Fetishes and gibbets dangled down from the branches above the narrow track. Either side of the path death masks had been carved into the lightning-blasted trees.
Midway through the second day Sláine was cursing Kilbain's passion for knots; his back arched like a bow, the rope burns around his wrists were livid red and bloody from the constant chafing.
Ukko still hadn't said a word to him.
As the day wore on he began to worry that Taranis' boot had scrambled the dwarf's brains - even for Ukko two days was a long time to sulk.
Then again, the Skinless Man was not exactly garrulous, and when he did speak Murrough was quick to silence him under threat of violence, so perhaps the dwarf had decided to rein in his tongue and save the sarcasm until they were in a position to make a break for it.
They spent another night on the road, though not beneath the stars. The withered trees obscured the sky. Murrough had two of his men haul Sláine off the cart and prop him up against one of the trees so that he could share their fire. The skull sword wanted to talk, Sláine didn't. Murrough cut his ropes; it was no great bravery or foolishness on his captor's part. With twenty swords at his disposal Sláine wasn't going anywhere.
"So, warrior, it comes to this. Come the morrow we will arrive at Cor Havas and you will be handed over to the Drune priests for interrogation. We are both men of war, there should be no bullshit between us. We know how this will go. They will torture you, you will talk, then they will either kill you, or your big brave heart will give out from the agony of their branding irons and their tongs and whatever other implements of pain they choose to use on your body. It won't be pleasant. There is no nobility in the suffering. To be frank it is quite unnecessary."
Sláine gently rubbed the circulation back into his wrists while he listened. The corpse of a great stag had rotted down to brittle bone and lay tangled beneath the huge roots of the ancient tree at his back. It was impossible to tell if the stag had died and the tree claimed its bones or if the tree had strangled the life out of the majestic creature.
"So you would have me spill my secrets out of gratitude for a warm fire on a brisk winter's night? Should I value them so cheaply, do you think? If they are worth torture, surely they are worth a good meal and an hour with a pretty maid?"
The skull sword chuckled. "Quite. Though Taranis is the closest I have to a pretty maid."
The longer he spent in Murrough's company the more difficult it became to demonise him. The man was not the pure evil Sláine needed him to be; not obviously corrupt, not tainted by the vile magic of the Drunes, he was not, in fact, unlike Sláine himself. It was a disturbing revelation.
"I should hate you and all you stand for," Sláine said, "but it would be like hating myself."
Murrough nodded, understanding. "That is ever the way of war, isn't it? Good people pitted against one another in the name of faith or for the lack of faith or some other reason they cannot fathom. And make no mistake, this is war. A slow, creeping war but war nonetheless. My masters and your mistress are opposed and we are in the middle. But for the place of our birth we could easily have found ourselves fighting on the same side of this conflict."
"And yet, for all that you say, you serve a master who would drain the land dry of the very goodness it needs to feed its people, and who solves starvation by murder."
"Tough times demand a sure and firm rule."
"A terrible swift sword to decapitate the rebellion, you mean."
"No, no, no, far from it."
"Then how do you justify the culling of the villages? The murder of innocents?"
"In Nemere, my own home, everyone was starving. Everyone. It broke my heart to see those I loved slowly withering away, knowing they were doomed through no fault of their own. They were all eating, but none enough, so they were only prolonging the inevitable. The famine is hard on everyone, warrior, but it takes a brave leader to find a way through to a solution."
"Murder is not a solution," said Sláine.
"And yet the survivors of Nemere would contradict your stubborn refusal to see reason. Twenty were culled in the first month, the elderly and the infirm who offered little in terms of usefulness and still consumed a full portion. With twenty less mouths to feed the survivors filled their bellies."
"That does not justify slaughter."
"Really? Sixty live where eighty would surely have died without our intervention. The land still gets worked, the young are tended to. There is hope where there was despair."
"Until you are too old to be considered useful."
"What?"
"There is hope until you are too old to be considered useful. There is despair when you think of the fate of fathers, grandfathers."
"It is a harsh world, warrior. You can see the truth of that if you just look around yourself."
"But it need not be, where I come from there is plenty. And yet you come and feed the land with blood, tainting it. Your master does not care for the Land of the Young. He defiles it with his very presence."
"And yet through his justice many who would be dead, live."
"And many who should live are dead," he said, meaning: like my mother. "You cannot blind yourself to the truth."
"The same could be said of your philosophy, warrior. In your mind it seems my sister, my son, my mother, my entire clan should be dead by rights, and why? Because you decry the sacrifice of a few for the many."
"I did not say-"
"Ah, but you did. You said that very thing. You see the crime but you do not see the greater good it does. Can something that feeds the good of many even be a crime? It is beyond my simple knowledge to argue properly, but when we reach Cor Havas I am certain Slough Maug will be eager to broaden your understanding."
"Will that be before or after he tortures me?" Sláine said, picking subconsciously at one of the weals burnt into his wrist.
"Very good," Murrough grinned; the smile reached his eyes. It made him look five years younger. "Shall we cut to the chase, then? You have something in your possession that I am reasonably sure will fascinate my master."
"The book."
"The book," Murrough agreed. "A curiosity, to be sure. One wonders how it came to be in your possession?"
"I killed the man who had it," said Sláine.
"Really? Fascinating. You are a thief and yet you lecture on morality. What a complicated soul you are."
"He was evil. He deserved to die."
Murrough shook his head slowly, his lips pursed. "Can your world really be so black and white? So absolute?"
"If you mean: do I condemn all evil, greater and lesser? Then yes, I do. And yes, it is that simple. There is wrong and there is right."
The skull sword pushed himself to his feet, dusting the arse of his britches off. "Cor Havas will be tough on you, I fear, warrior."
"So be it," said Sláine. "But in turn I will make this promise: I will teach Cor Havas the truth of what it means to be Sessair. I will be a blight on your people. A canker in the dark hearts of the priests of Carnun that shelter within the so-called safety of the fortress. I will bring death to their pet swords. I will be justice incarnate. I will be a plague, bringing blood and pain to their petty regime. I will be deliverance and damnation. I will be the liberator, overthrowing the yoke of oppression that chokes the very life out of the land. I will be a pox upon their flesh just as they are a pox upon the flesh of my Goddess. The evil of Cor Havas will dwell in narrow houses when I am through. That is my promise."
"And in that hatred you will become all that you despise. I pity you, warrior."
The forest fortress of Cor Havas was little better than a cluster of wattle shanties behind a crumbling limestone wall. It was not the impressive, daunting, citadel he had imagined. The sight of it did not strike fear into his heart. Cor Havas verged on ruin - which was strangely fitting for a Drune stronghold dedicated to the ruin of this once great land. But mother earth was no helpless maiden ripe for the plucking. Her pretty darling buds had th
orns. Indeed, Dardun had already begun reclaiming the land, its twisted roots undermining the foundations of the stone wall, growing between the crevices where the stones did not quite mate perfectly. In a few years nature would have done her work and it would be as though Cor Havas had never existed.
"I would walk to my doom like a man, not be dragged like a child," Sláine said as they neared the gate.
"I am sure you would," Murrough agreed, conversationally. "But if so, then the young cadets of the fortress would see the proud warrior, undaunted, walking under the gateway into his enemy's stronghold. You would rise to be this colossus in their superstitious minds. After all, who but the greatest of the enemy would willingly walk into the den of his would-be killers? No, I think not, warrior. This way you are humbled, a prisoner wheeled in on a ramshackle cart. The message it gives is one of defeat. There is no fight left in this enemy. It is a good lesson to give our young men: even the so-called mighty bow down before the strength of our swords."
"Do not make the mistake of thinking I am beaten."
"Oh, but you are, warrior. You most assuredly are. There is no great hero coming to your aid. Victory will not be snatched from the jaws of defeat by some archer's arrow, thief's pick or champion's sword. There will be no miracles from your precious Goddess. You are dead to her, now. How does that feel? The cold certainty that you are utterly alone?"
"I am not alone," said Sláine.
"No, you have that ugly dwarf and the painted man, companions who strike fear into the heart of every evil man in the world."
"Do not mock me, Murrough. You are a decent man. It will hurt to kill you."
The skull sword chuckled. "As I imagine it will hurt to die."
On Murrough's signal four riders spurred their mounts and cantered ahead. The procession rolled slowly down the shallow hill, into a wide glade. It took two men to open the heavy timber gates. They groaned inwards. Ukko prodded him in the side with a stiff kick. "Idiots built this place." They were the first words he had said in days. A cunning smile spread slowly across his face. "Who builds the gate of a fortress gate to swing inwards? It doesn't take a genius to know that a crew with battering ram would make light work of those gates."
"Stupidity or supreme arrogance," Myrrdin Emrys offered, struggling to rise. A backhanded cuff from Taranis's gauntlet dumped the tattooed man on his back. He groaned, wincing. The blow had split his lip. "Thank you for demonstrating my point with such brutal efficiency."
"You talk too much, old man," Taranis said, shaking his head. "Perhaps Maug will pull out your tongue."
The irony that those four words were all that the tattooed man had said in hours was not lost on Sláine. Taranis was a bully and easy to despise for it. He lacked the empathy of Murrough; he didn't care about what Murrough had called the "greater good", he enjoyed hurting things. People.
It had begun to rain - or it had been raining all along with only the dense trees sheltering them and now they were gone, either way. The first fat drops spattered on Sláine's upturned face. He closed his eyes.
"It is not unreasonable to suppose that they fear no one," Myrrdin continued. "Because there is no one here to fear. Who, after all, would - could - come this far into their forest to bring the fight to their door?"
And that was the truth; it wasn't stupidity, or even arrogance, it was a message to every captive brought to Cor Havas: you are ours. No one can help you once you pass beneath the portal.
With the message ringing joyful and triumphant at the front of their minds, they entered the stockade.
It was no more impressive inside, but then it did not need to be. Sláine rolled onto his shoulder, enduring the increased discomfort of the fresh knots for the chance to take in the layout of the fortress. A little pain in advance could inevitably save considerably more later.
To the left of the gates were all the necessities of life; the bakery, the oast house, the smithy, the kitchens and the smoke house, and to the right the reasons for the fortress: the barrack buildings, the stables, the training ground and drill hall, and the hovels the cadets shared and the latrine trenches. No doubt the goal house would be there as well. Sláine studied his surroundings as they passed, seeing the young cadets twelve and thirteen summers old, sparring on the training grounds to the bark of a harsh instructor. He could just as easily have been watching Murdo put the Red Branch through their paces. He remembered all too well the relentless drilling; the driving rain only served to make the image more vivid. The boys struggled in the quickening mud, stumbling and slipping. The instructor slapped a wooden sword out of the hand of a wide-eyed boy soldier, yelling furiously in his face. His words carried to them: "No, no, no. You left yourself wide open, Braifar! Why can't you be more like Gannon?" The admonishment took him back ten years. He saw again Cullen's open loathing, Wide Mouth mimicking: why can't you be more like Sláine? The memory sent a cold shiver through Sláine as he realised: but for the grace of Danu, that could be me.
There was no sense of permanence to the settlement. The buildings appeared on the verge of collapse. The construction was slipshod - as though it wasn't expected, or needed, to last. There was no pride in any of the workmanship. The daub had cracked and flaked away from the wattle, exposing the dried reeds on some of the chattel houses. He couldn't imagine his own people living so close to squalor. But for all its ugliness there was order to it, and logic. The builders exhibited far more foresight in that department than the founders of Murias had.
The fortress was divided into five unequal parts, four quarters separated by the path of the sun and the seasons and the central core where the Drune priests themselves resided in a domed temple adorned with more of the vile fetishes they'd seen coming through the forest. It reflected the arrogance of the priests, placing themselves at the heart of all things. For all his vanities Cathbad at least had the humility to understand his role as teacher; he was set apart from the people, a guide, a source of knowledge, a repository of history and tradition. He was not king, he did not marry the Goddess. He lived to serve. And like the druid himself, the nemeton was set outside the realm of everyday life.
It was not the only difference he saw within Cor Havas.
The quarters themselves were physically divided by low interior walls, making the fortress feel like an elaborate labyrinth; the Drunes at its centre, and Sláine nothing more a mouse let loose to run in it - only "loose" was of course an illusion, his tormentor had him by the tail and was gleefully about to snap a metal trap shut on his skull while he scrambled about madly.
Sláine slumped back into the cart. He had seen enough.
The rain continued to fall.
The vile stench preceeded Maug by a dozen paces.
The rancid aroma told Sláine all he needed to know about the Drune: he had attained the rank of Slough, shedding his mortal skin. His body now was a corruption of the flesh held together only by the strength of the priest's dark magic. The strength needed to defy nature so boldly was immense. For all the slaughter of the Sourlands Sláine and Ukko had encountered only two others who had accomplished the same shedding of mortality - Slough Throt, the thief of Feg's Ragnarok book, and the Lord Weird himself.
Taranis grabbed hold of the rope binding Sláine's feet together and dragged him bodily off the cart. Without his hands to break the fall, Sláine fell hard, cracking his skull off the side of the wagon and landing on his shoulder and face at the foot of the wretched priest. Without the skin to bind his bones and muscle Maug moved with a clumsy lopsided gait, his joints bending too far in one direction and overcompensating in the other. He relied upon a staff of bone for balance. The staff itself was carved with some quite sophisticated renditions of tribal art not dissimilar to the countless fetishes that adorned the branches of Dardun. The effect would have been comical if the young Sessair warrior did not know what he was - and what he was capable of.
But it was not Sláine that interested the Drune.
Maug stood over Myrrdin, a curious look of c
ontempt on his rotten lips. A fat-bellied maggot wriggled out through the Drune's gum, crawled down what remained of his neck and disappeared beneath the rotten strip of flesh behind his clavicle.
The Slough priest poked and prodded the tattooed man with his staff as though inspecting a piece of meat. "Turn him over," Maug rasped a moment later, continuing the inspection after two skull swords had manhandled Myrrdin onto his stomach. The Drune circled the tattooed man three times sunwise, shaking his head and muttering to himself. The rain streamed down his ruined features. "My, my, my. What do we have here, Murrough? Visitors? And such a motley rabble. A barbarian, a dwarf and this painted freak." He circled Myrrdin, cackling at some unheard mirth. "Could it be? Do you think? No. No. This wretched creature cannot be the druid. Can it?" He peered down at Myrrdin, the flayed muscle of his lip curling in a sneer. "Tell me, are you the druid? No, don't tell me. You are. You are. But I must admit you are not what I expected, druid. I am quite disappointed, Myrrdin Emrys, the fabled Lord of the Trees. To hear talk of you one would think a god walked among the mortals. Three hundred years of superstition and prattle and this is the great Myrrdin?" The Slough priest shook his head though it did not so much shake as loll on his neck.
Myrrdin opened his eyes. "I am the druid, Myrrdin," the Skinless Man said, his voice devoid of emotion. The sight of the wooden orbs caused the Drune to step back involuntarily, then take four more forwards and lean in close, fascinated by the fusion of nature and humanity. "A living embodiment of the great wood... now that is more interesting. Perhaps there is something to your legend after all. Perhaps. Trust me, your suffering shall be every bit as legendary as your life warrants." Maug limped away from the tattooed man, talking animatedly to himself.
Sláine could not make out a word that dripped off the priest's tongue.
The rain intensified, quickly turning the ground to wet sucking mud.
The Drune's bare feet sank into the ground, leaving maggots of flesh behind as he moved. The sloughed flesh writhed with a repulsive life all of its own.
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