The Beauty of Destruction

by Gavin G. Smith

  ‘And the Trinovantes,’ Anharad said. Mabon nodded at his grandmother’s words.

  ‘And you can speak for them?’ Guidgen said.

  ‘I have some influence,’ Anharad said.

  ‘We are to be wed,’ Bladud told them, and suddenly he had the attention of all but Tangwen. Britha guessed that Anharad had underplayed just how important she was to her tribe.

  ‘Congratulations,’ Britha said.

  Guidgen laughed bitterly. The old dryw turned and looked to the south at the plain of mud that used to be his people’s wooded land.

  ‘After we have dealt with the Lochlannach you will need strong allies,’ Bladud told the old man. ‘All the southern tribes will.’

  ‘Allies yes, rulers no, tyrants certainly not,’ Guidgen said. ‘And we have already had this discussion. The chalice was given to Tangwen to safeguard because we would have fallen on each other with sword and spear if we did not. Nothing has changed. We still have a threat that we need to deal with.’

  ‘So you see war between us when we have dealt with the Lochlannach?’ Bladud asked. Britha sensed a trap in his words.

  ‘There will be war if you insist on ruling all,’ Guidgen said angrily. ‘There is always war when a rhi wants to own more than they can see from the highest point of their land. We should use the chalice and then throw it into the deepest part of the sea.’

  ‘Things like the chalice have a way of finding their way back into the hands of mortals,’ Germelqart said quietly.

  ‘We need its power to defeat the Lochlannach,’ Bladud told them.

  Britha laughed bitterly. ‘You are assuming that you can defeat the Lochlannach,’ she said.

  ‘Andraste’s spawn and the Lochlannach have proven that we need to be united …’ Bladud said as if Britha hadn’t spoken.

  ‘But not ruled—’ Guidgen started.

  ‘I understand the danger of the chalice’s power,’ the Witch King continued. Ysgawyn turned to look at Bladud, distrust written all over his face. Bladud ignored him. ‘Can we come to an accord?’

  Guidgen peered through the rain at the Witch King. ‘An accord that will benefit you, no doubt,’ he said.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I don’t mind an agreement that benefits you and yours; I object when it is to the detriment of all else.’

  ‘Bladud may have forgotten that your people crept into our camp as we slept, slit throats and stole the blood of many, including children,’ Anharad started. Bladud was making calming motions with his hand. ‘I have not. You need to remember that he can take the chalice whenever he wants.’

  Britha saw Germelqart sigh. She understood how he felt.

  ‘We would murder him and flee with the chalice.’ Britha was surprised at just how strong Tangwen’s voice sounded. She was staring straight at the Witch King. She was more surprised when she looked up and saw Bladud smiling.

  ‘At best it would bring dissension in your forces before you face the Lochlannach,’ Britha added.

  ‘Indeed,’ Bladud said. ‘Before the battle we sent messengers out to all the tribes asking them to meet us in the valley of the Mother Hill where the entrance to Annwn and the Place of Bones is. We could also send a message to Ynys Dywyll. I am assuming that you will abide by the judgement of the council of dryw?’ Bladud asked. Britha knew Ynys Dywyll, or the Island of Shadows, was a place far to the west where the southern dryw were trained. It was also home to their council and arch dryw.

  Guidgen did not answer. Britha could tell by the firm expression on his wizened face that the old dryw was less than pleased. Britha wasn’t sure what Bladud hoped to gain from this. He had betrayed the dryw when he had pursued power as a warrior, leader, and ultimately rhi. She had heard that he had been satirised, censured and then cast out, though he still wore the robes and used the influence. She could not see the council on Ynys Dywyll ruling in his favour if they were anything like the dryw in her homeland to the north.

  ‘And you will accept the council’s judgement in this matter?’ Guidgen asked.

  ‘Of course,’ Bladud said. Britha knew that if Guidgen refused then Bladud would have reason to turn on him and the gwyllion for rebelling against the council. The Red Chalice was a thing of power; magic and the Otherworld should be their responsibility anyway.

  ‘I’m surprised you would seek their guidance,’ Guidgen said suspiciously.

  ‘I do not have to,’ Bladud said.

  ‘We all had a part in retrieving it,’ Britha pointed out.

  ‘Aye, while you tried to betray us,’ Ysgawyn spat.

  Britha looked down to hide the look of shame on her face. She had tried to bargain for the rod she needed to return to the Ubh Blaosc and her stolen, unborn daughter.

  ‘And you weren’t there,’ Tangwen said, staring at the rhi of the Corpse People.

  ‘We could claim it as a spoil of war from you,’ Bladud said evenly. Suddenly everyone went very still. The only sound was the rain in the trees just to the north of the ruined fort and the constant drip of water as Bladud’s threat settled in. Britha noticed Tangwen’s hand go to the hatchet pushed through her belt. She felt Caithna grip her more tightly.

  ‘Or?’ Guidgen managed between gritted teeth.

  ‘Or we seek the guidance of the dryw and we leave the chalice in the hands of Tangwen and Germelqart until they send someone to make judgement.’

  ‘Britha as well,’ Tangwen said, slurring the words slightly in her tiredness.

  ‘She cannot be trusted,’ Bladud said. He sounded almost sad. Tangwen opened her mouth to protest.

  ‘He’s right,’ Britha said. I would give the chalice back to Bress if I thought it would mean I could see my daughter.

  ‘The Red Chalice is the responsibility of the dryw,’ Bladud said, glancing over at Britha as he did so.

  ‘I grow tired of this; speak plainly,’ Guidgen told Bladud. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Your support,’ Bladud said.

  ‘Against the Lochlannach? Gladly.’

  ‘I mean your oath of loyalty.’

  Guidgen stared at Bladud. Britha had never seen the old dryw so angry before. She suspected that he would have struck the Witch King, had it not been for the muddy crater in the way.

  ‘False tongue! Deceiver! Liar!’ the old dryw spat. Bladud narrowed his eyes but controlled himself with great restraint. They weren’t words you called a warrior lightly. ‘You swore—’

  ‘That we would not conquer you. We are negotiating over the Red Chalice. Have the events of the last moon taught you nothing? Show me a stronger leader and I will step aside. Or he may challenge me and kill me in single combat.’

  ‘We will aid and follow your leadership for—’

  ‘No!’ Now Bladud became angry. ‘This does not work! You know this does not work! If everyone wants one rule for themselves we are divided.’ He pointed at Guidgen. ‘That is just you putting your arrogance and the arrogance of your people before the good of all!’

  Guidgen stared at Bladud. The old man was shaking with rage. Britha had to give Bladud his credit. Guidgen was wily but Bladud had completely outmanoeuvred him.

  ‘I will take this to my people,’ Guidgen muttered with little grace before turning and stalking out of the ruins.

  Bladud watched the old dryw walk away before turning and nodding to Britha and then starting to walk back to camp himself. Britha wondered how much it cost him to leave the chalice at the bottom of the muddy crater. That said, it would not be seemly for him to scrabble around in the mud. Ysgawyn smiled and then followed the Witch King.

  ‘The child,’ Anharad said, nodding towards Caithna.

  ‘I will look to her,’ Britha told the other woman. Anharad looked less than sure but started back towards the temporary camp. Mabon followed. ‘Her name is Caithna!’ Britha called. Anharad stopped. Something in the set of her shoulders told Britha that the other woman was feeling her age. The highborn Trinovantes woman did not turn around, and after a moment or two she c
ontinued on her way.

  Britha sagged, overcome by a sudden wave of fatigue, and she realised just how hungry she was. She looked to Caithna. The girl had fallen asleep.

  ‘I do not mislike Bladud …’ Germelqart started.

  ‘But you would not trust him with the chalice,’ Britha supplied.

  The Carthaginian navigator nodded. ‘I do not think I would trust anyone with it.’

  ‘Except yourself?’

  Germelqart looked up at her. ‘I would not trust myself with such a thing.’

  Britha noticed that Tangwen was staring down into the crater at the chalice with a look of loathing on her face.

  ‘I had better go and get it then,’ she muttered quietly to herself. She started to climb down into the crater and almost immediately slipped. By the time she had made her way through the mud to the chalice she was covered in filth from head to foot. Her fingers curled around the red metal and she lifted it out of the mud.

  He felt heavier with each step up the bone spiral staircase. It had been several days since the Dark Man’s last summons had crawled into the back of his head like a sickness. Bress hoped each time that it was the last. That his master would finally let him go, but he knew that it would not be the case this time – if indeed it ever would be.

  Crom Dhubh was standing on the top of the tower looking out over the boneless, drifting bodies in the huge subterranean lake. There were no carrion eaters here, and little current to carry them away from the isle of rock that the skeletal tower grew from, deep in the huge cavern.

  ‘They did it, didn’t they?’ said the pale warrior with the long silver hair. He held his master’s gaze when the Dark Man turned back to look at him. ‘They defeated the Muileartach’s Brood?’

  ‘I was as much their father as that slug was their mother,’ Crom Dhubh said, his voice a silk corruption. ‘Does my children’s destruction please you?’

  ‘They will come for you,’ Bress said.

  ‘It does not matter, they can do nothing to me. Your Lochlannach can distract them until I am ready. The war will not be fought here.’

  ‘You will travel to the Ubh Blaosc?’ Bress asked.

  ‘Me? No, they could destroy me. You will travel there. You will die there, but you will make the Ubh Blaosc’s location known to the Naga.’

  ‘How?’ Bress asked, showing no reaction to the news of his imminent death. If anything, he found himself struggling not to show excitement at the prospect.

  Crom’s expression of consternation looked alien on his face. ‘That is the question.’

  ‘You called them before.’

  ‘Relics from this world. The Ubh Blaosc is too far.’

  ‘What of the one in the cave, to the south and east?’

  ‘A frightened old creature, if it still exists, if my children did not consume or transform him. I have not heard his mindsong again. No. I think the answer lies in the body of the dragon.’

  2

  Now

  Six Months Ago

  The trees had been sucked towards the portal and some residual energy still played over the stones as lightning. They were standing there in what were thought to be period-appropriate clothes, all of which were armoured, though to Crabber they didn’t feel right without an energy dissipation grid woven into their fabric. His neunonics reached out and found a painfully slow connection to a painfully primitive communications network. He started to assimilate information on this world. Search routines filtered through the masses of information. They knew what he liked.

  ‘I think there’s a habitation nearby,’ his attractive, if dead-eyed ‘partner’ said.

  Crabber just smiled, and let the hybrid assault weapon hang horizontally on its sling down his front.

  ‘I guess we’ll have to kill them, then,’ Crabber said.

  ‘It will be cleaner just to rewrite their memories.’

  ‘You’re being well behaved. That’s not your reputation.’

  His ‘partner’ turned to look at him.‘You know as well as I do, the job’s all that matters.’

  Crabber nodded. ‘You ever think about what we could do here? Just with what we have in our heads, in our bodies? We could live like kings, like gods. After all, we’ve been sacrificed; we’re just betas, clones – the real us are living large with the money they were paid for us doing this pre-programmed work. I say fuck ‘em.’ His ‘partner’ looked down at him. Programmed or not, Crabber could still detect the slightest trace of contempt for him. ‘Couldn’t break free, huh?’ Crabber said quietly.

  ‘What’s that suppos—’

  If anything his ‘partner’ was faster, but Crabber had the drop on him. The shorter, squat, unnaturally broad-shouldered bounty killer with the offset head had his sidearm out of its holster and fired first. He’d changed the magazine in the pistol for the nano-tipped bullets he was supposed to use on the target. He put two in his ‘partner’s’ head while the taller human was still stepping back and bringing his hybrid weapon to bear. The bullets beat hardening skin and armoured bone. Their nanite payload started eating grey matter. His ‘partner’ spasmed, staggered backwards a few more steps and then hit the ground, shaking. Crabber was standing over him and put another two rounds in his head. He reached down and took the taller human’s magazine of nanite-tipped bullets and his grenade magazines – those would be hard to come by. Then he set the self-destruct code for the neunonics and liquid hardware, dropped an incendiary grenade on the corpse, and walked away.

  Alpha Crabber and Patron had made one mistake. They had let him say goodbye. His reconstructed man-plus body had a second hard-tech neck on it. It contained some very illegal corpse-hacking hard- and nano-ware. If he severed someone’s head and put it on the stump, the ’ware in his neck grew into their neunonics, hacked their liquid hardware and interrogated them. For a laugh, it also provided an artificial larynx and enough electrochemical stimuli to reanimate their head briefly. So they could see what he had done to them. Crabber was in a tough business. He needed a laugh every now and then.

  Normally, however, Little Crabber lived on the secondary, hard-tech neck stump. An automaton, which was just a head designed with a complementary personality. The head was packed with electronic and immersive hard- and liquidware. Basically, Little Crabber handled the hacking for him.

  Beta Crabber had been surprised when Alpha had agreed to let him say goodbye. He guessed the Alpha had assumed that Little Crabber was onboard with the plan to sacrifice the Beta. It seemed that the automaton’s loyalty programming hadn’t been as specific as it should have been. The programming had to allow for dealing with clones because their business was dangerous, but having two clones up and running was highly illegal. Patron didn’t seem to care about that. Little Crabber was just as loyal to the Beta as he was to the Alpha, and he didn’t like seeing him slaved. He had downloaded an attack program to go after the meat-hack.

  Of course that hadn’t helped his ‘partner’. So he had to die.

  As white phosphorus lit up the night behind him, illuminating a forest of broken trees, he drew his knife. He had heard panicked voices after the gunshots. Doubtless they were investigating the lights emanating from the ancient stones. He might not have much time but he was going to enjoy himself.

  Now

  Beth felt like someone had beaten every inch of her body with hammers. Even as she struggled to deal with the pain it started to recede. The technology inside her flesh was healing her. Instinctively she was aware of just how damaged she was. She was starting to feel very hungry. Like a machine, she needed fuel.

  Du Bois helped her get to her feet. For some reason his leather coat, shirt, and even his jeans did not look soaked through. His clothes seemed to have repaired themselves as well. The last time Beth had seen him he’d been lying on the roof of his Range Rover with a broken spine. Despite everything they had been through, even his shoulder length, sandy-blond hair didn’t look all that out of place. He looked undernourished, though. His sharp cheekbones norm
ally made his face look aristocratic; now they made it look angular and gaunt. Beth was up to her waist in water looking out at the choppy Solent. She was standing on the road that ran down the seafront in Southsea. The road had been completely swamped. She could barely make out the top of the remains of South Parade Pier, which du Bois and the strange bag lady – who had put the alien technology into Beth’s body – had destroyed when they had fought. There was no trace of the huge and very alien creature that she knew lived under the water. The one she had been inside. She could make out smoking wreckage in the water to the west of them, a sinking warship.

  Talia! Selfish bitch! But Beth knew her sister was gone. Talia was with the creature, or part of the creature. She wasn’t sure which. Her sister had joined the cult that seemed content to live as some sort of parasite within the alien. She staggered a little, trying to assimilate it all. She had been caught up in events: car chases, gunfights, alien creatures. It was only now that she had a moment to try and think it through. She tried to sit down in the water, borrowed weaponry still hanging off her on slings. Du Bois helped her back up with one arm, the other holding his carbine at port.

  ‘You want to go into shock,’ du Bois said. ‘That’s not unreasonable. The nanites, however, are trying to counteract your body’s biochemistry. You’ll be fine.’

  Nearby a woman’s body floated on top of the water, and as Beth swayed she could see the gunshot wounds that had killed her. She also saw the thing that had tried to grow and pull itself out of her flesh. Beth was vaguely aware of many phones ringing in the distance.

  ‘Did you …?’ Beth managed. Du Bois followed her eyes to the floating body.

  ‘I killed her,’ du Bois told her quietly. ‘I did her a favour.’

  For a moment Beth had a hysterical urge to attack du Bois. Punch him, kick him, claw at him. Just as soon as the feeling of hysteria came, it disappeared in a way that felt unnatural. She didn’t think that was the way that emotions, feelings, were supposed to work. Blue eyes looked down at her, du Bois’s expression grim.