The man staggered towards her.
‘Die!’ she screamed at him, putting every bit of her will behind the word. Too intent on the curse, she did not move quickly enough to avoid the powerful backhanded slash of his sword. It drew a line of burning blood up her torso from right to left. She stumbled back, falling hard. Already she could feel the poison on the blade coursing through her.
The light went as he towered over her, dragging her spear in his flesh. He reached down and managed to yank it out, tearing so much of his flesh it looked like his chest had caved in. Even through the pain Britha felt horror at what she saw. The end of her spear was wriggling tendrils of bloody metal. It looked alive. The warrior dropped the spear and tumbled forward like a felled tree, crashing through the platform and into the water. Despite the pain, Britha rolled onto her side to stare into the dark water. She stared for a long time. He did not surface. He has gone to feed his god, Britha thought. She felt hot and feverish. Under her skin her flesh burned.
Britha had no idea how long she had been unconscious, but she had woken to find the wound no better, although the cold night air had gone some way towards cooling her fever. She felt like there had been a war and her body had been the battlefield.
The sword wound had been deep but not deep enough to kill. It was puckered, wide, as if the flesh had torn itself open in the path of the sword. She had managed to hold it together long enough to start a fire in the hearth of the closest crannog, using the embers held in the horseshoe fungus. It too had a carving of the fish god. She did not like the way it stared at her. She wondered if it was working against her healing magics.
She had also managed to find some mead and had washed the wound out with the boiled liquid. She had passed out screaming doing this. When she came to again, she knew she did not have much time. She was already having to swat flies away from the gash. The knife she had taken from one of the dead warriors was red in the fire now. She picked it up and felt the heat coming from the blade. At that moment she feared nothing more than the red-hot blade of the knife but she knew she had to do it in one go. If she lost consciousness the flies would get into the wound, it would fester and she would die. Even after she’d cauterised the wound, she knew her chances of surviving were not great.
She tried to surprise herself. Suddenly she pressed the knife to the wound. She wondered if her screams made the sea god himself cringe far beneath the water.
There were no flies, no crow-black wings. Perhaps they felt how unnatural she had become, tainted by the Otherworld in some way she did not understand. She felt exhausted. The wound throbbed but was the manageable side of agony. She was very hungry, frail and emaciated. Looking at her body, she had lost a lot of weight again. Skin was stretched across bone.
She ate what supplies she had left. She scavenged and found more. What she ate she did not think a normal person would even be able to contain. Dimly she realised that she had not shat since before the red beach. She began to fill out again after she had consumed enough smoked fish and salted pork, lamb and beef to feed many people. She had been eating for hours.
A thought that had occurred to her on the red beach came to her again. She had tried to force the idea from her mind. It was the darkest of magics taught in the groves only when winter came, when animal innards festooned the branches of the oaks and blood watered the land.
Britha still knew almost nothing of them. Only what little Bress and Cliodna had told her. That they were slaves to a god and that they brought the madness of the moonstruck with them. It was not enough. She needed more. She needed to know where they were going. It would be more difficult if they were to sail across the sea, perhaps south to the kingdoms of the dark-skinned people the Pecht had sometimes traded with, or north back to their icy home.
She knew a way to steal knowledge but she did not wish to use it. Recovering from the wound had weakened her and these kinds of magics took their toll. They would stain her, make her less than other folk, but it was her people at stake, the people that she had sworn to protect.
Chanting to herself, hoping that her tattoos would offer enough protection to ward away the Goddodin’s sea god, she waded into the water. Every time she dived down into the dark water she feared the god of the carved effigies she had seen would find her. Eventually she found the body, her sight better underwater than she remembered. She managed to hold her breath for a long time and tie a rope around him. The huge warrior’s body was heavier than she thought, but with strength that surprised herself she dragged it onto the beach.
Naked, so that her tattoos could protect her, she had drawn with woad on her skin. The symbols would tell her body and mind what to do when she was lost in the vision. They were the magics that would steal knowledge from the dead champion. She had made do without the correct herbs to burn but she had said the words. Ancient words that allowed her to force her will on man, woman, beast, the land and the sky.
Her sickle would have been better, particularly since it had been bathed in her blood, and blood magic was the strongest of all, even more so than fire magic, but that had been lost on the red beach. The iron knife that had seared her flesh would have to do. She reached down to the champion’s body and cut the first slice of meat off. She held it to her face, steeled herself and opened her mouth. She had eaten raw meat before but it was all she could do not to vomit. She swallowed, stealing some of his power, looking for his knowledge, looking for what the demon inside him knew.
It was like swallowing fire. The fit hit her in a burning wave as she threw herself into violent contortions on the ground, screaming.
12. Now
The young Asian guy staring at her had one of those strange hairstyles that seemed to involve gluing your non-symmetrical hair to your head and, at least in this case, then sleeping on it. It took a few moments for Beth to remember where she was. What she couldn’t work out was who this guy was and why he was staring at her so angrily. His shirt and shorts were obviously what he wore to bed, but both came from what Beth vaguely recognised as designer labels.
‘Hello…?’ Beth tried.
‘So you’re a Luckwicke, are you? Gosh, how lucky we are to have another Luckwicke in our house.’ His voice full of effeminate sarcasm. Beth was pretty sure he was gay. He was certainly attractive enough. Beautiful skin, sensual dark eyes, slender, almost petite frame. Typical, she thought. Clearly he knew Talia and hated her. This wasn’t the first time something like this had happened to her. The sensual eyes were filled with anger as he leaned in close to Beth, who was just desperately trying to wake up.
‘Listen to me, bull dyke,’ he began.
I’m not a lesbian, Beth thought in mental protest but kept it to herself.
‘I know Maude thought that Talia was the coolest thing ever and a good friend, but I know that fucking little bitch was trying to turn her out! Try anything like that and you’ll have me to answer to. Understand?’
‘Er… yes,’ Beth said.
‘Now I want you the fuck out of my house and stay away from
Maude, you understand me?’
Beth would have liked to say something, to stand up for her sister, to defend herself, but she could see his point. He and Maude were presumably just two more of her sister’s victims.
‘Fair enough,’ she said and sat up in her sleeping bag. It was pretty much the archetypal student flat, patched and worn furniture, a mixture of band and young male heart-throb posters on the walls. Perhaps a bit more effort had been put into decorating the place, a bit of cheap glamour used to good effect. She found her combats and grabbed them. The pretty young man was glaring at her, arms crossed. ‘A bit of privacy?’ she asked.