The Defiler Read online

  "It does not end here, druid," Sláine promised the darkness. "You shall have your forest back, and it shall flourish again. Mark this promise between us now. As you said, the Morrigan has walked the path of futures and has seen it. And so it shall be. With your wisdom we shall bring deliverance from the menace of Slough Feg and restore this once great land to her former glory. We shall root out Feg's weeds and let the garden grow anew."

  "See," said Ukko, "that's why he's a hero. You ask for help and he promises the earth in return. I just hope you won't care if he delivers it soaked in blood."

  They were woken by their gaolers an hour before dawn.

  It was the brute, Taranis that loosened their shackles. Sláine collapsed as the chains were undone, falling at the foot of the skull sword.

  "That's right, warrior," Taranis mocked. "Beg for your miserable little life like the maggot you are."

  Sláine pushed himself to his feet. The pain standing on his burned soles brought was exquisite. It fired his blood. For the first time in what felt like months he felt the faintest touch of Danu there answering the agony with just the trace of her tender salve. He embraced the pain and forced himself to his full height. He refused to show Taranis his weakness.

  Ukko had no such qualms; he hit the floor whimpering and lay there as they unchained Myrrdin Emrys.

  The tattooed druid stepped away from the wall. He did not stagger or fall. He stood. He did not rub at his wrists or give the slightest sign of discomfort from his imprisonment. He fixed his wooden eyes on the men who had let him down. In the flickering oil lamp light his eyes appeared uncannily alive, as though responding to the nearness of Dardun and her sickened trees. Taranis stepped back from the druid, licking his lips nervously.

  Myrrdin helped Ukko stand. There were twelve soldiers come to escort the three of them; a sure sign of how much the skull swords feared their prisoners.

  "Maug has plans for you three," Taranis said, unable to hide the hint of excitement completely. "You are to run the stones. I have ten tin bits on the ugly little one being the first one to fall to the dogs," the skull sword chuckled mirthlessly. "Ballinus tells me the dogs haven't been fed since last night, though he did stir them up a bit by dangling part of a boy's rotting carcass over their cages for an hour this morning to fire their blood up. They should be ready for quite the feast by the time Maug lets them loose. Best not keep them waiting."

  The skull swords pushed them forwards, out of the dungeon and into the first light of morning. Sláine breathed deeply as he stepped through the door. He regretted it immediately. The air was rancid. He saw the repugnant Slough priest shuffling towards them. Maug's eyes blazed with feverish delight.

  "Good, good, good," the Drune crooned, rubbing his wretched hands together like some miser over a pot of silver, relishing the prospect of their renewed pain - as momentary as he hoped it would be. "Has Taranis explained the morning's trial? No?" he said, without waiting for any of them to acknowledge his rhetorical question. "Then indulge me. We few shall go for a short walk. I would show you one of the wonders of this old forest, the huge dolmens that mark the ancient ley dissecting Dardun. Within this temple," he waved a rotting hand at the building, "stands the first of the great megaliths. Or lies, to be more accurate, as it serves as altar to the Wyrm God, Crom-Cruach. The stones are evenly spaced along the ley line and run exactly one league. Your trial will be one of strength, cunning and speed. Survive it, and you will be absolved of your crimes against the Lord Weird. To fail is to be found guilty. Guilt is punishable by death, but fear not, my friends, it will be a rather abrupt happening. I cannot imagine you will have much time to hurt."

  "You expect us to run for our lives?" Sláine said.

  "Yes, I do," Maug said, insufferably smug as he walked the line. He barely acknowledged them to look at, making it plain they were no better than bugs to be crushed beneath his deformed feet.

  "His smelliness knows us so well," Ukko said, rubbing briskly at his wrists to get the circulation going. "If there's one thing a coward knows how to do well it is the subtle art of running for his life."

  "The running of the stags is one of the ancient justices of the forests, is it not, Myrrdin?"

  The druid, hearing his name, came back from wherever his mind had wandered. He turned his wooden eyes on the Slough priest. "It was a barbaric practice from the dark age of man, if that is what you mean, Drune?"

  "Interesting that you should say that, druid, but I cannot pretend your words don't confuse me. After all, was your great sacrifice not for the conservation of the self-same 'barbaric' rituals of your beloved Earth Mother? That was my understanding of the old stories about the great Myrrdin Emrys, that you gave everything to safeguard the sanctity of a few trees and meadows, trees made strong by the ritual sacrifices to the land your Goddess demanded."

  "Not all of the old ways are worthy of preservation," the druid said.

  "That is where we differ, old man. I believe all of the old ways are worthy of nurturing. Be contented by the knowledge that your blood shall feed the land, the energies carried far and wide by the great stones. Your deaths will mean something to someone, somewhere. There is a wonderful irony wrapped up in this predicament, I am sure. "

  The spear-tips of their guards kept them moving. The barks of the hounds intensified as they approached their handlers. Eight men struggled with the leashes of forty hounds. The strain of holding them back was telling: their faces were set with stubborn grimaces, their arms locked and trembling as the dogs pulled relentlessly. They were in a relatively small glade, unique only for the single standing stone in its centre. The monolith was carved with a simplistic device: an endless knot tied by the heads of two horned men, renditions on Carnun, the Horned God. The presence of the likeness placed a chill in Sláine's heart. The stone was a smaller version of the same stones they had found at Carnac, the same stones that crackled with life the length and breadth of the Sourlands, draining the very essence of the Earth Serpent and channelling it to Slough Feg's foul domain for whatever purpose the Lord Weird plotted.

  Sláine felt the sick pull of the standing stone as he neared. It lacked the overwhelming power of Carnac but there was no doubting its grip on his soul. Where the dolmens of Carnac had left him a wretched mess grubbing in the dirt, barely clinging to lucidity, this single stone was akin to an angry wasp buzzing in his face constantly; a distraction, an irritation, nothing more.

  The dogs were hungry - it was in their eyes.

  "Be so kind as to introduce yourselves to the dogs," Slough Maug said, salivating at the prospect of a quick and messy kill. "And be sure they get a good sniff so they recognise your scent."

  Taranis shoved Ukko in the back. Ukko stumbled forwards, landing on his knees inches from the frothing muzzle of the nearest hound. The dog strained on its leash, jowls bared on slick gums and yellowed canines. It jaws snapped less than an inch from the dwarf's nose. Ukko flinched, reeling back. He turned to look up at the Slough priest, and then across at Sláine and Myrrdin. He winked, very slowly and very deliberately, making sure everyone saw it. "We better get very close then, your smelliness, given as your sacred stink is, ahh, rather overpowering, don't you think? It has to be very confusing for the poor dogs, doesn't it? You being the smelliest thing in the whole forest and all, everything reeks of your divine putrescence. I mean, we wouldn't want them coming after you by mistake, now would we?"

  "Laugh now, dwarf," said Maug, lumbering towards Ukko, his bone-white staff sinking deep into the near-black loam of the top soil. "Let the sweetness of it roll off your tongue while it is still in your head. Enjoy the salve it spreads across your soul. It is called gallows humour; in the blackest moments the psyche finds ways of protecting itself, finding mirth in the danger it faces. I will forgive you this once simply because I won't have to forgive you ever again. In a few minutes my beauties will be grinding your bones and laughter will seem a long, long way away. Now, though, I tire of this prattle. It is time for you and your f
riends to run."

  Sláine's feet were raw, the soil and the spoils of the forest a fire beneath them. Thorns and dead brambles dug into his soles, cutting into the seared flesh, bleeding him. Each step brought more pain. The skull swords had brought Brain-Biter and the rest of their belongings along. They lay in a pile close to Maug, the intimation being that they were just waiting there to be collected after this silly little ritual had been completed. He looked along the line of stones. There was no way he would be able to outrun forty hounds for over three miles, even with a head start on the beasts - and a stand here, against a dozen skull swords, the dogs and their handlers and the Drune lord himself, was out of the question.

  A flutter of black caught his eye.

  A crow settled in one of the higher branches. It could have been an ordinary creature of the forest, of course, only there were no creatures in Dardun. The bird watched them with a curious intelligence in its yellow eyes. It was the Morrigan's creature. Myrrdin Emrys had seen it but their captives seemed oblivious of the crow's presence. Not for the first time Sláine drew strength from the presence of a bird; if an emissary of the Crone could broach a dark place like Dardun then so too could Danu's other aspects. Unlike Purgadair, this time he was not alone.

  "I am feeling generous," Maug said, rapping the end of his staff off the carved stone, "I will give you five minutes' start on the dogs. If you run, and run hard, those five minutes could mean covering as much as a mile, a third of the way. It is conceivable you might outrun them. But before you get too excited, I feel a burden to be truthful: no one has ever made it to the end of the stones and won their freedom. That does not mean you cannot be the first. I just did not want you entertaining unreasonable hope. Now, my dear fellows, I suggest very strongly that you run."

  Maug clapped his hands together sharply, and the human stags bolted.

  Sláine heard the dogs.

  They were less than four hundred paces distant and gaining fast.

  Myrrdin moved gracefully between the withered trees. Sláine kept pace with him easily. For a moment he had thought there was a chance that they might make it, reach the end of the stones and claim their freedom - but he knew Maug would never let them go. It was all a ruse, a game to delight the Drune. He didn't care if the dogs caught them or if they fell to swords or a damned pox. The means was irrelevant. All that Maug cared about was the end - that Sláine, Ukko and the druid, Myrrdin, were riddled with earthworms.

  The dogs came on, their hungry gait devouring the distance between them and their quarry. They pursued Sláine and the others with rabid insistency, nostrils flared, following the scent of sweat and fear stinking on the stale forest air. Their barks transformed to ragged howls as they grew closer.

  They ran hard.

  The end of the stones was still a mile distant and the trees were thickening, making it difficult to keep any kind of momentum for more than a few paces.

  Ukko struggled to keep up, his shorter legs needing three paces to cover what Sláine and Myrrdin managed in one. It didn't matter that his arms pumped furiously, strings of hair matted to his scalp, or that the grimace pasted across his ugly face was one of pure pain and bloody determination, he wasn't going to make it. And he knew it.

  Sláine shortened his stride to run alongside the dwarf. Utter despair consumed Ukko's eyes. He stopped running, sank to his knees and looked up imploringly at the barbarian. "I can't..."

  Sláine stopped running and turned to face the dogs as they came on.

  "We will stand together, dwarf. And Danu help the dogs. We will send them back to Maug in hessian sacks."

  "You don't have to-" Ukko began.

  "I do," Sláine finished for him.

  Then the first hound launched itself, hitting the young Sessair hard in the chest and barrelling him off his feet. Sláine rolled over onto his stomach, hands inside the snapping jaws of the huge dog. He pulled the teeth apart with all of his strength, not stopping as the tendon snapped and the bone dislocated, tearing the lower jaw from the shrieking hound's head even as he felt the fangs of the second hound sink into his calf and the claws of a third rake down his spine. He threw the dead animal aside and reached out for the beast feasting on his leg. The pain was unbearable - and these were just the first, there were so many more that had his scent and would be on him in moments. Howls rent the dawn, the animals baying, spurred on by the scent of his newly spilled blood on the grass.

  Sláine twisted his neck to avoid the savage snapping teeth of another huge hound, and saw the druid standing over him, his wooden eyes smouldering. Myrrdin reached out and touched him and a sudden explosion of power - agony and raw and blazing rage - tore through him, firing every nerve and fibre of his flesh. He tore the hound in his arms in two, splitting it open like a game hen on the feasting table. The animal's ribcage cracked open one bone at a time as Sláine opened it up and its guts and organs spilled out in a bloody lesson in anatomy.

  Sláine felt the heady rush of the riastrad, his warp spasm, burning within his bones, driving through his musculature, the fire of its heat swelling him beyond the bounds of flesh into a fearsome giant slayer - but this was different, even as the anger within him raged a part of Sláine realised that this wasn't the power of the earth feeding him, it was the druid himself acting as a conduit to Danu. He could taste the druid's thoughts, and fears, and beneath them, his bitterness at his entrapment and his failure.

  Sláine devoured the druid's strength greedily, feeding on the Earth Power and so much more, surrendering to a pure scarlet rage.

  His roars drowned out the savage barks and the frightened whimpers both.

  The barbarian tore into the dogs with his bare and bloody hands, stripping flesh from bone, blinding his enemy, grinding its teeth until they were reduced to a pile of ruined flesh and hair at his feet. Forty dogs dead, and he did not think it too many.

  Gore clinging to his hands, Sláine set off at a run back towards the encampment and Maug.

  The killing was not done.

  He saw Ukko kneeling over the druid. Anger refused to allow worry to enter his mind. He would find Slough Maug and strip his rancid flesh from his bones. He would recover Feg's book and he would return home - even if he had to kill every last stinking wretched sack of shit skull sword in the process, it would not be too many.

  Ukko crouched over the druid.

  The whimpering of the dogs had stopped, which meant the dying was done. The surge of relief was short lived.

  Shudders wracked the old man's body.

  There were no marks on his flesh. None of the dogs had come near him. No, Ukko reasoned, this attack was spiritual - some dark magic of the Drune's. He spat three times in rapid succession to ward against the black arts before he checked the druid's throat for an erratic pulse. At the contact Myrrdin's face twisted, pain rooting through his body. The sudden and violent seizure mirrored the spasms of Sláine as the warrior raged in battle frenzy - only where the riastrad empowered the Sessair these spasms weakened Myrrdin Emrys to the point of collapse. Myrrdin's eyes flared open. His jaw clenched, teeth grinding as he bit back on the sudden surge of agony. He was trying to speak but no words could escape between his locked jaws.

  Ukko didn't understand what was happening.

  He took the druid's hand in his.

  It was cold and lifeless.

  And Ukko knew then that the druid was dying. He could feel it in his skin. The Earth Power was literally stripping the strength from his flesh. It was a miracle he was still alive - but it was no mercy.

  "Sláine!" Ukko yelled, twisting to see the warped warrior charging back towards the Drune stronghold. "Sláine!" but the warrior was deaf in his battle rage.

  "Lug's balls, don't you dare die on me, old man. I am fed up of having to save people," Ukko muttered bitterly.

  Absolute terror blazed in Drune's eyes as Sláine, brutally warped and growing with every step, strode out to meet him in the centre of the clearing.

  The slough-skinned Drune
priest's hand closed around the bone-handled dagger at his hip. A slow cunning smile spread across his face.

  "You are running the wrong way, brute."

  A ring of skull swords moved to protect their leader, gathering around Maug, their swords quivering before the sheer physical enormity of the warped one.

  Sláine ignored their anxious blades. "Now you die, Maug, just like your dogs died. And I promise it will be agonising. What was it you promised the druid? A death befitting his legend? Add this to my promise, Drune. Your death will be wretched and inglorious, bloody and cruel. There is no salvation for failed ambition. No glorious seat in the Otherworld. It ends here, in piss, shit and blood. Now you die. Your death will be worthy of your malevolence."

  "I don't think so," Slough Maug rasped, drawing and throwing the wickedly curved blade in a single smooth motion. The silver and bone spun through the air and slammed into Sláine's chest.

  Sláine looked down at the elaborately carved bone handle protruding from his chest, then reached up and drew it slowly free of the warped muscle. He tossed it to the floor, ignoring the gaping wound as though it were little more than a wasp's sting. "Hubris, Drune," the giant warrior said, shaking his head. A heartbeat later he surged forwards, tearing out the throat of the first skull sword careless enough to get in his way. The sword clattered to the floor an instant after the dead warrior.

  Sláine stepped over the corpse.

  A rusted blade hacked into his forearm. He batted it away, thundering a right cross into his attacker's face, rupturing bone and cartilage, driving the man's nose back into his brain. The man fell, convulsing before his nerves ceased their desperate screaming for the life that had left them. Three more skull swords lay dead before the twitching stopped completely, their chests open to the world, their guts spilled out around their ankles in slick grey loops of unravelled intestine. The raging Sessair grabbed a man by the hair of his helmet and another by the throat, slamming their skulls together with such ferocity the bone shattered inwards and the blood and brains spilled down over his hands as he discarded them.