The Age of Scorpio (15 page)

‘Feroth?’ Cruibne asked. The tough wiry old man looked thoughtful.

‘We know the terrain and the sandbanks are flat; our people know the ways of them.’ There were smiles as people caught on to what he was suggesting. The tear-streaked northern warrior looked confused. ‘How do we fight when the northern tribes are stupid enough to fight us on our own ground?’ Feroth asked the warrior. Britha watched understanding creep slowly across the man’s face. ‘We’ll need to attack soon or they’ll come for us.’

‘What about the giants?’ Talorcan asked. A number of people spat. They were looking to Britha now for an answer. She tried to remember everything they had taught her in the groves.

‘We did not see them,’ Britha replied.

‘They’ll be in the sea,’ the hunter said with a surprising degree of certainty. Britha had to agree with him. The sea was the Lochlannach’s home.

‘Grapples, like you would use to pull down a wall,’ said Britha. There was nodding from some of warriors assembled, doubt in the eyes of others. ‘You’ll need to work together, bring them to the ground. This is not a fight for glory. There will be no glory if we do not live past this. We either fight together or we die. No songs will be sung of this, and any who seek glory over their duty to the people I promise you now, I will lay a satire on them that will curse their lines down to their grandchildren’s grandchildren.’ There were mutterings and a few of the braver spat to show their unhappiness.

‘Is that all you can advise?’ Drust, the
mormaer
of the Fotlaig asked, sounding less than convinced.

‘These are creatures of water and ice,’ Britha told them. ‘We must take everything that can burn – oil . . .’ There were groans. Oil was expensive. The best had to be traded for with southron merchants from across the sea. ‘
Uisge beatha
. . .’

‘You’re not burning good
uisge beatha
!’ Cruibne cried.

‘Shut up, you,’ Ethne told him. ‘It’ll be done,’ she told Britha. All eyes turned to Cruibne. He was nodding.

‘Gather the family,’ he told them, meaning the
cateran
, the warband.

When she awoke again she felt better. It was dark now but the cooler air didn’t seem to bother her. Britha pushed herself up and looked into the small skin-lined pit. Her sickle was there. Perhaps it was the darkness or her mind playing tricks on her, but the blade looked darker.

All the blood was gone. She would have assumed that it had just soaked into the skin or leaked through into the earth except there was no staining whatsoever. She reached down to touch the skin. It was dry. She touched the sickle. It was dry as well. She picked it up and held it in front of her face. It felt different. Somehow easier to wield. Somehow more connected to her. Britha could not remember her magic ever being this strong before. At some level she knew that the sickle shared her purpose. They would see the entrails of this Bress.

She looked at the wounds in her wrist. They looked fresh but had healed over. Britha had to suppress the fear she felt, fear of herself.

It was an effort to put the sickle down, but she had other preparations to make. She had to make friends with the night and look into the Otherworld. She reached for the clay pot of woad dye.

Cruibne and Feroth had no idea she was there. That was good. Both men were standing just below the peak of a dune on the headland that overlooked the sandbanks. They were watching the Lochlannach camp, using patches of dry sharp grass as cover. Their hundred-and-fifty-strong warband was concealed among the dunes. The war dogs with them had rags wrapped around their maws to stop them from howling.

Of the warband about seventy were warriors, half from the Cirig’s
cateran
, the other half from the Fotlaig and the Fortrenn. The rest were landsmen and women, spear-carriers. Those too old to fight and the children had gone to the broch on the Hill of Deer. There the youngest of the old and the oldest of the young would stand guard.

Cruibne and Feroth were wearing stiff leather jerkins with overlapping scales of iron sewn into them.

‘Nervous?’ Britha asked, meaning the armour. Both the older men visibly jumped; Cruibne reached for his spear.

‘Woman! Don’t you know that sneaking up on a warrior like that will get you killed?’ the
mormaer
demanded in a hissing whisper when he finally recognised her. Britha was naked and covered head to foot in woad the blue of midnight. In shadow she became part of the night itself. The woad was working its mysteries on her. The air seemed alive all around; she could see further; her hearing was sharper; she could smell the sweat and the metal and the meat from the fire of their enemies.

‘Or the warrior will get killed,’ Feroth whispered, smiling.

‘Aye, when my heart bursts. My wife asked me if I was nervous as well.’

‘You should have told her you were too fat to fight dressed only in woad. There are enough sickening sights in battle as it is,’ Feroth suggested. Britha grinned, white teeth in a midnight-blue face, but she knew this talk was a sign of nerves.

‘What are you talking about? I’m a fine figure of a man. For my age.’

‘You’re a fine figure of a man for a boar,’ Britha suggested.

‘There’s still time for one last rite,’ Cruibne suggested, winking. Britha sighed.

‘Leave the poor woman alone, man,’ Feroth said. ‘He’s in armour because he’s the
mormaer
,’ Feroth said seriously.

‘I didn’t want to,’ Cruibne said. She largely believed him. Cruibne felt safer wearing armour but would rather have fought clad in the sky like his warband.

‘I’m wearing it because I’m frightened,’ Feroth said in jest. But Britha knew he was armoured because he needed to focus on directing the battle. He was also frightened, but for his people, and he would master that fear.

‘Nechtan’s wearing armour,’ Cruibne told her.

Britha cursed under her breath. The fight in the fishing village must have shaken him more than she thought. It was not good for the champion to show fear. Even if she went to him now and shamed him into fighting skyclad, the fear would have already done its damage among the warband.

‘They follow gods. They are slaves. Nothing more,’ she told them. The two men regarded the much younger blue-painted woman trying to reassure them. Feroth glanced at the sickle she held in her right hand.
It would go ill for someone tonight if they fell under that blade
, he thought.

‘Aye,’ Cruibne said, ‘but there’s a lot of slaves.’

‘Will you not fight with us?’ Feroth asked Britha. ‘It would do the warband good to hear you, see you.’

Where you can watch over me
, Britha thought to herself.

‘I’ll harvest this Bress’s head,’ she told them.

‘Bring me his cock and balls so he can have no more children to plague us,’ Cruibne muttered.

‘He won’t be able to father children if we have his head,’ Feroth pointed out.

‘That’s not what I’ve heard,’ Cruibne said. Britha thought back to the fishing village. He was right. They would not want to harvest these heads.

It was a long crawl but the living night kept her company. She heard insects crawl with her across the sand. Listened to owls and bats hunting in the woods. She saw a seal breach out in the distant dark sea and thought of Cliodna. Ghost light traced patterns in the darkness, showing her hints of the Otherworld just out of sight. All of which she could have embraced had it not been for the smell of people living in their own filth and the sounds of whimpering that came from the black-hulled curraghs.

She slithered past charioteers lying flat on their stomachs as they crawled across the sandbank removing stones. They nodded to her but she continued on towards the flickering flames, the dark hulls of the ships and the eerily quiet and still shadows of the people around the campfire.

The spearman was standing just across a shallow channel, a run-off from the burn that ran down towards the sea. Britha was lying in shadow as close as she dared. In the groves they had taught her that it was movement that gave you away. She was waiting for the spearman to move, but he had remained still for a very long time. Britha was worried that if she didn’t move soon the attack would start before she could do anything.

She tried to study the spearman, get an idea of him, but his features were shadowed and he just looked like a normal man. His weapons and armour seemed of high quality but it was difficult to tell in this light.
Why are you doing this?
she wondered.

Caught up in her wonderings, it took a moment to register that he had turned to look at a sound behind him. Crouched low, Britha was across the channel, sickle in one hand. Hearing her or just sensing the movement, the man started to turn.

Britha leaped onto his back, wrapping her legs around him, relaxing her weight, overbalancing him, making him fall to the sand on top of her. Her hand covered his mouth. He immediately bit, and she felt his teeth against the bones of her hand. It was all she could do not to scream. Turn the pain to anger. Turn the anger to viciousness. With her free hand she arced the sickle towards his stomach. The curved bronze blade went through his chainmail and into his stomach as if it was hungry. The man didn’t scream, but as she tore the sickle up towards his chest cavity he bucked violently on the sand. Thousands of strands of what looked like living red-gold filigree whipped around the wound she was making. With her legs clasped around him, muscles screaming from the exertion, she somehow managed to keep hold of him. His struggles lessening, the strands seemingly started to die. She saw the tiny insectile fires in his flesh fade. She felt his death in her core, in her cunt, feeling the pleasure from the blade in her hand, wanting more.

The spearman lay still. Britha took time to smear herself with some of his blood. Then the shaking started.

She hid between the furrows made when the curraghs had been brought ashore and the black hide hulls of the craft themselves. She did not like it here. There was something wrong with the hulls. They seemed to move of their own accord. As if they were breathing or maybe trying to crawl back to the sea.

From inside the ships she smelled the rancid reek of frightened people forced to live in their own muck. She heard sobbing, whimpering and whispered prayers to uncaring, malevolent gods long forsaken by the Pecht.
That will not help you
, Britha thought.
Only strength can help you
.

From where she was half-buried in the sand she could see their fire. It was like a mockery of Cruibne’s gathering of the tribes. They sat round the fire like Cruibne’s guests had, five deep, but it was as if they were dead, all so still, all so quiet. To Britha’s eye all their armour, shields and spears looked exactly the same. The men had identically vacant expressions on their faces. Despite herself, Britha felt fear rising in her like a tide. This was potent magic. Regardless of how strong she had become, she couldn’t hope to fight this. The only thing that made her feel like she was still in the same world she had always lived in, and not ghost-walking, was the smell of the wood burning on the fire.

On the other side of the fire was what looked to be some kind of temporary hut made from sewn-together skins. Britha had never seen the like before. Through the opening in the skins, the interior of the hut looked very dark indeed.

He . . . it – Britha wasn’t sure – came stalking out of the tent. He looked very different to the others, a hulking squat brute, his hairless head shining in the moonlight. It was the head that was wrong, or in the wrong place. It was off to one side, almost growing out of his right shoulder, making him look grotesquely lopsided. He carried a heavy-looking axe with surprising ease.

Britha fought down the urge to bolt. It looked like he was making straight for her, but instead he climbed up into the curragh she was hiding next to. She felt it rock slightly, heard scrabbling, then screaming, then begging and a brief struggle.

A young man landed on his side, winded, in the sand worryingly close to her. Britha did not know him but recognised him for what he was by his dress. He wore the rough-spun
blaidth
and trews of a Pecht landsman. One of the Fidach, she reckoned.

She felt the impact through the sand as the lopsided axeman landed next to the landsman. Britha got a closer look at the deformed man. She didn’t think she had ever seen anyone so heavily built. Corded muscle was layered on corded muscle. He wore a stained leather jerkin; a variety of knives hung from a belt. The blades looked stained as well.

Gasping for breath, the landsman tried to scrabble away from the axeman, who quickly caught him and started dragging him towards the fire. The man was screaming, begging to be let go. The axeman dragged him into a kneeling position by the fire. He was still begging. Britha watched, knowing that there was nothing she could do.

Britha watched as Bress – somehow she knew he was Bress – came out of the skin hut. He was tall and had nearly bent double to get through the slit in the animal hides. Bress was slender but there was undeniable power in his movements. He was the most attractive man Britha had ever seen, handsome to the point of effeminate beauty. He had smooth white skin, surprisingly delicate long-fingered hands and long pale-blond hair which was practically silver. It was only the eyes that spoilt the picture. They were grey, cold, devoid of emotion, almost devoid of life.

Britha stopped breathing for a moment. How could she make out the colour of his eyes in this light? She looked again. Even with only the flickering light from the flames playing over him, she could make out the colour of his eyes. Again she felt the fear rising. It was as if she was becoming someone else. Was one of the old gods looking through her eyes from their home in the sky of the Otherworld? Was she becoming their slave? Was she by demons ridden? Beneath Bress’s skin she could see the fire that burned in his blood.

Britha forced herself to be calm, to focus on what she was doing, to look back at the beautiful Bress and gauge him as a victim. His boots and plaid trews were of the highest quality. The stiff leather armour looked like it had somehow been moulded to his body. There was a circlet of red gold around his head. Across his back he wore a massive sword that would take both hands to wield. Britha had heard Brude and the warriors in the
cateran
talk about such weapons in the past. Brude had always said that iron would bend too easily at that length and it would be too heavy to wield quickly enough in battle or single combat.