The Defiler (20 page)

"For the honour of the Eighth!" his cry echoed all around the beach. It was matched by a roar from the hillside as Sláine's spectre launched itself from the giant's stair into the thick of the fighting. It was too late for Gwalchmai; in damnation he found the freedom Myrrdin had promised them. The Huntress's blade cleaved into his plumed helmet, driving deep into his skull. His body spasmed viciously, the short sword tumbling from his fingers, only for his blazing spirit to grasp it as it hit the grey stones, and rise, bellowing his battle cry once more: "For the honour of the Eighth!"

Only now it was the spirits of the dead that rallied to him, joining with the living to cull the monstrous creatures of the wild hunt. Shoggy beasts roared their pain as the ghostly blades pierced where mortal blades could not, opening wounds their spirits could never heal. As more and more of the Eighth fell to swell the ranks of the dead, the more invincible they became. They rediscovered their hearts, won back their courage. They died men.

The battle turned to slaughter, Sláine at its heart, fighting side by side with the ghost of Gwalchmai. The pair were mirrors of each other; Sláine wild, brutal, strong and deadly whereas Gwalchmai was driven by a controlled fury. He was every bit as lethal as the barbarian, though, delivering true death to the beasts of the hunt with precision. Axe and blade joined to release the animals from the Huntress's thrall, as willingly, the men of the Eighth rose to take their place in the eternal hunt.

Furious, the Huntress broke their ranks, driving the Night-Mare all the way down to the shoreline. The steed snorted licks of flame that matched its mistress's foul temper.

Myrrdin stared at the serene, frozen perfection of her face as she in turn stared at him.

For a moment he thought they were free, and then she kicked the Night-Mare's flanks and urged the beast into the water.

EIGHT

The coracle cut through the water, but it was back-breaking work. For every stroke it moved an inch or two across the placid surface. Panic forced their strokes, making them erratic and unbalanced. The Night Bringer's hideous mount kicked up the spume, splashing deeper into the water.

"We'll never make it," Ukko grunted, struggling with his oar.

Myrrdin looked at him, then at the moon, then back at the ethereal Huntress. "We don't have to," he said, shipping his oar.

"What are you doing? Come on, row!"

"We don't have to," Myrrdin said again. The boat moved on even though he had ceased rowing. Ukko stared down at his own oar, lifting it out of the water. The boat glided on.

"Oh, well that's just bloody marvellous," the dwarf muttered.

Myrrdin gripped the side and struggled to stand, his balance shifting with the bottom of the small boat. He reached down for Sláine's corpse, trying to lift it. It was a dead weight.

"What in the name of Crom's hairy left nut are you doing?"

"We have to get out of here, where the moon holds no dominion."

"And where in the seven els is that?"

The druid pointed a withered finger at the water itself. "Down there," he said and Myrrdin pitched himself over the side, taking Sláine's body with him. The sudden shift in weight unbalanced the coracle, pitching it sideways. Ukko clutched at the sides, staring at the ever-decreasing ripples that swallowed the druid and his friend.

"Why is everyone around me abso-friggin-lutely mad?" Ukko despaired, looking up from the water to see the Night Bringer less than thirty paces away, her beast somehow treading the surface of the still water. The moon shone down on her spectral features, seeping deep beneath her silvered skin to lend her a pearly opalescence. She saw him, her grin curving like a blade across the angles of her face. She spurred the Night-Mare on, the hunger in her dark eyes placing a chill in his heart. "Water, hard place," Ukko said, and closing his eyes, threw himself over the side.

The moment he hit the water he remembered he could not swim. He screamed out in panic and thrashed desperately at the surface, trying to propel himself back to the boat, and then he was sinking and the world above the water disappeared.

The water closed around him like an icy gauntlet, surging into his open mouth as he gasped for breath, forcing the scream back down his throat, robbing his senses. The was no light, no smell, though other senses were enhanced inordinately; he felt his heart hammering against the inside of his chest, his blood drumming in his ears, and tasted the salt-tang of the water as it rushed in to drown his lungs. He fought the water desperately as the undertow wrapped itself around his legs and dragged him down. He kicked and splashed, lashing out desperately but the more he thrashed the more insistent its grip grew, relentlessly pulling him deeper and deeper under the surface.

The crushing sensation of the dark waters clenching around his body intensified the deeper the undertow dragged him below the surface. He kicked and thrashed about, swallowing more and more water as he tried to break free of its pull. The darkness was absolute. He kicked out in sheer terror as he felt something grasp his ankle. It took him a moment to realise what it was, and in that moment it was every nightmare from the deep his imagination could conjure, before his mind could interpret it as it truly was: a hand. And then the images swarming through his drowning mind were worse, frenzied, panicked, of monsters from the deep reaching up to drag him down and feast on his scrawny carcass.

Ukko felt dizziness surging through his head, the drumming of his blood deafening, the hammering of his heart like thunder tearing through the bones of his chest.

There was no time beneath the surface; he could have been under for seconds or hours. There was no way of knowing.

The darkness burned.

There was no hope of return. He would not die in the air, with the sun or the moon on his face. His last taste would be salt, his last sight a lie, his mind playing tricks.

And then there was silence, cold and implacable, and he knew he was drowning; that was what the hand in the deep was, his mind's way of rationalising the pull of death, dragging him down and down relentlessly. It was a curiously comforting notion, his mind protecting him from the numbing fear of oblivion - for a heartbeat at least.

Even then his mind refused to believe; there was no familiar face, no salvation.

His lungs burned, demanding air. He tried to open his mouth but the druid kept his hand clamped firmly over it as they rose up from the darkest part of the water.

Then he felt the presence of the moon and knew they were just below the surface, breath tantalisingly close - but the druid would not let him rise and Ukko knew it was one last mocking trick of his drowned mind, taunting him with light where there was no light, with hope where there was none. He was dead, the light the air-starved part of his mind misinterpreting the blood vessels rupturing behind his eyes.

So this is death?
he thought, not liking it one little bit. It hurt. It wasn't supposed to hurt. His lungs burned, his throat felt as though a huge hand crushed down on his windpipe, and starved of air his brain refused to quiet. He had always imagined it would be peaceful.
Fool of a dwarf, this is your punishment... an eternity of noise and hallucination, the madness of death.
And then he remembered the gift of the Annfwyn, no life and no death. He could not drown beneath these waters, no matter how much they pained him. There was no comfort to be had in that thought, only the sure and certain knowledge that this pain would never end.

His lungs cramped, violent convulsions wracking his body, and still they did not breach the surface until the shadow of the Night-Mare retreated, the Night Bringer giving up the hunt.

Only then did the druid allow them to rise again, reborn.

Ukko came up gasping and coughing up lungfuls of turgid black water, Myrrdin's arm around his waist. The druid's grip was the only thing that prevented him from being swallowed back beneath the water. It was a brutal return to the world of the flesh.

The tidal pull of the currents had dragged them far away from the coracle, and further from the shore where Sláine's spirit still battled side by side with Gwalchmai and the Eighth, buying their freedom from this hellish place. The Huntress had relinquished her claim on Sláine's flesh and returned to the shore, content to consume his spirit. The coracle glided over the still waters, continuing its journey to landfall. They trod water, waiting for the boat, then lay inside it, feeling the waning moonlight give way to a colourless sun, as the coracle sailed on towards its destination.

"Ynys Afallach," the druid said, as they came within sight of the sands of the beach and the green-grassed tops of the dunes as they ceded to the land. "The Isle of Apples, some call it, though in truth it is the Isle of Glass, home of the Wounded King. He was brought here after the Battle of Camdon Fields, where he was brought low by a mortal blow from his own son's blade. In this place his wounds cannot whiten, though neither can they end his life. He bleeds still but there is no death for him, no ageing, no release. In his pain he is tended by the White Sisters of Preiddeu, the mistresses of the Glass House."

"You know a lot about him," Ukko said, grimacing as a wave of nausea clenched his guts.

"I should, little man. I brought him here at the behest of the Crone."

"Her again, meddling. When was this? No don't tell me, hundreds of years ago, right? How long is her reach? No, don't tell me. I don't want to know. I like to kid myself my life is my own."

"Ninety-two years before I entered the tree," Myrrdin said, answering anyway. "She came to me the night before the battle, knowing which blow would prove fatal and bidding me open the way to the mists for Finvarra's passage to this place of the ever-living. It is funny, I remember her words clearly as though she spoke them only a moment ago: 'He must not die, druid. Not in this place. He has one last battle to ride out to, you will open the way for his return at the time of the kingdom's greatest need, giving hope to the hopeless. We will ride beside your champion, bringing freedom to the Isle of the Mighty.'"

"She does that a lot, doesn't she? Make a few nonsensical predictions and vague promises while she's really manipulating everyone to her own sinister purposes. You think you'd learn."

"I have, believe me, dwarf, I have; three centuries as her prisoner have a way of peeling the veneer from ones naïveté. She's treacherous, make no mistake. Her words twist around themselves in layers like an endless knot, the truth buried somewhere at their core, indecipherable. But for all that, never make the mistake of doubting her love of the land. She is older than all of us, as old as Tir-Nan-Og itself. It is the flesh of her sister-self. She will do anything to preserve it."

"I still don't trust her."

"And you are wise not to, my friend."

A woman waited on the sands. She wore a simple white shift and stood barefoot, her toenails painted a shade of purple with some kind of lacquer. It was a remarkable splash of colour after the drabness of the other shore. Her hair was fair, the yellow of flax, part-braided, part-falling loose, cascading down the curve of her back and across her delicate shoulders. Her eyes lit up like the dawn as she saw Sláine lying between the druid and the dwarf. She was hauntingly beautiful, too beautiful to be a mortal woman, Ukko knew instantly. Her looks had more than his hackles rising.

The bottom of the coracle ground against the sand, the wave receding so that it was beached.

She held out a hand to them as they disembarked. "Finvarra bids you welcome to his home. He has instructed me to tend to you and your companions' every need. I am Leanan, Sister of Preiddeu, servant of the Wounded King. It is good to see you, Myrrdin. It has been too long since you walked among us. Modron has missed you, as have we all." Her smile was undeniably flirtatious until her eyes returned to Sláine's corpse. "I see you have brought the dead to our shores, Lord of the Trees, and yet you know there can be no death here."

"It was necessary, Leanan."

"I will have him taken to the hospice where his wounds will be tended by my sisters."

"Oh no, I'm not going to let him out of my sight," Ukko said, moving to stand between the woman and Sláine. "Not until he's wide awake and slapping me around the lughole for letting him die in the first place. That's how it works, it is always my fault when he goes and does something heroic."

"Well that's a pity, we had prepared food for you: a succulent brisket, with golden vegetables and roots, braised to perfection in their own juices. Baths are being drawn, even as we dally here, and your beds are being warmed."

"Well," Ukko mused dubiously, "it
would
be a shame to waste such good hospitality. I suppose he's dead already so it isn't like anything worse can happen to him if I take you up on your kindness, is there? He'll still be dead to the world tomorrow morning, I can look in on him then. There, that's settled then. Good food, a hot soak and a warmed bed. I think I've died and gone to a much better place."

Three more women came walking down the sands towards them, each as beautiful as Leanan, each startlingly different in their own way, opposites: hair dark as midnight, silver as the moon and fiery as the sun, lush, fulsome and curvaceous, lithe to the point of boyishness, tall, elfin, delicate, dark-skinned and pale, and yet each was undeniably beautiful for all those differences. They moved with grace on the shifting sands, their smiles as warm as Leanan's as they neared. Each wore the same simple white shift though their toenails were lacquered with different shades, as were their lips. There was something about the women that craved the eye, demanding attention Ukko was more than happy to lavish on them. His smile ran from ear to ear with lascivious glee. "A man could get drunk looking at this lot," he mumbled, rubbing his grubby little hands together like a miser eyeing a pile of coins.

"Sisters," greeted Leanan, "our visitors have brought the dead to our door. They would have us tend to him."

"The dead?" the red-headed woman said, cherry red rising beneath her porcelain skin. Ukko wasn't so wrapped up in her beauty that her tone was lost on him. He looked at Myrrdin to see if the druid knew what had her flustered. "What of the geas?"