Still on his feet, the man moved towards Britha, swinging at the ban draoi as she scrambled out of the way.
‘Cut off his head!’ she screamed.
Nechtan was back on his feet now. He clubbed the sword out of the man’s hand with his own blade and then swung it two-handed at the man’s neck. It was like cutting leather. Each blow was more frenzied as Nechtan painted himself with blood. On the fifth blow the head came off, tumbling free of the body, which was still staggering around. From the stump of his neck waved hundreds of rippling strands of what looked like red filigree. In horror, Britha turned to the severed head and saw the same.
‘Cut his body up!’ she shouted. Nechtan swung at the headless corpse’s legs, taking it off its feet. Talorcan slid down next to the flailing body, his hatchet in one hand, dirk in the other, and started frenziedly hacking and cutting. Britha pulled her sickle out of her belt and raised it to strike. It was red work.
They had dismembered the body, then burned the still-twitching remains. Now they were looking to her for answers.
‘How?’ a still shaken Nechtan demanded.
Britha had always hated to give magic as an answer. More often than not, another answer could be found.
‘Magic,’ she said. ‘At a guess the Lochlannach, with help from dark gods.’ The very gods that the Pecht would not bend a knee to? she wondered.
Nechtan and Talorcan both spat. Britha noticed the quiet red-stained hunter touch the small pouch around his neck with the charm stone in it. The Lochlannach were half men, half demon raiders. People said they came from the hell where the sea freezes far to the north. Britha guessed they had somehow possessed the dead man.
‘Can you fight their magic?’ Nechtan asked.
‘As you see,’ Britha said. Nechtan was studying her as if he had just met her anew. ‘What?’ Britha demanded testily.
‘You used magic in that fight,’ he said. Britha almost demanded to know what he was talking about, but from experience it was always best to play at being mysterious. Let their minds come to their own conclusions. Still, she wondered what he meant.
Nechtan thought back to seeing Britha leap the height of a man and make a spear strike that he knew in his heart he was not fast enough to have made.
‘We travel back,’ Britha said. ‘Quickly down the coast; see if we can spot the raiders.’
‘What about Giric and Drest?’ Nechtan asked. He did not like anyone else giving orders, even the ban draoi, though they were definitely living in her world now. ‘They were warriors.’
‘Now they are crow-feeders,’ Britha said, but behind her impassive, almost cruel mask she felt sorry for the two boys. She tried not to get close to the warriors or indeed any of the Cirig. Familiarity would have interfered with those times when she had to make cruel decisions. Still, Drest and Giric had been less obnoxious than many of the other warriors and she felt they had deserved to see more of life than they had.
They had left the sweat-soaked, foaming-at-the-mouth ponies behind in the woods. They had crawled out onto the headland, Nechtan muttering all the while that sliding on his belly was no job for the Cirig champion.
They saw the fires first. Out on the sandbanks. They could just about make out the dark figures surrounding the orange flickering flames. There was the smell of meat on the cool night air. It had taken a while for Nechtan and Talorcan’s eyes to adjust, but Britha very quickly noticed the black bulks of the hulls against the night sky. They were curraghs like her people used. She had just never seen any so large before. There were two of them.
As Britha looked down at the camp, no more than six miles along the coast to the east of Ardestie, she realised that there was something else wrong here. There was no noise. The wind carries voices, and warriors talk, boast, shout, fight, jest and sing, but the wind brought them nothing from this camp. Nor could she see anything that could have made the monstrous footprint that Talorcan had found.
Britha opened her mouth to point this out, but Talorcan motioned her to be quiet. Then he pointed. Britha cursed herself when she saw the sentry leaning on his spear. She should have expected and then looked for the man. He wore a metal skin like some of the southern tribes and the ones over the western sea that she’d heard of. There was a longsword at his hip and he carried a large oval shield. He was also perfectly still, his cloak flapping in the wind. He did not seem bored nor did he fidget like most did on sentry duty.
Talorcan gestured for them to crawl back towards the wood. Britha started to move but then she heard Cliodna’s song. It seemed to come from inside her head. Tears came unbidden to her eyes. Her head was filled with beauty. Why hurt me like this? Either stay or go, but don’t play with me. She wondered if it was even her will that made her turn and look to the sea.
Cliodna’s dark hair was spread out over the calm surface of the water; only the top of her head and her eyes were visible. The eyes were enough. Britha could feel them looking past her skin and deep into her. They had changed though. They seemed colder.
Britha motioned the warriors to go on but Talorcan shook his head and gestured for her to come with them. She gave him a baleful eye and moved towards the cliff. Nechtan actually grabbed her arm, but she gave him an even more baleful look and he shrunk back from her. He had had enough of messing with things that he did not understand for one day.
She made her way very slowly to the cliff. As she did, she was mindful to keep watch on the sentry, but he did not move at all. She made it to the edge and slipped over. Like most of her people she had been climbing these cliffs or ones like them since she was a child. It was no trouble for her to clamber down into the little inlet and crouch by the side of the water.
The reflection of the moon was like a spear of light in the dark water pointing towards her. Cliodna surfaced in that light. Britha recognised this for what it was, a trick designed to awe the watcher. Is this all I mean to you now? Britha wondered. Another mortal to be made to feel small?
Cliodna remained in the water. Her song was fading. The dark pools of her eyes no longer looked welcoming and soulful to Britha; now they just drove home how different the selkie was from her and her people.
‘Listen to me, ban draoi,’ Cliodna said as if she was addressing any one of the dryw. ‘You cannot fight this. If you love your people well then you will take them far inland and hide from this. Stay there for twelve nights and then seek passage to another land. Head east over the sea and do not stop; there is much land there.’
The words made sense. Britha even liked what they said. They were good counsel. It was the way they were delivered. As if they were strangers.
‘Cliodna, what is this? What do you know? Who are these people? Are they the Lochlannach?’
‘The Lochlannach is as good a name as any. They are led by a man called Bress. They are not of your world and they wield magic that you cannot fight.’
‘What do they want?’ Britha asked.
‘A moonstruck world. They harvest pain,’ Cliodna all but hissed at her. Britha could make no sense of her words.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘This is not for the likes of you to understand. Run and hide or live like death. That is your choice.’
‘My people will not run, you know that,’ Britha said. They had not seen what Nechtan, Talorcan and she had seen.
‘I know only what you have told me,’ Cliodna said impatiently.
Is that it? Britha wondered. Is it because I would not take you to my people? I thought that was what you wanted. It was not shame that kept the secret; it was wanting a life in which I did not have to be the ban draoi, where I could be what’s left of the child that was, she thought but kept her peace.