Hag of the Hills, page 17
‘Hail Cernunnos!’ I shouted out and my voice echoed in the tomb, as if it had been much greater in size. ‘Hail Lugus!’ I shouted again, to honour my ancestor. ‘And hail the death of Brennus!’
I left the dead warrior naked now. The undershirt had become far too rotten, so I just fastened his tattered, cold, hard overtunic on my body. I pulled up the green-yellow check stiff trousers around my waist. I buckled the mildew-stricken leather belt around my hips, and hung the mouldy scabbard from it by its baldric. I clamped and snapped multiple feeble belts into place, each buckle forming spirals and knotted patterns of bronze. I hooked a goat-sack to my belt that possessed some unplanted wheat seeds. I put on his leather shoes, and tied the laces around my ankles. I donned the soiled cloak and cinched it across my chest with a corroded bronze brooch. The yellow-green, fur-lined conical hat sat on my head and its pointed tip scraped the ceiling of the tomb. Everything was rather damp, sordid, but glorious.
The warrior had been laid out on the back of a wooden shield, like a bier. I peeled the shield from Taman, and the bones slid off. All sorts of denizens of the dark scattered in an array of silver, red, and black in the yellow stain on the ground.
The shieldface had been painted green, but only faint chips remained. Its wood was warped, its rawhide decayed, and its planks loose. I missed my Ashaiger shield, for this shield was far too large, and I remembered my father once said ‘large shield, small balls,’ but it had been gifted to me by Cernunnos, and the man I now am had used it, so I strapped it to my back by its frayed leather strap.
I stooped to reassemble the bones, and then something in a tiny hole revealed by the imprint of the shield caught my eye. Another figure rested in the funeral bed. I reached into the tiny hole and was awed at what sat in the palm of my hand.
It was a figurine, and I knew, perhaps by my sight, that it had been an image long forgotten. It possessed the body of a man, but it looked as if caught between the world of man and the world of beasts. Catlike, but far more regal than the typical Alban wildcat, fiercer, beastlier, and more manlike. Its muzzled, elegant face smirked in the way that only men can. It had such living eyes that seemed to follow mine while I turned it to examine it. The colour had been yellow-brown and I did not recognize the rock it had been carved from, but later I would learn that it was from the teeth of one of those giant moles Tratonius told me about.
My sight caused me to weep. I wept not out of sadness, but out of its beauty, and its age, for my sight had allowed me to feel how old it had been, and it was so old that I thought it had been from a time when men were not entirely men, but these cat-men.
I cradled it to my bosom, it was so precious to me. My ancestors left it here for me to find it. It marked the time that links me to them, and reminded me that I shall always carry my ancestors with me, even if their world has long been vanquished.
That figure never left me. I still carry it in my pouch, to this day, and I am determined that if I never have a son, then I ought to have my men destroy it if I were to fall in battle. It must end with me, if I have no worthy descendants.
I resettled the bones of the man I now was, in his original position. I kissed his cold forehead. I thanked him again at his knees. I had been reborn in the tomb, and I was birthed from its womb back into the bright moorlands.
The brine-breeze extinguished the musty smell from my nose. The trousers I had discarded before I left the tomb flapped, stuck on some heather. No, they were no longer mine. They were Brennus’ trousers, and I was no longer him. I left them flapping there.
The wind petered out by dawn. The time had slipped by, passing like a hurried traveller in the night. I could not account for the time lost, but I thought perhaps it had been when Cernunnos armed me with his sword.
‘Good riddance,’ I said to the flapping trousers.
I emerged from the tomb a new man, bronze sword hung at my side, clad in a dead man’s clothes. Then, in the rose-fingered dawn, I marched down the moorlands, back to the headland, toward the coast. I would follow the beach and head back to the bivouac, where I would confront the mercenaries. I must challenge the mercenaries to single combat, and I shall win back Myrnna and salvage my oath.
Perhaps I shall die, but then I will die as an oath-keeper, as a man of honour, and with all the manliness of Lugus passed on through the new soul in my body, and expressed through my sword.
By the time I reached the coast, Belanus had spangled the ocean in a gentle gold, and early morning seagulls scoured the shells brought in by the new tide. My feet crunched down the coast, and there I could see no trace of the bivouac, but a white ball rocking back and forth near the steep cliff overlooking the sea.
The waves crashed below at the shale beach. The gulls screeched in the air. The chilly morning wind carried salt. There I found Cammios jabbering, his robe soiled again and tattered at the hem as if he had been wrestling a badger. When I drew near, he lifted his head up, squirrel-like, and scrambled to his feet. He fell at my knees and hugged them and sobbed. There I pitied him. Cammios hugged me tight, until he sniffed me, and then looked up at me, and his eyes darted.
He stood up. We stood at an arm’s length from one another, with the wind blowing his hair all over his face. He pulled his hair back behind his shoulder. He looked aghast.
‘You’ve done it,’ he said.
‘I’m a new man now, and I thank you for your help.’
‘No,’ he said, and he pointed toward the wooden scabbard around my waist. ‘Let me see it.’
I unsheathed the bronze sword. His eyes widened. I handed it to him.
‘Bronze is Belanus,’ he said. ‘You walk in his light now. His light comes through your sword. His light emblazons your soul.’
We were silent for a while, and he spotted the inscription.
‘It looks like writing,’ I said.
‘No,’ he said. ‘It is not writing. These are not letters. It is something else… it means that you are destined to avenge our clan. You will salvage your oath. Your name will live forevermore!’
He began to weep, and I did not know if madness had stricken him again, but his tears ran down the sword’s blade.
‘You have redeemed yourself,’ he said, ‘no… a new man. You are a new man now. You must choose a name for yourself, and that is the name that shall live on forever! Brennus is dead, long live Brennus!
‘But as for me,’ he said, and he shoved the sword back at me, and I grabbed it, and I just held it up toward the sun, thanking Belanus.
‘Let me find peace now,’ he said. ‘It is time to fulfil your promise.’
He backed up toward the edge of the cliff.
‘Kill me.’
I did nothing.
He grabbed a handful of my rotting tunic and pulled me toward him.
‘Why must you die?’ I asked.
He began to jabber again, his words nonsense, he spoke as men do after being stricken from sleep unexpectedly. He looked around, aimless, and backed up again, some pebbles crumbling down the cliff below. His eyes met mine and they came back, his jabbering ceased, and he smiled.
‘We had an agreement. You swore to me that if I made you a man, you would kill me. Now do it.’
‘Brennus swore to you, and I am no longer Brennus.’
He let go of my tunic, fell, and thudded against the ground. He began to kick his legs like a toddler. He cried and whined and even shouted and I left. I left him there, in all his misery. I did not understand why he would not just kill himself. I pitied him, and I should have killed him there, I owed him that at least. Luceo, truth be told, I got out of that oath too slyly.
I headed down the coast, back toward where the bivouac had been. Did Cammios tell me the truth? The inscription on the sword, did it really foretell that I will not only salvage my oath, but avenge my people, and bring glory to my name? I believed it would, Luceo, and I believed that I could defeat the mercenaries all with my newfound power, win Myrnna back, and take her to the refuge of Dun Torrin as I was forsworn to Ambicatos.
For a price…
CHAPTER XII
First light had come and gone, and the sun rose over the high moorlands. I followed the coastline, having left Cammios to his madness, and descended the shale beach. I passed where Cammios had sent the morgen slithering back into the sea, and I shuddered, and then I ran to get away from the Black Headland.
I had a plan. My plan had been to challenge the mercenaries to single combat. Tratonius would have disliked that idea, but I would evade him and goad the Celts. I’d call Antedios and Cattos cowards, insult Cicarus’ mother, and tell Verc just how much of an awful druid he had to have been to be among this traveling scum in his twilight years. I would tickle their sense of honour, I would rouse them to anger, take their honour hostage, so that they could retrieve their honour should they face me in single combat. One by one, I would defeat them, until they were all dead or shirked from my sword, or I had died in honour defending my oath to Ambicatos.
It was an ill-formed plan, Luceo. I had little combat experience, I intended to challenge veterans, and there were many of them. But I believed I would win, for I believed Cammios’ prophecy when he had read the inscription on my sword.
When the camp first came into view near the limpid sea-loch, I noticed no cooking fire. When I came closer, down the dry sheep-shit strewn grasslands, I found the camp deserted. Save for their mules tied to a post, the camp possessed no men. I found it odd, since they had left their belongings there. The mercenaries, Myrnna, and the slave girls were all gone. I spotted their tracks that led up into the moors, up a pass that went into the low mountains.
I followed their footsteps, and I could tell by their spacing that some had been hurried in the muddy track, and then it became scree and I emerged through the pass and crested the hill. There an expanse of red moorland sprawled out before me.
I unsheathed my sword because I had a feeling something went awry, and the regularity of the moorland had been broken by the presence of tall reeds around a loch. It cratered in the moorlands, sky-blue, and shimmered in the morning sun. A crane walked along its muddy banks. A chatter of birds passed by above, and frogs croaked unseen. I reminisced of the sombreness of the barren moorland. I had enjoyed hunting for pheasant in my youth in the moors, but now the hag had sullied my love for it. I disliked it, for I feared the sidhe, or another giant, or the hag herself.
Come back to the Slighan Hill…
The damnable voice had returned from the depths of my soul and rang inside of me. I had caught a glimpse of her grey crown poking up over the closer red hills. That thought left me when the faint sound of a lyre came from the other side of the loch. I heard, something splashing about, like a dog thrashing in the water after ducks, and I rounded the loch in haste toward its reedy side.
The reedbed receded when I neared a willow tree, and there I saw it from beyond the reeds.
‘Badb – Macha – Fea!’ my voice choked.
Multiple things dunked up and down in the water. There was a great commotion of multiple shouts. A blue-red mass surrounded by blurs, perhaps sacks, sloshed through the water, and figures squiggled at the water surface. Once I understood, Badb struck me with horror and I nearly pissed myself.
Legs dangled. Heads bobbed. I first spotted Orca, that Umbrian bear of a man, and he went down in the water with a hard splash. Then came up Aldryd, curly grey hair matted to his face. Sabella hung aloft; some red-blue rope coiled around her stomach. Tratonius swung by, flying on a blue-red rope. Cattos fell in the water as Marthelm came up from it. All the sellswords and their slave girls were there, dunking in and out of the water like playful dolphins, shouting and screaming and writhing with tentacles coiled around them.
The tentacles came from a monster in the shallow loch. A fleshy, red-blue, newt-faced thing with vine-like appendages was drowning my former masters. A nude Myrnna rose out of the water, a tendril wrapped around her belly, her eyes black. Two other tentacles plucked the strings of a lyre above its bulbous head. It strummed a sweet tune.
You can salvage your oath, if you dare.
The words pounded in my chest. I unhooked my shield and cast off my garments, sword-in-mouth so I may swim, and then penetrated the reeds.
‘Father Lugus!’ I cried out.
Tendrils wrapped around my shoulders, crept down my arms and coiled around them. They felt slimy and soft and another pair wrapped around my ankles. The twitching appendages seemed countless. A fleshy hook grabbed my sword-arm, and I clenched my blade in my teeth.
I yanked back, screaming as a thick tentacle curled around my torso, and shut my arms to my sides. I struggled, shaking my body, wrenching myself out of there, with all my might, attempting to writhe myself from that slimy grasp.
The thing turned its hideous face toward me, its glowing black eyes sent Badb pawing up my chest. My feet dragged in the mudbank toward it. Two iron-black eyes, just like the eyes of Myrnna. Myrnna! This thing would drown her!
My scream was strained through the blade of my sword.
The black glowing eyes of the fiend flickered. The thing gargled like a frog, and its entire head hinged open in a sickening creak, like the lid of a chest. That revealed three sets of jagged teeth, a set of throats, and a slurping black worm-like tongue that flapped around like a lure.
The tentacles pumped harder around me and squeezed the air from me, and I almost lost my sword to the loch. My teeth held the sword steadfast like a dog to its bone, and I flexed my arms under the slimy tendrils and felt its strength waning beneath my wrath.
The tune from the lyre settled me. It sounded much louder than the dull splashes of the water. It soothed me, overriding how I jerked my body, and the thing dug into my legs and drove them into the mudbank, and the music became so sweet.
The tentacles vanished in the mist. Where an unspeakable fiend once sprouted from the water like a lily pad, a succulent womanly form stood.
It was Negorm. She ran a hand down her small, perky breasts, and across her supple stomach. She moaned and beckoned me with her other hand. The lyre strummed on.
It all soothed me. When I looked upon Negorm in the dewy loch, I looked upon love. It was as if we were newly married, and she waited for me to deflower her in a mesh of pure love and hungry lust.
No more tentacles wrapped around my chest. No hag cackled in my ears. No more threatening giants. No more mercenaries. No more mad druids. No more Hillmen. Just her, love, and sleep.
Negorm’s mouth did not move when she spoke. Just behind her, a flicker of the wet dark hair of Myrnna, her tentacle-wrapped, naked body floated through the air and punctuated my foggy trance.
Come back to the Slighan Hill…
‘No!’
Negorm faded.
The slimy tentacles wrapped tightly around my body. They constricted me, they squeezed me, they pushed the air from my lungs. Badb kicked me in the chest when I gazed upon the toad-headed thing, its gaping jaws unhinged, my feet dragging toward my death in its sloppy fish-lips. A relief came to me, that I would have died with honour, on my feet, and painfully. I would have been freed of my oath, for I had not committed suicide, and we all would have gone to our deaths together. Myself, Myrnna, and those wretched mercenaries.
Negorm came back to me then. The air quieted, and it was a blustery late summer morning. The birds chirped in the trees. She stepped out of the deep water, waist deep, droplets falling from her red nipples. She smiled, her red lips beckoning me, and I could feel her breath. Would death come to me so sweetly?
Nothing is unconquerable. Even our gods can die.
‘Lonnbeimnech!’ I cried out the epithet of Lugus. Sword shouter. I had shouted it so loud that the blade jittered in my teeth. I stared right into the glowing pit-black eyes of the monster.
‘Father of Kings, Father of Cúchulainn, Allfather of Alba, fierce striker, long arm.’
I screamed, dry and long. I gave myself into the warp-spasm of Cúchulainn.
Spreading both of my arms like a perched eagle, the creature wailed a monstrous sound from its two hideous mouths as its tentacles loosened at my summoned power. I dropped the sword from my teeth, grabbed the hilt, and poised it skyward.
‘Lugus!’
Even our gods can die. This will die!
Its head lulled back on its hinges, and a bumpy black tongue slurped
its lips.
Tendrils crept back up my legs from the depths, like ivy, entangling me in its grasp. I could not get close to it.
Long arm!
That was it!
I cast my sword hard, point first. The flying sword impaled the grotesque head of the thing. It wailed a horrid cry, its jaw slapping shut like an unhinged chest, and the bodies of its victims plopped into the water. Some of its tentacles wiggled, others spasmed, and its wretched body cocked to the side, drooling black ink.
Aldryd popped up out of the water first, followed by Cattos. Soon, too, others emerged, some gasping for air, others in pain. The monster disappeared without a trace, and it left me awestruck. Then I remembered. Myrnna!
Myrnna dragged herself to the bank. She cooed the name of Bride, patroness and protector of women, and blessed herself with her a trembling, soggy hand. Nearby, Tratonius beat on the chest of a prone Orca, who then started coughing up water. Aster in turn beat on the chest of a prone Verc.
I could do nothing but aim my head skyward, and thanked Bride for looking after Myrnna. Surely, Myrnna owes Bride as much as I owed Lugus for guiding my hand that slew that loch monster.
There Myrnna sat, naked, clad in mud and pebbles, her dark hair matted to her face. I wished to grab her and hold her. She was my oath, and if I lived, I was forsworn to protect her. I stood silent, though, for I must be strong when others were weak, just like I was when Cammios kept falling into madness. I owed him, too, for I was a new man, the man I was meant to be, and the man that Myrnna needed.
