Behind him he heard Britha stop. She had seen Fachtna’s sword and shield at the ready. Fachtna heard her change her position, presumably readying her spear. Now have the good sense to be quiet, Fachtna thought. Then he heard the mindsong.
Britha had her back to Fachtna. She was still, her spear ready. She was not sure what was her awareness of someone or something in the gently swaying reeds around her and what was her mind playing tricks. All she heard was the wind and the water from the nearby river. She glanced over towards it. She could just about make out the Will of Dagon. There would be no help from that quarter. Quite the opposite: they would be pleased to see them gone.
She became aware of the music. It sounded simple, ancient and beautiful. It was a song without words. It was open, baring all. She started when she realised that she could understand it on a level much deeper than mere words, though she was not hearing it. She was listening to it some other way. She heard it inside her head, felt it through her body; her blood responded to it.
They came out of the reeds on all sides. They wore armour made of panels of boiled leather sewn onto skin to make it easier for them to move. Their spears were odd, made of wood, the ends carved into blades and then fire-hardened. Their shields were small and round, leather over wood, all painted with the same design. What could be seen of their skin was covered in mud. Over the top of the dried mud the same symbol was repeated. They wore full head coverings, not unlike the dog masks worn by the Cirig, except these were unmistakably in the shape of a serpent’s head. The serpent was the symbol painted over the mud and present on their shields.
‘Fachtna, I think I’ve made a mistake,’ Teardrop said quietly, but his voice carried.
Britha saw Fachtna move imperceptibly. He was getting ready to attack. He, like her and Teardrop, was surrounded. It looked like death to her. She heard him spit out an unfamiliar word through gritted teeth: ‘Naga.’
‘Fachtna, wait,’ Teardrop said, his voice carrying over the breeze, through the rushes.
‘Better to die,’ Fachtna said.
‘It may not be as we think. Bress raided them,’ Teardrop said. The warriors surrounding them said nothing.
‘Look at them. This is typical. They have set themselves up a god.’
‘Our god sees through our eyes and you are from elsewhere,’ one of the warriors in the snake masks said.
‘Isn’t everyone?’ Fachtna responded.
Britha could hear the warrior talking to Fachtna. The warriors around her were absolutely still, not even responding to any movements she made. Calm, yet she could feel their anger. She wondered how many people they had lost when the black curraghs came.
‘I don’t even want to know your name,’ Fachtna said, an insult. It was not the ritual insult of a challenge but disgust at what the warrior was, letting the man know that he was beneath him.
The man said nothing; he just watched Fachtna.
‘Fachtna, I need you to wait,’ Teardrop said.
‘It serves us nothing,’ Fachtna said. ‘Let’s get on with it.’
Britha wasn’t sure what was going on but she had never heard of Naga and so was sure that this tribe was no enemy of hers. They may become such, but there’s time for that later, she thought.
‘How will you face Bress if you are dead?’ Britha asked.
‘Better to die fighting than to come into their power. There is nothing left of you when they are finished anyway. It makes slavery under Bress look desirable.’
This chilled Britha, but the warrior was given to exaggeration, as all warriors and most men were.
‘But this does not look like that,’ Teardrop said. ‘There are magics here but they are weak.’ Britha could only just hear Teardrop, spread out as they were.
‘Why aren’t they attacking?’ Britha wondered out loud.
‘Because their god is watching us,’ Fachtna growled.
‘And wants you to know that the poison we coat our blades with is made from his blood. Our spears will pierce armour and flesh and rupture bowels. You will smell the filth of your own death.’ It was the same warrior who had spoken before.
‘Enough!’ Teardrop cried. His stance relaxed but his staff stayed at the ready. The warriors shifted slightly, keeping their spears levelled at them. ‘Either fight or take me to your god,’ Teardrop demanded. Fachtna looked less than pleased.
The village was a series of roundhouses not too dissimilar to those of Britha’s own people, although smaller. They were set on a number of low islands of hard-packed dirt that rose out of the surrounding marsh. They called themselves the Pobl Neidr, the People of the Snake, and were part of the much larger Catuvellauni, whose name meant Leaders of Battle. They had burned their own village, taken what supplies they could and fled into the marshes before Bress’s raiders. They had tried to fight them using cunning and their greater knowledge of the land, or so Tangwen, the warrior who had been doing all the talking, told them. Tangwen was a woman but apparently found it useful to impersonate a man in order to get other warriors to take her seriously. This didn’t make any sense at all to Britha, who also found it odd that they showed no reaction to Teardrop’s swollen and deformed head
Fachtna was clearly not happy. He treated the snake-masked warriors with contempt and was obviously itching for a fight despite near-constant warnings from Teardrop. Leaving the village, they were taken deep into the marshes by hidden trails and sunken causeways. The People of the Snake moved with an easy grace through the marsh, but more than once Fachtna, Britha or Teardrop missed their footing and ended up soaked or covered in mud.
‘We are going to find this thing and kill it, root out the centre of the corruption, yes?’ Fachtna demanded.
‘We are going to see what it is. Things are not as they should be here.’
Beyond realising that the Naga were a hated enemy of Fachtna, Britha could not make out what was happening.
She did not realise that there was a large island in the marsh until she stepped from a sunken causeway and onto it. It just blended with the rest of the marsh. There, staying low beneath the height of the rushes, she saw the rest of the People of the Snake. They did not have the fearsome countenance of the mud-covered, painted and masked warriors. They were landsfolk, or more likely fisherfolk and those who hunted birds, judging by the wooden frames with hanging fish and fowl. They regarded the newcomers with apprehension and would not look directly at their own warriors. This Britha understood: the warriors had taken on aspects of the serpents that they looked like. Dangerous spirits would possess them when they wore the snake masks. They were no longer kin to these folks but fearsome animalistic warriors.
In the centre of the island was what initially looked to Britha like a stone-lined well, but as she got closer she realised that it was a series of wooden steps lodged between the rocks of a dry-stone shaft going down into the island itself. Fachtna was shaking his head.
‘What are you frightened of?’ Britha asked, goading him.
‘I am to keep Teardrop safe. Go down there yourself if you want.’
‘You are safe if you do not wish ill on us and our father,’ Tangwen said. She nodded to some of the folk nearby. They shrank from the serpent visage of her mask, and just for a moment Britha caught the look of discomfort on the other woman’s face through the mud. They were brought food, a stew made from fish and fowl in bread trenchers, and wooden mugs of something ale-like. As a child offered Fachtna his food, he slapped it out of her hands. The little girl looked shocked and then very angry.