The Age of Scorpio (47 page)

Britha sat down on one of the benches with her back against the rail and hugged her legs. She could ignore the corpses in the dark water behind her but she still knew they were there. Britha did not sleep again that night, but that meant that she did not dream again either. When morning came, it brought raucous gulls to feed on the flesh of the floating dead behind them, the sun to dry the blood on wool and skin, and wind to carry them further south.

‘This is not a good place to be,’ Germelqart said. They had gone into the mouth of a river. It was not as large as the Tatha or the Black River but it had looked a reasonable size. Hanno had said that he knew the river and that the people there called it the Tamesas, meaning Grey Father, who was apparently the god of the river.

Either side was marshland. Britha could not understand how people lived here, but apparently they did or had. They knew this because they could see smoke rising from what used to be their villages.

‘This makes no sense to me,’ Hanno said. ‘These people were careful, clever people. They built their villages on mounds of dry earth in the marshes, and only those who had a guide who knew the secret ways could take you there.’

‘They would have made one of the guides drink from their chalice,’ Britha said. She still wore the blood of her victims. Flies from the marshes buzzed around her. The
Will of Dagon
was hidden from the main waterway of the Tamesas between a sparsely wooded island and the swampy mainland.

‘It would be easy to get trapped here,’ Germelqart said. Kush nodded in agreement.

‘You are a timid people,’ Fachtna observed dryly. Teardrop did not even admonish him for baiting the Carthaginians; he was staring to the north into the marsh at the rising smoke.

‘This happened recently, I think,’ Kush said. Hanno nodded. Britha stared west. Following the snaking line of the river they could see more columns of smoke. It was definitely the work of Bress.

‘I think now we sail east to the land of the Gaul,’ Hanno started. ‘Then we hug the coast and head south regardless of how stormy it is. Their god Taranis hates and fears me, I think.’ There was a snort of derision from Fachtna. ‘Through the pillars of Hercules and back to my beloved Carthage.’

Germelqart nodded his agreement.

‘No,’ Britha said. ‘They are not on the river any more.’ She was certain of this. She had been feeling much stronger since she had taken the lives of the kneelers.

‘And the Grey Father told you this himself, did he?’ Hanno asked. His tone was derisive, but she smiled when she heard the fear there as well. They thought her a moonstruck witch now. It was a part she could play. It might even have been true.

‘We go south,’ she insisted. Hanno opened his mouth to protest.

‘We’re being watched,’ Teardrop said.

‘Frightened survivors,’ Kush said.

Teardrop pointed into the swamp. ‘And there’s something in there . . . power of some sort. It hides from me every time I reach for it.’

Fachtna turned to look at his friend with interest.

‘Madmen, demons and witches.’ Hanno spat over the side of the ship and touched an amulet that he had taken to wearing. It was a tiny effigy of Dagon carved from driftwood.

‘If Teardrop says he feels something then he feels something,’ Fachtna told them. Britha had turned to look at the man who claimed to be from a tribe called the Croatan.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

Teardrop shook his head as if concentrating. ‘Something ancient and slippery, it coils away from me every time I reach for it.’ He turned to look at Britha, then seemed surprised as if he was only now seeing her covered in drying blood. ‘I think we should go ashore.’

‘Yes, go ashore, die in the swamp and we can sail away before the black ships find us,’ Hanno said.

‘Hanno of Carthage,’ Britha said, ‘I don’t think your god lives here. You leave us, and the corpses of those I slew will climb onto your deck as you sleep and slay you and your men. Do you understand me?’

Hanno looked furious. Kush looked close to swinging his axe. It didn’t matter what either of them believed. Britha wasn’t sure if she had the power to make good her threat, but enough of the crew believed her that they wouldn’t let Hanno abandon them.

‘Enough threats,’ Kush told her. ‘I mean it.’

Fachtna opened his mouth to say something but Britha cut him off.

‘You were well paid, trader; all we ask is that you honour it.’

‘I should have asked for more,’ Hanno muttered, eyeing the torcs around Fachtna’s neck and his left arm. ‘You make this quick. If you have not returned by tomorrow morning then we will leave you because the evil spirits that burn the night with their demon fire will have taken you. This is known by the people who live in this evil place.’

Britha nodded.

‘And we will flee the black ships if we sight them,’ the normally quiet Germelqart said.

Fachtna opened his mouth. ‘Agreed,’ Britha said before the warrior uttered something insulting. ‘You cannot fight them.’

‘I only hope you can outrun them,’ Fachtna said. ‘But I doubt it.’

Trial and error left them soaked and covered with thick foul-smelling mud, but eventually they managed to find a trail over what passed for dry ground. Or at least ground that didn’t want to pull them down into sucking mud.

‘So we just walk into the swamp and hope we find someone?’ Fachtna demanded angrily.

He’s like most warriors
, Britha thought. He liked being covered in blood, glory or fine things, but not mud.

‘They know we are here,’ Britha said. She could feel the eyes on her. The birds, the insects, reptiles and amphibians moving through the water or over the mud, the constant movement of the undergrowth; it was easy to imagine the whole place as a living being.

‘She’s right,’ Teardrop said. ‘I can hear the mindsong here. But it is distant, far away somehow.’ This got Fachtna’s attention, Britha’s too, but she chose not to show it, hoping that Teardrop would reveal more of his magics if she showed less interest.

‘Why don’t they show themselves?!’ Fachtna cried to the skies. Nearby gulls took to the air, showing their displeasure in raucous squawking. Britha watched them and then moved off the trail and into the rushes. Almost immediately she was standing in water, though the spirits in the mud hadn’t started dragging her down yet. Using the butt of her spear for support, she made her way to where the gulls had been.

Fachtna sighed, looked down in disgust at the mud coating his boots, greaves and trews, but followed her. Teardrop remained on the path, looking out over the rushes blowing in the gentle breeze. Perhaps he was listening for the mindsong, Fachtna thought, but more likely he just didn’t want to get further covered in mud. Cursing, Fachtna pushed through the rushes until he found Britha leaning against an earthen bank, standing in a red pool of bodies.

‘They died in battle,’ he said. The pictures that swords and spears drew on flesh were plain enough to see.

Britha nodded.

‘Someone brought them here?’ There were some twenty bodies but this was not a place to fight a pitched battle.

‘I think they are being given back to the land,’ she said. ‘Perhaps left in sacrifice because they could not protect their people.’

‘But they died well.’

Britha looked up at the warrior, surprised to hear the emotion in his voice.
Is this what you fear, Goidel?
No tomb, no one to remember your deeds.

‘Their ways are not your own,’ Britha said simply. ‘What I want to know is why the gulls will eat their flesh and bury them in the sky but the insects stay away.’

That got Fachtna’s attention. He jumped into the pool and waded towards the bodies. They were a small pale people, though death and immersion would always make a body pale. There were traces of paint on their bodies but no tattoos. Whatever weapons and armour they might have owned had been stripped from them.

Fachtna cut into the flesh of one of the bodies.

‘That is an ill thing,’ Britha said angrily.

‘It is an augury,’ Fachtna said, distracted.

‘And who are you to augur on the bones of people not yours, who have been left to rest in their own way?’ she demanded.

‘These wounds, they make channels in the flesh, like the roots of the tree,’ he told her.

‘These are Bress’s weapons. We know this.’

Fachtna took some of the flesh into his mouth and tasted it.

‘What are you doing?!’

Fachtna spat the flesh out. ‘These are kin of yours,’ he told her.

‘These are not kin of mine, fool!’

‘And yet in part your blood is the same as theirs.’

‘Then they were corrupted by the demons and left here when they turned on their own people.’

‘They died fighting Bress’s band, and I mean the blood you share with Cliodna and the Muileartach.’

Britha considered this. ‘The insects know that their blood is unnatural.’ Fachtna said nothing. ‘I thought the power you had was in your arms and legs and the weapons you bear.’

‘Don’t forget my cock.’

‘You are a fool and I do not believe you,’ Britha said in exasperation.

‘Then I will have Teardrop tell you.’

Fachtna waded across the pool. He had reached the bank and was about to step up when he stopped.

‘Why did you kill them?’ he asked, not quite turning to look at her directly.

Britha spent some time deciding whether to dignify his question with an answer. ‘Because they didn’t care about themselves so I ate their spirits,’ she finally said.

He nodded. ‘Have you ever done the like before?’

‘I’ve never met people like that before, and who are you to question me?’

‘Would you have done the same in the past?’

Britha said nothing. The silence seemed to go on and on before Fachtna stepped out of the pool and started back towards where they had left Teardrop. Britha watched the warrior’s back until the tall breeze-blown rushes swallowed him. What she didn’t tell him was that she had not felt even a trace of remorse for what she had done. In fact, it had left her feeling stronger. She tried to ignore the sense of how far away she was from home and what she had been. She looked at the corpses and wondered if they had known Cliodna.

Fachtna made his way along a tiny game trail. He could see Teardrop just ahead of him. He was facing towards where the smoke was coming from. Fachtna held the bloody knife in one hand; the other held the strap of his shield, which was slung over his shoulder.

He stopped. Despite the blood, he pushed his dirk back into its scabbard. He was half convinced that his mind was playing tricks with him. Then, assuming a low stance, he swung the shield into his hand, the feel of the leather over wood familiar where he gripped it. His sword whispered from the scabbard. He soothed its song with a thought. It was hungry. It had been drawn and not used too often recently.

They were good. He did not understand how he had not known they were there – his senses being expanded far beyond the normal – but they moved with the direction of the wind in the rushes and they moved quickly. They were like wild animals.

He listened. Keeping still. Britha’s footsteps on the trail behind him seemed thunderous. He had not paid close enough attention to Teardrop. He had not read his body like the weapons masters in the younglings’ camp had taught him. The tension in Teardrop’s stance told Fachtna that they had him.

Behind him he heard Britha stop. She had seen Fachtna’s sword and shield at the ready. Fachtna heard her change her position, presumably readying her spear.
Now have the good sense to be quiet
, Fachtna thought. Then he heard the mindsong.

Britha had her back to Fachtna. She was still, her spear ready. She was not sure what was her awareness of someone or something in the gently swaying reeds around her and what was her mind playing tricks. All she heard was the wind and the water from the nearby river. She glanced over towards it. She could just about make out the
Will of Dagon
. There would be no help from that quarter. Quite the opposite: they would be pleased to see them gone.

She became aware of the music. It sounded simple, ancient and beautiful. It was a song without words. It was open, baring all. She started when she realised that she could understand it on a level much deeper than mere words, though she was not hearing it. She was listening to it some other way. She heard it inside her head, felt it through her body; her blood responded to it.

They came out of the reeds on all sides. They wore armour made of panels of boiled leather sewn onto skin to make it easier for them to move. Their spears were odd, made of wood, the ends carved into blades and then fire-hardened. Their shields were small and round, leather over wood, all painted with the same design. What could be seen of their skin was covered in mud. Over the top of the dried mud the same symbol was repeated. They wore full head coverings, not unlike the dog masks worn by the Cirig, except these were unmistakably in the shape of a serpent’s head. The serpent was the symbol painted over the mud and present on their shields.

‘Fachtna, I think I’ve made a mistake,’ Teardrop said quietly, but his voice carried.

Britha saw Fachtna move imperceptibly. He was getting ready to attack. He, like her and Teardrop, was surrounded. It looked like death to her. She heard him spit out an unfamiliar word through gritted teeth: ‘Naga.’

‘Fachtna, wait,’ Teardrop said, his voice carrying over the breeze, through the rushes.

‘Better to die,’ Fachtna said.

‘It may not be as we think. Bress raided them,’ Teardrop said. The warriors surrounding them said nothing.

‘Look at them. This is typical. They have set themselves up a god.’

‘Our god sees through our eyes and you are from elsewhere,’ one of the warriors in the snake masks said.

‘Isn’t everyone?’ Fachtna responded.

Britha could hear the warrior talking to Fachtna. The warriors around her were absolutely still, not even responding to any movements she made. Calm, yet she could feel their anger. She wondered how many people they had lost when the black curraghs came.

‘I don’t even want to know your name,’ Fachtna said, an insult. It was not the ritual insult of a challenge but disgust at what the warrior was, letting the man know that he was beneath him.