The Exile (29 page)

There was quite a gathering down there. He counted easily over two hundred heads. It was some kind of ritual. The ululations of the Drunes chant reached them on the rise. The air around them crackled with life. Bluish veins of energy sparked out of the ground, coiling around the horned figure in the centre of the stone circle. With each sizzle of energy the horned man jumped and twisted, contorting his body in a primal tribal dance, throwing his hands above his head, kicking his legs out, spinning and jumping in time to the venting of the earth's energies.

As the dance grew more and more frenzied Ukko knuckled his eyes, sure that they were lying to him. The horned man froze, threw his arms above his head and began to rise, until he was levitating ten, fifteen, a full twenty feet above the heads of his worshippers.

The blue jags of power snapped and crackled, chasing through his body. The horned man acted as a conduit for the huge central stone, the earth's power streaming out of and into it.

At the horned man's beckoning the sky appeared to darken, rumbling thunderheads taking shape above him.

"Did you see that, Sláine?" Ukko whispered, unable to believe the hideous power the stones gifted the horned man. He looked over his shoulder to see the barbarian in the grip of a fierce fit. Sláine was on his knees, clutching at his gut, a low moan escaping his clenched teeth. Spasm after spasm wracked his entire body. He stayed crouched on his knees as a fresh seizure convulsed through him and then, gasping for breath he collapsed forwards, his bare torso pressed low to the earth.

Ukko scrambled back to Sláine's side. "Not now, come on, not now. I can't carry you out of here on my own."

Sláine couldn't talk. His eyes had rolled up into his head. Ukko couldn't break the contact with the diseased earth even though it was so obviously killing Sláine. He grabbed the barbarian by the shoulders and hauled him backwards. It took every ounce of strength the little dwarf had to drag Sláine ten feet. He hunched over Sláine huffing and puffing, counted to thirteen because at ten the idea of trying to move him another inch still felt idiotic, and hauled on Sláine's arms, managing another five feet.

He slapped Sláine across the face.

Sláine groaned groggily.

"Come on, Sláine. Don't you die on me, you big aurochs, not here. You still haven't told me where that moneylender buried his bloody gold! Wake up, Sláine!"

Ukko hunched over Sláine, folding the warrior's arms across his chest.

"Forgive me, big man, but needs must as Crom drives and all that." He reached under Sláine and rolled him over, and again, grunting with the exertion of it. A third shove and gravity lent a hand. Sláine tumbled down the hill, gathering momentum with each roll.

"Soth!" Ukko gasped, running after Sláine even as he rolled all the way to the bottom of the hill. "Well if the damned stones don't kill him I will."

Ukko jumped and bounced, and skipped and struggled valiantly to stay on his feet as he followed Sláine down the hill.

At the bottom he fell to his knees beside Sláine, gasping for breath.

The barbarian opened an eye. He did not look happy with his lot in life.

"You're a hard man to keep alive, Sláine Mac Roth," Ukko grumbled.

He felt a prickling on the back of his neck, the short hairs there standing on end. It was an uncomfortable sensation. He cast a worried glance over his shoulder, back up the hill, but the Drunes hadn't suddenly appeared at the crest. The feeling of being watched didn't disappear though.

"Wake up, Sláine. I think we're in trouble."

No amount of begging or cajoling helped. The Celt was dead to the world.

"Don't say it's up to old Ukko. I'm a lover not a fighter." He chuckled to himself, and then checked that he still had the small stabbing dirk tucked into the ratty folds of his grubby tunic. "Oh, come then, if you're coming. I know you're out there and I really hate waiting to die. Well, I don't really. I like waiting to die. I just like the idea of it being a long, long way off, in bed surrounded by a dozen beautifully rotund women pampering me with there bare breasts so that I suffocate happy."

Whatever it was didn't come as long as the sun was up.

Ukko rolled over, coming awake quickly.

He didn't know what he'd heard, only that it had dragged him abruptly from sleep with its wrongness.

He lay on his side, listening to the night sounds hoping - and more than half actively not hoping - that it would repeat itself. He looked up at the full silver moon hanging low in the cloudless sky. The stars were bright.

"Sláine? Are you awake? Come on, Sláine, wake up. I'm fed up of being the hero to your sleeping ugliness." The young Celt didn't stir. His sleep was disturbingly unnatural. It had been almost two days since his collapse on the hill overlooking the great stone Watcher of Er-Grah where the horned man had levitated.

Ukko had done all he could; he had dragged, kicked and bullied the warrior to shelter, had tended his visible wounds, a cut on his forehead where he had fallen and cracked it off a rock, made him warm, and kept the small fire going. None of it made the slightest discernible difference to the warrior's condition. He knew some kind of internal struggle was going on within Sláine. The young man tossed and turned, mumbling names in his sleep: Niamh, Danu, and Bedelia, although most often it was Niamh's name on his cracked lips. He was in the grip of a fever. Cold sweat peppered his entire body. Ukko knew that it could go one of two ways. The fever would break or the man would.

Ukko stoked the fire again, throwing on a fresh branch.

"Come on, Sláine. I don't deserve this. I've always been a good companion."

He shivered, moving closer to the fire, but it wasn't the cold that had his skin crawling. He had often joked that as a thief by nature he had an uncanny sixth sense for when things were just wrong. This, here, was wrong. His nerves were firing off warning after warning and had been doing so for almost two days. Someone - or something - was out there in the darkness, watching them.

Then, a few minutes later, he heard it again: the baying of a wolf at the moon. It was a savage sound. He had always imagined that wolves were noble beasts, kings of the wild, their calls swollen with longing and sadness. The only longing in this beast's howl was for meat. The animal was hungry.

Ukko had the uncomfortable feeling that the beast had chosen them to break its fast.

He scurried back to where Sláine lay and pushed the warrior hard in the chest, "Come on, you great lump of meat, time to wake up." Sláine grunted but didn't show any other sign of coming back to consciousness. Ukko tried to lift the barbarian's huge stone axe but it was no use, he could barely get the head off the ground.

"Bloody stupid thing, and why haven't you got smaller weapons, you know, daggers and stuff. Even magic acorns that'd grow into a tree I could climb up and hide in instead of this manly 'look at the size of my muscles' rubbish." He kicked the axe.

He heard the beast padding around them in the darkness. The slobber of its tongue and the
huff-huff-huff
of its breathing gave it away.

Ukko scrabbled away from Sláine, grabbing a gnarled branch and thrusting it into the fire. "Come on, come on. Catch." He shook the branch, stirring up the flames, trying to get the branch to burn. After a moment it began to smoulder. He cast a fretful glance over his shoulder. It was impossible to tell whether the beast was coming or not. Staring at the fire had all but blinded Ukko to the night. He cursed himself for a fool. "You're going to get yourself killed here, you idiot," he said, loud enough for it to sound as if he was talking to Sláine - had he not been unconscious.

The beast came out of the black in a fury of snarling, snapping teeth and raking claws. Ukko launched himself into a backwards tumble, rolling on his shoulder and coming up in a crouch, brandishing the burning branch as if it was the mightiest sword. He brought it sweeping round in a tight arc, the flame making a low whumping noise as it was almost snuffed out. The wolf circled the fire, hackles raised, never for a moment taking its hungry eyes off the dwarf.

"Come on then, let's be done with it shall we?"

The beast inclined its head as if it understood his request. It lowered its nose to the dirt almost as if it was nodding.

"Okay, I mean, I wasn't serious. It was a rhetorical question. No need to be hasty."

The beast sprang, covering the distance between them in a single bound. It hit Ukko high in the chest, barrelling him off his feet. Ukko screamed as its yellow-stained teeth snapped an inch shy of his throat. He threw up his arms, trying desperately to batter the creature away, and then a sickening howl tore from the wolf's slack jowls as the burning branch scorched its fur.

The animal rolled off him.

The stench of burned fur soured the air.

Ukko thrust the burning branch at the beast again, ramming the end of it into the animal's muzzle. A glowing twig snapped off the main brand, piercing the wolf's eye. Its cry was terrible. Ukko sprang to his feet, pushing home the unexpected advantage. He jabbed the burning brand into the animal's face again and again, until the stench of burning was overpowering. With his left hand he drew the stabbing dirk from his belt while thrusting the firebrand into the animal's face again. The beast rolled over onto its back, exposing its soft belly. Without thinking, Ukko threw himself forwards, jumping on the huge wolf and rammed the tip of the dirk deep between its ribs.

The beast stiffened, snapping its jaws around and sinking its teeth into Ukko's arm.

Ukko's answering scream was louder and more anguished than anything the beast had managed. The teeth sank deep into the bone and tore. Ukko dropped the firebrand and dragged the dirk out of the wolf's chest with both hands, ramming the short blade in again and again, with a shocking display of naked savagery until he hit and pierced the creature's heart. The animal bucked and writhed, howling, and then suddenly the fight fled from its body and it lay in the dirt, still.

Ukko flopped onto his back, gasping for breath. He lay beside the dead beast. The heat coming off its corpse was incredible - so much so he thought for a moment that the dead animal was lying on the brand and its entire pelt was going up in smoke - but the brand had died and lay blackened ten feet from where they were. No, the heat was coming from within the dead beast. Ukko scrambled away from the creature.

The wolf's face shifted in the flickering firelight, its snout truncating, and its brow narrowing.

Ukko put the fire between himself and the dead animal, far from happy with this latest turn of events.

Through the flames it was impossible to tell what was happening. He tried to see over them but the corpse had fallen into shadow.

"Just leave well enough alone, Ukko," he told himself. He still clutched the bloody stabbing dirk in his right hand. "Of course you can't can you? Oh no, curiosity killed the stupid thief," Ukko muttered, creeping around the fire.

Instead of finding the beast he saw a young boy lying naked by the fire. He had been a good-looking lad with a nice open face, a scruff of blonde hair and... and his body was soaked with blood. Standing over the corpse Ukko counted twenty-seven stab wounds in the boy's chest. He felt sick. He hadn't been able to stop himself once he had started stabbing. The dirk had just kept going in and in and in, even when the beast was dead.

"Soth! What have I done?" he moaned. The answer was obvious. He had killed the boy. Only he hadn't. He'd killed a wolf, a wolf, not a boy. He wouldn't have killed a boy.

His left arm hung loosely at his side, shredded where the wolf's teeth had torn into his flesh. The wound was very physical proof that he had fought a savage beast, not some wide-eyed boy drawn to the comfort of the fire.

It was only Ukko's blood on the lad's teeth that stopped the dwarf from thinking he had gone mad.

He shivered.

"It's going to be a long night," Ukko grumbled, digging around in his pack for something to bind his wounds, before he settled down to wait out the darkness.

Ukko heard something else grubbing about in the darkness less than an hour after sunrise. His heart skipped a beat. He held his wounded arm protectively to his side. "Please no, not again," he moaned. He peered in the direction of the sound but he couldn't see anything. That didn't make him any more relaxed. The fire was dead. It had burned out during the night despite his best efforts to keep it fed.

The corpse of the young boy was an ugly reminder of the sorts of danger that could be out there.

Ukko crept over to where Sláine lay. He knelt and pressed his lips up to the unconscious man's ear. "Sláine? Sláine?" he whispered urgently. "Wake up, will you?" He nudged the young Sessair, and then again, quite a bit harder. "There's something out there again and I'm not up to fighting off another shoggy beast so just bloody well wake up will you? You're supposed to be the hero, not me. I'm just along for the ride."

The scuffling in the bushes got louder. Ukko looked up sharply. He heard a grunt. "Definitely human," he muttered to Sláine. "Let's hope that means it's an improvement on a shoggy bugger."

His heart stopped in his chest as an old man blundered into the clearing a few moments later. He burst out laughing with relief. The old man was dressed in rags and his eyes were bound with another filthy strip. He used a long stick to feel his way, sweeping it around in front of him so that it hit anything in his path and he worked his way around it. It was slow going with roots and stones sticking out of the ground every few feet.

Ukko watched the blind man negotiate his way to the centre of the clearing and look up, look around, sniffing and turn to look directly at him. "How many injured?"

"Two, one dead."

"How bad?"

"Well the dead one was very dead the last time I looked," Ukko offered, puzzled by the question. "I don't think he'll be getting up in a long time."

"That's usually the way with the dead. I was more interested in the wounded. How badly are they wounded?"