Fire Arrow

by Edith Pattou

  Collun went pale.

  "Queen Medb gave him his choice of swords."

  Collun took a step back, letting his sword drop from Bricriu's throat. In an instant Bricriu made a dash for the door in the bluff, with a frenzied scuttling movement like a wounded crab. Collun did not move, his eyes fixed on the sword. Brie thought to give chase, but Bricriu was already at the door, then through. She could hear the clang as an iron bolt dropped into place.

  Brie went to Collun. He could not take his eyes off the blade in his hand.

  "Did you know of this? My father and Medb?" Collun asked in a low voice.

  Brie nodded reluctantly. "Balor told me."

  "Why did you not tell me?"

  "I..." Brie trailed off as no words came. Collun gazed at her a moment, then his eyes went back to the sword he held.

  "Brie." Collun's voice was almost a whisper. "I could have killed Bricriu."

  "I know."

  "I looked into his eyes and the memory of all that he did to Nessa, the way he tortured her, starved her, it filled me, until..."

  "I know," Brie said again. "But you did not kill him."

  There was another silence between them. Then Collun's jaw relaxed a little. "Brie," he said, "the next time I start to lecture about revenge and arrows doubling back, promise you will stop me?"

  "I promise." Brie smiled at him.

  "Let me see your hand," Collun said. And carefully he applied mallow salve and bound her burnt hand with a length of muslin from his leather wallet.

  ***

  The Dungalans had lost many. Of those who remained, fully two-thirds were injured, some grievously. And all were exhausted. Brie had assembled Lom, Hanna, Collun, Silien, Aelwyn, and Jacan by the remains of what looked to have been an ancient Sea Dyak sorcerer's mote.

  Lom reported that roughly two hundred goat-men, perhaps more, remained. Hanna grimly detailed the state of the Dungalans, the extent of their injuries, how many lay near death and how many were already gone. And Silien, gray-faced with exhaustion, told them his draiocht was still unusable. As the others, bleak but dogged, began to discuss what Cernu's strategy might be, Brie's throat tightened with despair. She had led these people to their deaths, she thought, and suddenly she felt Balor again, inside her mind.

  This time, of course, he knew where she was and he was laughing at her.

  Anger flared in Brie, and she raised her eyes to the glittering fortress by the sea. Why did he not show himself?

  Then, stifling her anger, Brie concentrated on the laughter. There was no trace of cowardice in it, or even a desire to remain unsoiled by the violence below. Indeed, what she sensed from Balor was more a feeling of irrelevance, as if all the mud and sweat and smoke and fear down there on the battlefield had little or nothing to do with him and his plans. It puzzled her. The laughter grew louder, flooding her head. Brie groaned and pressed her fists against her ears.

  "Brie?" Collun said, worried. The others were watching her.

  "I'm sorry," she replied. "It's nothing." Then, ignoring the ringing in her ears, she said, "Lom, if what you say is true, then the odds are, uh, not exactly even."

  "No, they are not," he agreed.

  "What say you?" Brie asked those gathered. "Shall we retreat? Or..." She paused.

  "Or do we give our lives to put a mighty hole in the villain Balor's invasion?" Hanna said for her, matter-of-factly.

  "Flight would sit ill with most in this company," suggested Lom.

  "What of Sago?" asked Hanna. "Is he the same?"

  Brie nodded grimly. While the Dungalans had been spilling their blood on the battlefield, the Sea Dyak sorcerer had stayed at the edge of the forest, astride his fat pony, weaving that pathetic little fishing net of his. Not surprisingly Monodnock had chosen to stay with the sorcerer.

  And before calling this council Brie had sought out Sago. She had found him sitting cross-legged by a heap of rocks. The sorcerer had been unreachable, eyes glazed, nonsense words tumbling out of his mouth; he was lost in madness. As she stared down at him, Brie could not even picture the amazing sorcerer of light who had destroyed the sumog back in Ardara.

  "Well, do not forget there is one among us who bears a fire arrow," Lom said, breaking into Brie's thoughts with a tired grin.

  "The gabha will find it difficult to forget that," agreed Hanna.

  Brie tried to smile, but there was still a buzzing in her ears where Balor's laughter had been, and that puzzle of his indifference.

  There was a sudden commotion down near the white stone beach, a shriek that sounded like Monodnock, followed by an eruption of laughter, then a murmuring of voices. Jacan soon appeared, supporting a half-fainting Monodnock. The orange-haired Ellyl had a dusting of some odd white powder on his cheeks. He sneezed loudly.

  "I was only seeking to bathe in the sea," Monodnock whined, "when I was suddenly attacked by them."

  "By what?" Brie asked.

  "Moths, thousands of them," Monodnock sputtered. "Ghost moths!"

  Brie stared at him with a faint stirring of alarm.

  "Yes," confirmed Jacan in a calm voice. "There are white moths covering the beach. They fly up into your face when you step on the white stones."

  Brie abruptly stood and, gesturing for Jacan to join her, began striding toward the shore.

  "Has anyone been affected by the moths?" she asked, urgent.

  "I am not sure what you mean," Jacan replied thoughtfully, "but no, other than terrifying Monodnock here and making a few men sneeze."

  They had arrived at the beach. When she looked closely, Brie could see the scores of moths resting atop the stones. Their wings pulsed, making the beach look like a living thing. She took a step forward and a swarm of them flew up at her face. She hastily stepped backward. She dipped her finger into a trace of white powder left on her sleeve and sniffed it. It made her sneeze violently, but she felt nothing else, certainly nothing resembling the confusion and empty eyes of Yldir. If these were the moths Balor had used, then he must have added his own sorcery to them. Still, to be cautious, she advised the Dungalans to stay off the beach.

  ***

  Sentries were posted to watch the gabha camp. The mist, which had been burned away by the sun during the day's battle, came up again during the night, ragged and drifting.

  It was a queer night, at once edgy and deathly still. The moon hung in. the sky like a swollen yellow fruit. Many among the exhausted company slumbered with a deep-reaching exhaustion, but as many could not sleep, tossing restlessly. There were low-pitched murmurings of pain from those whose wounds bit deep, and the soothing voices of those who tended them. Friends walked together, exchanging words unsaid before; one or two found refuge in song, strains of which, elegiac and silvery, wafted over the ruined buildings with the fog.

  Brie sat with Collun and Hanna, Fara curled at her side. She had seen Lom a short time ago walk off into the fog with the girl Maire. Though Hanna's side was heavily bandaged, Brie and Collun had long since given up trying to talk her out of fighting on the morrow.

  Unless they were attacked first, the Dungalan army would move as soon as the sun rose.

  From where she sat, Brie could see Sago, still cross-legged, by the small heap of stones.

  Brie suddenly had horrible images of Sago blundering into the thick of battle, mistaking a gabha ax for a leaping silver kingfish. Resolutely she sought out Monodnock. She found him among the trees at the edge of the forest, secretly snacking on sweetmeats he had squirreled away in his pack. She dragged him back to the heap of stones and ordered him to sit on a rock several feet from Sago.

  "I have something very important for you to do, Monodnock," Brie said to the apprehensive Ellyl. "Tomorrow morning, when the battle commences, I want you to ensure that Sago stays far away from the fighting. Do you understand, Monodnock? It is very important." Monodnock looked at her for a moment, uncomprehending. Then his face was split by an enormous smile, so unbelieving was he of his good fortune.

  "You must st
ick to the Sea Dyak sorcerer like barnacles to a rock. Will you pledge to do this, Monodnock?" Brie's eyes bored into the Ellyl's.

  "Of course, fairest of maidens. Much as I would have it otherwise, I shall keep the ancient sorcerer far, far away from the perilous battle," Monodnock simpered. "In jeopardy of my own life shall I ensure that your directive is followed!"

  Brie turned to look at Sago. He was still bent over his webbing of string and hemp, his frail fingers moving slowly. She fervently hoped that when the battle began he would stay right where he was, lost in his private world.

  But Sago suddenly raised his head and, with a deranged grin, gave Brie an exaggerated wink. Then he returned to his slow work. Brie felt a little sick. Hanna had dozed off, but Collun had seen the wink and said, as Brie returned to his side, "You are worried about the Sea Dyak sorcerer."

  Brie sighed. "Well, if Monodnock has anything to say about it, they will be halfway to Tir a Ceol when the battle starts." Then she said abruptly, "You could return to Eirren, you know."

  "I know." Collun calmly drank hot cyffroi.

  "Queen Aine and King Gwynn ought to be warned."

  "Yes," Collun agreed, his expression unchanged.

  "You are not Dungalan," she persisted. "There is no reason for you to give your life."

  "No more are...," Collun started to say, then stopped, a thoughtful look on his face.

  Brie shook her head, nettled. "I do not know for certain that my great-grandmother was from Dungal."

  "I was not thinking of Seila."

  "Then...?"

  "I was thinking of the Storm Petrel, of your dancing for the first time. And fishing the deep waters; shooting the arrow of binding; and even this cyffroi..." He gestured at the cup in his hand with a grimace.

  Brie stared at him for several moments. "It is true," she replied slowly. "I was happy for a time in Ardara. But..." She paused, then said deliberately, "I was happy, too, at Cuillean's dun."

  Brie thought Collun's eyes widened, but she could not read his thoughts.

  "Brie...," he started.

  "Excuse me," came Aelwyn's voice, "but Lom told me to tell you there is movement in the gabha camp." The sun was just rising, and the wyll's amber eyes glittered.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Sago's Net

  The battle began, not with a fiery headlong rush into a sleeping enemy camp, but with two armies facing each other across a stretch of turf. One was small, weakened by injury and fatigue, but determined and wildly brave, while the other was enormous and subhuman, led by the cunning intelligence of a monster.

  There was an eerie silence as the armies approached each other, no battle horns sounded, no gabha brayed. But then the two armies merged, and the noise grew and swelled as the killing began again.

  As before, Brie and Ciaran, with Fara loping at the horse's side, cleaved a burning gash through the gabha ranks, but Brie sensed something different in the goat-men who engaged her. They seemed bolder, reckless even, and she realized that the gabha general Cernu had devised a new strategy. She found herself being pushed to one side by thick bands of goat-men. The more she hewed down the more did Cernu send to take their place. Brie was fast becoming isolated from the rest of the Dungalan army.

  Vainly she tried to move toward her company, but clusters of gabha kept appearing, continually harrying her and Ciaran. Her anger mounted, but with it came some measure of despair. She saw that the Dungalans were being driven back, closer and closer to the white stone beach.

  Then she suddenly caught sight of the Sea Dyak sorcerer; the last time she had looked, Sago, with Monodnock huddled beside him, had been seated by the same heap of stones. Now he was mounted on his pony and was riding into the gap between Brie and her army. There was no sign of Monodnock.

  The frail sorcerer made a ridiculous, startling sight as he trotted along on the broad-beamed pony with the fishlike tail, and Brie heard a sound like a laugh coming from one of the gabha near her. Sago was singing, a nonsense song no doubt, and in one hand he held his little fishing net. Cursing Monodnock under her breath, Brie furiously slashed at the gabha hemming her in, trying desperately to break through to get to Sago. But by the time Ciaran had broken free, Sago had changed course. He was heading for the bulk of the gabha army, which was inexorably pushing the Dungalans toward the beach.

  "Sago!" Brie shouted.

  But he did not hear her, or chose not to hear her, and she watched, horrified, as he approached the nearest of the rear guard of the goat-men.

  "Faster," she urged Ciaran.

  A gabha had spotted Sago and turned to hew him down with an enormous ax. The Sea Dyak sorcerer lifted his paper-thin hand, the hand holding the net, and called out in a surprisingly loud voice, "Heva! Heva! Heva!" Brie recognized the words as the cry of the huer, the Ardaran fisherman whose house overlooked the bay, letting the other fishermen know of the reddening of the sea that meant pilchards in the bay.

  The goat-man with the ax paused, surprised by the loudness of Sago's voice perhaps, and Brie watched in amazement as the small, ungainly fishing net in Sago's hand began to widen and spread. There was no light coming from the sorcerer, as it had with the sumog, but his face, which was transformed by an uncanny expression of pleasure, seemed to glow white, almost moonlike. The net, which gave off a faint white glow of its own, stretched and extended over the rear guard of the gabha army. The goat-men gazed up at it in growing wonder and fear. The Dungalans, especially the fishermen among them, had begun moving back, away from the net, the moment they heard "Heva! Heva! Heva!" The fishing net kept spreading, floating impossibly several feet above gabha heads, until most of the goat-man army was under its shadow.

  Then the net drifted down, settling on their heads and shoulders and arms. Where it made contact with the furred hide of the gabha, it adhered, as though imbued with some sticky, deadly sort of glue. The strings of the net did not stick to Dungalan skin or hair, and those caught under it were able to burrow their way out between the bodies of the trapped and struggling goat-men. The gabha were panicking, braying loudly.

  Then Brie noticed that the creatures were clutching their necks, as though having trouble breathing. Some had fallen to the ground, their limbs stiff and wracked by small jerking movements; gagging, choking noises came from their throats. And, in that moment, Brie suddenly realized what kind of fish it was that she had seen in Sago's amhantar. It was called puffer fish, and Jacan had once told Brie that the puffer fish was the most poisonous of the fish that inhabited the waters by Ardara; he had seen a fellow fisherman die in a matter of minutes, his breath stopped and his body paralyzed, from careless handling of a puffer fish.

  Brie suddenly heard a powerful braying, and she spun around to see the goat-man general Cernu, astride a swift goat-horse, bearing down on Sago. He had no weapon in his hands, but before Brie could reach them, Cernu had lowered his spiraling horns and plunged them into Sago's thin chest. The sorcerer was knocked off his mount, falling backward onto the ground, the net dislodged from his hand. Cernu jumped off his steed as well and leaned over Sago. For a horrified moment Brie thought the goat-man would lift the featherlight sorcerer up into the air, impaled on his horns.

  But he did not. He turned and faced Brie, an evil grin on his grotesque face, blood dripping from his horns.

  "Brie!" came a warning shout from Collun, who had circled around toward her. Before she could react, a terrible pain radiated across her back. Brie toppled off Ciaran onto the ground. A goat-man, one of the band she had been fighting earlier, loomed above her swinging his club. With an agonizing upward lunge, Brie struck with the fire arrow and the creature collapsed.

  By the time she turned back, Brie saw that Cernu was locked in hand-to-hand combat with a Dungalan. No, not a Dungalan, she realized with a shock, but Collun.

  The gabha general towered above the boy. From somewhere the creature had produced one of those lethal clubs, studded with sharp spikes, and he was swinging it ruthlessly at Collun, who danced just out of re
ach.

  But even as Brie moved toward them she saw Collun take a mighty blow to his head. He collapsed, falling to the ground, and lay there, unmoving.

  Letting out a shout of pure rage, Brie charged the gabha general. The fire arrow sang in her blistered hand.

  Cernu lowered his horns, brandishing his club at the same time. Brie swerved to the side, then rounded back. But he kept her at bay with his horns and his club. Frustrated, she slashed wildly. She could tell Cernu felt the heat from the arrow, but when she gazed up into his bulging, savage eyes she saw no fear.

  Suddenly Brie was terrified, conscious of her puny human frailty. A terrible chill fear flooded her and she cowered back. Cernu let out a bray of victory and pushed forward to deliver a deathblow. Brie watched, hypnotized, as the spiraling horns came down at her.

  Then something brushed past her legs, and a snarling whirlwind of fur launched itself at the gabha's haunches. For a moment Cernu was knocked off balance, then he let out an impatient grunt and swung his club at Fara, catching her across the neck. The faol tried to rise, but, stunned, fell back again. The gabha general turned back to Brie, but in that moment she darted under the reach of his horns and thrust the fire arrow up into his bearded chin.

  Blood poured down her hand and the giant figure stiffened. The club dropped from his hand. As he fell, Cernu opened his mouth to bray, but all that emerged were flames. He hit the ground with a crash, his head afire.

  Brie staggered, almost falling to the ground herself. Anxiously she looked around for Fara. The faol had an ugly gash on her neck but was already on her feet and trotting toward Brie. Together they found Collun. He lay where he had fallen, eyes closed, the side of his head a sticky mass of blood.

  Brie was sure he was dead. Trembling, her fingers sought his pulse; she just barely could feel a whispering thrum against her fingertips.

  Then she saw Sago on the ground several feet away. He lay on his side, curled up, face peaceful. He might have been sleeping, except for the wide stain of crimson across the front of his tunic. Brie crossed to him and crouched down.