The Defiler (16 page)

"Looked?" Sláine said sceptically, not for a moment believing that the sight of something, no matter how hideous, could be enough to still a human heart.

"To see her was to embrace death, warrior. Make no mistake, the essence of the Goddess is mighty, her dark side far worse than anything Carnun could inspire. Carnun is a parasite on her flesh, the Night Bringer
is
her flesh - an apparition of it. What in the world could hold more power? Or more threat? The onlookers perished, their souls drawn to join the hunt for eternity."

"Until people stop recounting stories of the wild hunt?"

"Exactly. Until that day, they are bound to the endless winter night, running at her side in search of other souls to join the chase. The Morrigan's blessing was two-fold; on the one hand, she gave them the Night Bringer, on the other she gave them to the Night Bringer."

"I am not sure I follow."

"They worshipped the essence of the night. The Night Bringer became their precious deity, the moon her symbol. In return, the Morrigan gave
them
to the night and the moon. That was the duality of her gift, the curse that nestled in beside it. When the moon rides full in the sky the Moon-Torn children of the Night Bringer fade to nothing. They become invisible, save by the light of the moon itself when they are transformed, like the ghosts of the hunt they worship, appearing ethereal, insubstantial."

"That's... that's..."

"Barbaric? Evil? Hateful? Vile? Inhumane? Yes, it is all of these, and more, for the curse is handed down from generation to generation, the children suffering for the failings of the fathers with no way to break the cycle save for their story to stop being told. And in telling you this I merely prolong their suffering. As long as there are lips to blather they will suffer the torment of the moon."

Sláine put his head in his hands, scratching at his scalp as he tried to think. "How could a spirit being whose visage brings death come into possession of a piece of the Cauldron of Rebirth?" But he knew the answer even before he had finished the question: the Morrigan. Her fingers were all over this latest facet of the quest. He was being bullied into a course of action he had no control over; they all knew it but none of them mentioned the way seemingly random events were actually intertwined if you scratched beneath the thin patina of chance.

Was it any coincidence that the Crone was responsible for the curse that created one of the guardians of the fragments of her monstrous offspring's gaol?

Almost certainly not.

He was beginning to believe that there was no such thing as happenstance. There was a purpose to everything, no matter how innocuous it appeared to be; a guiding hand that shaped events to its need, want and desire. The Morrigan herself had confessed that she had walked paths of various futures - how could anyone with such knowledge not manipulate the here and now to their best interests, having seen how they would play out? The temptation to meddle would be too great, surely? Which all served to confirm his suspicion; they were being manipulated by the Crone. It was all part of that complex web of hers.

He didn't give the druid a chance to answer: "The Moon-Torn... their curse makes them invisible every full moon?"

"That is the nature of the curse, yes."

Sláine nodded, thinking it through. "And the Night Bringer comes when? Every month? Samain? Beltane? Once a year? A decade?"

"According to the saga of the Moon-Torn, the Huntress rides through Navan on the Night of the Questing Moon."

"Only once a year?"

Myrrdin nodded.

"Does it not disturb you that
chance
has delivered us to this very spot in time for us to witness the wild hunt as it rides through? It feels too convenient."

"Morrigu lead us to this place, this time. She pledged to aid me, to deliver to me the champion Danu needed for her salvation. You are that champion. These events transpiring now will temper you, not break you. I have faith."

"You just spent three hundred years inside a tree," Ukko mumbled, "so you won't mind if I don't share your optimism, will you?"

The Night of the Questing Moon was the holiest of holy nights for the Moon-Torn.

The heather leant the night its rich fragrance. The three travellers walked side by side, following the moon-shadows towards the wooden wall of the hillside fortification. The air was brisk, with the chill of winter to it. The serrated edge of the spiked wall sheared across the top of the mountain; with the moon at its back, it looked as though the rocky pinnacle had been sliced clean through, exposing Navan as its stony heart. Behind the wall, the stone buildings of the fortress proper looked tiny set against nature's might. Sláine needed no such reminder of the fleeting quality of life against the permanence of the mountain. He had sworn an oath to be the mountain, to be the river. That was what it meant to be Sessair. One life was brief, a mote in the eye of the time. The sum of lives, of generations added upon generations, of wisdom learned and shared; that was to be the mountain, that was what it meant to endure, to make a mark upon the world. To live. There was a durability to that succession that the man-made fort could never hope to emulate.

Even so, beneath the fortress they were little more than ants marching across the fields of heather and gorse.

The moon was a silver-white orb that owned the sky. Wraiths of breath coiled in front of his face. They curled lazily into the air above his head, climbing high before they finally dissipated, becoming one with the night.

A storm was brewing in the western skies.

Sláine studied the cloud formations: a warrior of the Red Branch learned to understand the skies, to read the mood of the weather. It was a poor battle king who led his men into combat with the elements against him. Mortal foes were enough. This was no ordinary storm front. The heavens roiled with angry life, thunderheads rolling in, and yet where he stood there was not so much as the faintest breeze to stir the air.

Myrrdin had noted the peculiar weather patterns as well. The druid looked pensive.

"The Night Bringer's doing?" Sláine asked, instinctively reaching for the familiar weight of Brain-Biter. The axe was slung on a leather thong across his back. He began loosening the leather ties.

"Possibly, or it is just a storm. Not everything that happens is down to some sinister purpose, champion. The world moves no matter what we do, what we plan; the sun rises, the rains fall."

"You don't believe that for a moment, do you? This is all a part of the Morrigan's scheming, Myrrdin. The more I see the more I know for sure and certain that nothing happens by accident in this realm."

"Well, there was the time I knocked up that barmaid back in Lundin," Ukko grinned, winking lasciviously at Sláine. "That
was
an accident, believe me."

"No, that was a miracle," said Sláine. "A miracle in that she let your scabby little backside anywhere
near
her in the first place."

"Hey! I'll have you know that plenty of women come looking for some Ukko-loving. They don't all swoon at the sight of your rippling muscles and your rugged jawline. Some of them like a little-"

"Runt?"

"That's
not
what I was going to say," Ukko grumbled, folding his arms and turning his back on Sláine.

"Oh I know, how about throbbing dwarfhood?" Sláine offered helpfully.

"Now you are just being stupid, I'm not talking to you."

"Suit yourself," said Sláine. "So, druid," Sláine turned back to Myrrdin, "how are we going to find these cursed tribesmen?"

"I think the Moon-Torn have found us," Myrrdin said. Sláine followed the direction of his gaze. At first he could see nothing; then, as the cloud that had obscured the moon passed, the shimmering naked silhouettes of six ethereal figures slowly solidified enough for him to distinguish their sex. The moon's silver radiated within them, making the six women luminous. Sláine stared - and knew he was staring. Their curves were beautiful, subtle and rounded, fulsome and lithe, their breasts proud and sagging, small and pendulous, their hair close-cropped, long and luxuriant, braided and cascading in loose curls; between them the six women were everything a red-blooded man could have possibly desired. He felt his blood stir, fired by their grace as they moved - they didn't walk, they ghosted over the ground, glided as though floating a few inches above the heather - down the hillside away from them.

The Morrigan's taunt returned to him, mocking him for being a carnal being, for worshipping the flesh and the desire and need of meat, and his promise to himself to change, but be pure in his devotion to the Goddess.

Ukko's face lit up when he saw them. He rubbed his hands together gleefully and started to follow them but before he could manage five eager steps the druid's hand clamped down on his shoulder to restrain him. He turned to look at Sláine for support but getting none seemed to shrink in on himself, crestfallen.

"Not so fast, little one. By your master's admission nothing in this realm happens by chance. These comely creatures appear to guide us, not some goat-like old man with a withered staff beckoning us to follow. Let us think, and not blunder into some ill-conceived trap like lusty lads driven by our cocks. Let your big head do the thinking for once."

"I was," Ukko's grin spread as he cupped his crotch with a grubby hand. "You're worse than Sláine, do you know that? You take all the fun out of life, old man." He screwed his face up distastefully. "Whatever happened to sucking the marrow out of life, eh? Six naked lovelies on a hill, breathe it in, man. You could smell their lust on the wind."

"Exactly, my hormonal little friend, and how better to bait a trap than with some honey?"

"Well, fine, but don't pretend you've never let your animal out to play. Everyone needs a little honey every now and again."

"Look," the druid commanded, his voice taking on an edge of authority Sláine had never heard before. That one word gave a hint to the enormous well of power that lay within the man. He turned in time to see the Moon-Torn women fade to nothing as another cloud obscured the moon. "That is what we face, dwarf, the cursed women of the wild hunt, not some naked lovelies on a hill as you so colourfully put it. What possible use could they have for your flesh? Think. No, I will tell you, they would feed you to the Night Bringer's black dogs. Is your lust worth
that
fate?"

"Well, I'd enter eternity with a smile on my face, which is more than can be said for a lot of deaths I can imagine," Ukko said, "but I get your point, no need to belabour it. Naked women bad. I understand. Let's do what we have to do and get out of here, shall we? It's getting bloody cold and to be brutally honest I'd rather be tucked up in my bedroll than standing out here in the middle of this blasted moor."

It was getting considerably colder, Sláine realised. The temperature of the night air had dropped considerably in the few minutes since the Moon-Torn women had appeared to them. The falling temperature presaged the stirring of the breeze, which quickly became a more insistent, bludgeoning wind that swept across the fields of heather.

The sounds came next, tribal drums pounding out mystic rhythms.

Sláine gestured for the others to follow, and loped towards the sound of the drums. The heather came up around his ankles, masking the treacherous ground. He stumbled several times, barely keeping his balance. He was not a graceful hunter, but he was a swift one. On the crest of the hill he dropped into a tight crouch, aware even as he did so, that he presented the bright moon with enough to betray himself to the Moon-Torn in the valley below.

He needn't have concerned himself. They were not scouring the hillside for the interlopers.

For the heartbeats it took to exhale a slow shallow breath, he thought the valley was empty. Then the first jag of lightning forked, three spears lancing down into the earth, turning night momentarily into day. The lightning revealed hundreds of glittering spectres all across the field. They moved with a haunting rhythm, men and women locked in a wild sexual dance that pounded with a base, raw, animalistic passion. Scores of men spun and twisted, their sex rigid, their movements oddly beautiful as they succumbed to the primal cadences of the drums, throwing their hands above their heads then stooping moments later into a tight stalking crouch before launching themselves again, over and over in this mimicry of the hunt.

It was a breathtaking sight.

The moonlight brought them to life - as the storm gathered and the thunderheads ghosted across the moon they slipped into insubstantiality and blended with the night, simply gone.

Myrrdin and Ukko joined him on the hill.

"The dance is a celebration of the moon herself, a benediction to the Night Bringer, and, more than anything, a eulogy for the lives they have lost in her service," the druid whispered. "They ingest a distillation of ipomoea alba seeds, or as they are more commonly called, moonflowers. The seeds are mildly hallucinogenic, inducing a trance state that the celebrants believe brings them closer to the Huntress, allowing them to call her - that is the dance they are doing."

As though in response to the frantic gyrations of the Moon-Torn the gathering storm strengthened, the wind swirling around them until a few minutes later it was fearsome, battering at them as though by sheer elemental might it could bully them down the slope.

Lightning crashed, searing the sky with ozone. Thunder rolled over the hills, folding in on itself until it gathered into the sky's own primal scream.

Sláine watched the Moon-Torn's ritual, this time struck by the humanity of it: the dance encapsulated all that it meant to be human, from birth to death re-enacted with sheer frenetic joy. Around the circle women waited, watching their men. One by one they reached out, drawing a lover from the dance. Their coupling was every bit as wild and desperate as their dance had been. Sláine felt an uncomfortable arousal at their base display of sensuality and sexuality. Beside him Ukko's face brimmed over with lust. Even the druid seemed touched by the wild dance's euphoria.