“Catch them a wiggly silver fish now,” the gray-haired man said. “Come and throw some bones with us while they take your water to your swollen wife, eh? We’ve got us a few shells to bet.”
“Aye, and we’ve got some black pearls, and pink,” the other teased, holding up a small pouch and shaking it about. “To be sure, you can outplay a couple o’ old men.”
Kal smiled and shook his head.
“Well, get me some water, too, then!” the old gray-hair grumbled, and he tossed a pail to Kal, who caught it and nodded, glad to oblige.
He started for the water, but had only gone a couple of steps before a scream sounded from the southern end of the village, away from the water. And such a scream it was, different in pitch than anything Kal had ever heard, more primal, more filled with terror, the absolute terror, as if in the moment of death realized.
Kal swung about, noting the youngsters doing likewise, his first thoughts revolving around a snake perhaps—some big ones had been seen recently—or perhaps a bear had wandered too near.
It wasn’t until the rumbling intonation of a conch horn sounded that Kal remembered the warning of Talmadge the trader that very morning, and when other horns began to blow, those words seemed suddenly to be a dire reality. He shook his head, trying to deny the obvious. Fasach Crann had sentries out far from the huts, out near the mountain’s foothills and along every likely approach to the village. Those guards should have given a more advanced warning! But the scream had come from inside the village perimeter, and the horns blowing now were among the houses.
“To the boats!” the old gray-hair said, stiffly rolling out of his seat and walking stiff-legged toward the shore. “Away all!” he yelled up the beach to the youngsters, who indeed were already sprinting for the small boats tucked up on the sands. They had been taught well, as had all in Fasach Crann, that the conch horns meant one thing and one thing only: Usgar raiders. And when the deamhan gods descended from Fireach Speuer, those who could not fight were taught to simply drop everything and get out onto the water.
Kal spun about, confused, his thoughts climbing all over each other and swirling in a dozen directions, but every one ultimately leading back to Innevah. He glanced at the lake, to see the fishing boats already putting up their square sails, oars already in the water. Too distant, he knew, for it would take a long while for the fleet to get back to shore and the men to coordinate a defense.
The old gray-hair grabbed Kal by the arm. “To the boats!” he yelled in Kal’s face, but Kal yanked his arm free and stumbled away from him, shaking his head, at a loss.
He scrambled through the sand, tossing aside the buckets, stumbling and trying to get his feet under him as he charged for his home. On the far side of the village, ahead and to Kal’s left, there came a crash as a hut collapsed, and a belch of black smoke and a swirl of sparks lifted into the air.
“Innevah,” the man said repeatedly, running with abandon. She could hardly walk on those swollen feet! How could she possibly escape?
By the time he got to his modest hut, which was halfway across the village, more screams filled the air, and smoke rose from a dozen fires. Kal even caught sight of some of the deamhan raiders at one point, though thankfully they didn’t seem to notice him!
He threw open the door to his hut, to find the place empty.
Nodding, trying to clear his thoughts, he scrambled back outside and rushed toward a nearby copse of trees, a place he and Innevah had long ago spied out as a refuge in case of an emergency. His focus entirely on that spot, a tangle of brush hiding a hollow under a tree, Kal did not notice the growing commotion to the side or behind. He threw himself headlong to the tangle and pulled aside the blocking branches.
He gasped with relief and nodded when Innevah’s face looked back at him.
“You should be on the boats!” she whispered harshly.
“I could not leave you,” he said, belly-crawling in. But Innevah stopped him, and when he looked at her with puzzlement, he found her face ashen as she stared past him.
“Oh, faoin,” Innevah cursed, calling him a fool. “The boats…” She shook her head, crestfallen, a woman who knew she was doomed.
Kal glanced back and rolled to the side, seeing a raider rushing his way, a young man, perhaps still a teenager, clutching one of the distinctive crystal-tipped spears of the Usgar, and with a look on his face that surely unnerved the lakeman.
A look of wildness, feral even, beyond fear.
Demonic.
Kal spun and scrambled to his feet, taking up a branch. He shook away his fears, remembering Innevah, remembering his child. He had to find some way to defeat this demon, and quickly, and be on his way if he and his wife were to have any chance of getting to the lake!
Or perhaps he could chase this one off, he thought, and he charged with all the ferocity he could muster, growling even, and waving the branch with abandon.
But the demon calmly held his ground and slapped at the branch with his spear, and after the first exchange, wisps of smoke rose from Kal’s weapon, and the crystal-tipped spear, tinged red within, showed licks of flames.
The god-power, Kal silently cursed!
Ahead Kal charged, and the youth would not run, and so Kal understood that he had to get a quick kill. “To the lake!” he called to Innevah. “Go!”
He heard her crawling out of the hollow behind him, and he pressed on with ferocious abandon, driving back the young Usgar raider.
He glanced left as Innevah started to stumble away, and he gasped as she reversed course, yelped, and dived back into the hollow.
Kal should have looked right instead.
For then he would have seen the spear flying for him, and might have fully dodged aside. Still, Kal was a warrior, and a fine one, and as soon as he felt the scrape of the tip just under his ribs, he pivoted gracefully on the heel of his right foot, turning fast. He got gashed badly, but he breathed a tiny sigh of relief, thinking he had avoided complete disaster.
A very short-lived moment of relief, for that spear’s demon magic was a bit different than the one the youth before him held, its crystal tip showing a dark gray beneath its sparkling surface. As it sliced through Kal’s skin, that magic ignited, a sudden and jolting burst of lightning that had Kal crying out in surprise, replete with a fiery pain that sent him lurching and stumbling to the side.
His teeth chattered and his hair stood on end, and he went many heartbeats without a heartbeat. Still, he might have recovered, and even regained his balance, but the young demon raider before him, with cold and dead eyes, didn’t hesitate at all, and used Kal’s moments of imbalance to find an opening.
With a growl the Usgar drove his spear past the frantically waving branch and into Kal’s chest. This weapon, too, released its magic upon impact, and Kal felt the sudden burst of a fireball within his ribs, beneath his skin, sizzling and searing and dropping him to the dirt with a level of agony he had never before imagined possible.
And the young Usgar followed the thrust and stood over him, holding the spear shaft, its tip still buried into Kal’s chest. The demon locked eyes with Kal, and Kal saw clearly the young man’s tears.
His tears?
Tears in the eyes of a deamhan god?
But they proved to be merciless tears, cold and full of some anger Kal could not begin to decipher.
The young warrior pressed the crystal spear tip in deeper and ground it about.
Kal fast went beyond pain. His head lolled to the side and he saw Innevah, his dear Innevah, being dragged out of the hollow by another Usgar, then punched hard in the face as she tried to resist.
Kal was beyond comprehension by then, however, his thoughts locked on the reality of the moment of his death. He stared into the yawning darkness.
And it stared back.
* * *
Tay Aillig nodded with satisfaction as he watched his raiders leaving Fasach Crann, their backs bent under packs heavily laden with winter supplies.
The war-party leader glanced back as another hut collapsed in flames, and lifted his gaze to the lake, where the boats full of able-bodied villagers still hadn’t come ashore to mount a defense, so swift and efficient had the Usgar swarmed the town. Tay Aillig smiled widely at the success, at the pain and humiliation his troupe had inflicted here, at the smoke spreading the warning to all the villages of Loch Beag, the certain reminder of the martial superiority of the mountain tribe. At least five villagers lay dead, another dozen had been wounded and left to writhe in pain—and in humiliation, for their elongated skulls had been etched with the markings of Usgar—the angled crystal of the sacred grove known as Usgar’s Horn—as a permanent reminder to them and to their village fellows of their defeat this day.
Another dozen villagers were dragged away with the departing warriors, including a handful of women who would be used to satisfy the excitement of the raiders, then sent back down the mountain in shame, and perhaps impregnated with Usgar seed; an elderly pair who would be sacrificed to Usgar; four children still young enough to be broken of all spirit that they might serve for a time as slaves; and the pregnant woman Tay Aillig had personally dragged out from the hollow under the tree after helping Brayth kill her mate.
Normally the captured children would be viewed as the greatest plunder, for the value of proper, broken slaves could not be underestimated. But even that prize would be overshadowed here by the rarest and most coveted catch of all: the pregnant woman. This one was afforded special treatment in the long march back home. She could not be violated by the warriors as the other women would be, nor abused or injured in any way. Indeed, the strongest men bore her on a stretcher, and gently.
She carried within her the perfect slave, and one that wouldn’t be so repulsive to look at, like its long-headed kin.
Tay Aillig led the group at a strong pace right to the foothills of Fireach Speuer, and up to a defensible position atop a high rocky jag, which offered a clear view of the lakeside village below. There they watched for a long while, ensuring no pursuit (though they really didn’t expect the weak and cowering lakemen to mount any kind of counterattack), and there the raiders feasted on their booty, the meals of fish and crabs and oysters, and the pleasure of the women captives.
Tay Aillig found Brayth upon one high stone, where the young man had volunteered as a sentry.
“That one is young,” the war-party leader said to his novice warrior, indicating one of the captive women, who was really more a girl, barely into her teens.
“She will make a fine slave then.”
“No, she is too old,” Tay Aillig explained. “She will never stop looking for her home and so will cost too many eyes to keep her from mischief. And she has too much strength to hold her until the next sacrifices.” He guided Brayth’s eyes to the doomed elderly couple, who would suffice to quiet the Crystal God through the difficult winter season.
“You will enjoy that strength and fire now,” Tay Aillig promised, and Brayth stared at him curiously.
“You would have me kill her?”
“We’ve no reason to kill her. We are warriors, not cowards.”
“Then what?”
Tay Aillig directed his attention to the side, where a group of raiders huddled above another captive, four men holding her down, while others took their turn upon her.
“Take her. Enjoy her,” Tay Aillig told him. “You have earned your pleasure by spilling the blood of your enemy.”
Brayth hesitated and appeared quite scared, which made Tay Aillig smile all the wider. He remembered his first time, returning from a raid much like this one, with all eyes upon him. This offer was not so unlike his order for Brayth to kill Aghmor on their way down the mountain, for it too was a demand to put aside fears and doubts and do as expected.
Brayth licked his lips nervously and glanced about as if cornered, seeming as if he meant to turn and leap from the high rock to his death. It took him many heartbeats to steady himself enough to go, and even then, he walked with steps slow and hesitating. Tay Aillig motioned to some others, and to the frightened young captive girl, and they rushed over, pulled her down, and tore off her clothes.
Tay Aillig nodded as he watched Brayth perform as was expected of the promising young Usgar. The raid leader nodded with satisfaction, thinking that he had shaped a competent young warrior here.
Yet another victory for his successful raid.
Later that same afternoon, with the sun low in the west beyond the lake, they found Aghmor, still alive, surprisingly, and clutching the enchanted spear in desperation.
Tay Aillig bent over him. “So are you brave and powerful to survive your trials?” he asked, soft enough so that only Brayth and a few others nearby could hear.
The gravely wounded man, shivering and sweating, managed a weak nod.
“Or are you so much the coward that you fear death?” Tay Aillig taunted, and he spat on the ground to the side as he rose up and turned away from Aghmor.
A few steps away, Tay Aillig looked back at the weakling, and had to remind himself repeatedly that the numbers of Usgar were simply too few to discard any, no matter how worthless. He also reminded himself that returning with the full war party would only heighten his own glory. On his command, his minions built a second stretcher to carry Aghmor home, while others were dispatched to find a proper place to camp for the night.
The next morning, after a night of indulgent revelry, the Usgar set free the captive women and sent them running down the mountainside. Tay Aillig pulled Brayth to his side and together they followed the departing prisoners to make sure that they would not stop running all the way back to their village. Tay Aillig wasn’t about to let any turnabout to follow the war party’s ascent, thus revealing the secret trails that allowed easier access to the high passes of the Usgar.
“They are so ugly,” Brayth said when Tay Aillig at last informed him that they could turn back to catch up to their fellow raiders.
“But she was pleasurable,” Tay Aillig replied. “First time, yes?”
Brayth nodded, a bit embarrassed.
“This is why we live,” Tay Aillig told him. “To hunt, to fight, to swive. To be the strongest is to please Usgar.”
“To be a man,” said Brayth, and Tay Aillig nodded.
“The lakemen are weak. Weak and ugly. They are horned women, nothing more.” He pulled Brayth close and looked him straight in the eye, then grabbed him tightly in the crotch to accentuate his point. “And they do not understand the power of that horn. Now, you do.”
Brayth winced a bit from the uncomfortable squeeze, but he managed to paint on a determined expression.
4
THE SECRET AND THE SACRED
Talmadge knelt over the body of the man called Huana’kal, studying the corpse’s curious wounds. He noted the blackened skin under the right side of Kal’s ribs, at the end of a long and jagged scar.
“I’ve seen a wound akin to this,” he told the few villagers beside him.
“Tell us, then, trader,” one man replied.
“Poor Kal was struck down by the god of thunder on a clear day!” another asserted.
“A deamhan, not a god!” a third argued, and so a commotion ensued as Fasach Crann villagers argued back and forth.
Talmadge closed his eyes and ignored the bickering, sending his thoughts back to the days of his own village, when he was a boy. A trio of Abellican monks, maddened by the carnage of the rosie plague upon the lands of Honce-the-Bear, had come all the way out to his village and other settlements nearby, crying for repentance from the people, blaming the men and women, one and all, for the plague, which they insisted was a curse from an angry god.
Talmadge let just enough of the conversation about him into his consciousness to note the eerie similarities.
“Gods and demons,” he spat, to himself more than any of the others, for he understood that they wouldn’t listen to his reasoning anyway. “Such a fine excuse.”
No god and no demon had done th
is, he knew. He thought back to the crazed monks, Abellican brothers with magical gemstones who inflicted great pain upon themselves, telling the flock that they would take unto their own flesh the suffering of the world, to spare all others.
“Idiots,” he whispered under his breath.
He looked to the blood and burn on Kal’s chest, and pulled the tattered remains of Kal’s shirt aside to study the wound. Obviously, a spear had been driven into the man, a wound that surely looked mortal, and when Talmadge inspected more closely, he realized just how undeniably fatal that blow had been. For under the surface, he saw melted flesh and charred bone—it was as if a monk had shoved his hand inside of the man and in there had released the fiery power of a ruby.
How could this be?
Talmadge settled back on his heel, his eyes lifting to the great and tall mountain, lit now with the rays of the late afternoon sun, the red maples and yellow-leafed autumn oaks shining brilliantly. A display worthy of a god, Talmadge thought, but no, these Usgar were not gods.
But they had gemstone magic.
He looked around at the villagers.
“They took Innevah from here!” one man cried from the side, from near a large tree. Talmadge didn’t understand the significance. He locked gazes with another man and wanted to explain about the gemstones, and thus, the Usgar.
But he didn’t, for what would be the point? Given the obvious advantage of this mountain tribe, perhaps it was better for the folk of Loch Beag to think of them as deamhan gods, and to flee whenever the Usgar drew near.
“They took Innevah, thick with child!” the man cried.
“They took several women,” said another.
“And young ones are missing!” another wailed, and indeed, Talmadge could hear the calls of men and women, yelling out for their missing children.