The Age of Scorpio

8

Northern Britain, a Long Time Ago





Surely the body cannot lose this much blood and live? she thought. It had felt painful at first. Now it felt like getting close to sleep. She was weak and tired.

Britha lay naked on the ground among the undergrowth. The surrounding oaks reached above her to form a canopy that the sunlight filtered through. The sunlight had a green look to it. She had been lying there for a while. Night was best for blood magic. She had been drifting in and out of consciousness dreaming of the night. She had dreamed of stars and then what the night sky would look like if there were no stars.

Britha had dug a small pit and lined it with a skin she had waxed to make waterproof. She had placed a framework of trimmed branches above the pit and hung clay pots filled with various herbs that she burned for their fragrant smoke. Then she had opened her veins with the sickle and worked the flow, covering herself in her own blood. She had lain on the cold earth, her arms over the pit in which she had placed the sickle, blood dripping onto the iron blade.

There should be more, she had thought. Normally rituals had various parts to them – words, movements, ingredients each designed to focus the will on what she wanted to achieve. She concentrated on the death of the invaders, who were not more than five miles from where she lay.

When Britha had returned to Ardestie she had found the village in chaos. Many of Cruibne’s guests had ridden back to their villages. Those who lived to the north, particularly on the coast or along major rivers, had returned with stories of destruction. There were a lot of very angry, grieving men and some women with swords and spears. Some felt that Cruibne was responsible and had lured them away from their homes; others pointed out that they paid tithes and swore oaths to Cruibne so that he and his cateran would protect them from such raids.

Talorcan and Nechtan had returned before her, Nechtan telling of the black curraghs on the sandbanks. Many had wanted to set off immediately to exact revenge. Britha had arrived as Feroth was trying to prevent them moving without a strategy. There was a lot of shouting, anger, posturing and very little getting done.

‘Quiet!’ she shouted. The cry silenced them. Cruibne’s shaggy dark-haired head whipped round to see who was giving orders in his land, immediately relaxing when he saw Britha. ‘I will not shout over you again,’ she said quietly enough to make them strain to hear her. ‘It is the Lochlannach. Demons from the ice and sea. They are hard to kill.’

‘Iron will do for them,’ shouted Feradach, one of the cateran and Nechtan’s closest rival. ‘My father always told me that iron will do for the fair folk.’

‘It has to be cold wrought,’ Brude, the smith and a dryw in his own right, said. He was a massive man who wore a moustache like those from the western isle, his bright orange hair tied into a ponytail, his right arm much larger than his left. ‘There is not enough time.’

‘Even with his head cut off he still fought—’ Nechtan started.

‘If you are too frightened . . .’ a warrior from one of the northern villages interrupted, his face still dirty from a hard ride, tear tracks streaking the dirt. Britha felt bad for the man but she silenced him with a look.

‘Cold iron is not enough. They have fire and metal in their flesh,’ she said. Brude looked more than a little disturbed at this. ‘They have to be dismembered.’ Talorcan and Nechtan nodded in agreement.

‘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.

The malformed axeman looked at Bress. The tall man’s nod was almost imperceptible. The axeman reached into the fire, his flesh blackening and blistering; sweat beaded his skin, teeth gritted, the pain written across his face. From the flame the axeman pulled a chalice of red gold. Inside the chalice was the same red metal heated to a molten state. The kneeling man was screaming and struggling, but the axeman held him with his other hand with ease. As Britha watched, the axeman’s burned hand started to heal itself in front of her.

The axeman brought the chalice to the captive’s mouth, who clamped it shut, but the molten metal surged out. The man screamed as it touched his face, and the metal crawled into his mouth, lighting it up through his skin. He dropped to the ground writhing and jerking. Britha watched the fire course through his body. Finally he lay still.

Britha had to force herself to look away. All attention was on the man who’d drunk from the chalice. Now was the time to move. She kept to the shadows. The night matched the blue of her skin as she willed herself to be nothing more than a shadow and moved as quickly as she could towards the skin hut. It was difficult to influence someone unseen and unknown but she kept her thoughts on Bress returning to the hut alone.

Britha waited. Her eyes adjusted much faster than she thought they would. But even before she could see, she knew that she was not alone. The skin hut did not feel empty. Her hearing, now seemingly more sensitive, like her other senses, picked up the sound of breathing. She smelled sweat on flesh, mixed with the scent of recently extinguished burning oil in braziers and some kind of incense. The smell of the sea, carried on the gentle night breeze, was the only reassuring scent.

Slowly she could pick detail out of the darkness. She saw the bent tree branches lashed together with leather to provide the framework for the hut. She saw the pallet with fresh ferns and a clean woollen blanket, the urns of wine and very little else.

They were asleep in the corner, piled on each other the way a dog or wolf pack sleeps. The way her people slept if they were caught out overnight during the winter months. It was difficult to make out what they were at once, to even recognise them as human, as children. They were hairless, pale, like they lived in the darkness. It took a moment to realise why. Their physiology was all wrong. These children were built like dogs. They looked like they could move at speed on all fours. Their finger- and toenails ended in sharp black claws. Their hands and feet were all red, marking them as creatures from the Otherworld.

One of them stirred as she watched. Yawned and opened his eyes. They were completely red. He looked straight at her and hissed. The others began to wake. Britha gripped her sickle but she had no stomach for this sickness. They began to move about, growling and hissing. She shrank back as one of them lunged at her. The thick chain around the creature’s neck brought her up short. The other end of the chain must have been buried deep in the sand.

Britha backed into the corner of the hut, into the deepest shadow. The pack of children was going mad. All Britha could hope for was that the noise would draw Bress in.

It was the axeman who appeared first.

‘Quiet!’ he shouted in a language Britha was sure she didn’t know but somehow understood all the same. His accent was similarly strange, his voice sounding like it was made for anger.

‘Stranger,’ one of the children said bestially, pointing into the corner. The fact that one of them had spoke just seemed to make it worse. The axeman turned towards her. Britha readied herself.

Bress ducked into the hut. The axeman was moving. For someone of such bulk he shifted with surprising speed. He was a blur as he grabbed two bronze blades from the front of his leather jerkin. Somehow she was moving faster. The point of her sickle headed straight towards Bress’s head. Bress just seemed to reach out and casually catch her wrist.

‘No,’ he said quietly. The axeman’s blade stopped against her skin. A drop of her blood ran down the surprisingly sharp bronze blade.

Britha knew she was going to die. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she took Bress with her. She kicked out, connecting solidly with his leg. He shifted slightly but showed no other sign of even feeling the blow. She struck out at the axeman, who cursed and grabbed for her other arm.

Suddenly she was lifted high, Bress’s fingers wrapped around her neck. She panicked. She could no longer taste the air. There was a sharp pain in her wrist and she felt the sickle tumble from her numb fingers. Bress pushed her down onto the pallet. She fought him, kicking, punching, scratching but never once screaming. His grip never faltered. Her nails drew red lines on his pale flesh, but the wounds quickly closed.

He loomed over her, holding her down, ignoring her attacks, staring down at her like he was confused, as if he was studying her. The pack was pulling at its chains in a frenzy as it tried to reach her to tear her apart. The axeman appeared at Bress’s side. He was drooling.

‘Let me hurt her,’ he demanded. ‘I’ll wear her head and make her talk.’

‘We’re about to be attacked,’ Bress said. Britha’s heart sank even as she fought on. ‘Take the pack outside, Ettin.’

‘What?!’

‘Now.’ He said it quietly, but even over the sound of her struggles his authority was unmistakable. The axeman glared at him but grabbed the pack’s chains, cuffed a few of the feistier ones hard and dragged them outside.

‘If I let you go will you calm down so we can talk?’ he asked calmly. Slowly Britha stopped fighting; finally she nodded. Bress relaxed his grip from around her throat. Britha dived for her sickle. Bress let her get her fingers round the grip and then kicked her so hard in the stomach that it lifted her off her feet and sent her flying across the hut. It wasn’t the pain of the blow. It was the momentary sensation that she would never be able to breathe again that frightened her, but again she was surprised by how quickly she recovered.

Britha swung at him. He swayed backwards; the curved blade just missed. Britha tried to bring the sickle up into his groin. It was the closest she had got to an expression out of him. Bress stepped back quickly, brought his palm down to block the blow and then cried out, more in surprise than pain, when the sickle bit hungrily into him, the point appearing through the back of his hand. Britha kicked him with all her might. He staggered back crying out, this time in pain, as the movement tore the blade out of his hand. Britha swung at his head. Bress stepped to the side and punched her. She felt sick and the ground seemed to fall away from her as the force of the blow lifted her off her feet. Bress walked quickly over to where she had fallen. Britha was trying to get up. Something in her head felt broken. Her vision was blurry. Bress stood on her hand. He knelt down, warding off her blows, and tore the sickle from her grip. Examined it.

‘Where did you get this?’ he asked quietly, turning to look at her. The deadness of his eyes aside, his beauty and the intensity of his stare caused Britha suddenly to find herself struggling to breathe for all the wrong reasons. She didn’t stop fighting, however. Bress flung the sickle into the corner of the hut and grabbed her around the neck, easily picking her up and laying her on the pallet again.

‘You can’t hurt me,’ he told her. ‘Talk to me, just talk to me.’ His voice remained quiet and calm, but Britha thought she could hear just the slightest hint of pleading in his voice. She stopped fighting, but decided that if there was to be rape she would not make it easy for him.

‘Let go of me. Now,’ she demanded. Cursing herself for giving in.

‘If you fight again I’ll have to kill you.’

Britha nodded. Bress let go. Britha sat up, rubbing her throat.

‘You’re here to kill me.’

It wasn’t a question so she didn’t bother to answer.

‘Why are you here? Why are you doing this to my people?’

‘Does it matter? There’s nothing you can do about it so you might as well resign yourself to it.’

‘You know that won’t happen.’

‘I don’t know anything. Your people will suffer more if they resist.’

‘You didn’t answer my question.’

‘Because I must.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I am nothing: less than a ghost, a servant, a mercenary, serving a god I do not believe in.’

‘Gods make slaves of people.’

Bress’s laughter was devoid of humour.

‘And people overestimate their importance in the scheme of things, but I cannot deny your words. What is your name?’

‘Britha. They say you will bring madness on the land.’

Suddenly all trace of humour was gone.

‘And who are “they”?’

‘The spirits on the night wind, the dead who speak to me in my dreams,’ she lied.

He stared at her suspiciously. Britha met his eyes. She didn’t like how they made her feel, but that feeling subsided as she remembered the pack.

‘What you’ve done here – despoiling, slaving – what you did to those children . . .’

‘Flesh is a tool, something to shape for the amusement of the gods.’

‘Do you not know this is wrong? Evil!’

‘Yes, I just don’t care.’ He wasn’t looking at her now. He was looking out through the entrance to the skin hut into the night beyond.

Britha stared at him. He just sounded tired and horribly alone. Britha cursed herself for her weakness, remembered the pack and forced down any feeling of sympathy. He was a monster from the Otherworld.

‘I have to kill you,’ she said almost involuntarily. He nodded.

‘Take your blade and go,’ he told her quietly. Britha stared at him. ‘Fight and die in the battle if you will, or run and live, but if you ever falter then never forget that I have done this to your people.’ He turned to look at her with his dead eyes. It was all Britha could do not to flee. Bress stood up and walked out into the night air. Britha didn’t move. Then the deep howl of the carnyx, the Cirig’s dog-headed brass war horn, filled the night air.

The carnyx had sounded at the last moment. The warriors had been, like Britha, painted blue as the night, and had slowly made their way on their bellies across the sand as close as they dared. These were cateran, professional soldiers. The spear-carrying landsmen waited in the dunes still.

With a gesture rather than the sounding of the carnyx, Feroth had sent the chariots onto the beach, each wood and wicker cart pulled by two ponies straining at their harness at full gallop, driven by a kneeling charioteer. Trying to close with the enemy as quickly as they could before they were noticed.

To Cruibne, the familiar beach was a blur beneath him as he crouched on one knee. Gone were the days when he would stand in a chariot – he didn’t feel so steady on his feet these days. He glanced to his right and saw Nechtan in his armour walking carefully out onto the yoke between the two horses – the chariot feat. The champion had his casting spears at the ready. Nechtan, like all the cateran, wore a wicker framework headdress designed to look like a dog’s skull covered with dog hide. Still, it would have been better if he had gone to battle skyclad like the rest of the cateran. Nechtan was lost to view when the chariots drove into a narrow channel in a spray of water.

Cruibne reached down to grab the boards of the chariot as it bounced back onto the wet sand. Ahead he could see the spearmen lying down. They had previously agreed lanes for the chariots to drive through. Ethne, who was the only person he trusted as his charioteer, expertly controlled the horses through the prostrate spearmen. Cruibne heard a scream, the sound whipped away from him by the speed of the chariot: someone had not been as accurate. Ahead he watched as the enemy, seemingly unhurried, arranged themselves into a tightly linked shield wall. Cruibne kept his mouth open – he didn’t want to break any teeth as the chariot bounced up and down – and shifted his grip on his casting spear. No shield wall ever stood against a chariot charge.

Behind him the dog-headed spearmen had got to their feet and were sprinting in behind the chariots. The carnyx sounded again and the spear-carrying landsmen poured out of the dunes and started their long run across the sand. The baying war dogs quickly outpaced them, the rags that had held their jaws closed had been removed.

As the cart bounced and juddered despite the smoothness of the sand, Cruibne watched as the wall of shields and spears got closer and closer. They had to break. Everyone did.

Britha heard the carnyx sound again. The attack. Her tribe were about to throw themselves against these creatures and she had not done what she had said she would.

Britha ducked out of the hut. She had a moment to see the back of the shield wall and hear the hoof beats echoing across the beach. The man she had seen drinking from the chalice of molten metal was standing behind the shield wall with a few others. They didn’t have armour or spears but were carrying swords. They were for those who got through. Britha moved quickly towards him, not allowing herself to think that he was an innocent victim who had been forced into this by Bress’s magic. Britha jumped at him and cleaved the sickle into his neck, driving it down into his chest cavity. She stared at the wound, wet and red, appalled. How can I have the strength for that? The sickle felt hungry in her hand. As the man juddered and sank to the ground, Britha noticed that his entire hand was covered in the red-gold filigree – it looked like it had grown out of the pommel of his sword. Then the chariots hit.

They weren’t going to break. Ethne slewed the chariot to the side hard, showering the enemy shield wall in sand. Cruibne felt the cart start to turn over and held on for dear life, but Ethne was better than that, forcing the terrified ponies forward through the sand, their speed pulling the cart straight.

Others weren’t so lucky. Some tried, like Ethne, to turn at the last moment but lost control, sending ponies, cart and passengers tumbling sideways into the shield wall. Others, their charioteers unable to believe that the shield wall hadn’t run, ploughed straight into it in a screaming, tangled, tumbling collision of wood, metal, human and horseflesh.

Britha threw herself to one side as a chariot went tumbling past her in an explosion of sand. She pushed herself to her feet. A figure charged her. He slashed his sword down. She caught the blade in the curve of the sickle blade and swung the sword away from her. She brought the sickle back and into his stomach, driving the curved blade up into his chest cavity. He fell back; the sickle slid out red; the expression on his face didn’t even change.

They were galloping along the enemy shield wall now. Cruibne struck out with his longspear again and again. The spear glanced off shields mostly but caught one of them in the head. Cruibne felt the impact in his arm as the spear haft snapped and the man was torn off his feet sideways, his neck broken, head gashed open, skull caved in.

Ahead of Cruibne, Nechtan stood on his yoke and threw casting spear after casting spear at the enemy shield wall. Shields were raised to block, but Nechtan caught more than one of the enemy warriors. A lucky shot took one of them in the face, sending him staggering back out of the line, but the gap was closed quickly by those on either side. At the end of the shield wall, following Nechtan’s chariot, Ethne steered the ponies in a long circle to bring them back into the attack.

Britha watched one of the enemy spearmen stagger back, a casting spear embedded in the ruin of his face. He reached up, pulled the spear out and threw it away. They had to call off the attack. She had to find Bress and kill him. She reached down and took the sword from the dead man’s hand. There was resistance – the red filigree had to be tugged out of his flesh and seemed to come to life. There was a moment of panic as she felt it start to dig into her flesh. She felt heat in her hand, wrist and then arm. Then she felt sick, like a strong fever. Her arm glowed with an inner light. She watched as the filigree on the cursed sword retracted into the blade’s pommel. The feeling of heat and sickness passed.

Sword in one hand, sickle in the other, she started towards the back of the shield wall. She glanced down the line and saw Ettin with the pack straining at its chains. He looked back towards her. Even over the distance she could feel the intensity of his stare, the hatred. Then she heard a crashing sound. The pieces of metal in the hollow brass sphere at the base of every one of the cateran’s spears were being rattled to frighten their foes. Britha couldn’t see it working this time.

The war dogs, massive, powerfully built deerhounds, many wearing their own protective leather jerkins, many of them scarred veterans of other battles, were nearly at the Lochlannach line. Their job was to distract and disrupt the enemy shield wall, make them lower their shields just ahead of the attack of the spearmen. The shield wall took a step forward. Many of the dogs died on the ends of spears, or shields broke their leaps, sent them tumbling back into their own advancing men.

The spearmen hit the shield wall. Britha watched as the force of their charge pushed the enemy back, their feet digging into the sand. The cateran battered against the Lochlannach’s shields, trying to force them up. Some cateran warriors went tumbling over the defenders’ shields, their naked, painted and tattooed bodies dead moments after they hit the sand.

Britha ran towards the back of the shield wall but was intercepted by swordsmen. She felt her blood sing as she ducked and parried blows. The sickle and sword cut through armour as if it wasn’t there and bit deep into flesh. She leaped and spun; she felt like she was dancing between her attackers. She had never fought like this. Never revelled in it like this. She wanted to see wounds. Feel hot blood on her skin, taste it.

The swordsmen dead, she went looking for Bress. He was pretty, she dimly remembered through her battle pleasure, but she wanted to see what his innards looked like. She thought they would be just as pretty.

The cateran had been flung back so hard, many of them had lost their footing and been speared. Now it would be the grind of shield wall on shield wall, Talorcan thought as he looked for a target. The advantage was with the Lochlannach with their large oval shields versus the Cirig’s smaller square ones.

One of the enemy was looking the other way. Talorcan loosed the notched arrow. The man somehow seemed to know. He ducked down behind his shield and the arrow flew over his head. Talorcan cursed. They were so fast.

Ettin released the pack.

Sleek lithe shapes clambered up the backs of the Lochlannach and launched themselves at the cateran. They were so quick that Talorcan struggled to make them out. Demons from the Otherworld, his frightened mind thought. It was easier to think this than acknowledge how much they looked like children. They tore at cateran and war dog alike.

He watched as one of the red-eyed demons threw itself at Feradach. The warrior swung his shield at it, catching it in the head in mid-air with enough force to knock it to the ground. Feradach stepped forward and ran his longspear through the demon, pinning it to the sand, but the creature was still writhing, fighting, screaming. A wild blow snapped the haft of the spear and Talorcan watched in horror as Feradach staggered back screaming, the demon’s hands redder now and dripping. There was a gaping wound where Feradach’s manhood used to be.

There weren’t many of the demons but enough of them to disrupt the cateran line. Talorcan glanced behind him. The landsmen were still too far away. As one, and without any order that Talorcan heard, the Lochlannach line moved forward. Spears thrust out. Pecht died. Spearheads embedded themselves in cateran shields. The Lochlannach stood on the hafts of the spears, forcing the shields down, and with frightening speed drew their swords and opened flesh. With each step more of the skyclad warriors died. To Talorcan their wounds looked worse than they should have been. Wide gaping red gashes and rips in his friends’ flesh.

Talorcan was loosing arrow after arrow, but his targets didn’t even seem to notice. It was when he watched one of them draw an arrow from his neck, toss it away and drive his spear through the head of a Fortrenn warrior that Talorcan knew that not only would they lose but they could not fight these people.

Talorcan dropped his bow and shrugged off the quiver. The small Pecht pulled his dog’s head on, drew his knife and hatchet, then ran towards the fight.

They had circled the entire battle looking for a place to attack where they would not run over their own warriors. Now his chariot was in the lead. Cruibne glanced behind him to see Nechtan following.

Cruibne could see their leader, the tall one. Even from the juddering boards of the fast-moving chariot he looked exactly like the mormaer expected a warrior from the Otherworld to look. Cruibne had shouted at Ethne to head for him. His oldest, and if he was honest, favourite wife had not even acknowledged him – she was too busy. Nevertheless the chariot was heading towards the tall warrior, who just stood there watching as Cruibne’s warriors were massacred. Cruibne felt calm. He was certain he was going to die, but he was with Ethne and sure that he was going to kill this man. So much for growing fat, he thought, well, fatter.

To Cruibne it looked like the giants exploded out of the sand, and they had in fact leaped out of the holes they had been buried in lying down. Cruibne only had a moment to see them – huge, dark, misshapen figures obscured by all the sand in the air. The closest lumbered towards him. Cruibne found himself in the shadow of an enormous foot. It stamped down, crushing wood and horseflesh, killing Ethne. The destruction of the chariot sent Cruibne flying forward. The beach rushed up to meet him. Darkness.

Nechtan soiled himself as the giant stamped on Cruibne’s chariot. Screaming, Broichan, Nechtan’s charioteer, yanked on the reins, trying to steer the terrified ponies away. The chariot jumped with each one of the giant’s footfalls as it swept down one massive hand, hitting the side of the cart and the horses, sweeping them up and sending them tumbling through the air.

Britha was laughing now, now more red than blue, little more human than those she fought. She swayed to the side, avoiding the slash of a sword, cutting at the neck of her attacker, hitting him so hard it spun him round. Ducking and then straightening her legs, she tore the sickle through someone’s flesh. She was oblivious to her tribe dying just the other side of the shield wall as she made her way closer to Bress. Excited, eager to do more violence, she wanted to see what this man really looked like on the inside.

The darkness had been good – cool, restful, it smelled of the sea. Not the metallic tang of blood or the smell of ruptured bowels. The sand shook beneath him. Giants walked the land now. Cruibne looked up, his face covered in a mixture of blood and sand. He was broken somewhere inside. He felt it. But he could still move.

Movement was pain. Standing was agony. He stuffed his beard in his mouth so he wouldn’t scream – too many years of not being able to show weakness. It tasted of sand and more blood.

Tears sprang unbidden and unwelcome to his eyes as he drew his sword, the blade blue from the forge, not polished like a southron warrior’s would be. He looked for their leader; instead he found some deformed but massively built man with an axe stalking towards him. He spat out his beard.

‘The gods that piss on you didn’t put your head on straight, but my sword will put you out of your misery,’ he shouted at the creature. May as well do this properly, he thought. He found he couldn’t move his left arm – the bone stuck out through his armour.

‘I need your head,’ the creature said.

Cruibne swung his sword in an overhead arc, bringing it down towards the ugly creature’s head, the speed and violence of the blow causing pain to shoot through his body. Ettin had time to step back and then swing up with his axe. Cruibne stared at the stump of his sword hand. The lopsided creature was huge but had moved so quickly, and Cruibne had never known an axe so sharp. He marvelled that he was able to think this as Ettin swung again.

Cruibne was lying in the sand again. He could see his leg. It seemed much further from him than a leg should be. He tried to get up. He felt a boot on his chest, forcing him back down into the sand. Beyond his leg he could see the landsfolk fleeing. He couldn’t blame them. How could they fight this? The giants caught up with them easily, sweeping down, killing many with each blow. Broken and crushed bodies rained down on the sand.

‘Hold still. I want a clean cut,’ Ettin said. Cruibne didn’t even see the axe as it swung down towards his neck.

He was running, except he wasn’t running. It was like he was being carried. He tried to stop running. He couldn’t. How could he be running without a leg? Cruibne opened his eyes. To his right he saw the Lochlannach spearmen pursuing the last of the cateran and the landsmen. Some were surrendering. Ahead of him he saw the tall man, the one who had the look of a leader, maybe even a high king, standing with his arms crossed watching Lochlannach swordsmen sprinting towards a warrior. There was joy as he recognised Britha. The ban draoi had always been a capable warrior but Cruibne couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

As one of the Lochlannach charged her, she ran her sword through his stomach and rolled as he crashed into her, sending the already dead body in a clumsy somersault over her. Britha rolled with the momentum, coming back up into a crouch. Her sickle blade went through another warrior’s knee and she pulled him off his feet; the sickle tore out of flesh, rose and then fell again as the man’s throat was ripped out. She spun round, biting her tongue and spitting blood into her next victim’s face before yanking her sword up between his legs. She continued her violent dance towards the tall pale man.

As Cruibne somehow ran towards her, he leaned down and picked up a discarded longspear without breaking stride. Cruibne did not understand. He was about to attack Britha, and the arm that picked up the spear was not his.

‘Noooooo!’ The scream broke Britha out of her bloody reverie. Her head whipped around. Ettin was sprinting towards her, axe in one hand, longspear in the other. He looked less off kilter. He had two heads now. His original head was laughing. The new one was screaming, begging, threatening. She recognised Cruibne’s voice.

‘I’ll kill you! I’ll cut you open and shit in the wound! I’ll have your corpse raped by dogs! No please! Don’t!’ Cruibne begged. Never in his life had he felt so helpless. Ettin just laughed. There was something else though: Cruibne could feel what Ettin felt. The creature’s pleasure. He knew things, like that Ettin had an erection and where he came from. He just couldn’t understand. It felt like it was his arm that threw the spear. Did he want it now? To see her corpse. No, that was Ettin. Cruibne prayed to gods who had not heard his people’s prayers in an age. If they heard, they chose not to respond.

Britha had a moment to wrestle with trying to understand why Ettin wore Cruibne’s head and then the spear was flying towards her. She tried to leap it. She had done so many times this night, but somehow Ettin had anticipated this, as if he had known what she would do. The spear caught her in the stomach. It felt almost as hungry as her sickle. She felt it grow inside her like a tree of iron tearing through her body. The force of the blow carried her through the air and she hit the sand hard. She lay still, looking at the spear sprouting from her. The shaft was moving slightly as the head continued to grow through her body.

Ettin appeared over her. Cruibne’s head was sobbing.

‘I’m sorry, so sorry,’ her mormaer’s head said from Ettin’s shoulder.

It was getting darker and colder, like something wrapping its wings around her. Britha was pretty sure that she was going to like death. She wasn’t feeling pain now. It had to be better than this, the death of her people.

Bress appeared over her. So, so pretty, she thought, even with his dead eyes.

‘I’m going to wear your head so you can see what I do to your corpse,’ Ettin told her. There was more wailing from Cruibne’s head. That’s no way for a mormaer to act, Britha thought faintly. Bress just shook his head. He grabbed the haft of the spear. Britha actually felt the spearhead contract back to its normal shape. Then nothing.