The Exile (34 page)

With nothing to hold them together, their bones rattled and fell, their skulls lolling slackly, their arms and legs coming apart at the joints.

"Well that takes all the fun out of life," Sláine said, setting Medb down beside him. She stood on her own two feet and seemed to be coming back to some kind of alertness as the drugs lost their hold. "Stay," Sláine said, holding up a hand. His arm shuddered involuntarily. A convulsion doubled Sláine up. He dry heaved, clutching his stomach. The sudden withdrawal of the earth's power hit him hard enough to drop him to his knees. He collapsed, clawing at his skull as the bones in his body grated and shifted, shrinking back on themselves through agonising contortions until he was himself, gasping, panting, sobbing, and desperate. The dead water lapped around his thighs. He couldn't move.

"You saved the girl, eh? What a story this'll make! Feg must be hopping mad."

He looked up to see Ukko standing over him, looking mighty pleased with himself.

He tried to talk but he couldn't find the words.

"The girl didn't want to be saved!" Medb shrieked, slapping at Sláine's face with her fingers hooked into claws. The blow was sudden and all the more shocking for it.

"But... but... I saved your life," Sláine said, not making any sense of the woman's furious attack.

"How dare you drag me from my bier defiling my wedding! I was going to be immortal! I was going to be joined with Crom-Cruach himself! I was going to be his queen! My entire life has been in preparation of this moment! I have dedicated myself to Crom since I was old enough to think for myself! I live to serve my master, my husband and you, you rob me of my greatest honour! You drag me through this wretched swamp full of ghouls, you wretched disgusting pig of a man! You have ruined my life!" She hit Sláine again and again, across the face and the side of the head as he shied away.

He tried to grab her wrists but moving was agony. It hurt less to take her beating and let the crazy woman exhaust herself.

"I was the best!" Medb yelled petulantly. "Can't you understand that? I mastered tongues, curses, dark magics, shape-changing! I was the best! That's why I was chosen for the honour of serving Crom! I could turn your blood to bile and your stupid muscles to blubber if I wanted to! It doesn't matter! The Lord Weird will find me! He will find me and kill you, you simple-minded fool!"

Ukko came up behind her with a big stick and hit her across the head with it. There was a sickening crunch and she slumped forwards into the swamp water slackly. For a moment Sláine thought that the dwarf had killed her. He pulled her out of the water and laid her on her back. She was breathing. She would wake up with one hell of a hangover, but she would wake up, which was more than could be said for Blind Bran, Tamun the Stump, Senoll the Scavenger and Kes the Murk Dweller. They would be somewhere down in Cernunnos's underworld by now.

"She was giving me a headache," Ukko said, "ungrateful sow. Beautiful maidens are meant to be happy when the handsome hero rescues them. I'll never understand these modern women. Give me a big fat girl any day. They know how to be grateful."

Sláine looked over Ukko's shoulder. The horizon was a bloody red with the wicker man's fire. It was a fitting send-off for so many good men, and so many bad ones.

"What do we do with her? Bring her with us?"

"And go through all that yelling again? Nah, leave her here for her precious Weirdo Lord to find. It's time to get out of here, before more of those ghouls decide they like the smell of your manliness and come looking to serenade you again. Can you walk?"

"I'll manage," Sláine said, grateful for the dwarf's support but not about to say so.

Sláine twisted to look back at the red sky one last time.

Together, they walked deeper into the swamp.

Twenty-One

The Cloud Curragh

Coming out of the swamp Sláine and Ukko crossed into more dead land, soured by the Drunes' foul magic. Carcasses of sheep and cattle rotted in the fields beneath the shadow of a great dolmen. Ogham runes were carved into the base of the great Weird Stone.

Ukko translated as best he could. "It's bad mojo, Sláine. This here, that's the great wyrm, which must be their god, Crom-Cruach. Beside the wyrm these here are conduits, words of power meant to open the earth to the nether world. This is bad magic."

"How can you possibly know that, dwarf? You aren't a druid, and as far as I have seen, you're about the least magical soul I have ever encountered."

"Harrumph! Well it could be bad magic, that's all I am saying," Ukko said defensively. "You've got to pay attention to the signs. Being careful never hurt anyone."

"So you're making it up?"

"It could be a list of the sacrifices they've made to their dark god," Ukko said, pointing a wagging finger at the long list of scratches.

"Do you even know if they are words?"

Ukko grunted and stormed off.

Sláine let him go.

He studied the huge stone. It was peculiar. Since escaping the wicker man he hadn't felt the pull of the Weird Stones draining his strength. It was as if whatever hold they had on him had been broken. His gut feeling was that Feg had drained them when he raised the half-dead, but then, surely, they would have been even hungrier, and their drain would have been exacerbated not nullified. He didn't understand it, but was grateful for the respite. He touched the stone, tracing the curves that Ukko had claimed represented Crom-Cruach. There was nothing, not even the faintest tingle. He should have been relieved, but he wasn't. All he could think was that what little of Danu's presence there had been here in this blighted land was finally spent.

Ukko was hunched down over something in the field. "Probably something shiny," Sláine muttered to himself, setting out after the dwarf.

A bell tolled somewhere in the distance. It was a mournful sound.

Beyond the dolmen lay another desperate village starving under the harsh laws of the Drunes.

After the trials of the swamp it promised blessed relief.

When he caught up with the dwarf he saw that Ukko was holding a bone, a child's leg bone, not fully formed. "They're here as well, aren't they?"

"A child?" Sláine said. "What kind of sickness infects these Drunes?"

"You remember what Bran said? They take the young and sacrifice them to Crom-Cruach. Those marks, what if every one is a tally, one scratch for each child offered to their vile master?"

Sláine didn't want to contemplate it but Blind Bran's words came back to him: "The Drunes rounded up the young of the village, all under twenty summers, and butchered them. That was more than half of us. He laughed in my face as I challenged him. What are you upset about, miner? Now there is foodenough for everyone!" Sláine shuddered.

"We should go around the village," Sláine said.

"Not a chance, I am dying for a decent meal and, no offence, but a change of company for a while. Who knows, maybe there's a nice fat girl waiting to shower me with kisses. That'd be nice." Ukko set a brisk pace, buoyed by the thought of a warm meal and warmer thighs. Sláine struggled to keep up with the dwarf. His mind drifted to the possibility of a real bed and a real woman to share it with him. They were good thoughts.

The village was a pale ghost of what it should have been. Sláine saw a boy grubbing around in the dirt after a beetle. For a moment he thought the lad was playing with the insect until he saw him stuff it in his mouth and chew.

Walking through the houses Sláine had the uncomfortable feeling that they were being watched. The hairs on the nape of his neck prickled and his skin crawled. Every time he turned, trying to catch a glimpse of the unseen watcher, the street was empty.

"Can't say I like this any better than the swamp," Sláine said, looking back over his shoulder at an abandoned street. "The whole place gives me the creeps."

An old man stepped out into the centre of the street to greet them. He was all slack yellowed skin and bone.

"What brings you to Gavra, strangers?"

"The need for food and a bed," Sláine said.

"Well, ain't much of either here. Best you be on your way, lad. This is a bad place to be."

"We've been walking for a week through the swamp, old man. I'm tired, I don't remember the last meal I ate, and I could murder an ale."

"Me, I'd settle for a big-titted woman to use as a pillow," Ukko said, earning a cuff from Sláine. "Hey!"

"Excuse my, ahhh, companion. He's special."

"That's right, I'm special," Ukko said, and then turned to Sláine. "Hey, I don't like the way you said that, you made me sound like a simpleton."

"Is there an inn?"

"Aye, Madaug Stagshanks runs a small place, but it ain't had beer for as long as I can remember, and as to a shank of venison? I think the old fool was spinning a yarn when he claimed that moniker." He shook his head.

"But it has beds?"

"A floor with straw," the old man said with a shrug.

"Sounds like the Summerland," Ukko grumbled sourly.

"Beggars can't be choosers."

"Well, what we have, you're welcome to share," the old man said. "I'm Madaug, innkeeper and what passes as chieftain of this doomed village."

"Sláine Mac Roth," Sláine said, holding out a hand, "and this ugly runt is Ukko. Don't trust him with anything you hold dear. He's a thief and a liar."

"But you love me for it," Ukko said.

Madaug grinned. "Welcome to Gavra."

For all the privation it was a blessed comfort to be in the company of others. The food, while far from plentiful, was filling. The citizens of Gavra had every right to moan and curse the fates but they didn't. They accepted this hardship as their due and waited for their world to collapse.

"How can they go on like this?" Ukko asked, shaking his head.

"What's the alternative, dwarf?" Sláine asked.

"Fight."

"Spoken like true idiot. What is there to fight? Do you see the Drunes here subjugating these people? The damage was done years ago. There is nothing to fight here, no enemy. The monsters are all around but they are invisible. They are hunger and fear, debilitating beasts both. Mother earth is no longer fertile. The essence of Danu's magic has been drained from the soil. This is a dead place."

"And you accept that, warrior?"

"I have no choice. I could avenge these people with my axe if I had her. Otherwise what? You shouldn't save the lives of people fated to die, Ukko, that's cheating the gods."

"Soth! You actually believe the gods care?"

"I know at least one who does, dwarf; one who cares with all of her heart."

The taproom of the inn was warm. A fire blazed in the hearth. A broth that was mostly water warmed in a huge cauldron. Sláine slapped Ukko on the shoulder, and pointed to one of the women stirring the pot. "That should be ample even for you."

Ukko grinned. "Now you're just trying to distract me."

"Has it worked?"

"Indubitably."

"In-what?"

Ukko hopped up and swaggered over to the woman, slapping her on the rump.

"I'll take that as a yes, then," Sláine called over the hubbub of the taproom. Ukko winked and made another grab for the woman. She didn't seem to mind, laughing and cuffing the little runt around the ear.

Sláine sat alone for a while, thinking about what he had told the dwarf. It felt as if he hadn't stopped running since he left Murias, and the more he ran the less he actually stopped to think. It was too easy to just run, lurching from one potential disaster to the next. A time would come when he had to stop running. The day would come when the road would take him back north and he would have to face up to his own stupidity, and, he thought wistfully, when Grudnew walked up to the pyre, return to his people to claim Niamh as his bride. It was a thought he had held close to his chest for a long time. A king reigned for seven years. It was not so long. Grudnew had been king for two years before his exile and he had been gone four already. His days were numbered. Soon he would be able to return to Murias without fear of the headsman's axe.

Did he truly believe what he had said to Ukko? Did he truly think that it was wrong to meddle and save someone fated to die? And if he did, why was he trying so hard to stem the threat of the skull-swords for the sake of his own people. Perhaps it was their time to die. Dare he risk the anger of the gods?

The answer lay in a memory: the smoke on the horizon and Danu's whispered words: "You needed to see, to understand". He understood why, finally. It wasn't about the black smoke consuming Murias. He felt anger welling up inside him. Images of more flames, of innocents burning, of the despoilers pillaging and raping the earth, turning it sour, superimposed themselves on his memories of home, of Murias, and of places he had visited since his exile. He saw exactly what she wanted him to see, and this time he understood. It was about The Land of the Young and the Goddess and the very power of the earth itself, being soured by the evil of Slough Feg and his foul minions in the name of Crom.

Madaug settled down beside him, two tankards in hand. He slid one across the table to Sláine.

"I thought you said there was no ale left?" Sláine said, raising the wooden tankard to his lips and draining a good long swallow from the frothy drink. It didn't taste like any beer he had drunk before. It was bitter.

"There isn't. I call this gutrot. It sorts the men out from the boys. It's fermented like beer but it's got a whole other set of ingredients. You don't want to know, just sup up, lad. It'll put hairs on your chest."

Sláine took another mouthful, feeling the intoxicating rush of the drink go straight to his head. "Potent stuff."

"Oh aye, and then some. Look, lad, no beating about the bush. Are you sure I can't convince you to stay? We need new blood if we are going to survive."

"I'm a wanderer, Madaug. It's in the blood. I can't settle down, no matter how inviting the place, or the woman."

"At least say you'll think about it."

"No need," Sláine said. "It can't be easy," Sláine raised his tankard and gestured to take in the whole taproom. He watched the door. It was a habit learned from paranoia and too long being hunted. Closed doors still made him uncomfortable, "All of this."