Gavin Smith - The Age of Scorpio

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.

A police officer ran towards the Range Rover waving at du Bois to stop. He understood the necessity for a cordon and supposed that the self-important look the policeman had on his face made him feel he was part of this. Du Bois had to remind himself that this would go more smoothly if he was a little patient and not too rude.

‘Turn this round now!’ the florid-faced and fleshy policeman demanded when du Bois rolled the window down. He sighed and handed the officer his warrant card. The officer stared at it. ‘Right, you stay here, I’ll have to check this.’ The policeman turned away with the card.

Fuck it , du Bois thought. ‘Excuse me, lowly paid civil servant.’ The police officer turned around. It took a moment for the anger to come as he processed what du Bois had said. ‘Please imagine, if that’s not beyond you, that the card in your hand just has the words “Yes, I can” written on it. It is not for you to check that, question me, or even talk to me. You are here only because it is more cost-effective than training a monkey to do your job. A job, that despite its simplicity – keeping the people who are not allowed in, out, and letting the ones who are allowed in, in – you are still somehow managing to screw up.’

The officer’s face seemed to lumber through increasingly severe stages of fury. He opened his mouth to retort but du Bois got in there first.

‘If someone is to question me it will be the highest-ranked monkey on the scene, do you understand me? Or should I have your extended family murdered for emphasis?’

The policeman snapped his mouth shut. In his heart he knew that the threat was idle but there was something about the casual delivery that made him believe that du Bois was capable of this. Du Bois reached out of the four-by-four, took his warrant card back and drove towards the inflatable hazardous-material isolation tent. He glanced at the near-identical rows of terraced housing on either side of the road. He was already not enjoying being in Portsmouth.