Gavin Smith - The Age of Scorpio

The Cigfran Teulu line hit the Lochlannach just ahead of her. Spears slid under shields, searching for bodies to bury themselves in. As the enemy spearmen lifted their shields, Atrebates leaped onto them, riding them as they threw themselves sword and spear first into the Lochlannach’s second rank.

Britha leaped high and far. For her there was a moment’s tranquillity. She heard nothing, the din of battle lost for a moment. There was just the sea and the bright blue sky as her salmon leap carried her over the heads of the Cigfran Teulu and the Lochlannach. Then the bloodlust was back as she stabbed down with the spear in mid-air. She felt the spear’s craving for flesh as it was driven home into the chest of one of the Lochlannach in the second row. Britha almost lost her grip on the spear but managed to hold onto it as the weapon’s head split into branches and grew through its victim’s ribcage. The path of her flight pulled the spearman over backwards into the water. Britha landed with a splash. The spearhead reformed and she wrenched it out of the dead man’s chest.

Screaming as she hewed her sword from one side to the other into anyone foolish enough to get close to her, Morfudd suddenly found herself knee deep in bloody red water with no enemies in front of here. They had fought their way through, she thought exultantly.

She turned. The ferocity of their attack had demolished the two lines of Lochlannach on the flank they had hit, but the other was wheeling to hit them in the back, presumably in response to some unheard order from some unseen leader.

Suddenly, on a sunny cloudless day, Morfudd found herself in the shade. She turned and looked up.

The giant reached down and grabbed Morfudd. Lifted her up, its fingers curving around her to make a fist and punched that fist into the shallow water. She was dead instantly. The giant threw her broken body at her own people and lifted up a foot to stamp. Lochlannach or Atrebates, it made no difference.

The stamping giant splashed everyone with bloody water and was close enough to Britha for the impact to knock her off her feet. She was underwater for a moment and for that moment heard the song. There was a sadness to it. The Muileartach knew pain on this day.

Britha sat up in the red water, fighting all around her. To her right something monstrous and glowing with an inner light hit the Lochlannach line. Enemy warriors went flying. The ban draoi knew that had this been a mortal army they would have broken and fled. There was an explosion of steam. Lochlannach and Atrebates alike fell away from the massive creature, their exposed skin red and blistering from the heat.

The monstrous thing that Fachtna had become barrelled into a giant’s leg, swinging the ghost blade at it again and again, hacking at it, each cut going deeper. The giant reached down for Fachtna, its skin seeming to melt and run as it did so. It grabbed him apparently oblivious to the pain, but then staggered and finally fell into the water.

Fachtna leaped high out of the steaming water and landed on the giant’s chest. He hacked with his sword and tore with bare burning hands at the thing’s chest as if he was burrowing into it. The giant grabbed at him, but the heat had sunk Fachtna’s monstrous form into the creature’s flesh. Strange fluids squirted out of the giant’s chest – Britha guessed it was blood – and lumps of its flesh were flung out. Some of it floated, other bits sank. There was an explosion of red liquid, much of it turning to steam as it sprayed close to Fachtna’s deformed glowing body. This looked more like the blood Britha was used to seeing.

Distracted by the death of the giant, she didn’t notice the Lochlannach moving towards her until she felt his foot on her chest pushing her down as he raised his spear. She reached for hers, but a shape rose out of the red water behind him. Teardrop grabbed the man’s head and pulled it back as he stroked his black-bladed knife across the man’s throat. A red smile appeared on the man’s neck and he fell. Britha realised that she knew him. His name was Dubthalorc. He was one of her people, a landsman. He had been known for raising the best sheep and his wife had been very good with a loom. Britha watched him slide into the water sadly.

Another Lochlannach charged but suddenly fell, yanked under the water. Tangwen appeared. She was red from head to foot, like the dirk she’d just rammed through the Lochlannach’s leg. She pushed his helmet forward and then repeatedly hit him in the back of his head with her hand axe until he stopped moving.

‘We have to go!’ Teardrop shouted over the din of battle and glanced angrily at Fachtna, who was wading through the Lochlannach, breaking them like toys. Just then there was the unmistakable sound of a large fire catching. Britha glanced behind her. Both the legs of the wicker man were in flames. Now the screams of the captives over the water far exceeded the sounds of the battle. Teardrop grabbed Britha and dragged her into deeper water.

They dived. It felt like home to Britha. She could hear the mindsong. It took every shred of willpower that she had not to turn and swim to the west.

Fachtna dived into the water in an explosion of steam. All around him the water boiled as he bled off heat and excess matter. He was tired, bone-weary, pained and hungry. He swam as fast and hard as he could. Surfaced to take a breath, long enough to see flames and hear screams, then beneath the surface again. He did not look behind him. He knew that the Cigfran Teulu would fight as long as they could.

With its legs on fire, Britha was wondering how they would climb up into the wicker man, but as she surfaced for another deep breath she saw a rope hanging from it. Presumably it had been used to hoist people or materials up. A casting spear hit the water close by. She glanced to her right to see one of the black curraghs. She dived again and watched more spears quickly lose their speed in the water. Teardrop was level with her but they were leaving Tangwen behind. She had no idea where Fachtna was. The water here was much deeper. As she swam she was aware of dark shapes darting through the water beneath her.

An exhausted Fachtna reached the wicker man first. The water above him looked orange as a result of the flames licking up the legs of the giant figure. He could hear the screams even under the water now. Worse still, when he surfaced he could smell burning flesh. Anger overwhelmed fatigue and the despair he felt as he looked up at the climb he had to do. He surged out of the water, grabbed the rope and started pulling himself hand over hand, not using his legs.

The climb was always going to leave them exposed. As he pulled himself up, Fachtna saw one of the black curraghs surging through the water towards him. The Lochlannach on board started throwing spears, but the wind that carried the wicker man’s stench and the screams of its prisoners also blew smoke around him. He still felt some spears pass close by him, making eddies in the smoke, but soon he was too high for thrown spears to hit him. Fachtna knew that the wicker man would not collapse. The metal drawn from the earth would have been seeded with smart matter designed to stand up to the heat. The wood would burn and so would the people.

Britha did not want to leave the water. It was better down here, safer. She certainly did not want to climb hundreds of feet into the air on a rope. Teardrop shamed her by grabbing the rope and pulling himself out of the water and up into the smoke. She quickly lost sight of him. Before the magic entered her blood, she would not have been capable of this. She surged out of the water, grasped the rope and started to pull herself up.

Fachtna felt others on the rope beneath him. As he reached the metal framework and the thick wooden planks at the base of the wicker man’s torso, he saw other ropes. His shoulders and arms were just extensions of pain. He had little idea how he was still hanging on, but he knew that he had to collect as many of the ropes as possible so that people could use them to climb down. For what? he asked himself as he swung hand over hand around the framework, excrement and urine dripping down on him through the cracks between the planks above. So that they can be massacred by the spearmen in the black curraghs, so they can hacked to pieces by mad men, so they can be swept out to sea? Fachtna was a strong swimmer and augmented, but even he’d had trouble with the currents. It felt hopeless, but he didn’t have any better ideas, and the flames were rising quickly up both legs of the wicker man. Above him the screaming and pleas for help were starting to be replaced with the sound of coughing. He himself was covered in soot but the smoke would not affect him.