The Beauty of Destruction (7 page)

‘Call this heather ale?’ Britha demanded, looking at one of the jugs they had taken with them into the woods. ‘I’ve pissed better than this!’

‘I’m not drinking that,’ Anharad said. There was more laughter from the three of them. They were now drunk enough that almost everything seemed funny.

‘My mouth hurts,’ Tangwen complained.

‘It’s because you haven’t laughed in so long,’ Britha said sombrely and then the mood was broken. The silence stretched out, becoming uncomfortable. Caithna was wrapped in fur and asleep in a bough of the tree they were sat by. They had made a fire in a root-lined bowl at the base of the tree. It was bitterly cold but not even Anharad, who had not drunk from the Red Chalice, seemed to be feeling it, though she too was wrapped heavily in fur. Some of which was so fine that Tangwen assumed it was a gift from her husband-to-be. The Trinovantes woman was also wearing a heavy wool dress that was obviously new, and a new ring, torc and headband of interlaced spun gold. All this, better food, the chance to bathe and groom, and not being harried by monsters across the land had revealed Anharad’s beauty despite her years.

‘Give me that,’ Anharad snatched the jug from Britha. For a moment Britha seemed confused as to where it had gone. ‘After all, I’m the one that needs to be drunk enough to get married in the morning.’

‘Aye, I just need to try and remember the ritual,’ Britha said. ‘I should do it in my own tongue. I mean, how would any of you know whether you were being wed or told how to make heather ale? I mean proper heather ale, not that shite.’ She nodded at the jug Anharad was drinking from.

‘Thought it was good,’ Tangwen said and then frowned. She wasn’t sure that the words she had used were what she had meant.

Anharad lowered the jug and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. ‘Aye,’ she said, and looked down.

‘Is this what you want?’ Britha asked. Tangwen looked up. Suddenly everything was serious and Britha seemed oddly sober. ‘I’m supposed to … it’s one of the things I have to ask this night.’ Perhaps not that sober.

‘I …’ Anharad started. Then she took another long swig from the jug.

‘Can I get some of that?’ Tangwen slurred.

‘I had thought that my children, and my children’s children, would have been enough …’

Anharad handed Tangwen the jug. Tangwen took a long swig from it and immediately regretted it.

‘Myself and Gwern believed we had made something. We had increased the fortunes of our tribe. Increased our village’s and our own standing among the Trinovantes. We had become wealthy. Our people had plenty, yet we had not become fat and lazy. Our warriors trained hard, they raided and practiced warfare, yet we never warred needlessly. We had brought up our daughters and sons well and they would continue the work we had done once we had seen our last sunrise. Then it was all taken away.’

Anharad took the jug from Tangwen. The older woman’s face was wet with tears now. ‘And that’s the thing that galls me the most. I could accept if another tribe had done this to us, if the Iceni had attacked from the north.’

Tangwen could hear the fervour in Anharad’s voice as she leaned forwards, the flames in the fire reflecting in her eyes.

‘We would have given them such a fight, but if they had won it would have been because they deserved it. There was no chance with the Lochlannach. They were good fighters but we could do nothing against their magic.’ Anharad was glaring at Britha. Britha reached down and took the jug from the other woman and took a long swig of it. ‘It’s over a child, isn’t it?’ said Anharad. ‘That’s why you betrayed us?’

Britha turned to stare at Tangwen. Tangwen managed to feel absurdly guilty, despite not having said anything to Anharad.

The Trinovantes woman nodded. ‘I would have betrayed all for my children, which is why you must know I’ll see you dead if you do anything that will harm us.’

Britha stared at the other woman. ‘I have never seen her,’ she said quietly. ‘They took her before I had a chance to.’

‘Does anyone ever see the Horned God?’ Tangwen asked. ‘Let alone get ploughed by him on these nights?’ Many newborns were supposed to be the children of the Horned God. It was why on the night before the wedding the betrothed was accompanied by two others, ideally one of them being the
dryw
that would perform the marriage ritual.

‘I’ve seen some foolish lovers and husbands-to-be running around the woods naked with antlers strapped to their heads, but I’ve never seen the Horned God in all the years I have done this,’ Britha said, ‘Though my people try … tried to avoid the gods.’

And with good reason
. Other than her Father, all the gods Tangwen had encountered, in one way or another, had brought them nothing but ill.

‘You didn’t answer her question,’ Tangwen said to Anharad. She did not want to talk of gods. It would have her thinking about her Father again.

Anharad wiped the tears from her cold skin and shivered under her furs.

‘There’s a reason weddings are for the summer,’ Britha said, not unkindly.

‘He has enough power and you hand him more,’ Tangwen said, sounding serious despite herself.

‘Has he not earned everything he has?’ Anharad snapped back, but Tangwen could hear the defensiveness in the older woman’s voice.

‘Aye, he has,’ Britha said. ‘Including his satire and casting out. He has taken oaths in the past not to wed, and he has broken those oaths. Why would he not do the same to you? He cares about the words of an oath only, not its meaning. Look what he did to Guidgen and the
gwyllion
.’

‘Have you never broken any oaths?’ Anharad asked. Britha opened her mouth to answer angrily but then closed it again. ‘Do you think he is an evil man? Or is it because he is not evil enough for you?’

Britha bristled.

‘Enough,
I beg you,’ Tangwen complained. ‘Anharad, Britha must ask you these questions.’

‘And the more honest you are, the more likely you will get what you want from your marriage,’ Britha said irritably. ‘Despite what you may think, we are not here to judge you.’

‘And yet you are no friends to Bladud,’ Anharad pointed out.

‘I like him well enough,’ Britha admitted. ‘But I would not be living under his boot. The same cannot be said for your tribe.’

‘I like him less since he started to count Ysgawyn as an ally,’ Tangwen muttered.

‘He is no fool, he can see Ysgawyn for what he is,’ Anharad said, but she did not look at either of the other women. ‘Everything I … we sought to build has been snatched away. I am not like either of you now. I am no longer beautiful …’

‘What matters that?’ Britha asked. ‘That is not what we are about.’

Tangwen barely realised that her hand had covered where the acid scar on her face had been before the drinking of Britha’s blood had healed it.

Anharad fixed Britha with a long, hard look.

‘Easy enough for you to say,’ she told the
dryw
, who looked genuinely confused. ‘By all accounts you can still catch the eye of a
rhi
yourself.’ Britha opened her mouth to retort. ‘Peace, please. I have been strong enough. I do not have that many winters left. I would live them out in as much comfort as possible and see Mabon well placed. I do not think Bladud will be a tyrant, I will add my word to his with the Trinovantes but in the end it will be their choice.’

‘It is dangerous,’ Britha started cautiously. ‘For a woman of—’

‘For a woman who has seen as many winters as I have to have children?’ Anharad laughed. ‘My days of giving birth have passed long since. He has another wife in the north who has provided him with children. He may have other wives if he wishes, lovers; it makes little difference to me as long as I have primacy.’

Something about this whole conversation bothered Tangwen. As a warrior among her people she counted as much as any other warrior. She did not like the way Bladud seemed to be the important one in the marriage. She could see that Britha looked uneasy as well.

‘His first wife will not like this,’ Britha said.

Anharad shrugged. ‘By all accounts she is young, pretty and docile. Who knows? Maybe I will teach her to respect herself, but if she troubles me I know a number of recipes that are difficult to trace. I’m too old to call her out with sword and shield, I think.’

Tangwen was appalled but Britha just smiled and looked down.

‘But I tell you this much.’ Anharad turned to stare into the fire. ‘I will see the Lochlannach, Bress and this Crom Dhubh dead first.’ Her spit arced into the fire and sizzled.

Tangwen swallowed.

Britha nodded. ‘I go to seek the Horned God,’ the
dryw
said.

‘Are you sure you can fit another child in your belly?’ Tangwen asked and both she and Anharad laughed.

‘You go too far, little snake!’ Britha said, unable to keep the smile from her face as she left the fire and walked into the woods.

Britha lifted her robes and squatted. She did not feel the cold as she once had but the draft on her hindquarters was still an unpleasant experience. Steam rose from the snow that had settled as she made water.

‘So your friend would see me dead?’

Britha actually cried out as she stood bolt upright, looking around frantically for her spear. She had left it leaning against a nearby tree. She found it and grabbed the weapon as Bress stepped into the faint moonlight that filtered through the branches.

‘Britha?’ Tangwen called from the fire.

The
dryw
could see the warm glow of the flames through the bare wood. They were supposed to have been left alone but since Anharad was with them Britha knew that the copse of woods where they performed their pre-wedding vigil was surrounded by Brigante and Trinovantes warriors. Of course they would not be difficult for Bress to slip past.

‘I’m fine,’ Britha called back to Tangwen. ‘I slipped.’ She wasn’t sure why she lied. Her spear was levelled at Bress. The last time she had seen him she had run him through with the weapon. Even so, even though she had helped him kill Fachtna, even though he had denied her the rod that she needed to get back to the Ubh Blaosc, she could not deny how he made her feel.

‘It is not right—’ Britha began.

‘Really? Another lecture on how I should behave? Are you sure you are in a position to sit in judgement?’

‘Not on all, but even a slave is in a position to sit in judgement of you!’ Britha snapped, trying to ignore how much she wanted to lie with him. ‘For you are the lowest of all the slaves.’ Bress was circling, making her turn to keep the tip of the spear between them both. She tried to remind herself of all that he had done. How he had all but wiped out her tribe, but she wanted to grab him by his hair, ram him against the closest tree, and take him.

Bress nodded towards the spear. ‘I can take that from you any time I wish.’

‘Draw your sword, let’s end this now,’ Britha spat, but it was bravado. Even with her own skill, even with the magics of the chalice inside her and the demon imprisoned in the spear whispering to her, hungry for gore, she knew she was no match for Bress. ‘You lied to me. You said that you would take me back to the Ubh Blaosc!’

Bress made a claw with his hand and nodded towards her belly. ‘I could tear it out of you now, like I tore out your friend’s heart.’

Britha tried to blink away her tears. It was the cruellest thing he had ever said to her.

‘Kill it with tansy. It will only live to do Crom Dhubh’s bidding.’

Britha heard someone running through the forest towards her. Her attention was diverted for a moment and Bress was gone.

Tangwen almost slipped over in the snow as she came to a halt next to the
dryw
, a hatchet in one hand, her dagger in the other, looking around frantically. ‘He was here, wasn’t he?’ she demanded.

Britha did not answer. Instead she looked through the trees towards where she knew the cave entrance to Oeth lay.

Bress staggered against the wall of the cave and sank into a crouch, hugging his knees, his tall, thin frame wracked by sobs. The Lochlannach stood sentry at the mouth of the cave paying not the slightest bit of notice to their master.

Eventually he straightened up and walked over to the mouth of the cave. From there he could see much of the valley. It was dusted in white and seemed to glow in the moonlight. It was still snowing, though the cloud cover had disappeared, making it bitterly cold. To the east, far in the distance, he could make out the fires of Bladud’s warband.

Staring at the camp, Bress drew his dagger and ran it across the palm of his left hand. He went to first one and then the other Lochlannach guard. They were unmoving as he smeared his blood on their faces. She was right, he was a slave and his master wanted him to travel south, to return to where they had grown the wicker man from the very roots of the earth, to search the corpse of a dragon for a way to summon others. She was right that he did not have the courage to disobey the Dark Man, and now he lacked the courage to do the deed himself.

He had given the two Lochlannach one simple order: kill her.

You leave soon
. It was not a question. The guilt that the words crawling into his skull made him feel was absurd. If Crom Dhubh wished to know what Bress had just done there was nothing Bress could do to prevent it.

‘Yes,’ Bress said out loud.

Summon the remainder
of your forces before you leave.
The presence was gone. Bress had stopped feeling the residual nausea a long time ago. He closed his eyes and reached out to the south and the east.

In a copse of woods on the banks of the Tros Hynt rows of Lochlannach turned and faced the west and started to march. Giants rose out of the water and stepped onto land, pushing trees aside as they went.

A freezing mist had formed in the lower ground and in bowls on the surrounding hills in the morning. Britha recognised that she and Tangwen should have felt much worse than they both did, though she observed that once again the young hunter had avoided sleep.