Shaft after shaft of raw energy from the earth's serpent cracked and spat as it was drawn into the weird stone.
The air was cold, clammy, and thick with the smell of Throt's stink. The air shimmered as he looked out over the dried-up fields.
The longship yawed and then righted itself.
Ukko clutched the rail. The little runt had turned a bilious shade of green. "I don't like this, Sláine."
"And you were doing such a good job of fooling me."
"Listen, I've been thinking." The dwarf leaned in close so that the Drune Lord and his crew couldn't overhear him. "What's happening here?" Before Sláine could tell him, Ukko went on, "We're on a ship that is going to sail the skies. That's not natural, Sláine. That's so far from natural it's in the realm of insanity. Why's it happening? I'll tell you why, because of Slough Throt. Are you telling me a man who can make a longship sail through the sky needs a battle-smiter like you? Uh-hunh. I don't believe that for a minute, Sláine. Throt's afraid of someone, or something, and anything powerful enough to make a sorcerer frightened is something that should have the likes of you and me make like the shepherd and the sheep and get the flock out of here. I mean, come on, who's old Dead Meat think he's fooling? You know he had the entire village butchered the moment we cast off."
"How can you be sure?"
"Count the skull-swords, fifteen were left standing when you were done with your little bit of brain-ball battering the other night. How many are here now?"
Sláine looked around the deck, counting the masked skull-swords. "Eleven."
"Eleven, so, unless you bashed a few more heads for good measure, four didn't make it onto the ship. Now, call me paranoid, but I don't like the mathematics."
The Cloud Curragh was aloft, sailors crawling over its rigging like ants, unfurling the sails and bracing the mainstay, adjusting the Curragh's course until she was bearing north-by-northeast.
Morrigan's birds flocked around her bow, cawing raucously. They had been ever present since the wicker man, perched on skeletal tree limbs and the thatched eaves of houses in the village, watching.
Ukko reeled away from him and heaved up his guts over the side of the ship.
"Look out below," Sláine said, forcing a grin. He wasn't in the mood for smiling, but it was important that no one saw his consternation. He knew, instinctively, that the little runt was right on both counts. The people of Gavra were almost certainly dead, and Slough Throt was afraid of someone, afraid enough to bargain with the enemy in the hopes there was some truth to the old adage, "my enemy's enemy is my friend". Sláine felt like a rat in a trap; a rat with no friends and a ship full of enemies.
The secrets of the Cloud Curragh revealed themselves slowly.
She was no merchantman, despite the attempt to appear as one. Sláine found the truth below decks. Slough Throt had assembled a war galley.
He lay awake staring at the shapes and shadow-shapes of Morrigan's crows flitting across the moon. He knew that the witch was taunting him, but instead of despair her birds brought hope. If Morrigan could reach into this blighted waste then surely the maiden could, too, if he needed her.
Deck hands shuffled about, tying off ropes and making minor adjustments for the wind. The low mumble of the three Drune Lords was ever present, their incantations keeping the Curragh aloft. There was a sugary mellifluence to the sound. The sweetness lulled him towards the edge of sleep but the undercurrent of immorality kept dragging him back, heart racing, to the deck of the Curragh and the stench of Throt's rotten flesh.
The slough-skinned sorcerer sat alone. Sláine watched as he ate a slab of old and decaying meat. Throt looked up, aware of the scrutiny. The sorcerer's perception was almost preternatural.
"Can't sleep?" Sláine said, stepping over Ukko. The dwarf grunted and rolled over, snoring deeply again within moments. Sláine envied the dwarf his ability to sleep anywhere. Gorian had drilled it into the men of the Red Branch that a true warrior needed to be able to sleep anywhere and anywhen, because those few minutes might be the last he had for a long time. Ukko's gift for sleep would have made old Gorian proud.
"I have no need of it, my magics sustain my body."
Sláine sat next to Throt. "Then I pity you, mage. In dreams I get to make love to the most beautiful of maidens, I get to wander the streets of my hometown and relive my life. In sleep I am the man I could never be in waking life."
"And you pity me?"
"Aye, I do, because I know a frightened man when I see one," Sláine said. "Tell me, who is it you fear? You're a powerful man, you can make the world dance to your darkest desires, so who is more powerful than you? Powerful enough to make you fear him?"
"There is no one," Slough Throt said, blood from the raw steak dribbling down his chin as he tore another mouthful off the bone.
"Oh, there is. We both know there is. I know who it is. I just want to hear you say his name."
"There is no one," Throt repeated.
"Believe that if you want to." Sláine shrugged. "I have better things to do with my time than argue who's afraid of whom with you."
"Yes, it is your job to keep me alive."
"And you say you aren't afraid?" Sláine shook his head. "You're a rotten liar."
Sláine left the sorcerer to his lonely vigil. He walked to the gunwale and leaned out over the side to watch the soured land drift by beneath the hull of the great Cloud Curragh. He let his hands feel out the extra thickness of the wale, picking away at the seam where it joined the side of the longship. With the wind blowing into his face the chants of the Drunes were muffled to a point where they were barely audible. He enjoyed the comparative quiet of the wind rushing into his ears.
Then he heard them, below decks, moaning, low, beneath the wind and the Drunes' incantations: mournful wails, like the voices of the damned begging to be heard.
Making sure he wasn't being watched, Sláine knelt and heaved up the hatch that led down to the hold. He lowered himself into the darkness. The melancholy lament sent a shiver the length of his spine. Reaching up, he pulled the hatch back over his head, sealing himself in darkness. He listened. Voices, inseparable from one another but distinct all the same, coalesced into a single keening dirge.
He fumbled with the torch and tinder, sparking up a light, and immediately wished he hadn't.
Cernunnos's Underworld itself was trapped in the shallow puddle of light.
Faces of bone and lichen stared back at him, skeletal fingers clawing at the light. He staggered back a step, and then reeled away from the clutching fingers of more half-dead zombies snagging at him. He spun in a circle, brandishing the torch as if it was a weapon. The half-dead were caged. They were drawn instinctively to the light, like moths to a flame. They clutched at rusted spears and battered shields.
There was a small army crammed in down here, enough of the pox-riddled half-dead to bring down any number of villages in the lands to the north of the border where the sour blight ran into rich fertile land.
Slough Throt was flying an army of the dead and damned north.
Sláine recognised one amongst the many, pushed up against the bars of cage, his rough-spun bandage slipping down from over his glazed over eyes: Blind Bran.
Behind him Sláine saw Senoll and Tamun. There were others from the wicker man, he was sure, cursed to this half-life half-death.
"No," Sláine said. "Danu, they deserved better than this. Bran? Tamun? It's me, Sláine Mac Roth, Sláine of the Sessair. Can you hear me?" But they couldn't. Their lips moved over and over, their voices an indistinguishable part of the choir of the damned.
He edged away, up the ladder to above decks, easing back the hatch in time to hear Throt cry, "Assassin!"
Slough Throt was on his feet and raging.
A barrel lay splintered at his feet.
He had a young deckhand by the throat and clenched his hand until his black nails sank into the soft flesh around his windpipe.
"It... it... was an accident, lord," the boy pleaded. "It slipped... from my... grasp."
"There are no accidents, boy. You will suffer for your master's arrogance. Your death will be a message to him." Throt threw the young deckhand across the swabbed planks. He turned to the nearest of his trusted skull-swords. "Strip this traitor and bind him to the mast. I will give his master a death if that is what he wants."
The skull-sword grappled with the boy, cracking him around the head with the hilt of his blade. The hapless assassin slumped in the soldier's arms. They stripped him quickly and bound him, naked, to the main mast.
Sláine sidled up beside Ukko. "What happened?"
The dwarf grunted. "His smelliness was about six inches from being knocked senseless by a falling barrel. He's taking it quite well, don't you think?"
Slough Throt stood in the centre of the Curragh's deck, arms thrown wide, the triskel medallion around his neck glowing a spectral blue beneath the shadowy umbra of his beseeching arms.
"Come!" Throt roared. It was the only word from a stream that Sláine understood.
A cloud of black formed on the horizon, completely clouding the moon as it drew closer and closer. The beating of black wings was deafening as the crows swept in low and hard, beaks and claws tearing at the prisoner's flesh, plucking his eyes out.
Sláine turned away from the feast.
The dying boy's screams were ghastly.
Morrigan's birds flew into his mouth and his throat, stripping the flesh from his lips and nose until they opened the lad up completely and his dead body was only supported by the ropes binding him to the mast.
Even as the last scream was torn from the poor unfortunate deck hand's mouth the mighty Cloud Curragh gave a sickening lurch.
Swollen black clouds filled the sky, hiding the moon.
Throt stood in the centre of the Cloud Curragh, hurling invocation after invocation at the sky. A howling gale erupted around the Slough sorcerer, battering the ship downwards. The Curragh lurched sickeningly again. Sláine grabbed at a trailing guide rope and hooked it around his wrist. An unfortunate skull-sword skidded across the deck and went over the rail, screaming as he struggled gamely to master the art of flight.
Sláine looked over the ship's edge.
No matter how frantically the soldier flapped his arms he only seemed to fall faster.
"I thought you Drunes controlled the weather?" Sláine rasped, struggling across the deck as the Curragh was tossed about violently by the storm. A deck hand fell from the rigging.
"We can. He is," Throt hissed between clenched teeth.
"Who is, damn it? Answer me!"
But the Drune Lord didn't. "The weird stone is weakening. We need a sacrifice. Only blood will have the strength to save us. We must ride out the storm! Hear how the weird stone whines? Yes, yes it needs blood! Only blood can save us!"
The storm surged around them. Lightning jagged across the pitch-black sky. Thunder cracked and rolled in behind it. The storm battered the Curragh down, driving it towards the earth.
Sláine grasped the tiller, trying desperately to right the listing vessel. It was no good. The storm was too fierce, its savagery too primal.
"You," Slough Throt rasped. The sailor his putrid hand singled out froze. "Here!" The sailor's face was stricken. His feet dragged him across the sloping deck of the listing ship to the vile sorcerer. The strain on his face was all Sláine needed to know that the man was moving against his own free will. Throt had a wickedly sharp knife in his hand. He grabbed the sailor by the hair, yanked his head back and slit his throat, bleeding him directly onto the weird stone.
Sláine stood paralysed with horror at the murder and the complete lack of emotion exhibited by Throt. "Madman..." Another jagged spar of lightning split the night in two. It struck the earth dangerously close to the Curragh, close enough for Sláine to feel the raw elemental power of it slam into his chest like a clenched fist. It knocked him off his feet. He lost his grip on the tiller. The Curragh buckled beneath his feet and Sláine went spinning down the deck. He dragged himself unsteadily to his feet, bracing himself against the second mast. "You'll pay for this, Throt," Sláine promised, his words whipped away by the fearsome wind.
But Slough Throt heard him. "It was necessary if I am to save us. We can show no weakness against him! I will need all the power of the weird stone to get us out of here alive." The sorcerer made ogham signs in the air, bending the power of the earth serpent to his will.
The three Drunes pressed their hands to the stone, their chant rising above the howling wind.
It wasn't enough.
Another jag of lightning crashed, striking the Curragh high up the main mast. The blow shered the long mast in two. The top segment broke free. Tied as it was to the ship by the rigging, it swung around sharply and smashed into the deck. The belly of the great sky ship began to scream in protest as sudden new strains were exerted on it by the damage caused by the ruined mast. Three more bolts of lightning hit the stricken vessel, ripping the Curragh in two. The dead and dying spilled out of the belly of the ship.
Sláine and Ukko clung on for dear life as the Cloud Curragh tumbled towards the earth.
Twenty-Two
Traitor and Saviour
The longship fell from the sky. They came down in the middle of a gnarled leafless forest, the skeletal boughs of the withered trees tearing through the ship's hull. The timber frame of the vessel split open like an eggshell, spars of wood and planking popping and cracking, and wrenching free of the rivets pinning them in place. The gunwale snapped clean in two, breaching the integrity of the hull. A gaping wound opened up in the side of the ship. The half-dead crawled out of it, uninjured from the fall.
Amongst the living the carnage was complete.
Sláine had fallen fifty feet from the wreckage, Brain-Biter a few feet away. He reached out for the familiar comfort of the axe. Ukko lay between him and the belly of the fallen sky ship. Skull-swords lay broken in the mulch of the forest floor, the slack emptiness of death claiming their bodies. There was no dignity or care to it. Limbs lay at impossible angles, broken back on themselves. Necks lolled, jaws wide, eyes glazed.