“To hell with my duty to my people!” Bran snarled. “Even now my people speak against me-complaining of taxes and troop levies and wars of my making! I try to make them see the rebirth of Pictdom as a great nation-and they see no farther than their next meal! And in this hour of crisis, they murmur against me! Enough I say!
“I’m done with this kinging it! I cannot call myself a man if I left my own blood kin to be the sport of the Worms of the Earth! Thus far they’ve made a fool of King Bran! Well, no more! Now it is not the king of Pictdom with whom they shall deal! It is Bran Mak Morn they must answer to!”
Bran’s arm came up swiftly to his brow, then flung away.
Something flashed in the moonlight, smacked into the folds of Gonar’s cloak. It was an iron crown.
10
ENCOUNTER AT DAWN
It was, of course, madness. Bran Mak Morn grudgingly admitted it to himself, if not to the others. More than any other man, the king who had flung away his crown understood the inhuman dangers he must face.
Almost two years had passed since Bran had made his descent through the Door in Dagon’s Barrow to steal the Black Stone. If you meet any on the Road, you will die as no mortal man has died for long centuries. So Atla had warned him then. With rash courage Bran Mak Morn had gone ahead with his quest for the Black Stone.
What he now intended called for a deeper courage. For now Bran knew what shapes of elder horror held dominion over the burrows beneath the earth.
High overhead a kestrel soared silently on the cold wind, riding the skies of dawn. Other than the hunting bird, Bran seemed to be entirely alone on the desolate heath. Hurriedly he made his way across the expanse of brown bent and yellow-blooming furze for the slopes beyond, where the boskage of birch and pine afforded better concealment in the growing light. Gaining the thicket, the Pict soon climbed to the base of Kestrel Scaur, even as the sun crept over the eastern ridges.
Carrion crows flapped heavily in the morning ground-mists, as Bran circled Kestrel Scaur to look down on the barrow that lay in its shadow. The scavengers broke their fast upon the pitiful fragments of human refuse strewn upon the crushed circle of rowans, and Bran was not so alone as he might wish. Later, when the sun was high and confident, his men would come to bury whatever they might find of their comrades.
Bran tried to piece together the vague, fragmented memory of what he had seen spewing forth from the earth scant hours ago. He did not entirely regret his inability to grasp a coherent picture of that mad instant.
His plans were of necessity unformed and imprecise. Bran only knew that Morgain was a captive of the Children of the Night and their half-human minions. Somewhere beneath the spring-touched heather, she was imprisoned within those burrows that bored through the earth like the paths of maggots through some dead giant’s skull. Alive or dead, Bran had no way of knowing-and remembering Titus Sulla, he was not at all certain that he wanted to find her alive.
But he would find Morgain-if not to rescue, then to avenge. Anguish spiking his heart, Bran knew the latter was far more likely.
So be it! He, Bran Mak Morn, had summoned this horror forth from the depths of hell-where the Worms of the Earth had laired for centuries, all but forgetting, and forgotten by, the world of men. It was only just that he should bring an end to this curse that he had boldly unleashed on the earth. There would be a killing of vermin such as the Children of the Night little imagined could strike them in their hidden realm. And when at last he fell upon the masses of slaughtered serpent-folk, such as survived would have little heart for creeping forth from their secret burrows ever again. And afterward old Gonar could pass on the iron crown to some other bold fool who wished to lead a pack of apish savages-or throw the crown into the deepest loch, as he saw fit.
The Worms of the Earth had come to the king of Pictdom. Now Bran Mak Morn was coming for them.
“Grim thoughts darken the brow of Bran Mak Morn,” a sudden voice spoke from beneath a pine. “Why broods the king of Pictdom on death and slaying on so fair a spring mom?”
Bran spun on his heels-sword clearing scabbard in a silver blur. He had believed himself to be alone here-for what affair would draw any other to this haunted spot after a night of feasting horror?
The voice laughed softly. “Nay-restore your blade, King Bran. What-will you do battle with whosoever accosts you, milord? A savage mood in truth for a morn that bespeaks new life.”
Bran peered suspiciously into the shadow. The tone was light and the speech was Pictish, albeit with curious inflection. Despite the disarming pleasantry, Bran caught a glimpse of mail in the filtered sunlight beneath the spinney of pine.
“Come out!” Bran warned, his mood dangerous.
A stirring and a clink of metal. A tall figure stepped away from the shadow of the grey pillars and their drooping boughs of dark green needles.
Bran grunted an astonished curse.
The newcomer was half a head taller than Bran Mak Morn. A wolf-skin cloak was flung back from one shoulder over a long shirt of curiously wrought link mail. The figure beneath the mail tunic and bracae was slender and straight, and-Bran made certain by a closer look-feminine. A fullness of the breast beneath the shirt of chainmail and a swelling of the hip where a long sword hung belted-not buxom, but unmistakable nonetheless.
“Who are you?” he demanded, somewhat taken in awe.
The girl laughed at his unease. “I am Liuba.”
“The name is strange to me,” Bran commented, studying her in open wonder. She was a personage to compel attention even in his present frame of mind.
Hair black and glossy as a raven’s wing was drawn back in a long fall, fastened at the nape by a gold brooch. Straight bangs came low across her wide forehead, then dropped across her temples at cheekbone level-hanging in a square cut as far as her ears, whence her untrimmed locks were drawn away by the brooch. The style-one unfamiliar to Bran-framed a face whose straight nose and severe jaw line seemed too harsh for a woman, yet too finely-hewn for a man. Her eyebrows made another straight, thin line across her forehead, and the eyes beneath were deep-set, black and bright as onyx. There was bitter irony in those eyes, carried through in the mordant twist of her full, pale lips.
Liuba laughed sardonically at Bran’s scrutiny. Her teeth were fine and very white against her dark complexion.
“Do you stare, Bran Mak Morn? In truth, it is I who should so stare at you-for your face is a mask of scab and swollen bruises.”
“I seek those who will give accounting for my battered face,” Bran returned with a hard smile.
“You’re a Pict?” he said-half statement, half questioning.
“I am a Pict.”
Bran furrowed his brow in thought. That she was of untainted Pictish blood was evident to him. Yet those who could claim such unbroken heritage were all too few in this age.
“I thought I could name all the gentry of my race,” mused Bran.
“Remnants of Pictdom yet lair in corners unknown even to King Bran,” replied Liuba in a tone of irony. “My clan has fallen into obscurity, and I have only lately come from afar to offer my sword to Bran Mak Morn.”
Bran grunted. That a woman should bear arms was not uncommon among so savage a race as the Picts-whose feuds and battles were deadly and final, with no thought of quarter. Even the barbarian Celts had shivered at the stone age ferocity of the Picts, and many a Celtic invader had died beneath the feral fury of those whose squalid huts they thought to burn. But while Pictish women might seize clubs and blades to follow their men onto the field of battle-and the gods take mercy on what wounded enemy they set upon-it was unheard of to encounter a woman fully armed and accoutred in costly battle gear.