The Age of Scorpio (30 page)

‘I had you cloned,’ Scab ’faced, the words soft and quiet in Vic’s mind.

‘Yes, thanks for that,’ Vic spat back. ‘You couldn’t leave me in peace then? Actually finally let me go?’ Vic had often thought that human tears looked very cathartic but were beyond him, and his pheromone-producing glands were not quite rebuilt yet. Scab seemed to be giving Vic’s words some thought.

‘You like life,’ he finally ’faced.

Vic gave this some thought. Scab was right. He like immersions, drink and drugs, partying, sex with experimental female-identifying humans, violence when he was in control; he sort of liked travel but was becoming more and more convinced that everywhere the uplifted races went was a shithole. Maybe it was all shallow stuff but Vic was happy with that. What he couldn’t cope with was the abusive, albeit well-paid, borderline slavery that was being Scab’s partner.

‘I’m seeking an end,’ Scab said.

Vic wasn’t sure what he meant. ‘And you have to take me along with you?’ Scab said nothing. ‘I take it we didn’t get the cocoon thing back?’ Vic just about made out Scab shaking his head through the thick opaque gel. ‘So we’re finished with this now? This is just so beyond us, even for you it’s just banging your head on a hull. There’s nothing we can do here.’

‘I got into the Citadel,’ Scab ’faced.

Oh shit
, Vic thought. The insect knew this wasn’t over. He thought back to human tears. There was enough of Vic to push his way through the gel and press his chitinous features up against the tank’s transparent material.

‘So all that effort, the expense, the S-tech, the blanks, the viral attack on Arclight, the dead Church Militiaman . . . NOT TO MENTION MY FUCKING MURDER AT THE HANDS OF A SICK MACHINE MADE EONS BEFORE MY PEOPLE EVEN FUCKING EXISTED was for nothing?!’ He was absurdly pleased that he had managed to convey angry/shouty human across the interface.

Scab considered the outburst as a reasonably asked question.

‘I don’t know.’ He shrugged. He was still both worried and trying to make sense of the Elite’s words.

‘Look, this is about bridge technology. The Monarchists want it; the Consortium wants it so they can break the Church’s monopoly. It’s the key to Red Space. This is way out of our league.’

‘Fun though,’ Scab said. He almost meant it. He was healed, his hand regrown, but he still missed the graft. The eyes. What he had seen with them. ‘And you’ve said that before.’

‘We’re working for Consortium interests?’ Vic asked.

Scab said nothing, which to Vic meant he knew but was not going to say. Scab tried to avoid lying where possible.

‘What I don’t understand is why they haven’t sent their own Elite.’

‘Maybe they have. They are capable of acting with subtlety. Or maybe it’s a case of mutually assured destruction. The Monarchists are mad, the Consortium greedy. The Consortium know that sending their Elite will lead to a confrontation. A very expensive one.’

‘They must have better options than us.’

‘And they are probably using them in ways we don’t see. The nobody who gave us the S-tech graft for ex—’

‘He seemed more like a street heretic,’ Vic said. Scab just stared at the ’sect. He hated interruptions. ‘Sorry.’

‘Despite your whining, self-pity and lack of self-belief, we are two very capable operators.’

‘But it’s over now, right?’ Scab shook his hand. ‘You once told me that you were a killer, not a detective. They have the resources of the entire Monarchist systems at—’

‘They are fragmented.’

Though apparently it was okay for Scab to interrupt
, Vic mused. ‘Even if it’s just one of the kingdoms. We’re two people and a ship you’ve bullied so badly the AI committed suicide.’

‘I killed it, well, lobotomised it.’

‘Whatever.’

‘We’re going to Pythia.’

Vic gave this some thought, feeling himself getting angrier as he did.

‘Why the fuck didn’t we just go there in the first place?’ he demanded.

‘Intelligence pointed to the Citadel. It would have made sense to hide it there.’

Ysgawyn awoke to the smells of earth, rot, decay and horse. It was a comfort. Once you were dead then nobody could kill you. All his people were warriors and all had chosen to live in Annwn. The living were their victims.

Ysgawyn climbed off his shelf in the barrow that he shared with the bones of many generations of his family. He also shared it with his horse. His horse, like him, was covered in lime, both their eyes ringed with black. Rider and mount had disturbing unnatural-looking symbols painted on the lime.

Ysgawyn took a deep breath and then turned to look at the shelf where his father’s decayed remains lay.

‘Soon,’ he said. He would often speak to his father, his grandfather and ancestors from further back. He heard their replies in his head and often took their counsel, but tonight there was little time. Armour had to be oiled and then limed, weapons honed, his mount prepared. Then he would eat the fungus and ride.

They emerged from barrows all across the plain, white like corpses, some leading their horses, others already astride them. The Dark Man had spoken to them. They would ride for the god of death and they would not stop. It would be an end to the living.

There were no war cries, no
carnyx
sounded, no orders were shouted; there was just the thunder of hoof beats echoing across the flat desolate plain.

Britha felt fire crawl through her, under her skin. Felt the demon in the consumed flesh try and consume her in turn. It burned. Not like a fever but like putting your hand in a fire and holding it there. The burning was pain but the agony was still to come. Her back was arched, her hands claws as she convulsed on the ground. The smell of the river, the feeling of pebbles beneath her, all of it went away as the stars in the night sky went out one by one, leaving nothing but darkness.

She saw a tribe painted white like corpses around a hearth pit, wriggling on their stomachs, so many, so close together, like white worms crawling over each other, in supplication that made Britha sick to see. How could they even call themselves people after such a display? The fire burned cold in the hearth and there was a tall man made of darkness. It hurt to look at him; his shape did not entirely make sense and there was something behind or through him, something she could feel, seething hatred and anger made of nothing. Then the screaming. Eventually, when she felt the blood in her raw throat, Britha would realise that she was the one screaming.

A cage, for people, her people, in the sea. Something inside them, a little crystalline egg waiting to hatch. She sank under the water, still burning, the water bubbling around her. Something came at her, darting through the water, a bestial fury on an alien face.

Then the agony started. It seemed like all the agony, pain and fear. Then she recognised the voice. Her people. Others. Thousands. A sacrifice.

There was too much pain. Britha went away into darkness, her flesh still burning, a cool whisper in her mind promising respite, promising relief, promising freedom from it all. All she had to do was serve the seductive voice. Listen to the blood in her veins. It was the tiniest fragments of a god.

It was all too much. She had failed. Her people would die in agony. If she would serve, what was her could recede into darkness and the pain would end. So easy . . .

Almost.

Britha’s back arched so violently it almost threw her upright. Violent contortions racked her body, making her writhe across the pebble beach. Her bloodstained face became a rictus mask of twisted facial expressions. The warrior glanced over at his misshapen friend.

‘Do we help?’ he asked.

The warrior’s misshapen friend gave this some thought. It was clear that he wanted to move on. The pair of them had a purpose after all. ‘Do we help?’ the warrior asked again. His misshapen companion said nothing; instead he knelt next to her, his eyes narrowing as he studied her more closely.

Britha’s eyes flicked open. The crystalline skull looked down on her, smiling its rictus grin. Roots grew off the skull, blowing in an invisible and disconcerting wind and ending somewhere that Britha couldn’t see and was sure did not exist. The face of the skull that wasn’t a skull had too many angles. Somehow she knew it existed beyond what she could perceive. The many faceted crystals caught and reflected a strange red light, the source of which was also beyond her sight. Then the crystals seemed to consume the light. Each separate crystal was moving, changing shape as if crawling back into the skull and from there to some impossible place.

Britha started to scream again.

Teardrop held her as she convulsed on the pebble beach. The flesh she had just eaten made her froth bloody. She tried clawing at Teardrop’s face. He just moved his head back to avoid it.

‘I think she can see me,’ Teardrop said. Fachtna glanced over at his oddly dressed, swollen-headed compatriot, then he turned back to look past the distant crannogs at the mouth of the river under the overcast sky and out to sea.

‘We are so far behind,’ he said quietly and then inhaled deeply. ‘I don’t like where the sky is, or the sun.’

‘You’ll get used to it. She’s eaten one of the possessed’s flesh.’

Fachtna did not grimace. Such practices had long since been abandoned by his people but he knew of them. It was a primitive response to what had happened, but he could understand it.

On his back he felt the spear shake and moan. It would need to be drugged and bathed in blood soon.

‘Will she live?’ the warrior asked.

‘She should, but she could also be possessed. The strange thing is that she is fighting it. He nodded towards the body of the huge tattooed warrior. ‘It looks like she killed one of them with their own weapon. I don’t understand how she could do that.’

This made Fachtna suspicious.

‘Someone else has blessed her?’

Teardrop took an obsidian-bladed knife from inside his jerkin and made a small incision in Britha’s cheek. He brought the blade to his mouth, licked it and concentrated.

‘I can taste the demon blood but something wars with the demon blood within her.’

‘What?’

‘Something old and powerful but so faint.’ Teardrop’s eyes widened. ‘I can taste the Muileartach in her.’

Fachtna stared at his companion.

‘Where’s she from?’

Teardrop leaned in to smell her.

‘Local.’

‘Sure?’ Fachtna asked. Teardrop gave him a look that left him in no doubt as to the stupidity of his question. ‘Can you help her?’

Teardrop gave the question some thought.

‘It will diminish me.’

Fachtna said nothing. It was Teardrop’s decision. More than anything he needed his friend strong, but she might be able to help and he wasn’t comfortable leaving her like this. And she looked strong. He would respect whatever decision Teardrop made.

‘Even if she wins the war in her blood, if she gets closer to Bress and the Red Chalice their influence on her would grow stronger. She’s pretty.’

‘For a mortal. Your head is so swollen, but it’s still the other one you want to use?’ Fachtna asked, amusement in his tone. Teardrop grinned at him. He was happily married; the comment had been for Fachtna’s benefit. It was the warrior, after all, not Teardrop who had an eye for pretty ‘mortals’.

Teardrop wiped the knife on his jerkin and then brought it up to the side of his oversized head. The black blade pushed though swarthy weather-beaten skin, cutting into it. As the blade broke the skin there was no blood, only interlocking crystalline growth. Teardrop closed his eyes, his features wrinkling in concentration. Something leaked through the dry wound. Some of the crystals seemed to melt into a viscous quicksilver-like liquid and run down onto the knife blade. The drop of quicksilver stayed on the blade. Teardrop forced Britha’s mouth open as gently as he could and held the knife over it. The quicksilver hung on the blade momentarily and then dripped into her mouth. Fachtna watched expectantly but nothing happened. Britha continued writhing on the pebbles, staring fixedly. Teardrop started to sing. It sounded like a series of disparate syllables but worked into a soothing melody.

‘Will that strengthen the blood of the Muileartach, weaken the demon’s blood?’ Fachtna asked.

Teardrop looked at his warrior friend, trying to decide if he could be bothered to explain. The warrior didn’t really care about these things. He was just talking for the sake of something to say.
That was fine
, Teardrop thought; the older he got the more he did the same thing.

‘No, what it should do is give her more control,’ Teardrop said and then had to stifle a smile as Fachtna nodded like he knew what the other man was talking about.

Then Britha woke, still screaming. Both of them jumped.

The impossible, painful-to-view crystalline skull faded away, crawling back into the head of the most bizarre man she had ever seen. His skin was dark but looked different from the southron traders her people had dealt with. There was a reddish tint to the brown. His face looked like it had never seen a blade and yet there was no trace of a beard there. Even allowing for this and the strangely bulbous hairless head, the strangest thing about him was his clothing.

He wore a pair of absurdly large trews, with thick red and thin white stripes. These were tucked into a pair of well made high leather boots. He had a white shirt under a stiff-looking leather jerkin, which was fastened with small metal discs that Britha had never seen the like of before. Over that he wore a piece of apparel that looked to Britha to be a cross between some sort of sleeved over-robe and a cloak. The garment was made from some kind of supple hide.

Next to him on the pebbles was a long gnarled wooden staff. There was a large crystal in the centre of the staff. It looked like the staff had grown round the crystal. Another crystal tipped the staff.

It was clear to Britha that this was some kind of monster. She looked around frantically for her spear but she was not where she had been. She was sore from the battering she had given herself during the visions. It was day now. The night must have come and gone.