Hag of the Hills, page 10
The newly crowned king would lead the charge against the Hillmen. This custom was altogether strange to us, since we had no kings or lords save for when we went on our battle-wandering, but the vates knew the will of the gods.
All men were lined in rows in the grove, nude, and the slave girls were tasked with painting us all with woad from head to toe. Using beeswax, the servants spiked each man’s hair, and curled their moustaches. Most men had been given one-handed spears and shields, though some were left with knives or clubs. I had Bodvoc’ sword, in its scabbard, wrapped around
my waist.
Fennigus and his men stood in the line awaiting their dressing. I stood next to my brother. I could not believe he had been chosen for the grisly sacrifice today, and I feared what he would say if he knew I had pardoned him. No one except for Ambicatos and his family knew I would leave that day, as far as I know. In truth, my dear Luceo, I was glad that they would not know I did not die with them that day.
‘Hurry up, come on! We want to die tonight, not tomorrow,’ said Vosenios to the slave girl painting his feet.
‘Hey Brenn,’ Fennigus said as the slave girl dressed him in woad.
‘Yeah?’
‘See you on the other side,’ said Fennigus.
‘You too,’ I said. I meant to say more, and my dear Luceo, I wanted to tell Fennigus how proud I was of him, and how I wished I could be half as strong, courageous, and masculine as him before he died, but I said nothing. Then Fennigus snickered.
‘Hey, do me a favour and jerk it a bit?’ Fennigus said. The slave girl was painting his genitals and Fennigus let out some moans. Fennigus’ band laughed, as did some other men in the ranks.
After the slave girls finished woading the last of the warriors, the druids divided the warriors by their battle prowess and experience. Fennigus nodded to me when they moved me to the last row of warriors.
‘We will meet again soon!’ said Fennigus, casually raising a backhand to me, and going back to chatting to Cractacus. Guilt spiked through me. Did I really deserve to live when Fennigus died? Would Myrnna be better off protected by him than me?
Harrowing blares from shrieking bronze instruments quenched whatever guilt clouded my mind.
‘Gangway!’ the champions of king Ambicatos cried.
The trumpeters carried long, top-heavy, curved bronze trumpets that morphed into the gaping maws of beasts – boars, dragons, sea monsters, horses – called the carnyx. It spouted a rattling cry when blown into, more akin to the bleating of a goat than a horn, to irritate and intimidate their enemies. Nine trumpeters marched down the avenue, each playing a carnyx, boar-headed war trumpets that curved up, held high above the player’s head.
The warriors divided to form a track, like a blue meadow of iron flowers, and a chariot thundered in the distance.
The carnyx resounded, and their players held their bronze instruments in salute, one-armed, as if they held spears. The thundering of the chariot pounded the ground. Pulled by two horses, both white as clouds, king Ambicatos rode through the sea of his warriors. All eyes averted to him, clad in nothing but horse blood and a bronze horned helmet. His charioteer whipped the horses into a frenzy.
King Ambicatos shouted ‘Epona!’
Behind him rode more of the king’s champions on horseback, eighteen proud men, severed heads riding their spears. The pounding of the hooves hit the chests of the warriors, and war cries were shouted. The carnyx bleated to signal the goddess of battle the Morrigan to lead the charge.
The warriors moved out in a blood-crazed jogtrot. The king rode through the palisade first, the stampede of his woad-covered entourage shivering the great wooden structure like a windswept tree. He stuck his spear up into the hanging skull of Vitallis, plugging his spearhead into its neck hole, raising the skull on his spear like its spine. Thus, Vitallis led the vanguard of the charge into the Hillmen.
Dog masters loosened eager dogs, while cries of ‘Epona!’ and ‘Lugus!’ and ‘Camulus!’ and ‘Morrigan!’ and ‘Vitallis!’ flew into the air, spewed by spasmed-faced warriors. Pommels beat against the backs of shields as they charged, unorderly, without strategy, their tactic to unleash an unbridled and unchained frenzy. They would break the nine-day siege by rush of flesh and iron.
King Ambicatos had other plans for me.
I nearly felt light in the feet and heavy in the hands as bloodlust swept me up to charge me into the fray. I had been painted in woad and my hair waxed in spikes, I was as armed and naked as my brethren that charged to their deaths. But my opportunity arose, as no one was looking, since I was the last in line. I shirked away from the line as it advanced down the trackway. I ran away.
On the other side of the hillfort, Myrnna waited to flee with me. A frantic commotion rose as I raced through the grove. After I emerged from the grove, I found myself in a sea of madness. Women wailed, children flew, bloodied bodies strewn there and about. A woman followed a child up the rampart, and when the two climbed to the stone-lined top, the woman shoved the child off, and flung herself after him. I will describe no more.
I spotted Myrnna, and Aine embraced her amidst the red madness.
‘Leave!’ cried Aine, tears streaming down her face.
Myrnna did not budge. I tossed two packs down the well. I slung the shield over my neck and grabbed Myrnna by the arm.
‘Come on, down the well!’
Myrnna hesitated. I shook her and she shouted, ‘I love you’ to Aine, and went down the well.
I hauled myself into the shaft, and took one last look at the fort from the inside. It was garnished with bodies, viscera, and rivulets of blood. In the sacred grove where children once chased butterflies, now death chased them. May the Hillmen’s blood upon my weapons never dry.
Before I descended the shaft, Aine nodded to me. I saw her fingering at her knife as I descended.
Then I heard a grunt and someone collapsed to the ground, followed by agony, nothing but dull echoes as I descended the well.
Myrnna fell into the cold well water as I climbed down after her.
‘Let me go first and check how it looks outside,’ I said.
Light emitted into the cavern through a crevice, where a boulder had been pushed to plug the entrance to the well. I peered outside, gingerly, praying to the gods that no Hillman was out there. I saw nothing but the darkening light of twilight, and heard nothing but the whistle of the wind.
I beckoned Myrnna to follow, and launched myself against the boulder and pushed it, shoving the boulder away enough for us to slip through, and the last light of twilight spilled into the cavern.
Pebbles cascaded down the well behind us, and a yelp echoed from above, followed by a splash. I rushed over to find a child facedown in the water. She floated lifeless. I propped her up, and her head hung limp. I looked up and saw dark figures climbing down.
‘Someone’s following us down! The Hillmen will notice if many are running out in the moors! Out now!’
I sat the dead girl upright on one side of the well, and we ran out. We ran along the hillside of the fort to the west back towards the forest. We passed the shaft of the arrow that had been shot days earlier into the earthen wall. I turned, and grumbled, seeing Myrnna trailing far behind.
A racket from the entrance erupted, and dozens of women and children raced in different directions across the heather.
‘We’re going to get spotted!’ I yelled ‘Come over here!’
My heart raced. Cold, hard Badb crept in my chest and cut my heart just as the briars crept around my legs and cut them, too. I bled and feared. Surely, the Hillmen would still have patrols? I didn’t know. We raced toward the pine forest and I hoped none of them awaited us there.
I led Myrnna up a hill, and as we got to the top, I turned and, in the distance, at the entryway to the cavern, figures ran after the fleeing women and children of Dun Ashaig, snatching them up, corralling them with rope. Some of the women were struck by bullwhips.
Dragging Myrnna down with me, we fell on our bellies in the heather.
‘Down the hill and to the pines – stay down – we don’t want to get spotted!’
We wormed our way through the heather, snaking around rock outcrops, and crawling through murky bogs. Clouds of midges swarmed us. Myrnna kept cursing under her breath, and finally she stood up and swatted at them and I nearly screamed at her.
‘What’s worse: bug bites or the Hillmen?’ I asked.
Scraped by briars, caked in mud, and bruised by stones, we carried on, silent.
The roar of the carnyx brayed over the moorlands. We neared a tentacle of the pine forest that reached out into the moor, and after some scouting, we positioned ourselves among the dark trees. We caught our breath. Obscured by the pine forest, I opened my pack and clothed myself with my green-yellow check trousers, my undertunic, my yellow overtunic, a rusty-yellow felt conical hat, Bodvoc’s shoes, and my green cloak which I fastened with Aine’s bronze brooch. I fingered the brooch and looked at Myrnna, who huddled against a stump.
We walked along a byway, ran down a slope into the valley. Through the fortress of trees, came the sounds of battle. We peered out through the pines, and from the far distance, just enough to hear the battle sounds, watched from the vantage point of the darkened forest.
The entrance to Dun Ashaig, the snaked trackway enclosed by earthen walls, was visible from here. On the moors, the innumerable Hillmen waited, armed and armoured and mobilizing to the entrance.
Ravens cawed above us, and flew out of the pines and across the heathery hills. The children of the Morrigan hungered.
The torrent of warriors from Dun Ashaig flooded down in a great wave into the countless bodies of Hillmen that hurried to dam the trackway. The Ashaiger clansmen crammed into the tight tunnel and pushed forward into the broad but dense defensive line of Hillmen.
A great shoving match ensued. Hillmen bowmen slung arrows into the crowd of woad-clad warriors, but the clansmen fired back with slings. Bodies crumpled on both sides.
After a collective shove, the barricade of wood-clad Hillmen broke. The dam was breached, and an unrelenting surge of stampeding horses crashed into the Hillman. The horses washed over the Hillmen, kicking and bucking and even biting, panicked by the havoc. The chariot of the king crashed into the line, and crushed hillmen under its wheels. Javelins whirled, spears struck, clubs swung, swords slashed, arrows pierced, shields battered to splinters. Snarling dogs sprang into the fray.
The Hillmen swarmed the clansmen.
I dared not avert my eyes. Myrnna trembled at my side.
‘We need to get to the trackway while the Hillmen are still fighting,’ I said.
I led the daughter of the short-reigning king through the pine forest, and up the other side of the valley. The moon emerged in the pale blue sky while the red sun still sank. The arbours of the spruces were just thick enough to cover the battle, and soon the frantic noise of horses whinnying, dogs barking, men shouting, and the rattling of weapons dulled.
By the time the forest waned, and we emerged on the moorland again, nightfall had befallen Skye. No sounds came from the war raging just beyond the hills. We ran down wild moorland to the trackway near the foothills of Slighan. We curved around one of Slighan’s Hill-daughters, and from this view, we could see Dun Ashaig. We stopped and looked.
Far into the distance, in the dark of night, a glow emanated from Dun Ashaig. Nothing could be seen save for flames under billows of thick smoke. Embers fell into sheer darkness below the hillfort.
I grabbed Myrnna by the wrist, she pulled away.
‘Don’t touch me,’ she said.
I had no response.
We went down the trackway, the backdrop of the flickering of fire and billows of smoke merging into the clouds signalled the end of Dun Ashaig and its clan.
For a price…
CHAPTER VII
The moonlight lit the trackway that snaked like a brown ribbon. To our west, boundless moorland, and to our east, the Slighan Hill.
I felt naked on the trackway in the full moon. In peacetime, we drove our cattle down from the mountains to it and to Dun Ashaig. Now during wartime, the Hillmen had trampled down it to Dun Ashaig. Hillmen patrols, Hillmen marauders, the victorious Hillmen parading down the trackway after sacking and burning our fort. Yet we had to stay on the trackway, since the moorland possesses treacherous footing. I touched the hilt of Bodvoc’s – no, my sword. I was just one man, but I would take at least one more of them with me if it came to it. My oath called for it.
Was this invasion the price the hag promised me? Had my meeting with the hag of the hills led to the sack of my stead, the death of my family, and of my entire clan down to the last child?
To the west, Bodvoc and Lappie lying in their own blood in our house. To the northeast, Fennigus and the boys sprawling out on the battlefield, faces skyward. Then ahead of me, the white path that cut into the blackness, with Myrnna step and step.
We carried on. Heathery hills stretched grey, and the dark blue sky hung over the horizon. I recognized the loch with its linden tree on one end and the hanging tree on the other, and my farm lay just west of the trackway. Just west, now devoid of cattle, sheep, and slaves. Our house stood just like a shadow.
My heart pounded harkening back to when I found Bodvoc, Lappie and the slaves in the entrance. I was sure they were rotting, all unburied, picked at by the Morrigan’s children. Soon, too, the house would rot, and then fall from its foundation. The stone foundation would be pilfered for another structure by the next inhabitant of the land, and so too the byre, barn, fences, and shed. It would all rot and leave nothing but the middens, my land just a skeleton with no flesh to dress and no voice to tell the tale. The peat fire warming the chilly mornings, Lappie’s wet tongue slurping me awake. Auneé’s call for quail eggs and bread for breakfast, Bodvoc’s collection of fox skins. The house, its warmth, its light, its thatched roof, its wattle-daub walls, its green and yellow paint, the brown woollen rug on the floor, Lugus’ wheel nailed to the door and the big pinewood door itself, all its histories and stories before I had been born – all would die with me. I ought to build Bodvoc a mound and place Lappie at his feet, if the children of the Morrigan would be so merciful as to leave a morsel to bury. All of this rumbled within me, causing tremors like an old man’s trembling hand, but I had to carry on down the trackway.
Fennigus ought to be buried in such a manner as well, as he died in that battle outside Dun Ashaig. Blade in hand, big white eyes, the warp-spasm about him, his boys flanking him, beautiful, handsome, brave men, all to their graves in the moorland. I must say, my dear Luceo, I had trouble keeping my form when mourning my brother’s death that I had missed, but I must stay strong for Myrnna.
Soon the breeze brought us the dreadful smell of decay. The cawing of crows from the byre tomb of my cousins cut through the cold night air. From here, I could see shadows garnished in crows. I suppose Vasenus had taken another route, but my oath was my route and I trod its path.
Myrnna groaned, gagged, then vomited. The wind never ceased dragging the awful stench to us for some time, all the while the crows cawed throughout the night. Truly, the Morrigan blessed them with a great feast.
The wind stilled, and I began to sweat in blue streams of woad. Myrnna began to slow, I suggested that we rest, and wondered out loud where to sleep. We sat in the weeds off the trackway, and Myrnna insisted we did not need to sleep. She wrapped herself in her brown wool cloak and huddled against some bushes. We shared a flask of water until she cried out:
‘Those idiots! Those idiots ran out of the cave like a hare from a hole, and they were all taken! The Hillmen took them all! Who knows what they do with them! Mother at least… mother at least is dead, so the Hillmen can’t take her.’
She sat silently, and I watched the bright moon and the stars. I found the moon an ill omen from a dark god. We called the moon the eye of Balor, the old god of twilight and blights that Lugus had slain. Lugus caught his eye and cast it up on the night sky and now it lights my path.
Something suddenly caught my eye.
Down past the stream that the moon sheened white, the hag’s mound stood. Its cairn-crown in disrepair, lopsided long-stones pointing haphazardly in every which direction that looked like blackthorns in the dark. Something was there, a fleeting thing. I said nothing to the quiet Myrnna.
After a spell, we started down the trackway. The cold wind swept down, Myrnna shivered, despite her cloak. I wrapped myself in my cloak. Shivering under our cloaks, we drew closer to the hag’s cairn. Passing clouds darkened the moorland now, and the figure grew darker until the trackway dimmed. The moonshine breached the clouds and illuminated the figure, the lustre of the bright moon and stars revealing an old woman in a tattered red robe kicking her heels on top of the barrow.
We both stopped.
‘What is she doing?’ asked Myrnna.
‘That’s the hag of the hills! That’s Calli!’
I did not know if I should run away or run her down with my sword. Badb just crept up through my chest. I shivered and I was thankful for the cold, so that Myrnna did not realize I was shivering from fear.
‘What did you call her – Calli?’
‘Calli, she’s the hag of the hills!’ I said, unable to say more.
‘Cailleach, the queen of winter,’ Myrnna said in disbelief.
The Cailleach was the old hag that stole summer from us and blighted us in autumn and then devoured autumn until it became winter. She darkens the world and casts it in white and eats all the leaves from the trees. She loves stones which are cold and hard so she makes the entire world cold and hard. On Beltane, Bride, goddess of the hearthfire, arrives to banish the Cailleach, until that frosty goddess returns the day after Samhain.
