Gavin Smith - The Age of Scorpio

The island was important to the Fib. It was a place of power for their dryw . It was said that the Auld Folk had come here to worship their terrible and uncaring gods. To the Cirig it had been a convenient place to cross when they went chasing Fib cattle, though they always had to ford the beasts further upstream on the way home.

From the island she watched another of the Fib’s villages burn. She was close enough to hear the screams but it was how quickly and efficiently it happened that got to her. The Fib were not as strong as the Cirig, but how quickly their resistance was dealt with shocked her. Standing on the shore of the island, she watched the Lochlannach, black figures silhouetted against the flames, herd their captives to the curraghs. The black ships were much larger than they had been when Britha had last seen them. If they came further west to make for the settlements on the Tatha further inland then Britha could try to sneak on board, either by swimming or via the branches that hung over the river.

The sun rose. The smoke from the still-burning settlements on the south bank was easier to see now. As were the black curraghs sailing east, back to the sea, their magics taking them against the wind. Britha still did not feel like sleeping. She ate too much, again, watching the huge black ships getting smaller and smaller. When she had sated herself she waded across the Tatha to the south shore and trudged south through the steep wooded hills. Avoiding the cliffs of wet grey stone when she could, losing time climbing them when she couldn’t.

Two days of walking. Britha had never been this far south in Fib lands before. She knew she could not be too far from the lands of the Goddodin. A tribe not of the Pecht, they were a weak people who bent their knees to a god of the sea. The only Goddodin that Britha had ever seen had been slaves of the Fib. If they worshipped gods this made them suitable to be slaves, in Britha’s opinion. But she knew that the Black River lay to the south – she had heard tell of it from southron traders all her life. If it was, as they said, similar in size to the Tatha, then she was sure the Lochlannach would raid along it for more captives.

Britha’s eyes flicked open. Usually a restless sleeper, she had woken from a deep, restful, dreamless sleep fully aware. The sensation that had roused her was a tug from deep inside. Instinctively she knew that something was wrong at a fundamental level with the world around her. She reached for her spear, the demon inside it long since cowed, and rolled to her feet.

She could see it through the trees. A bright, rapidly pulsing, blue and white light illuminated the thickly forested hill. It made the silhouettes of the trees look grotesque and alive. There was the sound of wind rushing through the branches. It tugged at her robes. She had been sleeping with them wrapped around her, although the night cold did not seem to bother her so much now. She realised that the air was being sucked towards the light and that her hair was standing up just like it did before a thunderstorm, but this feeling was stronger than any thunderstorm she had ever experienced.

She retreated and dropped low as she saw lightning play across the trees in the distance. Cursing herself for a coward, Britha forced herself to stand. She had never seen the like but she was sure it had something to do with the Otherworld. It was moments before dawn, and as the pulsing subsided, the forest was lit by the soft grey light of that time of the day and the occasional flash of lightning in the branches of the trees. Dawn was the time between times, the border times when it was easiest for things to cross over.

Britha cursed inventively for a long time for no other reason than to put off what she knew she had to do. As ban draoi she had to deal with the Otherworld, though she was of the opinion that Bress, Ettin and the Lochlannach were more than enough Otherworldly trouble.

‘Let’s just try not to sleep with them this time,’ she rebuked herself as she made her way towards where she’d seen the light.

It was a cairn, one of the circles of stones left by the Auld Folk. All the trees within a hundred feet of it had been blown over, their broken trunks pointing towards the circle. Lightning still arced between the stones.

It was known from stories told by mother to daughter and in the oak circles of the dryw that the Auld Folk would conduct rites and offer sacrifice in an attempt to appease or even curry favour with malevolent gods. Often the dryw of the Pecht would carve symbols of power onto the stones to counter the magic of the Auld Folk and their awful gods. Clearly this had not been done here.

The sense of power was palpable. The feeling of being on the edge of a storm was very strong but even now fading. She could feel the earth moving beneath her, vibrations that grew fainter even as the lightning flickered out. The sucking wind had long since subsided. At an instinctive level she knew that violence had been done to the very fabric of the land.

Britha walked around the stones slowly, looking for tracks, moving in a widening circle. In the soft earth beneath the trees she finally found signs. Two sets of tracks, both men by the length of stride and depth of the imprint, both carrying either spear or stave and, again judging by the depth, at least one of them armoured. One wore boots of a type she was used to seeing, though if she had been forced to guess she thought they looked more like the boots that the southron tribes wore, or even the warriors from the isle far to the west. The other man’s boots, the one who was unarmoured, were something else entirely. They had a hard sole of a type she had never seen before. She wished Talorcan were here. He had taught her how to track and hunt and would be able to get more from the tracks. She tried to ignore the tears welling in her eyes. She had to concentrate on what she was doing. Many of her tribe were still alive, though they might be little more than hosts for demons. The tracks headed south and east.

There’s no gain in courting trouble , Britha decided. She would continue south but keep away from the direction the tracks were going. Perhaps if she was lucky they were Otherworldly enemies of Lochlannach.

Britha found the first crow feeder some distance from the smoking village. The gaping wound was in his back yet he wore armour, though he had left his shield and spear behind when he had fled. The crows took flight at her approach. She took the time to spit on the coward’s corpse. She had a good mind to roll him into the Black River. He had no business being taken into the sky by the crows and the ravens. Then she remembered that these people worshipped a god of water.

‘If they are craven enough to bend a knee then this god gets what he deserves,’ she muttered, but she did not have the time to carry the coward’s corpse to the water, or any of the other corpses she saw.

Britha had seen her first glimpse of the Black River from the top of a cliff in the forested hills overlooking the mouth of the river. She’d only ever heard of the river in stories before. If anything it was larger than the Tatha. The north bank was a series of wooded hills and cliffs overlooking the river, which was studded with rocky islands, though the water did not look particularly black to her. More stone-grey under the overcast sky. She saw no demon ships either, though smoke rose from a number of places along the shore.

It had started to rain by the time she made it down to the village. It was the sort of constant drizzle that soon soaked through and made you feel very cold, though the cold still wasn’t bothering her.

The village was a series of crannogs connected by a network of bridges over the water. The crannogs were very similar to the roundhouses that Britha was used to: wattle and daub walls, conical thatched roofs held up by internal pillars lashed together with nettle rope. However, these crannogs were built on stilted platforms over the grey water.