Then the agony started. It seemed like all the agony, pain and fear. Then she recognised the voice. Her people. Others. Thousands. A sacrifice.
There was too much pain. Britha went away into darkness, her flesh still burning, a cool whisper in her mind promising respite, promising relief, promising freedom from it all. All she had to do was serve the seductive voice. Listen to the blood in her veins. It was the tiniest fragments of a god.
It was all too much. She had failed. Her people would die in agony. If she would serve, what was her could recede into darkness and the pain would end. So easy…
Almost.
Britha’s back arched so violently it almost threw her upright. Violent contortions racked her body, making her writhe across the pebble beach. Her bloodstained face became a rictus mask of twisted facial expressions. The warrior glanced over at his misshapen friend.
‘Do we help?’ he asked.
The warrior’s misshapen friend gave this some thought. It was clear that he wanted to move on. The pair of them had a purpose after all. ‘Do we help?’ the warrior asked again. His misshapen companion said nothing; instead he knelt next to her, his eyes narrowing as he studied her more closely.
Britha’s eyes flicked open. The crystalline skull looked down on her, smiling its rictus grin. Roots grew off the skull, blowing in an invisible and disconcerting wind and ending somewhere that Britha couldn’t see and was sure did not exist. The face of the skull that wasn’t a skull had too many angles. Somehow she knew it existed beyond what she could perceive. The many faceted crystals caught and reflected a strange red light, the source of which was also beyond her sight. Then the crystals seemed to consume the light. Each separate crystal was moving, changing shape as if crawling back into the skull and from there to some impossible place.
Britha started to scream again.
Teardrop held her as she convulsed on the pebble beach. The flesh she had just eaten made her froth bloody. She tried clawing at Teardrop’s face. He just moved his head back to avoid it.
‘I think she can see me,’ Teardrop said. Fachtna glanced over at his oddly dressed, swollen-headed compatriot, then he turned back to look past the distant crannogs at the mouth of the river under the overcast sky and out to sea.
‘We are so far behind,’ he said quietly and then inhaled deeply. ‘I don’t like where the sky is, or the sun.’
‘You’ll get used to it. She’s eaten one of the possessed’s flesh.’
Fachtna did not grimace. Such practices had long since been abandoned by his people but he knew of them. It was a primitive response to what had happened, but he could understand it.
On his back he felt the spear shake and moan. It would need to be drugged and bathed in blood soon.
‘Will she live?’ the warrior asked.
‘She should, but she could also be possessed. The strange thing is that she is fighting it. He nodded towards the body of the huge tattooed warrior. ‘It looks like she killed one of them with their own weapon. I don’t understand how she could do that.’
This made Fachtna suspicious.
‘Someone else has blessed her?’
Teardrop took an obsidian-bladed knife from inside his jerkin and made a small incision in Britha’s cheek. He brought the blade to his mouth, licked it and concentrated.
‘I can taste the demon blood but something wars with the demon blood within her.’
‘What?’
‘Something old and powerful but so faint.’ Teardrop’s eyes widened. ‘I can taste the Muileartach in her.’
Fachtna stared at his companion.
‘Where’s she from?’
Teardrop leaned in to smell her.
‘Local.’
‘Sure?’ Fachtna asked. Teardrop gave him a look that left him in no doubt as to the stupidity of his question. ‘Can you help her?’
Teardrop gave the question some thought.
‘It will diminish me.’
Fachtna said nothing. It was Teardrop’s decision. More than anything he needed his friend strong, but she might be able to help and he wasn’t comfortable leaving her like this. And she looked strong. He would respect whatever decision Teardrop made.
‘Even if she wins the war in her blood, if she gets closer to Bress and the Red Chalice their influence on her would grow stronger. She’s pretty.’
‘For a mortal. Your head is so swollen, but it’s still the other one you want to use?’ Fachtna asked, amusement in his tone. Teardrop grinned at him. He was happily married; the comment had been for Fachtna’s benefit. It was the warrior, after all, not Teardrop who had an eye for pretty ‘mortals’.
Teardrop wiped the knife on his jerkin and then brought it up to the side of his oversized head. The black blade pushed though swarthy weather-beaten skin, cutting into it. As the blade broke the skin there was no blood, only interlocking crystalline growth. Teardrop closed his eyes, his features wrinkling in concentration. Something leaked through the dry wound. Some of the crystals seemed to melt into a viscous quicksilver-like liquid and run down onto the knife blade. The drop of quicksilver stayed on the blade. Teardrop forced Britha’s mouth open as gently as he could and held the knife over it. The quicksilver hung on the blade momentarily and then dripped into her mouth. Fachtna watched expectantly but nothing happened. Britha continued writhing on the pebbles, staring fixedly. Teardrop started to sing. It sounded like a series of disparate syllables but worked into a soothing melody.
‘Will that strengthen the blood of the Muileartach, weaken the demon’s blood?’ Fachtna asked.
Teardrop looked at his warrior friend, trying to decide if he could be bothered to explain. The warrior didn’t really care about these things. He was just talking for the sake of something to say. That was fine, Teardrop thought; the older he got the more he did the same thing.
‘No, what it should do is give her more control,’ Teardrop said and then had to stifle a smile as Fachtna nodded like he knew what the other man was talking about.
Then Britha woke, still screaming. Both of them jumped.
The impossible, painful-to-view crystalline skull faded away, crawling back into the head of the most bizarre man she had ever seen. His skin was dark but looked different from the southron traders her people had dealt with. There was a reddish tint to the brown. His face looked like it had never seen a blade and yet there was no trace of a beard there. Even allowing for this and the strangely bulbous hairless head, the strangest thing about him was his clothing.
He wore a pair of absurdly large trews, with thick red and thin white stripes. These were tucked into a pair of well made high leather boots. He had a white shirt under a stiff-looking leather jerkin, which was fastened with small metal discs that Britha had never seen the like of before. Over that he wore a piece of apparel that looked to Britha to be a cross between some sort of sleeved over-robe and a cloak. The garment was made from some kind of supple hide.
Next to him on the pebbles was a long gnarled wooden staff. There was a large crystal in the centre of the staff. It looked like the staff had grown round the crystal. Another crystal tipped the staff.
It was clear to Britha that this was some kind of monster. She looked around frantically for her spear but she was not where she had been. She was sore from the battering she had given herself during the visions. It was day now. The night must have come and gone.
‘It’s okay…’ the strange man started. Britha kicked him in the mouth from her prone position.
‘Hey!’ Britha turned at the cry and saw another man moving towards her.
She put her hand on Teardrop’s staff and flipped over it onto her feet, coming up holding the staff, a feat she was sure that she would not have been capable of until recently.