The Exile

by Steven Savile

  Bodb of the Black Axe was in the corner, pressed up against the wall. His corpse was emaciated beyond recognition, but it could only be him. Bodb was a withered husk. There was almost nothing human left where the man had been. Only the eyes and the whiskers couldn't lie.

  Sláine knelt beside the corpse, taking Bodb's hand in his. The skin felt like cured leather, although there was a peculiar waxy quality to it in places. He turned it over, examining the back of Bodb's hand as if it might offer a clue to his hideous demise. There wasn't a single sign of injury anywhere on the old warrior's corpse, no matter where he looked.

  It looked as if the old warrior's very soul had been sucked out of his body. There was nothing but a shell left behind.

  "What kind of creature could do this?" Sláine asked.

  No one answered him.

  Fifteen

  Freedom

  "Are there any more prisoners in here?" Sláine demanded. "Come on, Nudd, speak up. Someone or something sang that damned song last night. I heard it. Ukko, stop skulking back there. You've been here how long? Have you ever heard another prisoner in this place?"

  "Umm well, now that you mention it, you know, oh great and warped one, it is a prison, so what are the odds of their being umm well, you know, prisoners in here?"

  "Oh, I could hit you so hard." He stopped himself, mid-blow.

  "You saw that, Nudd? He was going to hit me!" Ukko squealed, pressing up against the wall. "Hmm, you know Bodb borrowed some stuff off me, I really should get that back. It's only fair. I mean it is mine. Yes, let me just get my things back."

  "Stay right where you are and keep your hands to yourself, you ratty little thief, unless you want me to smack seven shades out of you."

  "I didn't do anything. All I did was talk about getting what's rightfully mine back. You heard that, Sláine, right? Soth! Everyone wants to hit me! What did I ever do?"

  "Shut up, Ukko. I am trying to think." Sláine glowered at the rat-like dwarf.

  "Well that ought to take the rest of the morning, so I think I'll just sit down here and have a nap. See if I can't find those fat women again. Soth! I love fat women. So much more to get a hold of and love." Ukko made a show of plumping himself down in the middle of the antechamber and closing his eyes.

  Sláine kicked him out of sheer bloody frustration but Ukko just grumbled and rolled over, feigning deep sleep.

  "I hardly know you but I could cheerfully throttle the life out of you already," Sláine said. Ukko answered with a full-throated snore, his lips flapping together.

  Sláine returned to Bodb's corpse, hoping there was something, some clue he had missed the first time but of course there wasn't. The old warrior had been drained completely but it was impossible to tell how it had actually been done. His gut told him it had to be something to do with the singer and that it had been Bodb he heard screaming. There was no evidence but that didn't matter. He knew, instinctively, and no one was talking to him.

  Nudd dragged Bodb's corpse out of his cage and hauled it away. Out of sight, out of mind seemed to be the notion the simpleton was working on. Perhaps it was true for him, like a guppy swimming around in circles, each time thinking that bit of the rock pool was a new place to explore. Sláine had no such luxury. He remembered all too well the lure of the damned song, and couldn't help but shiver at the realisation that but for the barred door of the cage the withered corpse could have been his own. It sent a cold shiver through him,

  A little while later the sweet tang of burning flesh reached his nose. Nudd had burned Black Axe's corpse. That didn't set Sláine's mind at rest.

  Ukko snored on.

  "I know you are awake, you miserable little bag of bones," Sláine said exasperatedly.

  "No you don't," Ukko said without moving. "You just think I am. I could be fast asleep with those fat women."

  "See!"

  "No, my eyes are closed and I am asleep. Now leave me alone would you."

  "Doesn't it worry you in the slightest? We were eating and joking with him last night and he's gone in the morning."

  "I try not to get attached to people. It saves all sorts of problems when they find out I've robbed them," the dwarf said, still not opening his eyes. He let out another tooth-rattling snore.

  Sláine went to the window and looked out. All he could see were the white breakers of the sea. He grabbed the bars and hauled himself up another six inches but it didn't reveal anything more telling. He paced the small cell, scuffing up the straw with his feet. He went over to the barred door and shook it. "Is there anybody there?" he called out into the endless corridors of the broch.

  No one answered him.

  He slumped down against the wall, knowing in his gut that darkness would come, and with it that damned song.

  They slouched towards nightfall.

  Being held captive dragged time out desperately. There was only so much pacing, thinking and mocking that Sláine and Ukko could do.

  Sláine made preparations.

  Using the ties from his boots and the fur lining, he made muffs to block his ears. He tested their efficacy by getting Ukko to yell insults in his face. The little man was delighted to be of assistance. He jumped up and down yelling a stream of colourful invective in the barbarian's face, taking far too much delight from it until Sláine pointed out that he couldn't actually hear what he was saying. That little revelation put a dampener on the dwarf's spirits.

  Finally satisfied that the makeshift earmuffs actually worked, Sláine hid them under the blanket in his cell and waited for Nudd to lock them up for the night.

  He didn't have to wait long.

  Nudd came just before dusk. The simpleton went through the ritual, dropping the bar into place, but this time there was no forlorn clunk of the lock mechanism. Nudd rattled on the bars to show the cage was locked even though it wasn't, not properly.

  Sláine curled up on the cot, reaching under the blanket for his makeshift muffs.

  He lay there in the darkness, waiting.

  After a while he found himself imagining that he could hear his lovers' voices masked within the swirl and crash of the waves. It gave him a curious sense of comfort despite the fact that they weren't actually there. He found himself listening out for Niamh and Bedelia, and thought for one fleeting moment that he actually heard Blathnaid.

  Then he heard it, the first aching note of the song. He knew the singer immediately and couldn't believe he hadn't recognised her voice last night. He pushed himself out of the hard cot. He knew the door was unlocked so he simply reached through the bars and lifted the beam. He pushed the cage door open and stepped out into the antechamber. The first bars of moonlight spilled across the rotten straw. He lumbered forwards, his feet moving wholly independently of his thoughts. All he could think was that he needed to find the singer of that haunting melody.

  Nudd had left the main antechamber door open.

  He could hear the dwarf's snark and watched as he snored on, oblivious to the song.

  Sláine pushed it open and stumbled out into the corridor, clutching the muffs in his trembling hands. He was powerless to resist as her voice gently rose and fell, weaving a hypnotic pattern around him. He felt a longing deep inside him more powerful than anything he had known, even in the arms of Danu's maiden aspect, Blodeuwedd.

  "I'm coming," he called, following the sound of her voice deeper and deeper into the dark heart of the broch. He past row after row of empty cells and stumbled down stairs raddled with woodworm and damp rot. The walls around him shifted from the clean limewash, mould and salt of above to a sickly subterranean slime as the song drew him beneath the level of the sea, and deeper still.

  Finally he came to a single cell deep in the belly of the broch. The iron-framed door was locked but that didn't stop the crooning melody from climbing high into the upper reaches of the cells above. The singer was on the other side of the door.

  The corridor reeked with the harsh metallic smell of blood.

  Heart racing, Sl
áine put on the earmuffs, stifling the damned song so that he could at least begin to think straight. He knew the voice. He was excited at the prospect of seeing her again, of surprising her and together breaking out of this infernal place.

  Sláine reached out and opened the door.

  She was chained to the wall, the black iron collar secured around her throat.

  "Blathnaid," Sláine gasped as he came crashing through the door. A huge wave of selfish relief washed over him - this was why she hadn't joined up with him. Bragg had turned her over to Kendrick and she'd been locked up in this hellhole like some common thief.

  She hadn't abandoned him after all!

  He stumbled forwards to free her, sagging to his knees as he pulled at her chains, trying to yank them out of the wall or break the metal bolts securing them. He realised that she was talking to him, but he couldn't hear a word because of the muffs. He reached forwards, taking Blathnaid in his arms, overcome. She hadn't left him. She wasn't like the other women in his life. He hugged her close, so close that she began to squirm in his arms.

  He closed his eyes.

  His hands tangled in her hair, his lips kissing with a passion that could hardly contain the hurt, the anger, the joy, and the pain of all the thoughts that had gone through his head since they had parted. She squirmed beneath his touch, moving more and more as if she was trying to wriggle out of his grip. He just held her all the more tightly.

  There was no passion in her lips. The texture of her tongue against his felt wrong. It flicked rather than licked, its movement too frantic, desperate.

  He felt Blathnaid's arms coil around him, her fingernails dragging down his back, sinking in painfully.

  Sláine opened his eyes.

  It was Blathnaid and yet it wasn't, as if some shimmering glamour had been laid over something so hideously evil that even the illusion couldn't quite mask it completely. Blathnaid's face slipped. That was the only way his mind could rationalise what it was seeing. For a moment Blathnaid was there, in his arms, kissing him, and then something shifted and she wasn't and this thing, this scaled reptilian thing was in her place. Sláine recoiled from the beast even as the glamour of Blathnaid's face struggled to reassert itself, a façade over the creature's true and hideous visage.

  He tried to pull away but the creature that wasn't Blathnaid held him in a vice-like grip.

  The cold-blooded narrow slits of eyes stared back at him hungrily. They were inhuman, the pupils reptilian ellipses. A long forked tongue laved across his face, lingering over his eyes before it darted down, back into his mouth. She held him immobile, her tongue exploring, probing, her fingers sinking deeper into his flesh.

  The she-beast - for by no stretch of the imagination was it the cutpurse, Blathnaid - reached up, pulling the muffs from his ears and exposing Sláine once more to her enchanted song.

  "What are you?" he yelled, thrashing in the she-beast's arms. Her grip was incredible. Sláine felt his anger rising, but there was no answering surge from the earth in his blood. He was alone, cut off from what made him.

  Her only answer was a slithering hiss, her forked tongue lashing across her lips and curling almost seductively around a wickedly sharp fang that dripped with ichor. Sláine recoiled, writhing in the creature's grasp. He felt something cold coiling around his legs. He kicked out at it but it continued snaking higher, wrapping itself around him and, when it reached his waist, constricting.

  Sláine tried to look down but the she-beast held him firm.

  Her song slipped into a mournful refrain, leaching the fight out of him.

  He wanted to be with her, with Blathnaid. He wanted to sink into her, to feel her heat around him. He wanted to give in. Surrender.

  She drew him into a kiss, and he sank into it.

  He sank his teeth into the creature's forked tongue and yanked his head back, tearing the meat apart. The beast's blood spilled into his mouth. He spat the tip of the tongue out as the she-beast howled and hissed in pain, the hypnotic lure of its song broken.

  Blathnaid was gone.

  He knew that she had never been there, but her loss was palpable. His own shriek dwarfed that of the she-beast.

  Reacting instinctively Sláine grabbed the loop of black iron chaining the she-beast to the wall, whipped it around her neck and braced it around his forearms. He heaved back on the chain and began throttling the creature as it clawed all the more desperately at his face. The beast bucked and writhed desperately, its serpent-like tail tightening around Sláine's waist, choking the life out of the barbarian even as Sláine choked the life out of it. They were locked in a deadly embrace.

  The beast shuddered, once, violently and the fight fled its body.

  Sláine stood over the she-beast, bleeding where the rough metal of chains had cut into his forearms.

  For the first time, he could see what it was - a huge part-snake part-woman abomination. Mannix had told tall tales of such a beast: a creature that lured men in with its seductive charms and fed on their blood and their spirit until they were empty. What had he called it? The word came back to him as he shucked off the dead she-beast's coil of tail.

  A lamia.

  He dropped the earmuffs on the she-beast's corpse and turned in time for Nudd's club to cannon into the side of his face and send him reeling back. His foot came down on the fat flesh of the lamia's tail, rolling his ankle as it gave way beneath his weight. Unbalanced, Sláine sprawled across the dungeon floor. Nudd stepped over him, grunting as he prepared to deliver another crushing blow with his club.

  Sláine rolled to the left, barely getting out of the way as the wooden club hammered into the stone floor. He grabbed Nudd's legs and used them to jack-knife his feet straight up into the looming simpleton's chin. Nudd staggered back. Sláine rolled and came up onto his feet in a fighting crouch. He had no weapon. There was nothing close to hand that he could improvise with.

  Nudd's club whistled dangerously close to his ear. The blow smacked off his shoulder and sent a surge of pain bone deep.

  "You hurt the princess," Nudd growled. "Nudd hurt you."

  "No, Nudd, you don't nee-" he didn't get to finish the sentence. Nudd's club ricocheted off his jaw, snapping his head back.

  Sláine collapsed to his knees. The world lurched. There was no focus, no form. Blackness threatened to overwhelm him. Nudd came in for the kill, club raised. Sláine rammed his fist into the simpleton's groin mercilessly, doubling Nudd up in agony. The club slipped from his fingers and clattered to the floor a second before Nudd did.

  Swaying precariously, Sláine reached out for the fallen club. It slipped between his fingers but he got it after a second fumble, and brought it round in a vicious arc. The meat of the club split Nudd's skull. He didn't need a second blow. The simpleton wouldn't be getting up any time soon.

  He dropped the club and forced himself to his feet. He managed four steps before he lurched into the wall and four more before he fell again. He stumbled along the corridor back to the woodworm raddled stairs and slumped down on to them. He stayed that way, with his head in his hands, until he had mastered the nausea.

  Sláine reclaimed Brain-Biter from Kendrick's chamber. The broch's owner was nowhere to be seen, but then, it was night and no doubt the man knew all about the lamia's seductive charms come sundown.

  Shouldering the axe he headed towards the drawbridge.

  He had almost made it when he heard a wheedling voice cry, "Let me out, you big muscle-bound lummox!"

  He stopped in his tracks. "Is that any way to beg, Ukko?" he called back.

  "Let me out of here!"

  "You really haven't got the hang of begging, have you?"

  "Please let me out!"

  "Better, but not good enough." He walked five more steps much to the dwarf's consternation. "All right, give me one good reason why I should let you out."

  There was silence for a moment, then, "I'll starve if you don't."

  Sláine thought about it for a moment. "Nope, not a good re
ason. One less thief in the world is a good thing, I think."

  Five more steps. He stood under the stone arch, one foot on the drawbridge, one on the broch's threshold.

  "Don't leave me!" Ukko wailed.

  "One reason. That shouldn't be too difficult, should it?"

  Silence.

  "Got nothing to say?" Sláine called up.

  "Every hero needs a sidekick, someone to record their heroic deeds otherwise who remembers them if you go around being a hero all by yourself? Come on, think about it Sláinie, who better to help you dodge your king's hunters and rescue fair maidens and stuff than a thief like me?"

  "Pandering to my vanity? I don't think so."

  "Okay, okay!" Ukko cried. "I know! I know! I've got it! You need me! See, I know this place like the back of my hand! You're a stranger but I know every inch of the Sourland inside out. I know where the Drunes are, but more importantly I know how to avoid them. You'll never make it more than a few miles without me!"

  "I know I am going to regret this," Sláine muttered, turning back to climb the stairs and free the dwarf.

  THE THIRD TRISKELL

  CRONE

  Sixteen

  Dry Land

  Sláine crushed the dead twig between his fingers. "This place is hellish, dwarf."

  Ukko had, of course, lied through his teeth. He had no idea where they were, that much was painfully evident.

  "I know, I know. It wasn't as if we had a choice though, your warpishness."

  "I don't like it." He didn't say what he didn't like, because it was painfully obvious that the land around them had turned sour. He hadn't felt the presence of the Earth Mother in a full three months of wandering. He didn't like it at all. Danu had always been with him. He felt as if he was abandoning her, although a nagging voice at the back of his mind kept goading him on quietly, insisting that he was wrong, that it was the other way around, that she had left him... like all of the women in his life had.