‘Then what?’ the king asked her. ‘We know that the Corpse People are connected to what is happening on the Isles of the Moon. We cannot harm them. The only reason our walls did not fall last night was because of these strangers’ display of power. What would you have me do? If they do not aid us tonight then we are dead.’
‘But abandon our people?’
‘Your landsmen must wear the armour that the warriors do not take with them, and must man the gate and the walls. They must try and hold out as long as possible,’ Britha told them
‘While we sneak away,’ Morfudd said bitterly. ‘Will you at least arm them with weapons that will harm the Corpse People?’ Britha hated to hear the tone of pleading in the proud, strong woman’s voice.
‘No,’ Teardrop said emotionlessly.
‘Why?!’ Now desperation.
‘Because there is only so much magic, and it always comes at a cost.’ Teardrop had a faraway look on his face as he said this.
‘Swear to me that this is the only chance that any of my people have of living,’ Rin said. Teardrop opened his mouth. ‘Not you, demon, her.’ He nodded at Britha.
‘The warband are probably all dead as well, but they will die trying to protect everything there is. I swear this by blood and bone and all I value,’ Britha said. She meant it, but it was an easy oath to swear. It cost her little but the king seemed to believe her.
‘There is one other thing.’ The silver-eyed man continued. ‘You must hold a feast in honour of the goddess.’
‘This is too much!’ Morfudd would have said more but Rin held up his hand.
‘I feel sore used by Andraste, for whom I have taken many a head,’ the king told them. ‘We will feast, we will feast in the face of death so that our enemies know that though our iron will not kill them, we do not fear them, but to Annwn with your goddess.’
‘What is the Hungry Nothingness?’ Britha demanded as they walked away from the circular stone temple.
‘Just play your part if you ever want to see any of your people again,’ Teardrop told her. Britha bit back an angry retort. Something told her that it would do no good and that Teardrop, or whatever he was now, was serious.
As they started preparing for the feast, Tangwen saw the argument. Britha remained quiet while Teardrop spoke in a low voice to Fachtna, who raged. He raged in his language, the language of the Goidel traders who claimed they came from an island in the west. She did not speak the tongue but she knew some words. One word she had learned because it was useful when dealing with traders was that for falsehood. Fachtna shouted it a lot.
Tangwen watched as the three walked along the track to the circular building that the hunter knew to be a temple. Then they were gone for a long time. Tangwen wondered what the Corpse People must be thinking as the smell of beef, pork, mutton and chicken started to fill the air. The feast was going to be mightier than any she had ever been to before. So this is how rich tribes ready themselves for death, she thought.
Some time later, bored with watching the Corpse People swarm over the opposite hillside like maggots, she went looking for the others. If they didn’t want her in their temple then the dryw could chase her away.
Tangwen walked into the temple to see Fachtna and Britha hanging upside down from a drying frame. Both of them were naked, both of them pale. Both had been cut and bled. Underneath, cauldrons collected their blood. Teardrop was sitting next to them.
Teardrop looked up as she entered and stared at her impassively. Tangwen could not take his staring eyes on her. She turned and fled.
After the warband had drunk their fill, reddening their chins on Fachtna and Britha’s blood. After Teardrop had worked his magic. After weapons had been washed in the blood until there was no more of it. After the king had drunk of the blood and then been dipped into the cauldron and they had watched the blood disappear into his skin. After ruined legs had been healed and the king walked again. After all that, Britha’s eyes flickered open. He had not taken all her blood. There was still some left inside her, but so little. She was so hungry, so weak. It had felt like death and there had been nothing there.
Tangwen watched as they carried Fachtna and Britha to where the feast was laid out. Weak though they were, they grabbed for the food, coming close to knocking over trestles as they gorged themselves on whatever they could shovel into their mouths. Many watched them in disgust. They ate so much it shamed Tangwen to be associated with them, but as they ate she saw their colour come back and meat return to their bones in front of her eyes. She found herself making a sign to protect herself against evil.
The warband did not attend the feast; they ate sparingly and drank little. Instead they walked the walls. This was for the folk. Rin spared nothing in terms of drink. There was a desperation to the drinking. The feast had seemed forced, but soon there was singing and dancing. Good, Tangwen thought, glancing over the walls. Throw it in their faces. But there were tears and embraces as well. Few had any doubts as to what was happening, but Rin wanted everybody to be drunk when they met their end.
Morfudd had asked to stay. She had been told no. Eurawg had asked to go. He had been told no. When the Corpse People came it would be his job to kill the youngest children so they did not fall into the hands of fiends.
The tears and the fear only kicked in when the warband gave away their armour and shields and it became apparent they were to leave the fort. Shame was written all over the tear-stained faces of the men and women of the Cigfran Teulu. They could not even look at those they had sworn to serve.
There would have been panic among the folk except for their king. They loved their king. It surprised nobody when he refused to leave.
Before they sneaked into the night, Rin spat in Britha’s face. Anger coursed through her – she came close to running him through with a spear – but in the face of her anger, despite the demonstrations of power that he’d witnessed, Rin held his ground. ‘That’s for your mother,’ he told her. Britha managed to control her anger.
They slipped over the darkest part of the walls at dusk before the Corpse People closed on the fort. A long drop by rope into the ditch, down to the treeline and then they crept away. Every one of them bar Britha, Teardrop, Tangwen and Fachtna felt like the basest betrayer and coward. Though Fachtna understood them and felt a little of what they felt.
They pushed hard, skirting west to avoid the Corpse People’s pickets. Then they turned south-east. They pushed hard because they did not want to hear the sounds of battle, though there wouldn’t be much of one. They weren’t quick enough to escape the screams.
They saw its head first. Morfudd told them that she had never seen such a thing before and that it had not been there when last she had been this way.
‘It’s too big,’ Britha said, appalled.
‘Things of that size cannot be built,’ Morfudd said firmly. It had to be more than five hundred feet tall and stood in the channel between two smallish islands close to the coast. Much further out was a third and considerably larger island. They had been cresting a large hill that ran parallel to the coast for some time now, walking through acres of what had once been woodland. Most of the trees had been felled. Britha couldn’t imagine how many people it must have taken to remove this many trees. But the trees were quickly forgotten when she saw the small fleet of black curraghs surrounding the structure in the water.
‘And yet…’ Teardrop said. Britha did not like the sly smile on the face of the stranger wearing her friend’s form.
‘It’s a wicker man,’ Fachtna said, no life in his voice.