The Exile Read online

  "I... I..." But he couldn't tell her. Instead, that night, as he offered his devotions to the Goddess it wasn't Brighid's face he saw beneath him as he buried himself in the warm flesh of the Earth Mother, it was Beauty's.

  Even when he closed his eyes.

  "What's wrong?" Brighid asked again, hours later.

  It was too dark for him to see her face.

  "Hold me," he said after a while.

  They lay in silence until he found the courage to talk.

  "I saw the Goddess today," he whispered, barely daring to give voice to the words.

  "You did?" Brighid said, smoothing his hair back from his brow. "Tell me about it. I would hear all about my mistress."

  "It was Dian's fault."

  "Ah, isn't it always?"

  "I crept into Grudnew's roundhouse, to smear poison oak in his loincloths." Brighid laughed. He liked the way she laughed. She laughed with all of her body.

  "Oh my."

  "She was in there. She was beautiful, Brighid. No, not beautiful. That's the wrong word. She was different. She was unlike anyone I have ever seen, but you know that, surely? You have seen the Goddess."

  "Oh my sweet beautiful Sláine, that wasn't the Goddess. That was Niamh," Brighid said, the amusement gone from her voice. The darkness couldn't hide her sadness as she spoke.

  "Heaven?" Sláine asked, misunderstanding. Niamh was the old world for heaven.

  "Grudnew's chosen bride. She was raised by women in Rath Grainne, I think, and brought to camp not three moons since. No man has ever seen her. No man will until she is wed to the king. There is to be a huge ceremony."

  "I have seen her," Sláine said simply.

  "And you must never see her again, my beautiful boy. To do so can only bring you pain. Promise me, you will never see her again." She leaned over him. "Promise me, Sláine."

  He made the promise, but like so many midnight promises shared between lovers it was made to be broken.

  Five

  Warrior's Dawn

  It was Dian's idea to repeat the poison oak gag on an unsuspecting Cullen, smearing the prickly herb inside his breeches while he slept and then delighting in Wide Mouth's discomfort as he itched and scratched his way through the best part of the day.

  Sláine made the mistake of laughing as Cullen rooted around in his crotch trying to ease the poison oak's sting.

  "You're hopping around like a whore in heat, Wide Mouth. You got some little love bug you didn't think of mentioning when you were getting deloused by the druids last week?"

  "Shut up, Sláine. I know it was you. I'll make you pay for this you miserable sack of shit. You mark my words."

  "Trembling in my boots."

  Today was the day their training began in earnest. The past few months since having taken the Red Branch had been spent on exercises aimed at working on general fitness and stamina. Gorian drove them hard, pushing the boys beyond the limits of endurance to the point where mind and body wanted nothing more than to break. Then still he goaded them into doing more.

  The drills were repetitive, running, lifting, carrying, running, lifting, pushing, pulling, carrying and running some more.

  Over and over and over again.

  From sun up every day for the last week they had laboured on the new roundhouse, building muscle by lifting huge blocks of stone and carrying them into place for the masons to lay into the complicated mesh they were constructing. The physical labour was a welcome change from the endless running.

  It was all about turning the soft flesh of youth into the iron muscles of a fighter. They hadn't lifted a weapon since being sworn into the warrior's sect.

  "Just shut up." Something in the way he said it made Sláine do just that.

  It had been raining the night before. The soil was still damp underfoot.

  Murdo, Gorian's youngest brother strode towards them carrying three tathlum.

  Sláine walked away to a tear in the ground where the clay was exposed, wet his hands on the damp grass and scooped out a handful of red clay. He worked the clay into a paste and smeared it into his hair, working it up into red spikes.

  "You look like a fool!" Cullen sneered, but that didn't prevent him from walking over to the same tear and spiking his own hair with red clay.

  "You boys look like real Red Branchers now," Murdo said, kindly. "Just like your father's in the grip of a mighty warp-spasm."

  "Not that Bellyshaker ever had a spasm that wasn't brought on by the beer," Wide Mouth muttered.

  "Enough of that, Wide Mouth," Murdo said, tossing the young warrior one of the three tathlum. He handed the second to Sláine. Each tathlum consisted of two balls joined by a leather tie. "You know what these are made of?"

  "Stone," Sláine said, stating what he thought was the obvious.

  "No," Murdo said. "Brains mixed with blood and lime to make 'em set hard. We favour the brains of our enemies."

  "Better than our own brains," Cullen agreed.

  "Now then, see that tree over there?" The offending oak was more than sixty feet away. "Watch and learn, boys. Watch and learn." Murdo whipped the tathlum around in a vicious arc above his head, once, twice, and on the third pass loosed it. The hardened brain balls spun through the air, seeming to chase each other as they flew, tangling around the tree. "Now you do it."

  It was easier said than done. Cullen tangled his tathlum around his arm and nearly knocked himself senseless as the lime-hardened brain ball slammed back into the side of his head.

  "You're meant to let go of the damned thing," Murdo said, shaking his head.

  Sláine's first effort wasn't much more successful. It whistled out of his hand and flew straight for Murdo's head. Murdo was standing twenty paces behind Sláine at the time. Cullen howled his delight as Murdo was forced to hurl himself out of the way of Sláine's wild throw.

  The morning progressed with more of the same.

  Sláine was the first to hit the tree, and a throw later he succeeded in wrapped the tathlum fully around its bole.

  The afternoon was spent working on the various feats Murdo demonstrated. The warrior was incredible to watch as he launched himself into the Salmon Feat, leaping more than his own height, straight up, from a standing start. He had Cullen join him to demonstrate the Shield Feat. Wide Mouth braced himself, holding the huge shield as if it might bite him, while Murdo launched himself under the shield's rim, kicking up so that the protection was nullified. As the shield flew upwards Murdo leapt, catching it so that he could use its protection as he delivered a deathblow to Cullen.

  Sláine applauded Wide Mouth's death.

  "Think you could do better?" Cullen grumbled, nursing a bruise from Murdo's practice sword.

  "No doubt," Sláine mocked. "Give me your shield and we'll see, shall we?"

  Murdo came at Sláine, and even knowing what the warrior intended it was impossible to stop him from knocking the wind out of him as he hammered down on the upraised shield.

  "Not so full of yourself now, are you?" Cullen sneered, his anger festering. Sláine knew Wide Mouth well enough to know he should have ceased with the constant jibes, but he was angry with himself for constantly failing Murdo's challenges and he couldn't help himself. He had to take his frustration out somewhere, and Cullen was convenient. Sláine wasn't used to always coming up short when challenged. It wasn't a feeling he enjoyed, and it certainly wasn't one he wanted to become familiar with.

  Most of the next few days went much the same way, with Cullen failing and growing increasingly frustrated with Murdo's urging him to be more like Sláine, to try to match Sláine, to watch how Sláine mastered his body. His ears burned with the word: Sláine, Sláine, Sláine, Sláine, Sláine.

  It didn't matter what he did, Murdo always saw something better in Sláine's effort.

  It galled him.

  He failed repeatedly when forced to attempt the Chariot Feat, stumbling as he ran along the chariot's yoke pole. Sláine, of course, succeeded at the second time of asking, his bala
nce honed by the weeks of bending himself double to kiss Murdo's backside. Cullen hurt himself badly on the fifth fall. His trailing arm caught and stuck in the wheel arch and was broken in three places as the chariot rolled mercilessly onwards. Sláine had the gall to laugh, even as Murdo prised his hideously contorted arm out of the trap.

  For two more weeks there was little he could do except work on his body form and balance, standing for hours at a time on first one leg and then the other, walking balance beams and shadow fighting. His arm was slow healing. Frustration ate away at him as he was forced to watch Sláine move further and further ahead of him.

  Murdo taking Sláine aside to share with him the Spearrach Carden manoeuvres was the final straw. The spear had always been his chosen weapon. Spearrach Carden, or the thicket of spears, had all the grace and fluidity of a deadly dance. Exponents were highly skilled with the gáe bolga - a bellows spear with a serrated head of thirty barbs that had to be cut out of a victim. It was a brutal weapon, the most brutal of all the tools at the disposal of the Red Branch.

  Mastery of the gáe bolga meant that the wielder could turn a single weapon into an apparent forest of spears, allowing the warrior to face down a huge force single-handedly. Such brute killing power was not the weapon's only grace. In the right hands it was incredibly accurate, and the barbs made it lethal more often than not.

  "Sit," Murdo instructed. They did. "Now, I want you to think about this: when down, unarmed, what is a warrior to do but die? It's a rhetorical question, boys. The answer is fight back. A Red Branch warrior is never predictable in the lengths he will go to in battle. Victory is all. Go on, take the spear with your foot."

  Cullen struggled to grip the shaft of the gáe bolga between his toes. He looked across as Sláine succeeded in not only lifting the spear but also in propelling it forward with ferocity. He snarled, his eyes narrowing to slits and lips curling back so far that his teeth jutted out like a row of jagged dolmen caving in on each other.

  "Come on, Wide Mouth, you've got to be quicker than that or your enemy will gut you. Watch Sláine."

  Watch Sláine. Watch Sláine. Precious fegging Sláine Mac Roth.

  Even the name was enough to make his blood boil!

  Couldn't they see that he was every bit as good as Sláine? If he hadn't mangled his arm... As it was, he was a laughing stock. He couldn't do anything right. He saw the others laughing at him when they thought he wasn't looking, and it was Sláine's fault.

  It was all Sláine's fault.

  He did it without thinking.

  He saw Sláine moving off, following Murdo. His back was turned.

  Cullen picked up the gáe bolga from the floor with his good hand and stared down the barbed tip at Sláine's retreating back. He was unarmed, but that didn't matter. It would be an accident, an unfortunate accident. Sláine would be gone from his life and he'd never have to hear Murdo or anyone else saying: "Why can't you be more like Sláine, Cullen?"

  He took three steps and threw, hurling the barbed spear at Sláine's back, and he knew, even as it left his hand, that his aim was true.

  He heard it rather than saw it.

  The barbs of the gáe bolga gave the weapon a distinctive whistling sound as it flew.

  Without thinking, Sláine turned to see what was happening and that slight movement was enough to save his life. The head of the spear tore into his arm, scraping past the bone and out the other side in a spray of blood. A searing wave of agony ripped through him. He staggered back, clutching at the shaft of the gáe bolga with trembling hands. His vision swam, the horizon canting dangerously away from him as his balance betrayed him to the pain. He lurched sideways, the movement jarring the teeth of the spear and tearing a scream from his mouth. He couldn't think for the fire in his body. He stumbled three paces back, feeling his legs buckle beneath him.

  Even as he began to fold, he felt it touch his blood: Danu's fire, earth power, the berserker rage. It bubbled up inside him, and he embraced it.

  When he looked up Cullen was running at him with an iron sword brandished above his head.

  He had no weapon.

  Unless...

  Gritting his teeth, Sláine tore the gáe bolga from his arm, each barb slicing through his muscle and tendon, and grating down the bone of his arm. His scream was terrible. Blood fountained from the ragged wound in a huge arterial spray. He embraced the pain and used it to feed his anger.

  Cullen's face loomed huge and ugly in front of him, grinning stupidly as Wide Mouth hurled himself forwards in a poorly executed salmon leap.

  "I'll bury my blade in your guts," Wide Mouth raged, all sensibility fleeing beneath the eagerness of loathing. He lunged, and when the sword's tip lanced wide of the mark, he swung it around and around as if hoping to decapitate Sláine with one of the wild blows. Sláine ducked under the erratic swings, struggling to staunch the bloody wound with his fingers. His blood - lots of it - leaked between them.

  Feeling the life bleed out of him, Sláine surrendered completely to Danu's fire and felt it warp through his entire body, like lightning surging up out of the earth herself. The pain was excruciating but quite unlike the agony of the wound. Every ounce of his flesh screamed as it twisted and distorted, deforming his body into monstrous proportions. The flesh around his wound overlapped, fusing with the fierce heat of the earth's power, the blood sizzling and hissing as it evaporated against his bulging skin. As every muscle screamed and every hair stood erect, Sláine became one with the power spasming through his body. He roared, a deep, vast, primal scream that echoed all the way back to the centre of Murias, and charged Cullen of the Wide Mouth.

  He heard the coward's screams but couldn't understand his words.

  "Danu's blood, he's warped." That was Murdo's voice cutting across Cullen's screams for - for what? Mercy? There would be none of that on the field today!

  "Freak! Cut me down and my entire family will see you strung up from the centre of the town square, your guts out to feed the crows," Cullen blustered, back-peddling. He held the sword out like some kind of talisman as if it might somehow protect him from the warped one's rage just by simply being there between them.

  Sláine batted it aside as if it was nothing more threatening than a buzzing gnat.

  "My father will avenge his son," Cullen half-pleaded, half-threatened.

  "He isn't losing a son, Wide Mouth, or at least he won't be when I have finished cutting you. He'll be losing a daughter." The words came out of him in a rush, charged with the raw rage of Danu's eternal fire drawn deep from the Earth Mother's molten core.

  He felt the muscles straining beneath his skin, felt his skeleton stretch and twist, the bones elongating and warping even as he lunged forwards.

  "Now, you die, Wide Mouth."

  Rejoicing in the battle heat, Sláine rammed the tip of the gáe bolga into Cullen's stomach and twisted it so that the barbs cut deep, anchoring themselves in the loops of his gut. Cullen's eyes flared as wide as his mouth ever had, shock and pain registering in them as Sláine yanked the gáe bolga back out of him. The barbs hooked up the slippery grey ropes of gut and dragged them out of the gaping hole in Wide Mouth's stomach.

  Grinning manically, Sláine rammed the spear back into Cullen's guts, angling it upwards, killing him even as he clawed desperately at the hole in his body and the loops of intestine spilling out. In a rage, Sláine worked the gáe bolga back and forth so that the spear's teeth bit and tore at Wide Mouth's lungs, his liver and finally his heart, and then he pulled it free of the corpse.

  Savage glee sang in his blood.

  Sláine threw Cullen's body away like a bairn tired of its rag doll. He stood over the broken corpse. Death wasn't enough. The power in his blood cried out for more. It demanded sating. He tossed his head back and roared again, beating his clenched fists off his chest.

  Conn of a Hundred Battles saw his boy's slaughter from across the training field.

  He stumbled and fell to his knees, the grief overwhelming as he
saw Cullen's broken body spin away from the warped one. Murdo was too far away to help him. Cullen was dead. That was the ultimate price for stupidity. Conn had seen it all: seen his boy hurl the gáe bolga at Sláine's back, seen him charge the unarmed boy with a sword, and seen him cut down for his treachery.

  He deserved to die but that didn't mean there wasn't a price to be exacted from Mac Roth.

  There was.

  Blood for blood; honour demanded nothing less.

  He pushed himself to his feet, unstringing his sword, and walked across the training field. How was he going to tell Corinne that her blessed boy was worm food? It would break her. Sláine's head would be no consolation. Death begat death but it didn't appease. It left an ache that was contagious. He couldn't think about it; couldn't allow himself the luxury. His world funnelled down to two things: his sword and Sláine Mac Roth. There would be no mercy. Conn of a Hundred Battles would have vengeance for his son. He would scoop out the murderer's brain and use it to make a tathlum. Warped warrior or not, Conn was no innocent. He was a killer amongst the elite of the Sessair. Sláine would die, and all because of the stupidity of his boy.

  "He's mine, Murdo!" Conn bellowed as the trainer sought to restrain his son's murderer.

  "They'll be digging an extra-wide grave!" Sláine raged, and came running at him, roaring wordless sounds at the top of his lungs.

  "You'll pay for his death," Conn promised, kissing his blade as he readied himself to meet the charge.

  A moment later the training field was swallowed by screams: screams of anger, screams of pain, screams of horror, screams of fear, and screams of agony fading into sighs of death.

  The rage subsided but its ghost was slow to fade.

  Sláine stood over the dead.