‘Or the warrior will get killed,’ Feroth whispered, smiling.
‘Aye, when my heart bursts. My wife asked me if I was nervous as well.’
‘You should have told her you were too fat to fight dressed only in woad. There are enough sickening sights in battle as it is,’ Feroth suggested. Britha grinned, white teeth in a midnight-blue face, but she knew this talk was a sign of nerves.
‘What are you talking about? I’m a fine figure of a man. For my age.’
‘You’re a fine figure of a man for a boar,’ Britha suggested.
‘There’s still time for one last rite,’ Cruibne suggested, winking. Britha sighed.
‘Leave the poor woman alone, man,’ Feroth said. ‘He’s in armour because he’s the mormaer,’ Feroth said seriously.
‘I didn’t want to,’ Cruibne said. She largely believed him. Cruibne felt safer wearing armour but would rather have fought clad in the sky like his warband.
‘I’m wearing it because I’m frightened,’ Feroth said in jest. But Britha knew he was armoured because he needed to focus on directing the battle. He was also frightened, but for his people, and he would master that fear.
‘Nechtan’s wearing armour,’ Cruibne told her.
Britha cursed under her breath. The fight in the fishing village must have shaken him more than she thought. It was not good for the champion to show fear. Even if she went to him now and shamed him into fighting skyclad, the fear would have already done its damage among the warband.
‘They follow gods. They are slaves. Nothing more,’ she told them. The two men regarded the much younger blue-painted woman trying to reassure them. Feroth glanced at the sickle she held in her right hand. It would go ill for someone tonight if they fell under that blade, he thought.
‘Aye,’ Cruibne said, ‘but there’s a lot of slaves.’
‘Will you not fight with us?’ Feroth asked Britha. ‘It would do the warband good to hear you, see you.’
Where you can watch over me, Britha thought to herself.
‘I’ll harvest this Bress’s head,’ she told them.
‘Bring me his cock and balls so he can have no more children to plague us,’ Cruibne muttered.
‘He won’t be able to father children if we have his head,’ Feroth pointed out.
‘That’s not what I’ve heard,’ Cruibne said. Britha thought back to the fishing village. He was right. They would not want to harvest these heads.
It was a long crawl but the living night kept her company. She heard insects crawl with her across the sand. Listened to owls and bats hunting in the woods. She saw a seal breach out in the distant dark sea and thought of Cliodna. Ghost light traced patterns in the darkness, showing her hints of the Otherworld just out of sight. All of which she could have embraced had it not been for the smell of people living in their own filth and the sounds of whimpering that came from the black-hulled curraghs.
She slithered past charioteers lying flat on their stomachs as they crawled across the sandbank removing stones. They nodded to her but she continued on towards the flickering flames, the dark hulls of the ships and the eerily quiet and still shadows of the people around the campfire.
The spearman was standing just across a shallow channel, a run-off from the burn that ran down towards the sea. Britha was lying in shadow as close as she dared. In the groves they had taught her that it was movement that gave you away. She was waiting for the spearman to move, but he had remained still for a very long time. Britha was worried that if she didn’t move soon the attack would start before she could do anything.
She tried to study the spearman, get an idea of him, but his features were shadowed and he just looked like a normal man. His weapons and armour seemed of high quality but it was difficult to tell in this light. Why are you doing this? she wondered.
Caught up in her wonderings, it took a moment to register that he had turned to look at a sound behind him. Crouched low, Britha was across the channel, sickle in one hand. Hearing her or just sensing the movement, the man started to turn.
Britha leaped onto his back, wrapping her legs around him, relaxing her weight, overbalancing him, making him fall to the sand on top of her. Her hand covered his mouth. He immediately bit, and she felt his teeth against the bones of her hand. It was all she could do not to scream. Turn the pain to anger. Turn the anger to viciousness. With her free hand she arced the sickle towards his stomach. The curved bronze blade went through his chainmail and into his stomach as if it was hungry. The man didn’t scream, but as she tore the sickle up towards his chest cavity he bucked violently on the sand. Thousands of strands of what looked like living red-gold filigree whipped around the wound she was making. With her legs clasped around him, muscles screaming from the exertion, she somehow managed to keep hold of him. His struggles lessening, the strands seemingly started to die. She saw the tiny insectile fires in his flesh fade. She felt his death in her core, in her cunt, feeling the pleasure from the blade in her hand, wanting more.
The spearman lay still. Britha took time to smear herself with some of his blood. Then the shaking started.
She hid between the furrows made when the curraghs had been brought ashore and the black hide hulls of the craft themselves. She did not like it here. There was something wrong with the hulls. They seemed to move of their own accord. As if they were breathing or maybe trying to crawl back to the sea.
From inside the ships she smelled the rancid reek of frightened people forced to live in their own muck. She heard sobbing, whimpering and whispered prayers to uncaring, malevolent gods long forsaken by the Pecht. That will not help you, Britha thought. Only strength can help you.
From where she was half-buried in the sand she could see their fire. It was like a mockery of Cruibne’s gathering of the tribes. They sat round the fire like Cruibne’s guests had, five deep, but it was as if they were dead, all so still, all so quiet. To Britha’s eye all their armour, shields and spears looked exactly the same. The men had identically vacant expressions on their faces. Despite herself, Britha felt fear rising in her like a tide. This was potent magic. Regardless of how strong she had become, she couldn’t hope to fight this. The only thing that made her feel like she was still in the same world she had always lived in, and not ghost-walking, was the smell of the wood burning on the fire.
On the other side of the fire was what looked to be some kind of temporary hut made from sewn-together skins. Britha had never seen the like before. Through the opening in the skins, the interior of the hut looked very dark indeed.
He… it – Britha wasn’t sure – came stalking out of the tent. He looked very different to the others, a hulking squat brute, his hairless head shining in the moonlight. It was the head that was wrong, or in the wrong place. It was off to one side, almost growing out of his right shoulder, making him look grotesquely lopsided. He carried a heavy-looking axe with surprising ease.
Britha fought down the urge to bolt. It looked like he was making straight for her, but instead he climbed up into the curragh she was hiding next to. She felt it rock slightly, heard scrabbling, then screaming, then begging and a brief struggle.
A young man landed on his side, winded, in the sand worryingly close to her. Britha did not know him but recognised him for what he was by his dress. He wore the rough-spun blaidth and trews of a Pecht landsman. One of the Fidach, she reckoned.