Gavin Smith - The Age of Scorpio

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.