‘Is it getting stronger the closer we get?’ Teardrop asked with urgency in his voice. Meaning her dream. It was, but she neither wished to admit that to Teardrop nor think about what it meant. She was frightened by the intensity of her experience, embarrassed that it had been so public, tired of being in the cramped stinking confines of the ship and thoroughly sick of listening to meaningless jabbering and incessant praying.
‘Enough,’ she said quietly to herself. She got to her feet, not even bothering to adjust her robe, grabbed her sickle and made her way over the sea of sleeping and half-awake rowers towards where the god-slaves were kneeling by the stern of the ship.
‘Britha!’ Teardrop hissed, but she ignored him.
‘Don’t want your life?’ she demanded. The god-slaves turned at the sound of her voice. She was no longer sure what language she was talking but they seemed to understand it. ‘Fine. I’ll have it.’
She started the words of the chant in the language of the Pecht, the language of her people. She saw the battle on the beach, the ruins of Ardestie, the destroyed broch empty, her people gone. Her people had fought until Bress’s magics, the demon magics – she had to not forget that – had enslaved them. The warriors fought, the landspeople fought, the old folk would have fought, the children would have fought, and here were people, victims of the Lochlannach like her people had been, and they wanted to embrace it.
The words of the working were not familiar to her. They were old and cold, taught to her a long time ago in veiled whispers by the black-robed sacrificers. Dark magics, every bit as dark as the consumption of the flesh of your enemies to know their secrets.
She grabbed the first one by the hair. He did not resist. Her pleasure at the hot salt splash of blood on her face was a pale echo of what she felt when she made love to Bress and the Dark Man whispered to her. She kicked the corpse over the side of the boat. She had taken what she needed from it with powerful words. Let Dagon consume the flesh now, or the cowardly gods of the Goddodin. Carrion gods.
Fachtna was sitting up now. His face neutral, he translated what she was saying so the crew could understand who she was, what she was. Someone had run screaming for Hanno. He came on deck, pulling his blaidth on. Kush was next to him, naked but for a loincloth, carrying his bronze axe. The rowers were scrabbling away from Britha now. Hanno and Kush exchanged a look and Kush started forward. Fachtna stood up, still translating Britha’s words as another god-slave died with no cry of pain, nor had she begged for her life. Britha used her sickle to paint the planks of the ship with the god-slave’s blood. It ran into the gaps and dripped into the hold below.
Fachtna stood between Kush and Britha. He was leaning on his sword, which was still in its scabbard, but his message, as he continued with the translation, was clear. There was not a moment of hesitation from the tall axeman, who stepped forward, but Hanno placed a hand on Kush’s shoulder and nodded towards Germelqart. The navigator was shaking his head.
Teardrop was on his feet, but Fachtna put a hand on his shoulder and shook his head. Teardrop, not long ago, would have stopped her, would have ignored Fachtna. He watched another of the god-slaves die and get kicked overboard. Then he knew he was just as culpable as Fachtna, as Britha. He found he didn’t care about their lives.
Britha cared about their lives because she wanted them. She wanted what was left of their lives. She wanted what would have been. She would take their weak and meagre spirits. She would deny the Dark Man even the paltry strength of their weakness. She only hoped that by saying the words that stole their spirits, she would not taint herself with their weakness.
It was only after she had sawn through the final god-slave’s throat, only after her robe was soaked with their blood, only after her skin was hot and red, that she realised how grateful each of them had looked.
She turned around to face the rest of the ship. The rowers cowered away from her even as blood trickled towards them. Hanno stared at her with horror, Kush with distaste, and Teardrop’s expression was cold. Fachtna had an unpleasant-looking half-smile on his face, and the navigator, Germelqart, looked at her with approval and nodded his thanks.
Britha sat down on one of the benches with her back against the rail and hugged her legs. She could ignore the corpses in the dark water behind her but she still knew they were there. Britha did not sleep again that night, but that meant that she did not dream again either. When morning came, it brought raucous gulls to feed on the flesh of the floating dead behind them, the sun to dry the blood on wool and skin, and wind to carry them further south.
‘This is not a good place to be,’ Germelqart said. They had gone into the mouth of a river. It was not as large as the Tatha or the Black River but it had looked a reasonable size. Hanno had said that he knew the river and that the people there called it the Tamesas, meaning Grey Father, who was apparently the god of the river.
Either side was marshland. Britha could not understand how people lived here, but apparently they did or had. They knew this because they could see smoke rising from what used to be their villages.
‘This makes no sense to me,’ Hanno said. ‘These people were careful, clever people. They built their villages on mounds of dry earth in the marshes, and only those who had a guide who knew the secret ways could take you there.’
‘They would have made one of the guides drink from their chalice,’ Britha said. She still wore the blood of her victims. Flies from the marshes buzzed around her. The Will of Dagon was hidden from the main waterway of the Tamesas between a sparsely wooded island and the swampy mainland.
‘It would be easy to get trapped here,’ Germelqart said. Kush nodded in agreement.
‘You are a timid people,’ Fachtna observed dryly. Teardrop did not even admonish him for baiting the Carthaginians; he was staring to the north into the marsh at the rising smoke.
‘This happened recently, I think,’ Kush said. Hanno nodded. Britha stared west. Following the snaking line of the river they could see more columns of smoke. It was definitely the work of Bress.
‘I think now we sail east to the land of the Gaul,’ Hanno started. ‘Then we hug the coast and head south regardless of how stormy it is. Their god Taranis hates and fears me, I think.’ There was a snort of derision from Fachtna. ‘Through the pillars of Hercules and back to my beloved Carthage.’
Germelqart nodded his agreement.
‘No,’ Britha said. ‘They are not on the river any more.’ She was certain of this. She had been feeling much stronger since she had taken the lives of the kneelers.
‘And the Grey Father told you this himself, did he?’ Hanno asked. His tone was derisive, but she smiled when she heard the fear there as well. They thought her a moonstruck witch now. It was a part she could play. It might even have been true.
‘We go south,’ she insisted. Hanno opened his mouth to protest.
‘We’re being watched,’ Teardrop said.
‘Frightened survivors,’ Kush said.
Teardrop pointed into the swamp. ‘And there’s something in there… power of some sort. It hides from me every time I reach for it.’
Fachtna turned to look at his friend with interest.
‘Madmen, demons and witches.’ Hanno spat over the side of the ship and touched an amulet that he had taken to wearing. It was a tiny effigy of Dagon carved from driftwood.
‘If Teardrop says he feels something then he feels something,’ Fachtna told them. Britha had turned to look at the man who claimed to be from a tribe called the Croatan.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
Teardrop shook his head as if concentrating. ‘Something ancient and slippery, it coils away from me every time I reach for it.’ He turned to look at Britha, then seemed surprised as if he was only now seeing her covered in drying blood. ‘I think we should go ashore.’