A Terrible Beauty
by
(First published in Three Crow Press Volume 2 Issue 6, February 2010, ed. Reece Notley)
Perched on the hillside, glutted with death, the Morrigan watched as her crows pecked tender morsels from the dead warriors' faces: soft red lips and tongues, oozing eyeballs. Drizzling raindrops beaded on the corpses' blood-stained woolen tunics and leggings. Soon, when they were sure the battle was over, women would walk the muddy tracks from neighboring villages for anything that the victors might have missed plundering from their enemies' bodies in their haste to reach the ale-keg in their feasting-hall. The dead men had fought well for their chieftains, petty kings of a few square miles of hill and bog, but what need had they now for their daggers, the coins hidden close to the skin, the rings and amulets of gold and silver twisted into the shapes of beasts and monsters?
"Well done, sister," a woman's voice said. Who was it? Where was she? The Morrigan, goddess of war and death, snapped her neck around.
A slightly deeper voice, still unmistakably female, added, "Perhaps a touch small, more of a cattle raid gone wrong than a decent pitched battle, but a good start for a relative newcomer."
The Morrigan whirled, her claws sharp, ready to kill. Two women draped in brightly-patterned linen stood together, looking down at the battlefield. Their gold-sandaled feet did not touch the hill, and power radiated from their crowned heads.
Goddesses! They would be hard for her to kill. She must be careful, stealthy, ruthless.
"Don't bother trying to harm us, sister," the woman on the left said. She was dark-haired, statuesque: a queen. "Our realm is in the sunlit south, the lands of olives and vines, not these northern lands of barley beer and endless rain. We're here to help you, not to fight."
"My sister Hera speaks with the foreknowledge of her husband, Zeus," the tall blonde woman added. She wore a bronze helmet, and held a long spear. "Heed her words. She is older and wiser even than the kingly ruler of Olympos. But we are weak, now, all we Olympian gods, and our followers are few. Even the city I loved above all others, my precious Athens, gives its tribute to foreign gods." She held out her open hands to the Morrigan. "We are no threat to you. You are young and strong, while we grow old."
The Morrigan's shape shivered and twisted, and she stood before them a wrinkled, toothless crone, shrouded in black rags.
Hera, queen of Olympos, smiled wryly. "Ah, the ancient crone is powerful indeed. But Athena is right: you are young, compared with either of us. I have been worshipped as maiden, mother and crone, just as you are now, for years beyond counting." As the Morrigan watched, Hera's regal face shifted and flickered. She was a soft virgin wreathed in white blossom, then a woman bent and wrinkled, close to the grave, and again a glorious, ageless queen.
A huge owl landed on Athena's shoulder, its beak dripping with blood. The warrior goddess tickled the feathers around its reddened throat. "Truly," she said, "Hera and I are older than you can understand here in the cold North, young goddess of Death. Girls danced for us, drugged with poppy juice, and cows with gilded horns were sacrificed in our honor in the labyrinthine palaces of Crete long before Athens and Sparta grew strong in their might, or Rome conquered them all."
Athena pointed her bronze spear at the Morrigan. Flowers rained from the sky and the black-clad crone was suddenly a tender girl, lovelier than spring, in a white shift patterned with green leaves. The Morrigan's head swiveled around, her huge dark eyes furious as a crow's.
Hera nodded. "That's better. Very fetching. When I was as young as you, my dear, my worshippers gave me cows and fat sheep in their hundreds. They slit the beasts' throats on my altars and burned their bones with incense for me to savor from on high. Now, I am lucky to be given a skinny piglet or a wild hare in a whole season. That is food to keep a goddess strong." Hera bared her teeth, and the Morrigan flinched despite herself.
"I cannot forget my festivals," helmeted Athena said. "The music; the dancing; the fine beasts, best of the herd, driven up the stony Acropolis to be slaughtered at my altar; the virgin daughters of the rich heading the procession, so proud of the new robe they'd woven to dress my statue; my priestesses dressed in white and garlanded with fresh olive leaves for me..."
The Morrigan circled the women, looking for a chance to attack while they were caught in their dreams of the past.
"Honestly," Hera said, turning to the Morrigan, "don't bother. We're on your side, sister. Come, we have things to show you."
She clapped her hands, and the three goddesses hovered over a rich city – richer far than any the Morrigan had ever seen in the cold north. The city's stone walls were thick, but a huge wooden horse stood inside the sturdy city gates, and the wide streets were piled deep with the corpses of warriors. Bronze-armored soldiers swarmed through the city, exultant in their victory, carrying treasure – metals, jewels and women – back to the tents pitched along the sea shore, by their black galleys.
"Ten full years the siege of Troy lasted," Athena said with pride. "Hera and I kept the Achaians focused and fierce against their enemies for all that time. And here, the culmination of those years: a battle more glorious than any that had come before."
"Ten full years," the Morrigan said. Despite herself, she was impressed. "And they fought all that time?"
Athena held her spear high. "Death stalked King Priam's powerful city of Troy and the tents of the Achaian heroes for ten long years. And all over an empty-headed girl stolen from her foolish husband by one of Priam's sons."
The Morrigan's eyes, black as jet beads, widened. "Such lengthy enmity could have its uses," she said. "My crows would grow sleek on the fat of the dead."
"There's more," Athena said. She snapped her fingers, and the three goddesses were floating high above a great battlefield. "Forget Troy: this was far more devastating. What you see below is just one scene in a war that lasted almost thirty years, to no purpose. It broke mighty Athens, and sapped all the strength from the strong Spartans. With proper planning, a battle goddess can bring decades of war – perhaps even centuries. So much more satisfying than a mere string of raids and minor battles. Do you understand us yet?"
"See," Hera said, waving her strong white arms at the scene below them, "this is the glorious sort of thing that Athena and I could accomplish, back in the days of our glory. Here are my beloved Spartans, dashing themselves in wave after wave against the shields of Athena's strong hoplites." Bronze swords flashed and clanged against a wall of gaudily-painted shields, held by shouting soldiers.
"You won that particular fight, as I recall," Athena said. "The battle of Mantinea, wasn't it? But my Athenians fought bravely, and died well. Their blood soaked the fields. Farmers still find fragments of bronze and bone, as they dig the stony soil."
Hera clapped her hands, and the scene changed. "The battle of Syracuse was even better," she said. "Five thousand Athenian soldiers dead and dozens of sleek triremes full of brave men sunk by my Spartans and their allies. Is there anything more beautiful than a sea battle?"
The Morrigan put her head on one side and studied the scene of carnage below her. Armed men were falling from their ships, staining the sea with blood. Wood splintered and burned, and smoke hung grey over the waves...
Yes, it was very beautiful. So much blood and fear!
Perhaps these ancient goddesses from the south were right after all; perhaps she could learn something from them. The tumultuous waves around her sacred northern islands would toss with corpses, and the bones of warriors would line the sea-bed.
The Morrigan, soft white-clad virgin still in form, smiled. "I can see it," she said. "Endless feuding between neighbor and neighbor. Brother at his brother's throat, sister betraying sister. Piles of the dead heaped on one another in fields clotted with blood."
Hera held out a hand to Athena. "Tribe against tribe, and nation against nation," she said. "A terrible beauty."
The Morrigan saw the future laid out before her. The people of Britain, her people, would fight with ever more devastating weapons. Her brave warriors would conquer and spread across the earth. In time, they would go to war in the names of new gods from other lands, but the spoils would be hers forever.
The Morrigan licked her soft girlish lips. "Teach me," she said.