Horns of the Hunter: Tales of Luah Fáil Book 1

by Frank Dorrian

  Síle raised her face from the skull, her stare skewering Náith where he stood, the hair on his neck prickling. ‘Did you slay it?’ she demanded. ‘Did you kill this beast?’

  ‘I did, my treasure, and took scars in the doing,’ said Náith, shrugging his right shoulder, where the wound the mutt had given him was a mess of pink new flesh, scars and stubborn black scabs. ‘It was a fight to behold, dear-heart. I smashed that spear-kisser’s home into splinters and left him crying in the forest with the carcass of his dead dog.’

  The memory made him snort. Síle, however, ran her hands over the skull again, a hunger behind her stare. Her teeth teased at her bottom lip, as if caught in a quiet throe of pleasure. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she whispered, closing her eyes with a sigh. Náith had his lopsided smirk ready for her when she looked upon him. Her own was coy as she laid a hand upon his scarred arm. ‘Come inside,’ she said, ‘that wound needs tending.’

  The rain still lashed Síle’s home when Náith awoke. No telling what time it was. The light that slithered through the shutters was grey and oily, the air stuffy as wet cloth. Síle stood before one window, the sharp bones of her face outlined by the weak light as she peered through the slats.

  ‘What is it, true-heart?’ Náith mumbled. His tongue clacked dryly, peeling itself from the roof of his mouth. Booze, a night of hard rutting and Síle’s heady medicines had left him dryer than a crone’s tit. He sat up when she gave no answer, fatigue grinding through his limbs. ‘Síle?’

  Lightning flared through the slats, painting a white ghost of her naked form before the gloom swallowed her again. A smile shaped Síle’s lips as she watched the gathering storm. Náith frowned, his skin prickling. ‘Síle?’

  She turned to him amid the growling of thunder, the shutters rattling against their latches. Silently, she stepped through the gloom to kneel beside the bed. Shadows made dark hollows of her eyes as she raised Bann’s skull, staring into its empty sockets. Náith sat up, her silence and strangeness creeping frozen down his spine. He knuckled gritty eyes, and found her staring at him over the skull.

  ‘Life springs from death, just as death spills from life,’ she muttered, running her hands over it. ‘You deserve a new name for this kill.’

  Náith blinked, snorted. ‘Did you keep drinking while I was asleep?’ He rummaged for the bottle down the side of the bed, the dryness of his throat begging relief.

  ‘You slew the Hound of Luw,’ Síle whispered. ‘Its death demands a proper legacy.’

  ‘It was a dog, dear-heart.’ He found the bottle, miserably empty as he put it to his mouth.

  ‘It was the Hound of Luw, slayer of Sreng.’ Síle’s tone made Náith pause, glance at her. The intensity in her face seared through the gloom like a knife pulled from the forge. ‘It was a legendary beast, and you took its head.’ She stood, holding the skull reverently. ‘You need a new name.’

  ‘I am Náith. My name is legend enough already,’ he said, settling back into the furs, a needling pain beginning to nip at his temple.

  ‘No.’

  Náith shot Síle a look that should have withered her. She didn’t even seem to notice it as she dipped a knee onto the bed beside him.

  ‘Your name was legend. Once. Before Aodhamar had you slung from his court as a murderer.’ She peered into the skull’s eyeholes, face turning as if she could see something beyond bone and emptiness. Náith squashed down the irritation scalding his throat like drunkard’s bile and looked away. ‘But now,’ Síle whispered, ‘now… you are something else. Someone else.’

  She wasn’t herself. Not one bit. She was never so dismissive, so insulting, so… bizarre. Náith’s skin crawled as she reached toward him with the hound’s skull, goosepimpled as if he’d awoke to find his bedsheets turned to fleshworms. He almost pulled away from her, but he was no nonny-boy, and instead he swallowed his disquiet behind gritted teeth.

  She laid the skull upon Náith’s wounded shoulder. It fit near perfectly about the joint and its bunched muscle. She shuffled back from him, awe shaping her face. ‘It’s like armour.’

  ‘I need no armour,’ Náith scoffed, ‘armour is for whimpering little dandy-boys who fear –’

  ‘Cu Náith.’

  A heartbeat of silence throbbed between them. Náith cleared his throat. ‘What?’

  ‘Cu Náith,’ Síle said again. ‘A new name, for a new man.’

  Cu. Greatest of the warrior hounds that had followed Nuan in the old fables. The one who had torn the throat from Gealdán the Giant, whose rotting corpse had become the islets that lurked off the west coast of Luah Fáil.

  ‘Ridiculous,’ he huffed, shrugging the skull from his shoulder. ‘I need no armour. I need no name. I am Náith.’

  ‘You are an exile.’ The coldness in Síle’s voice made his stomach twist. ‘A murderer and traitor in the north, and a butcherer and plunderer in the south. You are doomed to be forgotten. But this,’ she said, raising the skull, ‘this marks you born again, a new man, sprung from the death of Náith, from the death of the Hunter’s Hound. Cu Náith.’

  The sound of that name faded into the murk, taking his shame and hurt with it. Cu Náith. It seemed so forced a name. So… utterly pompous. He took the skull from Síle, looked into its empty eyeholes. Náith smiled as he fitted it back onto his shoulder, admiring the savage look it bestowed.

  Cu Náith.

  How Luw and Aodhamar would rage at the sound of that.

  Síle took the name seriously in the days that followed. Too seriously. As the storm beat the land and lashed her little house, she obsessed over that mutt’s skull. Anointing it with cleansing oils, stripping it of clinging shreds of flesh, tendon and gristle. With a slender brush, she daubed delicate runes across the skull in paint so deeply red it must have been worth more than its weight in gold.

  ‘Aodhamar himself would lust after so precious a thing as that, true-heart,’ Náith said, hovering over her as she worked on it in the light of a stubby candle. His brow raised as she traced a careful shape along the side of the skull. Expensive stuff to waste on pointless squiggles. Síle huffed.

  ‘I always find it ridiculous how men put prices on things they dig out of the ground.’ She finished the rune, sat back on her haunches and admired her work. ‘Especially over so shallow a thing as how something glitters or catches the light. They’re like crows with pebbles. And besides,’ she said, leaning close over the painted skull, ‘the true value of the mineral in this paint isn’t how pretty it is.’ She added another little squiggle to the mosaic covering it. ‘It’s how strongly it holds onto the Earthbond’s sorcery.’

  Náith frowned, kneeling beside her. ‘Sorcery?’ He tried to make some sense of the runes but looking at them gave him a headache. Síle nodded, distracted.

  ‘Gealstone ore. Found only in the deepest places. Its veins cluster about vessels of Earthblood, and it responds to the Earthbond’s sorcery better than any other mineral.’

  Suspicion pricked Náith. The Earthbond, the sorcerous power granted by the Earthblood, was the realm of willow-armed court whisperers and skulking cowards. And Aodhamar, he thought ruefully.

  ‘Why do such a thing?’ Náith grumbled.

  ‘Wards, my love,’ Síle breathed, smiling as she cleaned her brush on a cloth, her runework on the skull done. ‘Words of protection, written through the tale of how Cu Náith the Warrior slayed Luw’s Hound, and how no blade could pierce him.’

  Náith squinted at the squiggles she’d painted. ‘Enchanted armour?’

  ‘Of a sort,’ Síle said, grinning smugly. ‘When I am done, not even one of Ogmodh’s blades will be able to touch you, Cu Náith.’

  Náith frowned doubtfully at that, but kept quiet, lest he seem an ungrateful prick. She kissed his cheek and stood, leaving him staring at the painted skull in the wavering candlelight, while the shadows whispered to his discomfit.

  ‘Let me see how this fits you.’ Síle lowered the skull onto Náith’s shoulder. She’d fitted a leather bac
king and harness to keep it secure, and bright buckles jangled as she fastened them about his arm and chest. She stepped back from him, running a lover’s hand down his stomach, a look of wonder on her perfect face.

  ‘I feel a fool,’ Náith muttered, dragging his eyes from her to glance at the painted skull. Armour never sat right with him. It felt like a declaration he was scared to die, scared of pain – an affront to his reputation. Lightning stabbed at the shutters, the storm still battering Síle’s home. Her expression was suddenly cold.

  ‘It is a trophy,’ she snapped, ‘one men will envy. And fear.’ A smile crept back onto her face, as much unchaste as it was adoring. ‘You are mightier even than the hound that ran at Luw’s side.’

  ‘I am,’ said Náith, unable to keep a smirk off his face. She was changed since their reunion, the bloody stain upon her soul seeping through to the surface more with each day. Unnerving as it was, Náith couldn’t deny the excitement, couldn’t bring himself to try. She was his again. Nothing else mattered. He beat a fist against his chest. ‘I am Cu Náith. Greatest warrior in Luah Fáil.’

  Síle’s mouth made a teasing shape. ‘Almost,’ she said, and kissed him lightly, turning away. Náith’s heart fell out his arse. He went after her.

  ‘Almost?’

  ‘Almost,’ Síle repeated. She knelt and opened a cupboard against the far wall, stowing her leatherworking gear. Náith’s mouth twisted, hurt, disappointment flooding him in one gut-wrenching jolt.

  ‘Tell me, my treasure,’ he blurted, unable to stem the wave of insecurity pouring from his mouth. ‘Are you mine again? Are you still my dear-heart?’ Síle stiffened as his hand lighted upon her shoulder. She was silent just long enough for terror to grip Náith’s soul. She stood and faced him as he recoiled, one of her unreadable stares holding him.

  ‘I belong to no man,’ she said. Náith closed his eyes, turned away before she could see the pain twist his face like a struck child’s. He knew it. Too good to be true. It had been a taste of their old days, and nothing more. He gritted his teeth, felt his face begin to burn.

  ‘My heart, though…’ Síle’s fingertips drew a line down Náith’s spine. ‘I can give that to one who is worthy of it.’

  ‘And I am not?’ Náith huffed over his shoulder, immediately cursing himself a cringing dandy-boy for sounding so bitter. Síle laughed quietly.

  ‘You left me, Cu Náith.’

  ‘I was a fool.’ Náith turned and laid his hands upon her slender arms, uncaring if she saw his tears.

  ‘You chose blood and gold over me and the warmth of my bed. And then you come back to me an exile, seeking shelter.’ A warm light awoke behind her black eyes. ‘You might be a new man, you might have earned yourself a new name. But I know you, Cu Náith. We spent too many nights together as one. I have to be certain,’ she said, laying a hand over his heart.

  ‘Then tell me what I must do, true-heart,’ Náith pleaded. She gave him a queer look and moved away, leaving his hands lingering where she had stood. Again, Náith cursed himself for a fool, watching her morosely as she went to the window to peer through the shutters. He went to her, unable to stop himself, the silence chafing like damp cloth. He drew her close, the way the arch of her back fit against his body sending a rush of blood through him. ‘Tell me what it is you want, my love, and it is yours,’ he muttered beside her ear.

  Lightning flashed outside, the sodden world fading from silver to grey. Thunder bruised its knuckles against the walls. ‘I want to see a storm,’ Síle said.

  ‘There’s storm enough outside for anyone, my love,’ Náith commented, making to kiss her neck.

  ‘No. A true storm.’ She cupped his cheek, their faces touching.

  ‘Then I will take you to the northern shores of Arerí, where the lightning pounds the cliffs.’

  Síle turned, a hand upon Náith’s face. ‘The storm I mean is greater than you could ever imagine, my heart,’ she said, ‘there is time for that, though.’ Her lips pursed. ‘There is something you can do.’

  ‘Speak it, and it will be done,’ said Náith, fist thumping chest. Síle hesitated, dark eyes searching the floor.

  ‘I want you to kill someone.’

  Náith blinked, uncertain he’d heard her right. ‘You want me to kill someone?’

  ‘I do.’ Síle laid her head against his chest. ‘I know it is a terrible thing to ask of you. Believe me, I do not ask it lightly.’

  Náith held her against him, quiet as he tried to wrap his mind around the magnitude of her request. She always did have a sly fondness for violence. But… for cold murder… he’d be lowering himself to exactly what Aodhamar had exiled him for. He’d seen enough murder – true murder – in his life. When the southern kings of Luah Fáil butchered the starving people of old Machad. When Sreng and the Fomonán had spilled from the blackened earth and tore the island apart in a storm of blood and fire. Honourless, degenerate slaughter, all of it. Náith shook himself, pushing the memories aside and savouring Síle’s warmth.

  ‘This person,’ he said gently, ‘have they wronged you, my dear-heart?’

  ‘Yes.’ Síle looked up at him with shining eyes. ‘They have wronged many, many people.’

  Náith nodded. Vengeance, then – a matter of honour. ‘Then they shall die,’ Náith declared, flexing a mighty arm. It felt good doing that again. ‘Tell me who it is I shall kill, my love.’

  He prayed, and prayed hard, it was that snivelling little fuckwit, Luw. He’d ram his blade up the spear-swallower’s arse until he whistled like a reedpipe.

  Síle’s mouth twitched, eyes glistening. ‘Ancu,’ she said.

  Náith’s laughter shook the walls as the thunder had done moments before, rang from them so harshly it pained even his own ears. ‘You nearly had me there, beloved!’ he said, clomping away to wipe at a tear and slap his knee. ‘You’ve not lost your humour! Ah!’ He turned back to her, under control but thumbing away another tear. ‘Tell me, my love, who is to die and why have they earned it?’

  Síle regarded him silently, a faint look of hurt on her beautiful face. Náith’s chuckles faltered, his brow knotting. ‘You’re playing me,’ he said, ‘I know you are. Tell me who I must kill.’

  ‘Ancu.’ She turned away, staring back out at the storm.

  Náith rubbed at an eye, at a loss as how to answer her. ‘Has some warrior or fool named himself as such? I thought I would have heard of it, if someone had dared take that name, but… I have been distracted these last months.’

  ‘No, Cu Náith,’ Síle sighed. Lightning cracked, closer, white bars of light flashing through the shutters. ‘I want you to kill Ancu himself.’

  Náith snorted, took himself to her bed and sat down, reaching for the water jug on her table. ‘I suppose I’ll get right on it, true-heart.’

  ‘You asked me what I wanted,’ Síle said, ‘what you could do that would make me certain I can trust you with my heart.’ Thunder growled outside. ‘That is what I want you to do.’

  Náith wiped his mouth, set the jug back down. ‘You expect me to kill Ancu? You expect a man of flesh and bone to kill the death-god?’ Her silence was answer enough. Náith huffed, shook his head. ‘Your love carries a heavy price, my heart.’

  ‘So you will not do it, then?’ Síle sniped, stepping away from the window and making for the rack of meodhglin bottles near her food cupboards. She popped one open, poured a measure into a stone cup. ‘And I will be left with my doubts about you.’

  ‘Doubts?’ Náith was on his feet, marching toward her with fists clenched as she reclined against the wall, sipping her drink. ‘Doubts? I am the greatest warrior Luah Fáil has ever known! I am fucking Cu Náith!’

  Síle stared up at him, unconcerned as he towered over her and took another sip. ‘That might be true. But so long as Ancu exists, there will always be something greater than you. Death comes for us all, Cu Náith, and it robs us, time and again, throughout our lives. I’ve had more sorrow from the prying of its claws than I care to li
ve with.’ She drained her cup. ‘You want my heart? Prove yourself greater than death and kill that miserable thief, Ancu. Or our time is just the passing of another season,’ she said, trailing fingers across his chest as she went to her bed.

  Náith stared after her, the ridiculousness of her demand rattling through his skull as his mind failed to find any sense in it. His longing for her rose, went to war with the logic that urged him to bid her farewell. He couldn’t do it. No man could. Was this just her way of saying her love was beyond his reach? Or did she truly wish him to slay the death-god? No one could think a mere man capable of that… could they? Such a thing was beyond even Náith. Beyond Cu Náith, slayer of Bann.

  ‘I would not know where to begin with this,’ Náith muttered, helping himself to a cup of meodhglin.

  ‘Béchu will know,’ said Síle, lifting her dress over her head. She reclined upon the furs of her bed, lithe body stretching out as thunder raged again.

  ‘That mad old crone still lives? I’m surprised Ancu hasn’t seen fit to take her,’ he laughed. Síle nodded, closed her eyes. Náith poured himself another cup, knocked it back, a rotten feeling swimming beneath the booze in his gut. ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Peddling remedies and runecharms in the depths of Crofan Tarbeard’s swamp,’ yawned Síle. Náith snorted into his drink.

  ‘Of all the places,’ he murmured. The old hag had been exiled from Ardas Machad at least twenty years ago. On the back of some spurious claim the Enkindled had made about a vision of her betraying him in the future, if Náith remembered right. She’d been his advisor in all things sorcerous and mysterious before that. Most likely Aodhamar just decided he didn’t need her around anymore, having already drank enough Earthblood to kill several hundred men at that point. Náith hadn’t bothered going to the trial. Fitting though, he supposed, that she’d choose to settle herself in the latest place Aodhamar felt like fucking over.