by Angus Watson
The bruise on Atlas’ head had grown to something resembling a young deer’s horn. Carden laughed.
The African ignored him. “With the numbers still left to come from the trees, the Nervee—” He was interrupted by screams from the treeline. The Nervee were still running from it, but while before they had been brandishing weapons and singing battle cries, now they were unarmed, several were injured and bloodied, and all were fleeing in terror, screaming: “Demons! Monsters! Run! Run for your lives!”
Chapter 49
Spring and Dug rode north through the fine morning. Dug was just reaching a state of oneness with the swish of the winds, the chatter of the birds and the very language of the landscape when Spring announced that, up here, many more of the roadside huts were made of stone than you’d generally find further south.
“It’s because the people have a stonier character up north,” said Dug.
“They’re more like stones? They sit around all day doing nothing? They can’t speak? Can you skim the flatter ones across lakes?”
“They’re tougher.”
“Tougher?”
“Aye,” said Dug.
“Remember that time you killed a duckling by mistake with your sling?”
“Aye.”
“And you cried?”
“I did not. My eyes were already watering because the wind was cold.”
“I wish I came from somewhere so tough that they cry when they kill baby birds.”
“Come up north, you’ll see.”
“I’d like to. Can we go?”
“Maybe when you’re a big bigger and can look after yourself around all those tough people. The animals are even tougher. Their favourite food is soft southern girls.”
“I can look after myself.”
“What would you do if a pack of wolves attacked? And we’re not talking your spineless southern wolves. These are mean, big buggers that’d eat you up in one swallow.”
“I’d put an arrow in your leg and run away.”
“Aye, well that would work, but it doesn’t make me any keener to travel up north with you.”
“I wouldn’t really shoot you, I’d shoot the wolves.”
“All of them?”
“All of them.”
Dug looked at the girl. She was staring ahead, mouth set, no doubt fantasising about shooting a whole pack of wolves. Well, if anyone could do it, he thought, it would, in fact, be Lowa. But going by the way she’d spent much of the journey skewering game from horseback at several dozen paces, Spring wasn’t far behind.
Shortly after lunchtime they passed two men who said they were walking to Mallam for the burning of the wicker woman.
“Yes,” said the smarter and elder looking of the two. “There’re burning a full house of criminals at sunset, and that fabulous queen of Maidun in the head. Not that we have any chance of getting there on time. Someone had to make a pair of shoes before we left the farm!” He glowered reproachfully but affectionately at the younger-looking one, who had a complicated beard and woad patterns painted on his thick neck and brawny arms.
“Yeah, but look at my Branwin-kissed new boots!” said the youngest, but Spring and Dug were already away, speeding up to an uncomfortable canter.
“I thought we had plenty of time?” said Dug once he’d worked out again how to sit on the stupid animal without feeling like he was going to tumble off with every stride.
“She must have annoyed them,” said Spring.
“I guess it was a bit much to expect meek compliance from that one.”
They passed more and more people, but didn’t stop to chat. Spring said they’d make it in time but only if they didn’t fuck about. Dug marvelled at how her language had changed after living with Lowa, then returned to concentrating on not falling off. It wouldn’t help their cause a great deal if he came from his horse and staved his head in.
They had to dismount at Mallam town and push through a throng of carnival-spirited revellers. It seemed that the imminent burning of a couple of dozen men and women in a huge person-shaped wicker cage put the Murkans in fine fooling. Nobody paid any heed to Spring and Dug, no doubt thinking that they were daughter and father come to see the fun. If anybody thought that their long, straight but gnarled walking canes were a little odd, they didn’t mention it.
Chapter 50
A few injured Nervee staggered from the trees then there were no more. One of the last stumbled up to them, bleeding life-endingly from a neck wound, eyes wide. Atlas grabbed him as he fell.
“What happened? Where are the rest?”
“Monsters faster than hares … Giants in iron … killed everyone.” The man’s eyes closed.
Atlas hefted his axe on to his shoulder, said, “Come on!” and headed for the woods.
“Wait!” said Chamanca. Atlas carried on. “Look.” This time he did stop.
“Bel’s big bruised bollocks,” said Carden.
Looming in the shadows at the edges of the trees were a dozen huge figures, motionless, watching. They were surely too tall and too broad to be men, clad in thick iron armour that looked impossibly heavy. Their helmets were like great inverted metal buckets with no adornment but slots for mouth and eyes. One of them lifted a sword longer than Carden was tall and swished the air.
Chamanca felt herself taking a step back, then another. It was more than just their size; she could feel some foul power surging from them. Was it evil?
“What are they?” asked Carden. “I thought Fassites were a children’s tale?”
“Fassites?” asked Chamanca
“Mythical giants from an island near Britain,” said Atlas. “These aren’t Fassites. They are Felix’s dark legion. Some of them anyway. Shall we see how powerful they are?” The big man hefted his axe.
“No, let’s go,” said Chamanca.
“Perhaps you’re right,” said Atlas, “I think we—”
“They’ve gone!” said Carden.
Chamanca looked to the trees. All was darkness.
Chapter 51
The wicker woman was a collection of cages, two for each leg, a two-storey cage for the body, then one for each arm and one for the head. Lowa was glad that they’d put her alone in the head cage. Below her, maybe fifty people were crammed and chained into tight spaces. A fight had broken out at one point in one of the arm cages, but the whole structure had rocked precariously and they’d stopped. They didn’t want it to topple because it might have fallen off the cliff. Instead they were all waiting to burn to death.
The agony from her broken fingers had subsided somewhat, but they looked bad – a mess of twisted red and purple digits protruding from two hands swollen up like blue-black inflated bladders. Even if she were going to live a full life, rather than just until sunset, she wouldn’t be using her fingers again. She sat still, holding her hands in front of her like a squirrel, looking forward to dying.
She’d been so stupid to come to the Murkans with such a small force. And to bring Spring! She was certain that Spring was alive, but she’d been certain that Grummog would accept her offer of allegiance against the Romans. She’d been an arrogant fool. They’d all warned her about enemies at her back, but she’d been obsessed with beating the Romans. And now she was going to die. And Spring probably was dead. And there were three armies that were going to crush the people she’d tried to save before the Romans even reached the Channel. They would have been better off under Zadar, they really would have been.
And Dug. She did not want think about Dug.
Lowa closed her eyes and tried not to listen to the moans and pleas to the gods coming from below. She wished they’d hurry up and light the fucking thing because even in her agony she couldn’t think of anything but Dug and it was driving her mad.
Chapter 52
Dug and Spring finally escaped the crowds of Murkan town, remounted and rode west along a wide road. They were against the tide of pedestrians heading for the bottom of Mallam Cliff, but the people were perplexingly polite
about moving to one side as they approached so they made swift progress. They turned north off the road and galloped up a valley with a bouncing stream and messily rock-strewn sides. The valley narrowed into a gorge, wound round a couple of corners and ended in two waterfalls, one above the other, each one about ten Dugs high. They hobbled the horses and left them at the edge of the stream.
Dug tied a length of rope around both of their waists – “So you can hold me if I fall,” he said – and they headed up the waterfall.
“It’s much easier when it’s dryer,” shouted Dug as he helped Spring across a section with slippery rock underfoot and the entire force of the cascade on her.
“Glad to hear it!” she would have said, if there hadn’t been a waterfall in her face.
They reached the top, stripped, wrung out their clothes, re-dressed, packed up the rope, then headed along the widening gorge.
“Wait!” Spring whispered. She took a bow twine from an inside pocket, unwrapped it from its greased leather holder, used all her weight to bend her bow staff and strung it. Dug had insisted that this route wouldn’t be guarded, but she wanted to be careful.
“Oi, you!” came a Murkan-voiced shout at exactly that moment, as if to prove just how much Dug knew about the ways of the Murkans. Above them was a lone spearman.
“We looost a sheep doon eeeer…” cried Dug in what Spring guessed was an attempt at a Murkan accent.
“What was that meant to be? Who the fuck are you?” said the spearman, “Wait there, I’m going to—”
Spring’s arrow hit him in the mouth. Dug nodded his thanks and congratulations. She was shaking a little. Finally she’d killed someone. She’d known she was going to have to at some point. What a strange feeling it was though.
As she pressed her palm against the dead man’s forehead to pull the arrow from his mouth, she saw a flash of his life. He lived – had lived – in a stone hut in the town with his wife and two children, but the person who had been on his mind the most recently was a friend’s eldest daughter, with whom he was obsessed. Before he’d spotted the two strangers coming up from the waterfall, he’d been planning what excuse he might use next to visit his friend’s hut. He had no plans to hurt or molest the girl, or even to seduce her, he just wanted to see her and hear her voice, and he hoped against hope that his infatuation might one day be reciprocated. He dreamed that she’d come to him in the night and that they’d leave together and find a peaceful, beautiful land, where the two of them would live out their days. He’d been glad that he’d been sent to guard the top of the waterfall, because it had given him time to be alone and think about her. It was the next best thing to being with her.
Beneath his pathetic longing, Spring saw that he wasn’t a bad man. And she’d killed him because he’d been in her way. She’d decided that Lowa’s life was more important than this man’s, that her desire to rescue Lowa was more important than his life, and killed him without a moment’s thought. In tribal courts, rapists and murderers got more consideration than that.
As they crossed the moor, Spring was very near to tears. She resolved to be stonier, like a northerner, and tramped on behind Dug.
Her qualms at killing the Murkan dissolved a good deal when they saw the wicker woman that he’d been guarding.
“Badger’s bollock bristles,” whispered Dug.
They were lying on their stomachs at the top of a slope, looking down from the east on to the rock pavement and its giant man-made figure. It looked bigger than she remembered, but maybe that was because it was stuffed with people. All up and down the wicker structure human feet and hands were poking out and waggling around. Only the head was free of sprouting arms.
Around the wicker giant’s base were sheaves of kindling. On the far side of the figure, but massing towards it, were maybe two hundred people – Murkan soldiers, men and women dressed in various takes on finery, and a shower of people in wicker hats who had to be druids. Had the situation been less serious, she would have laughed at them.
In the centre of them all was the towering bulk of Pomax. She’d made no effort for the festival, still wearing the same dirty tartan jerkin and leather flange skirt. Spring felt a tingle of admiration. There was something impressive about a queen who didn’t feel the need for shiny clothes and the other regalia of rule. Lowa was like that, too. In different circumstances, Spring imagined that Pomax and Lowa would probably have been friends. She wondered if they’d been getting on during Lowa’s incarceration.
Beyond the Murkan guard and rulers, the sun was nearly at the horizon, shining in her and Dug’s eyes and lighting up their position annoyingly. If they tried to get any closer, they’d be spotted immediately.
“Which bit is she in?” whispered Dug.
“She’s in the head.”
“How do you know? Is your magic coming in?”
“No, the guy on the road told us she was in the head, remember?”
“Oh, aye.”
But her magic was coming in. Suddenly she knew that magic was with her. It was the same calm confidence she’d had in the arena. The plan was clear.
Short of running at the wicker woman and bashing it down with his hammer, Dug did not have the first clue what they should do. The sun was nearly at the horizon.
“Any ideas?” he asked.
“Yes.” Spring’s voice was odd. Suddenly grown up. She said nothing more, just smiled at the wicker woman.
“Going to tell me?”
“Wait.”
“OK…” The sun was very low now. “I hope you’re sure … Do you know whether they light the fire when the sun touches the horizon, or when it disappears?”
Spring didn’t answer. The sun touched the horizon, and two druids in wicker hats strode forwards with torches and lit the firewood around the bottom of the wicker woman. Soaked in pitch, it whooshed into flame.
Blood-chilling screams came from the burning figure. There weren’t many good screams, but Dug reckoned screams of people burning to death were about the worst. Cheers rang out from Grummog and his crew, and an echoing roar rose up from the crowds that they couldn’t see below the cliffs. He looked at Spring. She was smiling like someone playing liar dice who knew they’d thrown a winner. Whatever it was she had planned, he thought, looking at the flames licking up the wicker figure, they’d better get on with it.
The screams startled Lowa. Despite it all, she’d fallen asleep. She jerked her hands as the pain returned, which hurt them all the more. She clenched her jaw. Tears filled her eyes then ran down her face. She laid her ruined hands in her lap and waited.
The screams took on a higher, more urgent pitch. Changing from fear to pain, Lowa guessed, as the flames enveloped the people in the legs. She could feel the heat herself now. It wasn’t unpleasant. Perhaps, she thought, she could go to sleep again, quickly burn to death without noticing, and wake up in the Otherworld. Of course, there wasn’t an Otherworld, it was just a story for children and other fools. But she’d seen Spring’s magic, and if there was magic maybe there were gods and an Otherworld? She’d been wrong about everything else recently. Maybe she’d be drinking with her sister, Aithne, again? Maybe her mother would be there? She’d been about Lowa’s age when she’d been killed. How old would she be in the Otherworld? Maybe there were no ages there? Maybe people didn’t look like people, and you became thoughts and emotions without the hindrance of a physical shell? She smiled. She’d find out soon enough.
She closed her eyes. The screams and the crackle and pop of the burning wood crescendoed.
“I’m going in.” Dug stood.
“Wait.” Spring got up next to him and touched his arm. “Give me your rope.”
“But they’re dying…” The screams grew ever louder.
“We’re here to rescue Lowa. Rope, please.”
Dug pulled off his pack, pulled the rope out and handed it to Spring. She tied one end to an arrow, ran closer to the wicker woman, stood on the untied end of rope, drew the longbow full – someth
ing that very few grown men could do – and shot her arrow into its head.
“Here.” She handed Dug the end of the rope. “In thirty heartbeats, pull the wicker woman over. Take this as well.” She handed him her bow. “And string Lowa’s bow, too, while I’m gone.” Then she went.
Dug looked all around. Spring had vanished, not just buggered off quickly or nipped behind something, but actually disappeared into the air. He looked behind himself again. Nope, she really wasn’t there.
He strung Lowa’s bow, picked up the rope and saw that the cliff-top spectators had spotted him. A large, bare-armed woman was sprinting towards him, shouting at others to follow her. She had something coiled in one hand.
How many heartbeats had it been? He had no idea. Maybe twenty? Possibly thirty. The Murkans were closing fast. He took the rope in both hands and pulled.
“Hi.”
Lowa opened her eyes. Spring was squatting in front of her, there in the head of the wicker woman. The girl glowed with pure beauty, as she had when her magic had saved Lowa from Chamanca. Had she been drowned as Pomax had said? Was Spring here to guide Lowa into the next life?
“Otherworld or rescue?” Lowa asked.
“Rescue.”
“Good. But my hands?”
Lowa lifted her useless fingers. Spring took them in her own hands and blew on them. With a rolling rattle of snaps and cracks, her fingers lengthened, shortened, straightened and clicked back into place. She wiggled them. They felt tender still, but healed. She felt for the wound in her wrist. It had gone, as had the injuries to her shoulder, back and chest. She smiled. She felt tired, drugged even, but, more than that, she felt healed.
There was a lurch, and the wicker woman jerked a pace off vertical.
“He’s gone early!” said Spring.
