The Age of Scorpio (49 page)

‘That this Naga is not your enemy,’ Teardrop said.

‘I am more than a weapon. I will not use your flesh or plant my warped children in you.’

Britha was still confused but relieved that this Naga creature did not seem to wish them ill, horrifying though it might look.

Fachtna muttered something about the Naga not having a chance to defile his flesh.

‘We have met other servants – they are starting to fall,’ said Teardrop.

‘We were not her servants. We were her, or rather their, children, just like you.’

‘You speak of the gods?’ Britha asked, confused.

‘I speak of your forebears,’ the creature told her. It turned back to Teardrop. ‘I hear them fight. I hear their song as they fall. My cave keeps me safe. So far.’

‘So the Muileartach has fallen?’ Teardrop asked, sounding worried.

The creature shook its head slowly. ‘No, you would have felt it. She sleeps.’

‘So what is Bress doing with my people?’ Britha asked.

‘Bress is a servant. I have heard his master at the ceremonies of the Corpse People from the west and the demon-ridden slaves that Bress keeps. I have heard this in my dreams. I have seen the Dark Man in their fires. He comes to give birth. The anti-birth. Instead of life there will be death and Ynys Prydein will become Ynys Annwn, the isle of the dead.’

‘Who is the Dark Man?’ Fachtna asked, his hatred gone now, drawn in by the Naga’s story.

‘The Corpse People of the west call him Crom Dhubh. He will kill a man, steal the secret of birth so all will be stillborn, and then the Muileartach will fall and from her poisoned womb will come Llwglyd Diddymder.’

‘What does that mean?’ Teardrop asked.

‘I only know the songs they sing to their servants, nothing more. I do not know this Crom Dhubh, but he is old and has power.’

‘Only one man must die for this to happen?’ Fachtna asked. The Naga’s head seemed to wrinkle. Britha guessed it was frowning or concentrating.

‘This is what is sung,’ it finally said.

Fachtna turned to Teardrop. ‘Have you heard this?’

‘I have not dared open myself. Even with what little I did today, I heard the murmur of madness in the background. It sounded like ten thousand voices all struck by the moon and wretched.’

‘You must beware his followers, the Corpse People. They eat the flesh of heroes, kings and those touched by the gods. They harvest their power.’ Britha noticed the meaningful look that the Naga gave Teardrop as if trying to convey something else.

Teardrop nodded as if he understood. ‘Where is the Muileartach?’ he asked.

‘You cannot go there. The very land itself will fight you.’

‘We have no choice,’ Britha said. ‘Bress has my people.’

‘Then they are not yours any more.’

‘There is no shame in dying even though it proves you right,’ she replied.

‘You will not die. Not at first anyway. Not in the flesh.’

‘You know we will go,’ Teardrop said. The creature gave this some thought.

‘I will ask Tangwen to guide you. Do not go down the coast but instead travel the length of the Grey Father. I will tell her to take you to the lands of the Atrebates to my friend Rin, their
rhi
. That will take you closer. Do not get Tangwen killed. Her people need her strength.’

For a moment nobody said anything.

‘Thank you,’ Teardrop finally said. Britha nodded in agreement. Fachtna was quiet.

‘I’m sorry,’ the warrior finally said.

‘It saddens me to say that I think your response is probably the wisest. When you meet one of my people, don’t hesitate. Kill them. All that they were would thank you for your kindness.’ There was so much sadness in its voice, but even so Britha was surprised to see the tear that rolled down Fachtna’s cheek. The creature turned its head towards her. ‘I wish I could have been your dragon.’ She had no words for him. ‘Instead all I am is a foolish old snake who pisses in a circle to hide from the bad folk.’

‘Do you come from the Brass City?’ the creature asked as they turned to leave. Teardrop looked back and shook his head. Fachtna looked confused. ‘You carry weapons of the many-edged ones.’ For a while neither of them answered.

‘We are from the
Ubh Blaosc
,’ Fachtna told him. ‘When you sing, sing of us.’

The seeds were flung into dark rough waters. They spiralled to the seabed to burrow and grow. Strange roots dug deep into the earth, drinking energy from its heat and travelling far to take metal from its flesh. Slowly it began to rise through the silted depths.

The captives were quiet now. Ettin had taught them the value of silence when their screams were not wanted. The smell of fear still sickened him though, and he could feel eyes full of hate staring at his back. The black curragh held steady in the choppy sea as he watched its head slowly grow out of the water.

They were not quiet when they saw it, when they realised what it was, what they were to become. Ettin laid about them with his whip, his latest victim begging him and cursing him to stop from his shoulder as he did so.

They had been driving for a while but Beth was sure that she was still on the island. For one thing she couldn’t see them trying to smuggle her out past the roadblocks. They were clearly on a very rough road as she was getting kicked around in the boot of the car. She had struggled with the cuffs but they were solidly built and had been put on tightly. She still had her Balisong knife and her knuckledusters in her jacket – they hadn’t searched her before they dumped her into the boot.

The car came to a halt. She heard a gate creak open, and the car moved over what felt like soft ground. The car stopped again.

The bright light after the darkness of the boot made her squint. Markus was just a large backlit shadow reaching for her and dragging her out.
Suppress the anger
, she told herself.
Wait for the right moment
.

Her eyes adjusted to the light. Markus was pulling her towards an old greyhound racing stadium. Dilapidated and gutted, the stands surrounding the sandy track looked like they were falling apart though there were people gathering in the stands closest to her. There was a throbbing bass noise that she recognised as a generator. She presumed it was providing the power for the lights aimed at a corner of the track.

Beyond the stadium Beth could make out the lights of the police roadblock on the M275 motorway bridge that led out of the city. She had seen this area on the way into Portsmouth. Just past the stadium was the scrapyard with the rusting hulks of amphibious vehicles, submarines, tanks and the like. She was pretty sure the area was called Tipner.

Anger warred with fear as she saw McGurk in front of her. The light was behind him so she had to squint. She might have done it this time, she thought, pushed too hard. It doesn’t matter how much you can look after yourself, you’re fucked when they’ve got guns and more muscle than you. Still, it seemed a little public for an execution, what with all the people watching.

‘What do you know about my sister, you bastard?’ she demanded.

‘That she was a dirty little whore,’ McGurk said, to the sound of a few sycophantic chuckles.

‘Fuck you!’ The struggling was as instinctive as it was pointless. Markus had too tight a grip on her. She spat at McGurk but had no idea if it hit him.

‘I’m a fair man—’

‘You’re an arsehole wannabe who’s watched too many gangster movies!’ Beth interrupted. She was willing herself to be quiet but it just wasn’t happening.

Movement from the other end of the track caught her attention. Next to a brown multi-storey building, the glass in all its windows long since gone, was another gate. She guessed the scrapyard was on the other side of it. Five people were coming through the gate. Four of them were clearly guards, escorting the fifth figure that was in the middle of them all. Their size said muscle. Their body language said that they were nervous of the person they were escorting. The figure in the middle was hunched over and covered in a blanket. Something about this made her even more wary.

She looked back to McGurk. His smile was predatory and more than a little bit smug. She moved towards him but the gun came up.

‘Pussy,’ she said, trying to look him straight in the eyes despite the light.

‘Think you’re hard, do you? Even on your best day, love . . .’ He shook his head.

‘That what you need the stick for?’

‘What, this?’ he held it up, examining it. ‘You know what this is? It’s a bull cock.’

‘I can imagine you’d want a replacement.’

Even in the light she could see him frown. The four muscle and the strange covered figure were getting closer. Beth was downwind and could smell something like low tide.

‘It’s just an external manifestation, like. A reminder. So people remember who’s got the biggest swinging cock, so everything just jogs along fine. So we don’t have to make too many examples like this.’

‘Put the gun away and let’s find out.’

‘You’re fucking entertainment. Get used to it.’

McGurk looked to Markus, the gun still levelled at Beth. Markus unlocked the cuffs and started to back away as Beth put her hand into the pocket of her jacket as she grabbed his collar. Markus tried to turn but Beth’s hand came out wearing brass knuckles. She punched him in quick succession on the side of his head, all the while moving back, dragging him by his collar, keeping him off balance. By the second punch the tips of the knuckles were red, by the fourth or fifth so was the side of Markus’ head. The sound of metal hitting bone and flesh resonated around the stadium.

‘Hey!’ McGurk shouted, brandishing his pistol. Beth let Markus fall to the sand. She rubbed her nose, smearing blood on her face as she turned to stare at McGurk.

‘You’re about to do something bad to me. I won’t come after you because you’re a pussy who hides behind a gun.’ She saw McGurk’s mouth tighten in anger. ‘So either shoot me or get on with it.’

McGurk laughed. He looked down at Markus’ unconscious body, blood reddening the sand around his head.

‘Fuck him. Stupid cunt should’ve searched you.’

‘Yeah, he might have found this.’ Beth produced the Balisong knife from her other pocket and flipped it open. McGurk looked at the tempered blade as it caught the light and then back at Beth.

‘I like you. For some northern sub-literate you’ve got a pair, but that won’t help.’

‘Fuck you,’ Beth said mildly and then turned to look at the people milling in the stands. Some looked wealthy; others didn’t. Some had hunger for whatever entertainment this was written all over their faces. Others seemed nervous. ‘And fuck your parasite friends.’ Then she turned away from him to watch the group heading towards her. She didn’t realise it, but simply ignoring McGurk had been the biggest insult she’d paid him. She didn’t even register McGurk striding towards one of the stands.

The four guards were each holding the end of a chain that led under the blanket. They got about fifteen feet away from Beth and stopped. The smell was unbearable. She saw they all wore surgical masks. She wished she had one.

They clicked some release on their ends of the chains and heard what she guessed were manacles springing open under the blanket. The escorts dragged the manacle-ended chains towards themselves and ran. Now Beth was really worried. She wondered if McGurk was crazy enough to make her fight a gorilla or a small bear.

She had expected some kind of growl. What she got was a low, wet, bubbly, rasping rattle.

The hands that grabbed the edge of the foul-looking blanket weren’t right. The skin was pale, wet and large amounts of it were peeling. There were webs of skin between the fingers, and what little she could see of the forearms also suggested more flaps of skin. It was the fingers that unnerved her the most. Each of them ended in long black hooked nails.

The blanket was torn off. Beth found herself retreating. She was reasonably sure it had once been human. She was surer that human flesh shouldn’t look like that.

Its flesh was pale to the point of being a faint blue colour, like a corpse left in water. It was hunched over as if the ragged long coat that it was wearing covered a multitude of twisted deformities. Its hair was a stringy dark mess, much of it missing, and its eyes were milky white with no irises or pupils to speak of. There were slits at its neck. The slits seemed to be moving. Beth couldn’t shake the feeling that they were gills and suddenly she didn’t like living so close to the sea.

She felt herself back into something. She had back-pedalled all the way to the stands. Someone shoved her forward. She turned to grab them, shove them between her and whatever the thing was, but she saw McGurk pointing the gun at her. She looked around for ways out, but McGurk had known what he was doing. There were people on each gate, and if she made it to a wall without being shot they’d catch her before she could climb over. Her only way out was through whatever this thing was.

She moved forward cautiously, showed it the blade.

‘We don’t have to do this, but if you come close I will fucking cut you, okay?’ Beth found herself reminded of conversations she’d had in prison.

It didn’t seem to be paying any attention to her. Its head was cocked to one side as if listening to something. The odd thing was, you took away the skin problems and deformities, she reckoned the thing would look like a very normal guy. It was difficult to gauge its age, but perhaps forties or fifties.

It didn’t move like a middle-aged man, however. Suddenly it darted forward, clawing at her. Beth felt a tug as she danced out of its way, the hook-like nails tearing through her leather, ripping it as she pulled away. It had moved so fast.

‘My jacket!’

Retaliation was more instinct than anything else. The knife was mostly for show, to frighten. She had killed someone once and was in no hurry to repeat that. However, the ferocity of its attack took her by surprise and before she knew it she was hammering the blade up into the side of its head. She stabbed three times in quick succession, felt the impacts down her arms, heard the sound of bone breaking under the blade, felt something wet on her hand as she struggled to hold on to it. She pulled the Balisong out and swung with the knuckles, catching it in the jaw with enough force to send it to its knees. Beth stepped back and kicked it hard in the chest, knocking it over.