Saga Mac Brón: Chapter 9

15 minutes

Violence

The Price That Must Be Paid

“This is madness,” muttered Mac Brón.

The three travelers rambled along the northern side of the gorge. They followed the goats, sorry beasts who alone in all these lands seemed to bear them no ill will. There was hardly a path, and, though the wall was not so steep, their ankles bore a heavy load just to keep them on it.

“But there’s no other choice,” muttered the boy.

“Aye, and that’s by design,” spat the warrior. “We’ve been maneuvered here. Someone has chosen, boy. Someone who wishes you ill.”

“Enough!” shouted Tammet. “I’ve had enough of your doomsaying.”

He halted so quickly, that his mother, who was holding onto him, nearly lost her footing. Mac Brón turned to glare at the prince, but he also reached out to steady the empress. Her face was a shade of gray, as if the land were a vampire, and she its prey. Tammet looked at Mac Brón, almost pleading. “Can’t you see that you’re not helping her?” his eyes seemed to say.

Mac Brón took in the wide V of the canyon, straining to see its end. Twice he thought he’d spied that elusive bridge on the horizon, and twice it had faded like a daydream. Meanwhile, inch-by-inch, the gorge grew steeper. How long would it be before they were forced to descend into the flats? He recalled again the sea water that had slid down the serpent’s throat. If this land was a toothed beast, the gorge was its tongue, and the flats…something worse. Perhaps its stomach. He addressed himself to the empress.

“I will say one thing more, then. We can turn around now, if you like, and go back into the Devil’s Eyebrow, and chance the road. Failing that, we might head west, and skirt the Stjörnur Lach, and risk the Empire Road. We needn’t take the highway itself. We could haunt its edges; beyond sight of the highway guard, but not very deep into the wilds. Surely whatever we meet there cannot be much worse than this place. Either way, the trip will be perilous.”

She listened patiently, and seemed truly to consider his words. Tammet waited on his mother’s decision. This very consideration seemed to wear on his resolve to go forward.

“Warrior,” she said at last. “I am the queen of all Talahm-lár. My likeness hangs in a thousand taverns. My face is carved into every stone marker along the Empire Road. Such has been the custom of the House of Éadrom, that the people might find comfort in my face. I did not trouble myself about this before, for men only see what they think possible. Yet now we are pursued, and the steward’s lies follow us. If even one of my subjects recognizes me, or my son, then we shall fail. I must go this way. But you need not.”

Mac Brón looked away. He could not imagine abandoning her. Not, especially, when their eyes met. But his heart promised him that death was waiting here for him. He needed no charms to scry that. Then, boldly, he turned and took the empress’ hand in his own.

“My lady, this land is cursed. You know I speak true. There’s a price to pay for going this way.”

“Then I shall pay it,” she moaned. “Only let my boy claim his throne, and drive this impostor from it. He must live to see justice done for the emperor, and upon the steward. And I…I must help him while I can.”

Mac Brón sighed. A young goat edged its way between them, forcing the warrior to cling to the wall lest it knock him off.

“A price,” he repeated. “Set by another. And you may not be the one to decide who pays it. It could be your boy. It could be…”

He looked away again, ashamed. Yet she touched his face, and drew it up. There was no judgment in her eyes; only sorrow at having brought him into danger.

Neither of them spoke. A wind whistled down the north wall, and they leaned into the stone. It was cold air, and seemed to wedge itself between the wall and its riders, to pry them loose. A tear formed in Rusu’s eye. This time she could not wipe it away, for fear of falling, and so it rolled down her ashen cheek. Then Tammet spoke.

“Your shades, Mac Brón.”

It was no question. It didn’t need to be. The warrior stared at the boy, and understood. Even here, tiptoeing across the teeth and tongue of darkness, his shades had not re-appeared. So perhaps, just perhaps, there was hope.

“Aye,” replied the northman, and led them onward.

They crept along for another hour before coming to a ledge. Goats were huddled there, and Mac Brón was forced to use his sword to drive the beasts back out onto the canyon wall. The little ledge was only wide enough for three of them to huddle together, there amid the dung of goats. In this blessed alcove they rested, thanking whatever gods they prayed to for the reprieve. In another hour, they arose, and pressed on.

There was no hiding it now; the walls had become steeper. Moreover, the goat paths were no sure guide for them. The beasts could run alongside the stone, and leap between ledges. Their own way sometimes took them down, then up, then down again, yet Mac Brón never let the company linger near the sandy flats. At length, they were able to ascend, and to fall in with beasts from the herd.

The goats were strung out like ants along the gorge, yet they always seemed to stay within a few body lengths of each other. To the northman, this seemed a matter of animal morale. The herd gathered courage from itself. And perhaps the creatures thought of them as goats as well, for they made no move to drive them off the rocks.

At about mid-afternoon, they found another enclave. This was larger than the first, and housed a dozen animals. They had no luck evicting the whole lot of them, and Mac Brón did not wish to make enemies of the herd by prodding too forcibly with his sword. So they settled into a foul-smelling corner, where the goats would tolerate them. Leaning together, they closed their eyes for a time.

It wasn’t rain that woke Mac Brón. True, showers had come while they slept, and these could make the going perilous, if the rocks were slick. But that thought was a product of reasoning; something that occurred to him only after he’d awoken, and seen the evidence of rainfall. It was not raining now, so they’d missed the chance to fill their canteens. The rocks would likely be slippery. Both of these things were bad, yet they hadn’t drawn him forth from sleep. He felt panic, and didn’t know why. Then, listening, he did.

“What is that sound?” said Tammet, rubbing his eyes. “Oh, it rained!”

This noise was not rain, nor trickling water. But it was wet. It was disturbingly wet.

“I’ll look out,” said the northman.

“I’ll come too,” answered the prince.

“Suit yourself.”

When they poked their heads from the enclave, they saw the line of goats strung out along the wall to their left. None were moving. At first Mac Brón thought they were waiting for the path to dry. They looked down, toward the ashen flats, and were still as trees.

“Do you see that?” whispered Tammet.

Mac Brón followed the prince’s gaze to a shrub-covered finger of stone jutting up from the sand. There was something on the east end of it, just out of full sight. It was one of the burs — that much was clear — but something was in it, moving.

“Go, quietly,” his Mac Brón. “Do not cry out.”

“Why would I cr—”

“Hush!”

The two crept on, mindful of the slick rock. They came parallel with the large bur. Tammet stared at it.

“God of Light, I’m going to be sick!”

Mac Brón grabbed his arm, and squeezed.

“Quiet!” he hissed. “We don’t know if it sees or hears!”

But Tammet braced himself against the slick rock, and began retching.

The bur was a green, fibrous thing. Inside it, what was left of a man struggled. It was hard to tell where his body ended, and the bur began. It was not solid after all, but a pulsing, squeezing, oozing thing, formed of tendrils. Some of these also extended down into the sand. They pumped and sucked at him, making a terrible squelching sound.

It seemed to Mac Brón that the rain had woken up the nameless entity within the sandy flats, and it had given it energy with which to feed. It squeezed the man, and he screamed, and water and blood passed back and forth through the tendrils, into the man, and into the beast beneath the sand; sometimes spilling out, and dripping down into the sand. This man ought to have been dead a long time ago. This thing was keeping him alive; making him its extension, and its food. Here was the escaped slave.

“Kill it Mac Brón!”

Under other circumstances, the warrior might have laughed.

“Kill it? With fire from Heaven you mean?”

Tammet shook his head, then quickly covered his mouth.

“Not that. Kill that man! You have a knife, and an ax, I remember. It’s not far to throw. Put him out of his misery! What in black Hell is it doing to him?”

Mac Brón considered. The slave was in torment. What the thing did to him was worse — far worse — than death. And, he expected it had lasted several days, for the man must have entered the gorge long before they had. He thought of the other burs he’d seen on lush fingers of jutting rock. Did each contain some wretch like this? Finally he shook his head.

“I cannot.”

“What? How can you suffer him to live?”

Mac Brón sighed.

“Had I a bow, I would risk a single arrow. But the journey is long, and the way out of this place is now more uncertain than ever. I cannot deprive myself of what may save my own life, or yours.”

“You are cruel!” spat the boy. “You only care about yourself!”

Mac Brón shrugged. In truth, he was now close to certain that they’d die here.

“Then I will do it!” said Tammet. “I’m going back for my sword.”

Mac Brón scoffed. “Yours to waste, I suppose. But you’ll weaken our company.”

“Curse you! Curse you, Mac Brón! You truly are wretched.”

A hand came down on Tammet’s shoulder.

“No, son. The warrior is right.”

Both men looked up to see the empress. The rest must have done her well, for her face was ruddy, and flushed.

“Mother, how can you say that?” said the prince.

“As for his reasons,” she explained, “I will make no comment. But the conclusion is just. We cannot slay this man. He is not a horse that we may put him down.”

Tammet scowled, and shook his head bitterly.

“Ah, yes, because of the Way of Ligh—”

“Do not speak of it before him!” said the empress.

She seemed to grow in stature, and her voice was like an iron hand, holding him in place.

“And never speak thus of what is holy,” she added, gently. “Or do you presume to set one good at odds with another?”

The prince struggled in himself. For the first time since Mac Brón had met him, the young man seemed a child on the verge of tears.

“But what good is it now, in this moment? Can you wield it against this…this thing, as you do against the Péistghrá?”

She sighed. “The worm-lovers are all darkness. What lives inside them is no man’s soul at all. But, for them that live inside the victory, it is already conquered. This-” she nodded at the sucking thing, without looking, “-is a creature. Or was. God knows what it was, before it was twisted. Indeed, I do not think it is one thing at all, but several natures, mashed together, as it were. Yet something animates it, too. Something that led us toward it. For that, I can do something. And for him.”

She stood, and reached for Tammet. He held her steady against the wall. The empress planted her feet, then extended her other hand toward the slave. He mewed piteously, but they saw his eyes meet hers from within.

“Suaimhneas,” she said. “Síocháin oraibh.”

The slave cried out. It was a cry of relief, and not of pain. His mouth opened wide, then pulled back into a joyful smile. Within moments, his eyes closed, and he breathed no more. Tammet stared at his mother.

“Did you…kill him then?”

She shook her head. “I only gave him peace. The thing that holds him killed him. It only wanted his body. The darkness that fills these lands like a great, inky soul? It wanted his fear, and so kept him from dying as he ought.”

Tammet shook his head. “And yet the outcome is the same,” he muttered.

She looked at him patiently. “Outcome is not the measure of all things, son.”

“Yes, my father said the same,” muttered Tammet.

But Tammet said more than he said. Observing all this, Mac Brón turned his mind to the problem at hand. How were they going to escape slave’s fate?

“This Light you speak of,” he began. “That I am thought too coarse to hear of. Can it help us to get free, or only to die with more refinement?”

The empress’ eyes dared him to continue. Mac Brón found himself backing down.

“What I mean to say is, do you expect us to show pity to these foul things, because their nature bids them eat? Can you help us kill them instead?”

She raised her hand in his direction. He feared some spell to punish his insolence, yet he refused to flinch. She closed her eyes, and spread her fingers toward the East. Soon it was apparent that she did not look at Mac Brón at all, but at the horizon.

“The bridge!” shouted Tammet. “Mother, did you do that? I did not think you had power over-”

“-Hush, child. And who knows what I did. Did I clear a fog out there, or only in here?”

She pointed toward his breast, then touched his head.

“Either way, there it lies.”

She opened her eyes, and looked at Mac Brón. “As for your question, northman, the answer is no. No pity. No. Whatever they were at creation, they are but instruments of pain now. They should not be, and these will someday be unmade. But, being creatures, they are subject also to force. And that is your task, warrior. Yours is the business of cunning and of violence, of the shaping of the world by human will.”

She shuddered, and seemed to fall into herself.

“I have done all that I can,” she whispered. “Once more I must rest. While I sleep, you must discover a way out.”

She began to fall. Tammet caught her, and started dragging her back along the gorge, toward the enclave where they’d rested. Mac Brón was left alone with the goats, who still stared down in frozen terror at the thing that now wriggled back into the flats. Without face or features, it yet seemed disappointed, a dog whose meal has been put up out of reach. The goats were sure of foot, and he supposed the thing waited months for one to slip down into the ravine. And then, just like that, Mac Brón knew what he would do.

“How much thicker do we need to make it?” asked Tammet.

Mac Brón’s hammock lay in pieces. For the last half-hour the prince had been cutting it into strips, and wrapping these around the top third of the warrior’s twisted blade.

“All of it,” said the northman. “We need it to burn as long as possible.”

The boy nodded, and went back to work. In another quarter-hour, he’d reduced the hammock to a few scraps, plus the cords that had suspended it above ground.

“Put those in my pack,” said Mac Brón. “We don’t waste material.”

The prince nodded, and stowed the cord in the warrior’s pack. Inside it he also found a small flask. It was nearly full, for, since Mac Brón had sought out the witch, there’d been hardly a moment when he could rest safe. Only atop White Rock, washing down the bread bird.

“Give that to me.”

Tammet handed it over. Mac Brón opened the flask, and drizzled the thick liquor over the bound strips. He’d made his black sword into a torch. If only he could plunge into some creature that deserved to burn. Alas, its victims had done him no wrong.

Rusu walked over to him. She was packed, and ready. Tammet soon gathered his things, but not before removing his own sword. For his part, Mac Brón placed ax and dagger in easy reach within the strap of his belt. The warrior looked up at Rusu. Was that fear for them, or sorrow for the goats?

“It’s unfortunate,” he said. “But nothing really new for them. I realized it as we walked along the gorge. There’s not enough food here to sustain them year round. They must go back and forth between here and the Devil’s Beard. So there always had to be a bridge, you see. And with every crossing, some of them die in the flats.”

She nodded, accepting his logic, if not the ugly fact. Wordlessly, before he could doubt his plan, Mac Brón lowered the torch-sword to their small fire. Within seconds it was ablaze. With his free hand, he put flask to lips, and drank the dregs.

“For courage,” he said, then stepped out.

It was late afternoon. There was still light, though the sky was gray and mirthless as ever. That foul scent was on the air, and now it occurred to him that it had always been the smell of decay filtered through the greened buttes. The smell of what went on in the flats.

About forty goats were standing along the canyon wall to his left. As he walked forward, they saw his fire, and moved away.

“Are you ready?” he said, turning to Rusu.

She did not smile, but nodded. Whatever sickness had been burdening her, it seemed worst in the morning. Now, two hours before dusk, she had gathered her strength. He turned to Tammet.

“Listen to me boy. Prince or no, you go when I say. When you go, you run, and do not look back. If your mother falls, you put her over your shoulders, and then you run faster.”

The boy trembled. His jaw was set, but terror was written all over him.

“Good,” said Mac Brón. “It’s good to be afraid. Fear will give you wings, and now you must run as you have never run before.”

There was nothing else to say. The two royals looked on the barbarian. In this moment, he was their lord and master, and they waited for his word of doom. Then all at once it began.

Mac Brón went back along the wall, to a place where the beasts were bunched together. There he put fire to the hindquarters of one. It screeched — a terrible, helpless cry — and ran forward along the ledge. He scrambled after it. The other goats heard its panicked cries, and ran too. He drove them in a straight line until they passed the enclave where stood the boy and his mother. He did not look at them, but kept driving the doomed animals. Some began to climb, but most were bunched together. They were quickly running out of space.

Perhaps sixty now moved in huddled mass. Mac Brón let out a terrible cry, and plunged the torch into the midst of those closest to him. And then they ran.

It was a spectacular sight. The beasts sped along the sides of wall, even where it was sheer. The more they ran, the faster they had to run, lest they fall. And then they fell anyway. One here. Two there. Little by little, members of the herd lost their purchase, and tumbled toward the sand. Concerned as he was to stay on the wall, Mac Brón didn’t see the first to reach the flats. But he heard their terrible squealing.

They tried to sprint east, toward the horizon. Some cried out in terror as thick green tendrils burst forth from the ashen waste. A dozen more goats lost their footing near him, and now he chanced a look. What he saw took the heart out of him.

Some were caught immediately, wrapped in green coils, and pulled directly into the ground. Others escape the first onslaught, and ran on toward salvation. But then pits opened up — ten, or fifty, or a hundred feet in front of them. The ashen ground fell into itself, making funnels, or convex hills in the paths of the runners. One after another was snagged, and pulled below. Already some of those first caught were being raised up, and pressed against the bushy buttes.

The sucking sounds began. Mac Brón waited for what he hoped was true. If the goats migrated here from the East, then every year they must make this terrible passage. The instinct to run together, to overwhelm by numbers these beings against whom not one had a chance — that instinct must soon take over. And it did.

Like a school of fish, or a flock of ten million starlings, the whole herd began pouring down the mountain. As before, the first to touch down were engulfed, but others made it through. More and more hit the flats, and more and more slipped through the trap. They could not all be eaten. Now that they filled it in their hundreds, the bulk must survive.

Mac Brón looked at Tammet. The boy’s face was shock white. Rusu’s was a mask of acceptance.

“Look at me!” he cried. “Tammet, my prince! For your mother’s sake!”

Tammet looked at him. His eyes pleaded for it all to stop. Let it be a nightmare. “God of Light, do not ask me to do this thing!” said the lines of his face

Mac Brón cried out to the northern gods, those grim ones who love only the brave, bidding them bear witness to his deeds.

“NOW!” he cried.

The boy hesitated, then set his face like iron. He ran down the side, dragging his mother behind him.

“Run! RUN! Do not stop! Run, or die! Run or die!”

Then Mac Brón charged down the gorge wall. As he landed, he felt every gram of his weight, knowing that it was like blood to sharks. Then he sprinted forward. Had he been alone, he could have outpaced them, but the boy was fleet enough. Even Rusu ran like one possessed. They followed the tracks in the sand, the path of those beasts who’d made it through. All around them, the sand was rent open, or collapsed into itself. The cries of the beasts were pitiful, and even Mac Brón was wrung to the heart.

He did not feel the ground beneath him. He could have run like this for a thousand years; run until every atom of his blood was converted into that juice of fear that drove; until he was dry, and there was nothing left of him to torment or to kill. Now the bridge appeared before them. It was a mile away. Cruelest gods, it was a mile away!

They ran and they ran, following the herd. They ran until the sounds of death dissipated. They ran until the holes and dips stopped appearing before them. Mac Brón ran, and then suddenly turned. The boy and his mother had fallen behind. He turned, still running, for he dared not stop.

She had slipped, and Tammet and thrown her over his shoulder, just as he’d been told. Now they struggled forward. With his free hand, Mac Brón reached out, and took her legs upon his shoulders. Boy and barbarian struggled together. Yet the bridge was close. Only a quarter mile lay between them and this escape. Suddenly, as he studied it, his heart heaved up into his mouth. It was a bridge indeed, yet formed of the same green tendrils that came up out of the sand.

“No!” cried Rusu. “No, please no!”

Tammet fell forward under her weight. Prince and empress pitched into the sand. Without any thought, Mac Brón helped them up.

“Run still,” he said. “There’s no going back.”

They hesitated, breathing heavily, their bodies now remembering that this strain was beyond them.

“Do what I say boy!”

He jammed the torch toward the prince’s face. It was enough. The boy snapped out of his daze, grabbed his mother, and hurtled toward to evil-looking bridge. Mac Brón began to do the same, then fell. He whipped around to find his leg in the firm grip of a green tendril.

“Mac Brón!” cried Tammet.

“Go boy!” yelled the warrior.

A second tendril enclosed his other leg, and instantly the earth opened. As Mac Brón was dragged down, he remembered the torch. Already within the pit of sand, he pressed it against the masses that curled about his legs and waist. The reaction was instantaneous. The thing released him, and he crawled up the collapsing dune, and threw himself onto the sand flat. Still clutching the sword, he scrambled forward. His legs and torso burned where the things had touched him, and he realized that he was going numb. He would not be able to run away, and that vile thing, in its vile way, knew it. Still he struggled for as long as his legs would support him. They gave out, and he went numb from the waist down.

Mac Brón lay upon the sand. The thing that was many things came out of the sand, and shot towards him. He sliced at it with his torch sword, his cursed sword, the sword of his father. Once more it recoiled, but there was no escape. Another flailing tentacle struck the sword, tore it from his grip, and flung it down the path. A huge tendril snaked up around his wrist, and closed like a knot. It was his right wrist. His sword hand. Try as he might, he could not free it.

“Back to hell with you!” he cried. “You shall not take all of me!”

With his left hand, he drew forth his short ax. Then, without hesitation — for he was without hope — Mac Brón cut off his own hand. Crying out more in despair than in agony, he edged back on his elbows. Strong things gripped around the top of his body, and he cried to the gods of the North.

“Cowards! Come down and suffer like men! I defy you!”

He was pulled backward, across the sand, away from the writhing thing. It sprang at him, but there was a blinding flash. Then he felt his dagger pulled from his belt, and saw it fly forward through the air into the wicked, faceless fiend. The arms the dragged him swept down, picked up his torch sword, now smoking and spent, and stretched it under his arms across his chest.

“Hold onto it, if you can!” huffed Tammet.

Mac Brón smiled grim. “But I shall not need it any-”

Then all was black.

© 2022 Joseph Breslin All Rights Reserved