‘Moccus is a protector of hunters and warriors,’ she continued, leading him towards the stone. ‘Especially hunters of boar, which was a sacred animal to those people, and still is. A cohort of soldiers from the Fourteenth Legion was sent here to suppress the locals, who led them to this spot, from which the Romans never returned. Moccus tore them apart – five hundred fully armed legionnaires.’
‘You mean this clearing is one whole mass grave?’
She nodded. ‘Their blood sanctifies this soil. It is a hallowed place for us. I take it that doesn’t disturb you?’
He looked around at the green, level grass and the black soil surrounding the stone. ‘I’ve seen worse.’
They were at the stone now. It reared ten feet high, carved on all sides with scenes of battle and slaughter in which one figure dominated repeatedly: a man of towering stature with the head and tusks of a boar. One image on the battle tableau showed a Cornovii warrior holding something that looked like a war-horn to his mouth, except that it was extremely tall, rising in an elongated S-shape like a striking cobra – if any cobra had the head of a boar.
‘That is a carnyx,’ Mother explained, when he pointed it out. ‘The horn that summons Moccus.’
‘Pretty useful god if he can just be summoned like that. Does he do tricks too? Roll over? Play dead?’
‘He will heal your body and give you a lifespan many times that of a normal man – will that do for a trick?’
Bordering the scenes of carnage were images of crops and copulation: sheaves of wheat and vines entwined with phalluses and figures fucking in every conceivable position, some surely beyond the flexibility of human physiology.
‘If you don’t mind me saying so,’ he said, ‘Bill I understand, but you don’t seem to be a village of Celtic hunter-warriors to me.’
‘I was speaking simplistically, in terms that you would understand,’ she replied, and he felt a dull flare of resentment at being patronised. ‘Moccus is the hunter because he is the boar, which is the oldest of all sacred animals. His tusks are the crescent horns of the moon, which he holds between his jaws, and so like the moon he is both eater and renewer, death-bringer and life-giver. His favour brings us fertility, bountiful harvests, and good health—’
‘That,’ the deserter interrupted. ‘I want that. You want blood – well, I’ve shed enough of that for other people so it’s about time I spilled some of it for myself. You want my soul…’ He laughed at the sky. ‘You’re welcome to it. I’ve no use for the wretched thing any more. My lungs are full of holes – the doctors say I’ll be dead in a year, eighteen months at best.’
‘In that case for your sake I hope that you’re able to hang on until September.’
‘Why’s that? What happens in September?’
‘The autumnal solstice. That is when, if you’re worthy, you will meet him.’
‘Meet him?’
‘Unlike the Christian god, who defers his rewards until his worshippers are dead and unable to enjoy them, Moccus delivers his favour here, on earth. In the flesh.’ She indicated the surrounding woodland. ‘He’s out there now, walking his domain. He populates the woods with his children, got sometimes on the wild boar that are still hereabouts, sometimes on the women of the neighbouring villages. You’ve already met one of them.’
‘Gar.’
She nodded. ‘He’s probably watching you right now, curious about whether or not you have the strength of character to become one of us – one of the Farrow.’
‘I do!’ Everett strode to the trees at the clearing’s edge and peered into their shadow. ‘I’m ready to do this now!’ he called. ‘Whatever this is!’
‘You don’t honestly think it’s that easy, do you? You need to prove yourself.’
‘Fine. How do I do that, then?’
Mother regarded him with an amused smile. ‘That depends. How good are you at catching wild boar?’
* * *
Not very good, as it turned out. It took him a good month before he was able to snatch a piglet away from its screaming, furious mother. In that time, he moved into one of the cottages that the war had emptied and set to repairing both it and himself. He met many of the other villagers, and discovered that they were all either women or children; even given the fact that the war had reaped so many such villages of their menfolk it was odd to find none at all. Other than Gar, he seemed to be the only adult male for miles around. As the weeks passed he put on weight, most of it muscle, and even his cough abated somewhat. He also made a number of advances towards Ardwyn, but was even less successful with this human quarry; although her opinion of him had warmed, she firmly but good-naturedly rebuffed him at every turn, leaving him in another No Man’s Land of seething frustration. She was unshocked by his crude ways, treating him with an amused coolness which he found as infuriating as it was arousing. ‘Catch your boar,’ was all she said. ‘And we’ll see.’
‘All right, then, now I’ve caught one,’ he said, showing her the small, striped bundle of panic that was squealing and dashing around the pen he’d built in his backyard. It was tethered to one of the fence posts and going nowhere, but it didn’t know that. He’d already decided to call it Nikolai. ‘What do I do now?’
‘You look after it,’ said Ardwyn. ‘You raise it until its lower tusk curves back on itself, and then you sacrifice it to Moccus and you become one of the Farrow. And I,’ she added, twining her arms around and pressing her curves against him, ‘become yours. After a fashion.’ She kissed him, and she tasted of apples.
The grisliest part of looking after Nikolai was over soon, mercifully: the de-tusking.
The boar’s lower tusks were called its ‘cutters’, he was told, and they would continue to grow throughout the animal’s life, kept
