Horns of the Hunter: Tales of Luah Fáil Book 1 by Frank Dorrian

Author:Frank Dorrian [Dorrian, Frank]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Impaled Monarch Publishing
Published: 2021-07-26T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

Tarbeard’s Beast

‘Step to the water, deary-do… the watcher has a gift for you…’

The singing crept over the reeds, a whisper across the diseased waters. It made the heart of the marsh feel almost tranquil, even with the hissing clouds of biting flies and the clicking things that lived among reed, moss and muck. Náith stared out to where it emanated from – across the vast stretch of filth and scum-crusted bogwater. An old Nuankin children’s song. The voice sounded distinctly female.

Náith made his way through the reeds toward the sound, keeping to the westward trail and watching his footing, trying not to let hope make him sloppy after spending the last several days trudging through stagnant water and scratching at insect bites. Everything in Iarma’s marshes seemed to either suck blood or thrive on rot. Miserable fucking place. This had to be it, though, the heart of the marsh. It was too vast and rancid not to be. A yellow-brown sea of shit, glistening beneath a fume-choked sun.

The singing grew clearer as Náith wound his way around the waters, tuneless and inane. A hundred or more paces ahead and to his left, the reeds grew thicker, thinning out again as an earthen bank jutted sharply into the bog like a jetty. Náith paused, squinted through the noisome haze. Something small and shrivelled shifted at its end. The singing stopped, a cough echoing across the distance before it picked back up, the little figure rocking back and forth.

Got you. Carefully, Náith bared steel and touched the hound’s skull upon his shoulder for luck. Checking for any sign of Aodhamar’s men, he kept low against the reeds, gliding around the water in a crouch. Halting where the reeds grew their thickest behind the outcrop, he let the song rise to its peak again before he dared rustle among the thorn-strewn fronds, easing himself among them. A few paces in, he reached through and parted the reed-wall with a finger. There she was, just ahead, where the bog water lapped and suckled at the earthen bank’s tip.

‘Step from the water, deary-do… and tell Mother what the watcher said to you…’

It had to be Béchu. She was mad enough, for sure, sat in so shitty, stinking and bleak a place as this, singing that wretched old song. The sound of it made Náith’s skin crawl, as if all the insects of the marsh marched along his flesh at once. He shuddered, and realised, too late, the singing had stopped.

‘Come out, Náith,’ an old voice creaked, ‘no sense hiding. The gnawers like the reeds as much as they do the water.’

Sure enough, something glistened upon his shoulder. Náith gave a start, stumbled from the reeds and plucked a fat gnawer from his flesh. The thing bared a horrid little three-toothed mouth at him in a hiss before he launched it into the fume-clogged distance. A shallow, numb hole bled freely on his shoulder. Náith poked at it with distaste and realised that the crone was laughing at him.

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