Hag of the Hills, page 15
‘Here are the rules,’ Antedios said to us. ‘No one leaves the ring. No kicking. No biting. No grappling. No scratching. No hits to the groin. Just fists to the face and torso. First one to get knocked down for the count wins. Oh, and don’t leave the ring. Got it? Fight!’ He then put two fingers in his mouth and whistled, but nothing came out, just a squeak. Tratonius pushed him away and whistled hard, as if to recall a rogue horse.
Now Luceo, for a moment, I had a weird feeling. It was as if I had looked down at myself from the sky, shirtless in the moonlight, hyped and embattled by my own anger and ale. The mercenaries were all cheers and jeers. Cicarus bobbed up and down. Marthelm looked sombre, as if he observed his son about to make a terrible mistake. Myrnna stood silent.
I fell back into my sunburned body. I stood up to the giant. I can stand up to Cicarus.
‘Watch his left jab,’ Marthelm said.
I found myself on the ground, the ascendant stars nothing but sparks circling a blurry moon. I climbed to my feet.
The next moments were dreamlike, something far and distant like the blue-red that loomed over the Cuillins. I questioned if I were really duel-dancing in a flesh circle near the beach in a boxing match against that bellicose Hibernian. The crowd yelled at me. Some clapped. Even that old whore Sabella egged the fight on. I understood little.
I had never boxed before.
It was far too late, Cicarus struck me again. I fell on my back.
Antedios began to count. I somehow climbed to my feet in a stupor, and raised my fists and Cicarus’ fist slid through my forearms, and floored me again. Antedios resumed his counting. I ended up on my knees, wobbled a bit, and I felt itchy. Then I heard a woman scream. It sounded like Myrnna. Or maybe a slave girl. I never did find out.
The low voice of Marthelm woke me up. I found resolve in that voice, in a way. He was fatherly, so was Tratonius, but Tratonius had hot blood, while Marthelm was both soft and hard, like bronze. The dancing flames behind Marthelm’s head lit his light eyes, and he placed a hand on my shoulder.
‘You’re just fine,’ he said to me.
The full moon had blanketed the beach in a lustre of white. I mistrusted full moons, for the sidhe lurk in the shadows more at night, or perhaps, we can see them easier due to the enhanced moonlight. See, even the tides now banged against the shingles.
‘Poor servi!’ Sabella cried, her long hard red nails scratching at my face. I pawed her away, and she retreated her hand, and Marthelm helped me up.
I drank water from a cup, and Sabella now rattled off all the duties I had to do tonight to make up for the ridiculous boxing match. Across the sward, Cicarus had been seated on that same spot on the log. I sat down across from him again, next to my box of things, and sipped water from a small earthenware cup. Sabella had disappeared and returned with the whip, and this caused my hand to tremble. Camulus’ grip had not slipped from my heart, and then when Cicarus caught my eye, he grinned. The German girls passed by him lugging buckets of water, and Myrnna followed them. As she passed Cicarus, he slapped her arse, she jumped and the bucket fell and tumbled, some of the water hitting the fire and sizzling. Red Camulus had gripped me hard and shoved me. My box was open, and then I had Bodvoc’s sword and charged toward Cicarus. I hopped over another log and through the smoke and there I had my sword poised to strike him down, never had I been so angry, never had I been so Camulus-struck, never had my bloodlust been so thirsty since I had beaten down that Hillman with a rock. I raised it to crash it down on him and he could do nothing but raise his forearms over his head and then someone grabbed my arm and tossed me down.
Someone stepped on my throat. I wheezed and the sword slipped out of my hands. I received a kick to the nose and blood rushed to it. I writhed in pain on the well-trodden grass, the sand grains engulfed my feet as I dug them into the ground.
Tratonius stood over me, holding my sword.
‘You lost, damnit, get over it!’
I did not think he had seen the groping of the poor girl, but it did not matter now. I had been hauled up and now Tratonius, Verc, and Marthelm stood around me. Orca had Cicarus in a bearhug, and the Ulsterman rioted in his arms, shouting curses at me that I shall never repeat, and there was much commotion in the camp.
‘What did I say about a slave with a sword?’ Verc asked, and then stared me down.
‘You’ve become a problem for us,’ Marthelm said to me, and I could tell he was angry even though neither his face nor voice showed it, though his German accent sounded thicker now. ‘While yes, Cicarus should not have touched her, you acted unjustly. You should not attack an unarmed man. That is dishonourable. There is shame upon you.’
It stung me to hear that, and that shame would carry with me forever. I would feel it when I awoke in the morning. It will disturb my rest, and it will cause each meal to taste less satisfying. There will be shame upon me and my line, and indeed, my grandchildren would carry the shame. I had acted in dishonour, and though impassioned as I was, it was no excuse. I could not look Marthelm in the eyes and my shoulders slouched.
‘He needs to go,’ Verc said. ‘He attacks our friends unprovoked! How can a man sleep with this scoundrel around?’
‘Yes, it is true,’ Marthelm said. ‘You must go, Brennus.’
‘But Myrnna,’ I said, and Verc interrupted me.
‘She’s ours, not yours.’
Where could I even go without Myrnna? How could I go? It did not matter. How could I get Myrnna back now if I must leave the mercenary company? I was free of my bonds but not free from my oath, and now both were broken. It couldn’t be!
I turned to Tratonius, my mouth agape, tears in my eyes.
He showed me his palms. ‘You forced my hands!’ he shouted at me. ‘I went through so much trouble for you – by the gods I did! I convinced the council to take you on as a slave and I was going to do my best to keep the girl from getting sold until you could purchase her – and this is what you do! This is what you do!
‘Now – go on – get out of here!’ he shouted so loudly that my ears hurt, and he stormed off. I caught sight of Myrnna, looking down at her feet.
‘It’s not that easy,’ Verc said. ‘You have to buy your freedom.’
‘My land?’ I asked.
‘We don’t want your land, that would be a dispute with the Hillmen,’ he answered, ‘everything you own. You have to hand it over, and then leave.’
‘Leave me my sword,’ I said, tears in my eyes. ‘It was my brother’s.’
‘Shut up!’ Verc snapped at me. ‘Don’t you dare whine.’
‘But my brooch – it’s my oath.’
‘Shut up or I’ll strike you down! Yes, that is what we should do, pull out your entrails and read them and let the gods decide what to do with you!’
‘You are lucky, very few can attack friends of ours and survive the day,’ Marthelm said, ‘hand us over your things, and go.’
They sent me over to my box. I picked it up, and brought it to them. Verc dropped my sword into it. I unhooked my brooch, Aine’s cloak dropped to the sand, I pulled off my tunic, untied my shoes, and slipped off my socks. I stuffed everything into the box, then placed it at their feet, and closed the lid. Verc leaned over and yanked my leather collar, I gagged as it choked me until it tore off. He pointed over my shoulder, over into the dark yonder.
‘Now go on, go.’
I turned to leave, in just my trousers, lost in my thoughts, and in my shame, and it was too late before I heard the frantic footfalls that rushed behind me. A flurry of blows struck me in the back, but they did not really hurt, and there was a brown mass of curly hair wagging in front of a red face. It was Myrnna, and she screeched at me.
‘You idiot! My father trusted you!’
She pawed me with open fists against my chest and shoulders, and a single hot tear flicked against my face as Sabella pulled her away from me.
‘Oh puella! – servus is free now – let him go, there is work to do.’
I wandered away from the bivouac, a free man. Weaponless, without my cloak and brooch, and with broken oath, into the dark yonder. I wandered down the shingle beach and listened to the ducks quaking as they floated as little shadows near the coast. I listened to the calm of the waves against the beach to my right. I listened to the gentle breeze whistle through the wild moorland to my left. I wandered for hours until my bare feet hurt too much from the shingles, shells, and sand, and I sat on a cliff over the ocean and wondered how long it would take me for me to muster up the courage to fall over it. It was the only way to regain my honour.
I dozed, somehow, vaguely aware that I should not hide from my fate, and vaguely aware that I was on the Black Headland.
CHAPTER X
I woke up just after dawn. I had not slept long, and I hailed Belus, the sun god, just as I had every day. That is what Auneé had done, and Bodvoc as well, and indeed my father, and his father. I then stopped myself from completing the ritual, where I would sit and pray to them for a productive day, because I did not deserve to speak to my gods any longer. I was an oath breaker, and I should not be alive too much longer in my shame.
The wild moorlands with high hills were behind me, and in front of me, the endless ocean. A narrow path of shingle, shell and sand curved along the coast, and from the tuffs of wool in the heather, I could tell it was a sheep trail.
I heard some honking behind me. A flock of geese uprooted from some inland loch, and fluttered into the sky and then flew off across the sea. Then a voice chirped behind me.
‘Geese, you know what that means, right?’
There behind me stood a man in a soiled white robe.
‘I don’t know what that means,’ I said, and he approached me. ‘What’s does it mean?’
‘I can’t tell you that,’ he said.
‘Who are you?’
‘Don’t you recognize me?’
My blurry eyes failed to know him. The man wore a bleached white robe, though tarnished, and he carried a golden scythe pocked in green.
‘Druid Cammios!’
I hardly knew him. He had a matted grey beard and greasy grey hair. His eyes looked tired, with heavy blue-red eyelids, and I could smell him from nine paces away.
‘Who are you again?’ he asked. He had commanded many men, and it was understandable if he had not recognized me, especially with my shaved head, and without my garments that designated my role.
‘An oath breaker,’ I said. ‘And you must know that,’ and then I realized that he had to have died during the siege of Dun Ashaig. I jumped up, Badb pounding in my chest. ‘Are you a ghost?!’ I cried out, afraid that he had been sent here from the Otherworld to kill me, even though death is what I desired, he scared me deeply, especially with his dirty clothes as if he had crawled out of his grave.
‘No,’ he said. ‘But what did you say you are?’
‘Oath breaker,’ I said. ‘But how did you survive the battle?’
‘Did I?’ he asked. ‘There are fates worse than death.’
‘Aye,’ I said. ‘Let death take me then.’
He said nothing for a while, and came closer, peering at me. He was shorter than I.
‘Did you flee, too?’
‘Flee? You deserted?’
He squinted, and a tear came down from his wrinkled eye. ‘Do you know what they do to druids?’
‘No.’
‘They sew us up in the bellies of dead horses and suffocate us. Or they strap us to poles at high tide and let us drown. Or they sit us with stakes up our arses until the stakes impale us through the mouth. What do you think I did?’
‘But how?’ I asked, because last I had seen of the battlefield, the Hillmen outnumbered the Ashaigers at least twenty to one, and they had surrounded the narrow entryway of the hillfort.
‘I escaped,’ he said. ‘But the rest of the druids – who knows? It was so cowardly of me. I should have fought.’
He began to weep, and then he began to blabber. He stopped making sense, or I could no longer understand him, and as shameful as I felt, I still hated him for doing what he did. No one could call themselves a man if he left that battlefield alive. And he looked at me, eyes squinted, a half-smirk on his face. He hated me, too, because he knew what I did.
‘You deserted also,’ he said.
‘No, the chief druid ordered me to leave with his daughter.’
His eyes widened, and then he shook his head. ‘The bastard, that was against our council. What did you do, then?’
‘I lost her to mercenaries and broke my oath to him.’
His eyes squinted again. ‘You know the fate of oath breakers, do you not?’
‘Do you know the fate of deserters?’ I asked him.
He straightened his back and his eyes bulged. ‘I’m the druid. You cannot talk back to me,’ he said.
‘What are you going to do, kill me?’
‘You want that,’ he said. ‘But you’re going to kill me before you kill yourself.’
And we were silent. We just stared at each other. I could look him in the eyes, his tired old eyes.
‘I’m ordering you to kill me,’ he said. ‘Toss me off this cliff.’
‘No.’
‘Are you hungry?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
He walked off toward the high green hills, and I followed. Rockfall cluttered the hills, and I followed him up the steep ascent, often on all fours. The blue sky above us and the blue sea below, I knew that if I fell, I would likely die. I would at least break my legs if not my neck, and rot there. I cared little, because death is what I deserved.
We came to a rock shelter, nothing more than a gneiss overhang. All I could see from there was the blue sky and blue sea. Pebbles crumbled from its ceiling and I wondered if Cammios paid any mind that it may collapse and crush him. Inside, there was an extinguished campfire, and some flint tools, including a grey knife blade, a hammerstone, and a small scraper. I knew sometimes one can find such things in rock shelters, and Auneé told me these were the tools of the sidhe who inhabit these places. I would never have dared to use them, lest I invoked their wrath, but Cammios seemed carefree.
‘I have grouse. He was lekking on a stone in the heather. I struck him with a stick. He should not have been lekking so late in the year. Do you know what that means?’
‘No, tell me,’ I said to him.
‘No, I cannot,’ he said.
He had already beheaded and de-feathered the grouse. He started the campfire and spit the grouse over the it, and roasted it whole. We said nothing as it cooked, and when it finished, he butchered it with the flint knife, and plopped a portion on a space of stone in front of my lap. I ate with my hands, still nervous about the prospect of damning my luck for using the sidhe’s tools, even though I had damned ill-luck upon three generations of my descendants, if I ever had any.
‘After we eat, you will push me off here,’ he said with his mouth full.
‘No,’ I said, mouth also full, savouring the crisp roast of the grouse wing. ‘Perhaps the sidhe shall push us both for using their tools.’
Now he looked at me again. He squinted, and shook his head. ‘These are mine.’
‘You knapped these?’
‘No. I found them when my father sent me into the tomb. I found these, instead of finding a weapon. That’s how I became a druid, it was a sign from the gods.’
Cammios swallowed and then stared at me. ‘I said too much to you, I should push you now,’ he said.
‘Before you do, druid, tell me – did a god give the tools to you? Did the sidhe? An ancestor? All men say yes, but perhaps all men lie, and keep up the lie together out of fear of it not being true for them and no one else.’
‘What did you get, then?’ he asked me.
‘I never went into the tomb,’ I said.
He stopped eating. He now grabbed me by both of my shoulders and shook me.
‘Do you know what that means?!’
I now grew nervous, we had been seated on unsteady seats and his shaking of me threatened both of us falling. I needed to die, yes, but it should be on my terms, I felt.
‘Let me go, you utterly mad fool.’
‘Mad?!’ he shouted at me, and his voice echoed down the hill. ‘I am not mad – listen to me, I am a druid! By the good Danu I am a druid! Please! You said you never went into the tomb – you never became a man!’
I now squinted my eyes at him, suspecting an insult.
‘No, listen! It is not the end for you! It is too late for me, but not for you!’
‘Then go on!’
‘To become a man, you must receive something from them: the gods, sidhe, ancestors. You are not fully a member of the clan – your oaths are void, like a child. Think about it! If a child swears an oath to his mother to never go near the bog, because the bog-hag’s going to grab him by his ankles and yank him down to drown, but then he just goes near it anyway because that’s what stupid children do – was he an oath breaker? No! He’s a child, and unable to swear such an oath! Listen to me, you fool – you redeemable fool – you are no oath breaker, for you never had an oath to break!’
‘Then what could I do now?’
‘I will help you,’ he said, shaking me hard. ‘I will help you redeem yourself! I am the druid and I am ordained by the gods to turn you into who you are!’
‘Then help me, please, help me, Cammios!’ I cried out to him, grabbing his arms. Pebbles tumbled down the cliff under my bare feet.
‘Only if you kill me.’
‘Help me first and then I will kill you!’
‘Swear an oath,’ he said, his eyes wide and desperate and wet. He had stopped shaking. Swear it to Osimus.’
‘Why Osimus?’ I asked.
‘I cannot tell you – just swear it!’
