Horns of the Hunter: Tales of Luah Fáil Book 1

by Frank Dorrian

  ‘What use will that crone’s ravings be?’ asked Náith. ‘The old bitch is madder than a toad with a reed stuck up its arse and speaks even less sense than one.’

  ‘They say she sought out Ancu herself when she was exiled,’ said Síle, examining her nails.

  ‘They?’

  ‘They,’ repeated Síle. ‘How do you think she’s lived this long?’

  Náith sighed, poured himself another drink and went to the bed. He held her stare for a moment, trying to ignore how her naked body drew the eye and prodded at his lust. The corner of her mouth lifted at his caving resolve. He drank in the sight of her.

  ‘If I do this,’ Náith said, tearing his eyes from the long leagues of her bare legs. ‘If I do this thing… I find Béchu. I kill Ancu… then what?’

  ‘Then I will swear my heart to you, Cu Náith, greatest warrior of Luah Fáil, and you may do with it as you will.’

  She leaned forward with a wanton grin, a hand knotting itself in Náith’s hair as she kissed him, pulling him down on top of her.

  *

  Luw dismissed the Earthbond. Pulling his hand from the mud behind Síle’s home, he sat back in a crouch. Searing rain whipped his neck, drove his hanging head lower as sorrow and disgust oozed through him.

  So, she chooses him.

  The earth was a dull thing to spy through. It showed murky images, relayed distorted words, worse even than the forest. Síle’s obfuscating magicks ran thick through her garden, a clogging weave of pulsing, humming threads. Yet he had seen enough. Heard enough, at least, before the two had started rutting like stag and doe. He shouldn’t have come, wished he hadn’t – if only to have spared himself the agony of seeing them so sickeningly entwined. He couldn’t help it. He yearned for her.

  He means to kill Ancu and win her heart fully.

  It seemed so utterly ridiculous, as he sat there suffering the rain’s fury, that the fat, stupid bastard would even consider it. And yet…

  If he succeeds, he will take her from me forever.

  The terror of impending loss snatched at his heart – that woeful aching that foreshadows rejection, as you watch a loved one slip through your fingers like sand. Luw lifted the broken runecharm he clutched, the one that should have been dangling outside Síle’s window. Rónne. So much for that. She’d torn it down, stomped it into the earth and left it for the mud and worms. The ache grew worse as he stared at it, the rain’s chill hollowing his bones.

  One last try, he told himself, told the intrusive little voice that urged him to drop it, forget her and return to the forest. One last try, he told it again. She is the root of my soul. Without her, I will wither. Luw’s shaking hand closed about the broken runecharm, the splintered ends of twig and bone biting flesh. Hate slithered through him, a sickly serpent crawling through his veins, spreading its filth.

  I will not let him have her.

  Luw tucked the broken charm into his tunic and scurried off through the storm toward the forest, hand and foot splashing through mud and muck.

  If he was going to kill a god, he would need a new spear.

  Chapter 14

  Iarma

  The marshes of Iarma smouldered to the southwest. A haze of decay and filth hung over the place, wreathing the horizon in a discoloured miasma. A bit like a middenheap, Náith thought. He sniffed the air. A lot like a middenheap. The stench of Iarma reached him even here, a sour-sweet note on the wind and a blight upon both land and eye. Crofan Tarbeard’s pathetic little kingdom of rot and shit, one of the last realms of the south to refuse Aodhamar’s will. Why that weird fucker and his people clung so desperately to it, Náith had never understood. It was a remote, disgusting place with nothing to offer but disease and isolation.

  No Enkindled Arsehole to answer to, though, thought Náith. Maybe there was something to this place after all.

  ‘No wonder you came here, Béchu, you mad bitch,’ he muttered, gaze scouring the land. No sign of any settlements this far out. Not that there were many to speak of here. No sign of any of Aodhamar’s rearguards, either. The Enkindled King and his warriors would be deep in the shit by now, right in the thickest stretch of it, he reckoned. Unless Tarbeard had managed to spring one of his mythical ambushes. Not a chance of that, though. Not on Aodhamar. They were all in it for the long grind, or until Aodhamar got what he wanted. Whatever that was, this time.

  Náith sighed. Time to be about it. He touched the hound’s skull upon his shoulder, tracing one of its curving runes with a finger, hoping Síle’s favour would bring him luck, or some power to aid him. Cold bone was all that answered his touch.Taking a breath, he prepared himself for the stink ahead.

  Náith’s foot splashed ankle-deep in filth thick as a hearty soup. The waft of bog-reek that rose from it pierced the rag about his face. ‘Fuck me…’ he grunted, pulling it free and checking it over for gnawers. Nasty things, like leeches, only they chewed through the flesh into the bone, and then quietly sucked the marrow out of whatever poor bastard they got a grip of, usually while they were blissfully unaware.

  Free of marrow-suckers, Náith paused to peer through the gloom and noxious haze before him. Indistinct, wavering shapes loomed ahead and on every side, smothered by the fumes that boiled from the marsh waters. Could have been anything, maybe even nothing. The marsh played tricks on the lesser-witted who entered it, set its lanterns to lure them to stinking, filth-choked deaths in its most rotten places.

  One of them awoke as Náith scanned the gloom – a faint, pallid light that beckoned like a distant candle, shimmering wanly across the still waters. He snorted and looked away. Only a nonny-boy would go chasing lights in a festering bog. ‘Try harder,’ he muttered, hoping the land would hear. A brown bubble of foul-smelling gas popped at his side with a long, uncomfortable farting noise. He moved on.

  Náith pressed on along a thin, muddy trail that led westward, near-hidden by banks of sedge and spiky-headed reeds. Larger shapes loomed through the brown-tinged air, and a village rose from the marsh’s swimming filth as Náith drew close. Or the remains of one, at least. Most of it was a burnt ruin from what Náith could see, the few surviving buildings too damp and mould-riddled to be put to the torch.

  Bodies swayed from crude gallows at the centre of it all. Seven of them, all past rotten and pecked to shreds by the plump carrion birds that rested on their shoulders. No real telling how long they’d been here, things rotted faster than they should in this place. Weeks, at least, that much was certain. A tattered, red cloth swayed from the gallows’ scaffold, painted with Aodhamar’s whorled eye.

  I thought as much, Náith thought bleakly, making his way toward it.

  He marked hunch-backed figures as he reached the edge of the village – a handful of rag-draped paupers, grubbing through filth and rubble, men and women so caked in dirt they could barely be told apart. Most scattered when they noticed Náith, fleeing into shadows and reeds, but one pair remained, barely sparing him a glance as he strode through the mould-caked streets. A man and woman, both long in years and scrawny as starved dogs beneath their shitted-up rags.

  ‘You’re with that other lot, I s’pose,’ the man called out as Náith drew into the shadow of the gallows. ‘Bit late to it all, though. You won’t find much here, I’m afraid.’ He dropped to his knees, long beard trailing through muck as he nosed at a pile of burnt, rotting planks. ‘Not much at all,’ he muttered, chucking something covered with rust into the wicker basket on his back.

  ‘Other lot?’ Náith called back, stepping into the gallows’ shadow. Swollen maggots writhed upon the bodies, their stained rags rippling atop the fury of the larvae’s consumption. Clicking corpse bugs gnawed at the choicer parts of the dead, spindle-legged and hideous. Náith grimaced, looking away.

  ‘Aye, the horde that came with that northern tyrant. One who calls himself the Enkindled King,’ said the fellow, showing the woman something that looked like a handful of rusting nails. He chucked them in the basket. ‘You know the one; be silly to act
otherwise.’ He grunted, shifting boards aside. ‘He’s come for the Earthblood in Tarbeard’s old beast.’

  ‘You don’t say,’ Náith muttered, flicking a plump maggot from his shoulder. Earthblood. No surprises there. ‘But I’m not here for that. Do you know of anyone called Béchu?’

  The two shared a look, cackled and shook their heads, piling more worthless shit into their baskets. ‘Aye,’ the old man wheezed, ‘that Enkindled One’s been gone some days now looking for her, so he has.’ He jerked a thumb at the gallows. ‘How d’you think that lot ended up there? Wouldn’t talk. Silly bastards.’

  ‘He’s probably chasing lanterns through the marsh after those directions Seaghán gave him,’ sniggered the woman.

  Náith’s stomach twisted as foully as if he’d just swigged warm bog-water. He started toward the pair without thinking and they scrambled back over the ruins to hide in the shadows like rats. ‘Aodhamar seeks Béchu?’

  The old man’s head peeped out over a length of crumbling framework. ‘Of course he does, she’s the beast’s keeper! When she’s not whittling runecharms, that is.’

  ‘Where is she?’ demanded Náith.

  ‘West of here,’ the old man said, pointing and then shrinking back behind the ruins, ‘near the heart of the marsh. Follow the trail out of the village. Then follow the singing – you won’t miss it!’ He and the old woman vanished amid a fit of cackling, fading with the scurrying of their feet.

  Náith growled, turning the way the weird, decrepit old gonk had pointed and setting off at a jog. Not much to go on, but better some idea than none, and fear often sparks truth in men. He had to find Béchu before Aodhamar did – there was no telling what the prick would do to her if she’d thrown her lot in with that freak, Tarbeard.

  Chapter 15

  The Heartoak

  The Heartoak’s limbs twisted black against violet night as Luw stepped into its clearing. The ancient oak towered over the rest of the forest, the trees pulling back from it in a broad ring. Their front ranks seemed almost to bow to it, and Luw very nearly took a knee himself as he approached, crossing a carpet of oak leaves the size of his hands. He stopped, drew a careful breath and fought the impulse. He had not come here to pay tribute to this old fellow.

  A fragile hush hung beneath the Heartoak’s boughs, and even the rasp of the air in Luw’s chest seemed to splinter it. He glanced up at the tree’s knotted crown and looked quickly away, a groan echoing from above. It knew what he had come for. Luw slipped into its shadow, a shiver tracing his spine.

  A crack was visible in the trunk as he drew closer. A black, twisting gap in the Heartoak’s flesh, shoulder-height and barely a handspan wide. Luw paused, his breath catching as he reached toward it. The gap seemed filled by shadow, but as Luw lowered his hand into it, the tips of his fingers met something warm – soft, like raw flesh. He shuddered, a wet tearing noise coming from the gap as he made a rigid blade of his hand and forced it through. Another groan came from above. The Heartoak shook with impotent fury, a sheet of shed leaves billowing about Luw’s shoulders. He could feel its rage as he burrowed deeper – could feel the thrum of primordial anger beat against his hand and arm, the pounding of wrathful drums. Anger, and something else that the trees had no word for, yet Luw understood all the same.

  Betrayal.

  ‘Forgive me, old friend,’ he grunted, and with a squelch he sunk his arm shoulder-deep into the Heartoak’s guts. The trunk resonated, shook the ground with its bitter song. Luw strained, reaching through warm, throbbing pulp and oozing fluid, his fingertips brushing a rough, pitted surface. A moment of euphoria took Luw – a stab of lustful hunger, and he pushed himself deeper into the gap, ignoring the screams of the Heartoak, its bark biting into his chest. His fingers found purchase about the hard thing, hooked themselves upon a ridge. Luw heaved with his legs, shoved himself back with a foot on the trunk, and with a foul slurping, ripping noise, he fell on his arse.

  A solid weight thudded into Luw’s chest as he hit the ground, his hands slipping on the object he’d torn from the Heartoak’s breast. He seized it quickly before it rolled away, cradling it as he managed to get to his knees. He scurried out of the ancient tree’s shadow, lest whatever power was left to it deigned to snatch back its stolen heart. The Heartoak glowered, twisted black against the night sky, its limbs groaning as though caught by storm winds.

  There was no vengeance. There would be none. It was as helpless as it was ancient, the well of its power drained over the long years of its life, and now the last dregs of it had been snatched away. That fact rammed its cold blade through Luw’s heart. He could feel the wounds left by his betrayal, the swelling of its primitive sorrow.

  Luw looked away before it overcame him, down to the dripping lump in his hands. It stank of leaflitter, decaying vegetation. He wiped away a layer of gritty muck, revealing a surface that shone like Nuankin glass. A faint golden tinge lay behind the glistening of star and moonlight.

  A block of raw, primeval amber sat in Luw’s hands. It was huge, almost as large as his head. A faint pulse throbbed within it, warm against his palms. His Earthbond stirred in answer, prickling against his veins, reaching toward it. He looked at the Heartoak one last time. Its woe was palpable, every groan of its limbs a yearning call for its lost soul, a mourning song for his treachery.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Luw muttered. He stood and turned away from the Heartoak’s misery, wrapping the lump in a scrap of cloth he pulled from his jerkin. ‘I have no choice.’

  He wasn’t quite sure if that last was meant for the Heartoak or for himself as he sprinted across the clearing, the amber clutched tight to his breast. There was no other way. The forest would pay a price for his betrayal. He would pay, as well.

  Make it worth the cost, Luw told himself.

  He shot back into the gloom beneath the trees and angled northward, making for the empty valleys of Strathglás beyond Ardas Machad, where the Nuankin said hammers still sometimes rang from the hills.

  Chapter 16

  Ogmodh the Smith

  The ringing of hammer and anvil clanged down the valley’s gullet, thin and tinny with distance. Luw paused, snuffling at the evening air, smelled nothing but his own blood. His nose still bled now and then from his fight with Náith, but no danger lurked beneath the reek of copper. He reached down to scratch behind Bann’s ear, and found nothing but the cold echoes of sorrow.

  A moment’s habitual folly, and the misery hit him in an iron wave. Síle, Bann, his betrayal of the Heartoak… guilt burned like the slow drip of vitriol on the back of his neck. He could still hear the pain in the Heartoak’s creaking as he’d fled the clearing – a murdering night-thief, a plunderer of souls. A traitor of the Hunters’ oaths. There would be no redemption for him. There was nothing he could do but keep moving forwards, try to stay one pace ahead of his guilt and make it all mean something.

  Drawing breath, Luw moved to the side of the road to crouch among the scrub and brambles, face pressed into a filthy palm as he wrestled the spidery prickling of his shame back into its hole. His ears twitched as the hammer rang again, and he sighed, eyeing the wrap he clutched and the deepening sky. One last try, he told the little voices of doubt and guilt again. Then fate may do with me as it will.

  Luw crept back onto the road, following its curve through the hills, stalking the ringing of the hammer. Síle had asked Náith to kill a death-god, to kill Ancu. If that was what it took to win her heart… then Ancu’s head would be the Hunter’s final trophy. But that bastard Náith – Cu Náith, as Síle had taken to calling him – had broken his spear. And to kill a god, to kill the walking embodiment of death, not just any spear would do. A hunter must have the right tools for his quarry, if he is to have any hope of slaying it, after all.

  The hammer’s ringing grew louder as the evening bruised over, stars wakening from their slumber. Luw cleared an obstinate, sedge-speckled crag and spotted light. A small, lopsided house was nestled upon a foothill to the west. The red li
ght of a forge glowed upon its side, the air full of the sharp tang of hot metal. Sparks flashed yellow-white, the ringing of hammer upon anvil following an instant later. Luw scurried up the hillside, burden clutched close to his chest, heart thudding against it.

  Beneath a wooden awning, a great shadow loomed over the forge. Bright sparks haloed the shape of a man as a stout hammer fell and clanged against an ancient-looking anvil. Luw stepped quietly toward it, the air a dizzying mix of noise and colliding scents. The hammer rose for another strike.

  ‘Ogmodh?’ Luw called.

  The hammer jerked, froze, the shadow over the forge stiffening. A shaggy grey head turned to regard him over a shoulder heaped and bunched with muscle. Forge light played red in the eye that held him, made gruesome chasms of the scars that grimaced along arms thick as oaken beams. A typically flat Nuankin nose twitched irritably.

  ‘Time was, I’d crack a man’s skull open for sneaking up to my home like you’ve just done,’ a low voice rumbled. The smith’s shadow turned to face him, his hammer gleaming red, haft gripped in massive hands. ‘You must have a set of bollocks on you like a Mórre Bull after a heifer’s arse.’

  ‘Forgive me, I did not mean to offend,’ said Luw, stepping closer. ‘Tell me, are you the one they call Ogmodh the Smith?’

  The hammer turned over in the smith’s hands. He made a small noise, looked down at it, face lost to shadow. ‘Had a few names over the years. Don’t amount to fuck all, though, in the end. What would a forest sprite like you want with Ogmodh the Smith?’