by Gavin Smith
Suddenly, on a sunny cloudless day, Morfudd found herself in the shade. She turned and looked up.
The giant reached down and grabbed Morfudd. Lifted her up, its fingers curving around her to make a fist and punched that fist into the shallow water. She was dead instantly. The giant threw her broken body at her own people and lifted up a foot to stamp. Lochlannach or Atrebates, it made no difference.
The stamping giant splashed everyone with bloody water and was close enough to Britha for the impact to knock her off her feet. She was underwater for a moment and for that moment heard the song. There was a sadness to it. The Muileartach knew pain on this day.
Britha sat up in the red water, fighting all around her. To her right something monstrous and glowing with an inner light hit the Lochlannach line. Enemy warriors went flying. The ban draoi knew that had this been a mortal army they would have broken and fled. There was an explosion of steam. Lochlannach and Atrebates alike fell away from the massive creature, their exposed skin red and blistering from the heat.
The monstrous thing that Fachtna had become barrelled into a giant’s leg, swinging the ghost blade at it again and again, hacking at it, each cut going deeper. The giant reached down for Fachtna, its skin seeming to melt and run as it did so. It grabbed him apparently oblivious to the pain, but then staggered and finally fell into the water.
Fachtna leaped high out of the steaming water and landed on the giant’s chest. He hacked with his sword and tore with bare burning hands at the thing’s chest as if he was burrowing into it. The giant grabbed at him, but the heat had sunk Fachtna’s monstrous form into the creature’s flesh. Strange fluids squirted out of the giant’s chest – Britha guessed it was blood – and lumps of its flesh were flung out. Some of it floated, other bits sank. There was an explosion of red liquid, much of it turning to steam as it sprayed close to Fachtna’s deformed glowing body. This looked more like the blood Britha was used to seeing.
Distracted by the death of the giant, she didn’t notice the Lochlannach moving towards her until she felt his foot on her chest pushing her down as he raised his spear. She reached for hers, but a shape rose out of the red water behind him. Teardrop grabbed the man’s head and pulled it back as he stroked his black-bladed knife across the man’s throat. A red smile appeared on the man’s neck and he fell. Britha realised that she knew him. His name was Dubthalorc. He was one of her people, a landsman. He had been known for raising the best sheep and his wife had been very good with a loom. Britha watched him slide into the water sadly.
Another Lochlannach charged but suddenly fell, yanked under the water. Tangwen appeared. She was red from head to foot, like the dirk she’d just rammed through the Lochlannach’s leg. She pushed his helmet forward and then repeatedly hit him in the back of his head with her hand axe until he stopped moving.
‘We have to go!’ Teardrop shouted over the din of battle and glanced angrily at Fachtna, who was wading through the Lochlannach, breaking them like toys. Just then there was the unmistakable sound of a large fire catching. Britha glanced behind her. Both the legs of the wicker man were in flames. Now the screams of the captives over the water far exceeded the sounds of the battle. Teardrop grabbed Britha and dragged her into deeper water.
They dived. It felt like home to Britha. She could hear the mindsong. It took every shred of willpower that she had not to turn and swim to the west.
Fachtna dived into the water in an explosion of steam. All around him the water boiled as he bled off heat and excess matter. He was tired, bone-weary, pained and hungry. He swam as fast and hard as he could. Surfaced to take a breath, long enough to see flames and hear screams, then beneath the surface again. He did not look behind him. He knew that the Cigfran Teulu would fight as long as they could.
With its legs on fire, Britha was wondering how they would climb up into the wicker man, but as she surfaced for another deep breath she saw a rope hanging from it. Presumably it had been used to hoist people or materials up. A casting spear hit the water close by. She glanced to her right to see one of the black curraghs. She dived again and watched more spears quickly lose their speed in the water. Teardrop was level with her but they were leaving Tangwen behind. She had no idea where Fachtna was. The water here was much deeper. As she swam she was aware of dark shapes darting through the water beneath her.
An exhausted Fachtna reached the wicker man first. The water above him looked orange as a result of the flames licking up the legs of the giant figure. He could hear the screams even under the water now. Worse still, when he surfaced he could smell burning flesh. Anger overwhelmed fatigue and the despair he felt as he looked up at the climb he had to do. He surged out of the water, grabbed the rope and started pulling himself hand over hand, not using his legs.
The climb was always going to leave them exposed. As he pulled himself up, Fachtna saw one of the black curraghs surging through the water towards him. The Lochlannach on board started throwing spears, but the wind that carried the wicker man’s stench and the screams of its prisoners also blew smoke around him. He still felt some spears pass close by him, making eddies in the smoke, but soon he was too high for thrown spears to hit him. Fachtna knew that the wicker man would not collapse. The metal drawn from the earth would have been seeded with smart matter designed to stand up to the heat. The wood would burn and so would the people.
Britha did not want to leave the water. It was better down here, safer. She certainly did not want to climb hundreds of feet into the air on a rope. Teardrop shamed her by grabbing the rope and pulling himself out of the water and up into the smoke. She quickly lost sight of him. Before the magic entered her blood, she would not have been capable of this. She surged out of the water, grasped the rope and started to pull herself up.
Fachtna felt others on the rope beneath him. As he reached the metal framework and the thick wooden planks at the base of the wicker man’s torso, he saw other ropes. His shoulders and arms were just extensions of pain. He had little idea how he was still hanging on, but he knew that he had to collect as many of the ropes as possible so that people could use them to climb down. For what? he asked himself as he swung hand over hand around the framework, excrement and urine dripping down on him through the cracks between the planks above. So that they can be massacred by the spearmen in the black curraghs, so they can hacked to pieces by mad men, so they can be swept out to sea? Fachtna was a strong swimmer and augmented, but even he’d had trouble with the currents. It felt hopeless, but he didn’t have any better ideas, and the flames were rising quickly up both legs of the wicker man. Above him the screaming and pleas for help were starting to be replaced with the sound of coughing. He himself was covered in soot but the smoke would not affect him.
Pulling a handful of ropes with him, Fachtna climbed over the lip of the torso’s base. Soot-blackened arms stuck out through the metal framework, reaching for him.
‘Back!’ he shouted. Eventually a large man pushed a circle clear on the inside. He did so not without difficulty, they were packed in so tightly. Leaning back, Fachtna drew his sword and easily cut through the frame. There was a surge towards him that threatened to knock him off the framework. He brought the singing burning blade forward. ‘Back!’ he shouted again before turning to the large man. ‘Listen to me.’ He handed the man the bundle of ropes he had collected. ‘Tie these off against the framework so they don’t swing back under. There are people coming up behind me. Don’t climb down this rope; let them up. The strong have to carry the weak and any children too small to climb themselves. When you think you can jump, do so. The moment you hit the water, swim away from the ropes or others will land on you. You have to stay here and make sure this is done. If we give into fear then everyone will die. Do you understand me?’ The man was staring at him. Then he turned and started climbing down the rope. Good. I need an example, Fachtna thought. He kicked the man in the face. The man flew backwards off the rope and disappeared into the smoke. A hand grabbed his arm. He turned to see an
elderly but formidable-looking woman.
‘It will be done as you say,’ she told him, and then immediately began organising people. The smell of the people was so overwhelming that it brought tears to Fachtna’s eyes as he pushed his way through them, but to their credit they did not panic as word spread of what was happening.
The wooden steps that led to the next level were gated and barred. His sword cut through the gates with ease. At each level he appointed gatekeepers and told them what they had to do, that they had to try and keep the calm or all would die. In as much as he could judge, he chose the strongest personalities. Examples were made. He didn’t want to do it – they’d suffered enough – but panic would kill them all.
Tangwen was exhausted when she reached the rope dangling down from the wicker man. She had grown up in a marsh and close to the Grey Father. If you wanted to survive then you had to be a good swimmer, but the currents in the channel between the two islands were vicious. She was not chosen of the gods like her companions, and it had taken every last bit of her strength to stop herself from being swept out to sea. As she looked up at the rope, tears in her eyes, she knew that she could not make the climb. She’d let Fachtna, Teardrop, Britha and all the people in the wicker man down.
Tangwen felt something bump against her from below. She looked into the water and saw a dark shape darting away. The large man plummeting into the water from above startled her. The surprising thing was he didn’t come back up, but nearby the water turned red.
‘Move now!’ Teardrop said in a voice that brooked no argument, and people backed out of the way for the swollen-headed creature with the bulging veins and crystalline eyes. He was followed moments later by a naked soot- and bloodstained woman with a spear slung over her back. Britha sat down on the soiled planks, her upper body a mass of pain. She didn’t think she could move her arms and she was so hungry. She looked at the wretches around her, collected herself and then stood up and painfully slipped the spear off her back and readied it. A woman was organising the captives’ escape on the ropes, savagely berating anyone who tried to push ahead while the strong took the frail and the smallest children down. The woman was doing this through fits of coughing. Britha could feel the smoke in her lungs but somehow still found herself able to breathe. She was not surprised to find that Teardrop was unaffected by the smoke as well.
Britha looked questioningly at Teardrop. The creature that used to be a man had taken his crystal-topped staff off his back. Teardrop turned and headed towards the steps.
With a thought Bress brought one of the black curraghs in as close as he dared to the wicker man. The craft might be able to fit between its legs but he didn’t want to risk the fire and he had a feeling that it would be raining captives soon. Ettin stood next to him as both of them stared into the smoke. They could see the ropes hanging down.
Ettin went first. He backed up and then ran along the deck and leaped into the smoke, his second head berating him as he did so. Then Bress did the same, his cloak trailing out behind him as he ran and then leaped, the smoke swallowing him.
Long, strong fingers grabbed the rope, cloak billowing as he started to pull himself up, following Ettin. There were captives climbing down the rope as they ascended. Ettin told them to jump. Most did, plummeting past them. For those that didn’t, Ettin grabbed one of the bronze torture blades from the front of his apron and slashed at them until they let go.
As he climbed, Bress woke the dragon with a thought.
Seven levels. Each level packed with captives taken from many different tribes. Fachtna rushed up, cutting through bars and metal gates. Spoke to the people, told them how to help themselves.
It was selfish, he knew. He should be down there helping keep the calm, helping people climb down. Or he should seek out Teardrop and watch over him, but he wanted a moment. He climbed onto the head, standing up on it, his bare feet gripping the metal framework. Just a moment above the stench. Just a moment free of the smoke. Just a moment with the clear blue sky. Looking out over the two islands, the third behind him. The long ridge of the hill on the mainland, much of it wooded except for the ugly clear scar where they had taken material to build this abomination and the fuel to fire it.
He did not want to look down to see the curraghs, to see the fate of the captives who had managed to climb down. He did look down, however, when he heard the sound of huge amounts of water pouring off something. He watched the dragon rise out of the water.
Britha was amazed by how orderly it was. While most were terrified, they were holding themselves together long enough to act in their own best interests and those of the people around them.
They had found a place on the fourth level clear enough for Teardrop to sit down cross-legged, his staff across his lap, and close his eyes.
Then she heard the panic start, the screams, the sounds of struggling, cries of pain mingling with fear. Britha ran to the edge and looked down. As the dragon rose up level with her, water still pouring off it, she nearly soiled herself.
Behind her, Teardrop had started to beg and gibber, talking nonsense rapidly and pathetically. He was weeping openly. Britha forced herself to turn away from the monstrous form of the rising dragon and back to Teardrop. She watched in horror as blood leaked out of his clothes and wounds appeared all over his face, his skin blackening and blistering as if it was being burned. Some of the cuts on his face and head, the lower ones, leaked blood. Ghostly tendrils of what looked like crystal emerged from the cuts higher up. His features were racked with agony of the like Britha had never seen before. It was with mounting horror that she realised what Teardrop had come here to do. All the pain and suffering that Bress and his master were trying to use to drive a goddess insane, Teardrop was going to take unto himself.
Tears sprang into her eyes.
It was easy to mistake it for a dragon. The Naga craft had its membranous wings extended for atmospheric operations. It had a main body, which housed the craft’s biotech drive and the other organs that provided life support, and a long neck, which led to the craft’s brain and the Naga who ostensibly melded with it to act as overseers as much as pilots for the brute organism.
Fachtna watched it rise from the water, almost oblivious to the screams of panic from below. It was overkill. After all, what could one warrior do against such power. He felt gratified that Bress or his master felt that he warranted such a grand death.
Then he smiled and reached for the case on his back as his internal targeting systems locked on to the dragon, plotting targeting solutions and preparing to transmit them. He took the case and opened it. It was heavily shielded and constantly transmitting narcotic, soporific programs to the spear inside.
Fachtna lifted the drowsy spear out of its case. A demonic face formed in the smart matter of the lower part of the weapon’s long bladed head. The haft of the weapon extended to over six feet. He felt the psychotic AI in the weapon start to wake. The Lloigor had always felt that function followed form. If you were to make a weapon, then the weapon, to fully fulfil its purpose, should hate because its purpose was carnage. Even allowing for that, the AI in the spear, which some called Lug, had far exceeded its initial programmed hate and gone into the realms of near-uncontrollable madness on battlefields eternities ago. If some of the stories were true, then the weapon – like its makers – could have been older than this universe. Fachtna himself was nearly overwhelmed by the weapon’s hunger for slaughter. He almost lost himself in its myriad rage-filled psychoses.
The dragon breathed and engulfed the top of the wicker man’s head in fire. Superheated plasma turned the smart-matter-seeded metal into a melted and fused mess.
Fachtna’s leap took him high above the wicker man just as where he had been standing moments before was turned to slag. Fachtna was aiming for the wicker man’s shoulder. He almost overshot. His bare feet failed to grip as he slipped painfully onto his arse and started to slide off. He grabbed the framework of the wicker man with his left hand and used it to sw
ing around until he was facing the dragon again. The Naga ship tilted to one side as it circled the wicker man, looking for another shot.
Fachtna pulled his right arm back and threw the spear at the dragon. He transmitted his targeting ware’s firing solutions to the insane AI at the same time. The spear’s AG drive kicked in, accelerating it to hypersonic speeds, the resultant boom deafening the screaming captives below. The thermal head superheated to white hot as it hit the Naga craft in an explosion of burning biotechnological armoured skin and flesh.
Through conduits and corridors that had more in common with veins and arteries, the spear sought out the Naga symbiotically fused with the craft and the other semi-autonomous organisms/weapons that lived within it and killed them all.
Fachtna drew his sword again, cut through the framework and dived into the now-empty seventh level of the wicker man. He rolled forward onto his feet and ran. The dragon breathed once more. Fachtna felt the heat on his back; his hair caught fire as the shoulder of the wicker man was turned to slag.
Through the layers of psychoses, the spear recognised the craft as a manifestation of its ancient enemy. It sought out the craft/organism’s beating heart and slew the dragon.
Fachtna glanced behind him. The Naga craft was listing badly to one side. Then the disruption in the air at its tail, caused by the craft’s Real Space drive, simply stopped, and it plummeted towards the sea.
Fachtna stopped running and headed back to the edge of the fused area of the wicker man’s seventh level, patting out the flames in his hair as he went. He ignored the burning sensation from his feet and the smell of flesh cooking as he looked out and watched the dragon crash through one of the curraghs below. Even frightened, even deafened, the captives still managed to cheer.
Now comes the hard part, Fachtna thought. The program had taken up an enormous part of the memory within his internal nanite headware. The program was complex, intelligent, ancient and had its own personality. It was designed to do just one thing: soothe the spear enough for it to return and be replaced in its case. To the spear this would feel like the betrayal of a lover played out in moments that for the AI stretched out for lifetimes.
