The Age of Scorpio (24 page)

Then because she did not feel tired she turned to the west and started walking. She walked all night, tireless, no pain in her muscles or her feet despite a steady, fast pace.

She passed the black rock on the shore of the Tatha. In the distance she could see the hill fort. The height it sat on was just known simply as the hill. It would be locked up tight but only the younger children and the older landsmen and -women would be there. They were Cirig – their clan elders owed fealty to Cruibne – and all of the elders had been at the feast with their warriors and would have died on the red beach.

Beyond the hill fort were the Sidhe Hills, where the fair folk slept in their mounds and her people chose not to go. Best to leave the Otherworld alone.
What if it would not leave you alone?
she wondered.

In the woods just west of the black rock she met some of the older children from the fort. They had chosen to go out scouting. She told them to return to the fort and that if they saw the black ships land on this side of the river they were to flee, with everyone, carrying the old if they had to, into the north and stay away from the coast and the wider rivers. They knew her – she had delivered some of them – and would listen and do as she asked.

Watch fires on either side of the river flickered into red life, Cirig and Fib alike warning of the black ships. Still she headed west. She was sure that Bress would take his people raiding as far up the Tatha as they could get where there were still villages and settlements worth raiding. This time she wouldn’t hesitate. She would kill him and that monster, Ettin, as well.

Under the wooded grey cliff-lined hills to the west, the Tatha narrowed considerably and there was an island in the middle. Britha tied her robe around her. She had taken as much food as she could carry – oatmeal, heath pea, salted meat, anything that wouldn’t spoil quickly – and wrapped it in hide sacks. She tied the sacks and the horseshoe fungus carrying the embers of her hearth fire to the end of her spear and waded into the cold river.

She had taken off her fur leggings. Barefoot she was better able to grasp the smooth stones on the riverbed with her toes. Even so, halfway across, when the water was over her stomach, she began to feel as if she had made a mistake. The sacks of food tied to the end of her spear threatened to unbalance her. She managed to compensate and then slipped, going down on one knee. The fast-moving current nearly tore her off her feet. She fought to hold on to the spear, dipping the sacks slightly in the water but regaining her balance. Eventually she managed to stagger to her feet and take another step, knowing that if it got any deeper she would have to ditch her food and spear and swim for it. But the water got shallower.

The island was important to the Fib. It was a place of power for their
dryw
. It was said that the Auld Folk had come here to worship their terrible and uncaring gods. To the Cirig it had been a convenient place to cross when they went chasing Fib cattle, though they always had to ford the beasts further upstream on the way home.

From the island she watched another of the Fib’s villages burn. She was close enough to hear the screams but it was how quickly and efficiently it happened that got to her. The Fib were not as strong as the Cirig, but how quickly their resistance was dealt with shocked her. Standing on the shore of the island, she watched the Lochlannach, black figures silhouetted against the flames, herd their captives to the curraghs. The black ships were much larger than they had been when Britha had last seen them. If they came further west to make for the settlements on the Tatha further inland then Britha could try to sneak on board, either by swimming or via the branches that hung over the river.

The sun rose. The smoke from the still-burning settlements on the south bank was easier to see now. As were the black curraghs sailing east, back to the sea, their magics taking them against the wind. Britha still did not feel like sleeping. She ate too much, again, watching the huge black ships getting smaller and smaller. When she had sated herself she waded across the Tatha to the south shore and trudged south through the steep wooded hills. Avoiding the cliffs of wet grey stone when she could, losing time climbing them when she couldn’t.

Two days of walking. Britha had never been this far south in Fib lands before. She knew she could not be too far from the lands of the Goddodin. A tribe not of the Pecht, they were a weak people who bent their knees to a god of the sea. The only Goddodin that Britha had ever seen had been slaves of the Fib. If they worshipped gods this made them suitable to be slaves, in Britha’s opinion. But she knew that the Black River lay to the south – she had heard tell of it from southron traders all her life. If it was, as they said, similar in size to the Tatha, then she was sure the Lochlannach would raid along it for more captives.

Britha’s eyes flicked open. Usually a restless sleeper, she had woken from a deep, restful, dreamless sleep fully aware. The sensation that had roused her was a tug from deep inside. Instinctively she knew that something was wrong at a fundamental level with the world around her. She reached for her spear, the demon inside it long since cowed, and rolled to her feet.

She could see it through the trees. A bright, rapidly pulsing, blue and white light illuminated the thickly forested hill. It made the silhouettes of the trees look grotesque and alive. There was the sound of wind rushing through the branches. It tugged at her robes. She had been sleeping with them wrapped around her, although the night cold did not seem to bother her so much now. She realised that the air was being sucked towards the light and that her hair was standing up just like it did before a thunderstorm, but this feeling was stronger than any thunderstorm she had ever experienced.

She retreated and dropped low as she saw lightning play across the trees in the distance. Cursing herself for a coward, Britha forced herself to stand. She had never seen the like but she was sure it had something to do with the Otherworld. It was moments before dawn, and as the pulsing subsided, the forest was lit by the soft grey light of that time of the day and the occasional flash of lightning in the branches of the trees. Dawn was the time between times, the border times when it was easiest for things to cross over.

Britha cursed inventively for a long time for no other reason than to put off what she knew she had to do. As
ban draoi
she had to deal with the Otherworld, though she was of the opinion that Bress, Ettin and the Lochlannach were more than enough Otherworldly trouble.

‘Let’s just try not to sleep with them this time,’ she rebuked herself as she made her way towards where she’d seen the light.

It was a cairn, one of the circles of stones left by the Auld Folk. All the trees within a hundred feet of it had been blown over, their broken trunks pointing towards the circle. Lightning still arced between the stones.

It was known from stories told by mother to daughter and in the oak circles of the
dryw
that the Auld Folk would conduct rites and offer sacrifice in an attempt to appease or even curry favour with malevolent gods. Often the
dryw
of the Pecht would carve symbols of power onto the stones to counter the magic of the Auld Folk and their awful gods. Clearly this had not been done here.

The sense of power was palpable. The feeling of being on the edge of a storm was very strong but even now fading. She could feel the earth moving beneath her, vibrations that grew fainter even as the lightning flickered out. The sucking wind had long since subsided. At an instinctive level she knew that violence had been done to the very fabric of the land.

Britha walked around the stones slowly, looking for tracks, moving in a widening circle. In the soft earth beneath the trees she finally found signs. Two sets of tracks, both men by the length of stride and depth of the imprint, both carrying either spear or stave and, again judging by the depth, at least one of them armoured. One wore boots of a type she was used to seeing, though if she had been forced to guess she thought they looked more like the boots that the southron tribes wore, or even the warriors from the isle far to the west. The other man’s boots, the one who was unarmoured, were something else entirely. They had a hard sole of a type she had never seen before. She wished Talorcan were here. He had taught her how to track and hunt and would be able to get more from the tracks. She tried to ignore the tears welling in her eyes. She had to concentrate on what she was doing. Many of her tribe were still alive, though they might be little more than hosts for demons. The tracks headed south and east.

There’s no gain in courting trouble
, Britha decided. She would continue south but keep away from the direction the tracks were going. Perhaps if she was lucky they were Otherworldly enemies of Lochlannach.

Britha found the first crow feeder some distance from the smoking village. The gaping wound was in his back yet he wore armour, though he had left his shield and spear behind when he had fled. The crows took flight at her approach. She took the time to spit on the coward’s corpse. She had a good mind to roll him into the Black River. He had no business being taken into the sky by the crows and the ravens. Then she remembered that these people worshipped a god of water.

‘If they are craven enough to bend a knee then this god gets what he deserves,’ she muttered, but she did not have the time to carry the coward’s corpse to the water, or any of the other corpses she saw.

Britha had seen her first glimpse of the Black River from the top of a cliff in the forested hills overlooking the mouth of the river. She’d only ever heard of the river in stories before. If anything it was larger than the Tatha. The north bank was a series of wooded hills and cliffs overlooking the river, which was studded with rocky islands, though the water did not look particularly black to her. More stone-grey under the overcast sky. She saw no demon ships either, though smoke rose from a number of places along the shore.

It had started to rain by the time she made it down to the village. It was the sort of constant drizzle that soon soaked through and made you feel very cold, though the cold still wasn’t bothering her.

The village was a series of crannogs connected by a network of bridges over the water. The crannogs were very similar to the roundhouses that Britha was used to: wattle and daub walls, conical thatched roofs held up by internal pillars lashed together with nettle rope. However, these crannogs were built on stilted platforms over the grey water.

The bridges between the houses and the land were made of strong branches cut to size and could be pulled up to isolate the buildings from the shore and each other. This defence had done little good against ships and giants. More than one of the crannogs looked like the top had been torn open, presumably by one of the giants standing in the river.

The village told the same story as her own and the others on the banks of the Tatha. They had come for the people. They had taken food as well. Those warriors who resisted were quickly killed. The tracks told of people herded onto dry land, along the pebble beach and back into the water to climb into a curragh. If she was reading the tracks correctly, then they had split their forces and only one of the curraghs had attacked this village. She guessed that the attack had taken place at least two days ago.

She looked down at one of the bodies. It was headless. The body was the largest and well fed, covered in patches of scale-like woad tattoos, and was also, judging by its hands, the oldest. Britha reckoned he had been the chief. She wondered if his head now rode on Ettin’s shoulder. She hoped that Cruibne was free from that torment at least. The headless warrior’s body wore scaled armour, a small fortune in metal, but it had been left. All the scales made him look like a fish, a true servant of their sea god. Judging by his wounds he had at least tried to fight. He had died on the smooth pebbles down by the waterside. He had charged them as soon as they came ashore.

‘Treat him well, you bastard,’ she told the river.

Britha stood on the platform that circled the furthest crannog from shore. She had had to lay the bridges back down to get there, and more than a few had been broken, presumably by the giants. She stared out across the river and out to the sea to the east, hoping to see the black curraghs but they were presumably long gone.

Sighing, she turned to look through the broken wall and roof of the crannog. The entrance faced to the east, she guessed to greet the dawn. Opposite the opening she saw an altar, carved from driftwood, the crude figure of the sea god, a scaled large-eyed man. Too Britha’s eye there was something grotesque and unsettling about the figure.

Britha cast her eyes back to the beach. The smoke had not been from the crannogs. They had left the stilt village but burned the tiny fleet of fishing curraghs and log canoes. Even if they hadn’t, if the Black River was anything like the Tatha then the tides and currents were treacherous and she would need the guidance of a local to make a crossing. She would have to head further west, deeper into the kingdom of the sea god’s people, to cross.
The Lochlannach would make even more distance, but they had to be going somewhere and the land could only be so big
, she thought.

Britha heard movement behind her as she looked over the seemingly calm, grey surface of the river. She loosened the grip on her spear slightly and turned around.

It was one of the Goddodin, of that she was sure. He was no spear-carrier though; he had the look of a king’s champion, the kind of massively built man that Nechtan had loved to fight because they always underestimated his speed and size. ‘They won because people feared them, not because they were good fighters,’ she remembered him telling her before he killed the last champion that Finnguinne had brought onto Cirig land.Britha wondered why the man still lived. Had he been craven? The patchwork of scars that covered his torso showed that he had not been afraid of wounds in the past, but she knew that each man and woman only had so much courage and could reach a point when all of it had been harvested. He staggered towards her, dragging his longspear and shield over the wooden bridge to the platform she stood on.