She felt the impact through the sand as the lopsided axeman landed next to the landsman. Britha got a closer look at the deformed man. She didn’t think she had ever seen anyone so heavily built. Corded muscle was layered on corded muscle. He wore a stained leather jerkin; a variety of knives hung from a belt. The blades looked stained as well.
Gasping for breath, the landsman tried to scrabble away from the axeman, who quickly caught him and started dragging him towards the fire. The man was screaming, begging to be let go. The axeman dragged him into a kneeling position by the fire. He was still begging. Britha watched, knowing that there was nothing she could do.
Britha watched as Bress – somehow she knew he was Bress – came out of the skin hut. He was tall and had nearly bent double to get through the slit in the animal hides. Bress was slender but there was undeniable power in his movements. He was the most attractive man Britha had ever seen, handsome to the point of effeminate beauty. He had smooth white skin, surprisingly delicate long-fingered hands and long pale-blond hair which was practically silver. It was only the eyes that spoilt the picture. They were grey, cold, devoid of emotion, almost devoid of life.
Britha stopped breathing for a moment. How could she make out the colour of his eyes in this light? She looked again. Even with only the flickering light from the flames playing over him, she could make out the colour of his eyes. Again she felt the fear rising. It was as if she was becoming someone else. Was one of the old gods looking through her eyes from their home in the sky of the Otherworld? Was she becoming their slave? Was she by demons ridden? Beneath Bress’s skin she could see the fire that burned in his blood.
Britha forced herself to be calm, to focus on what she was doing, to look back at the beautiful Bress and gauge him as a victim. His boots and plaid trews were of the highest quality. The stiff leather armour looked like it had somehow been moulded to his body. There was a circlet of red gold around his head. Across his back he wore a massive sword that would take both hands to wield. Britha had heard Brude and the warriors in the cateran talk about such weapons in the past. Brude had always said that iron would bend too easily at that length and it would be too heavy to wield quickly enough in battle or single combat.
The malformed axeman looked at Bress. The tall man’s nod was almost imperceptible. The axeman reached into the fire, his flesh blackening and blistering; sweat beaded his skin, teeth gritted, the pain written across his face. From the flame the axeman pulled a chalice of red gold. Inside the chalice was the same red metal heated to a molten state. The kneeling man was screaming and struggling, but the axeman held him with his other hand with ease. As Britha watched, the axeman’s burned hand started to heal itself in front of her.
The axeman brought the chalice to the captive’s mouth, who clamped it shut, but the molten metal surged out. The man screamed as it touched his face, and the metal crawled into his mouth, lighting it up through his skin. He dropped to the ground writhing and jerking. Britha watched the fire course through his body. Finally he lay still.
Britha had to force herself to look away. All attention was on the man who’d drunk from the chalice. Now was the time to move. She kept to the shadows. The night matched the blue of her skin as she willed herself to be nothing more than a shadow and moved as quickly as she could towards the skin hut. It was difficult to influence someone unseen and unknown but she kept her thoughts on Bress returning to the hut alone.
Britha waited. Her eyes adjusted much faster than she thought they would. But even before she could see, she knew that she was not alone. The skin hut did not feel empty. Her hearing, now seemingly more sensitive, like her other senses, picked up the sound of breathing. She smelled sweat on flesh, mixed with the scent of recently extinguished burning oil in braziers and some kind of incense. The smell of the sea, carried on the gentle night breeze, was the only reassuring scent.
Slowly she could pick detail out of the darkness. She saw the bent tree branches lashed together with leather to provide the framework for the hut. She saw the pallet with fresh ferns and a clean woollen blanket, the urns of wine and very little else.
They were asleep in the corner, piled on each other the way a dog or wolf pack sleeps. The way her people slept if they were caught out overnight during the winter months. It was difficult to make out what they were at once, to even recognise them as human, as children. They were hairless, pale, like they lived in the darkness. It took a moment to realise why. Their physiology was all wrong. These children were built like dogs. They looked like they could move at speed on all fours. Their finger- and toenails ended in sharp black claws. Their hands and feet were all red, marking them as creatures from the Otherworld.
One of them stirred as she watched. Yawned and opened his eyes. They were completely red. He looked straight at her and hissed. The others began to wake. Britha gripped her sickle but she had no stomach for this sickness. They began to move about, growling and hissing. She shrank back as one of them lunged at her. The thick chain around the creature’s neck brought her up short. The other end of the chain must have been buried deep in the sand.
Britha backed into the corner of the hut, into the deepest shadow. The pack of children was going mad. All Britha could hope for was that the noise would draw Bress in.
It was the axeman who appeared first.
‘Quiet!’ he shouted in a language Britha was sure she didn’t know but somehow understood all the same. His accent was similarly strange, his voice sounding like it was made for anger.
‘Stranger,’ one of the children said bestially, pointing into the corner. The fact that one of them had spoke just seemed to make it worse. The axeman turned towards her. Britha readied herself.
Bress ducked into the hut. The axeman was moving. For someone of such bulk he shifted with surprising speed. He was a blur as he grabbed two bronze blades from the front of his leather jerkin. Somehow she was moving faster. The point of her sickle headed straight towards Bress’s head. Bress just seemed to reach out and casually catch her wrist.
‘No,’ he said quietly. The axeman’s blade stopped against her skin. A drop of her blood ran down the surprisingly sharp bronze blade.
Britha knew she was going to die. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she took Bress with her. She kicked out, connecting solidly with his leg. He shifted slightly but showed no other sign of even feeling the blow. She struck out at the axeman, who cursed and grabbed for her other arm.
Suddenly she was lifted high, Bress’s fingers wrapped around her neck. She panicked. She could no longer taste the air. There was a sharp pain in her wrist and she felt the sickle tumble from her numb fingers. Bress pushed her down onto the pallet. She fought him, kicking, punching, scratching but never once screaming. His grip never faltered. Her nails drew red lines on his pale flesh, but the wounds quickly closed.
He loomed over her, holding her down, ignoring her attacks, staring down at her like he was confused, as if he was studying her. The pack was pulling at its chains in a frenzy as it tried to reach her to tear her apart. The axeman appeared at Bress’s side. He was drooling.
‘Let me hurt her,’ he demanded. ‘I’ll wear her head and make her talk.’
‘We’re about to be attacked,’ Bress said. Britha’s heart sank even as she fought on. ‘Take the pack outside, Ettin.’
‘What?!’
‘Now.’ He said it quietly, but even over the sound of her struggles his authority was unmistakable. The axeman glared at him but grabbed the pack’s chains, cuffed a few of the feistier ones hard and dragged them outside.