The Beauty of Destruction (21 page)

It gave Patron no pleasure to look down on Churchman’s inert exoskeleton, but then nothing could give him pleasure.

Churchman’s exoskeleton had been found by one of the Thunder Squads. Hedetet, the arachnid Elite, had been too busy fighting Fallen Angel during their retreat. The Monarchist Elite had fought like a fury, still seemingly inconsolable at the death of his sister and/or lover.

Parker was standing to his right on the bridge of
Semektet
, Patron’s pleasure yacht. The fighting fish moved through the liquid software of the sculpted, transparent smart matter head that Parker had replaced his real head with. Patron had decided a long time ago that he would never understand fashion. On his left stood the most covert of the three Elite at his command. The serpent-headed woman clothed in black liquid glass was one of his oldest and most faithful servants.

‘I would be interested to know why Ludwig helped them,’ he said. Her serpent head nodded once and she sank through the deck of the yacht.

Patron turned to Parker, his personal secretary. ‘It seems we may still have a use for Mr Hat after all.’ He could not understand pleasure but he still felt these small disappointments.

13

Ancient Britain

They had been travelling for the better part of a week. They had crossed over into a mountainous country, the landscape completely white from heavy snowfall. Britha had seen hill forts, and fortified villages, but other than exchanging a few words in Pretani with the odd wool- and fur-clad shepherd they had pretty much been left unmolested.

When they could they had sought hospitality among common folk and the warrior classes. It was always given, though often begrudgingly. People were nervous. They had heard stories of the fair folk raiding and a warband of monsters from the sea. Britha’s appearance, her red metallic tattoos, did little to ease their minds. Bladud, to his credit, tried to leave any landsfolk they stayed with richer than when they had arrived.

In the roundhouses and longhalls of the wealthier warriors the Witch King proved to be a fair storyteller. He was known to many of them and had travelled this way before. He was often greeted warily, though more often than not as a friend. He regaled them with the stories of the Muileartach’s Brood, who he called the spawn of Andraste, and their current fight with the Lochlannach. He spun stories of mortal heroes facing the gods themselves. Stories that Britha knew could kill the young and the foolish.

They were in the territory of a people called the Deceangli. To Britha they seemed a timid people. She suspected that the majesty of their mountains, the starkness of their land offered so little worth the taking for other tribes that they were rarely raided.

Some nights they had hospitality, and others, like this one, they had found no hall. Instead they had found a shepherd’s
bwthyn
in the high country of one of the snow-filled narrow mountain passes they were trying to negotiate. The
bwthyn
was little more than a wood-framed hut with a thatch roof, the walls reinforced with mud and dung, but it kept the wind off and there was a small pit for a fire. Even so it was a tight squeeze for Bladud, two of his bear-skinned Brigante warriors, Guidgen and two of the
gwyllion
, Moren, herself and Madawg. She had been somewhat surprised to see Madawg accompanying them. She had assumed that he would be left behind to try and steal the Red Chalice. The narrow-faced Corpse People warrior spent most of the time riding at the front of their little column in the company of Bladud and Moren, who were trailed by the two Brigante warriors.

Britha had come to the conclusion that she didn’t like Moren very much. A
dryw
had to be knowledgeable, and at their best, wise. Often they had to be cunning and ruthless as well, but all of that was in the service of the people. She had met
dryw
like Moren before. He cared more for his own ambition than he did the people he served. What was more, he seemed to be firmly in Bladud’s counsel.

She had spent most of her time on the trip so far in the company of Guidgen. She had drunk from the chalice, and he of her blood, so both of them were capable of dealing with the discomforts and the cold, as was Madawg. Certainly more so than Bladud. Britha could see the Witch King getting more fatigued with every day. Yet he had pushed for this journey.

It was a different fatigue telling on Guidgen, however. Britha wasn’t sure when it had happened. Perhaps it was the confrontation with forces that previously he had only known abstractly through signs and omens. Perhaps it was the strain of constantly trying to counter Bladud’s machinations, but despite the ‘gifts’ of her blood flowing through him, he seemed tired as well. He had taken to grumbling, and his exchanges with Bladud were starting to take the form of two bickering, crotchety old men. Most nights Britha felt like banging their heads together. She could see Guidgen’s point, however.

Britha had also struggled to rest each night. She was filled with thoughts of the Lochlannach attacking the warband; fears that any chance of getting her unseen daughter back was slipping further and further away.

‘I wonder if they are all dead yet?’ Guidgen mused. It was a question he had asked most nights. Britha may have agreed with the sentiment but she was tiring of the divisiveness of his words. They were, after all, huddled round the same fire, they all had the same frozen earth under their bony arses. Instead of rising to the gibe Bladud muttered something about going to make water.

‘More like making yellow icicles,’ one of his warriors muttered.

Bladud’s departure from the cramped hut brought a blast of icy air with it. A moment later Britha made her own excuse and got up to follow. The Brigante who had spoken nudged his friend and, grinning, gave him a knowing look. The grin disappeared from the warrior’s face when he saw Britha glaring at him. He looked back down into the fire and she left the hut.

It was snowing hard outside. Bladud was little more than a black smudge through the flurries. The wind carried distant howls. She was surprised there were wolves out in this, let alone hunting, but the winter had come early and all were hungry. Steam rose as urine hit the snow and Britha came to stand next to the Witch King.

‘How is the child?’ Bladud asked, his tone neutral.

She had to think about the question. She was aware that she was pregnant, she was being careful with her activities, though she would not have recommended this trip to anyone else in her state, even this early on. She had wondered briefly if she was trying to rid herself of the child, but when the Lochlannach killers had come for it she had known the answer to that question. She knew the magics imbued in her by the Red Chalice would safeguard the child. There was little difference now to how she had been before. She was not even sick in the morning. She did not wish to risk fighting, however.

‘Fine,’ she told the Witch King. He nodded, put himself away and turned back to the
bwthyn
.

‘Who are you now?’ Britha asked.

Bladud stopped and visibly sagged. ‘I tire of these constant gibes. You tear at me like rats gnawing on the near-dead. All of this will be decided at Ynys Dywyll. This is no way to behave. Is it too much to ask to be left in peace during this journey?’

By the hut the horses whinnied nervously, their ears pricked back. Britha glanced at them for a moment. Perhaps they should post someone out here with a brand to watch the horses, though tightly packed together as they were they would be difficult for wolves to break, and their hooves would see off a pack until their riders could come to their aid.

‘I’m not biting at you,’ Britha tried to assure him. ‘I understand that you are ambitious, though I see little point in trying to rule anywhere you cannot travel across in more than a day or two. But against the Muileartach’s Brood you led, now you scheme, and this, this journey is a foolish risk. I may not like the way he is reminding you, but Guidgen is right. So I ask again, who are you?’

‘We left capable warriors behind us—’ Bladud started.

Britha touched his chest. ‘But we took their leader away, and we left them divided, and we did not utilise the magics we have, and all this for the ambition of one man, it would seem. All would follow you in this, but few would wish to live in tyranny for their efforts afterwards.’

‘So I am a tyrant now, am I? I have travelled over the seas. You would not call me such if you had seen true tyranny. Ask your Carthaginian friend.’

‘Perhaps, but that is no reason to take the first steps down this path. To ally with low men like the Corpse People.’

‘They are tools to be used, as they were for you, as by all accounts were the Lochlannach,’ and he glanced down at her belly. Britha suppressed her anger. He was, after all, not wrong. This time he touched her chest. ‘Both of us have served our own ends in this. Both of us have risked ruin. You for your child …’ He turned away from her and looked out into the flurry. There was more distant howling. He wrapped his furs tighter around himself.

‘And you?’

‘It’s the training in the groves. We need to be so sure of ourselves because others need to listen.’

‘But we spend twenty long winters and short summers learning the knowledge and wisdom we need for such surety.’

Bladud turned to look at her. ‘And you are so sure that I am wrong?’ Britha opened her mouth to answer and then closed it again. ‘Why? Because of what we have always been told? All that means is that the knowledge is old.’

‘There is a
Brenin Uchel
in a time of threat,’ she said. ‘All would follow you in this, even Guidgen—’

‘Who is
rhi
of his people in all but name. He is little different to me in this.’

‘He acknowledges that you are the best person to deal with the current threat, but he does not wish for his people to live under the heel of another tribe, and what is the point when you rule from so far away anyway? You would not know what he does.’

‘And if the threat never leaves?’ Bladud asked quietly. The wind tried to take his words and she had to strain to hear them. ‘Far to the south and the east there are kingdoms many times the size of the entire land of Ynys Prydain. They became this size because demon kings conquered the lands of other tribes.’

‘And you would become such a man?’ she asked.

‘How are we to fight them if … when they come here?’ He turned to look at her. Britha couldn’t be sure but she thought she saw tears in his eyes. ‘The spawn of Andraste, did you see what they did to my beautiful island? The desolation they left behind them?’ Britha could only nod. ‘We must be united. Find someone better and I will step aside.’ He leant in close to her, his face hardening. Britha had to resist the urge to step back. ‘So don’t pick at me, breed division among my warband, and pretend I am the enemy of the people of this land when you can just as easily work with us.’ His voice was like cold forged iron. He turned and stalked away from her back towards the hut. Suddenly she was less sure of her opposition to him. One thing she did know. There had been no falseness in what he had said to her.

Bress followed the trail of blood through the cave system. He was travelling south away from the so-called Witch King’s warband. Crom Dhubh did not fear the Pretani, but in this case he had decided his slave should take the path of least resistance. Bress, however, was starting to wonder if his master had underestimated the local tribes. They had proved resourceful, hardy, and had mastered what ‘magic’ they could find and used it well. They had done so at great loss to themselves. They had not quite frustrated Crom Dhubh’s plans but they had caused his master to adapt them more than once now. That said, Bress was confused as to what the Dark Man’s plans now actually were.

The cavern system was a ghost world he saw only in muted greens, whites and greys. There was little life down here. Nothing to distract him. He was left only with his thoughts as he climbed a rock face and pulled himself into an almost cylindrical passage lined with stalactites and stalagmites. The passage sloped upwards, and a stream ran through it. He reached down for a handful of the crystal clear liquid. Drinking it he could taste the minerals in the water.

The trickle of water had been the only thing he could hear down here. He had been moving as quietly as he could. Any sound he made had seemed invasive somehow. As a result he was very aware of a sudden skittering noise. It echoed down the passage and out over the larger cavern he had just climbed out of. It was unmistakably the sound of metal on stone.

Quickly Bress drew the dagger from the sheath at his hip and used it to make a nick in his skin. The cut didn’t bleed. Instead it released the tiny ‘demons’ from his blood into the cave. He quickly sheathed the dagger and drew the hand-and-a-half sword slung across his back.

The wards that the blood demons drew in the air caught something. Other wards, not unlike themselves. Bress moved silently behind a cluster of stalagmites and watched. Whatever it was, it sounded small. His blood wards sought answers, but the other ‘magics’ in the air resisted. Some of his wards were consumed.

He frowned as he heard a crunching noise like stone being eaten. If it was feeding then it would be growing. Bress glanced behind him at the cavern. This might just be something old and forgotten, wandering through the bowels of the earth, or it might be something specifically looking for him, Crom Dhubh, or ‘people’ like them. If that was the case then confrontation would be inevitable, and he certainly wouldn’t discover anything by avoiding it.

He stalked forwards quietly, but the wards of the stone-eating thing snagged him. It was like walking into a cobweb. He could see it now. A metallic parasite melded with the stone. It was sinking into it as it consumed more. It had sounded small the first time he had heard it, now it was the size of a cow. At his approach it pushed itself out of the stone and scuttled around to face him. Two metallic pincers snapped open and closed, and a dripping sting arched over the thing’s back. Bress found himself facing a massive brass scorpion.

They had come down out of the high mountain passes, though they’d had to pay more than one toll to the Deceangli warriors who guarded them. They had descended onto a flatter coastal area that supported a number of farms.

The journey had proved to be hard on those who had not drunk from the chalice, or of Britha’s blood. One of the
gwyllion
had lost two toes, and both the Brigante showed the black-skinned signs of the frost kiss. Bladud and Moren, both badly fatigued, had enough winter sense to keep themselves warm. This was no time of year to be travelling.

Britha had heard Bladud and Moren talking. Ynys Dywyll was off the coast. The western sea and the isle of the Goidels lay beyond it, but all she could see was thick, frozen mist. She had almost ridden into the water.

Moren had produced a horn from inside the thick layers of fur and skin he wore over his robes, and blew it. It seemed like the freezing mist swallowed the horn’s sonorous note. He waited several moments and then blew the horn again. Eventually they saw a long dugout log boat appear out of the mist. The boat was being paddled across the glass-like surface of the water by a fur- and hide-clad figure.