Ogmodh grumbled to himself. ‘A mighty cost for a weapon, Master Sprite. Especially one that will never accomplish what you wish. I tell you now: this spear will be fine, but it will not kill Ancu. Not even Aodhamar could do that. Are you sure you’re willing to pay such a price?’
Luw stared into Earthblood’s impurity, a misshapen pupil in a golden eye. He could feel the Heartoak staring back at him, full of accusation. ‘It always carries a price, Master Smith.’ He offered it up to Ogmodh. ‘The Southern Forest is doomed, anyway. And for Síle… I would see the world itself end, if she asked it.’
Ogmodh gave him a doubtful, funny look. ‘Never does well for a soppy fart to think with his cock, sprite,’ he said, ‘but as you wish.’ He took the amber from Luw and laid it upon the workbench. Taking up chisel and hammer, he laid them to the amber. ‘Remember, Luw. I warned you that even this will not work. It will not kill Ancu.’
Hammer struck chisel, and a crack ran down the amber.
‘She was married, you know.’
Luw raised his head from the rock he was rolling back and forth between his feet. ‘What?’
‘That one you’ve been poking,’ Ogmodh said, grunting as he twisted the spearhead onto its haft. ‘Síle.’
‘Do not speak ill of her,’ Luw warned, returning to his rock-rolling.
‘I do not,’ the smith muttered, turning the spear so that the blade flashed brilliantly. ‘For what I speak is true. She was married. A long, long time ago. I doubt she told you about it.’
Luw fumbled his rock, gawping at the smith as he knocked the butt upon the earth, tightening the blade’s fit. Married? The thought made his heart lurch toward his arse, as if he’d swallowed something that wriggled viciously against the inside of his guts. He crushed it down with a shudder. ‘No. She didn’t.’
Ogmodh nodded. ‘You probably weren’t even born then, sprite. Older than she looks, that one. Far older.’ He laid the spear down upon his workbench, tapping a nail into the socket. ‘I knew the man. Tárchan, his name was.’
‘I see.’
‘Dead now,’ the smith went on, ‘long, long dead.’ He squinted at the spearhead’s fit, held it eye-level to check for warps. ‘Good fucking riddance, too, if I do say so.’
An uncomfortable feeling wormed its way into Luw. It was strange to think of Síle as married. Tárchan. He knew that name, but couldn’t place it. She’d never mentioned him. Not once. Something about it didn’t sit right, no matter how his mind turned it over. It seemed… something that should be known, at least between lovers.
Lovers no longer, fool, he chided himself, staring up at the cloudless sky. Did that fat arsehole, Náith, know of this? Had she deemed him worthy enough to grace with that lost piece of herself?
‘Here.’ Ogmodh chucked the spear toward him, ripping Luw from his chafing reverie. He caught it – caught her – and felt his mouth fall open. ‘Beauty, isn’t she?’ the smith chuckled. Luw nodded absently. That she was. ‘A bit uneven yet, but I’ll fix that up today and treat the haft, make it just as comfortable as holding your own cock.’
Luw hefted her. Her haft was a length of pale ash wood thick as his wrist, but she was light, almost like air itself. A thing built for war. Earthblood-infused amber glistened just inside of her blade’s edge, making golden the myriad runes of strength, speed and life that flowed there. He raised her toward the sun, and for just a moment, he thought that silver flames flickered upon her edge as the light caught it.
‘Beautiful,’ Luw muttered.
‘Give her a try,’ Ogmodh said, his bench creaking as he plonked his arse down on it. ‘You’ve a face like a slapped sack, sprite. Get it out of you.’
Luw gave a nod and stepped into the sun.
The spear hummed as she cleft the air, scattering the sunlight like sparks. So light, so fluid as she spun, stabbed, turned and slashed. Luw moved through the motions, the dance of the spear the last of his kin had taught him. He spun her around himself one last time, splitting the air in a broad circle as the dregs of frustration clawed at his temper. He leapt, twisted and roared, plunging her down into the earth. The hill shook beneath that last blow, soil and stone splitting and scattering beneath its force.
Ogmodh was smiling when Luw raised his head. He spread his hands, a father watching his child take their first steps. ‘So? How does she feel?’
‘Perfect,’ said Luw, rising and plucking her from the earth to hold her reverently upon his palms.
‘Looked a little unbalanced on the swing,’ Ogmodh countered, ‘nothing that won’t be solved by the counterweight. Pass her here and I’ll finish her up for you tomorrow.’
Luw padded toward him to hand the weapon over reluctantly. It felt wrong for it to leave his hands, like handing over a piece of himself into someone else’s care. Ogmodh gave the spear a little twirl before he placed it in the rack near his forge. ‘Have you chosen a name for her yet?’
Luw mulled that one over for a moment, nodded. ‘Maebhara.’
Ogmodh pursed his lips, gave him a nod of his own. ‘Lovely, indeed. The Battle Crow herself, eh?’
‘I have always liked the tale,’ said Luw. ‘The blade burns in the sun like they say hers did.’
Maebhara, the Battle Crow of the Nuankin, she who had saved her lover’s soul from the Otherworld with her fury, courage and flaming spear. He could think of nothing better to name the weapon that would reunite him with own beloved.
Ogmodh launched the lump of firewood in a high arc. Luw leapt as it spun black against the sun, Maebhara sweeping high. A bare whisper of resistance as the blade connected, and Luw fell back to the earth, the firewood clattering around him, split clean down the middle.
‘Nicely done,’ Ogmodh muttered, a hand fiddling with something behind his back. The smith spun faster than Luw thought him capable of, a second lump of firewood whistling toward his face. He lunged, stepping low and aiming high, Maebhara’s blade sinking into the wood with a solid thunk.
‘Fucking excellent, Master Sprite!’ Ogmodh whooped as Luw stood to examine the firewood caught on the spear. ‘I’ve not seen a shot that accurate since I spat in Uil Bannagan’s eye with ten men between us!’
Luw grinned, prising the wood from Maebhara and chucking it back toward the pile the smith kept near his home. ‘She’s magnificent, Ogmodh.’
‘That she is, but this is nothing! Just wait till you give her a taste of flesh!’ The smith’s face darkened the moment those words left his mouth. Luw stepped away, not wanting to give an opening to Ogmodh’s thoughts, passing Maebhara through some simple, looping cuts to distract himself.
‘Do you mean to go through with this?’ Ogmodh called, the air alive with the spear’s hum. ‘Truly?’
Luw sighed, drove Maebhara into the stony earth and turned to face him. ‘Yes.’
Ogmodh looked away, fists pressed into his hips. He cast a sidelong look at Luw. ‘And I cannot change your mind?’
‘No. My path is set, Master Smith. Ancu will die upon Maebhara’s blade’
Sorrow touched Ogmodh’s eyes. He shook his head as if wearied by a child’s stubbornness, turned and clapped Luw upon the shoulder. ‘Then I wish you all the luck of the Hunters, friend sprite.’
‘My thanks.’ Luw dipped his head. ‘I will leave today, before the sun sets. Náith has already had many days to find Ancu.’
Too many days. There were tales that said Ancu haunted the ruined land of Gólga, past the blighted western crags, moving like a shadow through the pits filled with its victims. Luw had no hope of reaching Gólga or Ancu before Náith. Not now. Not ever. The only chance left was to draw his prey to him, offer the death-god something it could not resist. Something he had already set in motion.
He was going home. The thought made his flesh writhe.
‘Leave tomorrow,’ Ogmodh countered. ‘I think Ancu can wait another day to feel Maebhara’s kiss, even with a bastard like Náith lusting after it.’ He gestured to the weapon. ‘A weapon as fine as Maebhara needs a p
roper toasting. You and her have put the forge-fire back in my belly, and I can’t thank either of you enough, Master Sprite. Drink with me! Then you can chase your grave all you want!’
Luw offered him a smile, clasped the meaty arm he was offered. ‘It seems Maebhara and I shall hunt Ancu with a hangover.’
Chapter 19
Gólga
Rocks crunched and shattered beneath Náith’s boots as he mounted a westward-facing ridge, fragile as spent cinders. Only a few dozen miles beyond Crath Gulfáil’s desolation and the wolf-haunted western glens, and the land felt dead already. Even the air tasted stale here, every breath leaving a faint yet unpleasant taste upon the tongue. Náith paused, wiping sweat from his brow and searching the horizon. He grunted, hawked and spat over the ridge.
The Death Pits of Gólga glowered north and west of him, dismal black holes gouged from the land, as if something massive had fallen from the sky and blasted it apart. Each one was vast, miles across, and a twisting vortex of what looked like ash spiralled above every yawning maw. They stretched off infinitely skyward, vanishing into the black clouds that plunged Gólga into sempiternal gloom.
Náith held back a shudder, trying not to think what power might have created them. He touched the skull of Luw’s hound for luck, for protection, and started down the slope.
Ancu had to be lurking somewhere in these pits. No telling which one, though… any of them, or all of them. None of them, if Béchu’s words turned out to be the nonsensical shit he feared. It was hard to tell whether or not he wanted her to be right. The most enormous of the pits sat glowering in the west past a clutch of smaller outliers, a grim, blackened rockface bulging from the earth. It seemed as good a choice as any to start hunting the death-god, and so he broke into a trot toward it.
There was a quiet that hung over Gólga, one that seemed to possess a wretched weight all of its own. Náith could feel how it resented his disturbance as his boots cracked and crunched over the stone covered ground, that his very presence shattered its cold, frail serenity. This was a land of the silent dead, and the cacophony of the living did not belong here.
He could see them now. He had descended from the ridge and was crossing a place he had no right to be. The dead. They were everywhere. They were beyond number. He passed by what he had taken for a crag of blackened rock from the ridge. It was a pile of knotted, charred bodies, twisted and fused together, caught in a frozen wave as they’d tried to escape something. Their flesh glistened as if crystallised, and yet still it smouldered, a fume-haze lingering about it, making the air shimmer as something oozed from mouths caught forever in silent screams. Ash, or black ichor. Náith couldn’t tell – didn’t want to. He caught sight of how it defied nature to spiral skyward, a needle of horror slipping beneath his skin.
Ancient bones crumbled into dust beneath his boots. Skulls, thigh bones, clawed hands, all scattered and strewn endlessly through the stony earth. The pale clouds they discharged lingered too long in the air, Náith noticed, marking how they traced the path he had taken. Their dust drifted slowly toward the dark sky like the filth from the charred bodies. He kicked himself into a sprint, Gólga’s foulness plucking at his soul.
The wall of the largest pit loomed as the distance was scoured away, towering a hundred feet or more over Náith. He slowed, halted, neck craning to take in its immensity. Repulsion made him step back, a dandy-boy’s fear suddenly upon him and urging him to flee.
It wasn’t rock. It was corpses, a mounded, glistening ring of them. Fused, melded together like the ones he had seen studding the stone-wastes, thousands of faces caught in their final moments. Worse, for above he could see those drifting spirals for what they truly were. More scorched and blackened bodies, an endless procession of them, twisting into the darkened sky.
Náith put a muzzle on his fear before it moved his feet and set them carrying him home, this fool’s quest be fucked and damned and Síle’s love with it. But he was Náith. He was Cu Náith. And no man, not even he, would say that fear had ever ruled him for even a moment. He put a foot to the slope, touched the skull of Luw’s hound again, and climbed.
The pit’s corpse-ridge was steeper than it seemed, and a tangled, sloughing mess. Náith was soon climbing on all fours, ancient flesh cracking and peeling beneath his grasping hands, the still air ripe with the stink of death. There was a putrid heat to the flesh of the corpses that churned his stomach every step of the way. Like those below, they seemed to smoulder still from whatever abomination had been wrought upon them. About halfway up, his hand sank into something that bubbled grey-pink, and he recoiled, caught himself before he fell, gaze scraping the hopeless land below. He’d sworn he’d heard a woman’s scream in that moment, but there was nothing save rocks and the dead. He kept climbing.
Náith gasped, cried aloud in the moment he hauled himself over the edge of that corpse-ridge, covered in filth and flakes of charred, rotting skin. He drew a burning breath, tearing his eyes away from the death-spiral and the black sky, to stare down into the Death Pit and the horror it offered.
The smouldering dead stretched on for miles – down, down into the flesh of the land, a massacre beyond imagining. They lined a crater a mile deep or more, its glistening surface studded and mounded by more of their number, twisted and melded together into bizarre shapes. Something lay at the opposite end from where Náith crouched, frozen by his repulsion and the urge to spew his meagre breakfast over gawping, dead faces. It was wreathed by a fume-haze, drifting corpses, and shadows.
I do this for her, Náith told himself, the creeping fingers of fear prodding him to turn back. He bowed his head, closed his eyes, summoned the steel of his name. I do this for us. For her love to be mine, and mine alone.
‘I’m coming for you, Ancu,’ he muttered, shivering as a warm breeze trailed clammy, tattered ends across the small of his back. Stepping over the edge, Náith made his way down into the pit.
Charred flesh cracked and split beneath his feet, bubbling orange and rotten about them. Náith slipped just beyond the corpse-ridge’s edge, a sloughing sheet of skin snatching his feet from him. He barrelled down the glistening slope, his cry lost to the squelch and crack of dead meat and decaying bone. The pit vanished, descended to a vortex of black and grey, a white flash shattering it all as Náith struck an outcropping side-on. He felt himself fall, a jolt as he landed, his face smashing something into stinking pulp.
Náith pushed himself onto his knees, blinking back the dizziness of his fall, every inch of his body screaming agony and dripping with the pit’s filth. He spat out a mouthful of foul-tasting shite, wiped clinging muck from his eyes, and found himself staring into the face of a towering abomination. It was a statue. A sculpture of flesh, rising from a sea of reaching, clawed hands. A towering thing, crafted from the melted bodies of the dead, bent and warped into something that resembled a Nuankin man upon his knees, a desperate hand reaching toward something behind Náith. Its splayed fingers were the fused legs and arms of charred corpses, and the bodies that formed its face were shaped into a look of open-mouthed torment – a scream caught forever in silence.
In his shock, Náith flinched back from the sculpture and fell on his arse as he reached for his sword, its chime ear-splitting in the stillness of the pit. He leapt to his feet with a roar that battered his own skull, sword poised to lop off its reaching hand, and fell silent. An ugly prickle rippled down his spine, as though the eyes of a lurking beast were fixed upon him. He turned, slowly, still holding his sword ready to strike. ‘Fuck me…’ It fell limp at his side.
There were hundreds of them scattered across the pit, all rising from waves of clutching, shrivelled hands. Every one of was them knelt as if in some debased prayer, reaching toward the atrocity that loomed at the far side of the pit. It was a colossus, tall as the Sisters themselves, shaped from corpses that ran beyond number. It rose from a clawing ocean of its smaller kin, that same look of wordless horror caught on its vast face, but its hand rose toward the dark sk
y. Dead men circled that beseeching claw, drifting slowly upward.
‘Ancu…’ If ever there was an effigy to a death-god, that monstrosity at the pit’s end made a mockery of them all. Náith shook himself free of terror’s grip, shrugged his battered shield down onto his arm and hefted his sword. It was time for the hunt to begin.
Náith threaded his way through the tangled arms and legs between the flesh sculptures, shield raised high as he made his way toward the colossus. His gaze raked every shadow, every crevice beyond its rim, the sound of his breath chafing on the silence and stillness like a file across rusted iron. He couldn’t shake the feeling of being stalked, of another’s eyes trying to prise his flesh apart. A trick born of fear, maybe, or the unnatural stillness about him, but on every side the empty eyeholes of the dead leered, leaking their foul ichor skyward.
A mile or so from the colossus, the limbs of the dead grew too tangled for Náith to go any further. The sculptures converged at that point, clambering over one another in their desperation to reach it. Náith swept about the small clearing he stood in, sword levelled as he raked the ranks of the dead for any sign of movement. Nothing. All was still, save the constant upward dripping of filth.
Náith’s lip curled, sword and shield lowering. He turned to stare up at the colossus and its tormented face. Its hand stretched toward the black clouds above, dead centre with the eye of the corpse-vortex above. He spat at it, the glob sailing on a high arc to land somewhere amongst the thickest tangle of wasted limbs.
‘Ancu!’ he roared, pointing to the goliath’s upturned face with his sword. ‘You know I am here! Come down from your giant and face me!’ Stillness answered him, the colossus unmoved. ‘Send your titan, if you fear me! I care not! I am Cu Náith, and I spit at you, Death! I shit on your very name and all you have touched! On every soul I have ever sent you! Come down and face me, or I will tear your effigies apart, and cast down your giant, so that all will know I am greater than you!’
Horns of the Hunter: Tales of Luah Fáil Book 1 Page 14
