Unbalanced, Sláine fell forwards, arms windmilling desperately as he tried to catch himself on nothing. His head cracked off the lip of the hole with a sickening thud. He tumbled lifelessly into the pit.
"I know you're going to blame me for this," Ukko said, "but it really isn't my fault, not when you think about it."
"Shut up, Ukko."
"I mean as soon as I knew he was evil I tried to back out of the deal."
"I don't want to hear your voice again before I die," Sláine said.
"That can be arranged," Domnall the smith said, stomping up the stone steps from the midden back up to the forge proper.
The dwarf had strung them up by the hands. Sláine's feet dangled inches above the ground. Domnall's lantern cast a guttering light around the cramped pit. It revealed enough to hint at the horrors that had taken place beneath the smithy. Bleached white bones: skulls, femurs, fibulas, tibias, mandibles and ribs were scattered across the floor. Slick-bodied rats crawled over the bones and under the bones, looking for scraps of meat to be picked clean.
The walls had been scratched with short marks, as if one of the unfortunates before them had counted off the days before he joined the pile of bones.
"Ogham," Ukko hissed.
"I said shut up."
"No, no, listen Sláine. Those scratches, they're Ogham."
Sláine wriggled around, trying to see them better but it was useless and pointless since he couldn't read the old script. "Can you read them?"
Ukko didn't say anything.
Sláine twisted to look at the little dwarf, trussed up like a side of boar waiting to be thrown into the smoke house. "I said can you read it?"
The dwarf wiggled his eyebrows.
"Oh for Lugh's sake! Just tell me if you can read it."
"I'm allowed to talk now? I don't want you to beat me for impertinence or anything."
"What does it say?" Sláine asked, patiently.
Ukko twisted around on his ropes to get a better view of the curious letters scratched deep into the wall. "Hmm, well, that first one says, 'Why me?'"
"Helpful."
"And the next says, 'I don't want to die here', and 'repent, the Ragnarok is coming'. That one's quite big next to the others. And that one there says, 'all dwarfs are'... okay, I'm not reading any more. That's just plain crude, and untrue. We aren't miniature everywhere."
The sound of Domnall beating out the blade of his sword drifted down from above.
Impotent anger welled inside Sláine. Anywhere but this blighted land he would have had Danu to draw on, and then all the evils in the world wouldn't have been enough to protect the toad, Domnall, from his wrath. He twisted around angrily on the ropes, trying desperately to wriggle an extra inch or two of give out of the bonds, but the ropes were having none of it. Domnall had done a grand job of trussing them up.
The steady
clang-clang-clang
of the hammer on the blade haunted him. He could feel it - or imagined he could - each hammer blow ringing through his flesh because the smith was tempering the blade with his blood. They were bonded, just as he was bonded to Danu, her weapon tempered with the blood of the earth. He hung there picturing all sorts of grizzly fates for the dwarf smith. Sláine heard someone rap on the door, and then there was silence. It was unnerving. He strained to hear what was happening, but only caught fractured voices and the occasional word. He couldn't be sure but he thought the second speaker was Blind Bran.
"Down here!" he yelled, ratcheting his body around sharply. Fire burned down his left side as the muscle there twisted unnaturally. "Down here!"
Sláine heaved himself up and pulled down hard on the rope binding him, wrenching the hook an inch out of the wooden ceiling. He dropped far enough for his toes to graze the bones strewn across the midden floor. He nudged them around but couldn't quite grip any of them.
The door slammed and Domnall came stomping down the stairs shaking his head like a disappointed parent. "Now, now, Sláine, surely you understand your shouting just killed that poor blind man, don't you? You as good as stuck the knife in his throat yourself. Of course, I let him leave, but I couldn't let him live, not if he suspects you are down here. Was that really necessary?"
"You're scum, dwarf," Sláine said.
"Well of course I am. It's my nature. Ask the wasp why it stings and it'll tell you because I am a wasp, it is what I do. Now, come on, time to bleed for the nasty dwarf." Domnall came in close. "The blood's all gone to your feet. This is good, Sláine. This is really good. You'll be like that hero, the one who bled to death when they cut his ankle. Gah! I can't remember his name for the life of me. Oh well. Let's get this over with, shall we?"
"Over my dead body!"
"Well, that is kind of the idea, yes." The smith pulled a wickedly curved blade from the belt of his apron and pressed it up against Sláine's inner thigh. "Just one little cut, that's all I need. Open up the artery and that sweet red warped blood of yours will flow like there is no tomorrow. Well, of course, there isn't for you or your pet dwarf."
"Hey!" Ukko protested, "We're equals, Sláine and me. We're a team."
Domnall turned, laughing. "Of course you are, little naive Fukko, of course you are."
Sláine knew he had one chance, and that was barely half a chance. He closed his eyes, trying to touch whatever dregs of power might still reside in this dark pit, and jerked down hard on the rope, gaining another inch of give from the hook. He felt a long jagged spur of a broken femur with his feet, gripping it between his toes, as he would have a gáe bolga. As the smith turned Sláine lashed out with his leg and launched the splinter of bone just as Murdo had taught him to throw the deadly bellows spear.
Shock registered on Domnall's face as the makeshift weapon tore into his chest, the bone ripping out of his back in a spray of blood. His piggy little eyes bulged wide as his hands flew up to the bone piercing his chest, and then rolled up into his head as he fell, his body dead a moment before his brain knew it.
"See how I helped there, Sláine? I distracted him so you could kill him. That's got to be worth something, right? I mean I saved your life, technically."
Sláine stood on the dwarf's corpse, using the extra height to get the leverage he needed to work himself free of the knots.
"Shut up, Ukko. I don't want to hear another word from you if I cut you down."
"You won't-"
"I said if," Sláine cut him off.
"I didn't mean any harm. I was trying to do a good thing. I was thinking about you, Sláine. I thought you needed a hero's weapon."
"Every word out of your mouth is a lie, isn't it?"
Ukko looked around sheepishly as if checking to see who might hear. Satisfied they were alone with the dead, he said, "Not every word."
"Take it, it's yours. It always was," Ukko urged.
Sláine stared at the damned blade, War-Flame.
He shook his head.
"No, let the Lord Weird wield it. I'd rather swing Brain-Biter than some perverted blood forged blade." He tossed the sword into the cooling off barrel. "Besides, for all its so-called magnificence, it's untempered. Only a fool would wield an untempered blade in battle."
"Ah, good thinking, let's hope Slough Feg finds it and uses it eh? And that it shatters in battle when he most needs it, when he comes face to face with you! I knew this would happen," Ukko said brightly. "That was my plan all along. Give the horned High Priest a dodgy sword. I told you I was looking out for you, Sláine. We make a great team."
Sláine cuffed Ukko across the head. "What was it the smith called you? Sukko? No. No. Pukko? No that wasn't it. Fukko, such a great name. I should start calling you that!"
"Don't you dare."
"Fukko," Sláine said with a wink.
Ukko stormed off, slamming the forge door behind him.
"Temper, temper," Sláine chuckled, opening the door.
Three stunningly beautiful, three-quarter naked women waited for him on the other side. An intricate constellation of spirals and swirling tattoos was daubed across their bare flesh. They wore a sash across the cleft of their sex but were otherwise bare. He couldn't help but stare at the curve and sweep of their bodies, the swell of breasts, and the Gordian tattoos coiling around the dark, puffy, aureoles of their nipples and disappearing beneath the pendulous curve of their breasts. Sláine followed each and every swirl of ink with his eyes. The illusion was so perfect that he could have sworn they actually moved. Their muscles were taut, honed, lithe, their bodies like the finest works of art, worthy of the utmost devotion.
He looked up, shaking his head.
"Now this is what I call a welcoming committee," Sláine said, grinning widely. "If I'd known you were coming I'd have made an effort." None of them were smiling. He stopped talking. Something reeked. The smell assailed him. It was like rotten fruit. It well and truly shattered the illusion. He tore his gaze away from the feast of flesh and for the first time he saw beyond the three women: a circle of masked skull-swords stood, blades pointed at him. Behind the skull-swords, the source of the vile stench, a daemonic horned Drune priest cackled.
Ukko was on his knees, begging not to be hurt.
Blind Bran was on the floor, unconscious or dead, it was impossible to tell which.
"Seize him!" the horned priest hissed, and the women came at him.
Sláine wanted to laugh. They were naked, what could they do?
He said as much.
They quickly beat that misogynistic notion out of his head.
Nineteen
The Wicker Man
Sláine raised his hands to defend himself as the first of the women launched a blistering open-handed attack, slamming him quickly once, twice, three times in the chest, face and throat. The third hit had him choking. The second woman sprang, hammering a two-footed kick into his groin. A final blow from the first woman jabbed into his neck. He felt the needle's sting and knew he had been poisoned even before the third woman tumbled forwards. She used one hand to cartwheel around him acrobatically, bounced back to her feet and chopped down savagely on the back of his neck as he fell, sending stars bursting across his eyes.
It was over in seconds.
Sláine shook his head groggily.
He could hear Ukko begging not to be hurt but he couldn't see the little runt. He couldn't see anything beyond his own nose.
"Nuh..." he managed, slumping forwards.
The world was black.
There were no sounds in the blackness, no shapes, no forms and no shadows, at least not at first.
They came - or returned - slowly.
First there were sounds, desperate words: "Mercy! Help! Murder!" and other words, more seductive, promising: "That's what I want, yes, yes, yes. Scream for me little dwarf. I want to hear your screams as I give you the blood-eagle."
"No need for torture, priestess! Please, I'll tell you everything! There will be no secrets between us. We'll be like lovers well not like lovers that way, I mean unless you have a thing for dwarfs. Arrrrghhhhh! That hurt!"
"It was supposed to. That's why it is called torture."
Sláine opened one eye. A Drune priestess - at least that is what he assumed she was, with her macabre tattoos and bare flesh taunting him with the promise of just how enjoyably exhausting devotion could be with her - bent over Ukko, her bare breasts grazing the back of the dwarf's neck. Ukko was bound to a table, trussed up like the Sunday roast ready for the spit. The priestesses must have dragged them to their reclusium, a chamber deep within the bowels of their temple. There was no sign to suggest any form of worship took place this deep in the temple but plenty to suggest that torture and other unsavoury practices were the norm.
"Ah, your muscle-bound friend is awake, perfect. I do hope he'll be more sport."
The tip of a red-hot blade sliced into the muscle of his back, parting the skin and the meat. Sláine clenched his teeth, biting back against the pain. It was the first of four cuts that together made a blood eagle. The pain of it was excruciating but he refused to give the woman the pleasure of showing it. It was a savage reawakening. He closed his eyes waiting for the second cut. If the priestesses were to finish the blood eagle all they would need to do was pull and his body would rip open, disgorging his heart, liver and guts out of his back. He would be dead before then, although that was only a small mercy.
Ukko screamed again, a gut-wrenching shriek. Sláine didn't want to imagine what they were doing to the dwarf.
"Oh, shut up, you miserable little wretch! I didn't even touch you!"
Sláine wanted to laugh but a second cut ripped the sound from his mouth.
"Drop the knife, witch!" a masked skull-sword bellowed, barging into the sanctity of the reclusium.
"How dare you invade our sanctuary!" the priestess cried, wheeling round on the soldier only for the next sentence to die in her mouth as a sough-skinned Drune Lord came in behind him. The stench from the Drune was overpowering. Sláine gagged. The Drune stood head and shoulders taller than the skull-sword, wrapped in a huge bear pelt. Withered branches took the place of antlers on his hood. Sláine could see the rich red of rancid meat where the pelt fell open on the Drune's skinless flesh. It was like something plucked out of his worst nightmares.
"He dares because I commanded it, priestess. Dare you stop him? No, I thought not. You will relinquish these prisoners into my custody. They are to be fed to Crom-Cruach as part of his bridge's dowry of blood. The Lord Weird has commanded it."
"They are mine," the woman said, but there was no conviction in her voice.
"You know better, priestess. They belong - just as we do - to the Lord Weird. If he would have them burn, they will burn. Now, we both know there is little you can do about this other than hand them over, so shall we dispense with the pretence. You," the Drune Lord turned to the skull-sword, "see that they are taken to the wicker man."
Twenty skull-swords dragged Sláine between them. He didn't make it easy for them. Two more carried Ukko. The dwarf kicked and twisted and howled but the soldiers didn't take a blind bit of notice of him.