The Exile

by Steven Savile

  The longship fell from the sky. They came down in the middle of a gnarled leafless forest, the skeletal boughs of the withered trees tearing through the ship's hull. The timber frame of the vessel split open like an eggshell, spars of wood and planking popping and cracking, and wrenching free of the rivets pinning them in place. The gunwale snapped clean in two, breaching the integrity of the hull. A gaping wound opened up in the side of the ship. The half-dead crawled out of it, uninjured from the fall.

  Amongst the living the carnage was complete.

  Sláine had fallen fifty feet from the wreckage, Brain-Biter a few feet away. He reached out for the familiar comfort of the axe. Ukko lay between him and the belly of the fallen sky ship. Skull-swords lay broken in the mulch of the forest floor, the slack emptiness of death claiming their bodies. There was no dignity or care to it. Limbs lay at impossible angles, broken back on themselves. Necks lolled, jaws wide, eyes glazed.

  Sláine crawled forwards, towards Ukko.

  The little runt wasn't moving.

  A stab of grief tore at him. "Ukko! Ukko!" He called, dragging himself forwards. Ukko didn't answer. There was something about the way the little dwarf lay bent over a protruding tree root that sent a shiver through Sláine. He pushed himself to his feet and stumbled forwards, throwing himself on his knees at Ukko's feet. "Oh, my friend, oh, my friend, don't die on me, not like this. We've got such stories to live through yet. Come on, Ukko, don't be dead. Think of those fat women, they need you. Damn it, dwarf, I need you. Don't you dare die on me, dwarf!"

  "Wouldn't dream of it, friend." Ukko sat up and stretched. "Damned uncomfortable tree root that. I was beginning to think you'd never wake up and come looking for me." He hopped up and rolled his shoulders, cracking the stiffness out of the bones. "Look at that, not a mark on me. Amazing."

  "Oh you little toe rag, you were faking it!"

  Ukko grinned. "There's nothing like a brush with death to tell you who your real friends are."

  "Don't push your luck, dwarf. There's still time for you to have a terrible accident that leaves me mourning the loss of my dear friend."

  "Oh, you wouldn't!" Ukko blustered indignantly.

  "Try me." Sláine grinned. Then he turned to look at the wreckage and the grin fell from his lips. The sudden reminder of mortality was hammered home by the sight of Blind Bran stumbling through the withered trees, a low keening moan coming from his lips.

  "I've worked it out, Sláine. I know who Throt's afraid of. I mean, who would a Drune be frightened of apart from another Drune? A stronger one? Stands to reason, doesn't it?" Ukko said.

  "Slough Feg," Sláine agreed. "We're trapped in the middle of a battle between two sorcerers."

  "And by the looks of it we chose the wrong side," Ukko said, picking away at the inside of his nose.

  They made their way back to the ship. They walked through the dead, looking for survivors. Deck hands lay trapped beneath huge broken beams, a foot or a hand sticking out from beneath the crush of debris. Only the half-dead moved, shambling around the diseased forest, unaffected by the crash. Sláine found the sorcerer, Slough Throt, propped up against a knotted tree stump. One of the sorcerer's antlers had snapped off leaving a stub of horn where there had been a majestic thirteen points. Throt turned to look at them. "You're alive," he said simply.

  "I'm hard to kill," Sláine said.

  "A good attribute to have," Throt agreed. "a shame then that we are fated to die here."

  "I don't believe in fate, sorcerer. A man defines his own future."

  "If your Goddess or my God allows it. The weird stone is finished. The half-dead are on the loose. It is only a matter of time before their curse afflicts us."

  Sláine knew that the sorcerer was right. The weird stone was all but drained, only a few blood red lines running through the lifeless black.

  "You're forgetting one thing, sorcerer."

  "And what's that?"

  "We're survivors. There's still some life left in that black stone of yours. Stop feeling sorry for yourself, you aren't beaten yet. Banish the zombies. Prove to Feg that he hasn't gotten the best of you that easily. It is Feg you are running from, isn't it?"

  "How did you know?" Throt asked, not meeting the barbarian's eye.

  "Oh, I worked it out," Ukko piped up. "I mean who could a Drune Lord be afraid of apart from another Drune Lord? There's one name we keep hearing again and again, the biggest and nastiest of your kind: Slough Feg."

  "We cannot hide from him. The Lord Weird's magic is too far-reaching."

  "Rubbish," Sláine said. "You're acting as if you're dead before you've even struck a single blow in your defence. When has rolling over and playing dead ever saved the prey from its predator?"

  "Never," Ukko said helpfully.

  Sláine grabbed the Drune by the wrist and heaved him to his feet. He noticed for the first time that the sorcerer only had two fingers on his left hand, the third finger and the thumb. The others were little more than nubs of bone.

  Sláine helped him walk over to the weird stone.

  Throt laid both hands on the stone of power, whispering at first, a stream of sounds that might have been words. The stone answered his call, pulsing beneath his hands, and then it died, utterly drained.

  "Come to me, brethren of Cernunnos! Come to me dead and half-dead! Come and die a final death!"

  They answered his call, crawling out of the wreckage of the broken ship, lumbering out of the withered trees, and dragging themselves across the sour land. They shuffled forwards, weapons hanging limply in their hands. At the front, their pelts soaked in their own blood, their heads lolling slackly on broken necks, came the Drune pilots of the Curragh. One carried a spar from the mast embedded in his throat. Another carried a metal spike from the decking opening a third eye in his head. The third showed no outward sign of what had killed him.

  Throt gestured once, sharply, levelling an accusing finger at the first of the dead Drunes. A ribbon of shocking white power arced from his one good finger on that hand. The arc of raw energy struck the Drune square in the chest. It neither dissipated nor caused any noticeable damage. It hung there between the two of them, and then Throt's gaze shifted to the second of the dead Drunes and on to the third. The ribbon of white mirrored his gaze lancing from one to the next, joining them in a web of lethal energy. Throt threw his tangled web wider, drawing in Bran and Tamun and Senoll, and countless others, the shambling creatures and crawling wrecks of humanity, until every single one of the dead and half-dead were joined by the crackling arcs of power.

  Slough Throt uttered a single word, a word of unmistakable power despite its foreignness, and the bodies trapped within his web convulsed violently, a series of detonations chasing from one shell to the next as the organs within the corpses swelled beyond containing and ruptured, exploding violently. Eyes burst, kidneys, livers, and hearts. Brains swelled with blood, pressing out on the bones of the skulls until they shattered and blood and brains flew.

  "I told you he didn't need us," Ukko said, his face utterly drained of blood.

  Sláine didn't move so much as a muscle.

  The dead and half-dead jerked and spasmed to the dance of the sorcerer until the raw earth power streaming out of his fingers sizzled and spluttered, and died. The web fell and the unfortunates trapped within it collapsed, utterly devoid of life.

  "It is done," Slough Throt said. The sorcerer was shaking. He looked down at his hands, turning them over in front of his face. "I am spent. There is no more until I perform a blood sacrifice."

  "Get used to impotence, it comes to everyone eventually, or so I am told," Ukko said. "Well, not dwarfs of course," he cupped his groin and chuckled.

  "Are they really gone?" Sláine asked, not trusting the evidence of his own eyes. In this infernal land the dead had a habit of not staying dead. He had no way of knowing how dead was dead.

  Throt nodded. "They are dead and their souls have been torn apart and scattered to the four winds. They will
not rise again."

  "Good." Sláine suppressed a shiver. He couldn't shake the feeling that someone was watching them. He said as much.

  "The echoes of my magic will have been felt a long way from here, warrior. Feg has eyes everywhere. He will be aware of our resistance, token as it is. I would bet my life he is watching us even now, through the eyes of the forest denizens."

  "Then we'd better get a move on."

  "Which way?"

  "Does it really matter?"

  "No, I suppose not."

  "Then north seems as good as any other direction. We have friends waiting for us at Shadows Reach in Lyonesse," Throt said, setting off. Sláine noticed that he moved awkwardly, as if he had spent much of the magic that kept him alive in his conjuration to put the half-dead down. He had obviously risked much to banish the damned creatures.

  They walked for a while in silence.

  They found a path that led them deeper and deeper into the grim wood. The sensation of being watched heightened the further they ventured into the oppressive gloom of the trees.

  "There's something uncanny about this place," Ukko said. He constantly turned in circles as he walked. "It's so quiet, not even the branches rustle as the wind sighs through them. It's wrong."

  "Aye," Sláine agreed, "it is." He saw a wild cat hunkered down in the undergrowth, studying their progress. Behind it he saw a squirrel on a high branch, equally attentive.

  "Soth! Look at the size of that thing." Ukko pointed up at a huge oil-black raven perched on a thick bough. The bird was three times the size of any black bird Sláine had ever seen.

  The further they walked, the more obvious it became that the animals were shepherding them towards some unknown location in the heart of the dead wood.

  "Feg has invoked Carnun to come to his aid," Throt breathed, eyes wide. A huge brown bear stood on its hind legs, claws sunk deep into the bark of a dead tree not twenty feet from the slough-skinned sorcerer. "Our doom is sealed. The Horned God will see that none of us leave this wretched forest."

  Sláine hefted Brain-Biter. "I've never come across a tree this beauty couldn't fell. No forest scares me. As for animals, it will take more than an army of squirrels to bring me down."

  "You're a fool, Sláine Mac Roth!" Throt spat. "If Carnun causes this dread wood to rise up against us we are doomed."

  "Have you ever considered the possibility that your damned Feg isn't all that he's cracked up to be? What if these beasts have been sent to us by Danu, to guide us to safety?"

  The Drune Lord laughed bitterly.

  "There are fools, and then there are fools, and then, somewhere beyond those, there is you. Your Earth Goddess has no influence this far into the Sourlands."

  "Yet, I felt her power surging through my veins when your lot tried to burn me alive in that wicker man. Think about it, Throt, if she could aid me there, why not here?"

  They walked on for two days.

  Hunger and exhaustion ate at them.

  They seldom spoke.

  The animals were never far from the path, ushering them always forwards, and although they tired, the animals wouldn't allow them to rest.

  Ukko saw it first, a dark slash in the wall of solid rock. He would have missed it if the animals hadn't driven them at such an acute angle into the mountainside.

  "Shelter!" he cried, stumbling and running forwards.

  The others ran after him, new found energy in their legs.

  Ukko stood and turned in wonder. The cave was light inside, lit by a curious luminescent lichen that clung to the long stalactites dripping down from the ceiling. It was a vast cave but that wasn't what had stunned the little dwarf. The sickly green light played across engravings of wild beasts: stallions, aurochs, bison, fox and hound, owl, fish and bear. Thousands and thousands of them, each one perfectly rendered in the stone. Two stood out, one, of Carnun, the Horned God, the only painted image in the whole cave, and the other of a huge pot-bellied earthen golem. Ukko had seen the likeness once before, as Sláine rose from the swamp after escaping the burning wicker man: a vast outline in the cloying smoke, the physical manifestation of Danu, the Earth Goddess.

  The two images, rendered so closely together, were shocking. It went against everything the dwarf knew of the world.

  Slough Throt drew a protective ward around the mouth of the huge cavern.

  Slowly the beasts of the forest emerged to crowd around the cave's mouth: boar, bear, ox, fox and stag. More and more of Carnun's creatures came: rat and hare, horse and snake, and above them all, the huge oil-black raven that had dogged them since the crash.

  "It will hold them off," Throt said, sinking to the floor, his back pressed against the wall. Above him the painting of the Horned God was dwarfed by Danu's huge golem. "Although for how long, well who knows? I make no promises."

  The cave bore all the hallmarks of an ancient burial chamber, although who would be interred with the images of both Danu and the Horned God emblazoned on the walls of their tomb, Sláine didn't know. He didn't want to know, either. What might have once been porcelain jars lay in shards, any contents long since gone. Deeper into the cave the walls rose nearly a hundred feet to the ceiling. The floor angled down on a shallow decline. Sláine sifted through the detritus for the makings of a fire while Ukko explored the full extent of the cave.

  Whatever Throt had done, it kept the beasts at bay.

  With the fire burning, Sláine turned to the sorcerer. The flames danced high between them, throwing erratic shadows across the sorcerer's ruined face.

  "You know, I think it's time you told us why Feg wants you dead so badly, Throt? What have you done?" Sláine asked.

  Throt's worm-riddled tongue licked across his pustulant lips. "I stole something of his, something I intend to give to those who oppose him."

  "So, you're a traitor to your own master?"

  "That is a brutal way of putting it, warrior. I prefer to think of myself as saviour of your people."

  "You're as slippery with words as Ukko is."

  "You have seen what Feg is doing to the world. It is no accident. He is draining the life out of the land itself, sucking the vitality out of it to feed Crom-Cruach."

  "That isn't so different from what you would do, I am sure."

  "Feg is mad. He seeks nothing more than Ragnarok, the day of doom. He plans to destroy Tir-Nan-Og, turning it to blighted Sourland before he brings about the Deluge."

  "But that is madness! Why would he destroy his own nation?"

  "Because he is mad, warrior. Crom is his master, the only higher power he hears. He glorifies in destruction. I would warn the druids of the Earth Goddess that Feg schemes to cause a terrible war, an endless winter of raging snow storms, with ice sweeping down from Lochlann, and at last, the killing stroke, the Deluge: vast crashing waves where the sea herself rises up against the sickness of the land, drowning the Land of the Young. Mark me well, it will be our doom."

  "I don't get it," Ukko said, walking up to the fire. He kicked a clay shard into the heart of the flames, causing a shower of sparks to fly. "You're a Drune Lord, you serve Crom just as Feg does. Why aren't you looking forward to this disaster like your master?"

  "Because," Sláine said, understanding the sorcerer's motivations all too well, "Throt here is a coward who enjoys his power too much. You saw what he is capable of - the magic he threw at the half-dead, making the Curragh soar through the skies. He has power but it is the earth that grants him that power. If Feg succeeds and brings about the end of days the source of his magic will rot and decay like his own flesh, taking his power away, and then what will he be?"

  "A big festering sack of rotten meat," Ukko said thoughtfully.

  "You may question my motives, warrior, but my gold is good. I will pay you handsomely to see me safely to the lands of the Earth Goddess so that I might deliver my warning before it is too late. Feg must be stopped, for all our sakes!"

  "How very noble of you, sorcerer, trying to save them so that they mig
ht weaken or who knows, even slay Feg for you. Do you take me for a fool? We destroy Feg so that you might rise up in his place, a vile, cowardly power-mad sorcerer capable of cold-blooded murder on a grand scale. Don't think I don't know what happened to the people of Gavra after we left. I am more than capable of counting my numbers. Some of your men remained behind. Don't waste your breath lying to me any more. The villagers were doomed the moment you walked into their inn. You and Feg are both monsters. I am not interested in your gold."

  "I am," Ukko said, quietly.

  Slough Throt laughed. It was an unpleasant sound.

  "Sláine?"

  "Not now, Ukko."

  "Erm, Sláine?"

  "I said not now, Ukko."

  "Worms," Ukko said.

  The ground beneath them heaved. The convulsion shook loose rubble that cascaded down the wall to the uneven cave floor. A huge crack opened up in the flat expanse of wall. Through it came the probing tendrils of a huge sightless worm. The floor heaved again, fracturing in a hundred places, opening fissures in the hard packed earth, and through the fissures came more worms. Huge bloated fat-bellied pink things seethed through the cracks and wrapped themselves around the sorcerer's feet. Tiny white worms tangled in his pelt and his fetishes, and coiled around his arms. Purple worms so huge they were thicker than Throt's limbs looped around his waist and tightened, dragging him down into the ever-widening fissures, into the belly of the cave, drowning Throt's screams out as his throat filled with dirt.

  Throt writhed against the relentless pull of the worms, thrashing about, clawing at them, and at the ground as it closed over his head, and then he was gone, dragged down into a suffocating live burial. The worms receded.

  "Sláine?"

  "What?"

  Ukko held a small gold-clasped book in his hands. Seeing it glitter beneath the folds of Throt's filthy pelts he had snagged it after he saw the first worm coming through the crack in the wall. It had been an instinctive theft. He knew, without knowing why, that the worms had only come for Slough Throt. "You might want to look at this."