Gavin Smith - The Age of Scorpio

An arrow grew from Cadwr’s head. He felt the impact. Knew something was wrong.

Across the fire he saw Edern staring at him. Behind Edern the darkness parted, revealing a strange man with skin like wood and a swollen head. Not a man but a demon! The demon had a black knife in his hand. The blade had somehow captured the flames from the fire within it. A red smile appeared on Edern’s neck as the demon drew the blade across limed flesh with no more effort than a man slicing butter. Then the darkness came for Cadwr. Confused that he could die again, he hoped he was travelling to his reward.

Two of their number were dead before the Corpse People even started to reach for spears and swords and climb to their feet. Even hardened warriors who thought themselves dead jumped at the horrible keening noise. Britha seemed to fall from the sky. After all, they hadn’t seen her leap off a nearby moss-covered boulder. Her face contorted as she made fear magics with her voice. She landed behind one of the Corpse People; the head of her spear exploded out of the man’s chest. Part of the haft followed as Britha’s momentum pushed it through and rammed the point into the ground. Rather than try and tear the spear out, Britha pulled her sickle from her belt and turned to face the closest warrior.

Teardrop had insisted that their weapons, including Tangwen’s arrowheads, were first soaked in the blood of either himself, a reluctant Fachtna or Britha. Teardrop had then burned some kind of sweet-smelling plant to make smoke and chanted at the weapons. He said that he was telling them what to do. Britha thought this nonsense. Iron knew how to kill before it was forged. The heat in the pregnant metal of the belly of the forge was just the pain of birth.

The warrior had drawn his sword. The pitted blade shone in the firelight. Southron warriors polished their blades rather than leaving them blue from the forge as they did in the north. He swung the sword two-handed at Britha, who parried, also using both hands, catching the blade in the curve of the sickle. Surprise flashed across the warrior’s face. He had not been expecting Britha to be strong enough to stop the force of his blow.

Behind Britha another of the Corpse People swung a carved stone and bone club at the back of her hooded skull. Fachtna emerged out of the darkness behind him. His angry-sounding, singing, ghost-bladed sword made a cut through the warrior from shoulder to deep in the man’s stomach.

Britha kicked the swordsman back, again surprising him with her strength and staggering him. Then she swung the sickle two-handed up into the warrior’s groin. A long way from dead, he collapsed to the ground clutching his ruined manhood. This time she used his high-pitched screams to cast her fear magics. Her first victim was still sliding down the haft of her spear.

Two warriors charged Fachtna’s back. Two arrows appeared in the back of one, Tangwen firing from the trees, her snake mask high up on her head to give a clear view as she shot. The man hit the ground, sliding in the dirt as Fachtna spun around, lifting his leg over the fallen man. The second warrior had been going for a low strike with his spear, hoping to push it into Fachtna’s bowels. The Gael brought down his leg with incredible speed and stamped on the haft of the spear, splintering it. He swung the large oval shield strapped to his left arm into the charging spearman, lifting him off his feet and then slamming him to the ground. Fachtna pulled the shield up and then drove his sword through the man’s chest and deep into the earth beneath him.

Tangwen sprinted through the woods illuminated by the beams of moonlight the thick branches of the burned trees let through. She kept the flames from the campfire to her left, trying not to look directly at it as she changed position. She knelt down, dropping the two arrows she had already taken from her quiver to the ashen earth next to her. She watched as three warriors advanced on Teardrop, two with spears and one with an axe. The swollen-headed man was holding his own, parrying the spears with his crystal-tipped staff, but the axeman had his weapon held high and was waiting for just the right moment to strike.

It didn’t matter that he had trained as a warrior as well as a shaman. It didn’t matter that he had been in battles before. Whenever he was attacked, Teardrop was always aware that he was fighting for his life. Fachtna never let the thought of defeat enter his mind, so he said, but Teardrop always felt he was one mistake from death. He always felt the rise of panic within him and had to fight not to succumb to it.

The axeman was cagey, biding his moment as the spearmen pressed him. The sound of wood and metal on wood filled the air. Both spearmen thrust at once. Teardrop swept both spearheads to the side but they pushed against the staff, trying to force his guard down. Then the axeman charged.

Tangwen had one of the arrows nocked. She loosed and then grabbed the other arrow, nocked and loosed that before the first arrow had even reached its target.

The arrow caught the axeman in the side of the head with sufficient force that the arrowhead burst out of his skull on the opposite side. The momentum of his charge kept him moving forward even as he collapsed to the ground. Another arrow appeared in the back of the neck of one of the spearmen. He hit the ground before he was aware of what had killed him. The final spearman made the mistake of glancing towards his dead friend. When he looked back at Teardrop he saw the butt of Teardrop’s staff flying towards him.

Tangwen heard the crunch of Teardrop’s staff caving in the final spearman’s face. He turned and raised a hand to her in thanks.

‘Oh, Teardrop!’ Tangwen moaned as one of the lime-covered, gore-streaked Corpse People charged him, sword raised high. Tangwen nocked another arrow but she had her own problems. Three of the enemy were sprinting into the burned forest heading straight for her. How they could see her so well she did not know, and they were running in with the fire directly behind them, which would affect her aim.

Teardrop only just managed to spin out of the way of the swordsman’s blow. He continued to spin in a full circle, and his staff caught the man in the back of his head with sufficient force to lift him off his feet. Teardrop quickly closed with the swordsman as he rolled over. All but standing over him, Teardrop slammed the butt down towards the warrior’s head. The swordsman parried the blow two-handed. Teardrop slammed it down again. The swordsman rolled to the side and then smacked the staff out of the way, knocking Teardrop off balance. The man rolled to his feet and grinned at Teardrop, drooling. Teardrop knew he was outclassed.

Teardrop pointed the staff at the swordsman and called upon the crystal. He felt it creep further into his head. He screamed as it went directly to the pain receptors in the soft matter of his brain. Suddenly he saw things in a different way, in a way that mere humans were not meant to see. He reached out with impossibly long limbs only notionally attached to him and made a tiny change before he snapped back into his own body with its agony-filled mind. The swordsman’s scream drowned out Teardrop’s. It looked as if the hilt of the enemy warrior’s sword had slipped through his hand to fuse itself into the man’s arm. Fighting the pain and the seemingly inexorable advance of the crystal tendrils in his mind, Teardrop spun again, using his staff to sweep the man’s legs out from underneath him. The agonised warrior hit the ground. Teardrop stood over him, raised his staff and put the man out of his misery.

An arrow flew through the fire-blackened wood. It took the first man in the throat. Tangwen loosed the second arrow from a standing position in a hurry. She barely had time to curse as it hit the man in the leg. The third was almost on her. She tried to distract the charging warrior by throwing the bow at him. This gave her time to grab the hatchet from her belt as the man batted the bow to one side and charged. Tangwen had long ago learned the pointlessness of trying to fight much larger opponents head on. As he reached her she sank to one knee and swung her hatchet hard at the side of his knee. She felt the blade bite deep into flesh and hit bone. The man screamed even as his sword sliced into her wood and wicker snake’s head helm and opened the side of her head. She lost hold of the hatchet as the man barrelled into her.