Gavin Smith - The Age of Scorpio

Teardrop also took a step back. In a language she was sure she shouldn’t understand, Britha heard him beg a many-faced god for protection. Even Fachtna, as his damaged features rearranged themselves back to their original positions, looked unsure.

‘Teeth and claws, and you won’t look so pretty, sword-slave,’ Cliodna spat at Fachtna. The warrior was ready to attack but his normal arrogance was absent.

‘Is this a festival of rapine?’ Britha demanded, furious at the attempted violation and appalled at what had become of her lover.

‘I wasn’t trying to—’ Fachtna started.

‘Quiet,’ Teardrop told him.

‘You spread your legs for him.’ Cliodna jerked her head at Fachtna. ‘And him!’ She jerked her head at Teardrop.

‘I didn’t!’ Britha protested.

‘Not for want of trying!’

Fachtna spared a moment to glance at Teardrop. Teardrop was aware of it, rather than saw it. That was a future conversation he wasn’t looking forward to.

‘You left me!’ Britha practically screamed, furious at herself for the tears that came unwanted to her eyes. Fachtna, while readying himself to attack Cliodna, was also listening hard to what was being said.

Realisation spread across his face like a sunrise. ‘Oh really?’ he said.

‘Be quiet, Fachtna,’ Teardrop said.

‘And what of Bress?’ Cliodna hissed, her face a mask of malice. Britha felt like she’d been slapped. Both Fachtna and Teardrop turned to look at her. She could feel the judgement in their glares without having to look at them. ‘Just can’t keep your legs closed for the Otherworld, can you?’

‘It would seem that—’ Fachtna started.

‘Fachtna!’ Teardrop shouted.

But that was it for Britha. The words were little more than magics woven to wound. She could see the intent. Anger overcame hurt.

‘What, you spurn me so you can follow me and then throw my actions back in my face? Do what you please. Look what you’ve done to yourself! You are nothing in my eyes.’ Cliodna was not the only one who could weave those magics.

‘You swived Bress?’ Fachtna demanded.

‘No. Now be quiet, boy,’ Britha answered in the voice she used on arrogant warriors. Fachtna’s conditioning to obey whatever passed for the dryw where he came from silenced him.

Cliodna was suddenly in front of Britha. She tried not to flinch, tried to meet her eyes. The black pools that she had once found deep and beautiful now seemed alien and hard.

‘Then why can I smell his stench in here?’ she asked, pointing at Britha’s head. ‘And hear him here?’ She pointed at Britha’s heart.

Britha had no answer for herself, let alone her former lover. Tears were trickling down her cheek now. She flinched as Cliodna moistened her fingertip on the tears. There was something obscene about Cliodna’s long tongue as it protruded between her teeth to lick at the tears, seeming to savour them.

‘You’re a pure-blood servant of the Muileartach, aren’t you?’ Teardrop asked quietly. There was fear in his voice.

‘Not so pure now, witch-boy. Tell me, does it hurt, slowly being eaten from the inside?’

Teardrop swallowed hard but said nothing. Fachtna was resisting the urge to look at his friend.

Cliodna turned to stare at Britha. ‘The Dark Man comes. Water and earth mean nothing. All women must feel the boots of the sky gods on their necks. It has been this way since Marduk struck down Tiamat. Run and hide while you can. I am only a weapon from this time on, nothing more.’

Cliodna turned, practically running on all fours, and leaped into the water, her sleek form making a minimal splash as she disappeared into its blackness.

‘She seemed nice,’ Fachtna said. Teardrop silenced him with a glare and looked at Britha. She turned away from him to wipe her tears. With one eye on the water, Fachtna moved across to her.

‘Look, I know—’ he started as he went to put an arm around her.

The iron-bladed knife was in her hand before he could finish. She opened his face from temple to cheek. Fachtna cried out and staggered back, holding the gash closed as he reached for his sword. Teardrop started towards them. Britha licked his blood off the blade, smearing her mouth red. The singing sword was half out of its scabbard when Teardrop reached Fachtna and grabbed his arm. He looked him in the eye, shaking his head. Fachtna was trying to control his breathing as the wound healed before Britha’s eyes.

There is much rage in him , Britha thought. She found it less than frightening. ‘I have tasted you and found you wanting, boy. Touch me again and I will curse you and your line. After I’ve gelded you.’ She turned and walked away from them.

‘You don’t have any power!’ Fachtna screamed at her.

‘Fachtna, that’s enough,’ Teardrop told the furious warrior.

‘Your power’s a lie! You hear me? Nothing more than a jest!’

Teardrop wrenched the warrior around with surprising strength. He said nothing but the look he gave Fachtna shamed the other man into silence.

She had wanted to hear the sound of wind in the branches of the trees; the sound of the water lapping against the shore just reminded her of Cliodna. Instead she got the moaning sound that the god-slaves made as they appealed to their deity.

She had to lock it away, all of it. Her feelings were too close to the surface, too ready to burst out. Revealing them weakened her in Teardrop and Fachtna’s eyes, and if she meant to use them against Bress, to help her people, then she could not allow that.

Cliodna was gone from her. Driven mad by her apparent mother, the Muileartach. Britha had to accept that she was not the same person and be prepared to fight her. Bress was pretty, and sad, and not like other warlords and warriors, but that was all. His reasons for doing what he did, his enslavement, sounded like weakness to Britha, and she could not hesitate when the time came to kill him.

The only person she could have any interest in was Teardrop, and that was only in terms of ritually taking his power.

These thoughts rampaged angrily through her mind until she used some of the techniques she had been taught in the groves to quieten her head. Britha slipped into a restless unquiet sleep to the sound of people offering themselves to an unnamed god.

She had nestled into a small cleft of earth between some stones. The moon, high and full overhead, shone a path of light across the otherwise dark water. What clouds there were, were little more than wisps. In her sleep she was aware of the light changing. Her eyes flickered to see the silhouette of a tall dark man standing over her, reaching towards her.

Then she woke up. Teardrop stood over her, leaning on his staff. The silhouette of his oddly shaped head was picked out by the light of the moon.

‘I mislike people watching me sleep, and I mislike the kind of man who would do so.’

‘Your sleep looked troubled,’ he said, his face in shadow. Britha sat up, moving errant hair away from her face.

‘Any reason it shouldn’t be? What is it?’

‘Bress?’

‘I am going to kill him,’ she said, and she meant it. Teardrop could read this from her but he could also see the song of her heart and the song of her mind conflicting in her face. However, he was prepared to take her at her word.

‘What did she mean when she asked you how it felt to be eaten?’ Britha demanded, still angry at how she had been woken. It had obviously been meant to put her on the back foot, to intimidate her. An answer was a long time coming.

‘Power consumes you eventually,’ he said, his voice flat, his face still in shadow, making him difficult to read, but she could tell there was more to it than that.

‘That depends on the—’