‘She seemed nice,’ Fachtna said. Teardrop silenced him with a glare and looked at Britha. She turned away from him to wipe her tears. With one eye on the water, Fachtna moved across to her.
‘Look, I know—’ he started as he went to put an arm around her.
The iron-bladed knife was in her hand before he could finish. She opened his face from temple to cheek. Fachtna cried out and staggered back, holding the gash closed as he reached for his sword. Teardrop started towards them. Britha licked his blood off the blade, smearing her mouth red. The singing sword was half out of its scabbard when Teardrop reached Fachtna and grabbed his arm. He looked him in the eye, shaking his head. Fachtna was trying to control his breathing as the wound healed before Britha’s eyes.
There is much rage in him, Britha thought. She found it less than frightening. ‘I have tasted you and found you wanting, boy. Touch me again and I will curse you and your line. After I’ve gelded you.’ She turned and walked away from them.
‘You don’t have any power!’ Fachtna screamed at her.
‘Fachtna, that’s enough,’ Teardrop told the furious warrior.
‘Your power’s a lie! You hear me? Nothing more than a jest!’
Teardrop wrenched the warrior around with surprising strength. He said nothing but the look he gave Fachtna shamed the other man into silence.
She had wanted to hear the sound of wind in the branches of the trees; the sound of the water lapping against the shore just reminded her of Cliodna. Instead she got the moaning sound that the god-slaves made as they appealed to their deity.
She had to lock it away, all of it. Her feelings were too close to the surface, too ready to burst out. Revealing them weakened her in Teardrop and Fachtna’s eyes, and if she meant to use them against Bress, to help her people, then she could not allow that.
Cliodna was gone from her. Driven mad by her apparent mother, the Muileartach. Britha had to accept that she was not the same person and be prepared to fight her. Bress was pretty, and sad, and not like other warlords and warriors, but that was all. His reasons for doing what he did, his enslavement, sounded like weakness to Britha, and she could not hesitate when the time came to kill him.
The only person she could have any interest in was Teardrop, and that was only in terms of ritually taking his power.
These thoughts rampaged angrily through her mind until she used some of the techniques she had been taught in the groves to quieten her head. Britha slipped into a restless unquiet sleep to the sound of people offering themselves to an unnamed god.
She had nestled into a small cleft of earth between some stones. The moon, high and full overhead, shone a path of light across the otherwise dark water. What clouds there were, were little more than wisps. In her sleep she was aware of the light changing. Her eyes flickered to see the silhouette of a tall dark man standing over her, reaching towards her.
Then she woke up. Teardrop stood over her, leaning on his staff. The silhouette of his oddly shaped head was picked out by the light of the moon.
‘I mislike people watching me sleep, and I mislike the kind of man who would do so.’
‘Your sleep looked troubled,’ he said, his face in shadow. Britha sat up, moving errant hair away from her face.
‘Any reason it shouldn’t be? What is it?’
‘Bress?’
‘I am going to kill him,’ she said, and she meant it. Teardrop could read this from her but he could also see the song of her heart and the song of her mind conflicting in her face. However, he was prepared to take her at her word.
‘What did she mean when she asked you how it felt to be eaten?’ Britha demanded, still angry at how she had been woken. It had obviously been meant to put her on the back foot, to intimidate her. An answer was a long time coming.
‘Power consumes you eventually,’ he said, his voice flat, his face still in shadow, making him difficult to read, but she could tell there was more to it than that.
‘That depends on the—’
‘Always.’
There were cries from the fort. Britha caught the look on Teardrop’s face as he turned. He looked troubled. Britha got to her feet, rearranging her robe. Through the break in the cliffs she could see a ship approaching, its prow crashing through the rough white water between the rocks.
Britha grabbed her spear and headed towards the shore. The god-slaves had picked up their pitch. They seemed to feel that the ship was an answer to their prayers.
Even in the darkness and with the distance, Britha found herself able to make out the details of the ship clearly. The vessel was huge and made from planks of wood that looked to have been both painted and varnished. It looked like a southern trading vessel. She knew that the crew would have skin darkened by the hot suns of the south.
She had only seen their like once before, though she had heard stories from others of the Pecht who had dealt with the strange traders from the hot lands far across the seas. She found herself awed by the strange craft. It made the wood and skin boats of her people look so rudimentary and primitive.
The oars had been raised to prevent them from being splintered by the rocks on either side of the narrow entrance. The ship moved only by its gaily coloured sail, though even without the oars it was a close fit for the large vessel.
In the stern of the ship Britha could see hugely muscled men and women in kilts made of bronze-tipped strips of leather, labouring at the huge lever of the ship’s rudder. The navigator looked like those who worked the rudder, but older, gone to seed, though still powerful. He wore a blaidth-like garment but shorter and with no trews, and his footwear was a complicated series of leather straps. His eyelids and the skin around them were painted black, his head shorn, his beard trimmed short. He shouted instructions at the rudder-men and -women. Again, Britha wondered at how she could make out so much from so far away.
All of the crew looked so different to Britha’s tall, pale, hairy people. With skin colours in various dark hues and bizarre clothing and ornamentation, the crew of the ship looked very strange to the ban draoi’s eyes.
‘From your world?’ Britha asked suspiciously as she and Teardrop walked down to the shore. The ram prow of the ship splashed through the water of the harbour, the sinister-looking eyes painted on it disappearing in the white foam.
Teardrop shook his head. ‘Carthaginians, at a guess.’
A large, powerfully built man was holding on to the rail at the front of the ship. He wore a boiled leather jerkin over another blaidth-like piece of clothing. The light brown fur of some beast formed a small cloak. The man’s trews seemed overlarge to Britha. She could also make out the hilts of a sword and dirk on a belt. He had a necklace from the teeth of some mighty beast around his neck and wore a studded leather band on his head. His hair was neatly trimmed to the shoulder except for two long braids. His beard and hair were dyed and lacquered. Part of his face was white, limed, Britha assumed, like some of the southron tribes did. More black dye traced out a pattern across his face, all of it running due to the salt spray. To her eyes the ship’s master looked decadent, his face paint an extravagance that should only have been used for war or ceremony.
The Goddodin in the fort above raced along the stone palisades, keeping pace with the ship. Britha saw braziers placed for fire arrows. She wondered if they had any of the oil left. Would it look like a water- fall of flame pouring down on the ship if they used it? she wondered. It was something she almost wanted to see.
The man was shouting and laughing. He seemed to be by turns exhorting the sea, daring it to do its worst and crying out to a god named Dagon. Britha had no idea how she knew the language, she just did, it seemed.