Ugly walked around him, kicking him once in the back and a second time in the side of the face, splitting his cheek open just below the eye.
Vern looked down at Sláine, his nose twitching. The moneylender's eyes darted left and right. "No hard feelings, Sláine." He repeated. "Welkin, get the cart. Let's get this over with."
"Plennnn arrrrrd eeeeelins," Sláine lisped, struggling to form the words.
It was obvious Vern understood the threat well enough. The moneylender backed away from Sláine despite the fact that the drugs had him paralysed and incapable of extracting any kind of reckoning for Vern's duplicity.
"Evidently," Vern said, backing up another step. He looked down distastefully at Sláine's distended body, "which makes you a problem for another day. Today you are my cash cow."
They manhandled Sláine into the back of the flatbed cart, rolling him onto his side in case he vomited. "There we go, don't want our investment choking to death on his on puke, do we Welkin?" His head lolled awkwardly on his neck. He couldn't even see the sky. "Just in case you think about getting frisky along the road," Vern explained, dosing up a second dart with the dregs of the poison draught. Sláine grunted but couldn't move. "Would you like to do the honours, Welkin?"
"With a ridiculous amount of pleasure," Ugly said, taking the dart from the moneylender. He crawled into the flatbed, hmmming and ahhhhing as he looked for the perfect stop to jab the dart in.
"Gerrr ovah wif."
"Yes, yes," Ugly promised. "Won't hurt a bit. Well, maybe a bit."
"Anywhere," Vern said, "it doesn't matter."
"Oh, I know, I just want to do it properly." Ugly grinned and rammed the tip of the dart into Sláine's armpit, puncturing deep into the sweat glands. "That should do it."
The sky dissolved into a haze of pain and Sláine blacked out.
When he came to the cart was jouncing and juddering down the rutted track.
He tried to lift his head to get a look at his surroundings but his body was having none of it.
The broch was a solitary gaol on the outskirts of Crumlyn, where the land met the wild raging sea.
Even among prisons, the place was harsh.
It had been erected on a geological phenomenon known as a stack: a vertical pillar of rock cut off from the body of the mountain by centuries of erosion. Only the broch was built on the last column of a triple stack, three huge pillars cut off from the land by the churning sea. Once, years ago there had been a series of rock arches but the chalk had succumbed to the elements and collapsed. Now the series of pillars were only joined to the headland by a rickety wooden drawbridge.
The broch was a canker against the otherwise wild beauty of the natural world; an unnatural pinnacle on the high plateau, the crumbling stone walls of the prison overlooked nothing and everything, depending upon your perspective. It was an imposing spectre, a constant reminder of the austerity of justice. Algae and barnacles crept their way up the walls, tendrils of green and white eating into the brick and mortar.
They had Sláine trussed up. Ugly pushed him forwards onto the wooden bridge. It lurched violently beneath his feet. It was not a pleasant sensation. The bridge swayed sickeningly with every step he took. He didn't look down. It was a long way to the rocks below.
"Go on, take a good look at the rocks," Ugly goaded. "Wouldn't want you to fall and hurt yourself, now would we?"
He prodded Sláine in the back.
Sláine stumbled forwards.
The drop was vertiginous. He concentrated on looking forwards, not down. The prison was like something out of nightmare territory. The wind plucked at him, bullying him every bit as forcefully as Ugly's poking and prodding. A huge brute of a creature stood waiting for them at the other end of the bridge. The guard had shaved his head apart from a furious topknot and a jagged bolt of lightning just beneath the temple. He towered over Sláine, arms as thick as ham hocks from a Beltain feast, legs like the stumps of felled oaks. His face was flat, his brow simian, nose broken repeatedly so that it resembled nothing more than a slab of rib-eyed steak pressed up against his face. Only two teeth remained in his sneer. He crossed his huge ham hock arms and stared them down as they approached.
"We've come for our money, Nudd," Vern called. "Tell your master to crack open his coffers."
The guard grunted and disappeared into the broch, emerging a minute later with a runt of a man dressed in black robes smeared with streaks of egg and bacon fat, and other meals that had missed his mouth. The man in black rubbed his hands together delightedly at the sight of Sláine's captivity.
"Oh, yes, yes, yes, you did well, Gosta, very well indeed. How much was it we said, thirty coin?"
"We said fifty, Kendrick, as you very well know. Don't try to swindle a swindler, there's a good man."
"Yes, yes, right you are," the man in black muttered. "Fifty coin for the warped one. Come with me." He turned to the hulking Nudd. "See our new guest is safely accommodated, Nudd. Put him in with the dwarf and Black Axe while I see about paying the good Master Vern here. Splendid. Splendid."
Vern disappeared into the broch behind Kendrick.
Nudd grunted and grabbed Sláine by the scruff of the neck, pushing him into the old prison.
"Don't say goodbye then, Sláine," Ugly mocked.
"Why? Our relationship isn't over. One day you'll wake up to find me sharpening Brain-Biter with your bones."
"Big words as ever, Sláine. I'm going to miss you."
The broch was dank and oppressive inside, the cells crowded in on each other, the walls slick with mould and the white of sea salt crusting over the damp stone. The iron bars of the cell doors were riddled with rust and the straw scattered across the floor as insulation had seen better days. In fact the whole place had seen better days. In another life it had almost certainly been a stronghold erected to keep out marauders from Albion, across the savage sea.
"In here," Nudd grunted, taking a huge iron key from the chain around his waist and sliding it into the lock. There was an ominously heavy clunk as the bolt fell into place. The door groaned pitifully as Nudd dragged it open, its rusted hinges protesting. He shoved Sláine into the cell. Sláine stumbled and collapsed into a heap in the centre of the floor, his face pressed painfully into the rotten straw, the needle-sharp splintered ends digging into his chin and cheek. Nudd slammed the door and locked it. There was no lonelier sound than the second clunk of the lock coming down to trap him in the dark.
He felt a curious toe nudge his side, and then again, a little more insistently.
"What?"
"Alive then, always a good sign, eh, Bodb?"
Sláine rolled over to see the speaker, a pug-faced dwarf with wrinkles and folds of dark shadow where he should have had a chin and neck. The little man had a bulbous nose and stringy silver-grey hair. The gap between his quivering top lip and his runny nose was almost as long again as his nose itself. He wore a grey hood with long floppy ears. It took Sláine a moment to realise that the ears were not a part of the dwarf's hood, but were in fact his real ears.
The lighting in the cell was curious. It was lighter than he had expected, with salt and mould giving the cramped room a curious luminescence, and there were windows, lots of them. It wasn't the dank oppressive dungeon he had expected, but then, given the environs it was hardly likely any prisoners would be escaping through them. No one would be stupid - or desperate - enough to throw themselves on the mercy of the sea.
"You must get really bad headaches," Sláine said, pushing himself up onto his elbow.
"What do you mean?" the dwarf asked, quizzically.
"Ears that big must hear everything, even ants farting, it's got to drive you crazy."
From the darkness, Bodb laughed. "I could get to like you, young man."
"Oh shut up, Bodb," the dwarf grumbled. He prodded Sláine again, "So, what did you do to get yourself locked up in the salt lick of creation?"
Sláine sat up. "Long story, little man."
"Well
it isn't like we don't have time on our hands, so come on. Tell us your life story. We're all ears." The dwarf waggled his ears at Sláine.
"I can see that," Sláine said, grinning.
"I can see this is going to be the beginning of a heart-warming friendship," Bodb said, coming to sit down beside Sláine.
Sláine assumed he was the Black Axe that Kendrick had mentioned, even though the weapon was nowhere to be seen.
Black Axe wore a long blond braid and whiskers. Sláine noticed that his muscles had begun to atrophy. It wasn't surprising. Life cooped up in a cell would have a debilitating effect on even the mightiest warrior. He didn't for a moment think that Bodb's skill with his eponymous weapon had diminished in the slightest. A warrior didn't forget. The axe was nothing more than an extension of his arm. Sláine nodded to the old warrior.
Nudd still guarded the door. The cell was actually an antechamber with three smaller cages at the back.
"Oh don't worry about tall dark and gruesome. He's as simple as a lugworm," the dwarf assured Sláine, seeing the direction of his gaze.
For all that it was a long story it didn't take long in the telling.
In the end it all boiled down to a single moment of stupidity. Still, he told his story, including the first time the warp-spasm had gripped him and Cullen of the Wide Mouth's part in his downfall. His audience sat rapt, hanging on his every word. The dwarf's ears pricked up at the mention of Vern and his dubious practices. He was like a dog sniffing around scraps. His nostrils flared at the mention of gold. The little rat-like man was thoroughly enthralled with the idea of reading people's eyes in a metal trinket while fleecing them and then, as he put it, "being stupid enough to bury your treasure in the garden." Then, with a sudden look of predatory cunning, "You do remember where Master Vern's garden is, don't you?"
"Let me guess what you are in here for."
"That's me, Ukko, greatest thief in all Eiru." The rat-like dwarf assayed a mocking bow, his nose almost dragging on the floor.
"You can't be that great, seeing as you are locked up in here," Sláine pointed out.
Bodb chuckled. "I really could get to like you, Sláine Mac Roth."
"What's not to like," Sláine said.
"It was just bad luck," Ukko grumbled. "Could have happened to anyone."
"If you say so."
"Yes, I do."
"No need to be so defensive about it."
"I'm not defensive. Why be defensive about bad luck? It's not like I was stupid enough to dip my wick in some other bloke's chosen bride and think I could get away with it. Or, you know, moaning because I happen to be this legendary colossus with the strength of twenty men and truly dreadful taste in women."
"Do you have a point, you little rat?" Sláine scowled.
"Somewhere, I am sure. It evades me just now but I will come to it."
"I'm sure you will," Sláine said.
"One day."
Nudd brought food: gruel; wet, thin, runny gruel. Prison food.
Just the sight of it made him long for Bedelia's cooking, which was not something he could have imagined when she was actually cooking for him.
He hadn't realised how hungry he was until he smelled the lukewarm food and his stomach reminded him it existed. He couldn't remember the last time he had eaten, two or three days earlier, at least.
Sláine spooned it into his mouth.
He was so hungry that he actually managed to convince himself it tasted good.
He grunted his appreciation, licking the wooden spoon clean.
Bodb and Sláine traded war stories over the meal, each one gorier than the last as the two sought to out do each other.
"Soth! Does it always have to be about your axes being red and reeking with the offal of slaughter? I mean surely there is more to it than rivers of blood and your enemy's screams," Ukko grumbled, covering his ears. "It's enough to put an honest dwarf off his food."
"Good job you aren't honest then, eh?" Sláine said, spooning down another slop of gruel.
"Come to think of it, all these bloody exploits are better than hearing you constantly lamenting the slew of women who've left you, warped one."
And so it went, the three of them sparring with words instead of blows. The little dwarf mocked the warriors and in turn the warriors lampooned the runt of their pack. It was a curious form of bonding.
Nudd came to them as the sun went down.
"Lights out," the huge simpleton said, pointing towards the three individual cages at the back of the cell. Ukko moved first, scampering back into the middle cage and pulling a fur pelt down to black out the whole front of his cramped prison. Bodb stood, dusting off his hands, and shook hands with Sláine.
"We'll continue this tomorrow, Mac Roth."
"That we will, Black Axe," Sláine said. "I have stories from Dun Barc that will melt your ears."
"I look forward to them, and maybe I will share the tragic events of Glenn Kathra with you, if you are lucky. Now that is a story and a half." Bodb winked. The warrior retreated into his own small cell, on the left of the three, leaving the final one for Sláine.
Sláine ducked inside the cage. Nudd came up behind him, barred the door and fastened the lock securely, shutting him in. The cage was tiny, big enough for a hard wooden cot, a wash pot and a footstool. He pulled the pelt down to give himself some privacy. There were no windows and with the pelt pulled down the darkness was absolute. He felt his way over to the cot and lay down on the hard wooden pallet. It was as uncomfortable as anything he had ever lain on. Sleep didn't want to come. He was tired but after not moving for so long and being pent up, he was too frustrated to sleep.
For some unknowable amount of time he just lay there, looking up at the dark where the ceiling ought to have been. It was never quiet, this dark. Outside, the waves crashed against the base of the chalk pillar, wearing it away one wave at a time. The susurrant rush of water and the break and fall away of wave after wave was constant.
He rolled over, pulling the blanket up over him.
It felt odd, being this far removed from the earth. He couldn't feel any undercurrent of its power. For the first time in as long as he could remember he felt utterly alone. Even so, at the back of his mind was the nagging doubt that Danu, in any of her aspects, Blodeuwedd, the Morrigan or Ceridwen, would leave him be.
Through the bars he heard the muffled sound of snoring, the snnnnnnrrrrrrk psssssssssssshhhhawwwww of Ukko's flapping lips as the dwarf slept the sleep of the righteous.
Sláine, on the other hand, tossed and turned for most of the night.
The voice was haunting, elegiac, its tune a threnody of bittersweet lament.
Sláine lay in the darkness listening to it.
He had no idea who the singer was, or what sins had led her to the broch, but her voice was pure and heartbreakingly beautiful.
He found himself wanting to go to her, to sit before her, and listen. Her words wormed their way inside him. Sláine crawled out of the bed and stumbled forwards in the dark, drawn by the song. He reached through the bars of his cage, trying to force back the locked beam but there was no moving it. He moaned. The song's lure was irresistible. He needed to find the singer.
Sláine rattled the doors of his cell but they wouldn't budge.
He heaved at the bars but there was no give in them.
The song... There was something about the song.
He had to be with the singer, to kneel at her feet.
He had to...
Sláine pushed away from the bars and staggered back to the bed. He fumbled around in the dark for the blanket, tearing tufts from it and blocking his ears with them. Even muffled the lure of the song was powerful; too powerful for him to resist.
He tumbled out of bed and landed hard on the floor, tufts of wool sticking out of his ears. He scrambled across the dead straw to the bars of the cage door and rattled them, keening desperately.
A hideous blood-curdling scream rent the night asunder. Fear had made the scre
am so utterly sexless that it was impossible to tell if the screamer was male or female.
When the scream finally died there was only the sound of the waves crashing over and over again against the base of the stack.
Sláine fell to his knees, desolate at the loss of the song.
Finally, he slept on the floor at the foot of the cell door, curled around the ruined blanket.
Sláine awoke to the grunt and grumble of Nudd wrestling with the beam barring his cage door.
The simpleton heaved it back and pushed open the door to let him out. Sláine blinked back the sunlight. He had slept through since... since the song.
He lurched to his feet and stumbled out of the cell.
"Who was that singing last night?"
He grabbed Nudd by the arms and tried to shake him but the simpleton was an immovable mass.
"Who was singing?" Sláine pushed but Nudd just brushed him aside, opened Bodb's cage, and then moved on to Ukko's. The dwarf emerged rubbing his red-rimmed eyes and yawning.
"What's the racket? Some of us were still trying to sleep."
"Did you hear it last night?"
"Hear what?"
"The song? Did you hear the woman singing?"
"I didn't hear nothing. I was out like the lights, dead to the world, dreaming sweet dreams of making love to fat women on bleedin' great piles of gold. It was marvellous."
"How could you not? With those ears of yours! Bodb, what about you, did you hear the song?" Sláine called but Black Axe didn't answer.
"See," Ukko grumbled, "I wasn't the only one trying to sleep."
Sláine didn't like it, he didn't like it one little bit. Snatches of the song came back to him, and then that blood-curdling scream. He pushed past Nudd and in to Bodb's cage.
The place stank of piss and blood; twin reeks of the body laid bare. They were a vile combination, natural and yet so unnatural. The piss reeked, bitter, sharp and pungent, and beneath it lurked the iron tang of blood.
The Exile Page 19
