"Just give me an excuse, warped one," Ugly sneered.
"Are you in a hurry to die, ugly?" Sláine spat. He didn't recognise the thug but assumed Vern had hired him as his replacement. It made sense, since a moneylender would always need muscle.
A fifth kick from Ugly sent Sláine scrambling across the dirt. He roared in pain. Anger flamed beneath the agony, a brilliant red flare that latched on to the residual magic in the earth from where the maiden herself had sat weaving her crown of flowers. It surged into his veins, warping his flesh as it struggled impossibly to bind the sheer immensity of Danu's power. He surged to his feet, arms outstretched ready to throttle the life out of Ugly and the moneylender.
"They mentioned that, as well," Vern said, quite matter-of-factly. Sláine saw the moneylender slip the crumpled picture back into the folds of his grubby coat and pull out a small, thin, stick. He put the stick to his lips and blew sharply.
It felt like a gnat's bite on his neck, a sudden painful sting. A blush of heat followed the initial bite. The heat intensified quickly. Sláine felt his heart lurch and his vision blur nauseatingly. Reflexively his hand slapped up at the sting, pressing the poison-tipped dart deeper into his warped flesh. His legs buckled beneath him even as he lurched forwards another step, and he collapsed into Ugly's waiting arms.
"Good job the old man wanted you alive," Ugly goaded, "because killing you would be too easy."
The world rolled around Sláine, the ground rushing up to meet his face. He felt the sheer violent delight of the earth power ripping out of his skin. The energy of raw lightning twisted his body, contorting it. His muscles tore free of bone and tendon. His back arched, the bones in his spine stretching as the warp took full frightening hold. There was nothing he could do. He had no control over his own body. His legs refused to move. For all their size, his arms flopped uselessly at his sides. The power raged impotently within him with no hope of release. The toxins suffused his system, leaving him alert, enraged, seething with pent up earth power, and completely and utterly helpless.
Ugly walked around him, kicking him once in the back and a second time in the side of the face, splitting his cheek open just below the eye.
Vern looked down at Sláine, his nose twitching. The moneylender's eyes darted left and right. "No hard feelings, Sláine." He repeated. "Welkin, get the cart. Let's get this over with."
"Plennnn arrrrrd eeeeelins," Sláine lisped, struggling to form the words.
It was obvious Vern understood the threat well enough. The moneylender backed away from Sláine despite the fact that the drugs had him paralysed and incapable of extracting any kind of reckoning for Vern's duplicity.
"Evidently," Vern said, backing up another step. He looked down distastefully at Sláine's distended body, "which makes you a problem for another day. Today you are my cash cow."
They manhandled Sláine into the back of the flatbed cart, rolling him onto his side in case he vomited. "There we go, don't want our investment choking to death on his on puke, do we Welkin?" His head lolled awkwardly on his neck. He couldn't even see the sky. "Just in case you think about getting frisky along the road," Vern explained, dosing up a second dart with the dregs of the poison draught. Sláine grunted but couldn't move. "Would you like to do the honours, Welkin?"
"With a ridiculous amount of pleasure," Ugly said, taking the dart from the moneylender. He crawled into the flatbed, hmmming and ahhhhing as he looked for the perfect stop to jab the dart in.
"Gerrr ovah wif."
"Yes, yes," Ugly promised. "Won't hurt a bit. Well, maybe a bit."
"Anywhere," Vern said, "it doesn't matter."
"Oh, I know, I just want to do it properly." Ugly grinned and rammed the tip of the dart into Sláine's armpit, puncturing deep into the sweat glands. "That should do it."
The sky dissolved into a haze of pain and Sláine blacked out.
When he came to the cart was jouncing and juddering down the rutted track.
He tried to lift his head to get a look at his surroundings but his body was having none of it.
The broch was a solitary gaol on the outskirts of Crumlyn, where the land met the wild raging sea.
Even among prisons, the place was harsh.
It had been erected on a geological phenomenon known as a stack: a vertical pillar of rock cut off from the body of the mountain by centuries of erosion. Only the broch was built on the last column of a triple stack, three huge pillars cut off from the land by the churning sea. Once, years ago there had been a series of rock arches but the chalk had succumbed to the elements and collapsed. Now the series of pillars were only joined to the headland by a rickety wooden drawbridge.
The broch was a canker against the otherwise wild beauty of the natural world; an unnatural pinnacle on the high plateau, the crumbling stone walls of the prison overlooked nothing and everything, depending upon your perspective. It was an imposing spectre, a constant reminder of the austerity of justice. Algae and barnacles crept their way up the walls, tendrils of green and white eating into the brick and mortar.
They had Sláine trussed up. Ugly pushed him forwards onto the wooden bridge. It lurched violently beneath his feet. It was not a pleasant sensation. The bridge swayed sickeningly with every step he took. He didn't look down. It was a long way to the rocks below.
"Go on, take a good look at the rocks," Ugly goaded. "Wouldn't want you to fall and hurt yourself, now would we?"
He prodded Sláine in the back.
Sláine stumbled forwards.
The drop was vertiginous. He concentrated on looking forwards, not down. The prison was like something out of nightmare territory. The wind plucked at him, bullying him every bit as forcefully as Ugly's poking and prodding. A huge brute of a creature stood waiting for them at the other end of the bridge. The guard had shaved his head apart from a furious topknot and a jagged bolt of lightning just beneath the temple. He towered over Sláine, arms as thick as ham hocks from a Beltain feast, legs like the stumps of felled oaks. His face was flat, his brow simian, nose broken repeatedly so that it resembled nothing more than a slab of rib-eyed steak pressed up against his face. Only two teeth remained in his sneer. He crossed his huge ham hock arms and stared them down as they approached.
"We've come for our money, Nudd," Vern called. "Tell your master to crack open his coffers."
The guard grunted and disappeared into the broch, emerging a minute later with a runt of a man dressed in black robes smeared with streaks of egg and bacon fat, and other meals that had missed his mouth. The man in black rubbed his hands together delightedly at the sight of Sláine's captivity.
"Oh, yes, yes, yes, you did well, Gosta, very well indeed. How much was it we said, thirty coin?"
"We said fifty, Kendrick, as you very well know. Don't try to swindle a swindler, there's a good man."
"Yes, yes, right you are," the man in black muttered. "Fifty coin for the warped one. Come with me." He turned to the hulking Nudd. "See our new guest is safely accommodated, Nudd. Put him in with the dwarf and Black Axe while I see about paying the good Master Vern here. Splendid. Splendid."
Vern disappeared into the broch behind Kendrick.
Nudd grunted and grabbed Sláine by the scruff of the neck, pushing him into the old prison.
"Don't say goodbye then, Sláine," Ugly mocked.
"Why? Our relationship isn't over. One day you'll wake up to find me sharpening Brain-Biter with your bones."
"Big words as ever, Sláine. I'm going to miss you."
The broch was dank and oppressive inside, the cells crowded in on each other, the walls slick with mould and the white of sea salt crusting over the damp stone. The iron bars of the cell doors were riddled with rust and the straw scattered across the floor as insulation had seen better days. In fact the whole place had seen better days. In another life it had almost certainly been a stronghold erected to keep out marauders from Albion, across the savage sea.
"In here," Nudd grunted, taking a huge iron key from the chain around his waist and sliding it into the lock. There was an ominously heavy clunk as the bolt fell into place. The door groaned pitifully as Nudd dragged it open, its rusted hinges protesting. He shoved Sláine into the cell. Sláine stumbled and collapsed into a heap in the centre of the floor, his face pressed painfully into the rotten straw, the needle-sharp splintered ends digging into his chin and cheek. Nudd slammed the door and locked it. There was no lonelier sound than the second clunk of the lock coming down to trap him in the dark.
He felt a curious toe nudge his side, and then again, a little more insistently.
"What?"
"Alive then, always a good sign, eh, Bodb?"
Sláine rolled over to see the speaker, a pug-faced dwarf with wrinkles and folds of dark shadow where he should have had a chin and neck. The little man had a bulbous nose and stringy silver-grey hair. The gap between his quivering top lip and his runny nose was almost as long again as his nose itself. He wore a grey hood with long floppy ears. It took Sláine a moment to realise that the ears were not a part of the dwarf's hood, but were in fact his real ears.
The lighting in the cell was curious. It was lighter than he had expected, with salt and mould giving the cramped room a curious luminescence, and there were windows, lots of them. It wasn't the dank oppressive dungeon he had expected, but then, given the environs it was hardly likely any prisoners would be escaping through them. No one would be stupid - or desperate - enough to throw themselves on the mercy of the sea.
"You must get really bad headaches," Sláine said, pushing himself up onto his elbow.
"What do you mean?" the dwarf asked, quizzically.
"Ears that big must hear everything, even ants farting, it's got to drive you crazy."
From the darkness, Bodb laughed. "I could get to like you, young man."
"Oh shut up, Bodb," the dwarf grumbled. He prodded Sláine again, "So, what did you do to get yourself locked up in the salt lick of creation?"
Sláine sat up. "Long story, little man."
"Well it isn't like we don't have time on our hands, so come on. Tell us your life story. We're all ears." The dwarf waggled his ears at Sláine.
"I can see that," Sláine said, grinning.
"I can see this is going to be the beginning of a heart-warming friendship," Bodb said, coming to sit down beside Sláine.
Sláine assumed he was the Black Axe that Kendrick had mentioned, even though the weapon was nowhere to be seen.
Black Axe wore a long blond braid and whiskers. Sláine noticed that his muscles had begun to atrophy. It wasn't surprising. Life cooped up in a cell would have a debilitating effect on even the mightiest warrior. He didn't for a moment think that Bodb's skill with his eponymous weapon had diminished in the slightest. A warrior didn't forget. The axe was nothing more than an extension of his arm. Sláine nodded to the old warrior.
Nudd still guarded the door. The cell was actually an antechamber with three smaller cages at the back.
"Oh don't worry about tall dark and gruesome. He's as simple as a lugworm," the dwarf assured Sláine, seeing the direction of his gaze.
For all that it was a long story it didn't take long in the telling.
In the end it all boiled down to a single moment of stupidity. Still, he told his story, including the first time the warp-spasm had gripped him and Cullen of the Wide Mouth's part in his downfall. His audience sat rapt, hanging on his every word. The dwarf's ears pricked up at the mention of Vern and his dubious practices. He was like a dog sniffing around scraps. His nostrils flared at the mention of gold. The little rat-like man was thoroughly enthralled with the idea of reading people's eyes in a metal trinket while fleecing them and then, as he put it, "being stupid enough to bury your treasure in the garden." Then, with a sudden look of predatory cunning, "You do remember where Master Vern's garden is, don't you?"
"Let me guess what you are in here for."
"That's me, Ukko, greatest thief in all Eiru." The rat-like dwarf assayed a mocking bow, his nose almost dragging on the floor.
"You can't be that great, seeing as you are locked up in here," Sláine pointed out.
Bodb chuckled. "I really could get to like you, Sláine Mac Roth."
"What's not to like," Sláine said.
"It was just bad luck," Ukko grumbled. "Could have happened to anyone."
"If you say so."
"Yes, I do."
"No need to be so defensive about it."
"I'm not defensive. Why be defensive about bad luck? It's not like I was stupid enough to dip my wick in some other bloke's chosen bride and think I could get away with it. Or, you know, moaning because I happen to be this legendary colossus with the strength of twenty men and truly dreadful taste in women."
"Do you have a point, you little rat?" Sláine scowled.
"Somewhere, I am sure. It evades me just now but I will come to it."
"I'm sure you will," Sláine said.
"One day."
Nudd brought food: gruel; wet, thin, runny gruel. Prison food.
Just the sight of it made him long for Bedelia's cooking, which was not something he could have imagined when she was actually cooking for him.
He hadn't realised how hungry he was until he smelled the lukewarm food and his stomach reminded him it existed. He couldn't remember the last time he had eaten, two or three days earlier, at least.
Sláine spooned it into his mouth.
He was so hungry that he actually managed to convince himself it tasted good.
He grunted his appreciation, licking the wooden spoon clean.
Bodb and Sláine traded war stories over the meal, each one gorier than the last as the two sought to out do each other.
"Soth! Does it always have to be about your axes being red and reeking with the offal of slaughter? I mean surely there is more to it than rivers of blood and your enemy's screams," Ukko grumbled, covering his ears. "It's enough to put an honest dwarf off his food."