"Let the boy speak." A familiar voice cut across the rabble. "Not that he's a boy any longer." Gorian, warlord of the Red Branch, rose to his feet. He looked every inch the king where Kilian Ragall had appeared a pretender dressed up in a better man's furs. Beside him, red-headed Murdo grinned approvingly. "So, young Sláine, it only seems like yesterday I was interceding with Grudnew on your behalf. Do you remember the vow you made when you took the Red Branch?"
Sláine nodded. "It is writ on my soul."
"Then remind us all of it."
"We are Sessair. We are proud. Unbreakable."
"And tell me, Sláine, when you look around this chamber do you see proud unbreakable men?"
"No," Sláine said.
"Neither do I, lad. Now, tell us of the gifts that you believe worthy enough of our embrace, let's see if they're silver or coal."
"You do not recognise it, warlord?"
"Other than as a grand cooking pot? No, lad. Should I?"
"Light a fire, warm the pit, and see if the miracle of the Cú Roi is enough to remind the hungry of the bounty our Goddess offers the faithful."
A flicker of understanding lit up behind the druid Cathbad's eyes; the old man had an inkling of the treasure Sláine had returned.
Indeed, he is long-lived enough to have seen it before the sundering shattered the Cú Roi of Goibniu into pieces and scattered it to the four winds
, Sláine thought to himself.
"Light the fire," Gorian said, coming down to embrace Sláine wrist to wrist. "Soth! But it is good to see you again, boy. I had no liking for the way you were driven out," the warlord said, his voice pitched low enough that his words were for Sláine's ears only.
"Thank you, Gorian. May Danu reward your faith," said Sláine. He turned to face the remainder of the Spiral Council and slowly unwrapped oilskin to reveal the bark-covered book of vellum that the Lord Weird had poured his darkest desires into. "With this book we win our freedom from the yoke of oppression, my people."
"With a book? Do we read fairy tales to the skull swords until they fall asleep from boredom?" Madad the Quarrelsome heckled, shaking his head in disbelief at the gullibility of his own people, so desperate to believe that salvation had walked in out of the Death Winter. The gristle of the warrior's nose had been sliced off to reveal a huge cavity in the centre of his face. The maiming left the once fearsome warrior looking comical with his shaved scalp and his single tuft of flame-red hair like a unicorn's horn hanging down over the centre of his forehead.
"You are quick to judge, Madad," said Sláine, holding the precious Ragnarok book in his hands and lifting it so that all could see precisely what it was. "Dian, my friend," Sláine looked around for the young druid who stood still in the doorway to the chamber, out of the light from the oculus. "Come, I would ask you to read the first line of Ogham to the doubters. Perhaps your words will silence them."
"No need, I can read the scripts," Cathbad said, reaching out for the book.
"No, druid. I would have my friend read them, you can confirm his translation if need be, but Dian will address the council."
Dian, uncomfortable between the two men, friend and master, looked to Cathbad for instruction. The older man inclined his head in acquiescence. "Read to us, young Dian. I believe I speak for everyone assembled when I say that we are most eager to hear the secrets of this most secretive tome."
Dian took the book from Sláine, his hands trembling as he cracked open the bark cover and scanned the first few words. He looked to Sláine: "Is this true?"
The young warrior nodded. "Every word, my friend."
"How on earth did you come by such a thing?"
"That is a long story, one for another day."
"What is it?" Gorian asked, "What does it say?"
Dian cleared his throat and raised his eyes from the page. "I, Slough Feg, servant of Carnun, Horned God of the Forests, speak, hear my words that they may sour the earth and bring on the deluge, for this land is corrupt, pustulant, putrescent. This world is vile, the bitch Goddess has turned her back on her people but the great wyrm knows, yes the great Crom-Cruach knows and feels the wounding of the soil. Only the cleansing of the filth will do. The rotten must be purged. The filth of humanity, the pox of blood and shit and piss must be driven from the land, to the dirt returned..." his words had a distressingly hypnotic rhythm to them, the poetry of insanity drawing the listener deeper and deeper into the nightmare woven by the words.
"Nothing more than the ravings of a madman, surely," said Gorian.
"Read on, Dian," said Sláine said, knowing full well the promises to come, and the impact they would have upon the Spiral Council.
"The darkness of the world, the winter of mankind, is upon us, but soon the winter will be glorious spring, the souring will cease and the deluge from the heavens will bring deliverance, the scourge of the living cleansed, the canker of flesh scoured from the hills and the fields. There shall be no relief, no salvation, no testament to the will of the bitch Goddess because I am great, my reach long, my loyalty unflinching, my drive relentless. I loved her once, was faithful and pure, the purest and most faithful, but no more, no, no more. I know my master's mind, the voice of his reason, the reason of his voice. I, Slough Feg, the Lord Weird, servant of Crom, speak, and all of Albion, forests and field, sea and stream, will listen to my words and know fear for I bring the end of her reign with the rain. The seas shall rise up and swallow the land whole, the skies shall break and the unbelievers drown. Only then shall the Death Winter's grip on the land slacken, only then shall the will of Crom relent, only then shall the bitch Goddess suffer as she made me and mine suffer. Vengeance shall be me, sayeth the Horned Man, Lord of the Forests, Haunter of the Trees, Bringer of the Flood."
"Can it be?" Dian looked up, his face blanched white with fear at the insidious lure of the words he spoke.
"Who is this monster?" Gorian asked, shaking his head to be free of the vision the words of madness had conjured in his mind.
"He is the demon who, with his skull swords, killed my mother and so many of the wives and children of Murias," said Sláine. "The book is the darkness of his mind, the perversions of his spirit, laid down. If the druid Myrrdin Emrys-"
"The Lord of the Trees? Impossible!" Cathbad interrupted.
"- is to be believed the book holds his schemes to bring on the end of the world as we know it. With it, I believe we can thwart him."
"And we're supposed to listen to a vagabond son of a drunkard?" Madad's sudden outburst earned him scowls from Murdo and several other Red Branch warriors close to him.
"Silence!" Gorian bellowed, wheeling round on Madad, "unless you want to lose another piece of your face?"
"Couldn't make him any uglier," Murdo chuckled. Despite being poor, the joke broke the spell Dian's reading had placed upon the chamber. A hubbub of urgent chatter spread from seat to seat as the warriors leaned over to whisper with their neighbours. Few bar Cathbad and Dian knew who the Lord of the Trees was, or how impossible it was for Sláine to have spent his exile in the company of what to them was little more than a myth.
Gorian turned to Sláine. "The council would know more of your travels, and what you know of the threat that gathers at our door. I suspect you know far more of this menace than we do as you have walked among them, and no doubt fought them hand to hand, while Ragall has scraped his knees so desperate to please them."
Before he could say more Cathbad grabbed Sláine by the shoulder and twisted him around. "You met the Lord of the Trees? How is that possible? How? He has been lost to us for centuries."
"Not merely met; serving the Morrigan I delivered Myrrdin from his prison and returned him from the El Worlds, Cathbad."
"He walks among us, even now? I... I..."
"You can thank me later," Sláine said, and to Gorian, "Much of the land south of here has soured. No crops ripen, no herds fatten, but that is not the worst of it. Feg uses ancient lines of power to drain the earth itself of its power, leeching the life out of Danu. In Carnac thousands of standing stones act as foci for his evil. He uses the might of the Earth Serpent to raise great sky chariots kept aloft by blood magic."
"No, surely... no... blood magic taints the land... defiles it."
"The Lord Weird has no care for Danu, druid. You heard his thoughts, she is the bitch Goddess he once loved, nothing more, and like any lover spurned he would hurt the one who hurt him."
"Talk of lovers spurned is ironic, is it not?" Mongan Flint said, "You come before us, exiled, yourself a lover spurned, banished for your infidelity. Why should we believe you?"
"Because," Sláine said, slowly, "to disbelieve is to damn all of Tir-Nan-Og with your stupidity." The condemnation hung in the air with the dust motes.
"What should we do, warlord?" Ansgar asked, clearly torn by all that he had heard.
"We are Sessair!" Gorian answered, his cry swelling to fill the long house, the power of his words venting up through the oculus and into the coming dusk, daring the Death Winter to answer. "We will not be humbled by a madman!"
The Red Branch warriors stamped their feet in appreciation, faster and faster until the sound fused into a thunderous warcry. It took two full minutes before the tumult died down and a lone voice questioned: "But how do we fight with no food in our bellies? We are as weak of body as Kilian Ragall is of spirit!"
"When the fire is ready, you shall see, Phelan Oxbow," Sláine assured the man.
"I have no love for what you did to old Grudnew, Warped One, that was lower than low and you got what you deserved," Phelan said, "but if you silence the hunger in my belly with thin air and water I will follow you anywhere for truly you are a magician to be feared!"
"Me too," Cuinn agreed, beside him.
"How about you Orin? And you Madad? Mongan? Murdo? If I can fill your bellies will you remember what it means to be Sessair?"
"Aye, lad, we will, and we'll thank you for it."
"Then fetch your stone axes as well as your feeding forks, for the Cú Roi of Goibniu shall put an end to the ache in your guts."
"Can it truly be the Cauldron of Plenty?" Gorian said, kneeling to look at the bezel and the intricate rendering of Avagddu hammered into it. "Such a treasure," he breathed, marvelling at the relic. "You are a man of surprises, Sláine Mac Roth."
"I am Sessair, Gorian."
"Indeed you are, indeed you are."
"The treasure was lost, forfeit, sundered as a testament to our shame. Now you return it to us whole. If this truly is the Cú Roi you could not have brought a more precious gift. With our ancestors' shame laid finally to rest we shall rise up and remind the world what it means to be a Celt. We shall grovel and scrape in the dirt no more."
"Set it on the fire, Gorian," Sláine told him. "Every warrior shall eat his fill tonight. None with pure hearts shall go hungry. Come the morrow the Red Branch shall march, bringing death and destruction to the evils that infest our glorious land!"
A roar of agreement went up, the cheers reaching out through the oculus to drown the whole of Murias in its fervour.
Sláine drank in the acceptance of the warriors.
He was home among his people where he belonged.
Ukko heard the sudden roar and ran towards it, thinking only to find Sláine and warn him that His Weirdness had spies inside Murias, pretty spies that they knew from somewhere... the woman's identity plagued him. Ukko chased it even as the woman's blind thug, Balor, chased him.
But all thoughts of dire warning spilled from his head as he stumbled to a stop, staring at the woman, her hood pulled back to reveal a single long braid and the blue-inked tribal tattoos of Sláine's people across the ridge of her brow and cut into the coarse hairs of her eyebrows. He dropped to a crouch, trying to make himself small. She hadn't seen him. A man wearing only a colourful kilt of coarse wool caught her by the shoulders, talking earnestly, hurriedly, desperate for her to understand the import of his words.
Ukko couldn't hear a word of it.
He cast a nervous glance over his shoulder but there was no sign of Balor; though the blind man probably tracked by scent like a dog and would prove as relentless as a damned bloodhound on his trail. Ukko risked scuffling a few feet closer, close enough to make out the gist of their argument:
"I could have been a goddess once, Kilian Ragall! Wife of the most powerful god of all! And you crawl around on your hands and knees expecting me to be grateful for the scraps you feed me? I am of the Babd, you fool! I am more that you could ever be or dream of being."
The man, Ragall, let his hand fall from her shoulder. "I don't... ? Goddess? Wife of Lug the Sun? Hu the Mighty? Women do not marry the sky gods... Megrim, what are you saying? I do not understand."
"No you pathetic fool, the god who feeds on war, disease and disaster. The god who will save us by putting an end to the misery of life on this plane of the els, the Wyrm God, Crom-Cruach! How I have longed to smell his foetid breath on my face, to taste the slime of his flagellum around me, entering me, to hear the screams of his victims as he sucks at their souls, freeing them from the pain of living!"
"I don't know you at all, wife," Kilian Ragall said.
"No," the woman agreed, turning to stare directly at Ukko. "But he does, don't you, dwarf?"
Ukko didn't say a word. He looked at the dirt wishing fervently it would open up to swallow him whole - and then remembering the fate of Slough Throt, fervently wished he hadn't wished any such thing. He shook his head vigorously. "Never seen you before in my life, woman. I'd remember a She Devil like you, believe me."
The woman, Megrim, laughed. "Oh you know me, dwarf, as does your damned companion Sláine. You may not recognise me, but
you
I will never forget."
She stepped closer to Kilian Ragall, her arms encircling him in an embrace as she kissed him on the left cheek. "Goodbye, King Ragall," she said, stepping back. Ukko stared in horror at the blade buried deep in the man's gut and the thick black blood spilling out around his fingers. He fell to his knees.