Saga Mac Brón: Chapter 11

Photo by Brett Sayles

10 minutes

The Devil’s Beard

“Mother?”

The prince clutched the precious pile of wood, the driest stuff he’d found in the soaked forest, and stared at a point above her. They’d made camp just inside the dark forest, under one of the many piles of glacial rocks dropped here in ages past, then sharpened by time and the evil of the land. The boy’s arms and legs were tattooed with ugly lacerations from the bridge that crossed into the Devil’s Beard. It had come partially alive as they’d crossed it, its gray beams like vampire tentacles, bearing fangs. The little mouths had slowed their passage, and torn at them, like thorns in a briar field. The empress, bearing her own wounds, crouched within the makeshift cave, tending to the barbarian. Mac Brón lay with his head in her lap. He did not clutch at the place where his hand had been, but stared up blankly at the sharp moss-covered stones.

“MOTHER!” repeated Tammet.

“I’m here,” she said, looking up. “Best not to shout. What is it?”

Tammet did not look at her. His gaze was fixed on the accidental archway above her; on the things that crouched there.

“His shades,” said the prince. “They’ve returned.”

Rusu sighed deeply. “Yes. I know. But they cannot harm you or me. Come along with that wood.”

Tammet furrowed his brow, and took several steps forward. One of the shades looked up at him, then back down at the barbarian. The boy made himself walk forward until he was inside the boulder archway, just below the three fiends.

There was a small fire going, and he piled the damp wood beside it till it would be dry enough to burn. His mother’s hands were pressed gently against either side of Mac Brón’s head. She sang softly to him. It was not the music of the West, but of the High Ones, joy and sorrow braided together, words that couldn’t be translated, for they meant only themselves. The prince crouched down beside her.

“Why have they come back?” he whispered.

She continued to sing. The barbarian stared up into the overhanging rocks, as if he could see through them to the dark things that perched up there.

“You’ll need to revisit the wound,” she said. “Then, please lay your hands on me. The pain is hurting my focus, and I need it all.”

Tammet looked down at Mac Brón’s outstretched right arm. The hand was off at the wrist, and blood seeped out onto a bed of grass that the empress had piled there.

“What do you want me to do with him? I can’t regrow limbs.”

She did not answer. All of her concentration was on the barbarian. He did not doubt that she was exerting much of her power just to keep his mind intact, nor that these efforts alone stayed off the things that waited above him. Tammet crawled over to the arm, and unwrapped it. The cut was clean. The arm ought to be pouring forth life-liquid, draining the man, but Tammet had used his gift to hold back the flood. The wound only trickled. He could not restore the missing extremity, but he could stay off infection, and keep the wound just as it had been at the moment it was received. He stretched forth his hand, and lightly touched Mac Brón’s wrist.

Power went out from him. Something like a sphere of light bloomed around the barbarian’s wrist. The blood stopped again. The wound was arrested, but not healed. If she would have let him, he could have fused the bones and sinews that remained, and made the skin regrow there, but she would not. Rusu had other plans for Mac Brón, and Tammet knew better than to argue with a daughter of the Enthellian. Yet they must do something, for the big man was now an invalid, and they must soon traverse lands more perilous than those they’d escaped.

“Why have they come back?” he whispered, nodding at the arch.

“He is near despair,” she said, after pause. “It draws them.”

Tammet frowned. “That doesn’t seem fair. He was willing to give his life for us. What claim could they have on him?”

She sighed, and shook her head. “Whatever claim he gives them. This is a fell charm; the dark twin of my own. Indeed, I begin to suspect what sort of being laid it upon him. To be sure, it has the flavor of woman.”

Tammet turned toward her quickly. “You don’ think-”

She nodded. “I feel it in him. In them. In the aura that surrounds him, and draws them nigh. So I have thought from the beginning, when he first found us in the Near-North. But hush. The man can hear us.”

Tammet looked away from her, frustrated. It was a dark turn of fate. They’d only made it this far because the barbarian had helped them. Now they faced the darkness without his help. And, surely, they were duty-bound to protect him, as he had them.

“Can anything drive them away?” he said. “Won’t they come and take him while we sleep?”

She smiled grimly, and looked at him for the first time.

“Sleep we must, while we can. If our journey takes us past the cliffs, and down into the the Black Lands, then sleep will be the one thing we must never do there.”

The color drained from Tammet’s face. He was so tired. She looked on him kindly.

“Perhaps it will not come to that. Either way, we’ll sleep here. They will not touch him while I touch him, for they are but shadows of the power that sent them. She is dead now, and she was never my equal.”

He shuddered. “You know who she was? I mean her name?”

Rusu narrowed her eyes. “Do not mix yourself up in the business of your betters. And don’t be overcurious about dark things. Is it not enough to know that she was among the fallen? What matters now is this: who was she to Mac Brón? That I can answer, for I feel it in his very skin. Tammet, she was his own mother.”

Tammet looked at her, horrified, then down at Mac Brón. The boy raked a hand through his thick hair. “Then what hope is there for him? His very being is cursed. And will we draw this wounded, cursed creature into cursed lands? No wonder we’ve had such black luck so far. The man is a lodestone of—”

“Enough!” snapped Rusu.

The empress’ eyes flashed with a dangerous fire, and her son fell back from her. Never had he seen such pure rage in that fair face, and he raised his hands to hide his eyes. When he finally lowered them, the empress had recovered her calm, but her eyes still simmered, and her face was like a burning torch.

“No one,” she began, in crisp tones, “is by nature cursed. None but they who give themselves entirely to the darkness are wicked in their being. And even then, being itself remains always good, though a curse for the wicked. What you have spoken is evil. ‘Tis the very counsel of the Evil One, the Worm of All Worms. This evil did not create Mac Brón, for it has no power to create, nor to keep in being, but only to twist. You speak the very words of those who crouch there above us, whispering to this warrior’s soul that he is rotten in his essence, and that all his noblest deeds must come to ashes. By saying these things, in his presence, you — boy! — are aiding them!”

Tammet stared at the cave floor, chastened. He picked up a wet log, and began digging aimlessly in the ground. “Then what, Mother.”

“Tonight, we rest,” she said. “Build the fire up. We must get good sleep. You must tie my hand to Mac Brón’s, so that he is not lost in the night. Tomorrow, we shall try to go south through this darkened wood. If only we can keep south, and out of sight the border fortresses, it may be that we can reach the end of the Devil’s Beard, and skirt the Diamond Wall. From there we may perhaps pass beyond the eastern borders of Ketch, and make for the isthmus, and cross in into Kryiok. And then…”

As she spoke, Tammet tried to imagine it. So many things would have to go right just to make it that far. Even in Nezzyl, they’d not be safe. The shadow had lengthened indeed, for Bolghim could never have made it as far as Wyverheld without the help — or willful ignorance — of some in the Triarchy of Nezzyl. And Tarkaric was at its western end! Yet the alternative was, if possible, more grim. To go through the Black Land itself? To walk south among the slaves of the Worm? And, if they were conquered there, death would be the smallest of concerns.

“Very well,” he said. “We’ll try to pass through the Devil’s Beard. But rangers patrol these lands. I cannot believe it will be easy to avoid them.”

She smiled, and then, to his surprise, laughed. “‘Twill be impossible, son. Only miracles will take us so far. But one miracle at a time.”

She clasped Mac Brón’s hand in hers, and held the two hands out to him. Tammet took cord from Mac Brón’s pack, and tied their hands together. Then the empress settled down beside the barbarian, clutching him to herself. It was a strange thing to Tammet, for although she held him close to her body, it was not in the manner of wife with husband, but of a mother with her wounded child.

They made five miles the first day; eight or nine the second. Mac Brón walked under his own power, but did not speak. The three shades trailed them closely, and it was necessary at all times for the empress to join hands with the barbarian. This was a great humiliation for them both, for nothing could be done privately. At length, the empress taking the prince aside, laid hands upon him, and poured into him some measure of her power so that he could be a vessel of protection in those moments when privacy was most necessary. Yet this was a two edged sword, for the power that flowed naturally from her being, dissipated quickly apart from her life force. And it drained her to make the transfer. By the third day, Tammet had come to resent the barbarian, who, like a child, had to be kept safe from his trailing nightmares. Finally, he’d had enough.

They huddled about a fire in what passed for a clearing in the Devil’s Beard. Moss-covered boulders lay everywhere, and vine-chocked trees grew through and on the rocks, as if hungry to eat them. Torchlight from a turret on the Wall of Fortresses that overlooked the Black Lands could just be seen through a small break in the trees. In truth, they were far too close to that outpost to think they were safe from patrolling rangers, but to go any further west would mean hiking on an incline, and in even thicker woods. Mac Brón, as usual, stared blankly into the fire, allowing the empress to hold his hand. The empress dozed against her son. When she was fully asleep, Tammet turned to Mac Brón.

“How does it feel, barbarian, to be treated like an infant?”

Mac Brón continued to stare into the fire, but his jaw clenched slightly.

“I asked you a question,” repeated the prince.

The barbarian sat up, and finally turned to face Tammet. “I did not ask for any help, boy.”

“Oh,” said Tammet, “so you can still speak? And here I thought you’d become entirely helpless. I was beginning to wonder if we’d need to find you changing rags, and a bottle for milk.”

Mac Brón grimaced. He looked at the soft hand that held his own. As his glance came back to Tammet, it passed over the three leering things waiting on the other side of the fire. Tammet caught the small pause; the lingering fear that Mac Brón tried to hide.

“Nothing will change until you want it to,” said Tammet.

Mac Brón looked at him, considering.

“I have no desire to put you, or your mother at risk,” he said. “If you wish, I will go off into the woods, and let them take me.”

“Coward!” said Tammet. “You’d give up, just like that? Do you want to be damned?”

The barbarian looked at him soberly.

“I have no power to change this,” said Mac Brón. “I was cursed by my birth. But I do not wish to take you, or your mother with me. It must come sooner or later for me. If you wish, if it would help you, I shall go off now, and be done with it.”

As he said these things, the three shades stepped forward. Now they stood in the fire itself, hovering over him, making the flames black and blue. Tammet layed his slumbering mother on the moss, stood, and stepped between the fire and Mac Brón.

“Look at me!” he said.

The barbarian’s wide eyes came to focus on the prince. Tammet could see that he was scared to his very marrow of the things that stood behind him in the fire. Suddenly, the prince made a dash for the bundle of supplies. He unwrapped the clothes that held Mac Brón’s twisted sword, then stepped back before the fire.

“Take it!” he said.

Mac Brón didn’t move. In one motion, the prince drew his own sword, and brought the tip through the air, slicing Mac Brón’s cheek to the beard. The barbarian’s eyes went wide with surprise. Again Tammet offered him the pommel of his own black sword.

“Take it!”

Mac Brón stared at the weapon, as if at a memory.

“Take it! Take it!” shouted Tammet, cutting him again across the other cheek. “The next blow goes through you!”

The barbarian glared at him. “Idiot! My hand is off-”

“Use the other!” shouted Tammet, and prepared to run him through.

He had every intention of doing it, for if the northman would not fight, and reclaim his purpose, his life meant death to them. Tammet’s blade pierced jerkin, and entered skin, before a shattering blow knocked it wide left. Mac Brón rose, and swung at him. Tammet danced aside, drawing Mac Brón toward the clearing. Then the boy charged. Mac Brón stood his ground, and engaged him. Even so, as they fought, the barbarian’s eyes drifted again and again toward the leering shades. Whenever they did, Tammet redoubled his fury, aiming to kill the man rather than let him surrender. The violence and racket of their fighting woke the empress, and Rusu looked on in wonder, and in deep concern for Mac Brón.

As the fight stretched on, hope seeped into Tammet’s heart, for he saw that so long as Mac Brón fought, the dark things did not come closer. Mac Brón must have seen it too, for he began to throw himself into the work, dancing about, and once even smiling his grim smile. It was like those days when they’d first climbed above the canyon, and the barbarian had taught the boy. Now the youth instructed him.

“Keep at it, old man,” shouted the prince. “Else I cut off your leg as well, and use the skin to make you swaddling clothes.”

Tiring at length from the struggle, Mac Brón kicked dirt into the boy’s eyes, then knocked him from his feet, meaning to put the blade across his throat and remind him who was master. Yet the boy had learned his lessons well. When the barbarian leaned over him, black blade on his jugular, he found a dagger-point at his loins.

“Try it, and you lose something more,” said Tammet.

Mac Brón threw his head back, and laughed. He cast the black blade aside, swept Tammet up from the ground, and buried him in his arms. This time the boy did not protest the embrace, but gripped the big man as best he could. His eyes were wet, but surely it was only from the dirt Mac Brón had kicked into them. After a time, Mac Brón released him, and both looked over toward Rusu.

She stood beside the fire, exhausted, but quietly happy. The shades had retreated from the fire, and were now in the tree line. The empress’ face was like that of a young mother whose boy has taken its first, halting steps. Tammet knew what he’d done. He felt her pride in him, and he swelled. It was a lovely moment, for all the time it lasted. The smile fled from her face.

“Impressive swordplay,” said a voice behind him. “But quite a racket, I’m afraid.”

The voice was not Mac Brón’s. Tammet turned to see five men, ranger guards of the Wall, stepping out into the clearing.

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