Quintus started to swell with rage. Drust stopped him with a sharp bark.
‘So said Saturn after eating his children. Wanderer – go find these boats and see how they are.’
‘Is everyone dead?’ Kag demanded.
‘Everyone and his newborn,’ Quintus spat, and Drust had had enough of him.
‘Go back, find Ugo and bring up the mounts. We will stable them here until we come back this way.’
There was a coiled silence as men came back to the moment, to the what they had done. For Drust it was the aftermath of every fight he had ever been in, the sick elation of having survived. No one spoke or wanted to look at each other and the Wanderer loped back into the middle of it all, nodding. ‘Six boats, all intact. You will be able to cross.’
‘Well, get in one and show us how it is done,’ Drust said and the Wanderer lost his gummed smile.
‘I was to bring you here, no more,’ he said. ‘I would not go to that island…’
Drust took him by the front of his greasy skins, his grip so fierce that the material bunched through. The Wanderer yelped a little as he was drawn forward.
‘We did not do all this here just to leave you behind to betray us,’ he said. ‘Get in the boat.’
The Wanderer staggered when Drust released him, but his eyes narrowed with an icy hatred and Drust knew he’d have to watch the man. For a moment he thought the wizened old tracker would haul out a knife and attack – but a noise stopped everything, even breath.
It was a brassy bellow, a low roar of sound that seemed to stir the driving snow, that seemed to come from everywhere at once, rising to a hoarse shriek. There was silence broken only by their collective intake of breath.
‘What was that?’ demanded Sib.
‘Beasts beyond the Wall,’ Dog growled, and Quintus grinned, cold and vicious, then spat into the black water that wanted to be ice.
‘We are the beasts beyond the Wall.’
Chapter Eleven
The snow was a soft smothering death to warmth. This forest seemed swaddled in it, but the white drape of it, the hissing blur of driven flakes did not mask the sounds, the ones no one liked.
‘I hate this,’ Kag muttered. ‘It creaks and cracks and whispers.’
‘It is old,’ Ugo said reverentially, turning in circles and staring up into the blinding blur. ‘Older than any I have been in. A god of forests…’
‘At least it isn’t one of those god-cursed boats,’ Sib muttered and no one argued. They had been withy and skin bowls that only the Wanderer knew how to steer and propel, but even watching him it had been a long, hard sail of spinning circles. No one looked forward to going back in them and Drust was worried that the enemy, if they found out their sacrifice was gone, would be able to row such affairs better and so cut them off.
‘Don’t worry about that,’ Dog said confidently.
‘Speak softly,’ the Wanderer hissed, looking right to left, and Dog laughed. For a moment it seemed to Drust that they exchanged a look he did not care for, one that made him sick with unease. Then Dog pointed ahead and Drust squinted into the snow, saw the clearing and the weathered oak stump.
It was hung with old wither and Drust had to look a long time before he worked out that they were the remains of garlands, made from woven withy and worked with scraps of wool and ribbon, old bone and tarnished silver gewgaws. The patch it stood in was stained, as if the new fall of snow could not cover the dark spread of old straw and dung. Possibly worse, he thought and saw an image of teeth and fire and horns.
They were all half crouched and moving slowly when the blaring call echoed eldritch through the snow-mist. It came from everywhere, it seemed, but Dog pointed to their right, as if he knew already what it was.
‘They are coming,’ he said. Drust realised then that the sound came from horns – but the answer to them, that brassy, bellowing blare from the other side, came from deep in the forest. Ugo heard it and his heart seemed to thunder. He found himself, arms outstretched, axe in one hand, willing it to appear, wanting it to appear. Lord of the Forest. Ziu and Vitharr. Gna and Ing…
‘Bite your lip,’ Sib warned him. ‘We are hiding now.’
So Drust thought. So did they all until Dog came close, so close his breath smoked on Drust’s neck.
‘We may have to fight,’ he said and the words crushed the pips out of Drust. He stared. Dog grinned – at least, he drew his lips back from his teeth and the death face leered.
He stepped out, in full view; the sound of his blade coming out of the sheath was a hiss like the last expelled hope Drust had for truth.
‘And she may not be my sister.’
* * *
The warriors stepped out of the swirling snow-mist, cautious and curious. Drust saw there were a lot of them – a dozen, maybe more – and no farmers with blades either. These were chosen men with ring mail and gilded helms, those square shields and decent spears – the hearthtroop of a warrior chief or a king.
Or a queen. She walked in the middle of them dressed in quality wool, bleached almost as white as the snow, with a hooded cloak of madder. She carried a garland, fresh with mistletoe, bright with berries. Some of the warriors carried sheaves of fodder, which they let slip to the ground.
Offerings. Not his sister…
Dog smiled as he faced them, a short legionary sword in each hand. The warriors saw him and came on in a war cry of murder at this violation of their sacred place, a shuffling rush of boar-bristle spears, so that there was no time for anything but fighting like wolves.
The first one was on Drust, spear out, shield up. He lunged, Drust danced, batted the head of the spear to one side, tried to dart up the shaft and get close, but the warrior was too good for that and moved back. Another came. Quintus arrived at Drust’s side with a stabbing sword and a little square shield of his own – they were hardly dressed for the harena but fell into a pairing out of habit.
Dog was all dimarchus, even without the proper helm or accoutrements of that gladiator – he had the most important parts of it, two swords and a vicious skill. While Drust and Quintus bobbed and weaved, dancing with veteran spearmen, he boared in with his two tusks. Drust saw him block his way up the shaft of a spear and ram his other sword into the face of the wielder – but his own opponent almost caught him out, so he focused.
Behind, Ugo heard that brassy bellowing again, almost lost in the shouts and roars round the oak tree pillar. He let it happen behind him, waiting for the Lord of the Forest, conscious of someone shouting his name, but distantly.
‘Ugo,’ Kag yelled. ‘Ugo, you crazed fuck – the pompus is over, the Gate of Life open. We could use some help here.’
He would have said more, but saved his breath for fighting, slipped under an overarm spear thrust, stabbed down into the man’s instep and then, while the warrior howled and hopped, stabbed up and ripped out his throat. Blood scalded him and he cursed as it splashed in his eyes.
Drust and Quintus, panting and shouting, managed to kill two spearmen; the warriors began to realise what they faced and stopped trying to fight like old heroes; they coalesced slowly into a pack and then, to Drust’s sick lurch of fear, a shield-wall.
They drew apart – all save for Dog, who was prowling and snarling. He crouched and slashed the life out of a warrior hoarsely crying for help and Drust saw his head come up, searching for the woman, who was being hustled back into the snow-mist, towards the boats they had come on.
Drust stood on the blood-slushed snow, desperately looking for a way to break the wall ahead – there were six or seven in it, no more, but it was solid and retreating, step by step, each man hooming out the rhythm.
Behind him, he heard a crashing splinter of noise, as if some great tree had fallen. When he turned he saw Ugo, still standing with his arms out like a morning crucifixion waiting for the flames. Beyond him was… terror.
It was taller than three men at the shoulder, with a head the size of a small house and horns as thick at the base a
s Ugo’s waist. It was covered with a matted tangle of russet hair, a great fringe of it over the eyes – if it had any eyes. Smoke steamed out of where nostrils were and icicles had formed like fangs.
Ugo saw it. He was exultant, no longer heard anything but the rush of his own blood. The Lord of the Forest had come to him. To him. The Lord of the Forest had challenged and now must be answered.
Kag saw the big German bring his arms together, both hands on the axe, and he knew, with sick certainty, what Ugo intended. He roared at him to stop but might have saved his breath. Sib tried to leap forward and grab Ugo, but he slipped in the bloody slush and went to his knees.
Ugo took two steps forward and the great red Bull stood, swaying its head from side to side, blowing spumes of steaming breath; it had a withered loop of old garland round one horn and seemed to be waiting.
Ugo whirled the axe in a half-loop, raised it high, roared out his best battle cry and brought it down. He felt it crunch into the skull, heard the crack of it and then his hands were free. He stared at the splintered shaft, the end white as bone, the bitt buried in the head of the beast.
It gave an outraged bellow, a blast of sound and fetid heat that staggered Ugo backwards. It shook blood up in a massive spray, lowered its great horns and lumbered forward, crashing through the undergrowth.
Quintus saw it, the great avalanche inevitability of it and made a wild grab, snagged Ugo by the wool of his cloak and hauled him sideways; the great beast, horns lowered and spuming out snorts, crashed past in a shower of snow. One horn brushed Ugo and sent him pinwheeling, dragging Quintus with him.
Drust and the others scattered from the path of it, the shield-wall hesitated and that was too late; the Bull ploughed through them as if crashing into a bramble thicket, scattering them sideways. It bellowed and tossed its head one way, then the other; blood sprayed, scarlet slush bloomed in gobbets.
Dog followed it up, yelling at Drust and Kag to follow. Somewhere, Sib’s high voice added a threnody of scream and the great beast seemed to hear that above all. It pawed and bellowed and then lumbered after it. Sib capered and ululated, that thin, eldritch sound they all knew well; the women of the desert made it as they gutted the captives taken by their warriors.
‘Get the woman,’ Dog yelled, pointing. ‘Get to the boats.’
The woman stood on the shoreline, poised and seemingly drawn up in a haughty pose of disregard, but Drust saw the clenched tremble in her.
‘No danger, in the name of gods above and below,’ he said in his mother’s old tongue and saw that she understood at least part of it – saw, too, by her scornful look what poor-tin noise the words made clattering out. Her men were writhing, shrieking or torn to bloody shreds. Her violated god-beast was trailing blood and rampaging in fury – but lured by Sib’s cries. Her enemies were closing in, smeared with the entrails of her hearthtroop.
The Wanderer came loping up and she saw him and spat words like curses. He shrugged. Kag picked his way over the corpses, pausing to end the grating moans of one with a swift stroke; somewhere the Bull crashed and rampaged and Drust looked up in that direction.
‘Sib,’ he said. Kag waved one hand.
‘He’s fast and knows those beasts. He did some clown work in the Maximus from time to time, baiting creatures like that.’
He turned and stared at the boats by the shore behind the woman. ‘Look at that. Boats with sharp ends – lend me a hand and we’ll unload that fodder and get in them and away.’
Drust saw the boats were loaded with winter hay and roots and that the woman had been holding a fresh garland, now dropped. They had come, as they always did at this time of year, to make offerings to their Bull, to feed him over the winter. Small wonder he was so huge.
She was no sacrifice. The woman was a priestess or a queen – the Wanderer confirmed it warily.
‘Queen of the Bull People,’ he said, keeping out of range and licking his lips. Kag told him to bind the woman and then saw Drust’s face.
‘Not the time,’ he warned, but Drust was moving, searching, his head full of Dog’s thundering betrayal, latest in the long, reeking line of them. Dog was on his knees, pressing his thumbs into the eyes of a shrieking warrior too dying to be able to fend him off. The screams cut to Drust’s core.
‘Dog, you fuck.’
There was no response; the thumbs dug and there was a sickening wet plunge as resistance went. The man writhed a little.
‘Look at me, you whoreson. You lie like a fallen tree.’
Then he did and Drust felt he had stepped into the core of a blizzard blast. Blood smeared that death face and the eyes, though open, were the most dead thing in that skull. He looked like a revenant, freshly resurrected, and he started to rise, mouth working in a snarl.
Kag laid a hand on Drust’s arm and drew him aside.
‘Dog,’ he said quietly. ‘Look at me. Look at me.’
Dog was on his feet, wobbling, his face and hands dripping; beneath him, the victim flopped and moaned, trying to clutch at his ruined face.
‘Look at me.’
Dog looked at Kag, who nodded. ‘Leave him. We need to get away. With the woman.’
Quintus and Ugo came staggering up and Dog swung his head, heavy as a sacrificial ox.
‘He’s dead,’ he said and Quintus looked at the man at his feet.
‘What gave it away?’ he demanded scathingly. ‘The gutting? The blinding? Or the fact that he has ceased to breathe?’
‘Calvinus,’ Dog said dully. ‘He’s dead.’
‘Long since, you hagged fuck,’ Drust spat, and Kag gave him a warning glance.
‘Help unload the fodder. If that beast returns, it may be that decent pile of beets will work where Ugo’s axe failed.’
‘I fought the Lord of the Forest,’ Ugo said, staring after the sound of bellow and crash. ‘I challenged and fought. It was honourable.’
‘You got sent out of the ring standing,’ Quintus growled. ‘Well done – now get to the boats.’
They worked swiftly and loaded the woman onto a boat with Drust and Kag. Dog plunged his head and shoulders into the iced water and sluiced the worst off. By the time they had done all that, Dog seemed to have recovered some sense, though he squatted in the boat and passed his hands over his face now and then as if clearing some veil.
‘We should go,’ he said.
‘Not without Sib,’ Kag replied.
‘Longer we wait, closer the pursuers get,’ Dog argued, but he was too weak to protest when Kag simply, scornfully, ignored him.
Sib arrived in a loping run, breathing hard and wild-eyed. Drust had never seen his eyes so big and white and round. He said nothing, simply came up, gasping with relief to see they were still there and hurled himself into a boat.
He said nothing while they pushed off and worked round to where they had left their mounts. Said nothing at all, but stared back at the distant blaring bellows and shivered, not all of it from the cold.
They vanished into the white mist, a dream of drifting flakes.
Drust went in one boat with Kag and the Wanderer, paddling furiously across the black water until they ran out of fear and strength. They glided for a while, sweating and breathing acrid smoke.
Behind, Dog, the woman and Quintus slid in and out of the curtain of snow and Drust turned to the Wanderer, his voice cold as the water.
‘You knew of this,’ he said. ‘The woman. Who is she – is her name really Beatha?’
The Wanderer hunched up like a foetus, but nodded. ‘She is Mother of Bulls. A queen.’
‘Priestess?’ Kag demanded, and the Wanderer shrugged.
‘Goddess is closer,’ he answered, ‘but who knows with these people?’
‘Not his sister,’ Drust muttered bitterly and the Wanderer nodded.
‘Why does he want her?’ Kag demanded.
‘To force the Bull People to oath with us,’ the Wanderer answered. ‘It means they will not attack when…’
He stopped, looke
d at the water. Drust’s grin was wolfen.
‘When you and the rest of the skin-wearing fucks rise up in the summer,’ he said. Kag spat into the water.
‘Fortuna attend you, then,’ he said. ‘The army will eat you up and spit out the broken bones.’
‘What’s to stop the Bull People rising up when you hand the woman back?’ Drust demanded, and the Wanderer looked at him with a mixture of scorn and disbelief.
‘Oaths,’ he answered. ‘We keep to them.’
‘After stealing their goddess queen? Ugo might also have brained their big cow.’
The Wanderer shrugged. ‘They will store it up. It is for another time.’
They drifted up to the silent silhouette of the stilt dwelling, where the dead ruched up with frost. Drust did not want to think about what was in the building, but Ugo and Sib fetched out the mules while Drust put his face into Dog’s eyeline.
‘You lied. Again.’
Dog shrugged. ‘I thought you might be better disposed to help if you thought it was kin I was rescuing. Anyway – no harm done. At least to us. I would not want to be Talorc in years to come – this woman won’t forget.’
He tugged at the leather leash that led to her fastened hands and she stumbled forward a few steps, looked at him with quiet sneer and said something that trilled and burned at the same time. Dog merely showed his teeth at her.
‘She promises my prick will curl up and die, among other curses,’ he said.
‘I promise your prick will curl up and die,’ Drust answered quietly. ‘As far from your broken carcass as I can throw it if you lead us into another danger. On Jupiter’s balls I swear it, Dog.’
‘On your best day,’ Dog replied, ‘you could not.’
‘I could,’ Kag said softly. ‘We could. All of us could. We did before and should have ended you then instead of just breaking bits…’
‘Enough,’ Quintus said, then offered his white grin, ‘good fun though it is to think on. Warming on a day like this – but we have to move. What’s the next part of this, Dog?’
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