There were no corpses for them to bury, either.
A mess of hoof prints churned the dirt around each patch of scorched earth. Tracks led off towards the next village. The sun was already low in the sky, day giving way grudgingly to night. There was no way, even if he set off running now, that he could reach them in time to make a blind bit of difference. He fell to his knees, burying his hands in the churned dirt. He leaned forwards, pressing his forehead into the earth. It still simmered with the latent warmth of the flames. He wanted to pray for guidance, to beg for help, but there were no words inside him. Instead he wept until he heard the exhausted shuffle of Ukko's feet behind him. The acrid smell of smoke stung his throat. Sláine wiped away the tears, smearing dirt across his cheeks.
"This is the part where we swear vengeance, right?" Ukko said.
"Yes."
The dwarf looked around at the smouldering ruin that had only hours earlier been a home. "Good. What's the point of hanging around with a hero if the evil bastards get away with stuff like this?" The look of pain in his eyes belied the callous words. Sláine knew Ukko well enough to see past the bluster. The sight of the skull swords' plunder affected him every bit as much as it did the barbarian.
"So vengeance it is," Ukko said, harshly. "We shall not rest until the bastards responsible for this are worm food." Ukko turned his back on the young Sessair warrior.
"And now it is time for us to liberate the land."
"Before breakfast," Ukko said without turning around.
"I'm not bedding down in the middle of a slaughterhouse," Ukko insisted, vehemently. "I'm not doing it and you can't make me."
"Suit yourself," Sláine said, shouldering Brain-Biter. "You do know they can't hurt us?"
"Shows how little you know, your warpishness: vengeful spirits, wraiths, the restless dead. Those words ring any bells in your thick head?"
"Come on then, another mile, and then we make camp. We don't want you having nightmares, now do we?"
"Just walk," Ukko grumbled.
"I'm just saying-"
"I know full well what you are
just
saying. Look, don't you find it a little disturbing that there are no corpses? I mean there was plenty of blood soaked into the ground, more than enough to suggest a handful of dead, but there's not a single charred body." Ukko scratched at his scalp.
"No sign that they have been buried either," Sláine agreed.
"I don't like it, Sláine. I don't like it one little bit. It gives me the creeps."
And although Sláine would never admit it, the absence of the dead unnerved him as well. There were no obvious graves, and the bodies could not have been so utterly consumed by the fires as to be reduced to nothing. There was blood and signs of murder aplenty, but no corpses. It didn't sit right with him. The only explanation was that someone had taken the village's dead, denying them their right to peace. There was little that was sacred any more. The skull swords and the vile Slough priests defiled the very land itself, splitting her body open and corrupting all that was healthy and vital. The miles and miles of soured land were all the evidence he needed to know the depravities the enemy was capable of - but the thought of violating the sanctity of death went beyond scorched earth and rotten harvests. It was repulsive.
They walked awhile in silence, each wrapped up in their own thoughts.
The moon as it rose was a perfect circle, its bright-white a knife-edge that cut the black night cleanly. Sláine strode ahead, locked in the turmoil of his doubts and angers. He wanted to run, to fight, to unleash the pent-up frustration trapped within him to dull the despair he felt gnawing away at him. They had Feg's precious book. They would deliver those dire words to the Celtic kings so that they might fight back when the skull swords came. He pictured Niamh, imagined the suppleness of her body beneath him, opening up for him. He tried to remember her face but it had been a long time and images of her beauty merged with the string of uglies and beauties he had rutted with since leaving his home. Though of course in his traitorous memory they were all shades of beautiful; after all, no man would bed an ugly woman, or admit to one as a conquest, especially to himself. What he remembered was an ideal but that did not stop him from thinking about her. Thoughts of Niamh calmed his restless edge. Perfect or not, she healed him and tamed his fears.
He cast a long moon shadow down the gentle hill.
A man knelt by a stone cairn on the roadside up ahead. Sláine slowed his walk. The man reached out and touched one of the rounded stones. He turned and looked their way. The moonlight made him appear ill, his skin impossibly pale, dark crags drawn in by age, and hollows added by grief.
"Can I help you?"
"We have no wish to intrude on your farewell," Sláine called.
The stranger eased himself slowly to his feet. He was a wisp of a man, built like the willow bow at his feet. Even as the shadows shifted it was plain to see that he was an ugly man, his face pitted with the scars of some pox he had survived. His smile was warm, belying the sadness in his eyes.
"Well met," he called out, dusting his hands off on his britches. "Caoilfhionn would not object to you joining our farewell, I am sure."
"Your friend?" Sláine nodded towards the cairn. "I am sorry for your loss."
There was a scattering of trinkets, a jade necklace and a silver brooch fashioned in an endless knot, left as an offering for the dead. Neither piece looked particularly valuable. Beside them were a pack and a small harp. The harp's frame bore the countless chips and dents of constant travel.
"She was murdered this gone night," the stranger said, looking down at the mound of stones. "It seems so little for a life doesn't it? A pile of rocks and a few cheap jewels on a roadside in the middle of nowhere. She was worth so much more in life."
"Keeps the crows off," Ukko said, earning a cuff around the ear from Sláine. The dwarf grumbled, twisting his face. "Well, it does, doesn't it?"
"I'm sure she'd be happy to feed the Morrigan's birds. There are worse fates, especially for a woman like Caoilfhionn. She was a devotee of the three-faced Goddess, though she lived as a Weatherwitch. It was a petty magic, to be able to read the whims of nature and make gewgaws that promised luck in love and healthy harvests, but even such a small gift in these dark days appears to be worth the enmity of the butcher Feg."
"Slough Feg; now that is a name I never tire of hearing, stranger." The irony of his words was not lost on the man.
"You know the Lord Weird then?"
"Who does not? A man of his appetites earns his fame."
"More importantly," said Ukko. "His weirdness knows old Sláine here."
"Indeed? Feg's soldiers sought Caoilfhionn out. Her friends tried to hide her but what can a handful of farmers do against armed soldiers?"
"Precious little," Sláine agreed. "They turned her over to the skull swords?"
"No, they refused, forcing the soldiers' hand. These were simple people. They couldn't have anticipated the wrath their refusal brought down upon their heads. The skull swords went from house to house, setting fire to every homestead in the village and still they would not give her up, so the soldiers dragged one of the women into the village square and cut her tongue out, promising to do it again, every five minutes, until Caoilfhionn gave herself up. She had no choice. She surrendered to save her friends; her life in exchange for theirs. The cowards slit her throat, bleeding her out into the dirt like some fatted calf. And worse, they forced her friends to watch her die."
"And then they killed them," Sláine said, supplying the end of the bloody story.
"And then they killed them," the stranger agreed. "War - because that is exactly what this is, make no mistake - war should be between soldiers, not slaughtering peasants whose only crime is poaching to fill their bellies. Not burning down their homes. Not slitting the throat of a woman who made love potions and told people stories to bring happiness. It is barbaric." There was anguish in his voice, sadness in his eyes.
"These are black times," Sláine agreed.
"That they are, my new friend, that they are. Come, sit with me, raise a jug of pocheen and toast the departed on their way to the Otherworld."
"It would be an honour to stand vigil with you."
The man held out his hand. "Siothrún."
Sláine clasped Siothrún's wrist. "Well met, Siothrún. I am Sláine Mac Roth, and this little weasel is my, and I use the term very loosely, friend, Ukko."
They broke cornbread on the roadside. The thick cakes were dry and needed considerable chewing to digest, but they were food. Sláine hadn't realised how hungry he was until he had swallowed the first dry mouthful and felt his gut revolt. He crammed the rest of the cake into his mouth and ate ravenously.
Siothrún pulled a clay jar of potato wine from his sack and uncorked it. He took a swig and handed it to Sláine. It was a bitter brew, and potent. Sláine drank deeply, feeling the bite of the alcohol even before the first swallow was halfway down his throat.
He smacked his lips and passed the jar on to Ukko.
"They killed everyone, yet you live," Ukko said, stating the obvious. He took a deep swallow and spluttered, nearly coughing up half of his lungs. "That's disgusting! The drink," he said a moment later. Ukko shook his head violently, contorting his face as though trying to scrape the taste of the pocheen from his tongue with the top row of his teeth. "Not the fact that you're alive. You being alive is good, obviously." He broke off into a coughing fit. Sláine slapped him on the back, hard enough to rattle his jaws. "Much better than being dead."
"Ah, thank you for clarifying. Yes, I live. Though I will confess that right now it feels like my curse. I live but I don't weep for the lost. These were my friends too, my people. I should weep for them. I ought to be wracked by grief. Instead Feg's men have planted a black need for vengeance in my soul. I want them to hurt. I want them to fear for their children, their wives. I want them to forget what it feels like to be safe. I want their homes to be ash, their loved ones dead at their feet. And they have done this to me."
Sláine took the jar of potato wine back from Ukko and drank deeply. He felt a moment's light-headedness as he turned too quickly to pass the clay jar back to Siothrún, who stoppered it and stowed it back in his pack. As he did, his sleeve rode up, revealing a small crescent-shaped scar, the skin burned smooth.
"So you didn't run away to save your own skin?"
The stranger chuckled mirthlessly. "No, friend Ukko, I did not run. I arrived at the village too late to save them. Otherwise, if I thought it could have made a difference, I would have been down there with them at the last. As it was I saw the last few fall beneath the bloody swords of Feg's men. There was nothing I could do."
"Well at least you didn't run in like an idiot and get yourself killed," Ukko said encouragingly. "That's something."
"You'll have to excuse my ugly little friend," Sláine said. "He idolises cowards. I think he aspires to be one."
"I already am," Ukko smirked. "And proud of it. The world can never be short of enough cowards, believe you me. The very foundation of any functioning society is built on cowardice."
"I am not sure I understand, and to be honest I am not sure I
want
to understand," Siothrún said.
"Oh, it is. It is," Ukko said enthusiastically. "Cowardice spawns discussion, alliances, treaties, even peace. Imagine a world filled with heroes. Not only would it be excruciatingly dull, dull, dull, it would be brutal. No hero ever solved a dispute by the power of his mighty intellect. He hits things. Cowards make life safe for normal folk like you and me. He who turns and runs away lives to run again another day."
"Well, that's one way of looking at it, I suppose," Siothrún conceded.
"Don't listen to his blather, he'll have you convinced day is night and black is white and somewhere along the way to that revelation he'll have you parting with your purse and thanking him for making off with your money."
"You say that like it is a bad thing," Ukko said, his grin anything but innocent.
They talked some more, Siothrún recounting some of the stories he had heard on the road, Sláine sharing some of the horrors he had seen perpetrated in the name of Feg. They talked of death and sadness; of children being caught and set alight for the amusement of the soldiers, of wives being hunted like game, brought down by arrows in the legs and raped savagely for sport, criminals burnt alive in giant wicker effigies, and of the sickness blighting both crops and villagers across the desolate land.
Siothrún reached across the pack for his harp. Setting it on his knee, he plucked a few stray notes, teasing a melody out of it as he adjusted the tautness of the strings. Like the harpist, his instrument was ugly to look at, but the beauty of both resonated through the music they created together. Siothrún sang a song of sorrow and joy, his voice rich and melancholic. It was a song of keening. A lament. His voice rose, his words bittersweet:
"
Do not look to my pillow in the morning
Do not reach out to touch my cheek
I am not there.
I do not sleep.
Do not look to my grave and weep
Do not mourn, my love
I am not there.
I know no rest
I am scattered on the thousand winds that blow away my pain
I am the thief that steals from your heart
I am the whisper half-heard in the night
And when you turn
I am not there.
I have no face.
I am melting in the newly fallen snow.
I am the kiss of sunlight on ripened corn.
I am the soft and gentle autumn rain on your face.
I am not gone.
I am here, my love, I am here."
Siothrún laid his harp aside and closed his eyes. His pitted cheeks were stained with the tracks of his tears.