The Exile (25 page)

"Good job you aren't honest then, eh?" Sláine said, spooning down another slop of gruel.

"Come to think of it, all these bloody exploits are better than hearing you constantly lamenting the slew of women who've left you, warped one."

And so it went, the three of them sparring with words instead of blows. The little dwarf mocked the warriors and in turn the warriors lampooned the runt of their pack. It was a curious form of bonding.

Nudd came to them as the sun went down.

"Lights out," the huge simpleton said, pointing towards the three individual cages at the back of the cell. Ukko moved first, scampering back into the middle cage and pulling a fur pelt down to black out the whole front of his cramped prison. Bodb stood, dusting off his hands, and shook hands with Sláine.

"We'll continue this tomorrow, Mac Roth."

"That we will, Black Axe," Sláine said. "I have stories from Dun Barc that will melt your ears."

"I look forward to them, and maybe I will share the tragic events of Glenn Kathra with you, if you are lucky. Now that is a story and a half." Bodb winked. The warrior retreated into his own small cell, on the left of the three, leaving the final one for Sláine.

Sláine ducked inside the cage. Nudd came up behind him, barred the door and fastened the lock securely, shutting him in. The cage was tiny, big enough for a hard wooden cot, a wash pot and a footstool. He pulled the pelt down to give himself some privacy. There were no windows and with the pelt pulled down the darkness was absolute. He felt his way over to the cot and lay down on the hard wooden pallet. It was as uncomfortable as anything he had ever lain on. Sleep didn't want to come. He was tired but after not moving for so long and being pent up, he was too frustrated to sleep.

For some unknowable amount of time he just lay there, looking up at the dark where the ceiling ought to have been. It was never quiet, this dark. Outside, the waves crashed against the base of the chalk pillar, wearing it away one wave at a time. The susurrant rush of water and the break and fall away of wave after wave was constant.

He rolled over, pulling the blanket up over him.

It felt odd, being this far removed from the earth. He couldn't feel any undercurrent of its power. For the first time in as long as he could remember he felt utterly alone. Even so, at the back of his mind was the nagging doubt that Danu, in any of her aspects, Blodeuwedd, the Morrigan or Ceridwen, would leave him be.

Through the bars he heard the muffled sound of snoring, the
snnnnnnrrrrrrk psssssssssssshhhhawwwww
of Ukko's flapping lips as the dwarf slept the sleep of the righteous.

Sláine, on the other hand, tossed and turned for most of the night.

The voice was haunting, elegiac, its tune a threnody of bittersweet lament.

Sláine lay in the darkness listening to it.

He had no idea who the singer was, or what sins had led her to the broch, but her voice was pure and heartbreakingly beautiful.

He found himself wanting to go to her, to sit before her, and listen. Her words wormed their way inside him. Sláine crawled out of the bed and stumbled forwards in the dark, drawn by the song. He reached through the bars of his cage, trying to force back the locked beam but there was no moving it. He moaned. The song's lure was irresistible. He needed to find the singer.

Sláine rattled the doors of his cell but they wouldn't budge.

He heaved at the bars but there was no give in them.

The song... There was something about the song.

He had to be with the singer, to kneel at her feet.

He had to...

Sláine pushed away from the bars and staggered back to the bed. He fumbled around in the dark for the blanket, tearing tufts from it and blocking his ears with them. Even muffled the lure of the song was powerful; too powerful for him to resist.

He tumbled out of bed and landed hard on the floor, tufts of wool sticking out of his ears. He scrambled across the dead straw to the bars of the cage door and rattled them, keening desperately.

A hideous blood-curdling scream rent the night asunder. Fear had made the scream so utterly sexless that it was impossible to tell if the screamer was male or female.

When the scream finally died there was only the sound of the waves crashing over and over again against the base of the stack.

Sláine fell to his knees, desolate at the loss of the song.

Finally, he slept on the floor at the foot of the cell door, curled around the ruined blanket.

Sláine awoke to the grunt and grumble of Nudd wrestling with the beam barring his cage door.

The simpleton heaved it back and pushed open the door to let him out. Sláine blinked back the sunlight. He had slept through since... since the song.

He lurched to his feet and stumbled out of the cell.

"Who was that singing last night?"

He grabbed Nudd by the arms and tried to shake him but the simpleton was an immovable mass.

"Who was singing?" Sláine pushed but Nudd just brushed him aside, opened Bodb's cage, and then moved on to Ukko's. The dwarf emerged rubbing his red-rimmed eyes and yawning.

"What's the racket? Some of us were still trying to sleep."

"Did you hear it last night?"

"Hear what?"

"The song? Did you hear the woman singing?"

"I didn't hear nothing. I was out like the lights, dead to the world, dreaming sweet dreams of making love to fat women on bleedin' great piles of gold. It was marvellous."

"How could you not? With those ears of yours! Bodb, what about you, did you hear the song?" Sláine called but Black Axe didn't answer.

"See," Ukko grumbled, "I wasn't the only one trying to sleep."

Sláine didn't like it, he didn't like it one little bit. Snatches of the song came back to him, and then that blood-curdling scream. He pushed past Nudd and in to Bodb's cage.

The place stank of piss and blood; twin reeks of the body laid bare. They were a vile combination, natural and yet so unnatural. The piss reeked, bitter, sharp and pungent, and beneath it lurked the iron tang of blood.

Bodb of the Black Axe was in the corner, pressed up against the wall. His corpse was emaciated beyond recognition, but it could only be him. Bodb was a withered husk. There was almost nothing human left where the man had been. Only the eyes and the whiskers couldn't lie.

Sláine knelt beside the corpse, taking Bodb's hand in his. The skin felt like cured leather, although there was a peculiar waxy quality to it in places. He turned it over, examining the back of Bodb's hand as if it might offer a clue to his hideous demise. There wasn't a single sign of injury anywhere on the old warrior's corpse, no matter where he looked.

It looked as if the old warrior's very soul had been sucked out of his body. There was nothing but a shell left behind.

"What kind of creature could do this?" Sláine asked.

No one answered him.

Fifteen

Freedom

"Are there any more prisoners in here?" Sláine demanded. "Come on, Nudd, speak up. Someone or something sang that damned song last night. I heard it. Ukko, stop skulking back there. You've been here how long? Have you ever heard another prisoner in this place?"

"Umm well, now that you mention it, you know, oh great and warped one, it is a prison, so what are the odds of their being umm well, you know, prisoners in here?"

"Oh, I could hit you so hard." He stopped himself, mid-blow.

"You saw that, Nudd? He was going to hit me!" Ukko squealed, pressing up against the wall. "Hmm, you know Bodb borrowed some stuff off me, I really should get that back. It's only fair. I mean it is mine. Yes, let me just get my things back."

"Stay right where you are and keep your hands to yourself, you ratty little thief, unless you want me to smack seven shades out of you."

"I didn't do anything. All I did was talk about getting what's rightfully mine back. You heard that, Sláine, right? Soth! Everyone wants to hit me! What did I ever do?"

"Shut up, Ukko. I am trying to think." Sláine glowered at the rat-like dwarf.

"Well that ought to take the rest of the morning, so I think I'll just sit down here and have a nap. See if I can't find those fat women again. Soth! I love fat women. So much more to get a hold of and love." Ukko made a show of plumping himself down in the middle of the antechamber and closing his eyes.

Sláine kicked him out of sheer bloody frustration but Ukko just grumbled and rolled over, feigning deep sleep.

"I hardly know you but I could cheerfully throttle the life out of you already," Sláine said. Ukko answered with a full-throated snore, his lips flapping together.

Sláine returned to Bodb's corpse, hoping there was something, some clue he had missed the first time but of course there wasn't. The old warrior had been drained completely but it was impossible to tell how it had actually been done. His gut told him it had to be something to do with the singer and that it had been Bodb he heard screaming. There was no evidence but that didn't matter. He knew, instinctively, and no one was talking to him.

Nudd dragged Bodb's corpse out of his cage and hauled it away. Out of sight, out of mind seemed to be the notion the simpleton was working on. Perhaps it was true for him, like a guppy swimming around in circles, each time thinking that bit of the rock pool was a new place to explore. Sláine had no such luxury. He remembered all too well the lure of the damned song, and couldn't help but shiver at the realisation that but for the barred door of the cage the withered corpse could have been his own. It sent a cold shiver through him,

A little while later the sweet tang of burning flesh reached his nose. Nudd had burned Black Axe's corpse. That didn't set Sláine's mind at rest.

Ukko snored on.

"I know you are awake, you miserable little bag of bones," Sláine said exasperatedly.

"No you don't," Ukko said without moving. "You just think I am. I could be fast asleep with those fat women."

"See!"

"No, my eyes are closed and I am asleep. Now leave me alone would you."

"Doesn't it worry you in the slightest? We were eating and joking with him last night and he's gone in the morning."

"I try not to get attached to people. It saves all sorts of problems when they find out I've robbed them," the dwarf said, still not opening his eyes. He let out another tooth-rattling snore.

Sláine went to the window and looked out. All he could see were the white breakers of the sea. He grabbed the bars and hauled himself up another six inches but it didn't reveal anything more telling. He paced the small cell, scuffing up the straw with his feet. He went over to the barred door and shook it. "Is there anybody there?" he called out into the endless corridors of the broch.

No one answered him.

He slumped down against the wall, knowing in his gut that darkness would come, and with it that damned song.

They slouched towards nightfall.

Being held captive dragged time out desperately. There was only so much pacing, thinking and mocking that Sláine and Ukko could do.

Sláine made preparations.

Using the ties from his boots and the fur lining, he made muffs to block his ears. He tested their efficacy by getting Ukko to yell insults in his face. The little man was delighted to be of assistance. He jumped up and down yelling a stream of colourful invective in the barbarian's face, taking far too much delight from it until Sláine pointed out that he couldn't actually hear what he was saying. That little revelation put a dampener on the dwarf's spirits.

Finally satisfied that the makeshift earmuffs actually worked, Sláine hid them under the blanket in his cell and waited for Nudd to lock them up for the night.

He didn't have to wait long.

Nudd came just before dusk. The simpleton went through the ritual, dropping the bar into place, but this time there was no forlorn clunk of the lock mechanism. Nudd rattled on the bars to show the cage was locked even though it wasn't, not properly.

Sláine curled up on the cot, reaching under the blanket for his makeshift muffs.

He lay there in the darkness, waiting.

After a while he found himself imagining that he could hear his lovers' voices masked within the swirl and crash of the waves. It gave him a curious sense of comfort despite the fact that they weren't actually there. He found himself listening out for Niamh and Bedelia, and thought for one fleeting moment that he actually heard Blathnaid.

Then he heard it, the first aching note of the song. He knew the singer immediately and couldn't believe he hadn't recognised her voice last night. He pushed himself out of the hard cot. He knew the door was unlocked so he simply reached through the bars and lifted the beam. He pushed the cage door open and stepped out into the antechamber. The first bars of moonlight spilled across the rotten straw. He lumbered forwards, his feet moving wholly independently of his thoughts. All he could think was that he needed to find the singer of that haunting melody.

Nudd had left the main antechamber door open.

He could hear the dwarf's snark and watched as he snored on, oblivious to the song.

Sláine pushed it open and stumbled out into the corridor, clutching the muffs in his trembling hands. He was powerless to resist as her voice gently rose and fell, weaving a hypnotic pattern around him. He felt a longing deep inside him more powerful than anything he had known, even in the arms of Danu's maiden aspect, Blodeuwedd.

"I'm coming," he called, following the sound of her voice deeper and deeper into the dark heart of the broch. He past row after row of empty cells and stumbled down stairs raddled with woodworm and damp rot. The walls around him shifted from the clean limewash, mould and salt of above to a sickly subterranean slime as the song drew him beneath the level of the sea, and deeper still.

Finally he came to a single cell deep in the belly of the broch. The iron-framed door was locked but that didn't stop the crooning melody from climbing high into the upper reaches of the cells above. The singer was on the other side of the door.