Those prostrate on the ground felt the power of this mere shadow of their charnel god. The Dark Man in the flames, Crom Dhubh, the man the witch folk fire-danced with, was just a more powerful messenger of oblivion than they themselves.
‘Carrion warriors, continue to drive the weak before you, take your fill of their flesh and drive the rest to the sacrifice.’
Cadwr was nervous, but the young warrior knew he had led his small part of the warband well. They had ranged along the south-western banks of the river of the Grey Father. They killed those they caught, let the rest flee to be herded to the south by the larger bands led by Ysgawyn. They burned the land and slaughtered the cattle. There would be famine when winter came. Only the dead gods would feast, as would their servants, those who ate the flesh of heroes blessed by the gods themselves.
‘What would you have us do?’
The warped, living black flame turned to look at the young warrior covered in lime and blood.
‘When you meet Ysgawyn, go to the Crown. Slay this Rin; he is old and weak like the blood of the god within him. Bring the rest of his people to my servant, the tall man. I will send beasts from the Otherworld to aid you.’
Britha stood in the darkness just beyond the light of the fire and the circle of lime- and gore-crusted warriors. She knew that simply by being still they would not see her for looking. It was movement that gave away the hidden.
The figure in the fire was making her sick. She could feel it in the air somehow. She felt the violation of the natural order of things, a connection between the living fire and wherever this dark figure actually stood. The Cirig knew that you never looked too hard into a fire as you risked attracting the attention of callous gods who lived in burning places.
As sick as it made her, she felt its call. Was this shadow Bress’s master? she wondered. The figure spoke to the same parts of her that the dreams of Bress did. The dreams were more frequent and intense now. But perhaps it was just the thought of battle that was making her wet.
They were in the northern lands of the Atrebates, the tribe whose king they sought. What the black curraghs had left, the Corpse People had despoiled. Tangwen said that the Corpse People had been one of the many tribes that made up the Durotriges, a confederation of peoples from the far west. They had been expelled from the confederation for their dark practices. They lived on the plain where many of the other tribes placed their dead in barrows or left them for the crows to carry to the Otherworld. The plain bordered Annwn, the land of the dead, and the Corpse People were thought to have strayed too close to that border.
They had been travelling for ten days now. The last Britha had seen of the People of the Snake had been the little girl holding one of Fachtna’s arm torcs. The Will of Dagon had carried them west up the river until Hanno had finally refused to take them further despite there being plenty of loot for the Carthaginians from deserted and destroyed villages. Tangwen had led them on foot from there. The young hunter and warrior had taken them deeper into the ruined landscape. They had gone west first, skirting areas that had been raided, trying to avoid bands of warriors from further north seeking to protect their lands. Then they headed south. Britha did not trust the land here – its flatness seemed unnatural – but she had to admit that before its despoliation it must have been very rich.
‘What have you brought for me?’ the warped figure in the living flame asked. Its inhuman voice made Britha’s skin crawl. Bress must be his slave. This monster must have forced him to drink from the chalice she had seen. She had to push down these thoughts, focus, forget about Bress. All that mattered was her tribe. Regardless of this thing’s hold on Bress and her attraction to him. Bress still had to die.
The boy they brought forward was too terrified to cry. Pale and naked, there were cuts on his head and face where hair and eyebrows had been shaved off. The smile on the face of the warrior who’d asked about Rhi Rin told Britha that he took pleasure from this. She’d seen the look before on the face of blood-drunk warriors and black-robed sacrificers who relished what should have been no more than their duty. The boy shook like a leaf. They were not a strong people, Britha thought.
They made the boy kneel before the fire. Cadwr crawled behind him, averting his eyes. He put the stone blade into the small of the captive’s back. He would destroy the bone there so the boy could not move and then feed him to the fire so the Dark Man could drink the weakling’s suffering. The smiling lime-covered warrior wanted the smell of blood boiling in blackening skin so that Crom Dhubh would know his devotion. He was looking forward to the ragged feel of the rough stone blade tearing through soft skin and hard bone. He savoured the boy’s fear as stone touched flesh.
An arrow grew from Cadwr’s head. He felt the impact. Knew something was wrong.
Across the fire he saw Edern staring at him. Behind Edern the darkness parted, revealing a strange man with skin like wood and a swollen head. Not a man but a demon! The demon had a black knife in his hand. The blade had somehow captured the flames from the fire within it. A red smile appeared on Edern’s neck as the demon drew the blade across limed flesh with no more effort than a man slicing butter. Then the darkness came for Cadwr. Confused that he could die again, he hoped he was travelling to his reward.
Two of their number were dead before the Corpse People even started to reach for spears and swords and climb to their feet. Even hardened warriors who thought themselves dead jumped at the horrible keening noise. Britha seemed to fall from the sky. After all, they hadn’t seen her leap off a nearby moss-covered boulder. Her face contorted as she made fear magics with her voice. She landed behind one of the Corpse People; the head of her spear exploded out of the man’s chest. Part of the haft followed as Britha’s momentum pushed it through and rammed the point into the ground. Rather than try and tear the spear out, Britha pulled her sickle from her belt and turned to face the closest warrior.
Teardrop had insisted that their weapons, including Tangwen’s arrowheads, were first soaked in the blood of either himself, a reluctant Fachtna or Britha. Teardrop had then burned some kind of sweet-smelling plant to make smoke and chanted at the weapons. He said that he was telling them what to do. Britha thought this nonsense. Iron knew how to kill before it was forged. The heat in the pregnant metal of the belly of the forge was just the pain of birth.
The warrior had drawn his sword. The pitted blade shone in the firelight. Southron warriors polished their blades rather than leaving them blue from the forge as they did in the north. He swung the sword two-handed at Britha, who parried, also using both hands, catching the blade in the curve of the sickle. Surprise flashed across the warrior’s face. He had not been expecting Britha to be strong enough to stop the force of his blow.
Behind Britha another of the Corpse People swung a carved stone and bone club at the back of her hooded skull. Fachtna emerged out of the darkness behind him. His angry-sounding, singing, ghost-bladed sword made a cut through the warrior from shoulder to deep in the man’s stomach.
Britha kicked the swordsman back, again surprising him with her strength and staggering him. Then she swung the sickle two-handed up into the warrior’s groin. A long way from dead, he collapsed to the ground clutching his ruined manhood. This time she used his high-pitched screams to cast her fear magics. Her first victim was still sliding down the haft of her spear.
Two warriors charged Fachtna’s back. Two arrows appeared in the back of one, Tangwen firing from the trees, her snake mask high up on her head to give a clear view as she shot. The man hit the ground, sliding in the dirt as Fachtna spun around, lifting his leg over the fallen man. The second warrior had been going for a low strike with his spear, hoping to push it into Fachtna’s bowels. The Gael brought down his leg with incredible speed and stamped on the haft of the spear, splintering it. He swung the large oval shield strapped to his left arm into the charging spearman, lifting him off his feet and then slamming him to the ground. Fachtna pulled the shield up and then drove his sword through the man’s chest and deep into the earth beneath him.