Gavin Smith - The Age of Scorpio

Tangwen found herself lying on the floor fighting pain, nausea and unconsciousness, the side of her head wet, sticky and covered in dirt. She managed to push herself up as the man rolled towards her. She threw herself on him, grabbing the stone dagger from his belt and ramming it into his mouth, breaking teeth and, with a scream, pushing it up into his brain. The corpse bucked under her and then was still. She caught her breath.

The kick caught Tangwen in the side of her chest, picked her up off the body of the man and slammed her into a tree, burned bark crumbling under the impact. Then he was on her, hands around her throat, bestial look on his face as he squeezed the life out of her. It was the one she had shot in the leg. She dimly wondered why he hadn’t run her through with sword or spear. As things got darker, as she lost the fight for breath, as she clawed at him, she was horribly aware of his stench – of decay and the corpses he tried so hard to emulate.

The blade of the sickle dug deep into the warrior’s stomach as Britha wrenched it upwards. His war cry choked out and was replaced by the screams of the eviscerated. Britha yanked the sickle out. She staggered back as another of the Corpse People seemingly appeared out of nowhere, charging her, axe held high. Sidestepping, she fish-hooked the axeman in the face with the sickle and used his momentum to guide him into the fire. There was an explosion of sparks as the screaming man rolled around in the flames, his hair and trews catching fire. It looked like he was writhing around in the shadow of the Dark Man. As if his own god was consuming him. Good , Britha thought.

Wetness sprayed her face and the fingers around her throat fell away. Tangwen opened her eyes and saw Teardrop standing over her. The black-bladed knife he held in his hand was dripping. He raised a foot to kick the now-dead strangler off her.

Fachtna moved the shield rapidly between the blades of the two swordsmen. The shield shook with each impact. A third warrior stabbed at him with a spear. He turned the point with his sword and then swung to counter-attack. The spearman brought the haft of his weapon up to block. The singing sword cut through the wood and sliced the warrior open diagonally from hip to shoulder. Fachtna sidestepped rapidly, knocking the falling man towards the swordsmen. Fachtna bisected one of the warriors’ heads as he tried to move out of the way of his dead companion. As the other one charged him, Fachtna ducked behind his shield and rammed it forward, putting all his force behind it, battering the man’s sword strike out of the way and knocking him back. Fachtna reached around the front of the shield with his sword and slashed the blade across the man’s legs. Flesh just seemed to open up at the touch of the ghostly blade. The man fell into Fachtna’s shield and the Gael braced as he slid down it. Fachtna finished him by running the blade through the back of his neck.

Britha’s blood was up. Breathing hard and covered in blood, she wanted to fight more. Kill more. She looked around. All were still or almost dead, their fight long gone. Disappointed, she let the dripping blade of her sickle hang at her side. The burning man launched himself out of the fire, axe held high. Britha started to turn. Something passed her face, brushing against it. An arrow appeared in the burning axeman’s mouth, and he fell to the ground. Britha became aware of the smell of burning flesh mixed with the coppery tang of blood and the smell of ruptured bowels. She turned and looked into the woods. Tangwen was lowering her bow. The blood that caked the other woman’s face looked black in the moonlight. Teardrop was standing next to her. Britha could make out both perfectly despite the darkness. She nodded to the hunter.

The figure was still there watching them from the fire. ‘I know you,’ it said. Somehow Britha could feel the words in her blood. She did not want to look at the figure. There was something wrong with it. It hurt her head to look. His shape, though the shape of a man, did not make sense at some fundamental level.

‘Get up!’ she snapped at the blood-splattered and terrified boy the Corpse People had been about to sacrifice.

‘You are close to being one of us,’ the figure continued. Impossibly deep, its voice seemed to reverberate inside her. She tried not to stumble. She reached for the boy, who was shaking uncontrollably, and after several attempts she managed to pull him to his feet.

‘You have to go to your people,’ she told him. It was useless. The boy did not understand her words.

‘He has no people,’ the voice said. There was no maliciousness there: it was a simple statement of fact. It earned the figure a glare from Britha despite the nausea-inducing pain that lanced through her head as she did so.

‘Is your power to mock us through the flames?’ she demanded.

‘I have no power. None of us do. Our mistake is to believe that we are something when we are less than nothing.’

‘Crawl on your stomach if you will, but do not try to drag us down there with you,’ Britha shouted.

‘I apologise. I have misled you. I am not talking of my beliefs. This is knowledge, simply a case of understanding my place in things and yours.’

Teardrop was striding towards the fire, the hood of his cloak pulled up.

‘Release my people and you can do what you will. We will trouble you no more.’ Britha sensed and tried to ignore Fachtna glaring at her.

‘I don’t know or care who your people are. I want to know you better. Bress wants to know you better. Death wants to know you better. I can promise you the fulfilment of every desire you have and those you do not know before the end comes.’

Britha tried to suppress the images of Bress that came to her mind, how they made her feel. The Dark Man was there as well, watching, his presence not unwanted.

‘I desire my people released.’

Teardrop stared into the fire. Fachtna joined him, sword in hand. The warrior had put his cloak back on and pulled the hood up.

‘Can you see it?’ Fachtna asked.

‘I see it,’ Teardrop said quietly. Fachtna swung his blade into the fire. There was an explosion of sparks. The figure warped and then was gone. Glowing embers filled the night air. Britha turned to look at the pair.

‘What were you looking for?’ she demanded.

‘A crystal blackened by the fire,’ Teardrop muttered. ‘And you know better than to talk to them.’

‘Not if she’s swiving them,’ Fachtna muttered.

Britha bit back an angry retort. ‘If you saw it,’ she said to Teardrop instead and then pointed at Fachtna, ‘how did he know where to strike?’

Neither of them answered. There was the wet sound of iron hitting flesh and the sound of bones breaking. All of them turned to look at Tangwen as she struck again and again at a corpse. Finally satisfied, she moved on to the next one and repeated the process. Feeling their eyes on her, she looked up. One whole side of her head was covered in blood.

‘We break their bones so when they rise again all they can do is crawl,’ she told them and then sat down hard, holding the side of her head. Teardrop moved quickly to her and knelt down to examine the wound. As far as Britha could make out, the serpent had given some of its people the blood magic, but it was not as strong as hers and certainly not as strong as Teardrop and Fachtna’s.

Fachtna looked out over the trees. They were heading down into a plain where there was little in the way of woods. It looked like many of the trees had been cleared long ago to make way for farmland. Britha had glimpsed the once-fertile plain earlier in the day when they had been in the trees trying to find a way past the patrols of Corpse People. She had never seen anything like the scale of the farming here. It must be able to feed thousands , she had thought.