Britha lay naked on the ground among the undergrowth. The surrounding oaks reached above her to form a canopy that the sunlight filtered through. The sunlight had a green look to it. She had been lying there for a while. Night was best for blood magic. She had been drifting in and out of consciousness dreaming of the night. She had dreamed of stars and then what the night sky would look like if there were no stars.
Britha had dug a small pit and lined it with a skin she had waxed to make waterproof. She had placed a framework of trimmed branches above the pit and hung clay pots filled with various herbs that she burned for their fragrant smoke. Then she had opened her veins with the sickle and worked the flow, covering herself in her own blood. She had lain on the cold earth, her arms over the pit in which she had placed the sickle, blood dripping onto the iron blade.
There should be more, she had thought. Normally rituals had various parts to them – words, movements, ingredients each designed to focus the will on what she wanted to achieve. She concentrated on the death of the invaders, who were not more than five miles from where she lay.
When Britha had returned to Ardestie she had found the village in chaos. Many of Cruibne’s guests had ridden back to their villages. Those who lived to the north, particularly on the coast or along major rivers, had returned with stories of destruction. There were a lot of very angry, grieving men and some women with swords and spears. Some felt that Cruibne was responsible and had lured them away from their homes; others pointed out that they paid tithes and swore oaths to Cruibne so that he and his cateran would protect them from such raids.
Talorcan and Nechtan had returned before her, Nechtan telling of the black curraghs on the sandbanks. Many had wanted to set off immediately to exact revenge. Britha had arrived as Feroth was trying to prevent them moving without a strategy. There was a lot of shouting, anger, posturing and very little getting done.
‘Quiet!’ she shouted. The cry silenced them. Cruibne’s shaggy dark-haired head whipped round to see who was giving orders in his land, immediately relaxing when he saw Britha. ‘I will not shout over you again,’ she said quietly enough to make them strain to hear her. ‘It is the Lochlannach. Demons from the ice and sea. They are hard to kill.’
‘Iron will do for them,’ shouted Feradach, one of the cateran and Nechtan’s closest rival. ‘My father always told me that iron will do for the fair folk.’
‘It has to be cold wrought,’ Brude, the smith and a dryw in his own right, said. He was a massive man who wore a moustache like those from the western isle, his bright orange hair tied into a ponytail, his right arm much larger than his left. ‘There is not enough time.’
‘Even with his head cut off he still fought—’ Nechtan started.
‘If you are too frightened…’ a warrior from one of the northern villages interrupted, his face still dirty from a hard ride, tear tracks streaking the dirt. Britha felt bad for the man but she silenced him with a look.
‘Cold iron is not enough. They have fire and metal in their flesh,’ she said. Brude looked more than a little disturbed at this. ‘They have to be dismembered.’ Talorcan and Nechtan nodded in agreement.
‘Feroth?’ Cruibne asked. The tough wiry old man looked thoughtful.
‘We know the terrain and the sandbanks are flat; our people know the ways of them.’ There were smiles as people caught on to what he was suggesting. The tear-streaked northern warrior looked confused. ‘How do we fight when the northern tribes are stupid enough to fight us on our own ground?’ Feroth asked the warrior. Britha watched understanding creep slowly across the man’s face. ‘We’ll need to attack soon or they’ll come for us.’
‘What about the giants?’ Talorcan asked. A number of people spat. They were looking to Britha now for an answer. She tried to remember everything they had taught her in the groves.
‘We did not see them,’ Britha replied.
‘They’ll be in the sea,’ the hunter said with a surprising degree of certainty. Britha had to agree with him. The sea was the Lochlannach’s home.
‘Grapples, like you would use to pull down a wall,’ said Britha. There was nodding from some of warriors assembled, doubt in the eyes of others. ‘You’ll need to work together, bring them to the ground. This is not a fight for glory. There will be no glory if we do not live past this. We either fight together or we die. No songs will be sung of this, and any who seek glory over their duty to the people I promise you now, I will lay a satire on them that will curse their lines down to their grandchildren’s grandchildren.’ There were mutterings and a few of the braver spat to show their unhappiness.
‘Is that all you can advise?’ Drust, the mormaer of the Fotlaig asked, sounding less than convinced.
‘These are creatures of water and ice,’ Britha told them. ‘We must take everything that can burn – oil…’ There were groans. Oil was expensive. The best had to be traded for with southron merchants from across the sea. ‘Uisge beatha…’
‘You’re not burning good uisge beatha!’ Cruibne cried.
‘Shut up, you,’ Ethne told him. ‘It’ll be done,’ she told Britha. All eyes turned to Cruibne. He was nodding.
‘Gather the family,’ he told them, meaning the cateran, the warband.
When she awoke again she felt better. It was dark now but the cooler air didn’t seem to bother her. Britha pushed herself up and looked into the small skin-lined pit. Her sickle was there. Perhaps it was the darkness or her mind playing tricks on her, but the blade looked darker.
All the blood was gone. She would have assumed that it had just soaked into the skin or leaked through into the earth except there was no staining whatsoever. She reached down to touch the skin. It was dry. She touched the sickle. It was dry as well. She picked it up and held it in front of her face. It felt different. Somehow easier to wield. Somehow more connected to her. Britha could not remember her magic ever being this strong before. At some level she knew that the sickle shared her purpose. They would see the entrails of this Bress.
She looked at the wounds in her wrist. They looked fresh but had healed over. Britha had to suppress the fear she felt, fear of herself.
It was an effort to put the sickle down, but she had other preparations to make. She had to make friends with the night and look into the Otherworld. She reached for the clay pot of woad dye.
Cruibne and Feroth had no idea she was there. That was good. Both men were standing just below the peak of a dune on the headland that overlooked the sandbanks. They were watching the Lochlannach camp, using patches of dry sharp grass as cover. Their hundred-and-fifty-strong warband was concealed among the dunes. The war dogs with them had rags wrapped around their maws to stop them from howling.
Of the warband about seventy were warriors, half from the Cirig’s cateran, the other half from the Fotlaig and the Fortrenn. The rest were landsmen and women, spear-carriers. Those too old to fight and the children had gone to the broch on the Hill of Deer. There the youngest of the old and the oldest of the young would stand guard.
Cruibne and Feroth were wearing stiff leather jerkins with overlapping scales of iron sewn into them.
‘Nervous?’ Britha asked, meaning the armour. Both the older men visibly jumped; Cruibne reached for his spear.
‘Woman! Don’t you know that sneaking up on a warrior like that will get you killed?’ the mormaer demanded in a hissing whisper when he finally recognised her. Britha was naked and covered head to foot in woad the blue of midnight. In shadow she became part of the night itself. The woad was working its mysteries on her. The air seemed alive all around; she could see further; her hearing was sharper; she could smell the sweat and the metal and the meat from the fire of their enemies.