinking clothes and slit them open with the blade. Then she cut into his pallid, diseased flesh. The ‘man’ gave no indication that he felt it. There was no blood. Instead, she saw something move underneath his flesh.
‘Everybody out now!’ she shouted, but she knew they wouldn’t listen. She made a decision. It was a risk, but they had to get something from this or it was just another lead going nowhere.
‘Sorry,’ she told the man. She tried to grab him by the hair but it came away in clumps. Instead she pushed his head down against the cargo bay bulkhead and put the blade against his neck. The knife cut through brittle, dry flesh and bone with an unpleasant crunching noise. She pulled the head off the neck stump and looked into the skull. Nothing. She hoped he had at least rudimentary neunonics or this was all for nothing. Then something black and viscous surged up out of the dry neck wound. She snatched a thermal grenade from her belt and dropped it, then kicked off from the bulkhead.
‘Grenade!’ she shouted. Then people started to move. The thing inside the man’s body writhed, its amorphous, changing form breaking the flesh apart. The grenade went off and the thing was cleansed by fire.
The bath chair rolled across the obsidian floor in silhouette. Bright-light pollution flooded in through the window that looked out over the core planet’s low orbit. His employer was sitting behind the bare marble table.
‘There was really no need for you to come personally,’ the tall man said.
‘I felt an explanation was in order,’ Mr Hat replied. ‘I was outbid.’
‘You were outsmarted,’ his employer said.
Mr Hat shifted uncomfortably in his seat. ‘Perhaps—’ he began.
‘There is no perhaps about it. You were too eager. I have reviewed the information you sent ahead. Scab would not make a mistake like that. It was bait.’
‘These things are easy to sit in judgement on in retrospect—’
His employer held up a hand. Mr Hat went quiet, almost despite himself.
‘Being outsmarted by Mr Scab and his cohorts does not concern me as much as your apparent unwillingness to learn from your mistakes.’
‘Learn from my mistakes? Then you’re not going to … ?’
There was a dry chuckle from the other side of the desk. ‘Why would I? You are a valuable asset in which I have invested a great deal. You are already in place. Anyone new I would have to bring up to speed. The loss of the blank is regrettable, but it may open a channel of communication I had hitherto thought lost. I am a businessman. I cannot afford too many more failures like this, but the consequences are only the loss of my patronage, and the loss of payment. Now, I understand you suffered your own losses. Do you wish to continue in my employ in this matter?’
‘Unequivocally,’ Mr Hat said.
His employer nodded. ‘Excellent. Now, I have a confession. I, too, have made a mistake. I underestimated the good uses to which Scab would put the resources they gained during that farce of an auction on Pythia. I must see that you have access to similar resources.’
‘Thank you,’ Mr Hat said. Clearly surprised.
‘Now, I’m sorry, but you must excuse me.’
‘Of course.’ Mr Hat turned his bath chair around with a thought and headed for the two huge marble slabs that acted as a door to the office.
When the bounty killer had gone, his employer darkened the smart-matter window, dimming considerably the incoming light. He stood up and walked down a small passageway to an antechamber. It was bare except for a chair. On the chair sat a twitching, eyeless blank.
‘So. What it is you want to tell me?’ the tall man asked.
The blank opened his mouth to speak.
39
Ancient Britain
Britha stood on the fungal plain, leaning on her spear. She had been running for the better part of three days and nights, but she wasn’t out of breath. She was, however, hungry enough to start scooping up gobbets of earth and stuffing them into her mouth. She had become visibly thinner and frailer. The running, the simple act of putting one foot in front of another had managed to keep her thoughts at bay: the warped father of her daughter, dead at her lover’s hand. Bress walking away from her with the only hope she had of ever seeing her child again. Sitting on the floor by Fachtna’s steaming, still-mutating corpse, she had almost given in to despair. It was anger at herself, at her weakness, and thoughts of her child which forced her back onto her feet and started her moving.
In the distance she could see the shaking treeline. The Muileartach’s spawn looked like a swarm of devouring insects. She had passed numerous strange creatures as she ran, insects with human faces, winged stag-like creatures with cloven hooves, screaming trees, but they had mostly left her alone. She did not think that would be the case when she tried to make her way through the front ranks.
She saw a rider galloping towards her, clouds of fungal matter billowing out from under its hooves. The closer it came, the more deformed it looked. For a moment, Britha wondered what her life had come to that the flayed fusion of horse and rider, its sword and shield now protrusions of bone, had become so commonplace it neither appalled nor frightened her.
The creature slowed, coming to a halt a short distance from her.
The gwyllion had taken them off the main track and through the forested land of Ardu. Guidgen told them that the track wound through the forest, whereas they could show them a more direct route.
After Bladud, Anharad and the others had met with Guidgen, Nerthach and Anharad told Tangwen about the meeting with Britha and Bress. Her heart sank when she heard that Britha had joined with Bress. The strange northern dryw had been their strongest ally against the Lochlannach. Tangwen was convinced they had enslaved her with their magic, but Germelqart very quietly told her that he did not think this was the case. The Carthaginian was of the opinion that Britha had made the decision voluntarily. This had left Tangwen feeling more than a little angry with the other woman.
They had been walking through the woods for three days now and their supplies were close to running out. As night fell, they set up camp among the trees, and the warriors took turns standing guard through the night. The gwyllion were doing their best to help forage for more food, but as the survivors became weaker they also became slower. The sense of despair in the camp was greater than ever, a feeling that they were only forestalling the inevitable.
Tangwen heard angry shouts from the southern part of the camp, followed by iron sliding from leather. She grabbed her bow and sprinted through the woods. She saw others running towards the shouting and sounds of violence.
They found the monstrosity rearing in a small clearing. Warriors jabbed at it with longspears, but the wounds they made closed almost immediately. It was similar to the deformed
thing they had fought in the mud between the Isle of Madness and the mainland. Tangwen didn’t realise she was touching the acid burn on her face. Then she noticed the rider on its back, behind the thing’s human torso. Britha. Her finger appeared to be embedded in the back of the creature’s head. The dryw looked frail and emaciated. Tangwen shuddered. She had seen Britha look like that before – it was her hag-like aspect – though she had not seen the woman with half her head shaved, and the red metallic sigils in her flesh were also new.
When Britha tore her finger out of the creature’s head, Tangwen caught movement at the end of the finger as tendrils of metallic red filigree were sucked back into the stump of her middle finger. Britha slid from the creature’s back, ducking under a wild swing from the creature’s bone shield. As Britha straightened up she rammed her spear into the thing’s body, just below the horse head. Britha continued pushing upwards. The creature reared on its hind legs and toppled over.
Warriors and landsfolk alike stared at the black-robed woman. Britha put one foot on the creature’s corpse and wrenched her spear out. There was a collective gasp and even warriors backed away from her as the spearhead’s metal tendrils re-formed into a more conventional shape.
Tangwen held her ground but stared warily at the spearhead for a moment. Then she marched forward. Britha, sensing movement, turned as Tangwen slapped the other woman, hard, and the sound of flesh hitting flesh resounded through the trees. Another collective gasp rose from the growing crowd. Whatever else Britha was, she was clearly a dryw. You weren’t supposed to strike a dryw. Britha’s head whipped back, an expression of fury on her face. Then Tangwen punched the other woman as hard as she could. It felt like hitting wood, not flesh. Britha hit the ground. She was back on her feet a moment later, furious.
‘I am a dryw!’ she shouted at Tangwen. The skin around her mouth darkened for a moment before it healed and the blood on her lips was sucked through her skin. Her knuckles were white around her spear. Tangwen dropped her bow and drew her hatchet and dagger. Suddenly Kush was at her side, his axe in hand.
‘Prove it!’ Tangwen spat. ‘Help your people. Help the land.’ Even in the darkness, Tangwen thought she saw a look of shame on the other woman’s face.
‘What is this?’ Bladud’s voice was quiet but somehow still carried. Tangwen continued to glare at Britha as the Witch King walked forward, Nerthach, as ever, at his side.
Britha stared at him, trying to control her anger. ‘You would have people bear arms against a dryw?’ she demanded.
Bladud glanced down at the dead creature. ‘A dryw who rides demons into our camp. A dryw who, while she may not be our enemy, is certainly on his side. But you are right – I would not have my people bear arms against a dryw.’ He glanced at Tangwen, who showed no sign of putting up her weapons. Bladud took a step towards Britha. ‘I, on the other hand, will gladly kill a dryw and pay the price in this world and the next if it means protecting my people.’
There was another collective gasp. Britha was staring at intently at Bladud. Tangwen couldn’t quite read her expression.
‘I am no longer in your enemy’s council,’ Britha said.
‘And how can we trust someone who changes sides as often as you do?’ Bladud asked.
Britha’s face hardened. ‘I have not acted against you or yours, and I have dealt fairly with you. I made no oaths to you, or to Bress.’
‘But you made oaths to your people,’ Tangwen snapped.
Britha turned on the younger woman. ‘Who are all dead!’
Kush looked at the warriors and the survivors. ‘I see them all around you, and this isn’t even my land,’ the Numibian said.
Britha turned to Bladud. ‘What would you have of me?’ she asked.
‘Your oath,’ Bladud told her. There were mutterings from the assembled crowd.
‘The dryw do not swear to kings!’ Britha said angrily.
‘Take her head,’ Anharad said as she emerged from the trees, one hand gripping Mabon tightly to try and prevent him from doing anything rash. She glanced down at the corpse of the twisted creature and shuddered before spitting and making the sign to avert evil.
‘All are welcome to try,’ Britha said.
A quiet voice said something, but it was lost among the arguments, threats and counter-threats from Britha, the assembled warriors and the landsfolk.
‘Quiet!’ An authoritative voice cut through the furore. Tangwen looked around and eventually saw Guidgen standing in the trees. He was wearing his antler headdress and holding his staff. It was difficult to tell because he was standing in the moon shadow of a tree, but Tangwen didn’t think the dryw was smiling right now. Gwyllion warriors flanked him on either side. Tangwen caught a glimpse of Bladud’s face and he did not look happy. As the noise died down, Guidgen turned to Germelqart.
‘Carthaginian?’ the old dryw asked.
‘Do you have a way to fight your goddess’s spawn?’ the navigator asked.
‘But we cannot trust her!’ Anharad shouted. Bladud held up his hand for quiet, watching Britha.
‘You may take my blood—’ she began.
‘As we did on the Crown of Andraste?’ Tangwen asked. Britha nodded. ‘It was barely enough then, and there were two of you. It will not be enough now.’
‘What is the enemy’s greatest weapon?’ Germelqart asked.
She was tempted to say Bress himself.
‘It is not a weapon,’ Britha said, ‘but it is the source of their power. They have a chalice.’
Germelqart nodded as if this did not surprise him.
Bladud addressed the crowd: ‘Please return to your responsibilities, or rest. We will gather the people we require.’
People turned and started to shuffle back towards the camp.
‘Why should they leave?’ Guidgen asked. ‘This affects all here, them as much as you.’ The survivors and the warriors turned back to look at Bladud. The Witch King couldn’t prevent an expression of irritation from creeping onto his face.
‘Some things require secrecy,’ Nerthach said.
‘Why?’ This time it was Germelqart asking the question.
‘Because if we decide to do something, it would do us ill if the enemy discovered it,’ Nerthach said patiently and slowly.
Germelqart smiled at the warrior’s good-natured if patronising attitude. ‘I understand that, but who here would betray us other than the one we are going to talk to anyway?’ The navigator pointed at Britha. She remained impassive. ‘And if I die by betrayal, then so be it. I would prefer that to being transformed.’ Germelqart pointed at the corpse of the creature Britha had killed. ‘We’re in no more danger than we were this morning. The only difference is that now there is hope.’
There was muttered agreement from the assembled crowd.
‘Our hope will diminish if we are betrayed,’ Bladud pointed out.
‘And there are Corpse People among us,’ Tangwen said, though she couldn’t see Ysgawyn in the trees. Then she heard a dry chuckle.
‘Bress would not look to see me again. Nor I him, except perhaps on the edge of my sword, but that does not matter. He does not care what you talk of, or what you do, nor would he listen for the telling. You’re no threat to him.’
Tangwen finally located Ysgawyn. He was standing with his remaining three warriors, unarmoured, on a small rise just under the trees. All four Corpse People were in shadow.
‘I will aid in this,’ Ysgawyn told them. His three warriors nodded their agreement.
‘For a chance to gain the power for yourself,’ Tangwen spat.
Ysgawyn shrugged. ‘And how does that make me any different from this one?’ He nodded towards Bladud. ‘With his show of false threats against a dryw whilst he has the crowd’s ear?’
‘Bitter tongue! Deceiver! Spreader of strife!’ Nerthach spat. He drew his sword and made his way towards Y
sgawyn. The rhi of the Corpse People did nothing. Tangwen noticed Madawg shift slightly, his hand touching the hilt of his sword. She also noticed that Britha had a smile on her face.
‘Enough of this,’ Bladud said. Nerthach kept moving. ‘Nerthach!’
The big warrior stopped then and turned to Bladud. ‘No, enough is enough! Strength and power are nothing to be ashamed of – the Brigante know this! I am sick of these dogs nipping at you. You have led these people, kept them safe, and when they insult you, they insult all of us. This fool dies!’
‘Are you still my oath-sworn man?’ Bladud roared.
‘Let him kill the worm,’ Tangwen said.
‘Enough!’ Bladud roared again. Now all eyes were on him. ‘If you believe you are stronger than me – and I include you in this, Nerthach – then stand forth now with a weapon in your hand.’ The big Brigante warrior looked stricken at his rhi’s word. Bladud shrugged off his robe and dropped his staff, drawing his longsword. The polished blade glinted in the moonlight. He looked around at the assembled crowd then turned to Ysgawyn. The rhi of the Corpse People met his eyes, a wry smile on his face, but said nothing. Bladud turned next to Guidgen. The old dryw met his eyes as well, his face expressionless. Finally he turned to Britha. She held her head high and met his eyes, but said nothing.
‘Is the threat of death all it takes for you people to forget who you are?’ he demanded. ‘Was Ynys Prydain, the Isle of the Mighty, misnamed? Is this the Isle of the Weak?’ There were mutters from the crowd. ‘Do not talk behind your hands! If you have something to say then step forward with a weapon in your hand and say it!’
Tangwen was sure a number of warriors present would be more than capable of besting the Witch King in a challenge – she might be one herself, Kush certainly was – but nobody moved.
‘All have a voice!’ Bladud said. ‘They may speak for themselves or speak through me! But’ – he paused, glaring around the circle – ‘the rhi rules! The dryw advise!’ He glanced at both Britha and Guidgen again. Tangwen saw Guidgen nod. ‘The warriors protect!’ He turned to look at Nerthach, who hung his head. ‘I say again, any who think themselves stronger than I am, step forward and make your claim. There will be no shame in your death, and you can hold your head up high when you stand before Arawn, rhi of the dead, in Annwn!’ Still nobody moved. ‘Then remember this moment! Remember you had this chance! For the next time I order something of import and it is not done, either I will kill you, or one of those still loyal to me will!’ He glared at Nerthach again before looking to Britha. ‘Will you lead us to the Red Chalice?’
A Quantum Mythology Page 62