The Beauty of Destruction (47 page)

The orbital defences, the fleet, all of them had left the
Basilisk II
alone, presumably because they thought that Ludwig was escorting them somewhere, but Talia remained in charge of the craft.

‘Em …’ Talia said when she saw the machine Elite hovering in the
Basilisk II
’s lounge. They were stationary, close to one of the less visited beacons in Red Space. ‘Did we get the information?’

‘Yes,’ Vic answered.

‘Okay. Can we keep him?’ Talia asked.

‘No!’ the Monk and Vic said at the same time.

Vic was pretty sure that Talia didn’t fully appreciate just how dangerous the augmented alien killing machine was.

‘But, I mean, it’s going to be easy now. If we have the information we need, I mean. The flying bin can destroy anything that gets in our way.’

Vic stared at her, appalled. ‘“Easy?” Why would you say something like that?’ The ’sect wondered when he had become so superstitious. It was pleasingly human.

Scab was stretched out in an armchair, a cigarette with a long ash tail hanging precariously off it held between two fingers. He had stripped to the waist but still wore his hat and braces. He was immersed, looking at Ertl’s mindscape.

Finally Scab emerged from the immersion. The Monk, giving Ludwig a wide berth, moved closer to Scab.

‘Well?’ she asked. ‘Do you know the way to the Ubh Blaosc?’

‘No,’ Scab said. Now Vic knew his ex-partner had lost it. Scab was smiling.

34

Ubh Blaosc

The inevitability of the fall. More like riding over a cliff than into a lake through ice. The water was gone. Everything seemed to slow down, thanks to the gifts of the blood she had drunk from Britha. The instinct was to hold onto the chariot but, thinking quicker than she ever had before, Tangwen knew that would just mean she would join the collision of horseflesh, wood and metal. She leapt off the chariot.

Everything was moving too quickly for her to process. What she saw in the air, over the Lochlannach warriors, made no sense. Below the ice was another world wreathed in blue fire. A stone circle, but not the one she had seen in the crystal clear water during her previous visit to Oeth. There were dark armoured shapes just beyond the light. She had seen the blank-faced figure with the single serpent eye, and somehow she had known it was Selbach. He had been cursed by the magics of her Father’s people. All the Lochlannach were trying to protect him.

She practically landed on several of the demon-possessed warriors, carrying two of them to the ground. Once the impact would have broken her body. Now she rolled. She felt the impact of the chariot and its horse team, an explosion of dirt, screaming horseflesh, the mangled bodies of the Lochlannach.
Britha?

She had less than a moment to think. Her body was already healing the damage she had taken in the fall. She kicked out, her foot contacting with one of the Lochlannach, and rolled away from him and onto her feet. She still had her bow in hand. She grabbed at an arrow from her quiver. It was broken. She grabbed at another as one of the Lochlannach tackled her around the waist, picking her up off the ground and slamming her into one of the stones. She screamed out as her hair and exposed skin burned. The stone was hot. Her furs were smouldering. She heard shouting in the language of the Goidel, and another language she understood but didn’t recognise. There was screaming from above. She saw the monstrous burning spear that had slain the giant speeding towards them, and above the spear the toothed roof of the cavern Oeth was in. Cracks appeared in the rock far above them and raining stone crushed several of the Lochlannach. The screaming spear was caught in a net of lightning. This only seemed to make it angry. Tangwen dropped her bow and arrow. She grabbed the hilt of her dagger and dragged it from its sheath. She rammed the chalice-re-forged blade into the Lochlannach’s head. Her furs and hair caught fire. The Lochlannach dropped her and she shoved him back so she could move away from the stone. She dodged a spear-thrust from another Lochlannach. She closed with the man, drawing her hatchet as she did. He dropped the spear and reached for his sword, but the hatchet impacted into the side of his face. Tangwen kicked him into two more of the Lochlannach who were trying to get to her. She dropped the hatchet and the dagger, reached back for her bow, at the same time finding an unbroken arrow in her quiver by touch. Then she charged the Lochlannach.

‘Not the women!’ a familiar voice shouted in the unfamiliar tongue. Tangwen was moving too fast to register the pain of the flames yet. The Lochlannach had formed a circle around Selbach, protected by their large shields, bristling with spears. She spun, dancing past the spearheads, getting inside their reach. Something had been done to Selbach, something bad, but more obviously something important to Crom’s plans. She leapt up. Her foot touched the rim of one of the Lochlannach’s shields. She bent her knee and then threw herself into the air. The cavern, the falling rock, the ice and the water above her disappeared, and with it the blue fire, and suddenly she was falling up into a twilight sky. Panic came close to overwhelming her. The bowstring was already drawn back. She loosed. Then she was flying back towards the ground and Lochlannach blades. She saw Britha close to the stones, curled in a ball, trying to protect her stomach. The arrow took Selbach in the head. He disappeared under his guards. Lightning arced out, joining the stones to the Lochlannach warriors, their flesh blackening, their eyes cooking, their armour fusing in an instant. They collapsed in rows beneath her as she hit the ground. She tried to burrow her way through the smoking dead, to grab at the earth so she would not fall into the sky beneath her. Above her the living spear screamed, and
tried to force its way down through
the lightning to kill her and all else.

A figure
walked between the stones, a woman in the robes of
a
dryw
. Tangwen wanted to spit and make the sign
against evil, but she didn’t dare let go of
the earth lest she fall into the sky. The
dryw
wore the skull of a horse on her head. It
covered her face. She was the
L
á
ir Bh
á
n
, the White
Mare, the horse that was death and winter. A flickering
light glowed within the skull. She carried a staff in
one hand, her other was raised up towards the spear. Tangwen
could feel the magics in the air on her skin.
It was like the moment before a storm. She was
still burning. Tangwen rolled onto her back. Panic nearly overwhelmed
her again as she found herself looking down into the
sky below her, and at the god whose wings blocked
out the sun.

With difficulty she managed to put the
flames out. The lightning had gone, though she still saw
remnants of its light in her vision. The spear was
no longer in the sky above them. She crawled through
the smoking bodies, feeling little of the pain of her
burned back, clutching at the earth, making her way towards
Britha. Tangwen grabbed one of the Lochlannach’s swords as
she went. She tried not to look at the wreckage
of the chariot. The horses had, mercifully, been hit by
the lightning as well. The blonde charioteer’s body lay
broken, her limbs arranged at horrible angles. Tangwen made it
to Britha, and all but lay across her, sword at
the ready to defend her pregnant friend. Trying not to
look down into the sky.

The figure that walked slowly
towards them looked too bulky for a man, even a
man wearing armour. He was clad in thick plates of
ornately decorated metal, the likes of which Tangwen had never
seen before. His helm was that of a metal raven,
and it covered his entire head. She screamed as the
helm folded away from his face, over his head and
disappeared into his armour, seemingly of its own accord. His
face was in shadow, but it looked like he had
long, dark, braided hair, with feathers, bones, and other items
woven into it. Behind him the
L
á
ir Bh
á
n
held the
writhing spear in one hand. The spear was shrinking, as
other armoured figures helped wrestle the weapon into a case.

‘
Are you well?’ The familiar voice again. She pointed the
sword towards him. ‘I mean you no harm, and you
are not going to fall into the sky.’ He knelt
down, his features in light now.
The entire bottom part of his face was painted with black dye, and there were red and white markings painted around his eyes.

Tangwen’s eyes flicked to the
L
á
ir Bh
á
n
. She had walked to the centre of the circle, and was kneeling over Selbach’s corpse, knife in hand. There was a wet crunch as the horse-skulled figure cut into Selbach’s head.

‘Teardrop?’ Tangwen asked, her eyes welling with tears.

He shook his head sadly. ‘That is my name, but I am not the man you knew. When we die we come back in the spring.’ He smiled at her. ‘I think that both of you have wounds that need seeing to.’ Tangwen could feel Britha uncurling beneath her. She moved so the
ban draoi
could sit up.

‘My child,’ was all Britha said.

‘We will see to it,’ Teardrop said.

‘Like you did the last one?’ Britha demanded. Suddenly the
ban draoi
had a dagger in her hand.

‘That was … regrettable,’ Teardrop said. He glanced behind him at the horse-skulled
dryw
.

‘Anyone who tries to harm or steal her child, I’ll kill them,’ Tangwen spat, sounding more fierce and less afraid than she felt.

Teardrop just nodded, though Tangwen suspected that he wasn’t particularly worried. She felt a thrill of fear run through her as the
L
á
ir Bh
á
n
approached.

‘Just kill her,’ the horse-skulled
dryw
said. Her voice was not that of a woman. It was strange and full of authority and hate. She held something dripping in the hand not holding her staff.

‘She is with child,’ Teardrop said, exasperation in his voice. The
L
á
ir Bh
á
n
said nothing. The moments stretched out uncomfortably. Light flickered within the skull around the impenetrable black eye sockets. Then the
dryw
removed the skull from her head. She was one of the oldest people that Tangwen had ever seen. Her skin was like leather, but she still looked vital and full of life despite the sheen of sweat covering her face.

‘Whose child?’ she demanded. Her voice sounded normal now, though still angry.

‘Fachtna’s,’ Britha lied. Tangwen tried not to react. It wasn’t often she heard fear in the northern woman’s voice. Falsehood was a little more common. The
dryw
studied her. ‘We’ll harvest this child and then she burns.’ Tangwen was aware of Britha tensing, but she said nothing.

‘I do not know how things are among the sons and the daughters of Mael Duin, Grainne, but among the Croatan there are laws,’ Teardrop told the old woman.

‘We have laws against murdering a
drui
, for example,’ the
dryw
, apparently called Grainne, spat.

‘Fachtna killed Sainrith,’ Britha told the other woman evenly. ‘And I killed him for it, and you will give me my daughter back because there is no law that says you had the right to take her.’ Teardrop had sagged as he heard of Fachtna’s death.

‘She had her part in it!’ Grainne said.

‘I was asleep when it happened. He killed Sainrith trying to stop you both from stealing my child!’ Britha shouted at the other
dryw
. Teardrop held up his hands.

‘Peace, please.’ He turned to Grainne. ‘They are under my hospitality. Don’t we have more important things to do this night?’ He nodded at the bleeding thing in Grainne’s hand. It looked like a stone of some kind.

‘I will lodge a complaint with the Medicine Societies.’

‘That is your right,’ Teardrop said.

‘And by coming here they have killed us,’ Grainne said. ‘The changed one sang his mindsong. The Naga now know where we are.’

It had taken some convincing but Tangwen finally knew that she was not going to fall into the sky when she stood up. There was a remarkable difference between what she knew, and what all her senses were screaming at her. She was walking very carefully on the ground. She had retrieved her weapons, though re-forged in the chalice or not, they looked small and frail in comparison to the oversized spears, swords, clubs, hammers, and axes the bulky armoured figures bore. Some of the armour was decorated in ways similar to the metalwork of the Gauls, the Goidels, and her own people. Other armour, like Teardrop’s, she didn’t recognise the patterns of at all, though parts of the decoration seemed to represent beasts; some she recognised, others she didn’t. Those who wore the more strangely decorated armour were darker skinned, and had dark hair. She assumed that they were from the Croatan, the same tribe as Teardrop.

Tangwen had cried out again when Teardrop’s armour had folded away, like his helmet had, into a small metal pack attached to the back of his belt. Underneath his armour he wore deerskin leggings, soft-soled boots, and a loincloth. His shoulders, upper arms, and parts of his back and chest were decorated with tattoos that just formed shapes. If they represented anything, then Tangwen couldn’t work it out.

The circle of stones was nestled in the mouth of a canyon surrounded by sandy coloured rock. An outcrop gave views over a vast plain that reminded her a little of the reeds in her marshes at home, though without the hidden, and sometime treacherous, water channels.

They had been given food, which Tangwen hadn’t wanted to eat until she had assurance that it came with no obligation. It was known that you shouldn’t take food from the fair folk. After watching Britha get stuck in, however, she had followed suit. It had been delicious, filling, and had helped her body heal itself.

Teardrop had touched Britha’s belly and closed his eyes, concentrating. ‘I think if you were a normal mortal you would have lost the child by now,’ he had told Britha ruefully. ‘But all is well, as far as I can tell. Though you would do well to let a
drui
, or a medicine woman, examine you.’ Britha had just shaken her head.