Gavin Smith - The Age of Scorpio

The bridges between the houses and the land were made of strong branches cut to size and could be pulled up to isolate the buildings from the shore and each other. This defence had done little good against ships and giants. More than one of the crannogs looked like the top had been torn open, presumably by one of the giants standing in the river.

The village told the same story as her own and the others on the banks of the Tatha. They had come for the people. They had taken food as well. Those warriors who resisted were quickly killed. The tracks told of people herded onto dry land, along the pebble beach and back into the water to climb into a curragh. If she was reading the tracks correctly, then they had split their forces and only one of the curraghs had attacked this village. She guessed that the attack had taken place at least two days ago.

She looked down at one of the bodies. It was headless. The body was the largest and well fed, covered in patches of scale-like woad tattoos, and was also, judging by its hands, the oldest. Britha reckoned he had been the chief. She wondered if his head now rode on Ettin’s shoulder. She hoped that Cruibne was free from that torment at least. The headless warrior’s body wore scaled armour, a small fortune in metal, but it had been left. All the scales made him look like a fish, a true servant of their sea god. Judging by his wounds he had at least tried to fight. He had died on the smooth pebbles down by the waterside. He had charged them as soon as they came ashore.

‘Treat him well, you bastard,’ she told the river.

Britha stood on the platform that circled the furthest crannog from shore. She had had to lay the bridges back down to get there, and more than a few had been broken, presumably by the giants. She stared out across the river and out to the sea to the east, hoping to see the black curraghs but they were presumably long gone.

Sighing, she turned to look through the broken wall and roof of the crannog. The entrance faced to the east, she guessed to greet the dawn. Opposite the opening she saw an altar, carved from driftwood, the crude figure of the sea god, a scaled large-eyed man. Too Britha’s eye there was something grotesque and unsettling about the figure.

Britha cast her eyes back to the beach. The smoke had not been from the crannogs. They had left the stilt village but burned the tiny fleet of fishing curraghs and log canoes. Even if they hadn’t, if the Black River was anything like the Tatha then the tides and currents were treacherous and she would need the guidance of a local to make a crossing. She would have to head further west, deeper into the kingdom of the sea god’s people, to cross. The Lochlannach would make even more distance, but they had to be going somewhere and the land could only be so big , she thought.

Britha heard movement behind her as she looked over the seemingly calm, grey surface of the river. She loosened the grip on her spear slightly and turned around.

It was one of the Goddodin, of that she was sure. He was no spear-carrier though; he had the look of a king’s champion, the kind of massively built man that Nechtan had loved to fight because they always underestimated his speed and size. ‘They won because people feared them, not because they were good fighters,’ she remembered him telling her before he killed the last champion that Finnguinne had brought onto Cirig land.Britha wondered why the man still lived. Had he been craven? The patchwork of scars that covered his torso showed that he had not been afraid of wounds in the past, but she knew that each man and woman only had so much courage and could reach a point when all of it had been harvested. He staggered towards her, dragging his longspear and shield over the wooden bridge to the platform she stood on.

‘I did not do this,’ she said. Though he would not know her tongue. The Goddodin shared the same language of the people known as the Britons, who, like the Pecht, were made up of many different tribes. All of them were gods-slaves, to hear tell of it.

The champion was not far from seven feet tall – he towered over Britha. He wore fur leggings and trews, and his naked torso was covered in intricate blue woad scales. The top of his shaved head was likewise tattooed. Britha reckoned that his god made him ashamed to fight skyclad and that the tattoos were meant to make him look like a fish, or maybe it represented armour. The dead warriors she had seen had been similarly tattooed but not as extensively.

‘I wish to talk. They attacked my people as well. Many were taken. I am tracking them.’ The man ignored her words. He just stumbled towards her, a look of slack confusion on what little she could see of his bovine features.

‘Can you hear me? Are you hurt?’ she asked, thinking that he had taken a blow to his head that had perhaps laid him low, and the Lochlannach had left him for dead. It was a shame Ettin hadn’t taken his head, she mused; the size of it would have unbalanced him.

The man turned to face her and she saw it. His eyes were a solid metallic red, and paths of blood bulged beneath his skin as if he was in the throws of riasterthae , the fabled battle frenzy that she’d oft heard of but never seen. She looked hard at him and saw fire crawling like insects throughout his body. Britha cursed.

Then the man was holding his spear one-handed, and the powerful upwards sweep that Britha only just managed to parry with her own would have splintered the haft of any normal weapon. As it was, it sent her staggering back towards the Black River. Whatever he had been, he was one of them now.

The huge man roared as he threw his large oval shield into the air and caught it by the handgrip. He did the same with the spear, getting a better grip. Britha backed towards the river. She was running out of platform, and the shaved, rounded branches beneath her feet were slippery, preventing her from finding a steady stance. The huge man would be used to the shifting platform, however, and if he had been a good slave to his sea god then the water itself could act against her.

The Goddodin warrior stabbed out at her with the spear. She dodged it, darting to the left, exactly where he wanted her to go. His leather-covered oak shield hit her with enough force to pick her up off her feet. She landed hard on the platform, feeling the branches bend beneath her. The impact drove the wind from her but she still had the presence of mind to scrabble for her spear as she tried to remember how to breathe again. Britha rolled to the side as his next spear thrust turned the branches that had been underneath her into splinters.

Grabbing her spear, Britha staggered to her feet and threw herself through the hole in the wall of the crannog. The huge warrior stabbed at her through the wall as he moved around the building to block off her escape.

Britha ran out of the crannog and made to jump into the river but changed her mind. She did not want to feed herself to the Goddodin’s sea god. Changing direction, she made for the bridge leading to the next crannog. The warrior made lies of Nechtan’s words. He was incredibly fast. The thrust missed, but then he reversed the blow and caught Britha in the back hard enough to take her off her feet and slam her, winded and struggling for breath, again, onto the floor of the bridge.

As he advanced on her, Britha’s foot hit him in the groin with a maiden’s kick. He barely seemed to notice. From the ground she had to batter aside another savage spear thrust. She lashed out with a foot again, this time at his knee. Her foot contacted with force that surprised her. She heard the knee shatter and the man staggered back. Suddenly he looked unsteady on his feet. With a roar he reached down and grabbed her round the neck. He was too close for Britha to use her spear. Britha beat and clawed at him ineffectively. He picked her up and held her high. The fingers on his massive hand squeezed, cutting off blood and air.