Beside him, Ukko peered down a long and winding street at the array of insanities on display. Sláine followed the direction of his gaze. There were no people, at least none like him, but there were crowds and mad delights. The street was filled with everything from puppet shows and the mimes plying their trade, weasel-faced children looking on in rapt delight; butchers and bakers filling their windows with foods and smells that tantalised the nose and revolted the eye; to the crazy warren of alleyways and curved stairways that wriggled between the buildings and the barrage of colours seemingly strung across every available inch of sky. Brightly coloured silks tied to bone-white tusks formed canopies over part of the street, shielding the bazaar of the bizarre from the worst of the sun.
Seeing them, the children chittered and squawked animatedly, gesturing wildly at the strange intruders. The commotion served to draw even more unwanted attention to them.
"I think we need to move on," Ukko said, pointedly. "Find this Skinless Man, make like a shepherd and get the flock out of here."
"For once, you'll get no argument from me," Sláine rubbed at his chin, feeling the stubble rasp beneath his fingers. He turned too quickly, a wave of nausea welling up inside him. The pain in his head burned. He winced as he backed away into one of the countless cramped byways leading into the belly of the great city. "Come on."
Purgadair was a place of vile wonder.
Distant roars rumbled, chased by a rolling wave of cheers.
Everything was so daunting, every building a behemoth of stone, every street horribly claustrophobic. Worst of all though were the denizens of the strange city. They were all slants on the same demonic fusion of animal and human, a different blend of species dominant in each of the inhabitants they saw. Their perversion was repulsive to look upon - and yet it was impossible to look away. They were everywhere, on street corners, in windows, gathered around stalls, walking. Sláine felt utterly exposed. The city was populated by monsters. Sláine and Ukko walked side by side, trying to take it all in.
The crack of a whip startled Sláine. A slave driver hustled a group of beaten-down prisoners across the street towards the roar of the distant crowd. A familiar face stared hatefully at Sláine - a face he had never thought to see again: Cullen of the Wide Mouth. The wrongness of seeing his childhood nemesis here in these strange streets where he hadn't seen another human being was undeniable. Cullen was dead - killed by his own gae bolga after his jealousy had bettered the tenuous bonds of friendship the young men of the Red Branch shared. Cullen was dead and yet here he was, captive to these diabolic creatures. The slave driver lashed his prisoners on, steering them towards a wider street.
"I can save him," Sláine breathed, unaware that he had actually given voice to the thought. It felt right. He started forwards.
Ukko snagged ahold of his belt and pulled him up short. "Oh, no you don't, big man. Rein in those suicidal instincts."
"I-"
"I said no you don't. Remember what the crow-woman said. Things you see here aren't real."
"She didn't say that," said Sláine, remembering full well what the Crone had said.
"Might as well have. The street's empty, Sláine. There's nothing there except the ghosts inside your head. We need to find the Skinless Man, right? So let's just concentrate on doing that. This place feeds on your guilt, remember?"
"I remember," said Sláine, grudgingly. "But-"
"Why does there always have to be a 'but' with you? Huh? The Morrigan warned you that the city would manifest your guilt if you let it, and now you would go chasing after the ghost of some long-buried shame. Does that not strike you as, I don't know... erm... stupid?"
"But-"
"Crom's hairy gonads! Don't you ever just listen? There's nothing there. The street is empty. I can't see anything, so whatever you are seeing, it isn't there. It's in your head. Which means it isn't real. Which means it is trouble."
Ignoring the dwarf, Sláine set off after Cullen.
The slave driver herded them on mercilessly, his whip biting into the bare backs of his prisoners, the lash drawing weals and blood. No matter how quickly Sláine ran the slaver kept his captives just out of reach. Cullen looked back imploringly at Sláine, blame in his hate-filled eyes. Sláine could hear Ukko grunting and huffing behind him as he struggled to keep up.
The roars of the crowd grew nearer until, finally, they reached a mighty coliseum. The stone here was red with the blood of the fallen who had given their lives for the sport of the beasts of Purgadair. Through the ground-level arches Sláine could see the track, where charioteers lashed their teams into a frenzy, steel wheels eating the dirt of the arena as they raced for glory.
Sláine stopped, frozen in horror at the sight of his mother, running for her life before the pounding hooves of the teams and the wicked steel barbs set into the wheels. She was fast but she couldn't possibly win. The crowd bayed for her blood. The charioteers yelled at their teams, goading them on faster and still faster, until they were bearing down on the terrified Macha, and still she ran, head back, tears streaming down her cheeks, arms pumping desperately.
Sláine stumbled forwards a step, bumping into one of the hungry-eyed onlookers.
Macha turned into the home straight, the chariots on her heels. Fear and determination burned in her face - until she saw her son, on the side of the track. There was a moment, the space between heartbeats, when they looked at each other and the track, Purgadair, the world, ceased to exist. It was only the two of them.
Her lips moved. He could read their accusation: you could have saved me.
But he knew he couldn't - that was his guilt talking - and it all came back, the world, the city, the track and the raging stampede of the teams driven by men he knew, men he had left behind in Murias. Men his drunken sot of a father had called friends.
It wasn't real. None of it was real.
Macha went down beneath the wheels and hooves but before they could trample her to death she faded into nothing, her spirit released as Sláine came to terms with his own failure. "I couldn't save you then and I can't save you now," he breathed. A lone tear rolled down his cheek. He felt so utterly alone. Bereft. Losing her once had been hard. Losing her twice was devastating; a loss no son should have to bear.
Sláine turned his back on the ghosts of the coliseum track and walked away.
"We find this skinless one and get out of here."
Beside him, Ukko nodded.
There were no jokes or admonishments this time.
THREE
Understanding came to Sláine.
The city was a reflection of its people.
At the base it was corrupt, like the flesh and blood of the mortal being, craving and obsessive. Vice dominated the claustrophobic lower streets. The sins of need and desire subjugated anything more spiritual. There was no Earth Power because there was no connection to the land. The creatures that lived on these lower tiers were parasites, bloating themselves on the carcass of civilisation. Sláine and Ukko scoured the streets but found no sign of the Skinless Man. None of the denizens of Purgadair deigned to talk with them. The animals turned up their beaks and snouts and made as though they were nothing more than a bad smell to be ignored. But through each tier rising towards the highest level of the city matters of the flesh dwindled until, on the top tiers they encountered no one, the streets dedicated to dreams and souls and men no longer living.
"This place," said Ukko, "is downright creepy. It's like a ghost town."
"That is exactly what it is," Sláine agreed, pushing open a door and stepping into an abandoned house. The room was dark, the table still set for a dinner that was never eaten. The food had rotted on the plate.
Ukko shivered as he crossed the threshold. The house reeked of abandonment.
"It's like they went out and never came home."
Giving voice to their fears didn't make them any less pressing. Sláine moved through the room, looking for significations for its recent desertion. Wooden shades
had been shuttered to keep out the worst of the endless day's heat.
Sláine backed out of the room.
The house next door was much the same, though the shutters were open and instead of food on the table there was a single overturned tankard and a dark circle stained into the wood. The next two houses were derelict, empty but for an uncomfortable sulphuric aroma.
"Perhaps they went down below and became those abominations." He stopped talking as he pushed open the door of the next hovel. The table was set, as with the first house, but the centrepiece was a young man, trussed up, naked, flayed and partially carved. The soft meat of his belly glistened redly on the huge platter. The corpse was surrounded by succulent roots slathered in butter. Unlike all the other food they had found, this feast was fresh.
Ukko pushed in past him. "Is that? No, don't tell me. I don't want to know. I mean... urgh. Cannibals?"
"Is it cannibalism when there's no trace of humanity in these predators? By the looks of things we're nothing more than cattle to them, to be bred, slaughtered, gutted and carved up."
"Can't say I really care about definitions right now. Maybe it's because when mummy dearest gets home she'll take one look at me and think: ooh, din dins." Ukko turned away from the feast, his face suddenly a bilious shade of green. "You don't think that is what the witch meant by Skinless Man do you? Find the dead guy on the plate, he's the key? He was flayed before they laid him out to eat... flayed... no skin."
"No," Sláine said, quite certain the meal was not what they had come looking for. They had found a skinless man, not the Skinless Man. "It feels like a title, not an ingredient. Come on."
"You're the hero, I'm just the lackey."
They moved down the row of abandoned houses quickly, pushing doors open, looking for signs of life, secretly grateful every time they found none.
The sun was relentless. Twilight offered no respite, ceding the sky to the second sun long before it had cooled the streets. Sláine felt his headache returning with a vengeance. At the far end of the street lay a series of troughs used for watering the animals. They might as well have been a mirage; they were dried up, as were the barrels beside them. Sláine cracked the lids off all of them, just to be sure. As Brain-Biter splintered the last piece of wood, a second crack echoed somewhere behind him. Sláine lowered the axe to his side and leaned over the cask, fascinated. He strained to listen, to hear anything else out of place. Ukko scuffed about in the dust for a moment, then even he stopped and the silence was complete. He had almost succeeded in convincing himself that they were alone when he heard it again: a slow drawn-out sighing followed by a crump.
Sláine rose slowly, and turned.
The street behind him was empty.
"Did you hear it?" he asked the dwarf, his voice barely above a whisper.
"Aye, I did."
"Stay close to me," Sláine said, hefting his axe and resting it lightly on his shoulder.
"I've got no intention of going anywhere," Ukko said. His resolve lasted exactly thirty-nine steps. On the fortieth the sky caved in - or at least that was how it appeared at first as streaks of fire rained down from above. Ukko bolted. Sláine threw his left arm up to shield his face from the flames. Cinders bit into his flesh, searing through the skin all the way to the bone in four places, like fang-marks. He jerked his arm back, barely ducking out of the way of another trailing flare. He looked up to see five huge carapaced insectoid warriors scuttle out into the street before him. Their mandibles dripped ichor as they skittered forwards, pincers clacking on the hard sand of the street.
Sláine stepped forwards to meet them.
It was a mistake.
They were evolved for the climate and conditions, bred to kill. This was their natural habitat. They surged up the narrow street, scaling the walls, and onto the rooftops. More came in behind the initial five, coming over the rooftops and dropping down into the street. Their chittering spiralled into a hungry chorus as still more came pouring out of the cracks in the stonework, through the dark windows and up through the webway of gutter and sewer beneath the streets. As they neared, the full repulsiveness of their physique became apparent: the creatures were huge, twice Sláine's height and more, and four of their arachnoid legs ended in either savage pincers or wicked saw-toothed blades. Their jewel-encrusted carapaces were covered in scraps of rancid flesh worn like trophies. Fetishes of bone and tooth were draped around their throats.
"Far be it from me to interrupt a family gathering," Ukko said, as the insectoids continued to spill out of every nook and cranny until the street was alive with the hellish chittering and clicking of their mandibles, and he took off running.
The black-carapaced hunters swarmed forwards.
Sláine clenched fists around the hilt of Brain-Biter, kissing the axe's blade. "Come to me then, my uglies. Who wants to be the first to bleed for me?"
Sláine rolled his shoulder, slamming the axe down in a shocking display of raw power, splitting the nearest of the giant insects in two right down the length of the carapace. Blue-green viscous ichor leaked out of the rent as he tugged Brain-Biter free. Sláine stood on the back of the insect, crushing it beneath his foot like the bug it was.
"You die too easily, there's no sport in a bug hunt!"
Two of the critters dropped from the roofs on either side of him, pincers and claws clashing and snapping around his legs. Sláine blocked one set of blades as they scythed towards his ankles, but couldn't parry the second set of pincers as they snapped around his arm, cutting viciously into his bicep. He roared, kicking out at the first of the insects, burying his foot into the soft flesh between its crusted underbelly and the plates protecting its ridged head. The creature's death rattle was grotesque. Before it hit the floor two more had replaced it, blades and pincers blurring into a whirling dance of death. Sláine ducked beneath one cut, barely getting Brain-Biter between his gut and the saw-toothed blade, before having to throw himself out of the path of another. The pincers clashed close enough to scrape whiskers from his chin. Sláine launched himself upright, gasping hard, blood streaming from the slash in his arm as he drove the axe through the insect's hard-cased coxa.
He blocked three more blows on the blade of his axe, and countered with raw fury, scything Brain-Biter through the chittering mandibles of the closest foe. The blade sheered through the spindly legs and dripping fangs. The creature cried out in outrage. Sláine shifted his body weight and reversed the momentum of the axe, cleaving it into the insect's head. The blow split the ridge of shell and buried itself deep into the eye, severing the nerves as it sank all the way through to the mash of the dead critter's brain stem.
Sláine yanked Brain-Biter free; the great stone axe was covered with gore.
He cut the legs out from under the next of the hellish spawn, reckless from the scent of his blood, which got too close to Brain-Biter.
He spread death across the sands, leaving them slick with malignant blood.
Still the creatures came at him. There were too many to count. The air thrummed with the lethal harmonics of their pincers and blades, as their tarsi chimed off and scraped against stone and flesh.
Sláine cleaved a set of claws from its surprised owner, then stepped forwards, slipping as his foot came down on a ruptured compound eye that had been rent from a cleaved skull. Losing his balance, Sláine fell to one knee and drove Brain-Biter upwards, ramming the axe's point up under the labrium of his monstrous attacker, sinking it deep into the soft flesh of the insect's brain. The creature howled its pain, torn by paroxysms of agony as its body succumbed to the inevitable death rattle and slumped down on top of Sláine. Its weight dragged him to the floor. Even as he tried to thrust the dead shell aside more of the insects surged forwards, overwhelming him.
Ukko stopped running twenty paces down the narrow street and turned. For a moment it looked as though Sláine would fend the giant insects off, but there were simply too many of them. Ukko watched in horror as Sláine went down beneath the weight o
f insects.
It was a vision fit for the Underworld itself.
"Bloody stupid heroes... going on stupid quests. Dumb idea to listen to the crow. Now look at what's happening... Don't you dare die on me, Sláine!"
He didn't know what he was going to do until he was already doing it. The little man pushed open the nearest door and rushed into the room. Like all the others it reeked of death; he knew why now. He looked around the room frantically but couldn't find what he needed. There was no fire grate, no logs waiting to burn. "But why would there be?" He chided himself, grabbing a stiff-backed chair and slamming it against the wall again and again until it splintered and he was left holding two splintered legs. All he could think of was the body they had found trussed up on the dining table like a side of pig. That wasn't the way he intended to go - not that he actually intended to go any way. "What the feth am I supposed to do with these against a ravening horde of man-eating insects?"
He threw them on the floor, dropped to his knees and shucked out of his sack. "A good thief always comes prepared, Ukko, my boy."
He rummaged around inside the sack until he found the grease he had used to loosen the odd lock along the way. He scooped out handfuls of the oily substance and smeared it along the broken chair legs until he was happy they were coated with the stuff. Without thinking, Ukko fetched his tinderbox out of the pack and struck it over and over until it caught, igniting the oil and turning the chair leg into a blazing torch. He stuffed everything back into his pack and shouldered it, lighting the second wooden leg as he charged, screaming like a banshee possessed out of the hovel and down the street, brandishing the flaming spars like weapons.
Ukko ran straight into the chittering and shrieking mass of insects that had swarmed over the fallen barbarian, thrusting the blazing torches into what he hoped were their faces.
They skittered away from the fire, retreating fearfully from Ukko as he brandished the flame like a madman, slashing around in wild arcs, trying to force them back. "Come on, Sláine! Get up!" Ukko didn't dare look back, he just kept on with his wild dance, waving his arms around and jumping up and down. And then he understood why the insects feared the fire so much. One of the broken chair legs slapped into the side of one of the critters and it erupted in a violent fiery ball. The explosion threw Ukko from his feet, but he rolled and came up grinning as it set a chain reaction in motion: the insects too close to the burning insect shrieked as the gases leaking from their slathering mouths ignited and tongues of fire lashed down their throats, detonating within their guts. Faggots of charred flesh clung to the walls and smouldered on the sand. Fragments of burned-out shell steamed where they had slashed like shrapnel into the carapaces of the remaining spawn.
The Defiler Page 5
