Gavin Smith - The Age of Scorpio

Panic.

Britha reached down and pressed the ragged nails of her thumbs against his eyes. They did not feel like eyes; it was like pushing against bronze. Then she felt burning in her arm and then her hand, a sensation like something moving beneath her skin. She watched in horror as the nails on her thumbs changed shape and colour, turning into sharp black claws not unlike Cliodna’s. She pressed them into the huge man’s eyes. The nails pierced and Britha felt something wet squirt out over her thumbs. He howled like an animal and dropped her. His hands went to his eyes.

Sprawled on the bridge gasping for air, she tried to crawl away, seeking desperately for her spear. She was trying to fend off the blackness of unconsciousness that threatened to overwhelm her from lack of oxygen.

The man was staggering on his damaged knee. He steadied himself and took his hands away from the red ruin of his eyes. Britha managed to find her spear as her breath came again. She heard the bones in his knee knit together. She turned to face him, calming herself like Feroth had taught her. Even through the blood she could make out the look of feral hatred on his face.

Yanking his sword from its scabbard and screaming incoherently, he charged her. She tried to remember everything that Nechtan and Feroth before him had ever taught her about fighting. Her spear had the benefit of reach over his sword, but as soon as he was past her guard she was dead. However, she was faster than him and, she hoped, more intelligent.

Britha glanced behind herself, making sure she knew the position of the crannog and the network of platforms and bridges, and backed away rapidly. His powerful sweeping blows were designed to intimidate, sunder shields and tear open armour. If you were fast and unencumbered they were easy to avoid.

Britha struck out again and again with the spear. Slower than her he may have been, but he used his shield well. The point of her spear just made deep gouges in its leather covering.

She feinted to his leg and followed up with a lightning-fast strike to the head that surprised even herself. She opened a cut on his face.

Ducking, avoiding and parrying blows with her spear that should have shattered the haft, she kept the perfect picture of the crannog village that she had taken from the quick glance behind her in her head. Britha was trying to make her way back to dry land.

She turned and ran, leaping across a gap that she had thought too far to jump, expecting to find herself in the water. The huge warrior was in the air right behind her. She threw the spear above her head to parry his sword as he tried to open her skull in mid-air. The blow shook the spear’s haft, sending painful shock waves down her arm.

Britha landed. The warrior’s knee caught her in the back as she did, sending her flying, but she managed to stay on her feet. She spun round to parry vicious sword blow after vicious sword blow with her spear. He was herding her, controlling her movement. This time when she tried to move around the closest crannog, he blocked her. She darted to the right, stabbing out with the spear. Somehow the huge man managed to parry the thrust and hit her with the shield again. The jarring blow knocked her off her feet and slammed her into the wall of the crannog. The structure cracked behind her. Her head lolled as she struggled to remain conscious. She felt broken inside, nauseous, not sure of where she was for a moment and she had dropped her spear.

As he screamed at her, raising his sword, he sprayed her with spittle, his breath smelling of fish, ale and decay. He brought the sword down, moving the shield that was pinning her to the wall aside at the last moment. It was enough. With new-found speed she threw herself to the platform, rolled and grabbed her spear. The Goddodin’s sword cut through the roundhouse’s thatch roof and wattle and daub wall. On her feet holding the spear, she turned and used the momentum of the movement to help power the spear thrust. The massive warrior seemed momentarily confused as to where she was. He was starting to turn when Britha drove the head of the spear into his side and up into his ribcage.

She cried out as the ash haft of the spear became burning hot. Britha let go. She had felt the demon in the weapon awaken. It wanted to bury itself in flesh and bathe in blood. It wanted to drink the champion’s death and revel in it, even if he was one of theirs now.

The man staggered towards her.

‘Die!’ she screamed at him, putting every bit of her will behind the word. Too intent on the curse, she did not move quickly enough to avoid the powerful backhanded slash of his sword. It drew a line of burning blood up her torso from right to left. She stumbled back, falling hard. Already she could feel the poison on the blade coursing through her.

The light went as he towered over her, dragging her spear in his flesh. He reached down and managed to yank it out, tearing so much of his flesh it looked like his chest had caved in. Even through the pain Britha felt horror at what she saw. The end of her spear was wriggling tendrils of bloody metal. It looked alive. The warrior dropped the spear and tumbled forward like a felled tree, crashing through the platform and into the water. Despite the pain, Britha rolled onto her side to stare into the dark water. She stared for a long time. He did not surface. He has gone to feed his god , Britha thought. She felt hot and feverish. Under her skin her flesh burned.

Britha had no idea how long she had been unconscious, but she had woken to find the wound no better, although the cold night air had gone some way towards cooling her fever. She felt like there had been a war and her body had been the battlefield.

The sword wound had been deep but not deep enough to kill. It was puckered, wide, as if the flesh had torn itself open in the path of the sword. She had managed to hold it together long enough to start a fire in the hearth of the closest crannog, using the embers held in the horseshoe fungus. It too had a carving of the fish god. She did not like the way it stared at her. She wondered if it was working against her healing magics.

She had also managed to find some mead and had washed the wound out with the boiled liquid. She had passed out screaming doing this. When she came to again, she knew she did not have much time. She was already having to swat flies away from the gash. The knife she had taken from one of the dead warriors was red in the fire now. She picked it up and felt the heat coming from the blade. At that moment she feared nothing more than the red-hot blade of the knife but she knew she had to do it in one go. If she lost consciousness the flies would get into the wound, it would fester and she would die. Even after she’d cauterised the wound, she knew her chances of surviving were not great.

She tried to surprise herself. Suddenly she pressed the knife to the wound. She wondered if her screams made the sea god himself cringe far beneath the water.

There were no flies, no crow-black wings. Perhaps they felt how unnatural she had become, tainted by the Otherworld in some way she did not understand. She felt exhausted. The wound throbbed but was the manageable side of agony. She was very hungry, frail and emaciated. Looking at her body, she had lost a lot of weight again. Skin was stretched across bone.

She ate what supplies she had left. She scavenged and found more. What she ate she did not think a normal person would even be able to contain. Dimly she realised that she had not shat since before the red beach. She began to fill out again after she had consumed enough smoked fish and salted pork, lamb and beef to feed many people. She had been eating for hours.

A thought that had occurred to her on the red beach came to her again. She had tried to force the idea from her mind. It was the darkest of magics taught in the groves only when winter came, when animal innards festooned the branches of the oaks and blood watered the land.