"Water heat and water boil," Cathbad intoned, stirring the mighty Cú Roi with a wand of ash, "make the wheel of heaven toil! Fire flame and fire burn! Make the wheel of heaven turn!" Sláine's hair had been dyed three colours, brown at the roots using the dung of a white horse, yellow with lime to spike it until it resembled the rays of the sun, and red on the tips, in blood. His body was covered blue with woad, the tattoos depicting the sacred symbols of his people, inked in by Ukko's painstaking brush strokes: the winged birds of the Morrigan rose up each muscular leg, the life tree dominated his chest, and beneath it the bestial face of Lug, burning like the sun. And all around these huge icons, smaller, more intricate patterns, endless knots scaled the ripples of his abdominals like a serpent's scales, and on his rear a chuckling Ukko rendered his enemies so that he might defecate on them. Mixed with the woad were other tribal intoxicants meant to ease the pain of the boiling water on his skin.
