Bress swung his sword.
The two halves of Fachtna’s body tumbled out of the wicker man into clear blue sky, only to be swallowed by smoke.
Even as she grabbed for the sickle, she knew it was too late. The axe fell. Ettin was yanked back, the head of the axe biting into the planks just in front of Britha. Kush and Germelqart each had one of Ettin’s arms and were dragging him away from her. Hanno screamed at them to stop.
With one arm, Ettin threw Kush off, sending the large powerful man flying into the framework. Kush bounced off and hit the floor. Ettin grabbed Germelqart with the other hand, lifted the Carthaginian off the floor by his head and then started to squeeze. The navigator screamed.
Britha was searching around desperately for her spear.
Tangwen jumped high into the air behind Ettin and buried her dirk deep into his real head. Ettin roared and tossed Germelqart away. He turned. Tangwen was backing away. Ettin cuffed the hunter so hard that she too was flung into and bounced off the wicker man’s framework.
Ettin turned back to Britha, who rammed her spear into his fat stomach and drove it up into his ribcage, all the while staring straight into his eyes. She wanted to watch the light go out.
With a roar Kush brought his axe down on Ettin’s shoulder, driving the bronze blade diagonally into his chest, where it met the metal branches growing out her spear’s head.
‘It’s my axe!’ he screamed.
As Ettin sank to the floor, Britha knelt down with him to watch death come to his eyes.
Satisfied, she stood up and went to check on Tangwen. Kush put his foot on Ettin’s body and wrenched his axe free. Then he lifted it high and cut off Hanno’s head.
‘I’m sorry, old friend. You deserved better.’ Then he decapitated Ettin just to be on the safe side.
Tangwen was in tears.
‘I’m so sorry. The swim, the climb…’ She stared at Teardrop’s body, guilt all over her face.
‘It’s okay,’ Britha said.
Germelqart was getting unsteadily to his feet, aided by Kush. Both of them bore the ravages of their captivity.
‘I told you I heard Hanno,’ Kush told the navigator.
‘Do you still want my power?’ Teardrop asked, though his voice sounded wrong. All of them turned to stare. His lips were moving; the rest of his body looked very dead. The muscles on his face were slack, making the movements of his mouth all the more obscene, particularly as his head had been cut in half and one set of lips was slightly out of synch with the other. Inside his swollen skull they could see the crystal moving like it was alive, or rather like it was many living things.
‘That should not be happening,’ the normally taciturn Germelqart said. ‘I do not like Ynys Prydein and will not come back here.’
It took Britha a moment or two to realise that the odd rasping noise was Teardrop’s laughter. Kush raised his axe.
‘The dead should be still,’ the tall black man insisted.
‘Wait,’ Britha said, though she almost completely agreed with him.
‘You so wanted my power,’ Teardrop said. He was right. Now she could not think of anything she wanted less. ‘It’s a heavy price. You have no idea, but you are not done yet.’
Britha felt tears spring into her eyes but knelt down by Teardrop. The crystal tendrils that reached for her from his ears, nose, mouth, eyes, that flowed from the grisly split in his head, did not look wholly real.
As they pushed into her head, touched her mind, shattered it, rebuilt it so she could at least perceive – though never understand – she screamed until her throat bled, then they felt very real.
She became a border. She saw the rest of everything that was this tiny space. She drooled blood as the meat part of her mind tried to shut down. Her mind grew beyond the stinking sweet prison of her flesh into other space beyond the ken of the people around her, who cowered away as her cranium bulged and the crystal parasite consumed the meat of her brain and forced its tendrils into her veins and arteries, making them swell.
It wasn’t just Britha who opened mercury eyes.
Bress stalked out of the smoke, bloody sword in hand. Kush raised his axe; Tangwen, her dirk still in Ettin’s skull, grabbed her hand axe from her belt.
Bress glanced down at Ettin’s body. There was a slight smile on his lips. The smile disappeared as he looked at Britha’s inhuman eyes. She stood to face him.
‘It’s still me,’ she told him.
‘For now. Your friend is dead,’ he told them, and then, so there was no confusion, ‘I killed him.’ He nodded outside. Kush, Germelqart and Tangwen turned to look. Britha did not; she had felt the violation opening. Circles of blue pulsing light, and through it living, squirming, black, bacteria-like nothings, reached for its antithesis. To what was left of Britha it was like the sky was being eaten by maggots. It sought to touch the Muileartach and make her the same as her sisters, to corrupt the last progenitor.
‘No,’ Germelqart said and sat down hard. Kush was praying to the gods of his childhood, forgotten until now. Tangwen started to weep again.
Blister-like growths broke the surface of the water to the west and vomited forth monstrosities into the water and onto the land, the fruits of a womb poisoned by Crom Dhubh.
Beneath the wicker man the water was a red froth as the captives from it were attacked from beneath the surface.
Britha could not bear to turn to look at their failure just yet.
‘Will you make me kill you?’ Bress asked.
‘We will take our chances in the water,’ Britha told him as quicksilver tears rolled down her face.
‘Go lower. I have opened the way for you,’ he told her.
Britha stepped forward, wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him.
‘I must kill you,’ she told him when they had finished, though she was still holding him, looking up at him. He nodded. She noticed that he was carrying the case that Fachtna had borne since he’d known her.
Bress turned and walked into smoke and flame.
30. Now
A huge gun, shining and silver, held by a monster. Muzzle flash, slide going back in slow motion, used cartridge being ejected. Then the same again. Like getting punched in the chest, hard, except you don’t die when you get punched in the chest.
Beth gasped for breath and sat upright. She’d been killed. There was an afterlife. It looked like a motorway being negotiated at speed in a bloodstained Range Rover with spiderweb cracks in the windscreen.
‘Not professional. It was strange – they had skills but they acted like it was a school shooting spree.’ There was a pause. ‘Yes, download the satellite footage.’ Another pause. She was trying to recognise the voice. She’d been in a gunfight. No, that was ridiculous. She didn’t know the first thing about guns. Even as she thought that, all her knowledge about firearms became apparent to her. ‘I have the possibles. Yes, it’s likely they’ve changed the vehicle’s colour and plates.’ Another pause. His name was du Bois. He’d killed people in front of her. He wanted her sister. ‘We need to stop it. Police involvement worries me because the van’s armoured and they’re heavily armed. They’ll walk through the police but it could get Natalie hurt. That said, we need to stop them and a roadblock is the best idea I have.’ Another pause. ‘They are very resistant to damage. We need more nanite-tipped rounds.’